Today we've hauled YA author Paul Griffin into our Interrogation Room to question him about his new novel,
Burning Blue. At first we just had one burning question for him. After publishing three contemporary YA novels, what made him turn to mystery?
His answer surprised us. While this is his first published mystery, he's actually been quietly writing mysteries for years. He's also extremely well-read in this genre.
We knew we couldn't let him off the hook so fast. Surely he had valuable insights into the craft of mystery writing!
Notes from the Paul Griffin File:
Paul Griffin is an award-winning author of contemporary YA fiction. His previously published novels are
Ten Mile River, The Orange Houses (an ALA Best Books for Young Adults Top Ten), and
Stay With Me, all from Dial/Penguin. When he's not writing, he conducts workshops for at-risk, incarcerated, and special needs teens, and he is a volunteer EMT. He lives in New York City with three dogs and one wife, documentary filmmaker Risa Morimoto.
Here's a little bit about his Paul's new book, Burning Blue (Dial/Penguin):
How far would you go for love, beauty, and jealousy?
When
Nicole Castro, the most beautiful girl in her wealthy New Jersey high
school, is splashed with acid on the left side of her perfect face, the
whole world takes notice. But quiet loner Jay Nazarro does more than
that--he decides to find out who did it. Jay understands how it feels to
be treated like a freak, and he also has a secret: He's a brilliant
hacker. But the deeper he digs, the more danger he's in--and the more he
falls for Nicole. Too bad everyone is turning into a suspect, including
Nicole herself.
Award-winning author Paul Griffin has written a high-stakes, soulful mystery about the meaning--and dangers--of love and beauty.
Here's Diana Renn's Interview with Paul Griffin!
(And be sure to enter our giveaway at the end of this interview!)
DR:
Although some characters in your other contemporary YA novels are touched by
the world of crime in some ways, Burning Blue marks your first foray into
mystery/thriller territory. What
inspired you to turn to mystery?
PG:
I’ve always loved mysteries and thrillers, stuff like the Bourne franchise, The
Alienist, Thomas Harris, Michael Connelly, Richard Price, Lee Child, John
Grisham, P.D. James, so many others.
Dennis Lehane is awesome. The
Stieg Larsson books are probably my most recent favorites. Diana Renn rules, too.
DR: Aw.
PG: Presumed Innocent is another favorite,
because you have a lot of edge-of-your seat reading fun as you wonder about the
WHO, but just as interesting is the WHY of that story.
I started writing mysteries about 20 years
ago, lots of bad ones, and they all went unpublished, and rightly so. I don’t regret all those drafts, though. I had a ball hanging with the characters, if
only in my head.
I was very surprised
when, after having written mostly thrillers and mysteries, my first book
accepted for publication was a quiet little literary novel about two homeless
boys. That one was called Ten Mile
River, a title I made up on the spot, as I was pitching the story to my friend
Elisa, who was then an assistant at Doubleday. I probably pitched her thirty stories that day, and the only ones she
liked were Ten Mile and this other book about a homeless dog. They were the last—and in my mind,
weakest—two stories I pitched her.
Regardless,
Elisa passed the manuscripts on to a very nice man by the name of Kirby Kim, an
assistant who was becoming an agent, and Kirby said, “Yeah, the dog thing? I don’t know that I’d show that to anybody. But that Ten Mile River isn’t so bad. You know it’s a YA, right?”
“Of course it’s a YA,” I said, not knowing
what the hell a YA was. He could have
called it a cookbook, and I would have agreed, I was so broke and desperate to
get a sale, which, miraculously, Kirby got for me with Penguin/Dial. While Dial for the most part has been
interested in seeing more literary stories, my friends there, Lauri Hornik (my
Publisher), Kathy Dawson (Associate Publisher and now Publisher of her own
imprint, Penguin/Kathy Dawson Books—yay, Kathy!) and my wonderful editor Kate
Harrison have been generous in letting me experiment. When I begged them to let me write a mystery,
they got behind me, and I’m grateful.
DR:
And we're so happy you finally published a mystery! Did you start this novel with a mystery in mind, and did you know the nature of the
crime?
PG:
I work as an EMT with a volunteer ambulance here in NYC.
One day I’m called down to the subway, where
a man had been attacked and blinded with what I think was police-grade pepper
spray.
Somebody just tapped him on the
shoulder, and when he turned, the assailant nailed the victim, first in the
eyes, then the mouth.
Nasty.
Chemical burns are messy calls, because you
have to be really careful as you try to contain the chemical, i.e., not burn yourself
as you’re cleaning up the victim.
Getting a blinded man out of a crowded subway station and into an
ambulance is tricky and takes time.
And
then it was one of those hot, midtown NYC rush hours, and we were stuck in
traffic.
I figure I was with this guy
for about forty-five minutes, all told.
That doesn’t seem like a long time, but the minutes stretch out in
situations like these, when all your patient (not to mention you) wants is get
to the hospital and get the burning to stop.
All the while, I’m trying to flush this poor guy’s eyes with saline, and
he’s a wreck.
Not angry, just sad.
He keeps blaming himself.
“What did I do to provoke this?” became “I
can’t believe I got myself burned.”
