A fresh mystery is a combination of new twists, unforeseen turns and characters that effortlessly glide from the page into the reader’s mind. Spencer Seidel combines these qualities, wraps them in a suspenseful bow and presents it as Dead of Wynter. Thought-provoking, chilling and addictive, his debut novel is a fast-paced and seductive ride. Seidel shares what inspired Dead of Wynter, how comfortable he is tackling the female point-of-view and how faith in self is a fundamental instrument in any writer’s tool box.
“Dolly, it’s your mother.” Dolly. Jackie Ruth Wynter had called Alice that for years. The conversation that followed led her right back to the place she had run from for years. Her twin brother, younger by just a minute or so, had been fading, transforming into an image of their drunken, narrow-eyed father. Now her father was dead, and her brother, Chris, missing.
Alice resigns herself to return, helping her mother and the local police with the mystery surrounding the crime. But there are some family secrets her mother would sooner take to the grave than reveal.
Reacquainting with her past brings fresh pain and new friendships as she struggles with who to trust with the details of her father’s murder and brother’s disappearance. As the authorities come closer to solving the mystery of the men in her family, she begins to realize her past life as Alice Wynter is the missing part of the puzzle. But who is searching out the former Alice? The sinister mysteries of the Wynter family will capture the reader’s attention well past when the fire has gone out.
PC: As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
SS: Honestly, the first impulse I can remember having to really *do* something was to be a writer. I was so taken with Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth that I asked my mother to drag out her old red college typewriter so I could have a go at writing. What I wouldn't give to find that first attempt! I eventually gravitated more towards music as a kid but writing was definitely first.
PC: Your writing has a musical quality – in the cadence, poetry of language and rise and fall of present to past with the flashbacks. You’ve been a musician for 25 years. Would it be fair to say that one form of art influences another - Does one ability sing into the other?
SS: That's a huge compliment to me! Wow! Thank you. For sure it has a lot to do with music. For me, cadence is everything in writing. Everything you write should flow in such a way that the reader forgets about the words, about reading. All of my favorite writers have that quality. The writing doesn't get in the way of the story, of the telepathy of the whole thing. Even if you start out intending to analyze the words or the structure, you should end up lost in the story. Good musicianship is also like that.
PC: What inspired Dead of Wynter?
SS: For decades, there had been a persistent rumor about a murder and cover up among my mother’s cousins on a Michigan campsite. My mother and I got to talking about this one rainy day on Cape Cod, and she told me that my grandmother had admitted this to her in a moment of dementia. Creepy stuff. Not long after, my heavy-drinking uncle (my mother’s younger brother) unfortunately died of multiple organ failure. He’d had problems his entire life and never really escaped the controlling ways of my grandfather. When I combined the two ideas, I had the basic plot for Dead of Wynter.
PC: How easy is it to tackle writing from the female perspective? As a man, do you ever find it daunting to slip into the opposite gender?
SS: I don't. It's a funny thing with me. I'm all guy in most ways, but I tend to have more female friends and relate to the opposite sex more. I don't communicate well with many men because I don't often understand them, quite frankly. It's a character quirk or something. Maybe I'm more sensitive. I just don't know. For those reasons, I'm quite comfortable writing female characters.
PC: What makes a good story - what elements do you believe are vital to a great novel?
SS: Characters. Always characters. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people tell me that they have a great idea for a novel and then ramble on about some new super weapon, technology, or unique serial killer--the "MacGuffin" if that's the word you like. In the end, no one cares about anything but the characters and their relationships. That's how human beings are wired up. Plot and unique ideas are wonderful things but not without good three-dimensional characters readers care about. Or hate. You need that too.
PC: Your novel is dark, gripping and loaded with twists and turns. How do you set out creating such a complex work? Do you plot, outline – or are you more of a pantser, allowing the characters to lead the way?
SS: I'm not a pantser (for anyone not familiar, this is writer lingo for someone who writes "by the seat of their pants" instead of by outline). In some ways I wish I was because it can be so freeing. I may someday try to wing a novel-length work. I do wing my short fiction. My clumsy process goes like this... I start with characters. I plot, I grow, I outline. Then, when I have a list of one-sentence scene ideas, I start writing. Very rarely do I make it all the way through a first draft. My characters start exerting themselves and I find that I have to chuck it all and start again. Dead of Wynter was like that. In my first draft, Ray and Chris hardly spoke to one another and were anything but friends!
