Monday, July 27, 2015

Guest Post by Gordon Hopkins

So here's the deal:

When I decided to write my first novel, I was working as an insurance investigator. I had just moved from San Francisco to Hartford, CT and I hated it. There are no words to describe how miserable I was living in Hartford. Creative Writing 101 says "write what you know," so I wrote about an insurance investigator from San Francisco who moved to Hartford and hated it.

I lived in San Francisco for five years. It is still my favorite city. So why did I leave? Good question. I'm glad you asked. I was in San Francisco during the dotcom boom and bust. During the boom, the cost of living kept going up and up. I was promoted several times at work. Then the bust happened and my career stalled. You didn’t have to be working for a dotcom to get screwed by the bust. Everyone was affected. For example, the insurance company I worked for lost a lot of business when the dotcoms died and dropped all their insurance policies. Despite all this, the cost of living kept going up. By that time I was so sick of being broke that when I was offered a job as a fraud investigator in Hartford I jumped at the chance.

The moment I stepped off the plane, I realized I had made mistake. Just to be clear, it was Hartford I hated. I actually liked the work and was pretty good at it. Another upside was that my job gave me plenty of material for my book. I was investigating medical insurance fraud when I started writing the book. There are a lot of insurance investigators in crime fiction but they usually investigate murders (Did Lady Faversham bump off her husband for his million dollar life insurance policy?) or theft (Who stole Lady Faversham's heavily insured jewels?). There are a smattering of books about investigating arson (Don Winslow's California Fire and Life), car accidents (Dan Simmons' Darwin's Blade) and even a book about viatical fraud (Richard Dooling's Bet Your Life) but I couldn't think of a single example of medical insurance fraud as the basis of a mystery novel.

Having come up with what I thought was a good idea for a book, I just had to write it. I'm sure many of the folks reading this blog are aware of the difficulty of writing a book while also working a full time job. During my lunch hour I would take a pad and pencil (I didn't have a laptop at the time) and sit by the fountain, which had been turned off for the winter. I created a character named Gil DiMauro, who I named after my high-school Latin teacher, Mr. DiMauro (he was a teacher, so his first name was Mister). I made him a displaced San Franciscan and a Deadhead. He starts every morning by deciding which Jerry Garcia necktie to wear. Then I gave him a crusty, chain-smoking, ex-cop for a boss. His boss is never named. She is always just referred to as "The Old Lady." Most detectives in crime fiction seem to be either government employees (cops, FBI, etc.) or self-employed private eyes. I liked the idea of making my detective an employee with an office and a cubicle and a mean boss. The plot pretty much wrote itself. Although the book is fiction, all the scams described in it are real. I called the book Fraudsters, as one word titles were de rigueur at the time.

Okay, so I wrote a book. Now what? I heard from various sources (i.e. frustrated, unpublished writers like myself) that no publisher would consider my book without an agent, so I tried getting an agent. That didn't go so well. I sent out dozens of inquiries. No one will be surprised at how few gave a response. Then I found out that St. Martin's Press runs an annual contest called "Malice Domestic." No agent required. I sent in my book. It didn't win but it was a finalist. St. Martin's Press runs another contest in conjunction with the Private Eye Writers of America. I sent the book in. It didn't win but, again, it was a finalist. I tinkered with the manuscript a bit and sent it in to both contests again the following year. It was a finalist for the "Malice Domestic" contest again. I hadn't gotten published yet but this was enough to convince me the book didn't suck, so I tried again. It was about this time that I received a very nice (let me emphasize this: very nice) email from an editor at St. Martin's Press, which said in part, "I wanted to let you know that I enjoyed your novel very much and we considered it for publication, outside of the competitions. I’m afraid we decided it wouldn’t quite work for us." In other words, "we ain't publishing it so stop sending it to us."

By this time, I had escaped Hartford. Every once in a while, I would try sending the book to some publisher but, for the most part, I held out little hope it would ever be read by anyone other than my mother and sister (who, I'm pretty sure, only skimmed it). Speaking of my sister, she was the one who first introduced me to Joe Konrath and Jack Daniels. Our first conversation on the subject when something like this:

Me: What's so funny?

Shelley: (laugh) cat...(snort) diaper...(cough) cat...(laugh) can't talk...

Me: What the hell is wrong with you?

I began reading Mr. Konrath's blog and, following his lead, published the book myself.

