Posts Tagged: J. Carson Black

Books do one thing that television and movies can’t do:

They give you your own personal experience. Reading calls upon you to see what YOU see, and while it might be similar to the author’s intention, what you see comes from where you live, who your family is, how you see the world, the experiences you’ve had. If you lived in Greenland, you would experience a different world than a person who lives, say, in Tucson, Arizona.

I’ve never been to Greenland, so if someone describes it, I still see it my way: a vast platform of ice, populated by polar bears. Or maybe it’s taken from a TV show I saw as a child—Eskimos fishing. It comes from everything I’ve learned up to this point.

Childhood, school, the area where I live, what the people are like in my neighborhood, if I live way out on a ranch somewhere or cheek-to-jowl in a crowded city. People have mutual experiences, like school, learning to drive a car, your job. Your car might be an expensive beauty, and mine might be falling apart.

So we see everything through the prism of our own minds and experiences—and books give us the freedom to do just that.
Do you see what I see graphic
MY view of a cabin in the woods, depending on the area you or I live in, would look different from YOUR cabin in the woods. My picture of a strong female cop might be different from your idea of a strong female cop. She could be massive and strong. She could look like the cop on Criminal Minds. She could be red-haired, freckled, model-thin, with a whip-smart mind and a smart mouth to go with it. Whoever she is, she’s YOUR person. You made up your half of her.

If my character is driving on a lonesome winding highway in the middle of the night, YOU’RE driving on a road that might be like it, but it’s all your own—it’s your road. You fill in the pieces of the puzzle. That, in a nutshell, is the wonder of reading.

And because you hold the other piece of the jigsaw puzzle, I respect you and I respect what you add to the story. It takes two to tango. And I can’t help but wonder: what do YOU see?

Show me how you see it

Here are five subjects that have appeared in my books. I’m going to furnish you with a short description of each scene, and it’s up to you to fill in the blank. What does it LOOK LIKE?

Please post those pictures here on my Pinterest Page. Choose as many as you’d like. I’m really curious how you see these places and people.

1. A cabin in the woods near Aspen, Colorado—the opening scene of my thriller, The Shop.

2. A guy out in the boonies with a camper and a dog on a chain—from The Survivors Club.

3. A bombed-out house in Iraq with a secret stash of incredible riches—from Hard Return.

4. A bandshell in a western town—from Darkness on the Edge of Town.

5. A horsewoman teaching a riding class—from The Survivors Club.

I wonder how different your photos will be from other peoples’ photos, or what I saw as I wrote these scenes. I really want to know what YOU see. Go to https://www.pinterest.com/carson9648/

Categories: Books Darkness on the Edge of Town Hard Return The Shop The Survivors Club

I admit it: I thought ebooks were a fad. In 2010 I had been beating my head against the wall for three or four years after my last book deal with a New York publisher. I couldn’t sell a book to save my life.

So my husband and I began putting up all the books we’d gotten the rights back to. I thought it wouldn’t work out. But I liked designing the covers with him.

And it didn’t work out. At least not at first. My best bud and fellow New York Times Bestselling author, Carol Davis Luce, was also putting up a book. We launched our first books on Amazon in the fall. And I promptly sold about one book a month for three or four months. One. Not a very good business model, right? Eventually, Carol and I started selling about seven books apiece. It was an arms race, sort of.

With very few arms.

Everything changed the following February. I was looking at my numbers and all of a sudden I had sold 300-plus books in the course of an hour! What was that all about?
Laura Cardinal Series by J. Carson Black
And it didn’t end there. My books started selling like hotcakes—if hotcakes were on the internet and were strapped to a rocket. By June I sold 10,000 books in the Laura Cardinal series. I got up to 300,000+ before I stopped counting. My friend Carol was doing just as well. It was the Wild West and we were like those homesteaders who put up stakes in rich bottom land and ran cattle on the range, ready to build a dynasty.

And it lasted a long time. I joined other authors in various promotions. And we all sold like flapjacks at a church breakfast.

But the thing was, for most of that wild and crazy time, I didn’t write at all. It was like watching the stock market. I sat around eating cheese crisps for lunch, my face ten inches from the computer, hitting refresh on the browser, watching as my numbers went up and up and up.

I wasn’t an author anymore. I was an e-trader.

