Median Gray by Bill Mesce, Jr.

 Please welcome Bill Mesce, Jr. author of Median Gray

Bill Mesce, Jr. will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Median Gray

byBill Mesce, Jr.

 

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GENRE:   police drama/suspense/thriller

 

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INTERVIEW:

Interview Questions for Rogue's Angels 
1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

 

This is a question I always get asked and I always feel like a bit of an idiot whenever I get it because I don’t have an answer. My parents were big readers and I picked up the habit from them.  I suppose that probably led to me playing with my own writing

 

In some ways it was an accident.  When I was at the University of South Carolina, I took my first film studies class and fell in love with the idea of getting involved in moviemaking.  I settled on screenwriting and thought I might do some fiction on the side capitalizing on my anticipated grand success as a writer of films.

 

Well, although I did get some work, there was not only no grand success, but most of the film jobs that came my way were low-budget gun-for-hire schlock.  I think I started paying more attention to fiction because it became the place where I saw I would have the opportunity to tell the stories I wanted to, and I became more focused I become a competent writer of prose.  That took a while! 

 

2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?

 

I get very wary of this kind of question because when I’m writing, I don’t think like that.  I don’t think, Ok, this is a cop story, so this is what has to be in it; this is a war story, this is what has to be there.  My head simply doesn’t work that way.

 

A story comes to me, I tell the story the best way I can and that often means doing things that bend or even break genre conventions.  It’s not because I’m some brilliant maverick thumbing my nose at genre “rules,” it’s more like if the story tells me it’s turning left, we turn left, even if what’s more typical of the genre is to turn write.

3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?

 

The primary driver – and this is why the novel is set in New York in the early 1980s – was this was my response to being a twenty-something Jersey suburban kid working in the Big City when New York was perhaps at its craziest and scariest time.  A lot of the events in the novel that are not part of the main plot were actually events I witnessed.  In a way, writing this novel was a nostalgic exercise for me; it gave me a way to go back to those crazy, scary, and (because it was crazy and scary) exhilarating times.

 

For whatever reason, maybe because I’ve always liked cop stories, I thought a police drama would be the most entertaining vehicle to frame that New York experience.  As I developed the plot, another aspect was to punch a hole in that myth of the rule-breaking avenging cop.  What if, for example, Dirty Harry wasn’t an expert shot (most cops aren’t) and missed?  In the Lethal Weapons, the Dirty Harrys, etc. there’s never any serious collateral damage. Well, life is messier than that, and that became another major component of the story.

4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?

 

I suppose whether or not I demonstrate any expertise at all is really in the eyes of readers.

 

I try to be diligent about research not just to get some period or physical details right, but to get the feel of a place or profession down.

 

Other than that, I can only say I’ve been at this for a while, there’s been a lot of trail and error (a LOT of error!), and I like to think I have a better understanding now of how words work on a page than I did when I began.

5. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?

 

That I have a real love/hate thing going on with writing!  I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a book that at some point I didn’t get bored with and couldn’t wait to finish!

6. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

 

The idea of having plans went out the window years ago when that expected Oscar-winning success as a screenwriter didn’t happen!

 

I’ve done a fair amount of nonfiction, even a couple of academic works, some of them simply because an opportunity presented itself with a subject that interested me.  My fiction hasn’t been any different; an idea comes to me (or as has happened in the past, comes to me from someone else), and if it clicks, I run with it.

 

Plans?  My plan is to win the Power Ball so I don’t have to work at anything else but writing!

7. If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and why?

 

That’s an interesting question because if you think about it, every character you write is some aspect of the author since they all come out of the author’s head.

 

The character of Ronnie Valerio – the young cop who unwittingly gets sucked into the chaotic wake of an older cop’s quest to settle an old score – probably already has a lot of me in him because a lot of what I felt in my early days in New York went into that character.

 

What can be a little scary is when you write dark characters because you do wonder, Gee, what creepy part of me did that come from?

8. Can you give us a sneak peek into this book?

 

Think of the New York City of MIDNIGHT COWBOY, the grit of THE FRENCH CONNECTION, and the foxhole humor of BARNEY MILLER and you’d have a sense of the feel of MEDIAN GRAY.

 

9. Do you belong to a critique group? If so how does this help or hinder your writing?

 

No.  I’m trying to think of a way to respond without sounding arrogant or snobby.  I think if I was just starting out, getting that kind of feedback could be helpful, and there are still people whose opinions I value.  But I’ve been doing this long enough that I think I more or less know what I’m doing. I’m not saying I get everything right, and I don’t mind an exchange with an editor, but you have to remember how subjective critiquing is.  If you get a consensus from a group that something isn’t working, ok, that’s something you have to consider, but if you’re in a group of ten and get ten different opinions…

 

I remember my first novel making the rounds for over twenty years.  I’d get rejections, rewrite, submit, more rejections, rewrite, etc.  The difficulty was there was no consensus:  this editor liked the writing but didn’t like the story, this one liked the story but didn’t like the characters, etc.  Even editors have their preferences.

 

10. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?

 

Frankly, I didn’t get a lot of encouragement.  It was something I wanted to do so I did it.

