Happy Pub Day, Glen Erik Hamilton!

INGRID THOFT

I'm thrilled to welcome Glen Erik Hamilton to Jungle Reds. The third book in his critically acclaimed Van Shaw series, EVERY DAY ABOVE GROUND, is out today.  Glen's debut, PAST CRIMES, won the Anthony, Macavity, and Strand Magazine Critics awards for Best First Novel and was also nominated for the Edgar, Barry, and Nero awards.  The follow-up in the series, HARD COLD WINTER, was published to rave reviews in 2016.  Glen is a native of Seattle, but currently resides in LA with his family, where we recently met up at a tiki bar for great conversation and strong zombie cocktails!  I'm so glad he's spending his pub day with us!

INGRID THOFT: Your new release EVERY DAY ABOVE GROUND is out today, and it’s fantastic. Can you tell us about it?

GLEN ERIK HAMILTON: Thank you! EVERY DAY ABOVE GROUND is the third in the Van Shaw series.  Van was raised by his grandfather, a professional thief, and escaped the criminal life in his late teens to serve in the Army Rangers.  At the start of EDAG (as the publisher and I affectionately call it), Van has been out of the military for a few months.  He’s trying, with some difficulty, to rebuild his life and home after the events of the last book.  An old partner of his grandfather’s approaches Van with the offer of a safe cracking job.  Van would normally refuse any criminal work, but he convinces himself that this score is at least semi-legal and on the side of the angels.  As is often the case in crime thrillers, the job does not go as planned.

I had a lot of fun writing EDAG:  Van is forced to contend with some wild characters, villains at both the apex and bottom rungs of the smuggling world, and no less dangerous for being at either end.  His personal relationships are also rocky.  Van has the bad habit of neglecting his emotional life for his more active one, even when he needs the people around him more than ever. He’s a family guy without a normal family. Part of EDAG is him wrestling with those friendships and those responsibilities. 


IPT: You grew up on a boat, which is a very unique setting in which to live.  Has that experience influenced your writing?

GEH: Tremendously.  Some of those inspirations are easy to spot: I have major characters living aboard and many scenes set on or around the waterways that almost completely surround Seattle. Seattle is also our largest western seaport north of Los Angeles, so the shipping business is a tremendous opportunity for crime stories.

But beyond that, people who live aboard boats make the deliberate choice to be a little removed from mainstream society. There’s an outsider mentality, which includes a distrust, if not outright rejection of the norm (whether that’s a positive or a negative, I leave for the observer).  I have at least some of that outlook, and there’s no question that Van, with his skewed upbringing, does as well.


IPT:  If writing is your dream job, what would your second dream job be?

GEH:  This is a tough one.  I love acting on stage.  Before writing, theater was my primary creative outlet; I have a degree in it and it’s how my wife and I met. I fully intend to continue acting for the fun of it when life allows. I also enjoy reading history, and teaching, and can easily imagine an alternate life path that could have lead me to becoming the world’s foremost expert on post-WWI North African territorial wars, for example, and the impoverished academic career that might result.

IPT: Ha!  I had no idea that you have an interest in post-WWI North African territorial wars!  What are you working on now, and is there a book you’re dying to write? Romance?  Sci-fi?

GEH:  I’m working on a standalone novel, more of a direct thriller than the mystery-thrillers of the Van Shaw series. What I’m most eager to try next, time allowing, are short stories. The interstitial chapters of the Van books show our hero at different ages.  I approach those as if they were independent stories, and I have a lot of fun with the flexibility and the challenge.  Seeing one of my short stories appear in "The Strand" or "Ellery Queen" someday would be a huge milestone.


IPT:  Okay, you know I have to ask: How do you come up with character names?

GEH:  [For the reader:  Ingrid is asking this because one of the major characters in EDAG is also named Ingrid.  She’s a bad bad person.  The character, that is…]

Anytime I hear a name that strikes me as unusual and evocative, I note it down in a running list.  The best names have a particular tone, a musicality.  For example, Ostrander is a town in Washington State. The name always struck me as chilly, removed, and monied. I used Ostrander for the name of a well-heeled attorney and personal fixer for a billionaire in my second book, HARD COLD WINTER.

Van Shaw has a fun genesis – Van is short for Donovan; I wanted he and his grandfather to share the name.  In the Irish way, the granddad is Dono, so the younger Donovan is Van.  Shaw comes from two places: my favorite playwright George Bernard Shaw, and the late actor Robert Shaw, who would have made a wonderful Dono. The name Shaw also has an appropriate music to it, like a sword being unsheathed.

