Jungle Red Writers: Diane Sawyer

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I love my college (Yay, Austin College! Go Roos!!!) I have some of the coolest fellow alums, including writer Kim Powers with whom I did a writing seminar at Austin College last year.

Here's a little bit about just how special Kim is:

Kim Powers is the author of the novel Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story as well as the critically acclaimed memoir The History of Swimming, which was both a Barnes & Noble “Discover” Selection and a Lambda Literary Award finalist for Best Memoir of the Year. He also wrote the screenplay for the festival-favorite indie film “Finding North.”

Powers is currently the Editorial Producer/Senior Writer for ABC’s 20/20, and has written for numerous ABC shows includingWhat Would You Do? with John Quinones, and primetime specials with Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Robin Roberts and Katie Couric. He won both Emmy and Peabody Awards for his 9/11 reporting for Good Morning America, and for the past two years has received the Edward R. Murrow Award with ABC News for Overall Excellence.

A native Texan, he received an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and lives in New York City.

(He's not just a native Texan, he's from my town!)

And as if Kim didn't have enough writing credits, now he's written a cracking good mystery that's getting reviews like this, from Publisher's Weekly--"A heart-tugging child-in-peril plot drives this thoughtful crime novel....Powers nicely depicts the pathos of Ethan’s situation...as the story progresses to a twist-filled resolution."

Here's Kim to tell us more about Dig Two Graves.

KIM POWERS: Thanks, Deborah Crombie and the Jungle Red Writers, for inviting me in today. I have to start by telling you a story: several months ago, I invited a young gay male friend (30 or so) to my house in Asbury Park, NJ (go Bruce!) for the weekend. We were watching DVDs and I was giving him the 101 on gay movie classics, none of which he had ever seen, or barely heard of: The Women, All About Eve, Some Like It Hot, Stage Door. You know, the essentials – for gay men and ALL movie lovers. We got to the fingernail scene in The Women and I said, “Now pay attention. This is important.” The famous “jungle red” scene came on. He said, “So that’s a thing? Jungle Red?” I said, “Yes, a very big important thing!” Educating young minds, one at a time... and passing on the legacy!

With that said, I thought I’d do something a little different. Not so much about writing my new thriller, Dig Two Graves, but selling it. (Plus it’s got some fun visuals! Stay tuned.) It’s the part of publishing they never tell you about: actually selling the book. I don’t mean to an editor at a publishing house; that’s hard enough, as a newbie. (Maybe harder than actually writing the book in the first place – and I used to think nothing could be harder than that.) No, I mean “selling it” to the book-reading public. Getting it in their hands. Launching a book, especially when it’s your first entrée into the mystery/thriller world, something you hope might become an on-going series. Which now leads to this question: what do eight semi-naked men, wearing only nylon running shorts, sneakers, and fake gold medals (six bucks for a dozen, made in China) have to do with selling a book? Actually, a lot.

Let me start at the beginning, some ten years ago. (Build suspense!) I had just published my first book, a memoir called The History of Swimming – that had very little to do with swimming. There was water in it, and my fear of swimming, and a suicidal tumble into a river; there was a college guy in a speedo, and there was my tortured twin brother, who had disappeared. The book is about my equally tortured and over-the-top journey to find him.

And despite how serious the book was, how many times do you get to celebrate your first book being published – and the years and years it took you to get that point? Once, and only once. No matter how many times you take that journey from typeset proofs to galleys and ARCS and finally hardbound books, nothing can top that first time. (Sort of like sex – only a lot better, in my humble opinion.) I think part of my fantasy of “being a writer” even came from Carrie Bradshaw and the Sex and the City TV series: you write a book, you throw a big party, even if you spend as much on the party as you made selling the book. I had read about a new boutique hotel that had just opened in mid-town Manhattan; one of its bars was built around a swimming pool. My mind started working. What if I rented that space and hired male models in speedos, to go along with the title of the book? (Word to the wise: finding speedos in late October is not an easy thing to do.) The guys would lounge on inflatable rafts in the pool as the party began, “reading” the book, then socialize and mingle and pose for photo ops with the guests. (But pre-social media being the machine it is today, there weren’t many places for those photos to go.)

Well, the party was such a hit that people immediately started teasing me about what my next book and party would be: The History of the High Dive? The History of Spandex? Turns out there wasn’t much of an opportunity for semi-clad male models in my next book, Capote in Kansas, a sort of “fantasia” about the legendary friendship between Truman Capote and Harper Lee. Actually, I’m sure there WERE semi-clad men in Truman’s life, but at that point, I was still paying for the first party. By the time Dig Two Graves was published, this December, I was ready to be a party planner again. And now I had the perfect new vehicle for it.

Even though I consider all three of my books to be mysteries in some way – something tragic happens, and someone tries to figure out why – Dig Two Graves is a dyed-in-the-wool thriller. Ethan Holt, a one-time Olympic gold medal winner of the Decathlon, leaves the world of the body for the world of the brain, and now teaches classics at a small New England college. It’s always been his first love: the study of ancient cultures and languages, where passions seem bigger; it’s what got him interested in the Olympics in the first place. When his teenage daughter is kidnapped, he begins getting ransom demands not for money, but to perform modern-day versions of the 12 Labors of Hercules. (“Hercules” was his nickname during the Olympics.) He’ll have to call on that muscle memory from decades earlier to save her – but use his brain to discover who’s behind it all.

