Here at Casa Mysterioso, instead of recycled site-owner publicity, we offer interviews with other people in the arts--writers, musicians, actors, entertainers, and sometimes just plain characters. We add new ones all the time, and site visitors are invited to contribute. If we use your interview, we'll pay $35. Query by e-mail.

Interview with Jan Burke
Interview with Jeremiah Healy
Ben and Diane (An Interview with Stephen Booth)
Cold Days and Deadly Nights (An Interview with Steve Hamilton)
Mysteries (An Interview with Irene Marcuse)
The Stone Monkey (An Interview with Jeff Deaver)
The Salaryman's Wife (An Interview with Sujata Massey)
A Kiss Gone Bad (An Interview with Jeff Abbott)
Charlotte Justice (An Interview with Paula Woods)
Blood Money (An Interview with Rochelle Krich)
Letter From New Orleans: (An interview With Andy J. Forest)
The Lady From Charm City (An Interview with Laura Lippman)
Crescent City Views (An Interview with Anne Rice)

 

A Kiss Gone Bad
(An Interview with Jeff Abbott)
by Andi Shechter

AS: For all the Jordan Poteet fans, let's get this over with, okay? What happened to Jordan? Why did you end the series at four books and why isn't this new book a book about Jordan?

JA: I quit writing Jordan because more of the book ideas that I had weren't suited to a first-person narrator or really to the tone or feel of the Jordan books. And I felt at the end of DISTANT BLOOD that Jordan's story had been told. When NAL's Joe Pittman approached me about writing books for him, he wanted a whole new series for NAL. And so that gave me a chance to create a new world that was a bit darker and richer in tone, and that could incorporate multiple protagonists and suspense elements. If I had done that with Jordan, it would have been too dramatic-and drastic-a change in the series. But enough about Jordan. He's happy now in Mirabeau, and I've moved on. Hopefully, readers will come with me.

AS: So. . . whatcha been doing the past few years?

JA: Got married, had kids. I dramatically upped my happiness factor.

AS: You write exceptionally well about small towns. You live in Austin which is not exactly small town Texas. How do you know so much about small town life?

JA: Both sides of my family come from small towns. They're where I spent my summers. And right now Americans seem to be having a love affair with small towns. Everyone wants to escape to one, find a slower pace of life. We've romanticized them, made them into a cure for all our social ills. If we move there, we think, life will be better and sweeter. But small towns still have murders, drug dealers, tragedy. Towns are human constructs, the same as cities, with all the human joys and sorrows plugged into a smaller, more claustrophobic space.

AS: What's the best thing about writing for you?

JA: I love the satisfaction of a well-told story and the excitement of seeing it unfold on the pages.

AS: What's the worst thing about writing for you?

JA: Writing ruins you for other work; everything pales in comparison. I was an executive at a fast-growing software company and I never found it as fulfilling as writing books. This attitude demands that I be a good enough writer to keep food on the table.

AS: You were very much at ease about being a male writer writing "cozies". How did you feel about getting the Agatha - a "cozy" award?

JA: I was very happy and honored to win an Agatha. I was pleased that the Malice Domestic readers recognized my work. It's a wonderful conference with wonderful people. But I won almost seven years ago. I hope another man wins an Agatha for a novel soon because I'm starting to expect I will be asked about winning an Agatha when I am ninety-nine, as though it were the linchpin of my writing career. No award should be that, for any author. You don't write hoping for awards.

AS: Tell us about A KISS GONE BAD. Where did this book come from?
Specifically - talk about Whit Mosley, a man who fell into his job and is trying to live down his reputation and live up to his position. Where did he come from?

JA: Whit has been great fun to write. Jordan was so damned responsible; Whit isn't. He's a justice of the peace, appointed by his father's political cronies after he's failed at a number of jobs. I think we all know someone like Whit; talented and smart but not exactly focused. More charming than hard-charging. So now we have this beach-party boy serving as a judge-putting his own spin on jurisprudence-and also serving as coroner, which is very common in rural Texas counties, and having to adjudicate cases and conduct death inquests. He is learning how to do this work. As A KISS GONE BAD opens, Whit's decided he actually wants this job, he needs to win a very tough election to keep it, and he has to conduct the death inquest in the most politically charged suicide in Texas. And Whit's being stalked by a maniac and he doesn't know it. I laid the problems on thick for Whit in this book, just to see what steel that party-boy was made of.

Whit, in part, came from my desire to retain the best elements of the "everyman" in mystery or suspense fiction, the normal guy put in danger. But as justice of the peace/coroner, he has a legitimate, professional reason to be involved in death investigations. As well, he works with Claudia Salazar, an investigator on the Port Leo police department. Claudia is cool and professional. Whit is a walking attitude with a gavel. They make a great team, in my mind-at least I love writing about the two of them. Readers will be the final judges.

AS: What's next for you? Are you going to write that big stand-alone thriller like every other writer seems to be doing lately?

JA: A KISS GONE BAD is being marketed as a mainstream suspense book. So I think I'm already driving down Suspense Novel Road, just in the context of a series. I have two more Whit novels under contract. The next will be out in September 2002 and is most tastefully described as "Quentin Tarantino does Treasure Island". Then one more Whit after that. Then we'll see. I'd like to tackle a screenplay. I've got kids to put through college, so I won't be writing any haiku collections.

AS: Well, DARN. I've got a space on my shelf where the Abbott Haiku Concordance was going.
So Jeff, who do you like to read?

JA: I enjoy reading history, true crime, short stories-I have very wide ranging tastes. I'm planning a Eudora Welty month for myself, rereading her wonderful works. We lost a national treasure when we lost her. She gave us permission to write like how people really talked-at least the people I grew up knowing and hearing.

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