Fired from his job at the Tulsa Zoo, 26-year-old Zane Clearwater wakes from an alcohol-and cough syrup-induced blackout to learn his mother was killed the night before in a fire in their trailer-park home. Zane has no memory of that night-could he have set the blaze? The police have a lot of questions, but so do Zane and his 14-year-old sister Lettie. When he gets a mysterious text that indicates everything his mother told him about her past was a lie, Zane embarks on a journey of discovery that results in meeting his supposedly long-dead father. Jeremiah Doom has a dangerous streak as long as the Arkansas River and a shady, secretive life. Zane may share his father's Cherokee blood, but can he battle against the anger and violence that also lurks beneath the surface of his own skin? Is Zane destined to repeat the sins of his father?
Goodreads blurb for Serpent Loop:
Sometimes new beginnings come from destruction.
A man is murdered at a carnival. For Zane Clearwater, witnessing the crime is a dark reminder of a violent past he had hoped to put behind him and his teenage sister Lettie. But the fear on her face tells him one thing: she's somehow involved and as her guardian, he must protect her at all costs. Even if it jeopardizes his future as a police officer.
Zane has a lot of questions, but so do the police...and the FBI. Zane had seen his sister's genius computer skills as an asset to get her into college and out of the hand-to-mouth life he was living as security guard and janitor. But Lettie had decided to use those skills in some questionable schemes on the dark web. And now trouble had come looking for them in real life.
When Lettie takes off for California, Zane embarks on a journey of discovery that even unbreakable bonds may have their limits. Can he stay one step ahead of trouble and protect Lettie? Or has trouble finally caught up with them for good?
I'm going to go with inquisitive, imaginative and adaptable.
2. Tell us a bit about the inspiration behind the Zane Clearwater mystery-thriller series (Bloodlines and Serpent Loop)?
I wanted to write a story that focused on an ordinary person asked to do extraordinary things. Zane Clearwater is just that. He lives in a trailer park in a crappy Tulsa neighborhood. He has no money and no special skills or talents. He isn't given to poetic insights about life though he tries to work the Alcoholics Anonymous steps to get his drinking under control. Many people might dismiss him as a loser, but I see him as heroic in his determination to make a better life for himself and his younger sister, Lettie.
3. What are some of the similarities between the first book Bloodlines and its sequel Serpent Loop? And the differences?
Both books focus on Zane and his sister Lettie. In the first book, Zane is in peril, drawn to act on some of his darkest impulses as he tries to get closer to his long lost father. The first book really asks whether or not goodness always prevails inside us, as we balance the capacity for good and evil in our hearts. In Serpent Loop, Zane's kind of adrift, working two dead-end jobs, maybe thinking about being a police officer, when his sister becomes embroiled in criminal activity on the dark web. We really see the close connection between the two in Serpent Loop, and how Zane will do nearly anything for her, even as she pulls away from him.
4. Could you express what part of Bloodlines and Serpent Loop (without any spoilers) that gave you writer’s block and how did you get over it?
It's always the endings. Writer's block and imposter syndrome kick in hard when I arrive at the ending of a story. I love writing the early parts, because anything is possible in those early pages. Imagine it and you can bring it to life. But all the work is in the ending: you have to wrap it up in a way that brings the reader satisfaction. It can be so hard. I usually falter and struggle for weeks over endings. When I'm struggling to write, I usually fall back on the discipline of daily writing, first thing in the morning, and a daily word count. Usually the word count goal will be fairly modest, somewhere between 250 and 500 words. That keeps me moving the story forward and getting words on pages. Eventually I get to the point where I can type "The End."
5. Silly-Game question: From the Bloodlines and Serpent Loop novels (with your eyes closed) could you please leaf through the pages and point at a random place. What is the full sentence? And what is the page number of this random sentence?
From Bloodlines, this exercise drew a descriptive sentence on page 84: "Underneath a long wooden shelf holding at least a dozen softball trophies was a green, yellow, and white plaid couch, one cushion sunk deep into the frame from years of someone sitting in the same spot."
From Serpent Loop, I got this sentence from page 136: "But the woman working the register looked like her special talent was more likely to be chewing gum than baton twirling or the long jump."
6. If (or when) Bloodlines becomes a film or TV series, which scene are you most excited to see on the screen?
Hands down, this would be the scene in Bloodlines where Randy, Zane's boss, is eaten by the Tulsa Zoo's Komodo dragon. The scene has always been very vivid in my mind (I hope readers found it vivid too) and I'd really love to see it done well, just scary enough but not too gory. After all, I don't write horror, I write thrillers. In the book, Randy is a real jerk, so in some ways this death is a karmic payback. Although even Randy probably didn't deserve to die that way.
