Let's Do Lunch! Interview with Timothy Hallinan

I'm just a little excited - our guest author today is the terrific Timothy Hallinan! Tim has stopped by the Lunch Room today to talk about his new series featuring travel writer Poke Rafferty, and to give away copies of the second book in the series, The Fourth Watcher!

About Tim: Timothy Hallinan has lived, on and off, in Southeast Asia for more than 25 years. He wrote songs and sang in a rock band while in college, and many of his songs were recorded by well-known artists who included the platinum-selling group Bread. He began writing books while enjoying a successful career in the television industry. Over the past fourteen years he has been responsible for a number of well-reviewed novels and a nonfiction book on Charles Dickens. For years he has taught a course on "Finishing the Novel" with remarkable results – more than half his students complete their first novel and go on to a second, and several have been, or are about to be, published. Tim currently maintains a house in Santa Monica, California, and apartments in Bangkok, Thailand; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He is lucky enough (as he puts it) to be married to Munyin Choy-Hallinan.

About the series: A Nail Through the Heart introduces Poke Rafferty, a "rough-travel" writer who has settled in Bangkok with a former go-go dancer named Rose, whom he's trying to marry, and an eight-year-old street child named Miaow, whom he wants to adopt. His Looking for Trouble books (Looking for Trouble in Indonesia, Looking for Trouble in the Philippines, and Looking for Trouble in Thailand) are designed for travelers who want to go beyond the temples and tourist traps and experience life at street level – including the streets no travel guide ever mentions. Writing these books requires skills that come in handy when life in Bangkok gets rough for Poke, as it frequently does.

The Fourth Watcher: Travel writer Poke Rafferty is ready to let go of his "Looking for Trouble" series of travel books and settle down in Bangkok with his fiancee, Rose, and his newly adopted daughter, Miaow. But trouble isn't ready to let go of Poke. Enter the one person Poke least wants to see in the entire world -- a person whose emotional hold over Poke is absolute. And with him comes a box of rubies, a wad of fraudulent identity papers and -- in pursuit of those things -- one of the most dangerous gangsters in China. Add to that Rose's innocent involvement in a North Korean counterfeiting operation and an off-the-tracks agent of the American Secret Service who's dying to put Poke behind bars, and Poke and his family find themselves in a complicated and potentially deadly situation. Getting them all out alive will take every skill Poke has.

JB: First of all, congratulations on the great press for The Fourth Watcher - a nice Kirkus review, a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and it's just been chosen as Mystery of the Month by Bookpage. It really is a terrific book. Of course, now I have to go back and read A Nail Through the Heart so I'll be caught up! So, tell me, Tim - who is Poke Rafferty? Where did he come from, and what makes him tick?

TIM: Poke first came to me on New Year's Eve, 1998. I was in Bangkok, and I essentially walked the city from about ten PM until it was time for coffee, maybe 9 AM. I walked through both the tourist areas and the little back-street villages that make up Bangkok, or used to, and it came to me that I might enjoy writing a character, a travel writer who specializes in the back streets, where the bright lights aren't, and writes about life as it's lived off the tourist itineraries. I sort of parked that in the back of my mind for a few years, and he developed into someone who had made a career of bouncing from culture to culture, sort of in a detached, wise-ass way, who suddenly falls in love with an entire country, as I did when I first went to Thailand. From there it was a small step to his trying to create a Thai family, and the story of that family runs through all the books. For a variety of reasons, the family is brought into especially sharp relief in The Fourth Watcher.

JB: Okay, let's get something cleared up right off the bat - for those of us floundering in ignorance (i.e., me), how do you pronounce Miaow's name? Is it mee-ow like a cat or my-ow (my-oh?) like I hurt my toe?

TIM: Miaow is my spelling of a common Thai nickname for girls that's usually spelled in English translation as Meaw. But it's pronounced exactly like the sound a cat makes. And you're the first person ever to ask that question.

And by the way, for those who haven't read the books, Miaow is the street orphan Poke and his fiancée-and-later-wife, Rose, adopt. She's eight, going on thirty (as one reviewer said) in the first book, nine in the second, and a perilously insecure ten in the third. I love to write her – I never have the slightest doubt what she'd say, feel, or do in any conceivable situation.

JB: Your previous series (featuring LA private eye Simeon Grist) consisted of six novels (with such fabulous titles as Everything but the Squeal and Incinerator) published each year from 1989 to 1994. After you put Simeon to rest, what brought you back to novel writing and the creation of Poke Rafferty 10 years later?

TIM: Well, I didn't actually put Simeon to rest. My publishers did. The books got great reviews, stars, lots of hyperbolic adjectives, predictions of breakthrough, and everything else a writer could want, except for sales. After book six, the people at William Morrow looked at the numbers and pulled the plug. I would have done the same – the series had been given six books to find its audience, and it hadn't. So poor old Simeon went wherever it is that the heroes of discontinued series hang out, probably carping all day long about the injustice of it all. Maybe someday I'll write a book in which three or four of them resolve to team up for a comeback and take over the consciousness of some poor writer. It could be pretty funny.