Oh, and the character Ingrid?  “Ingrid Ekby” had a great sound, both Nordic and subtly mechanical. Ekby, by the way, is a shelf unit from IKEA…

IPT:  Now it’s Glen’s turn to shoot a question to the readers of Jungle Red!
GEH:  What’s your favorite character name, the one that best sounds like the fictional person’s personality?

I’m going to make this a little harder and say: No Harry Potter characters allowed.  J.K. Rowling is just too good at that game.  Comment, and you'll be entered to win a copy of EDAG!


EVERY DAY ABOVE GROUND
It sounds like a thief's dream to Van Shaw: A terminally-ill ex-con tells him of a fortune in gold, abandoned and nearly forgotten after the original owner died in prison. To rebuild his destroyed house and to help the dying man leave a legacy for his pre-teen daughter, Van agrees to the job. But the safe holding the fortune is a trap and Van must figure out who the hunters are really after—while being hunted himself.


Glen Erik Hamilton's debut Past Crimes won the Anthony, Macavity, and Strand Magazine Critics awards for Best First Novel, and was also nominated for the Edgar, Barry, and Nero awards. Publishers Weekly and Library Journal gave Past Crimes starred reviews, and Kirkus called the book "an exciting heir to the classic detective novel". The follow-up in the Van Shaw series, Hard Cold Winter, was published to rave reviews in March 2016 by William Morrow (US) and Faber & Faber (UK).
A native of Seattle, Glen grew up aboard a sailboat, finding trouble around the islands and marinas and commercial docks of the Pacific Northwest. He now lives in California with his family but frequently returns to his hometown to soak up the rain.

Website: www.glenerikhamilton.com
Facebook: @glenerikhamilton
Twitter: @glenerikh

Hard Cold Winter with Glen Erik Hamilton

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Let's turn back the clock a bit, to Bouchercon 2014 in Longbeach, California. I was lucky enough to snag a galley of a debut novel called PAST CRIMES by a writer named Glen Erik Hamilton. It was one book out of many accumulated at the conference, but I was intrigued by the synopsis so I picked it up first. And, continuing our binge reading theme from yesterday, I read it as straight through as I could manage.

Then I said, "This one is going to be a winner." And now it's nominated for an Edgar for Best First Novel and I am patting myself on the back!!

 So of course I was thrilled to read the second book in Glen's Van Shaw series, HARD COLD WINTER, which is out today. It does NOT suffer from "sophomore slump," let me tell you. It is, if anything, more unputdownable that the first Van Shaw book, and this is now my favorite new series.

Here's a bit about HARD COLD WINTER: Former Army Ranger and thief Van Shaw is thrust into a maelstrom of danger as lethal and unpredictable as the war he left behind in this emotionally powerful and gritty follow up to the acclaimed Past Crimes.

When an old crony of Van's career criminal grandfather calls in a favor, the recently-discharged veteran embarks on a dangerous journey to the Olympic Mountains, in search of a missing girl tied to Van's own felonious past. What he discovers taps into dark memories, leaving Van vulnerable when an avalanche of trouble hits. A fellow Ranger from Afghanistan appears on his doorstep, desperate for help. And as the investigation heats up, Van finds himself caught between a billionaire businessman and vicious gangsters, each with different methods of playing dirty. 

And here's Glen to tell you  how he tacked the challenge of the SECOND BOOK.

GLEN ERIK HAMILTON:

 

To the Power of Two: Writing the Second Book in Your Series

Our hosts at Jungle Red Writers are experts at navigating the choppy waters of writing a series.  I’m still tapping my compass, wondering if the N on it stands for Not Yet…

Less than three years ago, I was an unpublished writer with a shiny new manuscript, having his very first conversation on the phone with the woman who might, if I were very fortunate, offer to become my literary agent.  

One of her starter questions was: “Is this book the first in a series?”  I assured her that it was, and I had hopes for that series to be a long one.  That was partly a practical decision: Series sell better.  But there’s also the creative advantages.  I loved and still love the idea of gradually assembling a large cast of characters over time, and having them bounce off one another in different combinations, and with different conflicts.  

That conversation was nerve-wracking (for me), encouraging (from her), and ultimately successful for both of us.   We sold that manuscript as part of a two-book deal within a handful of months.  My debut PAST CRIMES came out one year ago, the follow-up HARD COLD WINTER is about to hit the stands, and I’m hip-deep into writing my third.  

