by Grace Topping
Doubtful
Relations
by James M. Jackson
What will Seamus do this time?
Financial
crimes investigator Seamus McCree has wife problems, and Lizzie’s not even his
wife anymore. Her current husband disappeared on a business trip to Savannah.
Was he kidnapped? Dispatched by his hedge fund partners? Or did he run off with
another woman? Police assume he’s AWOL, and Lizzie turns to Seamus for help.
Seamus
has no desire to be sucked into Lizzie’s drama again, but her angst is also
affecting their son, Paddy. Seamus agrees to help discover the truth, a quest
that soon involves the entire extended family. Long buried secrets surface and
each member must confront the question, “How far can you trust your family?”
Equal
parts road trip, who done what, and domestic thriller, book four in the Seamus
McCree series takes psychological suspense to a new level. Seamus McCree fans
and newcomers alike will delight in this fast-paced novel that leaves no one in
the family unchanged and keeps you guessing until the very end.
I’ve heard other writers
comment about James M. Jackson’s character Seamus McCree and wondered what the
buzz was about. So when I had the opportunity to interview him and learn more
about Seamus, I jumped at the chance. What I discovered is that Seamus is a
terrific character, and if he were real, someone I would enjoy having as a
friend. That’s high praise for a fictional character.
Jim Jackson is one of the
contributors to Writers Who Kill and also the president of the Sisters in Crime
Guppy (Great Unpublished) Chapter. Whether he’s blogging on his own site,
writing as a guest on another blog, or serving as Chief Guppy, Jim is always
reaching a helping hand out to other writers. It gives me a great deal of
pleasure to interview him about the latest book in his Seamus McCree series.
Welcome, Jim.
Frequently books are categorized as being character
or plot driven. You have a wonderful balance of both. How do you keep that
balance in your books?
When character
motivations impel their actions and I follow Elmore Leonard’s advice to “leave
out all the parts readers skip,” I’m confident folks will keep turning the
pages past their bedtime.
Seamus worries about everybody, even his ex-wife.
What is it about him that makes him feel responsible for what happens to his
family and friends?
Seamus’s father
died when he was young. Subconsciously he accepted the message that he needed
to “be the man of the family.” He conceptually understands that feeling
responsible for things out of his control is not healthy, but when a new crisis
arises, he reverts to what he knows. To be “in control” he must take charge,
and if he is in charge, he must be responsible. He’s getting better about
dealing with this issue, but he still has many steps remaining on his journey
toward wholeness.
The pace of Doubtful
Relations is one of its strongest features. Even with a complex story line
it moves and is hard to put down. Definitely no slumps in this story. Is there
a secret to good pacing? What advice would you give new writers about pacing?
Excellent books
have been written about pacing, but I think it boils down to two basic
concepts. (1) Every scene must include tension. If one source of tension
resolves, another source must become apparent so the reader always wants to
know what happens next. (2) The reader has to be invested in the story. Usually
that results from being interested in what happens to at least one character.
Doubtful Relations has
multiple mysteries but no body until much later in the book. Do you consider it
a murder mystery? If not, how would you categorize it?
I think of the
Seamus McCree novels as crime fiction. I haven’t wanted to be pinned down any
more than that. Although Ant Farm and
Bad Policy could properly be called
murder mysteries, Cabin Fever is much
closer to a domestic thriller, and Doubtful
Relations is probably a combination of road trip, psychological suspense
and domestic thriller.
They all
involve crimes, and have a focus on financial shenanigans. They all have at
least one dead body, but as you note, not necessarily in the first pages of the
story.
Computers and high finance play a major role in
this story. In fact, you have me afraid to use a computer again. Do you have a
background in those areas, or did you have a lot of fun doing research?
I first
programmed a computer in 1967, have an MBA with a finance concentration, worked
for thirty years in an arcane area of financial consulting, and I’ve always
been interested in financial crimes. That background and an active imagination
are sufficient for most things I write about. For more technical
computer-related information, I rely on experts, including my son.
So many things writers love or hate appear in their
writing, such as your love of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which Seamus shares. How much autobiographical material do you allow to creep into your
writing?
Because I enjoy
reading books that use real locations, I incorporate actual locations into my
writing, mostly from my own experiences. I know where Seamus hangs out in the Upper
Peninsula and I know his Clifton neighborhood in Cincinnati because I’ve lived
in both places.
Doubtful Relations kept me
guessing throughout the book and then had a zinger of an ending. Did you start
out knowing who your villain was? Are you a plotter or a pantser?
I am a pantser
writing my first draft. I start a novel knowing the inciting incident for the
story and not much else. By the time I finish the first draft, I’ve learned the
who, what, where, when, and why of the novel. I never know “who done it” before
I start writing, and I often change my mind about perpetrators and their
motivations in the course of writing the first or second draft.
I suppose you
could say I write a 90,000-word outline and then start the real writing, which
for me is rewriting.
Seamus McCree’s mother, Trudy, is quite a
character, starting with her dartboard performances and most unusual friends. I
always worry that people will think I based my character’s awful mother on my
mother. Do family and friends ever accuse you of basing your characters on
them?
I am very fond
of Trudy as a character because she is complex. The only character that bears
any strong intended resemblance to an actual person is Seamus (as I described
above).
However,
sometimes people think they know who I used as a model for a character. After Cabin Fever was published, I had several
people tell me they knew “exactly” who I based a particular character on. Since
I had never met that person, I took it as a compliment that I had done an
excellent job providing the character with realistic motivations to justify her
actions.
You have a reputation for sharing your knowledge
and helping other writers. What do you wish someone had told you when you first
started writing? What would you tell your younger self?
Thank you for
your kind comment on my behavior. Although I have a strong business background,
for too long I treated writing as solely a creative endeavor. My original
objective was and continues to be to write books people will want to read.
I don’t want my
creative process to become subservient to the business of writing. I am not
going to write something just because it will sell. However, by not paying
sufficient attention to the publishing aspects of the business, I overallocated
time on crafting the story at the expense of finding readers who would enjoy
the kind of books I write. “If you write it, they will come” doesn’t work very
well in today’s world.
Many writers are faced with the decision of whether
to continue pursuing traditional publishing or taking their careers into their
own hands and self-publish. What advice would you give writers facing this
decision? What is the most challenging thing about self-publishing?
Writers need to
be honest with themselves about why they write and make career decisions based
on their
goals. I am fortunate that I do not need to make money on my writing, although
I would like to be fairly compensated in the long term. To reach my objectives, I need to expand the pool of people who
know of my writing. With each book in the series, I’ve had the choice of
sticking with Seamus McCree or starting something new. Because I have a longer
story arc in mind, I have stayed with Seamus.
Given that I
decided to stick with the Seamus McCree series, I decided that I could better
utilize the available marketing and sales tools on my own rather than continue
working through a publisher.
What’s next for Seamus?
Empty Promises will be the fifth Seamus McCree novel.
In it, we follow Seamus back to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The first draft is
complete and I am in the rewriting stage. False
Promises is number six. Seamus returns to Boston after his Uncle Mike has
been killed. I am about half way through its first draft.
Thank you, Jim.
Doubtful Relations is available for pre-order in paperback and e-book
format with an August 23, 2016 publication date. You can check Jim’s website www.jamesmjackson.com for the current list of online retailers, to order
a signed print edition of the book, or to learn more about Jim and his writing.
