Dead Reckoning Blog Tour

DEAD RECKONING
Caitlin Rother
* True Crime *

• At what point did you decide to be an author and what was your path to publication?

It was a slow process. Growing up, I always liked writing and got A’s in English. I experimented with different types of writing in college—I took classes in creative writing and journalism, wrote for the school paper, and interned at a radio station in San Francisco. While I learned that I liked the excitement of the news business, I didn’t want to move to a small town somewhere, which is what was necessary back in those days to get a job. I also didn’t get a lot of encouragement along the way, in fact, I had people dis-courage me. But what I learned was that I was good at this writing and reporting thing, and I enjoyed it, but that it also would take determination, persistence and rebounding from rejection. It also meant that I needed to keep working on my craft until I had what it took to hit the mark and sell my work. That took quite a while. I had a rough start in journalism, because I kept trying to be creative, so that had to beaten out of me to fit the news format. Then, once I tried writing books, I had too much of the journalist in me, so I had to beat that out of me, and put the creativity back in. Today, I’ve got a good balance, as an author of narrative nonfiction, I combine my writing and storytelling skills with my research skills, to produce very detailed narrative that reads like a novel but is all true. If I look back, I’d say that I decided I wanted to become an author while I was in a writing workshop during the early 1980s. I wrote a story that grew into a novella, which really wanted to be a novel. And so it began. It took 15 years to get my first book published. And that wasn’t even the first book that I wrote, which took 17 years to get published. But I kept at it, and I’m now writing #14 and #15, under contract with two different publishers, and I’m promoting DEAD RECKONING, which just came out, so I guess I’m doing OK.

• Describe your writing process. Do you outline, plot and plan, or is your writing more organic?

The first book I wrote was a novel, but the fact that it took me 17 years to get published is testament to the need to do an outline first, which I didn’t do. I also made the mistake of rewriting the first 100 pages over and over, when I should have kept going. Today, I always outline every book, but I’m now writing only nonfiction, not making up stories. So, I may learn new revelations and facts that change the story arc, but the basic outline will usually remain largely the same. Even when I outline, though, I may still move chapters around. Also, I always write long, then go back to tighten up and edit. This is how I get such detailed prose. I’m a “taker-out-er” not a “put-er-in-er.” That means I’m not one of those people who says, well, I’m finished writing but I only have 50,000 words, now what? I’m more of, oh, I’ve got 125,000 words, and I’ve got to get it down to 100,000, so snip, snip, snip. Lately I’ve been hearing that publishers want a book closer to 90,000 words, so I’ve really got to repress my urge to include all kinds of interesting things unless they are germane to the premise of the book. I also find that if I am having problems writing something, it means I haven’t done enough research or planning. As a writing instructor and coach, that is a common problem I see with my students and clients. That they want to rush to write a book, when they 1) haven’t learned their craft well enough yet or 2) don’t know enough about their subject matter yet to start writing authoritatively about it. My advice is to read, write, rewrite and rewrite some more. It may look easy, but it’s not. Or everyone would be a famous New York Times bestselling author!

• Describe the book in 10 words or less for people who are just learning about it.

DEAD RECKONING is the true story of the murder of Tom and Jackie Hawks, who were tied to the anchor of their yacht and thrown overboard alive, by a transgender killer.

Sorry, but it’s close to 500 pages and it’s pretty complicated for just 10 words.

• Is there anything you would like people to take away from your book?

People are not always what they seem to be. Watch out for those who tell crazy stories about themselves. Skylar Deleon, the transgender killer who was still presenting as a man when she killed the Hawkses—to get money to pay for gender confirmation surgery—told people she was a sniper and had killed dozens of people. Turned out that she took the name of her sniper troop from a video game. But by the same token, Skylar was far more dangerous than she seemed at the time, a man with a high singsong, effeminate voice, and a persistent giggle. She also killed a third person while out of jail for the day on work furlough, drove to Mexico, cut his throat and left him to bleed out on the side of the road. Then she went to California Pizza Kitchen, called the jail to say she’d be a little late, then came back two hours after her curfew and bought an anal sex machine, using her credit card, on a jail computer. You just can’t make this stuff up. Skylar recently legally changed her name and gender to female and takes hormones so she now looks like a woman.

• What has been the toughest criticism you have received as an author? What has been the best compliment?

One critic said my books were very detailed. Some people might think my writing is exhaustive, he said, but he thought it was exhausting. But that’s why we have vanilla and jamoca almond fudge ice cream. Most of my readers like all that detail, and those who don’t can buy someone else’s book! One of the best compliments came from a woman who said my book was so hard to put down that she stayed up late reading it, then set an alarm to wake up and read some more. Or the woman who said her husband got mad at her because she didn’t cook or clean anything all weekend because she was too busy reading my book. I LOVE that.

• Share some advice for aspiring authors. What advice would you give to your younger self?

See above.

• To date, what is your favorite (or most difficult) chapter you have ever written?

There are a few difficult chapters that come to mind. One was in my book BODY PARTS, which tells the story of serial killer Wayne Adam Ford, a long-haul trucker who picked up troubled women, had rough sex with them, choked them until they passed out, then brought them back using CPR to do it again. I took testimony from one of his victims who survived to tell what he did to her, and used it to tell her story in real time. It took about two days to write that scene, and it was some of the hardest and emotionally challenging writing I’ve ever done. Other scenes that were difficult to write were in HUNTING CHARLES MANSON, about the Manson Family murders of Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Although I write about murder, I try not to include a lot of graphic violence in most of my true crime books. Instead, I like to focus on the psychological angle, to show why the killers committed the murder, with not so much emphasis on the graphic details. But sometimes you have to include those, or you’re not telling the truth.

• Have you ever experienced writer’s block? How did you deal with it?

Yes, just today, as a matter of fact. I switched tasks, going from a book manuscript to a blog, which I had been putting off because I was blocked, and then this interview. I wrote the blog, then worked on this interview, both of which I’d been putting off because I felt I needed to work on my current book project. So, I got them all done, and that way, I didn’t let the “stuck” feeling ruin my day’s progress or prevent me from feeling like I’d accomplished something. I’ve always got many tasks and projects going at all time, so if I run into a wall on one of them, I just pick up another one and keep on going.

• What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

I like to swim or walk for exercise almost every day. I swim along the shore in La Jolla during the summer and early fall, when the water is warm, then switch back to the pool during the colder months. I walk year-round, also by the beach, on a hiking trail, or around my neighborhood. I’m lucky to live in sunny San Diego, and spend a lot of time in the Sonoma-Napa area as well, so I’ve got lots of lovely scenery to choose from. I also play keyboards and sing in a band with my partner, who is the lead singer and a songwriter too. We’re called breakingthecode. He and I love sampling new restaurants and wineries, and we also love to cook at home, so we are toying with doing a cooking show and putting it on YouTube, because people always seem to enjoy our reviews on Facebook. Life’s too short to drink cheap wine and eat bad food.