Volumes have been written (even second volumes!) about the challenges of writing a second book.  Meeting both reader and publisher expectations.  Reintroducing your characters and settings economically.  Going bigger, getting better.  Just considering all of those hurdles can make your knees shake.

So let’s Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive and talk through a few questions.  I wrestled with these demands while drafting HARD COLD WINTER.  Answer them for yourself, and you’ll have some foundation blocks for your next brilliant effort.

Is this Book Two, or Act Two?

If your novel is Book Two of a long series, you have some flexibility.  You can revisit themes, allow for new characters and slower character growth, and even expand on the world-building you started in Book One while your heroes and heroines are jumping through the hoops of the plot.   

But if your series was conceived as having only three or four books, then you better get on with that larger story in Book Two.   Big obstacles, new goals, and the classic Dark Night of the Soul for your protagonist, setting up the climax in the final entries.  Acts Two are infamous for the difficulty of having no beginnings and no endings.  Beat that problem.  Introduce a major twist that forces characters (good and evil) to re-evaluate the game.  Kill off someone your readers might have thought essential to the climax.  Defy some of your own expectations.

This isn’t to say that protagonists shouldn’t undergo those trials during a longer series.  Your heroine might still be recovering from the events of Book One, or realize that her corner of the world isn’t as secure as she imagined.  That’s good.  Force some change upon them.  Which leads me to…

Will My Characters Change?  

This seems like an obvious answer (Change is conflict!  Conflict is good!  Characters must have an arc!), until you consider how many protagonists remain largely the same during long series.  Miss Marple.  Spenser.  Jack Reacher.  The world around them might mark time, but our heroes just keep on keeping on.   

That’s both limiting and freeing.  I know Spenser’s not going to die.  I know he’s not going to reach an age where thrombosis is a bigger danger to him than thugs.  But Boston is not the same city it was in the early seventies, when that ex-heavyweight boxer first climbed into the fictional ring.  The Spenser of today has a smartphone and knows his way around the internet, like any good P.I.  He doesn’t change much, but he adapts.

Even if you decide to let your characters change significantly, there’s the question of the internal calendar.  My own lead character, Van Shaw, is a young guy.  He could have an adventure each year for twenty years, aging in real time, and still be in his forties.   But while drafting the third book, I already find myself deliberately clouding the elapsed time.  Ten months between the events of PAST CRIMES and HARD COLD WINTER.  Maybe only six months between HCW and the third book.  Bending the relationship between the pages and the years, so that Van hits the big Three-Oh when I want him to, and not before.  (Wouldn’t that be a nice trick for all of us?)

To What Are Your Readers Looking Forward?

Here’s the big one.  By the time you’re feverishly working on Book Two, you may already have some feedback on your Debut – from friendly readers, keen-eyed editors, and maybe even reviewers.  What stuck with them?  What did they love?  It’s great to hear praise, but it’s also critical to listen to it.  Because those bits of candy are what’s going to bring your readers back, hopefully again and again.  

Note that lesson doesn’t mean robotically repeating the same action scenes or romantic flirtations (this is the tricky part, people), but building on them – adding a chocolate coating to the candy.  

This also doesn’t mean serving up anything and everything your audience is clamoring for.  To quote Joss Whedon – who knows a little something about an impassioned fan base -- “What they want is different from what they need.”  And what readers need is to watch their heroes and heroines struggle, overcome, and struggle again.  No rest for the valiant.  No happy endings, at least not without many more adventures.  Many more books.   

Here are a couple of questions for YOU.  Chime in on the comments with your input! (and Glen will give a copy of HARD COLD WINTER to a lucky commenter!)

For the JRW Hosts, and other Writers – When starting your second novels, did you already have the questions above answered?  Were there other concerns that made you step back and consider the direction of the overall series?

For Readers – Do you like it when heroes and heroines change significantly over time?  Or do you prefer your lead characters to be the eye in the hurricane around them?

DEBS: What a challenge, REDS and readers! Tell us what you think!

Glen Erik Hamilton's debut PAST CRIMES has been nominated for Best First Novel at the 2016 Edgar Awards.  PAST CRIMES was given starred reviews by Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal, and called "an exciting heir to the classic detective novel" by Kirkus.  The second book in the Van Shaw series, HARD COLD WINTER, will be published in March by William Morrow (US) and Faber & Faber (UK).  A native of Seattle, Glen now lives in California but frequently returns to his hometown to soak up the rain.  Follow his wet footprints on Facebook and on Twitter @GlenErikH.   glenerikhamilton.com