We are delighted to welcome author Matt Ferraz to Omnimystery News today.
Matt has a new book coming out next year, with a very intriguing premise — Killing Dr. Watson (MX Publishing; February 2016 trade paperback format) — and we had a chance to talk with him more about it.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to the lead character of Killing Dr. Watson.
Photo provided courtesy of
Matt Ferraz
Matt Ferraz: Jerry Bellamy is a twenty-something English lad whose life is below mediocrity. He has never achieved a thing in his whole life, and all he knows about the world is what he sees on television. His favorite show was The Baker Street Sleuth, a Sherlock Holmes series from the 90's starring Sir Bartholomew Neville. Jerry is quite pathetic at the beginning, but the reader really has the chance to see the character grow as the novel goes on. Sir Bartholomew is also a pathetic character, but of a different sort. He's a has-been actor that lives on the shadow of his early work. They both team up to find out who's killing the actors who played Dr. Watson in The Baker Street Sleuth, but neither of them has any detective skills. Seeing these people trying to conduct an investigation can be really funny at some points, and quite tragic at others.
OMN: Tell us something about the book that isn't mentioned in the publisher's synopsis.
MF: I decided to set this Killing Dr. Watson in 1997 for a simple reason: I think that, if the characters could use the internet tools that are available nowadays in their investigations, they would be sitting in their chairs throughout the whole book. There's a lot of running around in Killing Dr. Watson, with the characters trying to find out which actor played who in the past, who's dead and who's alive, and I didn't want they to just make a quick research at the Internet Movie Data Base. It would take all the fun away from it.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in the book?
MF: I've always wanted to write a book dealing with fandom. I'm the kind of guy that stays all night long on an internet forum, discussing some tiny detail in an obscure 60's movie, and I know that's not necessarily a healthy thing to do. I mean, there are tons of people who can do things like that and still lead a normal life. But there are people like my main character Jerry Bellamy, who hasn't done anything with his life other than sitting in front of the TV and memorizing trivia. In some aspects, he's the kind of guy I could have become, and that still scares me a little bit.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
MF: I really hate the idea of creating characters biographies. I want the characters to reveal themselves to me as I write them. That's the important thing about the first draft: you don't know who those people are, what they're going to do and what's going to happen to them. You realize it little by little as you write that draft. Them, when you read everything all over from the beginning, you already know your characters, and you can tell when they said something they wouldn't really say, or when they do something that doesn't fit their arc.
While writing this novel I had great support from my fiancée Alana, who read a million different drafts of the book and encouraged me to keep writing. She's an avid reader, and is always my first critic. I also had the support of a wonderful editor, Makenzi Crouch. She edited the second draft of Killing Dr. Watson and had no mercy on me while pointing the weak spots of my story.
OMN: If we could send you anywhere in the world to research the setting for a book, where would it be?
MF: I'd say to Rome, without thinking twice! I've always been fascinated with Italian culture. The Italian cinema is for me the best in the world, and I've even learned to speak Italian without ever setting a foot there. They have an amazing tradition on Mystery novels, what they call giallo, and some great comics like Dylan Dog, Nick Raider, Martin Mistére, Mr. No, and many others.
OMN: What is the best advice — and harshest criticism — you've received as an author?
MF: The best advice I've ever received was from John D. MacDonald, who wrote an introduction to Stephen King's short stories collection Night Shift, where he advised writers never to be carried out but their own ego, because the most important thing is always the story. The harshest criticisms to my work always come from myself, as I have a very good idea of what kind of writer I don't want to become. There's no better way to evolve than by learning to take criticism. When someone complains about your work, you can either cry, yell back or take a deep breath and learn something with that criticism. Learning how to do that is the most important thing for an artist.
OMN: How involved were you with the cover design of Killing Dr. Watson?
MF: I was allowed to make suggestions on the cover. I wanted an image of Sherlock Holmes inside a TV set, which I thought would look intriguing and also give a hint on the book's plot. I didn't like the first version, featuring a modern TV set, and asked the designer to use an older model. That's the draft that ended up being approved.
OMN: Suppose Killing Dr. Watson were to be adapted for television or film. Who do you see playing the key roles?
MF: I've always pictured Jerry Bellamy as this very thin, almost ill-looking young man. I think that has something to do with the fact that he's always running around, always trying to solve everything, without having time to catch his breath. If they ever made a movie about my book, I'd want a complete unknown for the part. Now, regarding Sir Bartholomew Neville, I've always had Timothy Dalton in mind while writing him. Dalton is my favorite Bond, and I read somewhere that he was once cast as Sherlock Holmes in a movie that ended up being cancelled. I couldn't stop thinking how awesome that could have been, so I created this role for him. I can't think of anyone better to play Neville.
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?
MF: There was a very popular series of books in Brazil when I was a child called Coleção Vagalume (Firefly Collection). These books were aimed to older children, tackling a wide range of genres, and many of them were really, really good. There was one particular book called Enigma na Televisão, about a serial killer who eliminated soap-opera actors, that was a great influence for me while writing Killing Dr. Watson.
When I was about twelve, my Math teacher lent me my first Agatha Christie book, Death on the Nile. Later she let me have her collection of pulp magazines for the summer. They were filled with violent noir stories that were different from everything I had seen. At that point I decided that was what I wanted to write.
OMN: What's next for you?
MF: I'm moving to England to take my Masters in Biography, and hope to do a lot of writing while I'm there. As a writer and a journalist, I'd really like to take a shot at the True Crime genre. I also have some ideas for a sequel to Killing Dr. Watson and for a few other novels. We'll see how things go from now on!
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Matt Ferraz is a Brazilian author and film critic with a degree in Journalism. He's been writing stories since he was four, and now has works published in English, Portuguese and Italian. Matt is also a lecturer, and loves to stand in front of a crowd to talk about movies and literature. His favorite Holmes story is "The Copper Beeches" and his favorite Holmes movie is Hammer's The Hound of the Baskervilles.
For more information about the author, please visit his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook.
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Killing Dr. Watson by Matt Ferraz
A Crime Novel
Publisher: MX Publishing
Years after its final episode was broadcasted by the BBC, The Baker Street Sleuth continues to be the most famous Sherlock Holmes TV series of all time, with constant re-runs and thousands of fans. Jerry Bellamy is one of them, and his passion for the series is the only thing that makes his life bearable.
With a lousy job, no friends and a difficult relationship with his family, Jerry finds comfort in the adventures of the detective played by the great Sir Bartholomew Neville. But after finding out that a mysterious killer is eliminating the actors who played Dr. Watson in the different seasons of The Baker Street Sleuth, Jerry and Neville team up to form an unlikely partnership to stop these murders from happening.
A mysterious redhead, secret agents and street kids with sharp pocket-knives complete this unusual crime novel where finding out who the killer is might not be the end of the mystery.
— Killing Dr. Watson by Matt Ferraz
