Please welcome Gillespie Lamb author of The Junkyard Dick
Gillespie Lamb will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
The Junkyard Dick
by Gillespie Lamb
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GENRE: Contemporary mystery
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INTERVIEW:
1. What or who inspired you to start writing?
Looking back, it seems to me that other people saw a “writer” in me that I hadn’t yet recognized or hadn’t acknowledged anyway. The way I sometimes unconventionally looked at life might have suggested to them, “Hey, this guy may never amount to anything, but he could be a writer.” Something like that. A distinct memory is a conversation with my mother in later years during a time of personal frustration or struggle of some kind. I don’t remember the particulars, but after listening to me, she said quietly, “Why don’t you write about it.” That was encouragement I think I needed, even if I didn’t know it at the time.
2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?
Mysteries must be at least somewhat puzzling. My working title for The Junkyard Dick was The Pablo Puzzle. I am not a huge fan of mysteries that are full of misdirection and Byzantine plots. I want to enjoy a story, not laboriously keep up with its twists and turns. Mysteries are escapist fare, in the purest sense, because criminal and aberrant behaviors are not part of our daily routine. At least not for most of us. We open a mystery book to witness such stuff at arm’s length.
3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?
I admire blue-collar people and communities. It’s the farm boy in me, maybe. The idea of The Junkyard Dick was to feature an amateur detective—a “dick” as detectives sometimes are called—who is blue-collar all the way. Protagonist Tak Sweedner has a manual labor career, drives a nondescript pickup, swims in the clear water of a Texas river, has a best friend who manages a ranch, and a dog named Otis for a companion. It is clear to readers that Tak knows who he is and is OK with it. We all should be so lucky.
4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?
In the novel, Tak operates a salvage yard, mostly junked cars and trucks. Here’s how that came to be: A friend of mine who owns a salvage yard came to me a few years ago and asked if I would consider working for him part-time. I did for a while and came away intrigued by the enterprise. It wasn’t exactly replicated in The Junkyard Dick, but some of the details of operation gibe with my experience there. I came away with appreciation for the work and I hope readers do.
5. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?
I’m a Midwest guy at heart who lived most of 20 years on the East Coast. I’ve come to believe that people are the same everywhere albeit with different sets of attitudes and habits. Underlying those cosmetic traits are common hopes, dreams, and impulses. The character of humanity is pretty much universal at its core. I like people. I hope that shows in the characterizations I create in my novels.
6. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?
I’m polishing another novel. It’s set in contemporary times and engages ordinary people in some of the extraordinary debates occurring in this country and the world. It’s not polemical, nor especially political. Characters respond to the times the best they can and engender mutual respect along the way. I think the story is a positive contribution to the dialogue. Beyond that, there’s a biography I’ll be working on and yet another novel is percolating in the back of my brain.
7. Can you give us a sneak peek into this book?
Well, it’s a love story, and a buddy story, and a multicultural story. A sense of place is important. Here’s the twist: The place is Uvalde, Texas, where I live and where the school shooting last spring turned things upside down. The awfulness threw a wrench in my marketing of the book: I couldn’t promote the “place” of the novel, Uvalde, without seeming to capitalize on the tragedy. So, I created a nonprofit organization into which will go any royalties I receive plus a contribution from the publisher, Black Rose Writing. A lot more money will need to be raised, and I will be doing that. The organization will foster creative writing skills in elementary age children in Uvalde. You can read more about it at the nonprofit’s website, storyinventorsclub.com. So, now I promote the book, and the book promotes the nonprofit. The tragedy brought this about.
8. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?
Five years ago, I quietly found a publisher for my first book, The Beamy Courage of Gerta Scholler, a middle-grades reader set in the 1870s. I didn’t push that book at all. Having it published seemed enough, but I am promoting it now. I like the characters and they deserve to be read. It’s sort of the same story with The Junkyard Dick. I quietly wrote it and now am marketing it because I believe Tak and company are good bedside companions, or wherever you do your reading. In a nutshell, I’m pretty self-motivated at this point. I believe the work of writing has value and that I have something to offer.
9. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)
I picked up some good advice many years ago in reading a review of a book about Ernest Hemingway. I don’t recall which Hemingway biographer it was, but I do remember the reviewer’s conclusion about the biographer. He said, “The writer not only has to live off this book, he has to live with it.” When writing anything—fiction or nonfiction, for that matter—what is produced leaves an indelible imprint on a writer’s reputation. A dent or an enhancement. The point is, I can live proudly with this book.
10. Do you outline your books or just start writing?
No, I don’t outline, but I do get to a novel’s last page in different ways. Gerta Scholler was a short story I later expanded. Junkyard was conceived as a novel and created as such from the beginning. I, of course, have a very general idea of where a book is headed, but mostly the story comes together spontaneously. It is rather like a vacation—a well-planned vacation is no vacation at all. In the same way, a rigidly outlined piece of fiction may be efficiently told, but it is not artful.
