Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Ron Corbett, an ice-fishing hut, & a murder on RAGGED LAKE

HALLIE EPHRON: I had the pleasure of meeting Canadian mystery writer Ron Corbett at the Edgar Awards ceremony in NY. His novel, Ragged Lake, was a finalist for Best Paperback Original. It's also up for Crime Writers of Canada award as best debut novel.

At the awards ceremony, Ron looked stunned. Gobsmacked in a good way.
Welcoming him to Jungle Red, one of his first blog guest appearances.Ron, congratulations on your award nomination for your novel Ragged Lake. Wow! Talk about hitting it out of the park with your first novel. What was it like, learning that you'd been nominated?

RON CORBETT: It was a complete surprise because I had no idea Ragged Lake had been submitted. My publisher, ECW Press, submitted it and I only found out when the nominees were announced. I was working in my study and received an e-mail from the Mystery Writers of America. At first I thought a friend was pulling a joke. When ECW confirmed the nomination, I was still rather startled. Many of my favourite writers have won an Edgar. I am very aware of the award, and still quite flattered that MWA thought Ragged Lake was worthy of a nomination.

HALLIE: That's the kind of surprise every author hopes for. Why a mystery?

RON: When I was in university I loved James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler (I am of a generation that was taught the opening paragraph to The Postman Always Rings Twice in writing classes.) I discovered John D MacDonald a couple years ago, while vacationing in Florida, and I’m still over the moon about him. A few years ago, I did the same thing after reading my first James Lee Burke novel. So I like mysteries, and crime stories. It’s what I prefer to read. 

"There is plenty of violence in Corbett's debut, the first in the Frank Yakabuski series, but it is the gorgeous writing that makes the biggest impression. Whether it is describing a howling storm, depicting the way the fire following a meth lab explosion turns the snow to rain, or sharing the quiet sounds a building makes when everyone has gone to sleep, Corbett enthralls with his writing."
 
Now that's a review we'd all love to get. How did you make the transition to lush prose?

RON: As a print journalist, I was awfully lucky in my career. A lot of my background is in magazines, and when I was with newspapers it was as a feature writer or columnist. Which means I didn't write a lot of inverted-pyramid news stories. My non-fiction books(which all started as journalism stories) were often categorized as "creative non-fiction." So the jump to fiction wasn't as big as the jump might seem. Although I do love the fact that no matter what I write, I won't be getting a phone call tomorrow from a politician saying I'd missed the other side
of the story.

HALLIE:. Where (in your imagination, in real life?) did you find the cabin and a god-forsaken lawless town in which the story is set?

RON: There really was a cabin, or an ice-fishing hut, actually. I saw it one night when I was near Algonquin Park, working on a story for the Ottawa Citizen. I was walking back to my motel, and suddenly there was this flash of light way out on this lake I was walking beside. It was winter, and the lake was frozen. The light came from an ice-fishing hut. There were two more flashes of light, and then nothing.

In hindsight, it was probably some poor soul who couldn’t get his kerosene lantern lit, but at the time I thought it was the oddest thing. These three flashes of light from inside an ice-fishing hut, and then nothing more -- What had happened? By the time I reached my motel, those three flashes had become shotgun blasts, and something horrific had happened inside that hut.

I wrote some paragraphs that night that are in Ragged Lake.


HALLIE: Tell us about your series detective, Frank Yakabuski--where did he come from? And what inspired you to write his relationship with his father?


RON: Frank Yakabuski went through various incarnations (and various names) before I settled on the character you meet in Ragged Lake. I decided I wanted a character that was competent, skilled, confident about his abilities and his place in the world. I did not want a character riddled with self-doubt or with some dark, back-story that provided the narrative tension of the book. I wanted a character that was like the guides and woodsmen I have met from the Algonquin Highlands and the Northern Divide. “Stand-up” people, is the phrase you would use in those places.

Yakabuski is a common name up there, which is why I chose it, and why I stayed with it (despite suggestions along the way that it be changed. “How would you even pronounce it?” an early editor asked me. The answer, if you’re interested, is, “any way you want. It’s how they do it up there.”)   

Yakabuski’s relationship with his father grew as the story was being written. His role became much larger, and rather crucial in a few places. It seemed to make sense as I was writing the story. It wasn’t part of the original design. The father has an even larger role in the sequel, for the same reasons. Although it wasn’t a goal I set out with, by the time the third book in this series is published, some sort of opinion will be offered on the nature of father-son relationships.

That’s one of the quirky things about writing. Sometimes you’re all set to go in one direction but you end up stumbling off in the other. Drives you mad, but what are you going to do? If you can’t stand getting lost, you probably shouldn’t be doing this.

