Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a writing teacher and a novelist. I work at Boise State University, where I direct the technical writing program. I have written 12 books: eight nonfiction books about writing and literature, and the four novels in the Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery series.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is Three-Ways. It’s about the murder of a sex-addicted graduate student studying English at Central Montana State University, the college in the fictional town where I set the books. The victim had sex with three or four women on his last night on earth. All of them–and their other partners–had motives, means, and opportunity to kill him.
What inspired this topic? I can’t really say. I don’t think it’s that I wish to live through this guy vicariously, because he ends up really dead by page 3 of the book. I guess I thought the topic would give me another way to to get at the kind of ethical fable that I like to write about. This time, it was lust. The previous books were more about public issues.
All of my books are ethical fables in the guise of police procedurals. They’re all about choices we make as we try to figure out who we are and what we want. The title of this book, like that of the others, refers to a number of different characters in the book. Just as Big Sick Heart, the first book in the series, was about three different characters who had big sick hearts (of one kind or another), Three-Ways is about three-way sexual relationships and love affairs. Among the characters in a three-way relationship is the protagonist, Detective Karen Seagate.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I’m afraid I don’t. Paper, pen, then the computer–the usual. The only thing that is borderline unusual is that I don’t believe in writer’s block. Just as a plumber can’t not go to work because he or she lacks inspiration that day, I can’t not write because I’m not inspired. I put words on the screen, then fix them the next day.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
My two favorites, at least as they relate to my own writing, are the books by Le Carre and Elmore Leonard. Carre for how he gets at the layers of motivation in his characters, and Leonard for how he makes the books gallop. Like every other mystery or crime novelist, I’m a big fan of Leonard’s rules for writers. (Google the phrase if you haven’t seen it–it will change the way you write.)
But I try not to read every crime novelist out there. Maybe I’m too impressionable and don’t want to pick up anyone else’s style. Perhaps that’s the reason I write in the first person, in the voice of my detective, Karen Seagate. I know her pretty well by now, and she can’t speak like anyone else or see things they way others do. My books, for better or worse, are mine.
What are you working on now?
I’m preparing the fifth book in the series, Fractures. Now that you know my titles refer to multiple things going on in each book, you should expect fracking–as well as at least one very bad head injury.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m hoping that Awesome Gang will turn out to be the best site for promoting my books. I’m a member of eNovel Authors at Work, where the chief whip-cracker, the endlessly energetic and generous romance novelist Jackie Weger, teaches me something about promotion nearly every day.
The trick is to get the book into people’s hands. I feel lucky in that the people who read my books tend to like them and read the others in the series.
But I do wish I knew Oprah and she really liked my writing.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
If you can be happy not writing, don’t write. If you have to write, read the best writers, develop a really thick skin, and try to figure out how to summon the persistence you will need to keep writing when the world appears to say that it will keep turning even if you don’t write.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
I like a line from Elvis Costello: Nothing in this ugly world comes easily.
What are you reading now?
The Last Taxi Ride, by A. X. Ahmad. I like to read books by writers I’ve never heard of, from places I can’t pronounce.
What’s next for you as a writer?
What’s next is always the same: trying to become a better writer.
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?
Books on building boats and planes out of desert island vegetation.
Author Websites and Profiles
Mike Markel Website
Mike Markel Amazon Profile
Mike Markel’s Social Media Links
Facebook Profile
Twitter Account
Oh! What great and entertaining interview. I love the last line in the interview! Wht a hoot.
Really interesting inteview, Mike. I’m curious about how easy/difficult it is to switch between your non-fection books on writing and your fiction books?
Mary Smith
Nice interview, Mike. And some very sound advice, too.
That was an enjoyable interview and it was great to get to know Mike better. I agree, no 1 has to be, develop a thick skin, lol. Good luck with your novel, Mike. You never know, Oprah might be reading the Awsomegang’s interviews right now.
Oh, no, you know I meant AwEsomegang’s, didn’t you?
