I SNAGGED AN INTERVIEW WITH TOP SELLING MYSTERY WRITER DAVID BISHOP

I'm excited to have you here on my blog,
David. Thanks so much for permitting me        
to ask some tough questions.

Thank you, Lorrie, for your interest in my writing career.

Well, let's not keep our readers waiting.

 L--  Please, David, tell us something about one of your novels.

DB -- How about “Who Murdered Garson Talmadge,” a Matt Kile Mystery, to direct my answer toward. I currently have nine writings published (seven novels and two short stories).  Who Murdered Garson Talmadge was my first of three in the Matt Kile mystery series (a fourth will be out in a few weeks). I have always loved mysteries and finally decided to stop working at other things and become a full-time novelist.

L--What do you do when you are not writing? Do you pick up something from your to be read pile?

DB-- The only thing I don’t like about being a novelist is that it limits my time to read the works of others. Most of what I read is the stories I am developing, read them and revise them and read them again and so on. However, I do get to read one to three novels by others each month. It is a joy to read books I don’t already know inside and out. To see how other wordsmiths have crafted a story.

L-- What do you look for in a book when you sit down to read for fun? 

DB-- Like many of your readers, I am first attracted to a cover that catches my eye. Then I read the short description of the story. Sometimes I will read the sample pages which are available for eBooks without purchase. Should I find myself not wanting to put the book down when the sample portion ends, I buy the book. The exception is if the author is one I have read before and trust to deliver an enjoyable, well told story. With those authors I just order the book.

L-- What has been your favorite part of being an author? What has been your least favorite? 

DB-- Golly, I love everything about being an author. I’m doing what I love to do and making a living doing it. It doesn’t get any better than that.

L --Did you get to quit your day job and become an author or do you still have a day job and writing is something you do for fun? If you still have a day job, what is it?

DB --Writing fiction is my full time job. I love it and get to do it all day long. Years ago I quit my day job as a financial analyst to write full time. The skills I honed as an analyst allow me to develop and salt clues into my mysteries.

L --What is your favorite junk food vice?

DB-- Ah, your question assumes I have one. Yes, I confess, I do. I’m also glad you narrowed down my vices to just junk food.  That helped keep the list short. I love ice cream. Mint chip, rocky road, homemade strawberry, almost any flavor, but those are favorites. Also chocolate, to confess to a second one. For some reason, from talking to fiction writers, I suspect chocolate is a common vice among us. But then, is chocolate a vice? I think of it as a basic food group, a pleasure, a diversion, a stimulant for my creative juices. As you can tell, I am also skilled at rationalizing my vices.

L--We all have our little things when it comes to reading, is there anything that bugs you when you read a novel? What is it?

DB-- I am turned off by overwritten descriptions of people, places, or things. When that happens I find myself skipping ahead to the next paragraph to see if the author has returned to the story. If it happens too often, that book becomes a wall banger and I pick up a different one.

When the tension builds in a scene, the story should be pedantic in detail with each detail embellishing that tension. However, the description of people or whatever should be adequate but not verbose. To overwrite descriptions slows the story and robs the reader of seeing each person or thing a little in that reader’s own eyes.

The descriptions should “show” what is being described but leave room for the reader to “add” some element. An example: The lady CIA Director had the look of a librarian, but the heart of a cobra. This describes but allows the reader to see “librarian” as each reader sees a librarian.  This is done subconsciously, but it is part of subtly leaving room for the reader to enter the story.

L--What seven words would you use to describe yourself? 

DB --Wow. This is a hard one and I am confident you would get very different words should you ask someone else who knows me well. Actually, I hope you wouldn’t, but you’ve asked for mine so here goes: Dependable. Loved. Intelligent. Imaginative. Healthy. Self-confident.  That’s six, so a seventh? Ah, yes, humble, although that might appear in doubt after the first six. This of course ignores words like handsome, rich, and famous. But then, you asked for words, not dreams.

L—lol. I think everyone has those dreams.  Is there anything else that you would like to share or say to those who will read this interview? 

DB-- As a writer, I conjure up occurrences designed to quickly bring the story to roiling boil. Along the way, I invent people. Victims and villains and heroes are needed, as well as a supporting cast. I make these people fun and interesting so you will welcome them and introduce them to your friends. Primary characters need habits and tics and talents, the qualities that bring them to life and make you love them or hate them. You’ll want to see them humiliated or hunted down, be successful or seduced.

I don't know about other authors, but I can learn a lot from this interview, David.

My mysteries offer you the opportunity to be challenged to find the villain from among the suspects. Clues as large as a log or as tiny as a bump thereon are salted throughout my stories. There are distractions in the form of false clues, called red herrings, which point to someone other than the real villain.

            Take a journey with me. Laugh. Hold your breath. Cheer. Boo. The characters are rich and the plots are grabbers. I promise you’ll be glad you came along. Some people don’t like golf or chocolate or even a hearty laugh. But I’ll bet you like some of those things and I’ll bet you’ll like my mysteries.

I have loved your books, David, and here I have to tell the readers a funny story.

Sorry to say, a year back I was not familiar with David's work. Well, his promoed novel on Facebook looked yummy, so I read it. Oooh, instant like. Since I'd seen David on Facebook. I thought I'd be a nice person, so I sent him a private message. I asked if he'd like me to give him a review on Amazon. I really, really thought I was doing him a great big favor. Ha, ha, ha. He wrote back to thank me and said if I wanted to add mine to the other hundreds he had, that would be fine.

Me the idiot

I've since read all his other novels that I didn't know he had released at the time.

