Interview With Author Gregory Stout
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Following 29 years in the private sector and 12 more in public education, I am now retired and living in southeast Missouri. To date, I have 28 traditionally published titles from four publishers. My next release, the fifth installment in the Nashville-based Jackson Gamble PI series is scheduled to be released in the autumn of 2025.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My most recent release (December 2024) is called Long Time Gone. PI Gamble is hired to track down a college professor who has been missing for four years. It is the fourth in the Jackson Gamble series, and is set in the present day. As with any series, I would have to say each book is “inspired” by the previous entry. However, the first book, Lost Little Girl, which was the winner of the 2021 PWA Shamus Award for best first PI novel, was an outgrowth of my interest in noir-ish crime fiction that is especially prevalent in the multitude of black-and-white crime films prevalent in the decade or so following the end of World War II.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Let’s begin with the proposition that, to a greater or lesser degree, all writers are unusual, in that we spend our time sitting at a keyboard in front of a screen trying our best to come up with an interesting (and maybe also marketable) story. In my own case, I spend hours hidden away in my house writing, sometimes five hundred words, most of the time less, and occasionally nothing at all because I can’t think of what should happen next in the story.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
For certain, the works of James Ellroy, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane and Raymond Chandler (the inspiration for every author of PI fiction). I have also read several books by Henning Mankell, Martin Cruz Smith, James Lee Burke and Carl Hiaasen. All these writers ably convey the personality of their protagonist as good people, but not without flaws, which, I think gives the reader a character is at once admirable but also a little bit dangerous to know.
What are you working on now?
Book five in the series, Goodbye is Forever, is completed past its developmental edit and will be released shortly. The sixth (and possibly the final) book in the series, When the Music’s Over, is 26,000 words-complete. After that, I’m considering a new series based in a new locale with a different protagonist
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m not convinced there is one “best” method; I think you have to reach out in as many ways as you can. To that end, I have a website; a Facebook author page; a Goodreads author page; an Amazon author page; and recently, I retained the services of a publicist, who has directed me to sites like this one where I can reach out to more potential readers. I also have a quarterly newsletter, which gives me the opportunity to speak directly to my readers. Mixed in with all that, I have done numerous podcasts, broadcast radio, and just recently, an appearance on local television
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Writing is a tough and highly competitive business. Even small publishers can receive upward of a thousand unsolicited manuscripts every month. So…my advice would be, first, make sure what you have written is the best you can possibly make it. And when you go searching for a publisher, be prepared for lots of rejections, many of which will be unrelated to the quality of your work. You can always publish independently, and many authors I know do just that. But whichever route you choose, you must be relentless in pursuing your goal, because every one of your competitors certainly is just that.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
A writer (now deceased) who was wiser than I, told me, “Sometimes, it’s not what you put into the book, it’s what you leave out.” It was his way of saying, don’t let the words get in the way of the story.
What are you reading now?
The Pennsylvania Railroad, Vol. 3: The Long Decline 1933-1968, by Albert Churella (this baby is 900 pages, including endnotes, so I’m going to be at it for a while)
Farewell, Amethystine, by Walter Moseley
Desert Star, by Michael Connelly
What’s next for you as a writer?
I think I would like to write another YA/middle grade, to go with Gideon’s Ghost (2019) and Connor’s War (2022), both from Beacon Publishing Group. It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, and as a former middle school teacher, I enjoy writing for this age group.
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?
L.A> Confidential, by James Elroy
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
Gone, Baby, Gone, by Dennis Lehane
October 1964, by David Halberstam
Author Websites and Profiles
Gregory Stout’s Social Media Links
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