With Kaylie Seed.
Photo by Leah Servin
Ed, I thoroughly enjoyed Blame the Dead. It was a gripping read and the perfect combination of a murder mystery along with elements of war. I’m honoured to be able to ask you some questions about Blame the Dead, your writing process, and to be able to do share your novel with our readers.
I’ve always been a huge fan of WWII historical fiction and this is the first novel that I’ve read that has a murder mystery woven into a WWII plot. Where did you get the idea to write Blame the Dead? What drew you to combine a historical fiction narrative with a murder mystery twist?
I was drawn to the idea that the military’s job, in combat, is to create maximum chaos for the enemy. You want the enemy thinking that the world is coming to an end so that he forgets about his mission, so that his only concern is escape. But as soon as the battle lines pass by, someone has to restore order: everything from food distribution to the rule of law. I was intrigued by that point of friction. You have tens of thousands of young men (exclusively men in WW2) heavily armed and, sadly, inured to violence; yet someone has to reintroduce civilization. Medical people work hard to heal physical wounds; Military Police work hard to restore civilization. In this book we see how both the medical and police function.
Where did you gain your insight and knowledge about Italy during WWII? What kind of research was involved and most helpful to your writing? Tell us more about why you chose this setting for your novel?
One of my non-fiction books is a work of military history covering the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily, so I was on familiar ground here. The non-fiction work was based on interviews with scores of veterans, so I had a pretty good feel for the time and place. I also relied on some terrific histories and memoirs, including some by Army nurses. I’ve been reading military history since I could read, and I spent eleven years in the US Army; I have a feel for how soldiers think and act. I chose to make the protagonist a Military Police officer because that job allows him great freedom of movement. He can get caught up in various kinds of adventures.
Eddie Harkins is a very likeable character. Where did you get your inspiration for his voice and character and was he based on anyone living or historical?
The characters probably—I’m not 100% certain—come from people and events I’ve observed, especially when it comes to soldiers. No character is a straight riff on a real person, the idea is that a reader can see a real person doing those things. A friend of mine, also a veteran, said of Dominic Colianno (Harkins’ driver/side-kick), “He reminds me of every jeep driver I ran across in the Army.”
What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing Blame the Dead?
I enjoyed learning about US Army and Allied nurses, who shared battlefield risks and operated under trying conditions—and all this at a time when most people thought women shouldn’t even be exposed to hard work, much less combat conditions.
With such an intriguing and well-conceived story, I have to ask, will there be another book from you soon?
Blame the Dead is the first in a series I’m calling “Victory in Europe.” Book 2, Comes the War, finds Eddie Harkins in London on the eve of the Allied invasion of France, investigating a murder. The victim was an analyst for the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the blandly named US spy agency that was a forerunner of the CIA.
Since you’ve completed the process of writing and publishing a novel multiple times, what advice would you give to aspiring authors?
Read, write, persevere.
Read. I doubt you can be a writer unless you’re a reader. But piling up books on your night table isn’t enough; you must be an active reader. If you like something, ask yourself why you liked it. Parse it and try to figure out why it worked so well.
Write. Practice. The more you do it the better you become. Try different styles and even genres. Blog posts, journalism, thank you notes—it’s all helpful. Imitate writers whose work you admire; pick someone with a distinctive style. Stretch your muscles. When I taught composition years ago, we had the students write in imitation of Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff. We did not want the students to adopt Wolfe’s distinctive voice forever and always, but in order to imitate you have to discover how the writer achieves that distinctive voice. You may adopt some aspects, or you may not, but you will have added to your toolkit.
Persevere. I read a story recently about a woman who went to her doctoral defense wearing a skirt made out of all the rejection letters she’d received from professional journals.
I’m never going to tell someone that if you try hard enough, anything is possible. I think that’s patently untrue—I was never going to play pro baseball—but unless you stick to it, I mean really work your butt off, you can’t honestly say, “I gave it my best shot but I just don’t have the goods.”
What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?
I don’t know about “the most” influence, but I can name two books I’ve been recommending for years for their style and storytelling: True Grit by Charles Portis and News of the World, By Paulette Jiles. Both books offer lots of samples of exquisite writing—Jiles is a poet—and humor. Mattie Ross of True Grit is one of the most distinctive voices in modern American literature, in my book right up there with Huck Finn. She’s funny as all get-out, often without intending to be funny. She’s also preachy, opinionated and fierce, in short, a three-dimensional character. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd of News is more quietly determined, but quick-witted and, at the last, a good person.
Thank you to Ed Ruggero for this interview and please be sure to pick up his novel Blame the Dead to see what a great story this is!