After the Simeon series went down in flames, I looked at my life and decided that I was devoting too much energy to making money and not enough to writing. So I spent about five years setting things up so I could write full-time, and then I sat down and wrote the first Poke book. And I put it into a drawer and left it there, and went on to write the second. When I wrote the Simeon books, I was given a three-book contract within about six weeks of finishing the first book, and there were aspects of his character and his relationships that I would have changed if I'd written another book about him before the first one was published. So this time I decided to write a book that I wouldn't even try to publish and then move on to one I'd give to an agent. As it happened, I wrote one and a half books before sending the third one to an agent, the one that was eventually titled A Nail Through the Heart. So there are one and a half Poke Rafferty stories that will never see the light of day, although I have to admit that I've cannibalized them pretty extensively.

JB: Bill Cameron recently did a piece on you for the ITW online feature THE BIG THRILL, in which he said you "[look] forward to writing about Poke, Rose and Miaow for the rest of [your] life." Do you have any ideas at this point where Poke, Rose and Miaow might end up in the years to come?

TIM: None whatsoever. In the book I'm writing right now, which is tentatively titled Misdirection, I actually kill a continuing character. I think that in this series, everything should be on the table, just as it is in life. I'd like to think that they'll be celebrating silver anniversaries and going to Miaow's wedding, but I have no idea. There's always the potential for disaster to knock on the door.

And I never have any idea where a story is going as I write it, so it would be extremely out of character for me to know where the series is going. I've always seen plot as what characters do, and I let my characters reveal the story to me one book at a time. I'm sure they'll do the same with the series, if we're lucky enough to go into six and seven books.

JB: I sincerely hope it does. Poke has a sharp wit and a very dry sense of humor. (I've noticed in our correspondence that you do too!) Personality wise, is Poke a lot like you?

TIM: You know how, when you're in front of a mirror, and the light's just right, there's a certain way you can turn your head that makes you look, well, almost okay? I think all thriller writers are writing that guy in the mirror. It's them, edited down to the best bits, with a few admirable traits Photoshopped in. I'm not as brave as Poke or as witty in conversation, although I could be if the people I talked to would let me say, "Wait. Ask that question again," and then I could hit them with a better answer. Unlike Poke, I come from a highly functional family. But he shares my wanderlust and my fascination with different ways of looking at the world, whether it's the material world, the world of human relationships, or the world of spirit. And he's endlessly curious, which I am, too.

JB: The Fourth Watcher implies shades of violence, but it's really very subtle and toned back, which I think adds a lot to the suspense - there's not a lot we actually 'see' on-screen, and you leave a lot to the reader's imagination, which leaves us wondering what's going to happen when we turn the page. I've read others who seem to think the bloodier, the better. Was it an intentional tactic on your part to pull back the on-screen violence and concentrate more on the intrigue (which, by the by, I happen to prefer)?

TIM: It's very important in a thriller that the reader (a) likes the protagonist and (b) hates the villain. Violence is often one way to make the villain more despicable: the sort of boil-the-rabbit scene you come across once in a while. I like to write action but I don't particularly like to write violence. And I reserve a special loathing for the glib, giggling kind of sadism one gets in some serial killer books, especially since most real serial killers would be hard-pressed to hold up their end in a conversation with a toadstool. What I prefer is a kind of generalized dread that's caused by knowing that the protagonist and/or other characters we like are up against people who have absolutely no reservations about using any level of force. I think it's possible to write a villain who's capable of driving a spike through someone's tongue without actually writing the scene in which he or she does it. Colonel Chu, the primary villain in The Fourth Watcher, commits an act of unspeakable psychological violence in the book, and I think we can intuit on our own that anyone who could do what he does in that scene – without ever touching his victim – is capable of doing absolutely anything to anyone at any time. In general, with both heroes and villains, I'm more drawn to those who show me they're capable of violent or explosive behavior, than I am to those who demonstrate it at every opportunity.

JB: You spend half the year in the US and the other half in Southeast Asia, working on your novels. Does your wife travel with you? And how much get-out-and-go research do you actually do when you’re working on a book?

TIM: My wife is Chinese, and Asia doesn't hold a lot of interest for her. Also, since I literally write all day, I'm no fun to travel with on those trips. By and large, I've done my research before I leave, although I did some Cambodian research for one of the backstories in A Nail Through the Heart. Asia is not only the setting of the Poke novels, it's sort of a character, too. I want to write the books where, when I look up from the keyboard, I'm actually there. I can look around and borrow a face, a gesture, body language, the name of a business. (There's a shop in Phnom Penh called The Lovely Hours that sells clocks. How cool is that?) I'm in the climate, I'm dripping from the humidity, I'm eating the chilies in the food. I'm there, and that frees my imagination to work on characters and story instead of frittering away a bunch of energy on making the setting convincing.