11. How do you maintain your creativity?
I read others’ writing and am inspired by the good stuff and encouraged by the bad—I can do better than that! I do not feel wedded to a particular genre, which can be limiting. Through the years we have seen novels that were pigeonholed as mysteries or romances or thrillers and ended up being embraced as literary classics, so I write without much thought of category. I also am inspired by people around me who are living their lives. Neighbors, friends and strangers become fictional characters. As long as I’m surrounded by people, I won’t run dry of ideas.
12. Who is your favorite character in the book? Can you tell us why?
My favorite in The Junkyard Dick? I have several. Billy, the young hired hand, amuses me. I like his spunk. The lead character, Tak, isn’t full of himself, is in fact rather unsure of himself, and that underlying fragility makes him appealing to me. And Pele Zamarripa, the father of Tak’s best friend, is a hoot. Quietly serious and seriously discerning, he makes quite an impression in a few words. I like the sheriff, too. Everyone likes the sheriff.
BLURB:
Salvage yard operator and part-time sleuth Tak Sweedner is asked by a buddy, Roque Zamarripa, to investigate a murder. Tak says OK and for his trouble is assaulted with a tire iron. Then he's run off the side of a cliff-the investigation really goes downhill at that point!
Tak calls up gal-pal Emma to help him and soon discovers his feelings for the woman go beyond palling around. When she asks him to give up his investigation and concentrate on her, Tak balks. She might better have asked a bulldog to give up its bone. It would be like quitting, Tak said, and he wasn't a quitter.
Can this blue-collar crime-solver hang in there to get the bad guy... AND win his girl?
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EXCERPT:
Sunday stroll with dog…
I scratched behind the dog’s ears when it strolled over for companionship. We were a lazy pair. His eyes pleaded with me for a walk. So, I carried the bowl inside, rinsed it, grabbed a hat, and we headed out to the pasture behind the house. Otis trotted ahead and periodically ran back to jump against me and trot away again. A fun, fun dog.
I unhooked the pasture gate for us, and we moseyed north into my thirty-five acres of south Texas soil. We moved past clumps of blackbrush and sumac, through stretches of buffalo grass, and under a live oak whose branches seemed to defy gravity in their undulating horizontal reach. I admired several Beauty Berry shrubs near the western edge of the property that were favorites of wandering white-tailed deer. Certain times of the year, hungry deer virtually stripped the plants of their lavender fruit.
Otis padded down the bank of a dry gulch that foamed with runoff after heavy rains, but normally was no more than a pleasing variant in the landscape, cutting southeast across flat terrain. The dog poked its head into a guajillo thicket on the other side. The bush wasn’t good for livestock but was great for honeybees. Preserving it was my contribution to the local honey industry.
Otis lifted his leg to fertilize the bush and we began to walk the gulch back toward the house. A black-tailed jackrabbit sprang from hiding and Otis gave chase for half a minute before returning to my side with tongue lolling from the side of his muzzle.
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Gillespie Lamb developed writing skills as a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist before leaving journalism to become a freelancer and pursue less formulaic writing. He published his first novel in 2017, a middle-grades reader about a girl who rode an “orphan train” from New York City to Kansas. It is titled The Beamy Courage of Gerta Scholler. This second novel is his initial foray into the mystery genre. The setting of The Junkyard Dick is the ruralTexas region where Lamb lives.
Gillespie Lamb
Website: https://www.gillespielamb.com/
NOTE:
My latest novel, The Junkyard Dick, is a mystery set in Uvalde, Tex. It contains numerous allusions to Uvalde streets, restaurants, swimming in the Nueces, and so on, and positively characterizes this multicultural, county-seat town where I happen to live.
One week before I began marketing the book through my website (gillespielamb.com), Uvalde became a national byword for school shootings. A minor consequence of that tragedy is that suddenly my book became awkwardly positioned in the marketplace. Many people naturally will see promotion of a book about Uvalde at this time as shamelessly cashing in on the tragic event. I want neither the perception nor the reality of that.
So, I have created a nonprofit that will benefit elementary fiction-writing programs in Uvalde—or create such programs out of whole cloth. Any royalties I receive from the book will go into the fund along with contributions from the publisher, Black Rose Writing. That will just be seed money. I will be soliciting donations to the fund from the literary industry and associated artistic ventures, from local and regional community organizations and businesses, and from readers anywhere who find comfort, escape or inspiration in fiction.
I am calling the nonprofit “The Story Inventors Club,” which is appropriately juvenile so that it might appeal to young people. It will be dedicated to the proposition that young imaginations are capable of producing fictional stories of merit and enduring value. The hoped-for legacy of the Club would be creation of a new generation of prose (and poetry) to delight readers, and the instilling of enhanced cognitive, language and communication skills in some young people.
So, as a consequence of all of the above, I now will be promoting two things: (1) a novel that I believe in on its literary merits, and (2) a Club that I believe can build a new and creative legacy upon the ashes of misfortune.
For more information on this Club, please go here: https://www.storyinventorsclub.com/home
Black Rose Writing
https://www.blackrosewriting.com/mystery/thejunkyarddick?rq=the%20junkyard%20dick
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Dick-Gillespie-Lamb/dp/1685130178/
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61257463-the-junkyard-dick
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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE:
Gillespie Lamb will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
