1--What is the title of your latest release?
NEGATIVE GIRL
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Former punk-turned-PI Martin Wade and his hipster assistant, Valerie Jacks, have to each reckon with their brutal pasts when the daughter of Martin’s old bandmate is found dead in the river.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The earliest drafts took place in New York City, similar to my first novel, The Big Rewind. But I found that the city couldn’t give me the atmosphere I really needed to make the book sing, so I relocated it to Perrine, a fictional city in Upstate NY, where the characters had a little more room to maneuver and breathe.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely! I’d probably bug Martin with all my questions about his past life as a musician, and Valerie just seems like she’d be really fun to have tacos with.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
For Martin: Stoic, smart, charming. For Valerie: Loyal, scrappy, intuitive.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
Patience! I wrote The Big Rewind, in eight months while working full time. Negative Girl took me three years. I had to learn to give myself the space to let the characters breathe and develop. I spent a lot of time fighting the page, and I’m still learning, in a lot of ways, how not to do that.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
A little bit of both! I write rough drafts by hand, often in notebooks that I made by hand (and if I didn’t make it, I collage the pages) so by the time I’m taking those pages to the laptop, edits are being made. I usually do a full draft, print it out and red-line it, update the draft and send it to my agent, Jim McCarthy, for his thoughts. Then it’s back to the draft a few more times before it’s completed.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I am always up for tacos. Doesn’t matter what kind or what time of day it is. If you say “let’s get tacos,” I’m already in the car.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
My office serves two purposes – writing and records. The wall in front of my desk has all my inspiration in front of it – a script from The Shield (“Family Meeting”) signed by Shawn Ryan, my Shamus and my Black Orchid, and the Wayne Claypatch lithograph (“Dance Party Jitters”) that I bought with my first sale to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The back wall is all my music, so I’ve got framed, signed setlists from the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and the Vapors, posters of Elvis Costello and Tom Waits, and then a huge record cabinet for my turntable, Walter. Often you can find my cat Bosco sleeping in front of the records, and my other cat, Mr. Mustard, sitting next to me on my desk.
10--Who is an author you admire?
I’m obsessed with Dave Housley. I re-read his chapbook Looney over and over when I need to rethink how I look at a story, how I use language. His writing is so weird, but so firmly staked in the soil of human experience, and it inspires me every single time.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye. I read it as an assignment in college and I finished it in one sitting. It opened up a whole new world of writing to me, and I’ve been writing mysteries ever since. I’ve always described Martin Wade as “if Paul Westerberg played Phillip Marlowe.”
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
Because of the time zone difference between me and my editors at Datura, it was a Zoom call while I was at work! I had to take the news very quietly so as not to disturb everyone else in the cubicles around me, but I went home and celebrated at the end of the day.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I love niche non-fiction! I was a journalist in a past life, so I love diving into these unique areas of our history. Right now, I’m reading a book about striptease and burlesque, and before that I was reading about the lives of the people who live near the Green Bank radio telescope.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Road House. The original 1989 one with Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliot, obviously. It’s one of those movies that is also fun to show other people, because they can’t believe just how utterly ridiculous it is. When it gets to the big fight scene, they just lose their minds. It’s marvelous.
15--What is your favorite season?
I’m a big fan of late spring/early summer. Past the rainy season but before it gets too hot, when everything starts to slow down but you still have chilly, cozy mornings for coffee and staying in bed.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I throw a themed movie party with all my friends! This year’s was based around Cutthroat Island, which was my favorite movie when I was about 13. It still holds up!
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I’m always telling people to watch The Righteous Gemstones. Not just because I do a podcast on it (Misbehavin’: A Righteous Gemstones Podcast) but because I think it’s very funny and manages, sometimes miraculously, to balance the vulgar with the sublime. Danny McBride should get a MacArther Genius Grant.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I love tiny food! Appetizers, tapas, dim sum, cheese trays with cubes and crackers. I just think it’s delightful.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I’m really good at claw machines! So good that my husband and I really limit what I play so that our entire house isn’t filled with stuffed animals. I also collect records – lately I’ve been listening to a lot of midcentury cocktail-party jazz, rockabilly and 90s swing revival, so you can find me either at the record store or shopping for vintage dresses & accessories.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
More Martin and Valerie! I just love writing them. But one of these days, you’ll get a ghost story from me. I’m really starting to get into horror, so let’s see what I come up with.
For fans of Cottonmouths by Kelly J. Ford comes Negative Girl: an evocative, moody, neo-noir thriller that explores obsession and people dying across America's forgotten spaces.
Martin Wade lived hard in his youth, but unlike many of his former bandmates and roadie friends, he didn’t die young. Instead he hit the recovery path, cleaned up his life, and became a private investigator in a dying city in upstate New York.
When his heavily tattooed and scarred assistant Valerie sets up an appointment with a young woman who needs help keeping her biological father away from her, none of the three realize that the father is Martin’s old bandmate, still using, and on a destructive path that will soon be headed straight for Martin’s clean life. As Martin struggles, Valerie becomes increasingly obsessed with their new client’s life.
Then the client is found dead in a riverbank, and duty, nostalgia, and lifetimes of regret find Martin and Valerie on the case for the young woman’s killer. As Martin struggles to hold onto his sobriety, Valerie becomes increasingly obsessed with their dead client.
Mystery Police Procedural | Thriller Crime [Datura Books, On Sale: September 10, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781915523310 / eISBN: 9781915523341]
Libby is the author of Negative Girl (Datura 2024) and The Big Rewind (William Morrow 2016) as well as the Wade & Jacks P.I. series in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Tough. Her short fiction has appeared in The Dark, Smokelong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, Shotgun Honey, Stone’s Throw and HAD, as well as the anthologies Mixed Up, Welcome Home, Hanzai Japan, A Beast Without a Name and Lawyers, Guns & Money: Crime Fiction Inspired By the Music of Warren Zevon (co-edited with Art Taylor). She is the 2018 recipient of the Oregon Writer’s Colony prize, the 2023 Shamus award for best P.I short story, and the 2023 Black Orchid Novella award.
She is the current co-host of the OST Party and Misbehavin’ podcasts and the former co-host of The Shattered Shield podcast, and teaches short fiction through The Writer’s Circle.
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