Back to our blog



Here is the cover and prologue to the novel David mentioned above

 

Who Murdered Garson Talmadge, a Matt Kile Mystery

By: David Bishop

 

Prologue

It’s funny the way a kiss stays with you. How it lingers. How you can feel it long after it ends. I understand what amputees mean when they speak of phantom limbs. It’s there, but it isn’t. You know it isn’t. But you feel it’s still with you. While I was in prison, my wife divorced me; I thought she was with me, but she wasn’t. She said I destroyed our marriage in a moment of rage in a search for some kind of perverted justice. I didn’t think it was perverted, but I didn’t blame her for the divorce.

But enough sad stuff. Yesterday I left the smells and perversions of men, and, wearing the same clothes I had worn the last day of my trial, reentered the world of three-dimensional women and meals you choose for yourself; things I used to take for granted, but don’t any longer. My old suit fit looser and had a musty smell, but nothing could be bad on a con’s first day of freedom. I tilted my head back and inhaled. Free air smelled different, felt different tossing my hair and puffing my shirt.

I had no excuses. I had been guilty. I knew that. The jury knew that. The city knew that. The whole damn country knew. I had shot the guy in front of the TV cameras, emptied my gun into him. He had raped and killed a woman, then killed her three children for having walked in during his deed. The homicide team of Kile and Fidgery had found the evidence that linked the man I killed to the crime. Sergeant Matthew Kile, that was me, still is me, only now there’s no Sergeant in front of my name, and my then partner, Detective Terrence Fidgery. We arrested the scum, and he readily confessed.

The judge ruled our search illegal and all that followed bad fruit, which included the thug’s confession. Cute words for giving a rapist-killer a get-out-of-jail-free card. In chambers the judge had wrung his hands while saying, “I have to let him walk.” Judges talk about their rules of evidence as though they had replaced the rules about right and wrong. Justice isn’t about guilt and innocence, not anymore. Over time, criminal trials had become a game for wins and losses between district attorneys and the mouthpieces for the accused. Heavy wins get defense attorneys bigger fees. For district attorneys, wins mean advancement into higher office and maybe even a political career. They should take the robes away from the judges and make them wear striped shirts like referees in other sports.

On the courthouse steps, the news hounds had surrounded the rapist-killer like he was a movie star. Fame or infamy can make you a celebrity, and America treats celebrity like virtue.

I still see the woman’s husband, the father of the dead children, stepping out from the crowd, standing there looking at the man who had murdered his family, palpable fury filling his eyes. His body pulsing from the strain of controlled rage that was fraying around the edges, ready to explode. The justice system had failed him, and because we all rely on it, failed us all. Because I had been the arresting officer, I had also failed him.

The thug spit on the father and punched him, knocking him down onto the dirty-white marble stairs; he rolled all the way to the bottom, stopping on the sidewalk. The police arrested the man we all knew to be a murderer, charging him with assault and battery.

The thug laughed. “I’ll plead to assault,” he boasted. “Is this a great country or what?”

At that moment, without a conscious decision to do so, I drew my service revolver and fired until my gun emptied. The lowlife went down. The sentence he deserved, delivered.

The district attorney tried me for murder-two. The same judge who had let the thug walk gave me seven years. Three months after my incarceration, the surviving husband and father, a wealthy business owner, funded a public opinion poll that showed more than eighty percent of the people felt the judge was wrong, with an excess of two-thirds thinking I did right. All I knew was the world was better off without that piece of shit, and people who would have been damaged in the future had this guy lived, would now be safe. That was enough; it had to be.

A big reward offered by the husband/father eventually found a witness who had bought a woman’s Rolex from the man I killed. The Rolex had belonged to the murdered woman. Eventually, the father convinced the governor to grant me what is technically known in California as a Certificate of Rehabilitation and Pardon. My time served, four years.

While in prison I had started writing mysteries, something I had always wanted to do, I finally had the time to do. During my second year inside, I secured a literary agent and a publisher. I guessed, they figured that stories written by a former homicide cop and convicted murderer would sell.

My literary agent had wanted to meet me at the gate, but I said no. After walking far enough to put the prison out of sight, I paid a cabbie part of the modest advance on my first novel to drive me to Long Beach, California. I told the hack not to talk to me during the drive. He probably thought that a bit odd, but that was his concern, not mine. If I had wanted to gab, I would have let my literary agent meet me. This trip was about looking out a window without bars, about being able to close my eyes without first checking to see who was nearby. In short, I wanted to quietly absorb the subtleties of freedom regained.

The Prologue of: Who Murdered Garson Talmadge, a Matt Kile Mystery, available in eBook and print editions.  www.davidbishopbooks.com

 

And another goodie for us above. I suggest you read David's page on Amazon to see all his mystery series Here 

 

I was born in Washington, D.C. From there my life likely mirrored that of a lot of my readers. We moved around. I got some education. Played some sports, and got some more education. Prior to becoming a novelist, I worked as a financial analyst determining the value of companies. But let's talk about my current and final career, writing mystery novels.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

David Bishop stuck his author nose under the edge of the mystery tent with his first novel in October 2011. Since then his mysteries have maintained a constant presence on Amazon Best Selling Lists in multiple categories of mystery novels. He has also been listed numerous times among the 100 best selling authors of mysteries, including appearances among the top 10.

He writes several series characters:

MATT KILE MYSTERIES (in the order of release): Who Murdered Garson Talmadge, The Original Alibi, and Money & Murder.
MADDIE RICHARDS MYSTERIES (in order of release): The Beholder, and Death of a Bankster.
JACK McCALL MYSTERIES (in order of release): The Third Coincidence, and The Blackmail Club.
The stories within these series are independent, not continuing. They can be read in any order.

Again, to order any of David's wonderfull, thrilling mysteries, go to David's page Here

 

          Since it's that time of year, here's our wish for a safe and happy Thanksgiving.



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