I had to top my three paltry models from the History of Swimming party, and the answer was right there in my new plot: this time I’d have TEN male models -- to represent the ten different events of the Decathlon. Genius, right? I started joking I planned the party first, then wrote the book around it. After all, who doesn’t like a little male flesh, after solving a case? (As the character Coco (Irene Cara) in the movie Fame says, “Ya’ gotta give ‘em some visuals.”)

I used an online modeling agency to put out my casting call, trying to replicate the body type of a Decathlete as much as possible. (6’1” or 6’2”; 180 pounds to a little over 200, just in case you’re wondering.) I would supply them with running shorts and a gold medal; I even taped the name of the specific event each one did on the back of his medal, in case someone asked them!

Everything was so carefully planned, and then – disaster. Only eight of the ten models showed up! I was devastated. After all the careful planning of my theme – decathlon, ten guys, no more, no less – the party was about to go down the drain. At one point, one of the model’s friends showed up – a good-looking guy with a great body, sausaged into a tight t-shirt – and I almost said, “Strip! Put on this medal! You’re hired! Now work it!”

But I didn’t. I took a breath – and a sip of the party’s signature drink, the “Dig Your Own Grave Daiquiri.” (Theme drinks are important too!) And I calmed down. Nobody was counting to see if there were ten models or not. Nobody was wondering what they had to do with my book in the first place – although I did make a speech and explain. Nobody was doing anything except having a good time. My beloved ABC colleague Diane Sawyer showed up and gamely posed with the guys, holding a copy of the book, of course. It became the most posted and re-posted photo of the night.

So did that party do anything to help sell the book? Who knows. All I know is this: I got a lot of mileage out of the pictures. Some people came from book blogs, who otherwise might not have come, just because the party sounded like so much fun. I got to share something I’m very proud of with my best friends. After all those years of hard work, of literal blood sweat and tears, I wanted to do something silly and fun to celebrate. After so much tension and tragedy in Dig Two Graves itself, I wanted to do something that said, “Not really. You all know what a goof I am.” Lesley Gore said it best, “It’s my party and I can spend if I want to.” Well, she sang something like that. There was already enough crying in the book; I didn’t need to do anymore.

If there’s any take-away from this, I think it’s just about how hard and creative we all have to be, as writers. And how much work there is to be done – after the writing is done. With fewer publishing companies having the resources or budgets to launch a book, it’s on our own shoulders now to do the work. And it can be done – with so much social media now at our fingertips. (Shoulders, fingertips. I’m sensing a “body parts” theme here.)

I want people to get to know my characters Ethan Holt and his daughter Skip, and the sassy detective Aretha Mizell, who throws proper procedure out the window when it comes to doing whatever she has to do, to save a teenage girl. It’s strange, almost like wanting your friends to like your other friends, when they meet them for the first time. You don’t want them to think, “How could he waste his time on people like that?” For so many of the Jungle Red Writers, who write ongoing series, you’ve passed that test. People obviously DO like your friends – your characters – and keep coming back to them, to see what they’re up to next.

That’s where I am now, with Dig Two Graves just having come out: waiting to see if people like my “friends” Ethan and Skip and Aretha. If they want to spend more time with them. I know I do.

So writers and readers, I leave you with this question: what makes a great mystery book series? Why do you come back, time after time, to revisit your favorites? And for the series writers here: do you ever have book ideas that don’t naturally fit in with your established characters or their world? Do you bend it to work – or launch a new series or a one-off? And when does a publisher decide to make a single book a series? Do they wait to see how sales do on the first one?

But in the meantime: how do I top that Decathlon party? My next book (already written, soon to go out to publishers) has nothing to do with athletes or great looking guys in spandex. It’s about old movies from the ‘60s. Sean Connery impersonators, anyone?

Here's more about Dig Two Graves--

In his twenties, Ethan Holt won the decathlon at the Olympics and was jokingly nicknamed "Hercules"; now, in his late thirties, he's returned to his ivy-covered alma mater to teach, and to raise his young daughter Skip as a single father. After a hushed-up scandal over his Olympics win and the death of his wife in a car accident five years ago, Ethan wants nothing more than to forget his past. Skip is not only the light of Ethan's life—she is his life. Then, Skip is kidnapped.

A series of bizarre ransom demands start coming in that stretch Ethan's athletic prowess to its limits, and he realizes with growing horror that they are modern versions of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, demanded in tricky, rhyming clues by someone who seems to have followed every step of Ethan's career. As images from Ethan's childhood become an onslaught in his mind, he finally comes face to face, literally, with the secrets of his past and understands who the kidnapper is. Drawn to the arena of their final showdown, the Twelfth Labor—a cemetery where the dog Cerberus guards the gates of Hell—"Hercules" must do final battle with his nemesis one last time, to free his daughter, and solve the mystery of the childhood that has haunted him all his life.

DEBS: Kim is giving away a copy of Dig Two Graves to one of our commenters, so REDS and readers, chime in and tell us what you think makes for a good mystery!

To learn more about Kim, please visit his website: kimpowersbooks.com

And just for fun, here I am with Kim and our very talented fellow alum Robert Stikmanz at Austin College, 2015. (I, of course, am talking...)