Author Interview & Giveaway: The Hangman’s Companion by Joseph Flynn

08 Feb 2011 19 Comments

by shelleyrae @ Book'd Out in Author Interview/Guest Post, Crime & Mystery, Fiction, Giveaways, Thriller & Suspense

 

The Hangman’s Companion by Joseph Flynn combines intrigue, action and humour with dynamic characters to create an engaging story.  I loved it, you can see what I had to say HERE,  and I think you will too! I persuaded Joseph to answer a few questions for me today and he has generously offered ten electronic editions of The Hangman’s Companion to my readers. Details on how to enter can be found below.

 

Welcome Joseph!

Q:The Hangman’s Companion is the sequel to The President’s Henchman, though it works well as a stand-alone novel, what made you decide to continue the series?

Joseph: I was casting about for a story idea one day. This is not my normal practice; I usually let my muse come to me and say, “Here’s something you might like.” Anyway, I wondered where might be an unusual place for a private eye to reside. At that point, my muse did join the effort and said, “How about the White House? There’s bound to be a female president before too long. The detective could be her husband.” This was in 2003, five years before Hillary Clinton almost won the Democratic Party’s nomination as its presidential candidate. Once the idea evolved into the story outline for The President’s Henchman, I thought that this character, Jim McGill, deserved a series, and I decided to do one book for each year of a two-term presidency: eight years, eight books. I’ll start writing book number three this March and publish it later this year.

Q: I think your slideshow of Jim McGill’s Paris  is clever idea to support the novel, did you travel to Paris deliberately to research the novel or did the trip inspire the idea to set The Hangman’s Companion in France?

Joseph: The story idea came first. The trip was financed by the first half of my advance from The President’s Henchman. The idea of one novel supporting the next appealed to me. Seeing a place in person is a much better way to get to know it than using secondary sources. Luckily for me, my wife, Catherine, is an excellent photographer. I asked her to shoot pictures of places I wanted to keep fresh in my memory. Then I thought: Why not let readers actually see the places I saw? Let them see if they can spot the sites that inspired specific scenes in the novel. Magistrate Pruet’s apartment building is in the video; so is the building where Gabbi Casale lives; so is the place Jim McGill uses as his lodgings. See if you can pick them out.

Q: I get the impression from The Hangman’s Companion, and the themes of your other works, that you have a healthy scepticism for authority, would that be a fair statement?

Joseph: My basic take on institutions of any size or shape is that they may have been founded for the most noble of purposes but all of them quickly come to exist to serve themselves, and their defense of their self-interest is likely to be ferocious.

Q: Australia has its first female prime minister, and make some interesting points about the  possible issues a female leader may face, do you think a female US President is ever likely?

Joseph: As I mentioned above, Hillary Clinton came quite close to being the first female president of the United States. Had she bested Barack Obama in the primary election, I have no doubt she would have beaten John McCain in the general election. Currently, Mrs. Clinton says that her career in government will end with her tenure as secretary of state. That, of course, is the kind of diplomatic statement you’d expect from her at this point. I still wouldn’t rule her out as the first woman to sit in the Oval Office.

Q: With his sense of humour, curious nature and a talent for martial arts, Jim McGill is a dynamic and likeable protagonist – how much of your personality informs his character?

Joseph: McGill is probably a fifty-fifty blend of my personality and being his own man. I think you have to keep a certain balance in creating your characters. If you skew too closely to your own identity, you’re just doing a Walter Mitty fantasy; if you divorce your lead character entirely from who you are, he’s not likely to ring true.

Q: While McGill is in Paris, Sweetie, Jim McGill’s investigative firm partner, who is one of my favourite characters in The Hangman’s Companion, was involved in her own investigation.  Did you find it difficult to carry two distinct stories through the novel?

Joseph: Well, you have to plan carefully. For the most part, I like to write stories with many characters and multiple storylines. In order to make everything work, I write an extensive outline and then write a draft I call the raw story. Given that foundation, I can make the characters clear, the stories cohere, and keep a quick pace to it all. Usually.

Q: Do you plan to write further novels to in the Jim McGill series? Any hints on what we can expect from the next installment?

Joseph: As mentioned above, I plan to write eight books in the Jim McGill series. I decided that the way to go about things is to have McGill working his cases in concert with developing political issues in U.S. government. The president’s political standings and maneuvers will evolve in parallel fashion. McGill’s next case will be set in Washington, DC. It will have to do with solving a murder that calls into question who really runs the U.S. government.

Q: Tell us about your plan -  ‘Looking for 100,000 Readers’.

Joseph: My best-selling novel was Digger (sorry, no reference to Australia here; a blurb and excerpt are available on my website: www.josephflynn.com). It sold just under 100,000 copies. What I’d like to do is build an active fan base at that number, at a minimum. People who will write to me, occasionally, and give me feedback on my work. Problem is, while my books, especially The Hangman’s Companion and The President’s Henchman, are selling nicely, I’ve been getting very few online reviews. So allow me to extend a plea here: If you’ve read one of my books and enjoyed it, please write a review, and drop me a line. Authors need all the happy readers they can get. Word-of-mouth and word-of-mouse advertising are the best ways to share the good word.

Q: What are you currently reading?

Joseph: The Reversal by Michael Connelly and This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin.

Thank you Joseph, I appreciate the time you have taken to share with the readers of Book’d Out.

Visit Josephs website for an excerpt and more.

Purchase The Hangman’s Companion

@ Amazon for Kindle and in Print

@ Smashwords

@ iBookstore

@ Barnes & Noble for Nook and in Print

 

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