HALLIE: What's the next book in the series, and when is it coming out?

RON: The title is Cape Diamond and it comes out in early October, 2018. All three titles in this series will have proper place names.
Like I said, I’m crazy about John D MacDonald right now and he put a colour in all the titles to his Travis McGee mystery novels. That led to some pretty strange titles. Don’t know if the conceit works for dozens of books, but I’m hoping it works for three. It’s a tip of the hat to MacDonald, who I encourage everyone to read, if they haven’t done so already. He has a body of work I don’t think any writer will come close to attaining again.

As for the actual story, most of the action takes place in Springfield, this fictional northern city where Yakabuski works as a police detective. In Ragged Lake, with the exception of the diary portion and the epilogue, all the action took place outside of Springfield. In Cape Diamond, the reader finally gets to visit Springfield. Which is a pretty weird city. I’ll leave it at that.    

About Ragged Lake by Ron Corbett
While working one afternoon on the Northern Divide, a young tree-marker makes a grisly discovery: in a squatter’s cabin near an old mill town, a family has been murdered. An army vet coming off a successful turn leading a task force that took down infamous biker criminals, Detective Frank Yakabuski arrives in Ragged Lake, a nearly abandoned village, to solve the family’s murder. But no one is willing to talk. With a winter storm coming, Yakabuski sequesters the locals in a fishing lodge as he investigates the area with his two junior officers. Before long, he is fighting not only to solve the crime but also to stay alive and protect the few innocents left living in the desolate woods. A richly atmospheric mystery with sweeping backdrops, explosive action, and memorable villains, Ragged Lake will keep you guessing — about the violent crime, the nature of family, and secret deeds done long ago on abandoned frontiers.

 HALLIE: Start with an ice fishing cabin and 3 flashes of light... I SO get it!

What's a place  you've passed through and thought, whoa boy, I can imagine a story set right here.

49 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your nomination, Ron. I’m looking forward to reading your book.

    We recently took two of our grandchildren on a ferry ride and it struck me as a perfect setting for a mystery story.

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    1. A Staten Island ferry ride inspired Sara J. Henry's Learning to Swim. And whenever I take the ferry to Peaks Island from Portland, Maine, I think: What if....

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    2. Thanks; I’m definitely going to read that book . . . .
      We took the Lewes Ferry across the Delaware Bay to Cape May; the wind was fierce and, if the ferry had been smaller, I definitely could imagine it blowing a child overboard . . . .

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  2. Congrats on the book and the Edgar nomination.

    "Ragged Lake" is now officially on my To Buy List.

    As for the question of passing through somewhere and thinking it would be a good place to set a mystery, I think my problem is that I have that feeling everywhere I go.

    The bigger problem for me is whether I'd want to set a mystery in a real place or make up a city or town for my main character to inhabit and work.

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    1. I think most 'made up' places in mystery novels are based on real places. I've done that many times just to avoid having to get every nitpicky detail right. Or because I'm going to make the place evil or corrupt. (Harry Bosch lives in a real Los Angeles; Kinsey Milhone lives in 1960s Santa Barbara; does Agatha Christie's St Mary Meade exist? And doesn't Louise Penny mix real and made-up places?)

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    2. In the extremely rough idea of my mystery, the place I would be setting it would be evil and corrupt, so definitely better to make things up.

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  3. Welcome Ron and congratulations! That's a super way to hear about your Edgar nomination! And loved this interview with Hallie. I've read all the John D. Macdonald books, though not in a while. I'd love to hear more about why you decided not to have a big dark backstory for your detective?

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    1. I am embarrassed to say I've not read any John D. MacDonald. Putting his books on my TBR list along with Ron's.

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  4. RAGGED LAKE was on my radar from the Edgars, but now I really have to read it. My favorite genre of all is Murder Where the Weather Can Kill You. I'm excited to see more tough, hard-boiled crime fiction in rural settings - for so long, it had to be in a big city (and conversely, if it was in the sticks, it was cozy or traditional.)

    Three flashes of light in a remote fishing shack - when anyone asks me how the writer's imagination works, I'm going to use that as an answer.

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    1. Julia, I grab a blanket every time I think of Clare and Russ and the ice storm ;-)

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  5. Congratulations from me as well on your Edgar nomination! How wonderful! I personally love books set in 'interesting' locations. I find myself drawn to the cold spots - probably because I live in Texas and it's hot here a lot. Don't think I've read a book with an ice fishing hut and I know nothing about ice fishing, but seems like I need to learn. Fun!

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  6. Welcome to Jungle Reds, Ron, and congrats on the nomination!

