RSS
Home
Interview with mystery author Steven Torres
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
My guest today is mystery writer Steven Torres, author of The Concrete Maze and the Precinct Puerto Rico series, published by St. Martin's Minotaur. The protagonist of this series is Luis Gonzalo, the sheriff of Angustias, a fictionalized small town nestled in the mountainous heart of the beautiful island of Puerto Rico. Steven received his Ph.D. in English in 2002 from the City University of New York Graduate School and University Center.
Thanks for being my guest on the Examiner, Steven. When did your love for mystery literature begin and when did you start writing detective novels?
I guess I came to reading mysteries both early and late. I loved the Encyclopedia Brown stories when I was a kid, but other than that, I don't think I read a real mystery until I was in grad school. I read a
couple of Bill Pronzini novels and a couple of James Lee Burke novels (both wonderful writers and wonderful mystery writers) to get away from the dry, dull stuff you sometimes have to read in graduate school.
A couple of years into that, and I knew I had to put some kind of publication on my resume if I wanted to find work when I graduated, so I started writing a novel. Never having written one before, I just
knew I wanted it to be one with action in it. The mystery form has the added advantage of having a definite ending. I felt a real sense of accomplishment from typing out the words "The End." I think I finished the first book I wrote (which will actually debut in April of next year) in 1998.
Please tell us about your Precinct Puerto Rico series and a little about your protagonist, Detective Luis Gonzalo.
The Precinct Puerto Rico series springs from my having lived in PR for about a year and a half in the early eighties. I spent a lot of that time living on the outskirts of a small town called Moca, and I
absorbed a lot of what was going on around me and what was in the news.
Some of the plots come directly from things that happened back then. For instance, I remember a story about a house buring down in the mountains of PR because a firetruck came from the biggest town in the area, but they hadn't filled the tanker. By the time they went back to fill the tanker and came back, there wasn't anything to spray the water on. Hilarious. Unless it's your house.
What this tells me about the small town I invented for the series - Angustias - is that the people there have to solve their own problems. If someone's been murdered, you can't wait around for homicide
detectives to come from the big city and bail you out. Luis Gonzalo, my main protagonist, is sort of a sheriff (that's what I call him in the books, but in real life, he would have a rank like sergeant or
lieutenant), and he realizes that if there's a bad guy on the loose, he has to start the process of capturing him.
Another aspect of Gonzalo is that he's a pretty normal guy. I didn't want to put a Puerto Rican officer out there who has all the stereotypical problems - drinking, marriage falling apart, the innocent twelve year old he shot in a dark alley, and, of course, a tour of duty in Viet Nam. Gonzalo doesn't have any of that baggage. The job is stressful enough. Gonzalo loves his wife, he drinks in moderation, never went to Nam, never shot a kid. He does have a case he hasn't been able to solve that haunts him sometimes. And then he has all the citizens of Angustias - Los Angustiados - to worry about, and they're a handful.
You also have another novel out, The Concrete Maze. Is this also a mystery?
The Concrete Maze is a mystery. Not part of the series at all. For years people asked me if I would write a New York City novel, so I did. Frankly, I think it's my best work, but it's not really my place to judge. In any event, it is based on a couple of true stories from when I lived in the Bronx - a girl I knew went missing from the Skate Key Roller Skating Rink and a man I knew was chopped into eight pieces.
The Boogie Down Bronx was a really hard place to live way back when. I set the book in one of the hardest periods - the early 1990s when the city averaged almost seven murders a day.
It's kind of unusual for a Puerto Rican author to be writing mysteries, isn't it? Are there any other Latino mystery authors whose work you admire?
Well, there are several very good Latino mystery writers that I'm aware of - Michele Martinez writes very good thrillers set in New York City and with a female Assistant District Attorney as the main
protagonist.
Manuel Ramos is a marvelous writer with a series set in Denver that follows the struggles of a Latino lawyer.
Carolina Garcia-Aguilera has also been very successful with a series set in Miami. There are others, I'm sure; I'm just forgetting names right now.
In fact, I should point out that I have a story in an anthology called Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery edited by Sarah Cortez and Liz Martinez. The book has a dozen or more awesome Latino mystery writers
in it.
How do you plot your mysteries?
Generally, I just know where I want to ultimately wind up and I know which characters I want to travel with for the journey. I don't outline. When the story gets complex, I assign myself some route markers. For instance, I might write "fight between Gonzalo and Ramirez for next chapter" or "interrogate accomplice" on a scrap of paper.
Of course, overall, the plot of a lot of different types of stories will be like putting a couple of trains on the same track headed toward each other.
On average, how long does it take you to write a novel?
I only start actually typing once I have a large portion of the storyline in my head. That can take a few months since I have a family and a job. After the bulk of the story has been roughly plotted in my
head, it will take me about three or four hundred hours in front of the computer typing to get to about sixty-five thousand words. This is for a Precinct Puerto Rico novel.
The Concrete Maze was strange - I had the whole story in my head after a short period of time and I wrote the first ten thousand words or so, then I left it aside for a long while, maybe a year. I had other
things going on. Then I came back to the novel and picked up where I had left off without an interruption. A few months later, I was done and quite pleased with the book.
Do you have any writing quirks?
Not sure what qualifies as a quirk. I don't like to sit to write unless I know I'll be uninterrupted for a few hours, so I mainly write at night. I listen to some classical music - Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, etc.
Sometimes I'm able to write with the TV on. Then it's just like a white noise in the background. And sometimes I write things out longhand before typing it up, for instance, if I'm on an airplane or
train.
Do you often visit Puerto Rico to do book signings?
I went exactly once to do a signing in a Borders. It was a disaster - the store manager forgot to order books so I had to bring copies on the plane with me, then the manager didn't show up and no one in the
store seemed to have any idea I was supposed to be there. Sold zero copies and did a reading for the one person who sat down. When I was done, I asked if he had any questions and he told me he didn't speak English and didn't know I'd been talking to him. It's my "nightmare book signing" story.
I did have a very good experience doing a booktalk for a reader's club in Rincon. We all had a great time and it went about an hour overtime. If only they were all like that.
Do you do a lot of book promotion? In your experience, what types of promotion are most effective?
I try to do a fair amount of book promotion - I go to some of the mystery conventions, and I do talks in libraries when I am offered the opportunity. So far, I hate to say it, but nothing has really worked
for me in terms of generating huge sales. The library talks are fruitful, but selling ten copies at a time is enormously time consuming.
I keep hoping Oprah will call me, but that hasn't worked for me so far.
Anything else you'd like to tell our readers?
My editor would be mad if I didn't mention that the next book in the Precinct Puerto Rico series comes out next April and will be called Blackout in Precinct Puerto Rico. It's the first book I ever wrote, and I re-read it a couple of times this year and I still like it, so it must be pretty good...
Readers can contact me at crimetimecafe.blogspot.com.
Thanks for the great interview, Steven!
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