The
victim’s blaming himself was heartbreaking, and I started writing
Burning Blue
to figure out why folks do that.
I don’t
know that I got any closer to a new understanding of self blame, but I needed
to try.
Again, figuring out the WHO of
the crime is always interesting, but it’s the WHY that keeps me writing and
reading mysteries.
DR: The mystery plot of Burning Blue takes many twists and turns. It kept me guessing until the
very end. Did it surprise you too, or did you know who the villain was from the
outset?
PG:
I knew from the outset. Now, again,
remember, I’m like one for twenty in selling these things, so don’t take what
I’m about to write here as anything resembling good advice, but, while my
mystery ideas usually start with the perp, I’m often surprised to find that the
bad guy’s ID changes as I flesh out the other characters. They start walking and talking—and slicing
and dicing—on their own, and then my original outline is out the window. Allowing the story to change is a lot of fun
and keeps the story fresh for me as I’m writing it. But for Burning Blue, the perp was always
[DELETED]. Now that I think about it,
since Burning Blue was the only one that sold, I’ll be sticking with my
original perps from now on, so forget everything I just said. At my age, the ability to pay my rent trumps
artistic integrity.
DR:
While the novel is narrated primarily from Jay’s point of view, you include
occasional journal excerpts from Nicole. It’s wonderful, and rare, I think, to
hear the voice of the victim. And I love the mix of vulnerability and
resilience we get in Nicole. She’s such a complex character. What prompted your
decision to include so much of her voice?
PG:
My editor Kate.
She’s a girly girl,
thank god, and kept saying, “I’d really love to get inside Nicole’s head
here.”
I asked her how the f--- I was
supposed to that when Nicole, the victim, is also a suspect.
“You’ll figure it out,” Kate said.
“Have fun.”
And I did.
The tricky thing
was—and without giving away too much here—Jay can only get inside Nicole’s head
if he hacks into her privacy.
That
invasion, that forsaking of trust, is a major obstacle the two have to overcome
as they try to come together to catch the bad guy.
But obstacles are great things in
romance.
Once you overcome them, and if
the other person is still there with you, then you know the love is for real.
DR:
What was the most challenging part of writing a mystery specifically for a YA
audience? What was the most rewarding part?
PG:
The biggest challenge: school. That the
characters have to go. It’s hard to be a
full time detective when you have eight hundred hours a night of calculus
homework. The solution was obvious: don’t
do your homework, which is something I always recommend to the kids when I’m
working in schools all across our great land. Actually, the characters’ school obligations ended up being great
opportunities to flesh out relationships between the suspects. Those buffed faux marble floors in those long
high school hallways can be pretty interesting meeting places when they’re
jammed with kids dashing off to class, and even more interesting when they’re
empty, except for maybe that one shadowy figure hiding out in the cutout behind
the water fountain.
DR: I love how you turned a YA challenge into an advantage! So now what's the most rewarding part of writing YA mystery?
PG: Well,
you know, young adults are horrible people, so I’m stumped. No, the YA world is an amazing place to
be. Young adults are endlessly
fascinating, exuberant, dark, brilliant, passionate. They’re not yet jaded, and they’re eager for
new experiences. Our characters can and
must reflect that hopefulness if they’re to resonate with our readers.
DR:
Do you read mysteries? Did you read them as a teen? And how important do you think
it is for mystery writers to read in this genre?
PG:
Repeating myself here, but mysteries have always been a favorite. Way back when I had a paper route, this guy
on my route used to get Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. I’d “borrow” it for a day or two (along with
his Playboy subscription) before putting it back into his mailbox. Initially I read mysteries for fun, trying to
guess the perp’s ID my chief aim, but nowadays it’s the bad guy’s motive that
keeps me going. We, with Hannibal
Lecter, know early on in Silence of the Lambs that we don’t want to get caught
in a parking lot with Buffalo Bill, but getting to know him is, while in no way
a pleasure, fascinating.
I saw the
amazing Harlan Coben speak at a conference recently, and he gets together with
Lawrence Block and Lee Child and a bunch of other greats once a month, and they
read each other’s stuff. So yeah, I
think you only read mysteries if you love them, and in the process, when you’re
in the grips of a great writer, you’re getting a phenomenal education about
what makes mysteries work—and a lesson in what makes them fun.
DR: We received a tip from a source. It seems you’ve been moonlighting with an
all-volunteer ambulance corps. How long have you been doing that? How has that
experience affected your writing – of this book, or of your writing in
general?
PG:
So I jumped the gun in my first answer, but yes, I’m an EMT.
Back in 2001 my mother-in-law had a
catastrophic stroke right in front of me, as we were eating lunch.
I didn’t know what to do, other than dial
911.
I rode with Mom, in the back of the
ambulance.
She was unconscious, but the
EMT was so calm, so collected, and he kept me chilled out.
I really appreciated that.
He probably kept me from having a stroke!
Not long after that came 9-11, and as you
know, the city was crazy that day and for a long while after.
Again, I felt powerless, not having any
medical training.
I signed up for six
months of EMT school and started volunteering not long after.
Yes, every call is a mystery.