    I saw a picture of the flooded water running underneath Fallingwater, right over the platform. My first thought: What if a dead body washed up there - during a tour?

    Mary/Liz

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    1. I want the body to be skeletal, dating back to when Frank Lloyd Wright supervised the construction...

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    2. He also used a lot of concrete in his structures--what if, upon doing some needed repairs after a ferocious storm, part of a skeleton emerged? Now I'll never be able to think of Fallingwater, Mary, without seeing a body in the water....

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    3. Hallie, that would be perfect.

      Flora, my work here is done. =)

      Mary/Liz

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  7. Congrats on your Edgar nomination. I just bought your book on Amazon, Kindle edition is $1.99 by the way. I had to go find the first paragraph of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. I think I read it first run! Time to go do that again too.

    "They threw me off the hay truck about noon. I had swung on the night before, down at the border, and as soon as I got up there under the canvas, I went to sleep. I needed plenty of that, after three weeks in Tia Juana, and I was still getting it when they pulled off to one side to let the engine cool. Then they saw a foot sticking out and threw me off. I tried some comical stuff, but all I got was a dead pan, so that gag was out. They gave me a cigarette, though, and I hiked down the road to find something to eat." James Cain

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  8. Welcome! I am obsessed with setting-and , and see it lacking in so many manuscripts… But looks like you have hit the setting out of the ballpark. How was it making the change from journalist typewriter to fiction writer?

    Congratulations on the nomination! Getting that letter, and then going to the Edgars as a nominee is an incredible step for any author. Did you know about the nomination when you wrote book 2? How did that change your writing, if it did?

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  9. Oh boy! I can't wait to read these! I read all of John D. MacDonald years ago and loved them; if I didn't have so many other books I wanted to read I would go through them all over again. But I'll read yours first!

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  10. Wow! With reviews like yours, Ron, no wonder the Edgar nomination was made! Congratulations! Slanted slightly sidewise, the commonest incidents can take a sinister cast. I'll be scooping up that Kindle edition (thanks, Ann!) shortly.

    My crews and I spent a lot of time off the beaten track in my days as a contract archaeologist--we drove across a backwoods bridge daily for one project, where weeks later, the sheriff found the body of a missing woman, wrapped in an old sleeping bag and dumped. Then there was the beautifully preserved cabin that time and the locals had (seemingly) forgotten--why? But the only skeltons we ever found, thankfully, were prehistoric.

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    1. A "contract archaeologist!" What a perfect job for a mystery sleuth.

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    2. Some of our sites were right next to roads--right out in the open, but we would open excavation units, excavate deep prehistoric storage pits or earth ovens, for example, covering with tarps at the end of the work day. There was always the tiniest thought before the tarps were pulled back the next morning--'what if?'

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  11. Good Morning,
    Any day that starts with the first paragraph from The Postman Always Rings Twice is a good day. Thank you Ann, for that.
    Someone out there may know how the New York Times review of that book went. I seem to recall the reviewer quoted not only the famous first sentence, but either the entire first paragraph or the entire first chapter (which was, of course, short.)
    What wonderful comments. I am by my computer this morning and looking forward to reading more.
    In response to some of the ones that have always come in, a sense of place, or setting, is normally what makes me want to write. I'll drive through a town and I'll want to describe it. I'll see mist rising over a lake, and want to describe it. Those three flashes of light in an ice-fishing hut is the sort of thing that would always make me want to sit down and write something. It is a different impulse for other writers, but that has always been mine.
    I did not realize that Murder Where the Weather Can Kill You was an official mystery genre. I am so pleased to hear about this, I am stealing the line. Thank you Julia.

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    1. Julia is squarely in that genre. Ditto Nancy Pickard. And I remember Sarah Smith's wonderful book with the Paris floods in it. Tony Hillerman. I'm a fan of Elmore Leonard but I disagree with his "writing rule" - Never open a book with weather.

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    2. Hi Ron, and welcome! I am inspired by place as well. Wherever I go and whatever I do, I am running descriptions in my head. If I weren't a writer, I think that might be considered certifiable:-)

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  12. Congratulations! I look forward to reading your books. Best location for a body dump? The Natchez Trace between Jackson, MS and Natchez. The two lane road is limited access and almost empty. Maybe a campsite along the way. Otherwise, no cars, law enforcement, or evidence of civilization. Some snakes and other critters, but otherwise, wooded areas and meadows for miles, silent, except for bird song and...

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    1. Whoa. Sounds perfect. Somehow it brought to mind Julia Dahl's book in which a body is found in Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal... cities can have desolate spots, too.

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    2. I haven't driven on the Trace in years but I remember it was gorgeous.

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    3. Nevada Barr country. My mom and I took a trip there after reading her books.

