Yes, We Promise Not To Tell

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Pssst. Do you want to know a secret? Well, sure you do. But the influence and generosity and talent of Jim Jackson is no secret!  He's president of the Guppies (Yay!) and works tirelessly with Sisters in Crime and the Guppies and his flow sister and brother authors. He's cut quite a swath through mystery world--and the Reds are always delighted to host him! 

He's got a new book--yay! see below-- but first, he's exploring secrets.  And, even better, telling them. And even more fascinating--they're family secrets. His. 

Secrets

   by Jim Jackson 

Do you want to hear a secret? Promise not to tell?

Of course you do. We all want to know other people’s secrets. The opening words to this post belong to Snow White as she breaks into the first song in the Disney version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I can hear George Harrison singing a rephrased version of these questions in the Beatle’s song “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” that was a track on their 1963 album Please Please Me.

Lean in with me and we can catch similar words as the start of a whispered conversation between two girls (or guys) of almost any age. We all have secrets.

Telling secrets starts soon after we learn to talk. We use small ones as currency to help develop friendships. We offer a small sliver of our hidden selves and judge how the person reacts. Will they still like us if they know . . . ?

We eagerly read the tabloids (or at least their headlines as we check out at the grocery store) to find out others’ secrets. Of course, when it’s ours, we don’t want people sharing. We hope to bury our big ones so deep that no one can find them. Ben Franklin’s “Three may keep a secret if two are dead,” reminds us that if we really want to keep a secret, we must keep it to ourselves.

How well do any of us know our relatives? Are they hiding secrets we should really know? I chose to explore those questions in DoubtfulRelations, the newest addition to the Seamus McCree series coming out August 23.

If you are like me, we often reference ancestors who did something of which we are proud. However, if we shake our family trees hard enough we’ll probably tumble out a passel of doubtful relations.

One of my early ancestors in North America died during a severe winter that wiped out a large percentage of the community. He was buried along with the other victims of starvation and disease. Well, that’s what they told the English authorities. Turns out the British crown was after him and with the community’s connivance, he “died” and was “resurrected” under an assumed name.

Not too many years later, in the mid-1600s, a Puritan minister relative on my father’s side forced a minister relative on my mother’s side to flee Massachusetts during the night—for religious purity reasons. That maternal relative found relief in the more religiously tolerant colony of Rhode Island.

Parts of my family have gone bankrupt; some divorced at a time when that was just not done; a great-grandfather abandoned his family and took off for the Alaska gold rush.

Those are the stories I do know. I wonder at the stories behind the names on my family tree that have no more details than a name and date of birth. What happened to them that we don’t even know when they died?

How about you? Any doubtful relations in your family tree?

HANK: Well, I had a really cool aunt named Portia. She was just like Grace Kelly, the way I remember it at least. Her very cool son had a Porsche. I just realized that. That's gotta be funny.  Hmm. Let me think. How about you, Reds?

***************

JamesM. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree mystery series. ANT FARM, BAD POLICY, CABIN FEVER, and DOUBTFUL RELATIONS (8/23/16). Jim is the president of the 600-member Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime. He splits his time between the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the open spaces of Georgia’s Lowcountry. Check out his website (http://jamesmjackson.com) for more information about him and his writing.

Doubtful Relations 

Financial crimes investigator Seamus McCree has wife problems, and Lizzie’s not even his wife anymore. Her current husband disappears on a business trip to Savannah. Has he been kidnapped? Dispatched by his hedge fund partners? Or run off with another woman? Police assume he’s AWOL, and Lizzie turns to Seamus for help.

Seamus has no desire to be sucked into Lizzie’s drama again, but her angst is also affecting their son, Paddy. Seamus agrees to help discover the truth, a quest that soon involves the entire extended family. Long buried secrets surface and each member must confront the question, “How far can you trust your family?”

Equal parts road trip, who done what, and domestic thriller, book four in the Seamus McCree series takes psychological suspense to a new level. Seamus McCree fans and newcomers alike will delight in this fast-paced novel that leaves no one in the family unchanged and keeps you guessing until the very end.

What Sara Says

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Jim Jackson is such a numbers guy! He's the only author I've ever heard who describes rejections by weight. And--because Jim can talk about math in a fascinating way--it actually makes sense.

And what do Sara Paretsky and peanut butter have in common? Jim can explain that, too.

Keeping Faith

    by James M. Jackson

 After I finished my “practice novel” and had it rejected by tons of agents (I figure it at 7.5 tons: 100 agents at an assumed average 150 lbs.) I despaired. Mostly the feedback was a simple rejection, but on several occasions the feedback included a statement that they couldn’t sell it people my protagonist didn’t fit what people were reading.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to take a master class from one of my favorite authors. Sara Paretsky taught the class in conjunction with a Love is Murder conference. She gave us an exercise to write using as fodder several seemingly random words. (I remember peanut butter being one.) 

We shared our pieces aloud, and mine felt pathetic compared to most of the other offerings.

But after the class was over, Sara came over to me and told me that I had an interesting voice and I shouldn’t let people try to change it. At the time I had no clue exactly what that meant, but I knew enough to realize she was talking about my writing, not my dulcet baritone.

When I eventually understood what she meant by voice, Sara’s little pat on the back became only one of two gifts from her. Her second was her own example. When she wrote her first VI Warshawski novel (published 1982) people weren’t reading books about female PIs. A few such novels existed, and when it came to women, people seemingly cared more about “Charlie’s Angels” than about a realistic woman.

Which did not stop Sara or Sue Grafton. They wrote what they wanted and changed the rules for female crime protagonists.

I wanted to write about Seamus McCree—a good guy; a guy who cares deeply for his son, a guy who struggles with relationships; a guy with a strong sense of right and wrong, but who is faced with choices that are shaded in grays; a guy who abhors violence because he senses he is carrying anger inside himself; a guy who has succeeded financially in the world, but knows that isn’t really what matters.

 I chose to write about financial crimes because those are what interest me, and I can explain complex finances in ordinary English that people can understand.

Sara by word and example gave me permission to write the kind of book I wanted to read, regardless of whether an agent ever wanted to represent it. After writing about Seamus for several years I now think of him as a mash-up of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport and Winnie the Pooh.

 

Midwest Review concluded its recommended pick review of Cabin Fever, “With its combination of social consciousness, political action, intrigue, and family relationships, Cabin Fever will satisfy any mystery or thriller reader."

To that wonderful black and white statement, I’ll add some gray. If a mystery reader wants a nice cozy they’ll find I use some bad language and show some violence. And I don’t write a superhero who singlehandedly saves the world. I do have faith though that there are enough readers who will like my protagonist and want to read my kind of writing.

If that’s the kind of book you’d like to read wrapped in a fast-paced story, then give me a try. I hope you’ll enjoy Seamus and his friends, because if enough of you do, I get to keep writing about them.

Regardless, I am enjoying my writing. So Reds, anything you were told is a waste of your time that you knew deep down was bad advice?

HANK: Bad advice. Huh. Still thinking about that. But good advice? How about this: Leave a comment for us, and we will give a copy of the Jim-book of your choice to one lucky winner!  

 

James Montgomery Jackson
"Writing about when Honesty Isn't Everything"
CABIN FEVER (Seamus McCree mystery #2) Released April 8, 2014
BAD POLICY (Seamus McCree mystery #1) [2013]
ONE TRICK AT A TIME: How to start winning at bridge [2012]
Website: http://jamesmjackson.com