Title: Blood of the Wicked
Author: Leighton Gage
Publisher: Soho Press
Hardcover: 324 pages
ISBN: 9781569474709
1. First off, congratulations on the big novel sale! Give us the elevator pitch. What’s your book about?
Blood of the Wicked is a mystery and, like most mysteries, it’s about murder. Like other mysteries, too, there are multiple suspects, multiple motives, even multiple killings. But the murders couldn’t have happened in any city in America. They, like my protagonist, are uniquely Brazilian.
That protagonist is Mario Silva, a chief inspector of the federal police. As the book begins, he’s dispatched to a small town in the interior of the country where he’s tasked to solve the murder of a bishop.
The book teaches readers a good deal about people and issues in South America’s largest country, but not at the cost of being an entertaining read. And when I say entertaining read, that’s not just me talking. It’s people like The New York Times ( “top-notch…controversial and entirely absorbing” ) and Library Journal ( “highly-recommended” and a star).
2. Most new novelists have an interesting story to tell about their journey to publication. What’s yours? Did you use an agent? Make sure to tell us about the day you found out you’d sold a book.
I’m one of those instant success stories. It only took me seven years to learn the craft. Prior to tackling a novel most of my experience was with writing scripts for commercials and industrial films. Back then, I thought I could write. Now, I know I couldn’t. What is it Hemingway said? Oh yeah, “We’re all apprentices in a trade where no one is a master.”
My first book was lousy, and I blush to remember it. My second showed promise and was even good in parts. Some day maybe I can fix it. Blood of the Wicked was the third effort and the first one I was truly satisfied with. I was lucky enough to discover a terrific agent for it, Jacques de Spoelberch, and he found me a great publisher, Soho Crime.
I was in Brazil on the day Jacques made the sale, a two-book contract straight off. He sent me an e-mail and asked me to call him. I suppose he could have advanced the news, but he didn’t. Very considerate, I thought. The champagne my wife and I found, bought and drank was Argentinean. I thought it was quite good, but I’ll have to try the stuff again to be sure. Anything, at that moment, would have tasted like ambrosia.
3. Do you have another book in the pipeline? What are you working on now?
Sure do. Three of them in fact. Buried Strangers brings Mario and his sidekicks to São Paulo, one of the most fascinating (and dangerous) cities in the world. That will be published in January of 2009. Dying Gasp is slated for release in 2010. It starts in Amsterdam and ends in Manaus, the heart of the Amazon rainforest. Right now, I’m working on The Tenth Passenger, the fourth in the series.
4. What’s your process like? Morning writer, night writer, or something in between?
I outline, so I always know where I’m going to, but the way I get there changes all the time. I seldom get up before nine, work until about two, have lunch, get some exercise and often take a nap. Refreshed, I get back to writing and work through until eight or so. After all my years in Europe and South America I’m used to dining at nine or ten PM, so that’s what we generally do. I tend to read in bed; generally don’t shut off the light until two or three.
I try to put in at least six hours a day or two thousand words. If I’m “hot”, I go longer. On a bad day it can be six hours and less than a thousand words. That, mind you, is to take a book to first draft. Afterwards, I do many revisions, sometimes on the computer, but also at least three times on paper.
I take weekends off, get out of wherever I happen to be sleeping, go somewhere and do something. There are those who say a writer should write every day. I have learned of myself that I shouldn’t.
5. There seems to be an unusually high percentage of writers who own cats. Here at The First Book, we’re doing a study to find out if there’s a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership. Do you own a cat? If so, tell us about him or her. If not, tell us what you have against cats.
Any possible relationship between writing success and owning a cat should dictate that I immediately go out and get one. God knows, I do everything else to succeed in this business.
But there are a couple of hitches. The first of these is that a cat wouldn’t fit very well with our gypsy life style. My wife and I spend two or three months of any given year in Europe, six months or so in Brazil and three in the ‘States. Each visit is generally limited to a month or so before we move on to somewhere else. We keep a flat in Miami and another one in Paris. I’ve got two (soon to be three) grandchildren in the Netherlands, daughters there, and in Florida and Rhode Island. We try to see them all frequently.
Then there’s my wife’s penchant for black. You know the black that shows up every hair that comes to rest upon it? Yeah, that kind of black. The family cats (yes, there are family cats – two in RI, one in Florida, one in Harlem and one in The Hague) always seem to be able to find where she’s put a skirt, or a dress, or a pair of slacks – and lie on it. Cats, being curious creatures, are as interested in my wife’s wardrobe as she is in my books. And you know how much cats love closets.
Up until a few years ago, Eide (that’s my wife) had talked about getting another cat (we’ve had four during the twenty-eight years we’ve been married). About a year ago, she stopped talking. We pet them (when they deign to be petted), we cuddle them (when they deign to be cuddled) but I don’t see another cat in our futures.
Unless, of course, the hypothesis linking writing success to cat ownership is proven. In that case I’ll be buying a pet carrier, visiting a vet for international vaccination certificates and Eide will be changing the color preference of her wardrobe.