JB: What are the biggest cultural differences you have to deal with in living on two continents (e.g., talk a bit about the food, the people, the general ambience, etc.)?

TIM: The things I love best about Southeast Asia are the relative lack of irony and the absence of "cool." I wrote a blog on my website a while back called "Irony-Free Zone" that focuses precisely on that. I hate a cultural attitude that puts air-quotes around emotions. I hate cool because it's based on an assumption of superiority to all that is not-cool. By and large, Southeast Asians say what they believe and do what they say they'll do. I suppose you can credit Buddhism with some of that, but I also think it's because they haven't grown up surrounded by all the greasy bounty of the West; they don't feel entitled yet. This is changing as the place grows more Westernized, but once you get past the moneyed elite and get to know actual people, most of them are – by contrast with some of the people in New York and California, at any rate – real rays of light.

JB: For writers who might be interested, there's a fabulous section on Tim's website called "Writers' Resources", with some very helpful information on finishing your novel. Tim, how did you get started teaching other writers, and where can we get more information on your course?

TIM: I started to teach because it occurred to me one day that I knew something most people didn't – how to finish a book. Anybody can start a book, but not many people ever actually finish one, which is probably good for those of us who attempt to make a living by writing. But finishing a novel is a transformational experience, and I wanted to help people get there. The class was eight three-hour sessions, or twenty-four hours in all, and it was absolutely jammed with information – how to get started, how to test-drive an idea, how to develop a character, how to learn to listen to the characters you've developed (or who have been nice enough to present themselves to you), how to shape a story, how to create a setting, how to rewrite, and, most important of all, HOW NOT TO QUIT. And that means, among other things, how to beat writer's block, how to get out of the corners you paint yourself into, how to revive a book that seems to have lapsed into a coma, and how to deal with the internal critics, the malign imps that tell you you haven't got it, you never had it, you never will have it, you probably wouldn't know it if it bit you on the calf, and all the rest of that.

The information on the site is all practical. The writing experience is woo-woo enough all by itself not to build some sort of metaphysical scaffold of creativity every time you sit down to check your punctuation. Virtually all the material I developed for the class is presented on the site in different form. But if you want to boil the whole thing down, it comes to: Write daily, or at least five days a week; write for a minimum of three hours or 500-1000 words each time (more if you can), trust your characters and don't expect the book you ultimately write to be the book you thought you were going to write. And don't quit, no matter what.

JB: What happened to the Dickens Challenge?

TIM: Ah, well, mea culpa. For those who don't know, the Dickens Challenge came about when I got caught in an online crossfire between planners – writers who work to an outline – and "pantsers," or those who write by the seat of their pants. Some people in the planner camp felt I was dismissive of their approach because I said something like, "Plot is what characters do, not a box you cram them into." I pointed out that Charles Dickens, when he died, was halfway through The Mystery of Edwin Drood and that there wasn't a single sentence or sentence fragment to suggest that he'd plotted out the rest of it. So he was pantsing – and, what's more, he was publishing as he went along. In other words, he had to live with whatever he wrote – there was no going back and tidying it up as we pantsers generally do. So I challenged people to write a novel online, a chapter a week, and to live with whatever came out. A bunch of fine writers accepted – in the States, Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand, you name it. And I dropped the ball. First, a new novel, not a Poke book, presented itself to me and took over my life for six weeks, at which point I had 95,000 words and the beginning of a new series. Second, I went to Cambodia, where online speeds are slower than the rock cycle, and it became virtually impossible for me to read everybody's story. Third, I got into trouble on Misdirection, and it ate me alive for six weeks. So my Dickens Challenge book, which was called Counterclockwise, went out the window. The Challenge is still ongoing, but with a smaller number of writers, and they're doing it more privately, on a closed site where they can post their new chapters and critique them. They're writing great, and if they'll have me, I'll be starting Counterclockwise again sometime in the next month, once I finish Misdirection.

JB: Thanks so much for stopping by the Lunch Room, Tim. It's been a pleasure having you, and we'll see you in Nashville in September!

Now, as I've mentioned about oh, a thousand times (okay, maybe more like six), Tim has been gracious enough to offer up autographed copies of The Fourth Watcher for 7 lucky winners. So enter today! Just click on the link below to send me an email, and be sure to include your full name in the body text of your message. Deadline to enter is midnight Monday next (June 30, 2008), and we'll draw the 7 winners at random first thing Tuesday morning. I'll contact you for a mailing address if you've won, and we'll post the winners names here.

Keep in mind, even if you've entered one of the drawings here at the Lunch Room before (and even if you won!), that doesn't disqualify you from entering this one - but only one entry per person for each giveaway, please! Good luck!

Click to register: I want to win The Fourth Watcher!

You can learn more about Tim and his books at www.timothyhallinan.com.