Saturday, December 3, 2011

John McDaniel, MYSTERY WE WRITE blog tour guest today

BOOK GIVEAWAY! John will be giving away a copy of Behind the Redwood Door and Generous Helpings to a lucky commentor during this blog tour.
john@johnmdaniel.com
facebook.johnmdaniel.com

John M. Daniel was born in Minnesota, raised in Texas, and educated in Massachusetts and California.  He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University and a Writer in Residence at Wilbur Hot Springs. He has taught fiction writing at UCLA Extension and Santa Barbara Adult Education and was on the faculty of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for nearly twenty years.  He now teaches creative writing for Humboldt State University Extended Education.
 
John’s stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines. His thirteen published books include four mysteries: Play Melancholy Baby, The Poet’s Funeral, Vanity Fire, and Behind the Redwood Door, recently published by Oak Tree Press.
 
John has worked as a bookseller, a free-lance writer, an editor, an entertainer, a model, an innkeeper, and a teacher.  He and his wife, Susan, live in Humboldt County, California, where they are small-press book publishers. Susan enjoys gardening, John enjoys writing, and they both enjoy living with their wondercat, Warren. 

Today John confesses!

Confessions of a mild-mannered murderer
Let me tell you a secret. I have no taste for violence. I’ve never observed a fist fight between two grown men. Heck, I’ve never even watched the fights on TV. Boxing movies give me the creeps. The last time I hit somebody I was fourteen, and it was more of a nudge than a hit.
Not only that, I’ve never seen a corpse in a pool of blood. Other than skeletons in art class, the only dead person I ever saw was my brother, whom I mourned painfully, but he looked quite peaceful.
I’ll tell you something else. I’ve never had a run-in with the law. I’ve had a few moving violations, but my interchanges with the police have always been cordial.
That’s me. Your basic mild-mannered, law-abiding, semi-retired small-press book publisher who likes to write books. Some of the books are about a man named Guy Mallon, a mild-mannered, law-abiding, semi-retired small-press book publisher who likes to …
Here’s where the resemblance stops. Guy Mallon likes to get into trouble. As he puts it, publishing may sound like a gentle profession, but think again. “In the line of duty as a publisher, I’ve been threatened and chased by thugs in Las Vegas and marched through a tropical jungle at gunpoint by a cocaine smuggler, I’ve had a ton of books dropped on my body by a religious fanatic, and had my warehouse burned down by an arsonist. I’ve had loud arguments with the police, who seemed to resent my solving murders and other crimes that they didn’t want to bother with.”
This passage is from the opening chapter of Guy’s new adventure, Behind the Redwood Door, where among other things our pint-sized hero gets tossed off a pier into an ocean full of fish guts and hungry seals.
I doubt if Guy has ever hit a man with his fist, but I remember a time (in The Poet’s Funeral) where he shoved a thug face-first into a large, lethal cactus. I think you’d agree that this violence is not gratuitous, if you were to meet the thug in question.
At the beginning of Behind the Redwood Door, Guy wants no trouble. Been there, done that. Not his problem, he insists when his friend Pete Thayer is stabbed to death behind the Redwood Door saloon.
But Guy’s wife, Carol, knows better. She knows Guy will not let this go. Poor Carol, she has to put up with Guy Mallon’s spunky addiction to taking risks in the name of what’s right and wrong.
So where do I, who am such a peaceable, friendly, law-abiding, chicken-hearted fellow, find the spirit that allows me to write about thugs, coke dealers, porn-meisters, pole dancers, bullies, and weapon-packing murderers?
Who knows? There must be something dark, deep within me. I’m flat-out afraid of tough guys, and I have been ever since I was a shrimp myself, the shortest kid in my class, year after year. Back then I got along by smiling a lot. That kept the bullies at bay, at least from the second grade on.
Now, frankly, I’m still afraid of violent people, but I make up for my fears by writing a lot. That’s my way of whistling a happy tune.
And of course I let my alter-ego, Guy Mallon, do the confronting for me. Guy helps me confront my own demons. He helps me get even with that big kid who used to chase me and push me into the gravel every afternoon as I walked home from first grade.
Revenge is sweet, even for a mild-mannered pacifist like yours truly.
Behind the Redwood Door is sold by Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It can be ordered by your local independent bookseller, or bought directly from the publisher at http://www.oaktreebooks.com/. For an autographed copy, call John at 1-800-662-8351.



15 comments:

WS Gager said...

To the mild mannered pacifist: Great post. I can't wait to read about Guy!
Wendy

Marilyn Meredith a.k.a. F. M. Meredith said...

Yep, me too, I'm anxious to read your book. The more I read about it the more I want to get my hands on a copy Marilyn

john M. Daniel said...

Thanks a lot, Wendy and Marilyn. I expect most of us in this game are mild mannered pacifists, wearing murderous disguises.

M.M. Gornell said...

Interesting post, John. Fiction sure allows us to do so much, go so many places, be so many people...

Madeline

William Doonan said...

Just think how lucky you are; if you were a tough guy, then your alter-ego protagonist would be a mild-mannered law-abiding citizen. And who would want to read a book about him?

William Doonan
www.williamdoonan.com

Timothy Hallinan said...

Great post, John. I share your belief that most of us are lily-livers who talk a good game. I've been known to jump at the sight of my reflection in a mirror in a dark room. In our books we get to be handsomer (or prettier), younger (in my case anyway) and braver than we are in real life. What's not to like?

john M. Daniel said...

Thanks, Madeline, Bill, and Tim. Yup, fiction gives us an excuse to get inside the mind of somebody we'd never be able to be in so-called real life. Sometimes it's a bit scary, but it's always a joy ride.

Theresa Varela said...

I'm glad that you confessed, John! One of the joys of writing is having ability to be so many different types- if our characters let us.

Jean Henry Mead said...

Loved this post, John. I'm also a mild mannered writer who wrote about gory events as a news reporter. That's why I'm now writing "cozies" instead of noir.

Alice Duncan said...

Love your way of coping with violence, John! I think a lot of us do that :-)

john M. Daniel said...

Thanks to all who dropped by and left such supportive comments, and thanks, Jinx, for hosting me!

Sunny Frazier said...

Well. . . confession time. My alter ego, Christy, is much less interesting than her creator. I had to go that route because nobody would believe me if I wrote about the harrowing situations I've actually found myself in (re: riot in Haiti, presumed drug smuggling in Bogota). International incidents aside, I chose to make her a wallflower-with-potential. Maybe my fantasy is to fade into the background.

Unknown said...

I love that you confess to being so different from your character. My husband is always telling me my characters are me...I personally think they're far more interesting than I am.

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