This week, we sat down with Steve Hockensmith and Lisa Falco, coauthors of the Tarot Mysteries. Their latest, Fool Me Once, is out now!
Steve Hockensmith: I'm approaching this Q&A tag
team style. I'll wrestle with every question I can until I find there's one I
can't handle. Then I'll slap hands with my partner on the Tarot Mystery series,
Lisa Falco, and she'll jump into the ring to save me.
Midnight Ink: How long have you been writing?
SH: Forever! I began creating my own
(horrible) once-act plays and comic books and old-time radio-style audio dramas
when I was in fourth or fifth grade. (How I pray no one ever finds those old
cassette tapes.) I was very ambitious but also very lazy—great combo, eh?—so I started a lot of projects I never finished. I didn't get really serious
about writing fiction until I was in my twenties. That's when I finally
developed some stick-to-itiveness. I put in a few years writing bad short
stories I couldn't sell, and then an amazing thing happened: The stories
stopped being bad, and editors started buying them! Quite a coincidence how
those two things happened at roughly the same time….
MI: What influence have other authors had on
your writing?
Steve: My mystery novels get called
"quirky" a lot, and I think maybe that's because my biggest
influences come from outside the genre. When I was a 15 or 16, I stumbled onto
a Kurt Vonnegut novel in the school library—thank you, Bridgeport High School!—and that ended up having a huge
impact on me. I can't remember which book it was, but it doesn't really matter
because within a few months I'd tracked down and read everything else the guy ever
wrote. I completely gorged myself on Vonnegut. That'll have an effect on an
impressionable young mind. Around the same time, I read Catch-22 and
fell in love with the bleak, cynical, surreal humor of it. But I've always been
a lover of genre, too, so I had this weird mix of influences stewing in my
head: dark, strange, funny "literary" fiction simmering alongside
plot-driven adventure stuff. So when I finally started serving up my own
stories, they tended to be a little . . . different.
MI: If you weren’t a writer, what would you be doing?
SH: Dreaming of being a writer.
MI: What was your inspiration for this
series?
SH: I'm going to bring Lisa in for
this one, because doing a series about a tarot reader who uses the cards to
help her clients was her idea. Tag!
Lisa Falco: I LOVE reading mysteries. I always
have. As a child, I’d spend my summers plowing through entire mystery series:
Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew. I still read mystery series as an adult. I love how
all the elements of the mystery at hand weave in and out of the main
characters’ lives, each subsequent book revealing a little bit more about them—their own story advancing just enough to keep me impatient for the next
book. And since tarot has always been a mysterious fascination of mine, it only
made sense to marry the two.
MI: What has it been like to work on the
Tarot Mystery series together?
LF: What an amazing experience. There
were definitely hiccups along the way—through no fault of our own, of
course. But it all worked out in the end, and winding up at Midnight Ink was a
huge benefit! As far as creating the books together, thank goodness for the Internet.
Even though we live in different cities, it’s easy to shoot ideas to each
other. This is my first truly collaborative writing experience. I love talking
through plots on the phone—winding down one path, retracing our steps,
trying another. It’s great fun!
SH: Tag! I’m back in! Although I don’t
really have anything to add except maybe “Yeah—what she said!”
MI: How does this series compare to your past
works?
SH: The tarot element sets it apart,
obviously. But it's a change of pace for me in other ways, as well. My first
mystery series, the Holmes on the Range books, were historicals set
mostly in the Old West. They were in first person written from the point of
view of an 1890s cowboy, so the voice was both earthy and a bit old time-y. My
next books were Jane Austen-inspired zombie novels set in Regency England, so I
was working in a deliberately old-fashioned third person voice. After that, I
moved on to a series of third person middle-grade mystery/science books (which
I do with "Science Bob" Pflugfelder). Those were my first books in a
modern setting. And then came the Tarot Mystery series, which is both set in
the present day and written in first person. So finally I'm writing books with
a modern narrator. I think that's part of the reason they feel so easy and fun
for me to do. Lisa does all the research and deep thinking when it comes to the
tarot, then I get to amuse myself by turning that into a story told from the
perspective of a twenty-first century smart-ass.
MI: Who is your favorite mystery sleuth and
why?
SH: There are a lot that I love—Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Jim Rockford, Nick and Nora Charles (and
Asta), Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe, I.M. Fletcher, etc. etc. etc. But if I
could only pick one to watch at work, it would have to be Lt. Columbo of the
LAPD. He personifies the mystery genre in a really beautiful way: He's someone
who thinks and thinks and thinks and can't stop thinking and thinking and
thinking some more until he finally understands. He's not about flashy shows of
unbelievable genius or tough-guy heroics. He's just a schlubby little guy who
won't stop asking questions because the official story doesn't add up. What's
not to love about that? I'll tag Lisa here not because I need help—I could
obviously drone on about my favorite detectives all day—but because it's a
fun question. Lisa?
LF: I’m partial to the sleuths on
British TV like Inspector Lewis and Foyle’s
War. The lead characters are human with just the right amount of unpolished
edges. I do like the women sleuths as well, my favorite being Precious Ramotswe
from the Ladies No. Detective Agency.
MI: What’s your favorite part about being an
Inker?
LF: I love how Midnight Ink does the
layout of our books—not an an easy feat given all the tarot card positions,
etc. I’m sure Steve has his own favorite aspects of being an Inker….
SH: I love the layouts, too. And the
covers. But I think my favorite aspect of working with Midnight Ink is just how
easy everything is. Once we’ve submitted our final draft, the design, copy
editing, proofreading, and publicity wheels turn incredibly swiftly and smoothly.
A publishing company can feel like a lumbering behemoth at times, but that
hasn’t been our experience with Midnight Ink at all. And it helps that so many
people there have a genuine interest in tarot. You can tell they care about
what goes into these books and appreciate the final product. Again—that’s
something you don’t always get from your publisher. It’s a real bummer when you
don’t . . . and fantastic when you do!
Fool Me Once is available online and in bookstores now!
Midnight Ink | Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon | Your local bookstore
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