Blog favourite, Dietrich Kalteis is back talking about his sixth book - Poughkeepsie Shuffle which drops today.....
Publication day for Poughkeepsie
Shuffle - can you pitch the book to potential readers in 50 words or less
please?
Publication day is September 11, 2018.
Ex-con Jeff Nichols is discontent with
his used-car sales job. Not one to let past mistakes stand in the way of a good
score, he gets involved with running guns. And as things spin out of control,
Jeff hangs on, determined to not let anything stop him from hitting the
motherlode.
What was the germ or spark for this
latest offering?
The story takes place in Toronto in
the mid-eighties. It’s where I grew up, and as I usually visit every year, I’m
amazed at how much the city has changed since those days. Urban expansion, taller buildings springing up, with widening roadways,
some that didn’t exist at all when I lived there. It’s still a great city, but,
it’s sad to see some of the places l remember torn away. So, I wanted to bring
some of that back, weaving in those sights and sounds of a grittier, but
character-filled Toronto, the way I remember it back in those days.
The city sits across
the lake from Niagara and Buffalo, with easy access to the US, making it the
perfect setting for a story revolving around gun smuggling. After I read a news
story a couple of years ago about a gunrunning ring that operated between
upstate New York and Ontario, my story took shape. Another element that worked
into it was the increasing gang violence that I remember hearing about on the
radio and reading about in the papers.
Why Poughkeepsie? Do you have a
connection to the city?
(Poughkeepsie
is a city in New York State’s Hudson Valley. The waterfront Mid-Hudson Children’s
Museum has science, art and literacy exhibits. Once a railroad bridge, the
Walkway Over the Hudson has views of the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson
River. It links to the Dutchess Rail Trail, a path through the Hudson Valley.
North, the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site includes a
library and museum.)
Poughkeepsie is this picturesque town
along the Hudson River, in New York state, about a seven-hour car ride
southeast from Toronto. I’ve driven through the area a number of times, and it’s
a beautiful, peaceful place with a lot of history. And I thought its small size
and sleepy setting offered a good fictitious base for an operation smuggling
guns into Canada.
Did you take a field trip, or could
you do all your research from the comfort of your own home?
A lot of it came from memory, but I
did quite a bit of research too, sifting through newspaper archives, histories
and photos. I relied on memory primarily for color, adding the kind of things
that can’t be researched, and I researched for what lent authenticity and
accuracy to the story.
The most important thing I’ve learned
about research is to leave most of it out. Sometimes I turn up all these
fantastic details, and I have to decide what to put in and what to toss out.
There’s this fine line between making a story believable and dragging its pace
with too much information.
Roughly speaking, what was the timescale
from the first pen or key stroke on this one to the last tweak? Was there much
tinkering or re-writing needed?
Poughkeepsie Shuffle took under a year to complete. The
first draft was done in a couple of months, during which time I got to know my
characters and develop the story. Then I reworked a second draft, smoothing out
some scenes, deleting others, sharpening dialog and so on. After that, I did a
timeline, making sure the sequence of events worked. Then I set it aside for a
week or so before giving the whole thing a final polish. I don’t have a set
rule as to how much time or how many drafts it takes to finish a novel, I just
know when I’m done. Sometimes I nail it in three drafts, sometimes it takes
four.
I'm slightly curious, as a published
author was there much of a delay between you signing off on this one and it
seeing the light of day?
Presumably you're hard at work on your
next one, do you find it strange back-tracking and promoting last year's child?
Is it not like picking up and putting on a pair of dirty socks?
Once accepted by my publisher, ECW
Press, the book was assigned a publishing date. Then came the editing and copy
editing. A cover was designed and a marketing plan was laid out. By the time
the final book went to press, the better part of another year had gone by.
Once a story leaves my desk, I’m
working on the next one, putting the completed one out of mind until it comes
back from my editor. That works since it lets me look at the first story more
objectively having been away from it for a longer period. It doesn’t feel like
backtracking since it gives me a final chance to improve it and catch anything
that slipped by.
It's your sixth novel and you've been
churning them out regular as clockwork - one a year (two in 2016) since 2014,
no problem with writer's block then?
I’ve never had writer’s block,
although depending on what’s going on at any point in time, I may get
distracted by real life, so I might have less focus and time for my imaginary
world. I try not to worry about it too much; I don’t adhere to a quota of a
minimum of words or pages per day. I just show up every morning and do my best,
and most of the time I get right into it, and I write until noon, and sometimes
later.
Back-tracking on my notes from your
earlier books, the first three were set present day, House of Blazes in
the early 1900s, last year's Zero Avenue was the 70s and this one is in
the 80s. Are you gradually working your way back to present times?
The next one to be published is set in
the late 30s, and the one I’m currently working on is set in the early 70s, so
no there’s no pattern.Time is just part of the setting, and I choose an era I
think will work best for a particular story. Sometimes present time seems
right, and sometimes the past gives a particular story something special.
What can we look forward to next in
2019? Any hints or teasers?
Call Down the Thunder (the one set in the 30s) will be out
in 2019, although I’m not sure of the exact pub date yet. The story centers
around a young married couple who come up with a hell of a way to survive the
hard times during the dustbowl days of Kansas.
I also have a short story called “Bottom
Dollar” included in the Vancouver Noir anthology by Akashic Books,
coming out this November.
—
Bio: Dietrich Kalteis is the award-winning author of Ride
the Lightning (bronze medal winner, 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards,
for best regional fiction), The Deadbeat Club, Triggerfish, House
of Blazes (silver medal winner, 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards, for
best historical fiction), and Zero Avenue. His novel The Deadbeat
Club has been translated to German, and 50 of his short stories have also
been published internationally. He lives with his family on Canada’s West
Coast.
His website is http://www.dietrichkalteis.com/, and he regularly contributes at the blogs Off the Cuff:
And at 7 Criminal Minds:
and Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dietrichkalteis/
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Jeff Nichols - a man strong of conviction but weak of character - is fresh out of the Don Jail, looking for work - any kind of work - and a way back into Ann Ryan's good graces. She waited for his return from prison but is quickly running short on patience. An ex-inmate and friend gets Jeff a job at Ted Bracey's used car lot, selling cars for commission only. But it's not enough to keep him and Ann afloat in mid-80s Toronto, and the lure of easy money soon gets Jeff involved in smuggling guns from upstate New York. With that sweet Poughkeepsie cash, now he can keep his promises to Ann; he even buys them a house, but conceals the source of the money. As Jeff gets in deeper and deeper, everyone around him learns how many rules he's willing to bend and just how far he'll go to get on the fast track to riches. That he's a guy who doesn't let lessons from past mistakes get in the way of a good score.
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Dietrich and his books previously on the blog....
Interesting interview - thanks, both. That's an interesting point about research; it's interesting, and you can turn up a lot of great information. But that doesn't mean all of those details belong in the story...
ReplyDeleteYes, I suppose it's as much about what you leave out, as well as what you include.
DeleteCol – Thanks for posting this interview. His comment on the changes in Toronto started me thinking how the old Toronto – or any place – still exists in a writer’s mind and can live again on the page.
ReplyDeleteElgin, that's an interesting point. I know lately I've been reading a lot of current books, but I do enjoy books either written in or set in the 60s, 70s and even the 80s. It invokes a kind of nostalgia I suppose for when I was young and growing up and life was a lot less complicated.
DeleteAnother author I have been meaning to read. I think the one I have is Ride the Lightning.
ReplyDeleteWell worth trying at least one of his books, I reckon.
DeleteAnd I meant to say, great interview, very interesting.
ReplyDeleteThanks Tracy.
Delete