with Rick Skwiot
We are delighted to welcome author Rick Skwiot to Omnimystery News today.
Rick's new crime thriller is Fail (Blank Slate Press; October 2014 trade paperback) and we recently had the chance to talk with him a little more about it.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to the principal character in Fail. And what is it about him that appeals to you as a writer?
Photo provided courtesy of
Rick Skwiot
Rick Skwiot: Fail's major protagonist is a tough, wisecracking Mexican- and African-American cop, Lt. Carlo Gabriel, who has been exiled to the city's unruly North Side for beating a prisoner who had killed one of his men. Divorced, 54, a former basketball player for Saint Louis University and a lapsed Catholic, he gets called in on a missing person case by his former partner Angelo Cira, now the mayor, with a chance to redeem himself.
I like Carlo because is human, that is, a man with weaknesses: somewhat corruptible, a sensualist, always on a diet. In fact, at one time or another in the novel he practices all the Seven Deadly Sins — wrath, greed, lust, pride, sloth, envy, and gluttony. Also, he is somewhat of a mystery himself, hard to figure, and the reader can't be sure on what side of the law — and right and wrong — he will land until the end.
OMN: How do you usually go about researching the plot points of your stories?
RS: In the pre-Internet days I dreaded doing the research for my journalism and fiction writing — long hours in libraries, endless phone calls, poring through the numerous reference books on my shelves. While I still get help over the phone, I get most of what I need over the Internet. For example, in Fail there's a scene where my protagonist, exiled St. Louis cop Carlo Gabriel, meets the mayor in his city hall office. Though I had once been in the mayor's office, it was thirty years ago, and I wasn't sure what was visible through the high windows. No problem — even though I was writing the novel from Key West, Florida. Using Google Earth and its Street View function, I was able to zoom down the north side of St. Louis City Hall, where I knew the mayor's office to be, and gaze out across the park to the World War I Memorial and the Central Library. So I rely heavily on the Internet to check facts and dig out info, but I also rely on experts — such as the director of the St. Louis Police Academy, who spent an hour on the phone with me filling me in on an array of procedures, policies and equipment. I've also learned over the years to do the research early rather than filling it in later, as factual details can change everything — including the plot, the characters and their motivations.
OMN: The action in Fail takes place in St. Louis. How important is setting to the story?
RS: Setting is crucial, as setting determines character and character determines plot. So I work to nail the setting — the sense of place, the weather, the geography, the architecture, all the telling physical details — in order to create a fictional world that feels real. The job here is to pull your readers into this created world and allow them to live there along with your characters, to feel a part of the drama. So any physical detail that doesn't square with the reader's knowledge or experience breaks that dream and undermines the desired effect. This is also true of affected prose — which makes the reader conscious of the words, keeping him or her on the surface of things rather than immersed in the story. I try to make the words on the page disappear for the reader, so the reader can see, feel and live the fictional moment in a realistic environment.
OMN: If we could send you anywhere in the world, all expenses on us, to research the setting for a book, where would it be?
RS: Book me a ticket to London and nice hotel near Leicester Square. I've started work on a book set there — though in 1973, when the Provisional Irish Republican Army was planting bombs about town. I would love to dig in for a month or two to add a contemporary perspective for the narrator, who is telling how he murdered his young, faithless wife there 40 years earlier. (FYI, nothing autobiographical here.) I don't believe I can think of a more costly research locale. Thank you for the generous offer, which I assume includes theatre tickets and a box at Wimbledon if I happen to go there in June.
OMN: But of course! Back to the real world, as it were … what is the best advice you've received as an author?
