Frank Hayes | A Spark of What is Best

It goes without saying but tastes in literature run the gamut. As a writer I have to take this into account. It informs my writing, not in the sense that I am writing for a specific audience but that I have to decide what I am comfortable with in terms of current appetites. I am aware that zombies, vampires and other representatives of the un-dead are high on the list of what attracts an audience. Combine them with myriad explosions and conflagrations, against an apocalyptic landscape and you are on the road to a sure fire winner. This is fertile ground for many writers. I am not in their number. This on my part is probably not a wise commercial decision.

As long as I am going down this road I might as well also state that I am not a huge fan of the anti-hero as the protagonist. Again I am well aware that there are many who relish this as either writers or readers. When I read I am looking for someone to root for, someone who has a spark of what is best in a human being. I am not looking for perfection. They can be heavily flawed. These characters intrigue me as a reader and more so as a writer. For the most part I like to like the characters that people my stories.

In my latest effort after I sent it to my editor he called after reading the first couple of chapters. "You didn't kill Jimmy did you? He is my favorite character." It is good to have favorites in novels because it means that on some level a connection has been made with the reader.

Sometimes the positive is hard to find. I remember years ago seeing a movie called White Heat with a friend. It starred Jimmy Cagney as a sociopathic killer. The body count was high, his psychopathic behavior off the charts, but throughout the film he and his mother were always close. The movie ends with him standing on top of a huge gas tank totally engulfed in flame. His last words as the world blows up underneath him are," Look Ma, I'm on top of the world." – pretty hard to find the positive in his character. But when the movie ended, my friend turned to me and said," Well at least he loved his mother." He had found the positive in a madman.

I hope it is not as difficult for my readers to find the positive in the characters in DEATH ON THE HIGH LONESOME.

About Frank Hayes

Frank Hayes has spent much of his life as an English teacher with a long a successful career introducing inner city students to the power of language. For over thirty years he taught grades six through twelve. Beyond the regular curriculum, Frank taught Mass Media, Film, Debate and Creative Writing. Outside the formal education system, Frank has worked with the Fresh Air Fund and various non-profit groups for over fifteen years. He has been involved with outdoor education, teaching wilderness survival, orienteering, pond studies, and group challenge courses. He’s also directed summer camps and programs specializing in courses for brain injured children and adults.

Frank has lived most of his life on a small farm in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife of over fifty years, Fran. Together they have raised eight children and now have a large extended family. Over the years Frank’s love of nature and animals has brought a menagerie to their small farm. While they specialized in breeding AKC registered English Springer Spaniels, they have also raised horses, cows, cats, chickens, pigs, goats and more.

Frank’s first novel Death at the Black Bull was published under the Berkeley imprint by Penguin Random House in the fall of 2014. The sequel, Death on the High Lonesome, will be published in 2015.

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About DEATH ON THE HIGH LONESOME

The author of Death at the Black Bull returns to the Southwestern town of Haywood where the onset of winter ushers in a new mystery for Sheriff Virgil Dalton…

Virgil knows that his sleepy hometown is starting to reflect the times, in good ways and bad. It still comes as a shock when his deputy is almost killed by the body of a woman falling from the highway overpass onto his car. A woman who had been fleeing for her life…

Then longtime resident Velma Thompson is found dead on her porch—her husband missing. To search for the man, Virgil saddles up and heads to the High Lonesome, the rugged mountains above their ranch. And on a wind-swept mesa, he’ll find the first clues that point to a killer whose body count has only just begun…