Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to do good works and make a living at it. I spent a long time as a police officer, back when we were supposed to risk our own lives instead of shooting first. Or as my training officer put it, “You could be replaced by a speed bump, and outside of the improvement, nobody’d know the difference.”
I must have been good at it, because they kept promoting me, but after 25 years I got out and changed course radically; I got a job with the Red Cross, taking elderly and disabled persons to medical appointments. I learned a lot about cancer, diabetes, stroke, and other nasty things, and I’ve always felt lucky to learn it second-hand.
I was also lucky to meet a wonderful woman and be with her when she passed, after 40 years of marriage. Good marriages don’t make good stories, so I don’t write about her, but I could fill volumes….
Somewhere along the line I managed to sell three books and write two others that were rejected by every publisher and agent in the Free World.
‘NADA (Casperian, 2010) is a tale of high adventure, with Shotguns, buried treasure, Nazis and a Mexican posse. It was a finalist for the Spur award even though it isn’t a Western.
EASY DEATH (Hard Case Crime, 2014) is a heist story set in the 1950s, with a likeable pair of armed robbers up against a blizzard and a sharp Forest Ranger.
And….
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
THE DEVIL & STREAK WILSON is the tale of a cowboy in his teens who makes a deal with the Devil and has to grow up with the consequences. It’s based on an old folk story that was re-told by Hoffmann and Poe, but once I started writing about Satan he refused to act like any other Devil in literature. If you know a young person who seems confused, in need of guidance, and you think Devil Worship might be the answer, get them a copy of this book. Their parents will never forget you for it.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
That’s between me and my Shrink.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Oh Lord, where to start? As a child I read above my age level, so in recent years I’ve had to go back to books like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, and LORD JIM to get the deeper meaning behind the stories I enjoyed back then. I also seem to spend a lot of time reading cheap paperbacks and books about HAMLET.
What are you working on now?
Just finished another Streak Wilson story, and working on a mystery that unravels over the course of a single night.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Mostly I stand on freeway ramps with copies of my books and a cardboard sign.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Well my first thought is “Do something else. I don’t need the competition.” But then I recall Somerset Maugham wrote something that I mis-remember as,
“When you’re thrown in the water you swim. You don’t ask yourself if you’re a good swimmer or a bad swimmer. You swim because you have to.”
Writing is like that.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
“It’s easier to fool someone than to convince someone he has been fooled.”
Mark Twain’s comment seems especially fitting right now.
What are you reading now?
MY OWN MURDERER a British mystery from 1940 by Richard Hull
What’s next for you as a writer?
These days it doesn’t pay to look too far into the future.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
There’s a big volume of English & American Poetry I forget the name of, the letters of Raymond Chandler… and hey, on a related topic, I can’t figure out why anyone on his deathbed would read the Bible. Seems to me you’ll get plenty of that stuff in Heaven. Lots of Christians up there, they tell me, and most of them fairly religious. No, I want to be reading something a bit more iconoclastic when I head off to wherever.
Author Websites and Profiles
Daniel Boyd Amazon Profile