I'm a big fan of the Jack Daniels stories, so I jumped at the chance to write one, especially since Mr. Konrath was allowing other writers to use their own characters in the stories. I banged out the story in three days, again using a real insurance scam, the time honored "swoop-and-squat." In keeping with the cocktail theme of titles, I called it, The Whiplash Brokers. Yes, there really is a drink called the whiplash.

I was online when I stumbled across the recipe for a drink called a Japanese Slipper. I immediately thought that would make a great title for a Jack Daniels mystery. I wished I had a story idea. Five minutes later, I was reading about insurance fraud in a nail salon. I changed the nail salon to a massage parlor, added a few murders and wrote, The Japanese Slipper Murders.

Unlike some of the others writing in the Jack Daniels and Associates Kindle World, I am only just getting started as a writer. So far, I have published only one novel and the two Jack Daniels stories. I have now finished two books and have two more in production. I hope all four will be out this year. I will also be writing more Jack Daniels stories. In The Whiplash Brokers, I made reference to a case Jack's mother had worked on years ago when she was a cop. It was never intended as anything other than an excuse to talk about Jack's mother. Having brought it up, however, I now feel obligated to tell the story, so I am currently working on Black Mary: A Mary Streng Mystery.

Joe sez: Check out Gordon's books.

I'm always fascinated how authors decide they want to write books, and the route they take to publication. Everyone is different, and there is no "right" way to do things.

The thing we all need to focus on, especially in the beginning, is how much fun we're having. If you're having fun, it gets you through the rejections, the poor sales, the bad reviews. Hopefully, the fun you have also bleeds out onto the page, which allows the reader to have fun as well. The more fun the reader has, the few rejections, better sales, and nicer reviews the writers gets.

So have fun. Keep having fun. Don't be afraid to learn, to experiment, to fail. Help one another, and keep building your career.

Looking forward to Black Mary, Gordon.

9 comments:

Phyllis Humphrey said...

Gordon: I, too, tried to find a publisher, or an agent, for my mystery novels. Then I found the St. Martins Press Malice Domestic contest and was a finalist - twice! Finally, this year I stumbled across Gemma Halliday Publishing and, after reading only three chapters of one of my books, she sent me a contract for both. I hope to see them out in 2016. I must qualify this by saying my books are cozy mysteries with humor, which are enormous fun to write. So we both found success in our own way. Thanks for sharing, plus good luck and many sales.

Patrice Fitzgerald said...

Gordon - Your books sound great! I'm so sorry you didn't enjoy Hartford. I'm in West Hartford, and I love it here.

Hope you find success with these books, and good for you for sticking with it.

Tracy Sharp - Author of the Leah Ryan Series said...

Congrats, Gordon!

Anonymous said...

Gordon, I went out and read Fraudster's sample just based on your voice here.

It is a great start, so I bought it. The concept of investigating medical fraud - and what you did with Biff - sold me. I want to hear more. I was annoyed when the sample ended, so I had to have my own.

Fraud angers me no end, and I have a DIL in the credit card fraud business - in San Francisco. If I like it as much as I think I will, she's getting a copy.

Are you continuing the series?

BTW, you have 'waive' for 'wave' in the sample; if you're fixing things, you might want to make sure the sample doesn't have typos. It looks very well formatted, not a given.

Alicia

Gordon Hopkins said...

Thanks, Tracy. Since reading Jacked Up! I have bought all of the Leah Ryan books and am enjoying them immensely.

Gordon Hopkins said...

Thank for the heads up, Alicia. I will get that fixed as soon as possible. That is one of the downsides to self-publishing. I don't have a publisher to yell at for mistakes. "Look what you did to my baby!"

In addition to Black Mary, I have three more novels in the series in various stages of development.

You might think that making the lead character a medical insurance fraud investigator would limit the number of stories I could tell but Gil DiMauro is turning out to be a surprising flexible character. While Fraudsters was a fairly straight-forward detective story, one of my new books is more of a suspense thriller dealing with a serial killer while another is a straight-up, "Die Hard-ish" action thriller.

Tim Tresslar said...

Just bought the Whiplash Brokers, Gordon. Looking forward to reading it!

BRYAN HIGBY said...

Great post Gordon. I look forward to reading your stories.

apm said...

i also interested in reading 'The Japanese Slipper Murders' novel. i like to read your posts thank you.