PC: As a reader, it's impossible to put Dead of Wynter down. As the writer; did you find yourself as captivated as your readers are in the story, secrets and heart of the Wynters?
SS: Thank you for that, really. In some ways, yes. But it's hard to explain. As a writer, I love my characters and love being in their world. I never have a God-like feeling when I'm writing because I don't control the world they live in. I just kind of let it unfold. To go back to the earlier question, my scene lists and outlines are more like predictions than actual fact. Sometimes what I predict doesn't happen. That's what makes it so interesting for me. I love reading, but stories are richer as a writer. So, yes, I do get caught up in the story like a reader does.
PC: Characters are often the heart of a story. They wrap us around their pinky fingers, drawing us in and holding us close as we hover along for their journey. But are all characters in your stories only people? Do your settings, ideas and themes ever become characters as well?
SS: I'm interested in exploring this more as a writer. I've been thinking a lot about it lately. In the novel I have coming out next April (Lovesick), I think Portland, ME comes across as something of a character. I love that city, and I think having good, detailed knowledge of the place adds something to the manuscript, which I'm really excited about.
PC: Are your characters real to you? When you begin writing, do they come to you fully formed, or does it take time to get to know them?
SS: Very real. I have a general idea of their background and their relationships with other characters when I create them. When I name them, they get a little more vivid to me. Then, when they start thinking and making decisions, I really get to know them. It usually doesn't take long. I never liked Ray, for example. Right from the beginning. He always made me nervous.
PC: Would you share one of your favorite discoveries that emerged from researching and writing this novel?
SS: This one is easy. I suffer from self-doubt. I don't have an arrogant bone in my body. I abandoned this novel and my writing career several times before taking Dead of Wynter from a seed of an idea to a complete novel. It got so bad that I had to create and frame a sign that I now keep on my writing desk. It reads: "Just write the damn book." Whenever I start to weasel out of a plot or an idea because I get tangled up, I read that sign and know that I've been there before, that I just need faith in myself to finish the damn thing.
PC: Writers all over are struggling with the future of publishing – to publish the traditional route or to go it alone. Readers will always read, but do you believe one route is more beneficial than the other?
SS: The landscape is definitely changing for writers. My philosophy has always been this: if you have some talent and you're persistent, prolific, intelligent, as willing to give as you are to take, and you consider what you do both a business and an art, you have a good shot at creating something sustainable, whether you go traditional or not. That's the way I'm going about it. I happen to gravitate towards the traditional approach because I think there's a lot to be said for getting yourself hooked up with a bunch of people who sell books and don't write them. But that's just me.
PC: Is there anything you are more passionate about than writing?
SS: No.
PC: When writing Dead of Wynter, did you ever scare yourself? Or can you separate your created fiction from reality without effort?
SS: I don't scare easily with this stuff. It's real life that scares me silly. I once bought a book about real-life serial killers. It was graphic and detailed. I had to throw it out because I couldn't stand having it in my house. It was too scary for me. So was "Helter Skelter," that book about Charlie Manson. And yet, I regularly read all manner of horror novels and don't even think about it.
PC: What advice would you give to people who "run out of creativity" when writing?
SS: Take a closer look at yourself. There's probably something else going on in your head that's clogging up the pipes. I know that I don't create well if I'm tired, nervous, stressed, or depressed. Typical also is that nagging self doubt. Self doubt can grind everything to a halt. I find that simply having a day or two away from my current project usually helps me.
PC: How would you, Spencer Seidel, commit the perfect murder?
SS: I would argue that a perfect murder is a very rare thing indeed. If you're talking about anything but a completely random victim in a random place at a random time, it won't be perfect. People are always connected. That's kind of my bread and butter as a writer, making up those connections.
PC: How important are your readers to you?
SS: They're everything to me. I write to entertain. And I consider myself damn lucky to be able to do so. I mean that.
Visit Spencer Seidel at: http://www.spencerseidel.com/
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