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)

 

Cold Days and Deadly Nights
(An Interview with Steve Hamilton)
by Andi Shechter

AS is interviewer Andi Shechter; SH is Steve Hamilton.

AS:  Alex McKnight seems very much your opposite.  Is he?  Where did he come from?

SH:  I don’t know if he’s a polar opposite, but he’s definitely not me.  Not at all.  He’s older, for one thing.  Someone pointed out to me once that very few writers do that, at least in mystery.  Usually the main character is about the same age or younger.  And without making it sound all mystical and everything, I really don’t know where he came from.  When I tried to write a wise-cracking private eye and totally failed – after I crashed and burned and just gave up – he was just there waiting.

AS:  How did you decide to use mystery fiction as your way of telling stories?  What's the best thing about writing mystery?  What's the worst?  

SH: I think, like a lot of mystery writers, this is what I loved reading ever since I was a kid.  Even if you lose touch with it for a while, it’s always there waiting for you to come back to it.  The best part is that right now you can pretty much write about anything in a mystery.  The field is so wide open, and there are so many great writers who have elevated it.  The worst thing is when you hear people talking about “transcending” the genre.  You know what I mean.   

AS:  You've received a lot of honors in a  short time, starting with winning the St. Martin's contest, and now, most recently, North of Nowhere was picked as one of Publishers Weekly's "best of 2002".  So, what's next?  Working on the Pulitzer, are you?

SH:  Obviously, you can’t think about the prizes too much, and certainly not when you’re actually writing something.  And really, these honors, as great as they are at the time, become trivia questions a few years later.  It’s the books themselves that either stand or fade away.    

AS:  You write some of the coldest books I've ever read. By that I don't mean emotionally, but that  the setting is such a strong part of your writing.  Is that from growing up in Michigan?  Did it have that much of an impact on you? (It must have - you're living in upstate New York now.  At the time I send these questions, some parts of New York got 3 feet of snow over Christmas!)

SH:  Yeah, we got lots of snow this past couple weeks, and it does feel like home, being a native Michigander.  If you say “hardboiled” to some people, it might bring to mind a big city.  If it’s the classic LA hardboiled scene, then you have the sun beating down on everything and the palm trees.  For me, hardboiled is cold.  Really cold weather is so brutal and unforgiving.  It just seemed like a natural backdrop to have in a hardboiled mystery.

AS:  Are you still working full time?  If so, when do you find time to write?  It seems like you have at least two full-time careers.

SH:  I still work at IBM, for the simple reason that they’ve been so great about it.  The people I work with have been so supportive and flexible, they’ve made it possible for me to hang in there, at least for now.  I’ve been very lucky.  As far as when I can find time to write goes, I really only have one choice.  My wife and two kids go to bed and I start writing.  Good thing I’m a night owl.   

AS: I know you wrote in college. Did you see yourself even then as having a career writing fiction?

SH: I hoped that I’d be lucky enough to do just that, but at the same time I knew that the odds against actually making a living as a writer were pretty long.  So that’s why I got my degree in Computer Science, for purely boring, practical reasons, and then used up all my free classes in English and Creative Writing.  That’s what I really loved.

AS: Several authors who have a successful series have been tempted to write thrillers, or stand-alones.  Is this something that interests you?

SH:  If you do that for the right reason – because there’s this “next story” inside you that’s burning to get out, but doesn’t fit into the series – then it can be a great thing.  If you look at Dennis Lehane or Michael Connelly or Harlan Coben, obviously it worked out well for them.  But if I tried to do that just because I thought it was a way to have a “big book,” I think that would show.  So when that new thing is there in my mind, that’s when I’ll do it.  But I’m sure I’ll always go back to Alex, too. 

AS:  You seem to enjoy the convention scene. Do you?  What do you like best about it?

SH:  As exhausting as it can be, yes, I definitely enjoy seeing everybody.  I’ve met so many great people in this business already and made so many friends.  It’s sounds kinda sappy, but it’s true.  If the convention itself is put together well or not, it doesn’t really matter.  I get to hang out with all these great people so I’m happy. 

AS:  As always, the big question. What's next?

SH:  BLOOD IS THE SKY comes out in June.  Alex goes up to Canada with his old friend Vinnie LeBlanc to look for Vinnie’s brother, who never came back from a hunting trip.  Things don’t work out so well, to put it mildly.  St. Martin’s is putting a bigger push behind this book, so we’ll see what happens.  I’m working on another McKnight book, to come out in 2004.  After that, who knows? 

Back To Top