RS: Years ago, when I was living in Mexico trying to figure out how to be a writer, I got some great advice from an expatriate Canadian film director over a bottle of tequila: "Dig deep into yourself to develop your own unique vision, Rick, grasp it with all your heart and might, and shove it up their (***)!" — all accompanied by appropriate gestures. Though a bit profane, his advice was apt: be original, trust yourself, and don't worry about what others are doing or try to write for the market — make the market. Write for a reader, write for yourself. Follow your heart. And one more crucial piece of advice, this from a Cuban refugee, a friend who fought his way to international success as a prosecutor and high-stakes attorney. It is an admonition he had received from his mother as a child: "Dream large, work hard, and never, ever give up." I pass it along to aspiring authors or anyone who wants to fulfill himself or herself — or die trying.
OMN: How did Fail come to be titled? And tell us more about the cover design?
RS: My working title for Fail was "Professor Stone Vanishes," after the wonderful psychological novel Monsieur Monde Vanishes by the late Belgian writer Georges Simenon (creator of the equally wonderful Inspector Maigret mysteries). In fact, the early scene where Lt. Gabriel interviews the wife of the missing Professor Stone draws somewhat on the opening scene of Simenon's novel … But soon, as the novel started evolving and growing and began to delve into the corruption and malfeasance in St. Louis city government and its public schools, the title migrated to "F," that is, a failing grade. Finally, at the suggestion of a colleague (and later underscored by my publisher), we called the book Fail — which is less ambiguous.
The nighttime cover image of the St. Louis riverfront depicts the setting of a key scene, and shows the dark, relentless movement of the Mississippi River — and important element in my mystery.
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?
RS: As a child I devoured biographies — mostly of famous Americans. Today I still read biographies — now mostly those of writers, spies and other nefarious sorts. Then as now I was intrigued by people's journeys, their life stories, how they become who they are meant to become — or how they fail. Fiction often does the same thing, and in the process likewise expands the bounds of human sympathy. We could not have known Charles Dickens or what it was like to be a boy in 19th century England, but when we read David Copperfield and Great Expectations we begin to understand. Similarly, most of us don't know what it is like to be a disgraced African-American St. Louis cop fighting to regain his self-respect, or a humiliated English professor struggling to do the right thing, but when we read Fail we perhaps begin to get an idea — at least I hope so.
OMN: Have any specific authors influenced how and what you write today?
RS: I mentioned Georges Simenon when I talked about the title. He has probably influenced my approach to writing more than any other single writer. He in turn, got some timely advice from the French novelist Colette: cut, cut, cut. Anything that is there just for effect or because you think it clever or whatever, cut it. Pare things down to the bones so the reader can feel the story and judge for himself or herself — don't lecture or lead. Just give the story and setting without explanation and trust the reader to see it and understand and draw his or her own conclusions. Simenon called himself a pointillist, after the French impressionist painters such as Georges Seurat who painted discrete dots of color which, when viewed from a distance, created a harmonious and understandable picture that blended in the viewer's eye. Similarly, in Simenon you find few if any transitions, dialogue tags, or explanations. What you get are short sentences and short paragraphs without ostentation; you get the direct, unfiltered thoughts, words and deeds of the characters that you, the reader, blend into understanding.
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Former journalist Rick Skwiot is the author of three previous novels—the Hemingway First Novel Award winner Death in Mexico, the Willa Cather Fiction Prize finalist Sleeping With Pancho Villa, and Key West Story—as well as two memoirs. He also works as a feature writer, book doctor and editor. From St. Louis, he currently resides in Key West.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at RickSkwiot.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Fail
Rick Skwiot
A Crime Thriller
Disgraced African American St. Louis Police Lieutenant Carlo Gabriel wants fiercely to return to the headquarters hierarchy from which he has been exiled to the city's tough North Side. All he needs do is track down the missing husband of the mayor's vivacious press secretary. Instead he unwittingly and unwillingly unearths a morass of corruption, educational malpractice and greed that consigns thousands of at-risk youths to the mean streets of America's erstwhile murder capital. Worse, it's the kind of information that could get a cop killed.
Fighting for life and his honor, Gabriel makes chilling discoveries that ultimately lead to a life-threatening and life-changing decision — a choice that could affect not only his own future but also that of the city and its top leaders.