 

The closest to encouragement I ever got was my first writing teacher in college.  I’d asked him to look over what was then the first draft of my first novel. He called me into his office and spent a half-hour explaining to me everything that was wrong in the first couple of pages (it took ten drafts and twenty years to realize he was right and fix the problems).  But when he was done, he said, “I’m taking the time to tell you all this because you have a good story in here.  You just haven’t found it yet.”  And that was the extent of my encouragement.

11. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)

 

I can’t say I’ve ever received bad advice.  Some has been better than others.  I’ve been very lucky in the people I’ve come across over the years, mentors, really, people who’ve accomplished more than I have and are in a position to offer advice based on their experience, so in that regard I’ve been pretty lucky.

12. Do you outline your books or just start writing?

 

I always laugh when I get this, not because it’s a bad question but because it’s ALWAYS asked!

 

When I was first starting out, I used to do very skeletal outlines, but after a while I stopped.  I was never sure what it was that didn’t sit right with me, but then a few years ago I went for my MFA to recharge my batteries. The writer Sam Lipsyte was one of our guest speakers and when he was asked this question he said, “Rarely, because I fine if I do an outline, I feel like I’ve already written the book.”  I heard that and I thought, THAT’S IT!  I get easily bored, and to do an outline and then have to write the damned book, no, that won’t work for me.

 

By the time I sit down to write, I sort of have a mental outline; I have a general idea of how the story is supposed to go, and may have even already written some dialogue for key scenes, but I won’t do an outline.

 

I’m not saying they’re a bad idea.  All of us who do this are different.  Some writers need an outline, some need to write out back stories for all their characters, etc.  If it works for you, great, do it.

13. How do you maintain your creativity?

 

Beats the hell out of me.  I’m not being cute.  I don’t know where it comes from so I’ll be damned if I know how to maintain it, and I live with the constant fear that as mysteriously as it appeared, it might one day mysteriously disappear.

14. Who is your favorite character in the book. Can you tell us why?

 

Ronnie, for the same reasons I pointed out before. I like that he’s very life-sized, a very human mix of abilities and ineptitude, strengths and foibles.

15. Are your plotting bunnies, angels or demons?

 

Neither.  Here’s a funny thing:  I’m not a plot guy.  My plots tend to be fairly straightforward.  For me, the fun is in characters, a sense of place, dialogue, and the simpler a plot is, the more room you have for that kind of running room.

 

BLURB:

 

New York City, Summer 1963
Rookie beat cop Jack Meara is bleeding out on the dirty floor of a tenement hallway - next to the body of another cop. The eyes of the shooter burned into his memory. Meara watches and waits to see the shooter brought to justice, but, instead, "Tony Boy" Maiella climbs up the Mob ranks, slipping off indictments as easily as his designer overcoat. But on the eve of his retirement, Meara decides on one last kamikaze-like try to even the scales of justice.

New York City, 1983

Rookie detective Ronnie Valerio finds himself unknowingly pulled into the wake of Meara's quest. A go-go palace bartender is being stalked, a body turns up in a neighborhood dumpster, machine guns blaze in the night, a New York bookie turns up dead in the Jersey Pinelands and the only thing they all have in common is, in one way or another, they all tie back to Jack Meara.

How far does a cop go to even a score? How far does a brother cop go to shield him? Is justice worth any price when the line between right and wrong blurs?

 

 

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EXCERPT:

 

He hears a shout upstairs, something panicky about cops out front, feet stumbling down the stairs. He gets up, turns as a figure hurtles around the second-floor landing and down the upper stairs of the first flight. He barely gets his gun up, hasn’t even said anything when they collide, entangle, and there’s one, brief, brilliant second of mental clarity – when he’s swamped by just what an unbelievably fucking bad idea it was to come down that hall – and then that clarity collapses into panic as he and the figure grapple and try to untangle themselves, and then he feels himself losing his balance, falling backward, he reaches a foot back but there’s nothing there and now he’s on his back, his breath punched out of him as he skids down the stairs to the hallway floor.

 

He’s still got his pistol in his hand but he’s dazed, he can’t get enough breath to move, and he looks up, sees the guy he just wrangled with standing on the landing over McInerney, silhouetted against the soot-streaked window, sees the guy’s right arm coming up and he knows what that means, he fucking knows, and he feels everything from the pit of his stomach down to his groin turn to cold mush, he’s trying to draw in some air, enough to get his own piece up –

 

There’s a flash. Quick, bright, like lightning. In that flash, dark eyes look down on him, cold fucking hard eyes.

 

And with the flash...

 

There’s a POP – a small noise, like a single clap of hands, but in the confines of the hall it sets his ears ringing…

 

 

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Bill Mesce, Jr. Is an award-winning author and playwright as well as a screenwriter.  He is an adjunct instructor at several colleges in his native New Jersey.

 

Social Media Links: 

facebook.com/bill.mesce.7/

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/MesceJr

LInked In:  linkedin.com/in/b-mesce-jr-750a6015/

 

Amazon Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/Median-Gray-Bill-Mesce-Jr-ebook/dp/B08BJF6WX6

 

 

The book will be on sale for only $0.99.

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE:

 

Bill Mesce, Jr. will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f3817