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 Interview with Jamie Katz, author of Dead Low Tide (Harper Collins, December 1998), the acclaimed first Dan Kardon novel, nominated for a 1999 Shamus Award for Best First Mystery.Read the author's full biography. Read our reviews of Dead Low Tide and A Summer for Dying - Author's web site - Email: jamiekatz@jamiekatz.com Feature by Nancy Mehl. NANCY MEHL - Your first novel Dead Low Tide received rave reviews and was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First Mystery. What is it about your novel that you think made it stand out? JAMIE KATZ - It's hard for me to have much perspective on Dead Low Tide, but readers and reviewers have identified a number of strengths. People have enjoyed the characters, some because they liked them and others because the characters are well-delineated. I was surprised that teenagers liked the book, because they identified with a college student who appears at the beginning. Other readers have observed that the book includes strong, smart and not always nice women. And Dan Kardon, the protagonist, is an ordinary guy who's not in the best of moods when the book starts. He's not an invincible private eye. By and large, my characters are fairly ordinary people struggling to extricate themselves or others from difficult circumstances. The characters also wander through some interesting settings. The book is set near Cape Cod, and many readers have idyllic images of the Cape. But the settings in the book are far from idyllic. The most unique setting, for example, is a tire pile that figures prominently in the action. Some people don't like it, but there's no question it's a fairly unusual setting. And the tire pile sits a short distance from the beautiful Buzzards Bay, a real body of water that lies between Cape Cod and the southeast coast of Massachusetts. That irony, among other things, helps to set up some of the tensions and themes that run through the book. Finally, the book has something of a symmetrical arc. I won't say more for fear of giving things away but readers have indicated their pleasure at seeing the book follow a clear, clean story trajectory to a conclusion that makes sense. Dead Low Tide does not contain the most convoluted plot, but it has integrity, logic, and a certain sense of cohesion about it. The mystery market is highly competitive. Why did you choose to write in this genre? Why write mystery at all? Writing a mystery came naturally because I've been a mystery reader since I was a kid reading Sherlock Holmes and Hardy Boys (even a few Nancy Drews) under the covers late at night with a flashlight. After college, I wrote and published some non-fiction. Then sometime in my thirties, a number of internal forces converged. I believed that I could write as well as some of the mystery authors I read; I had a feeling that I'd finally lived and learned enough to have something to say; and I realized that if I didn't give it a shot, I might wait decades before getting the chance again. When I started out, I knew nothing about publishing and felt that it would be almost impossible to get a book published, so I didn't really think about the market or the absurdity of what I was doing. Writing mysteries has also given me a way to write about compelling people, places, and issues. Both Dead Low Tide and my second book A Summer for Dying have helped me grapple with certain issues and, hopefully, enable readers to do the same. There are both personal and social issues touched upon in the books that allow me to work in some of my own issues and concerns. How is your protagonist, Dan Kardon, different from other lawyers we find in other mystery novels? Kardon is less cocky and less sure of himself than most other fictional lawyers of my acquaintance. At times he has qualms about lawyering. He also has periods when he's not happy with himself and has concerns about his actions in the murder investigation he takes on. Kardon is keenly aware of his limitations, even if he's sometimes obtuse about why the limitations exist. He doesn't take himself too seriously, but he takes his work very seriously. So when he becomes involved in Dead Low Tide, he hangs in there until the end. Similarly, in A Summer for Dying, Kardon makes clear to prospective clients what he can and can't do - no grandiose promises or assumptions are made. But once in, he's harder to dislodge than a hungry boa constrictor around lunch. Explain the title – Dead Low Tide. What does it mean and how did you decide upon it? The phrase 'dead low tide' is used, at least in New England, to mean the point at which the outgoing tide hits its very lowest, just before it starts coming in again. Further, due to the gravitational pull of the moon, some tides are lower than others and some are higher than others - 'dead low' usually means when you have a low tide, at its lowest level. At dead low tide, on the one hand there's not much water for swimming, boating, or fishing. On the other hand, it also means that the ocean floor, and all the life on it and under it, is far more accessible for those who wander off the shore. The original title of the book was different. When I used 'dead low tide' in a particular scene to help describe the behavior of a particular character, I knew instantly that the phrase worked well on a number of levels. Some of the characters in the book have faced their own personal dead low tides - what one does in that situation is one of the themes of the book. Your second novel A Summer for Dying will be released by Avon in August 2000. Is this a second in a series with Dan Kardon? What can readers expect? A Summer for Dying is indeed the second Dan Kardon mystery. Kardon leaves the Massachusetts coastline and goes inland. There he finds a golf course owned by a black NBA player and his cousin, an endangered species of turtles preventing the golf course from opening, and a small rural town whose citizens oppose the cousins opening a camp for inner-city kids on a lake adjoining the golf course. As