Another favorite Canadian: Owen Laukkanen

INGRID THOFT

It's an embarrassment of riches on Jungle Red this week:  Our own Jenn McKinlay, James Ziskin, and today, I’m welcoming critically acclaimed thriller writer Owen Laukkanen to the blog.

Owen is the author of six novels that feature Minnesota State Investigator Kirk Stevens and FBI Special Agent Carla Windermere.  Nominated for a host of awards, including a Barry, an Anthony, an ITW Thriller award, and a Spinetingler, Owen has been hailed by Kirkus Review for "combining great storytelling with compassion for the underdog."  This is no surprise to anyone who knows him:  He's a terrific guy with a strong commitment to social justice.

Can you give readers the scoop on your latest novel, The Forgotten Girls, which came out in March?

The Forgotten Girls is the sixth installment in my Stevens and Windermere series of FBI thrillers. It's about a serial killer who stalks the wilds of northern Montana and the Idaho panhandle, killing runaways, prostitutes and train-hoppers--the kind of women who seem to slip through the cracks.

In my neighbourhood in Vancouver, a serial killer operated for decades, and the response to these murders was pretty shockingly apathetic.  This idea that some people, and in particular women, are worth more than others really sticks in my craw. I walk my dog through the neighbourhood daily, and we pass the memorial rock to the missing women, and it's always decorated with some kind of stuffed animal or birthday card, some reminder that these women were more than just streetwalkers and junkies; they were daughters, sisters, mothers. I'm also really into trains, so writing a book about a serial killer who rides freight trains was a pretty good way to get my fix. 

Why did you decide to set your stories in the United States?

It was a threefold decision to set my books in the States. I grew up on the border, closer to Detroit than to any major Canadian city, and nearly all of the culture I consumed came from the States.

Also, the stories I was trying to tell just worked better in the U.S. My first novel, The Professionals, is about a group of itinerant kidnappers who make quick scores for low ransoms and keep moving from major city to major city. We don't have more than a handful of major cities in Canada, and only a couple of major highways, and with our population about ten percent of yours, any crime attracts serious attention, and quickly. I figured it wouldn't take more than a couple of chapters before the Mounties picked up the trail in Moose Jaw and were waiting for my guys in Medicine Hat, and that would be the end of it. It was just more of an American tale, to me.

Finally, and here's where things get awkward, it's nearly impossible to make a living as an artist in Canada if Americans aren't buying your work, and Americans, by and large, don't buy thrillers set in Canada.  Mostly, though, writing about the States means I have plenty of tax-deductible reasons to visit, which is just fine by me!

You’ve also written two YA books (under the name of Owen Matthews,) How to Win at High School and The Fixes.  Tell us about them. 

I wrote the first draft of How2Win when I was a really emo kid in university, believing that it would bring me instant fame and fortune. Needless to say, it did not, and I tucked it away in the proverbial drawer for about ten years, until I was a few books into my career writing FBI thrillers.  I rewrote the heck out of it, and essentially broke every rule I adhere to when I'm writing thrillers. It found a publisher really quickly, and I've since put out another standalone YA, The Fixes, which I pitched as "Gossip Girl with bombs."  I essentially treat the YA stuff as an excuse to go nuts and be wild and experimental, where I write the thrillers hoping to tell a good, straightforward story without the style getting too much in the way.

I know you get asked this question often, but tell me about your experience as a reporter on the world poker circuit.  Has it informed your books?

Ha! That gig came about during the summer after I'd graduated from university with a fine arts degree in Creative Writing, which was about as useful for obtaining gainful employment as you might expect. I found an ad that offered six weeks' paid travel to Las Vegas to write about the World Series of Poker, and though I didn't know a thing about poker, I did know I didn't want to spend my summer working midnights in a warehouse.

I went down to Vegas for a pretty epic summer, at the end of which, the company asked if I'd like to travel the professional poker circuit full time. I was 23 and had never left North America, so the answer was obviously yes, and for the next three years I spent 75% of my life on the road, traveling all over the world to wherever high stakes poker tournaments were played.

I've tried not to focus too much on poker in the thrillers; I didn't want to pigeonhole myself as the guy who only wrote poker mysteries.  I was exposed to humanity's seedier side, and though gamblers aren't all criminals, all criminals are gamblers by nature.  Working the poker gig was kind of a crash course in just how desperation and greed can drive a person to act. 

And now a couple of my favorite questions to ask guests to the blog.  First, what has surprised you most about becoming a published author?

First of all, I've been wonderfully surprised by what a warm, welcoming community the world of crime fiction has turned out to be.  It's a cliché to say that these people are my tribe, but I've been amazed at how at home I've felt in this community and how the community embraces people who want to be embraced.

Second, one of the really hard lessons I had to learn after I was published a few times was that just having a book out, or two books, or six or eight, no matter how critically acclaimed or bestselling, they don't change who you are as a human being, and they don't automatically make your life everything you'd ever hoped it would be.  I had to learn to separate my feelings of self-worth from whatever was happening in my writing career and to learn to be happy with what I was writing if it made me happy and satisfied.

I think most of all, though, what has surprised me is that anything is possible, so long as you're audacious enough to try for it, and dedicated enough to put the work in.  But those of us who succeed aren't necessarily the most talented, but we are the people who were dumb enough to think, "Why not me?" and then bust our humps until we got there.

And now my other favorite question: What are you working on now?  Is there a book you’d love to write if you didn’t have to take agents, editors, and your fans into consideration?  A western?  Romance?

Next year, I’m putting out a deep-sea adventure story about a female salvage tugboat captain and her crew chasing after a $100m shipwreck. It's a story I've always wanted to write, and I'm so stoked that Putnam seems just as into the idea as I am. 

I've just finished the draft of another departure, something inspired by all the David Joy and Ace Atkins I've been reading, and starring a dog based on my rescue Pit-bull, Lucy. I think my issue is less that I feel constrained and more that I don't have enough time to write everything I want to write!

Another giveaway!  Comment and you'll be in the running to win The Forgotten Girls!

THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS

They are the victims no one has ever cared about, until now. Agents Stevens and Windermere return in the blistering new crime novel from the fast-rising, multi-award-nominated suspense star.

She was a forgotten girl, a runaway found murdered on the High Line railroad pass through the northern Rocky Mountains and, with little local interest, put into a dead file. But she was not alone. When Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere of the joint FBI-BCA violent crime force stumble upon the case, they discover a horror far greater than anyone expected—a string of murders on the High Line, all of them young women drifters whom no one would notice.

But someone has noticed now. Through the bleak midwinter and a frontier land of forbidding geography, Stevens and Windermere follow a frustratingly light trail of clues—and where it ends, even they will be shocked.

Owen Laukkanen is the author of six critically-acclaimed Stevens and Windermere FBI thrillers, the latest of which, The Forgotten Girls, was released in March 2017. As Owen Matthews, he's also the author of two completely inappropriate young adult novels. A former professional poker journalist and commercial fisherman, Owen lives in Vancouver, BC, with his girlfriend and their rescue pit-bull, Lucy. His next novel, Gale Force, will be published by Putnam in 2018.