7. What was your favorite book as a kid?
As a kid, I was always hunting around my mother's bookshelf so my early reading was quite adult! Think V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic, Judith Krantz's Scruples, etc. But I used to love to read Encyclopedia Brown books. Remember those? They were usually short mystery stories and you'd have to pit your wits against this nerdy kid named Encyclopedia Brown to see if you could figure it out just like he did. I remember one vividly, where Encyclopedia Brown figured out someone was lying because they said they had pulled something out of their right-hand pants pocket with their left hand and EB proved they couldn't have done it while running. I've loved mysteries ever since.
8. What book (or movie) had the most influence in your life?
That's a tough one! Because you ask about the most influential book or movie in my life, my mind went to early influences, and a key one was Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. It was a simple fable of a seagull who preferred to perfect the art of flying than grubbing around with the other seagulls for food. I think we read it in Catholic school. It seems like a Christian fable, but what I liked about it was how Jonathan Livingston Seagull followed his own interests and didn't want to conform to the others. Eventually, he was cast out of his group but soon formed his own group of like-minded followers. This quote sums it up: "You have the freedom to yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way." It's a sweet book and movie, worth revisiting as an adult.
9. What book (or movie) made you cry from sadness?
One that comes to mind is the book Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosney. World War II and Holocaust books can be tough but important reads. Reading about the round-up of the Jewish people in Paris during World War II and the terrible conditions they were forced to endure at the Vel d'Hiv was heart-wrenching. The story at the heart of the book is that of Sarah who locks her younger brother in a cupboard to protect him from the concentration camp where she ends up. He dies in the cupboard. It's the saddest book.
10. Do you still read physical books or are you strictly digital?
I'm a hybrid reader. Just got my first Kindle this year, though I'd been reading on the Kindle app on my tablet for years. I kind of like both at different times.
11. Could you give us an interesting fact about the countries you have been to (Argentina, China, Czech Republic, Senegal, Singapore, and South Africa)?
Each of those countries I visited as a part of my former job in communications for the nonprofit called ICANN that has oversight of the Internet's domain name system. As I look at the list, I'm struck by the memories of the people I worked with and their sincere interest in making an interconnected world work. There is so much we all have in common: a desire for a better life for our families is the constant. My most vivid images are of Senegal, which was the least developed of the countries I visited. There, people selling vegetables from donkey-led carts took payment on shiny new mobile phones in 2011. They had Venmo-like payment systems way before those were common in the U.S. Because their infrastructure had not been built up with old technology, they were able to leapfrog us in some ways via tech, certainly with online banking. Yet even the most mundane things in Senegal--like electricity--became something you had to pay attention to, as rolling blackouts occurred at random times because the power grid wasn't 100% reliable. But on that trip and really, all of those trips, a feeling would come over me every time I stepped into a new country. It was this sense of being connected to the world, as though by an infinite thread. That's how travel both sets us free and brings us together.
12. Which person from history would you like to meet the most?
I think I'd pick Margaret Fuller, who was a 19th century poet and journalist with ties to the Transcendentalist movement. She was a close friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and lived with him and his wife for a while, as did Walt Whitman. I'd really love to have dinner with them all, maybe help them edit one of their magazines. Fuller was raised by a father who urged her to pursue a classical education at a time when women were largely excluded from that kind of knowledge. She went on to write prolifically and eventually became a foreign correspondent in Italy. I read a lot of her writing in graduate school and she had such a curious, delightful mind. She died in a shipwreck off of Fire Island, close enough to see the shore but not swim there.
13. Have you ever considered writing a screenplay?
Oh yes, I've even written one. It's a weird, early version of Bloodlines called Murder at the Zoo but it really doesn't follow the plot of the book too well. I wrote it before I'd finished the novel. It has different characters. I think it's mainly about the herpetologist at the zoo named Dustin Bollinger who is wrongly accused of trapping a coworker in the Komodo dragon enclosure. Yes, I am a bit obsessed with Komodo dragons. As I answered this question, I paused to read that screenplay for the first time since 2012 and there is a terrible "herpes-herpetology" joke on the first page. This should probably not see the light of day. [closes file with a shudder]
14. What television show has gotten your undivided attention?
Hardly anything gets my undivided attention any more, since I'm always looking at the phone or something even when I watch shows I really like. It's why I like reading as a more immersive experience, because you really can't read something at the same time you look at something else. With that said, the last television series that really grabbed my attention was "Killing Eve" with Sandra Oh. I love dark comedies with great fashion--combine that with a spy thriller with mainly female characters and I'm hooked.
15. Last question, what do you hope readers will take away from reading Bloodlines and Serpent Loop?
I hope that readers take inspiration from the tight family bond between Zane and his sister Lettie, and how those strong bonds between two people can shape two lives for the better. I think humans are good by nature but I also think we each have a shadow within us. We each hope that we make the right choices when it matters. Zane and Lettie ultimately do make those choices because they have each other.