We are delighted to welcome author Gary Corbin to Omnimystery News today.
Gary's new courtroom thriller is Lying in Judgment (Double Diamond Publishing; March 2016 hardcover, trade paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the opportunity to spend some time with him talking about it.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to the lead character of Lying in Judgment. What is it about him that appeals to you as a writer?
Photo provided courtesy of
Gary Corbin
Gary Corbin: Peter Robertson, 33, is a loyal, principled husband, son, and friend, whose discovers his wife is having an affair. Following her suspected lover leads to an accidental collision on a remote county road, and a fight that escalates too quickly, resulting in the man's death. But Peter blacks out and can't remember much about it — and then discovers he's followed and killed the wrong man, a perfect stranger. His memory returns while serving on the jury for a murder trial — which turns out to be the murder he committed.
What appeals to me about Peter is that he is a man of conscience, an "everyman" we can all relate to, but who makes a horrible mistake that could ruin his life. We are all one horrible mistake away from a similar situation. Who among us hasn't had a just-miss incident while driving after one too many beers, or who swerved in the nick of time to avoid that child fetching a ball bouncing into the street? Who among us hasn't been in the position of knowing with certainty that a person accused of doing something wrong is innocent — but is afraid to act, since revealing their innocence would be ruinous to one's own situation? When the stakes are at their highest — i.e., murder — the way everyday people react may be fascinatingly different than in everyday situations.
OMN: How would you tweet a summary of the book?
GC: A man serves on the jury of a murder trial — for the crime that he committed.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?
GC: While all of the characters and events in the story are completely fictitious, my own experiences inform the story in a variety of ways. Usually my own passions come in as interests of the main characters, or things I know well become specifics in the story. For example, I'm a homebrewer, wine enthusiast, "foodie," and coffee roaster. Many of the characters in Lying in Judgment, but particularly Peter, subconsciously obsess about one or more of these. Christine and Larry, for example, both obsess about coffee, but from opposite perspectives.
OMN: Which comes first when starting a new project, the characters or the storyline?
GC: When starting a new book or play, the premise comes first, followed quickly by the principal conflict. I then sketch out the main characters, then the storyline, and derive subplots from the key conflicting motivations among the characters. Story and character development are very interactive and codependent with me.
OMN: Tell us a little more about your writing process.
GC: I write longhand first — always. Sometimes a story begins as a morning freewrite that I'll later flag for development; other times it comes to me as I'm doing something else, and I'll jot down a quick note to return to later. I develop the main premise and principal conflicts first, then develop detailed character outlines — even biographies — so that I know everything about them before I immerse them into scenes. I know what they look like, what car they drive, where they went to school, how many siblings, their fears, their obsessions, their quirks. I sketch the story outline in a "top down" manner, with the major "acts" and plot points first, then develop scene structures and beats. Despite all that, the story can take on a life of its own as I write, usually because the characters begin to take over a bit. New characters emerge unbidden at times — but only in novels, never in plays.
OMN: How true are you to the settings of the story?
GC: My stories tend to be set in a real place, or a fictional place based very strongly on a real location. Lying in Judgment is set in Portland, while The Mountain Man's Dog is set in a fictional logging town in central Oregon. The specific locations (restaurants, bars, people's homes) tend to be fictionalized versions of actual places I like, with a few exceptions on either end — completely fabricated places for some events (ones people might not like seeing represented in their "backyard"), and well-known true-to-life places for others (e.g., the Multnomah County Courthouse for the trial).
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as an author?
GC: Read, read, read, and write, write, write! Challenge yourself with your reading and writing. Read everything in your genre and as much as you can in other genres, even ones you think you hate. Write for the sake of writing; write (and read) in styles and genres out of your comfort zone. If you're a novelist, write plays, or poems, or screenplays sometimes. Try writing your novel as a play or poem or song. Keep refilling the well with as much diversity as you can.
OMN: Suppose Lying in Judgment were to be adapted for television or film. Who do you see playing the key roles?
GC: For Peter I'd imagine someone like Billy Zane, Matt Damon, or Richard Cummings Jr. For Christine, Anne Hathaway, Rose McGowan, or Zoey Deschanel. Dana Delaney would make a great Marcia.
OMN: What's next for you?
GC: I have another novel (The Mountain Man's Dog), a crime/mystery novel set in central Oregon, in the works for a 2016 release. I also write plays, and am marketing a new comedy — "Family Hardware" — about a man whose doctor tells him his heart is not healthy enough for sex. There will be plenty more books and plays after those!
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Gary Corbin is a writer, actor, and playwright in Camas, WA, a suburb of Portland, OR. In addition to writing and editing for private sector, government, individuals, and not-for-profit clients, his creative and journalistic work has been published in BrainstormNW, the Portland Tribune, The Oregonian, and Global Envision, among others. A homebrewer as well as a maker of wine, mead, cider, and soft drinks, Gary is a member of the Oregon Brew Crew and a BJCP National Beer Judge. He loves to ski, cook, and garden, and hopes someday to train his dogs to obey.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at GaryCorbinWriting.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Lying in Judgment by Gary Corbin
A Courtroom Thriller
Publisher: Double Diamond Publishing
Peter Robertson, 33, discovers his wife is cheating on him. Following her suspected boyfriend one night, he erupts into a rage, beats him and leaves him to die … or so he thought. Soon he discovers that he has killed the wrong man — a perfect stranger. Six months later, impaneled on a jury, he realizes that the murder being tried is the one he committed. After wrestling with his conscience, he works hard to convince the jury to acquit the accused man. But the prosecution's case is strong as the accused man had both motive and opportunity to commit the murder.
The pressure builds, and Peter begins to slip up, revealing things that only the murderer would know — and Christine, a pretty and intelligent alternate juror, suspects something is amiss. Meanwhile, Peter's wife leaves him, his mother suffers a series of debilitating strokes, and his best friend and employee, accused of sexual harassment, needs Peter's help that he's too preoccupied to give. As jurors one by one declare their intention to convict, Peter's conscience eats away at him and he careens toward nervous breakdown.
— Lying in Judgment by Gary Corbin. Click here to take a Look Inside the book.