Kudos on getting Oprah, Elvis Costello, and Elmore Leonard in the same post! That exclamation point is for Elmore. I have his ‘ten rules’ posted on my wall.
I read and review a lot of books, and if they start with the weather or a prologue I rarely get past the sample. Not because Elmore said, but because, for the reader, it’s a frustrating opening to a story–where’s the beef?
I wonder, as a university teacher, have you received any negative feedback for writing about a less than model student with behavior that is very much under the spotlight nowadays, even though he meets his demise about the same time as another writer might have finished giving details about a thunderstorm :-)?
Mike, this is a great interview. I enjoyed learning more about your background and I’m in awe that you have 12 books under your belt. Besides all of your good advice, I love your forethought in choosing your desert island book topics! Cheers!
Hah, good choice of books for the deserted island! Jackie is a force, I tell you, but she sure looks out for all of us on enovelauthorsatwork. Nice to share the space with you, Mike!
Honestly, Mike, Oprah is missing out on a terrific writer!
Thanks, all, for commenting.
Mary, I work on both fiction and nonfiction most days. I tell the truth sometimes in my fiction and I lie in my nonfiction, so they sort of meet in the middle. In both cases, I work in established genres, so my job is to figure out where to fulfill the expectations of the genre and where to subvert them .
Pete, my colleagues in the university steer clear of me. You know the old line: for fifty bucks I’ll put you in my next book. For a hundred, I’ll take you out.
Dianne, 12 books is no big deal. I’ve been a university professor for a long time. We’re supposed to write.
Again, thank you all for reading and commenting!
Great interview and a chance to meet another Enovels author. My favorite lines are:
“I tell the truth sometimes in my fiction and I lie in my nonfiction, so they sort of meet in the middle. ”
AND
“..for fifty bucks I’ll put you in my next book. For a hundred, I’ll take you out.”
Lorrie, if you have a moment, could you reach out to Oprah on my behalf?
Stephen, I’m glad you like the two jokes. One of them is mine. I’m batting .500!
Talk about impressive, Mike: That’s quite an array of books. “Ethical fables in the guise of police procedurals”– I like that! It’s always fun to learn more about other members of eNovel Authors At Work. Congrats on a great interview!
LOL! Sure, Mike. Of course, I’ll be reaching out to my good friend down at the weekly macrame class, Oprah Bumbershoot. Sadly, I don’t know the other one. 🙁
Good interview Mike. You and I obviously write exactly the same stuff: “They’re all about choices we make as we try to figure out who we are and what we want.” [Grins] I’m sure they couldn’t be more different, but then all books are about the choices we make, I guess. And my heroines never seem to know what they want (or at least, what they need). Keep writing! And maybe Oprah would do well to feature a bunch of us at once, hint, hint….
That’s the Oprah I was referring to, Lorrie! Thank you. Three-Ways is about The Macrame Murders, and I was hoping to exploit that connection in my marketing. You’re a godsend.
You are all just having a blast on this post I love it. 🙂
Jenny, you’re right that most fiction is about the choices we make. But I think what I was thinking of that night when I wrote this thing is that in the crime genre, there is a kind of book that I don’t care for: the crazed mad slasher or mad-something-or-otherer. This guy (I think he’s always a guy) has no motivation, no story. He just is, and he’s malignant. In my books, I try to make sure that even the murderers are recognizably human, and that they act out of their own (flawed or at least limited) sense of reality or justice or entitlement. So in Big Sick Heart, the first book in the series, my protagonist, Karen Seagate, almost kills a kid while driving drunk. By contrast, the murderer in that book is, in most important ways, more noble and admirable than any of the other characters.
In other words, I like books (and therefore try to write books) in which every character is colored a different shade of grey. As a result, I try to have at least three plausible suspects for each murder.
Sorry for droning on. I’m a professor. I teach 6-9 pm, and I can easily go till 9:30.
Mike, if I die laughing, it’s going to be your fault!