After a while (a good LONG while) the numbers started to fall off and it wasn’t as much fun anymore. Nobody likes to go downhill, and there was no way I could sustain those kinds of numbers.
The Shop by J. Carson Black
Then I sold The Shop in a two-book deal to Thomas & Mercer. But that meant I needed to write another book. It was a tough one to write, because I really missed sitting on my ass eating cheese crisps and watching my numbers. But finally I got into the story and wrote the best book I could. Icon was born.
Icon from NYT thriller author J. Carson Black
I look back on those days and think of it as a haze. As if I’d been swallowed down the rabbithole.

But I have to admit, those cheese crisps tasted darn good at the time.

Categories: Publishing Hub-Bub The Laura Cardinal Project The Shop The Writing Life

Laura Cardinal is a criminal investigator with the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Her job- to investigate and bring justice to murder victims and their killers in small towns with limited resources. J. Carson Black reveals answers on the plot and character development of the Laura Cardinal Series.

Q: Where did your inspiration for Laura’s character come from?

A: I have always been intrigued by people whose lives change, usually through tragedy. I’m fascinated by those whose lives become bigger than they were before. John Walsh is a perfect example of this. His son is murdered, and his whole life changes. He has been responsible for the capture of hundreds of criminals, and in the process, become larger than himself. I grew up with a friend whose life was altered by tragedy. Like Laura, she was middle-class, went to college, and she was artistic. But after the tragedy (a result of gun violence) she became something else: a black-belt, multiple-Rottweiler-owning, gun-toting cop. Perhaps this person always resided inside her, but the transformation was incredible and complete. She has become an urban legend among the cops at TPD; some of them think she uses her hallway for a shooting range. I’ve been in her hallway, and there’s no way.

Q: Why did you decide to go the route of a series as opposed to stand-alone type novels?

A: I think of a series as building equity. With every book you write, whoever comes late to the party realizes you have a book before that and a book before that, and they buy those, too, which is good for your backlist. So many stand-alone books are just plain lost. Now, with amazon, if someone really wants to buy your first three or four books in a series, they usually can. But the main thing for me is continuity. I want someone I can depend on and grow with.

j.-carson-black-laura-cardinal-series copy

 

Q: Where do you get your plot ideas?

A: From everywhere and anywhere. I’ll be honest and tell you I had a leg up on the first book in the series. Cops, again. Two of them approached me and asked if I had a premise for the first book in my series. They were seriously worried about internet predation on children and wanted to get the message out to parents. They thought fiction was a good way to do it. They even had a scenario which impressed the heck out of me. (These guys could have been screenwriters!) The premise was open-ended and could lead anywhere: what would happen if cops in a small town took things in their own hands and lured a sexual predator to their town—and it all went bad? And so I wrote DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN. The second book, DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, started with one idea (the dark side of love) but I realized that it needed another component. I read something on the truckloads of nuclear waste traversing our highways, going through the heart of two major cities: Flagstaff and Albuquerque. I wondered what would happen if someone got control of one of those trucks.

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, at its heart, is about how we see ourselves, and how we want other people to see us. It’s about what happens when that image of self breaks down.

THE DEVIL’S HOUR is about a sociopath. I don’t want to give away the story line, but this, too, was inspired by an undercover detective who told me about that strangest case he had ever been involved with. (Another cop. Are you beginning to see a theme here?) And then one day I was sitting at a light and there was a purple PT Cruiser behind me. The man driving it was somewhere between forty and fifty, and he had a salt-and-pepper beard, wire-rimmed glasses, and hair parted in the middle that fell to his shoulders. Later that week I was finishing the last rewrite of DARK SIDE OF THE MOON in a cabin in the woods, throwing pages of hardcopy on the floor when I was done with them, when I suddenly thought of this guy. Now he had a name, a real white-bread monicker: Steve Lawson. And he had a dog, a black Labrador named Jake. The next morning I awoke at four in the morning and wrote what would happen to Steve Lawson and why. And what his connection to Laura Cardinal was.

Q: Do you usually know where your book is going and where it will all end when you start, or are you the type who makes it up as you go along?

A: With police procedural/thrillers, I think it’s good to know who the killer is. Although I’m sure there are some writers who don’t even know that. I try to outline some, and I try to just write my way in, too. It’s different with every book. I just sort of muddle through. Although with DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, I was asked for a detailed synopsis halfway through. If I didn’t deliver it, I wouldn’t get my next paycheck. So I ended up writing about 20 pages of outline, which is pretty detailed. I followed it, too, although there were plenty of differences. I believe the real changes and the real writing come in the second draft. The first draft–for me, anyway–is just somehow getting it down, even if it’s complete and utter crap

Q: Does any of your own personal background go into Laura’s stories? If so, how about some examples.