the cousins proceed with the golf course and camp, ugly things happen, and Kardon is called upon to help sort things out. Whereas Dead Low Tide focused on Kardon, this book is more about the two cousins who develop the golf course and camp. Among other things, the book touches on environmental issues and racism. Readers have told me that A Summer for Dying reads as well if not better than Dead Low Tide. Read our review of A Summer for Dying In your opinion, do mystery series appeal more to publishers today than stand-alone mysteries? The series versus the stand-alone debate seems to be evolving. A few years ago, editors and booksellers preferred a series simply because of reader preference. For many authors, stand-alones did not establish reader loyalty whereas a series allowed sales to grow steadily, even dramatically over time. Some writers prefer writing stand-alones - they're can start over with each book, they're not burdened with previous events and characters, they can explore things that would not fit into a series. It is also believed that stand-alones are easier to turn into movies, so some writers wrote stand-alones with an eye on the film industry. Now that the world of publishing is changing dramatically, the remaining few major publishers are cutting back on their authors, seeking to sell more books from fewer authors. New authors like me are given a small window - one or two, maybe three books - to establish that their work will sell. In that environment, a series becomes a liability. Publishers don't want to take on a series that will take six or eight books to become popular. Writers like Robert Parker and Tony Hillerman had to write a fair number of books in their series to become well-known. Major publishers simply won't wait that long these days. Smaller publishers are rushing to fill the void, although with substantially fewer dollars to pay the authors. As a result, writers and publishers are turning to stand-alones to see if they can take off quickly. Authors with established series have, or are about to, come out with stand-alones. In part, that's because many authors like to try their hand at different kinds of work. But I also believe that winds of change blowing in the publishing industry do not augur well for series. So authors have begun to recognize this new trend and reflect it in their writing. As an Assistant Attorney General in Massachusetts, your lifestyle must be hectic. What are your best times for quiet writing? Yes, I'm an Assistant Attorney General in charge of a division that regulates public charities, including fraudulent fund-raising and spending by charities. I'm also the father of an exceedingly active three year old girl. I made a colossal mistake in terms of timing by signing a two book contract at the same time that my wife and I adopted our daughter from China. Thus I wrote the first book in the year or so after we first adopted Lee. Not a good year. Things are hectic, but that's true for most writers. I've had to give up many activities to keep up the writing. Finding time to write is hard, but the publishing industry makes both lawyering and being a father to a toddler look good. Most of my writing takes place after the ladies of the house have gone to sleep. That means I start writing around 9:30-10:00, and go until I can't anymore. At times I literally fell asleep at the keyboard writing my second book. I also take some weekend time, but that's irregular as I don't like to take too much time away from my family. I'm trying to develop a more balanced approach as I start the third book. The real mystery for me is not in my books, it's in how to fit everything in. How do plots form in your mind? What inspires you? Plot ideas come to me in very different ways, but always develop from something that intrigues me. The plot in Dead Low Tide began with ideas revolving around a tire pile and the area near the coast where it was located. With the settings and some specific ideas about certain characters, the plot evolved fairly naturally. By contrast, the plot in A SUMMER FOR DYING began with a character that I had to cut out of Dead Low Tide. But I liked him so much that when I began the second book, I kept coming back to him. Given his unusual aspirations, I recognized that he was bound to have certain kinds of problems. Those problems were of considerable interest to me, so the plot grew as I explored the character and his desires. The third novel I've started began with the fairly common technique of asking 'what if'. In this case, the question is what if somebody gained and lost something of immense value in an instant? I have the beginning and ending pretty much set, but the connecting plot will have to come from the characters as they resolve the conflicts that arise. How would you counsel emerging writers who wish to become published authors? Write, then re-write, then re-write some more. Let other people - people who don't love you or care about you - read your stuff. If you want to publish, you need to see their reactions. You need to get used to having people find fault with what you write. Be confident in your skills and in the fact that you have something to say, yet be humble enough to learn from others about what you've written. Write about something you care about. In Dead Low Tide, I wrote in part about a tire pile. I thought it was interesting and in a perverse way compelling, but not everybody else did. What’s next? Will you continue writing mysteries or do you have something else in mind? I always have things to write - just not enough time to get them onto paper. I've started another Dan Kardon mystery. I'm working on some essays about parenthood and I've been asked to collaborate on a more mainstream novel. I also have a non-fiction project in mind. While I have control over what I write, I don't have control over what gets published. The publishing industry is hard to predict but I certainly hope to have more books published after A SUMMER FOR DYING. |
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