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  13. The sequel to Ragged Lake opens with a body being found tied to a fence at a children's sports field. The field is on the north shore of a great river, atop an escarpment. Trying to combine desolate with unexpected.

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  14. I adore John D. MacDonald. I've read all the books but it's been years, so thanks for the reminder, Ron. And I still can't go to Florida without getting little Travis McGee snippets in my head!

    Now I'm off to buy Ragged Lake!

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  15. John D. MacDonald, the man with the red hot typewriter, according to his biographer. I am the lucky person to have read his manuscripts (housed at the University of Florida in Gainesville. What impressed me was there were so few strike overs, or white outs. The words seemed to flow from his brain out the fingers and onto the pages. Amazing. Another plug for Bouchercon St. Pete., his grand children will be there!

    I once got off the bus in Pendleton OR and walked a bit to stretch my legs. The town was so quiet for a mill town. This would make a perfect setting for some thing like Bad Day at Black Rock, I thought.

    oh, and yes, I will be reading Ragged lake very soon. My kindle tablet arrives today!

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    1. Coralee, that is so cool that you've seen MacDonald's manuscripts! And now looking forward to meeting his grandchildren at B'con!

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    2. Coral, really?!? It's so hard to imagine writing on a typewriter... and yet everyone did it.

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  16. When I was in college, I temporarily commuted by train. One day when I returned home, I read in the afternoon newspaper that a dismembered female body had been found in a locker at the train station that morning, after I took off for school. The victim was from Canada, Quebec, I believe. I don't recall if the mystery of her death was ever solved. (But what a great way to use a train station locker!)

    Gee, Ron, thanks for giving me more books to read! Fortunately, I'll soon have more time. And congratulations, too!

    DebRo

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    1. In this day of terrorists, I'm not sure train stations even have lockers any more.

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  17. RAGGED LAKE sounds terrific, Ron! I love reading "murder where the weather can kill you" books, especially if I'm curled up on the couch under a blanket! Do you have a plan for the series beyond book three? I know that you may not know from a publishing standpoint, but have you given it much thought it terms of story arcs?

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  18. Ingrid,
    Yes, I am planning on extending the series beyond the initial three books. I was even hesitant to call it a trilogy, although it will wrap up the stories of Sean Morrissey and Cambino Cortez, two of the characters in Ragged Lake. Both of these characters play a much larger role in the sequel.
    I like the character of Frank Yakabuski and want to keep him around for a while.

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    1. I have only one piece of advice: DO NOT KILL YOUR MAIN CHARACTER There's LOT more stories in him.

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  19. Congratulations, Ron. My brother is an ice fisherman, and I've walked out to where he and the boys fish on their frozen lake in MA, so I absolutely understand how three flashes of light in the frozen nowhere could kick off a story. Brilliant! Also, I'm a huge Travis McGee fan, so I loved that you referenced him. Looking forward to reading Ragged Lake.

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  20. Our little lake was a town in wintertime when we lived in Minnesota. Fish houses and pickup trucks! I'm going to take advantage of that Kindle deal Ron! I have been blessed with discovering new-to-me Canadian writers quite a bit this past year. I am delighted to add you to my list.

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  21. Hi Pat,
    I know what you mean about the town on the frozen lake. The same thing happens every year in Ottawa, where I live, on a bay in the river. A few years back, in Lake Ontario I think it was, the ice melted early and the ice fishermen had to be rescued by police. The lead on the news story was that several of the fishermen didn't want to be rescued, because the fishing was good.

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  22. Oh, Ragged Lake sounds like an amazing read. For some reason I'm drawn to ice-covered water settings. Allen Eskens' The Deep Dark Descending was one of my favorite books last year. So, I've now added Ragged Lake to my Kindle. Thanks for being here today, Ron, and talking about your book.

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  23. I love how the comments here can remind me of different authors and their series.

    Like Hallie, I haven't read any John D. MacDonald but given how everyone raves I probably should get on the ball and check out some of his work. Any suggestions for a first book to start with?

    Also, Hallie's mention of Nancy Pickard reminded me how much I miss her Jenny Cain series.

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  24. Hi Jay,
    The first book I read by John D. MacDonald was not a Travis McGee mystery, although the McGee stories are probably his most popular books. The book I read was Dead Low Tide, which would be an early one for him, although I would recommend it.
    If you're looking for a good McGee mystery, I would recommend The Turquoise Lament. It has everything you would hope to find in a good John D. MacDonald story.
    I'd like to thank Hallie for giving me the chance to guest-blog today. A lot of fun, and some really great comments.
    Best,
    Ron

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  25. Another author. My husband absolutely loves Ross Thomas.

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