Whether you’re asked to help victims of
crimes of violence or accidents or chronic disease, the big question is always
the same: How did this person get here?
My life has a habit of leaking into my novels, so exercising the detective
part of my addled brain generally has me spinning mystery plots, particularly
after an interesting ambulance tour.
DR:
A lot of sleuthing in novels these days – and in real life -- is
done on computers. I fear the days of skulking down alleys and stairways with
flashlights are nearly gone. Googling information and scrolling through
Facebook pages could be inherently boring, on the page. But in Burning Blue,
there’s a good amount of screen time, and you make cyber-sleuthing utterly
compelling. How did you keep coming up with different ways for Jay and others
to get information online, without slowing the pace? Do you have advice for
mystery writers who are wrestling with how to incorporate technology and social media sleuthing into their plots?
PG:
Thanks for the “utterly compelling,” Diana.
You are too good to me, and yes, I am working on paying you back the
three grand I owe you.
(DR: Shhh!)
PG: I’m not a big
online guy, probably because so much of it is social connection and “sharing,”
and I’m inherently antisocial and a selfish bastard, but the technology
fascinates me. I see hackers as the new
ghosts. They can sneak in anywhere. Take a look at The Girl With The Dragon
Tattoo. Salander is a ghost with wicked
digital skills. HOW she works her magic,
while interesting, is still less interesting than WHY she’s doing it. When I see a ghost, the first thing that
comes to mind is: Why are you still hanging around here? Why are you not off throwing back a few nice
cold beers at the ghost bar?
I think
focusing a bit less on the click-by-click methodology and more on the
motivation behind the hacking can bring you to some interesting places. Hacking for money makes a lot of sense, but
hacking for love? Now what the hell is
that about? I guess you write the novel
to find out.
DR:
One of the most fascinating aspects of Burning Blue, for me, is the window it
offers into the world of hackers. Jay is a brilliant one, and he’s not even the
only one in the book. How did you go about researching hacker skills and lingo?
(Or do you have another moonlighting gig we should know about?)
PG:
My ambulance corps is big on continuing education, and we’ve had some
interesting guest lecturers come talk to us, usually from EMS or law
enforcement or the military. Lots of the
new crime is computer-based, and a lot of our bet-hedging, not just as it
relates to anti-terrorism but also to things as mundane as shoplifting, is being
focused on dangers of a digital nature.
I took this 14-week course at the NYPD Academy, just for fun . . . . Popping off with that Glock nine was to be
perfectly honest an absolute thrill, but the most interesting segment for me
was computer crime. The detectives gave
us some fascinating real-life scenarios to look at, and yes, the perps’
methodology was in every case ingenious, but their motivations were varied, at
times thrilling and at others chilling. We almost root for that poor old guy who had a hard time of it, losing
his job in the new economy, as he figures out a way to siphon a little away
from the soulless monolith corporation that canned him, but more often than not
you’re peeking into the very dark and broken heart of a sexual predator looking
to worm his way into his target’s virtual life, and then into her physical
world. Scary stuff.
DR:
What writing secret will you reveal only under the harsh light of this
Interrogation Room?
PG:
I’m going to run this question through the translation machine, and—oops—here’s
what comes out the other side: Have you ever written drunk?
Answer:
I wouldn’t call it writing.
Thanks for the interview, Paul. Hope our Interrogation Room lamp wasn't too blinding. We hope to see more mysteries from you soon!
You can
stalk hack find Paul online at
his website.
He is
NOT on Twitter, which is undoubtedly the secret to his prolific writing!
Would you like to win an ARC of
Burning Blue? We have one to give away! Click on the Rafflecopter thingie to enter!
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A few years ago, Little, Brown reissued ten of Duncan's paperbacks. I reread Down a Dark Hall, just to see, and it totally held up. (It didn't hurt that Duncan updated the technology and fashions involved.) It struck me that one of the reasons her stories endure—and it seems like Hollywood is still making movies out of them—is because Duncan does such a great job setting up not only a compelling mystery or suspense story but also in building incredibly relatable, sympathetic characters that demand emotional investment. Most are dealing with family drama like icky stepparents, abuse and alienation (you know, on top of the murderous classmates, secret twins and discoveries that they're unwitting subjects for educational experiments). This is a great reminder for those of us trying to write thrillers, mysteries or even horror books for teens or tweens. At the end of the day, what readers are going to respond to is how well we can capture the experience of adolescence, which, it hardly needs restating, is harrowing enough in its own right.
Elisa Ludwig's debut young adult novel PRETTY CROOKED (Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins), was released in March 2012. It's the story of Willa Fox, a teen girl who goes Robin Hood on her rich classmates, and it's the first of a trilogy. The sequel, PRETTY SLY, will be released in March 2014. Elisa lives in Philadelphia with her husband Jesse.
Elisa Ludwig's debut young adult novel PRETTY CROOKED (Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins), was released in March 2012. It's the story of Willa Fox, a teen girl who goes Robin Hood on her rich classmates, and it's the first of a trilogy. The sequel, PRETTY SLY, will be released in March 2014. Elisa lives in Philadelphia with her husband Jesse.