A: Laura grew up where I grew up, in the El Fuerte area of Tucson, Arizona. El Fuerte means “fort”. Fort Lowell was a cavalry fort outside Tucson in the late 1800s, and a neighborhood later grew up around the ruins. When I was growing up, there were lots of farms and ranches along the riverbed. And a little desert cemetery that gave me nightmares. j-carson-black-arizona

The orange and white 1955 Chevy Bel Air that was used in the murder of Julie Marr was the same car that chased me when I was fourteen. I had been walking down a road after getting into a fight with my friends and splitting up with them. Recently, I found a three-page description I wrote of the chase for English class. It was over-written; heavy on the heart-pounding, throat-closing, knees-shaking, but a nice effort nonetheless.

Laura had a horse, and so did I. When I was seventeen years old, I spent a goodly number of nights sitting on the ground waiting for a mare to foal; she never did—not until I had gone home to sleep. So I used this for an important event in DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN.

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Categories: Laura Cardinal

The day has finally come—the debut of my thriller, HARD RETURN.

Some of you might have met Cyril Landry in THE SHOP (Thomas & Mercer 2011). I met him on the same night you did—the night a group of people were murdered in a pine-log McMansion in Aspen, Colorado. Cyril Landry was the faceless killer and the leader of three other faceless killers. It was a walk-on part.
HARD RETURN COVER

But on page 2, something happened. Landry touched his earpiece and asked the upstairs team how many people were in the bedroom.

The guy replied, “Two. A couple. They were laying in bed.”

“Lying,” Landry said.

“What?” (And it wasn’t just the guy upstairs asking the question. I was asking it, too.)

“Lying in bed, not laying,” Landry said.

The other guy, as nonplussed as I was, couldn’t think of a retort. Finally, he said, “Roger that.”

And a star is born.

You have to think of it from my perspective. Here I am, writing this walk-on part, and what does Generic Assassin #1 do? He decides to become real.

And Cyril Landry gets more and more real every moment he’s onstage, so, yeah, I end up giving him more and more scenes, and then the man just goes ahead and takes over half the book.

And I’m thinking: hey, this guy’s easy to write. He does all the work. So, being the lazy sort, I ultimately decided to give Landry his own book.

I did my best to stay out of his way and just watch him do his thing, and darn if we didn’t become fast friends.

So here it is, folks:

Landry’s maiden voyage with a book all his own.

— J. Carson Black, September 2014

Categories: Books Cyril Landry

J. Carson Black’s new thriller, ICON, has a publication date of June 12, 2012.  Published by Thomas & Mercer, ICON is already earning rave reviews as one of the best thrillers in 2012.  Order your Kindle Edition or Trade Paperback edition NOW.

Icon is a smart thriller that had me hooked from the start. J. Carson Black has outdone herself. I loved it!” – John Rector, bestselling author of Already Gone

Hollywood superstar Max Conroy is A-list all the way—one of the few actors who can guarantee box office blockbusters on opening weekend. Max has it all: the devil-may-care charisma, the stunning movie star wife, and a sizable personal fortune that grows along with his legend.

When Max escapes from a rehab center in Arizona, disoriented and longing to return to his blue-collar roots, he becomes the target of a motley group of kidnappers planning to cash in by holding him for ransom. Max not only outsmarts them; he evens the score. Little does he know that a far more dangerous and merciless enemy is coming for him. But this time, he has an ally in the smart and beautiful sheriff’s deputy Tess McCrae.

For years, Max drifted through an easy superstar life, untethered and without purpose. But as he fights for his life, something turns inside him. He’s ready to live again—on his own terms. He will destroy those who’d rather see him die like an icon than live like a man.

Categories: Publishing Hub-Bub

When my publisher Glenn McCreedy at Breakaway Media and I decided to put up my three Laura Cardinal crime fiction thrillers, the first thing we thought about was cover art.

Readers of crime fiction and thrillers would be our primary audience. So we asked ourselves these questions.

What should a thriller look like?

Should the books be unified in some way?

Should they have the traditional look of a big publishing house? And if we chose to go that route, what kind of product did we envision? (more…)

Categories: The Writing Life