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JON: You’ve just released The Devil’s Bed, a stand alone. Has this book been floating around in your brain for a while ? KENT: Not long compared to some of the stories I’ve written. In fact, The Devil’s Bed was an evolution, one idea that became another and ended up a creature different in many ways from the one I’d imagined in the beginning. The whole of the idea didn’t exist until the book was completed, which is a new experience for me. Typically, I know just about all there is to know about a story before I ever put it to paper. As a result, I usually come very close to hitting the mark I set for myself. With this one, I never quite saw what I was aiming for, and in the end what I created was as much a surprise for me as I hope it is for readers. JON: What is it about Minnesota that you love? KENT: I love that people who have never been to Minnesota-and there a lot of them-have either no idea of what it’s like here or harbor marvelous misconceptions. That moose wander our yards, for example, or that the mosquitoes are fierce as piranha. I love that it has four seasons and that each is powerful and profoundly different. I love that, geographically, it’s schizo. In the south are rolling hills covered with neatly laid out farm fields and dotted with prairie towns. North, the hard crust of the earth itself seems to have thrust up through the ground. The soil of the north country is thin, the hills rugged, the lakes plentiful, and evergreen forests stretch all the way to the horizon in every direction. I love that Minnesota is a state that appreciates its artists. JON: So, who exactly is Cork O'Connor? KENT: Cork began as me. I may be wrong, but I think that’s where most writers begin. They put themselves into the character who will shoulder the story. For me, the story demanded more than I was or knew or had experienced, so Cork grew-carries genes I don’t carry, has lived through tragedies I never did or maybe even could-but he’s still me at heart; what he cares about, I care about. Before I knew anything else about him, I knew his name would be Cork, because I envisioned him as a man who, no matter how far down he was shoved, would always bob to the surface. JON: As research for The Devil’s Bed, did you do anything special or different?
JON: I’ve never heard of the
Anishinaabe Indian tribe. Are they native to the area you write about? KENT: The Anishinaabe people are also known as Ojibwe or Chippewa. (The Ottawa are also Anishinaabe, as are, technically speaking, several other subgroups.) They comprise the largest tribal affiliation in North America. Shinnobs live in an area that covers the entire Great Lakes region, and that reaches far north into Canada, west into the Dakotas, and south onto the Midwest farmlands and plains. JON: Is there something about the wilderness that makes it easy to write suspenseful books about it? KENT: The thing that’s wonderful about the wilderness is that it can swallow you whole. In a suspense novel, a character can easily be gobbled up without a trace. Blizzards, huge tracts of deep woods, hungry wolves, deranged sects and political vigilantes, these are just a few of the marvelous menaces in Minnesota’s great Northwoods. In the isolation of the forest, the dark is thicker, the snap of a twig more telling, the chance for help often non-existent. In a romance novel, I suppose, the deep woods might be painted as simply wild and beautiful. In a novel of suspense, the woods may be beautiful, but it’s like the beauty of a coral snake.
KENT: Although I always try to write a suspenseful story, at the heart of the Cork books there is a mystery to be solved. The Devil’s Bed is primarily a thriller, and what fuels the plot isn’t so much mystery as sheer suspense. So the challenge was in ratcheting up the suspense. Also, readers of thrillers expect a certain level of techno detail, and I had to be careful to get that right. Knowing that it was a stand alone didn’t much affect the writing. I still worried every step of the way. JON: Do you enjoy the touring when the books come out? KENT: De Sade would have loved touring. It’s both a pain and a pleasure. It requires an enormous amount of time, energy, resources (mostly financial), takes me away from my family, and tends to interrupt the flow of whatever writing project I’m working on. It’s a lot of nights in hotels, dinners on the run, waits in ugly airports, hours on the road. But the flip side is that you get to an event and there are wonderful booksellers and eager fans and stacks of your novels waiting to be bought and signed. What’s not to love about that?
JON: The Minnesota Crime Wave seems
like a wonderful way to make events more fun. Who’s idea was KENT: It was an evolution, begun in a conversation between Ellen Hart and me. I’d toured with Deborah Woodworth. I’d toured with Carl Brookins. And I happened one evening to be talking with Ellen about what a fine experience each of those tours had been and how it made things so much easier. We decided that maybe it was a question of the more, the merrier. Deborah and Carl, when we approached them, loved the idea. And we’ve been an ensemble company ever since. JON: At the Mayhem in the Midlands convention you donated to the auction. Specifically, someone gets to be a character in the next two books as love interest for Cork. What would you have done if a man had won and insisted o using his name?
KENT: I’m a writer. I deal with the
creative use of words. I’d have found some way to make the name work.
Honestly, I wasn’t worried in the least. That the winning bidder was, in fact,
a great fan, a good friend, and a terrific woman with a marvelous name pleased
me immensely. JON: What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen at a convention? KENT: At a recent convention, one of the panel moderators donned a Richard Nixon mask and continued the discussion in an alternate identity. Wait a minute. That was me JON: What kinds of things did you do before becoming a published writer? KENT: I logged timber, worked construction, was a bureaucrat, a freelance journalist, a researcher in child development, a husband, a father, a good son. During the writing of my first three books, mostly what I did for a living was collect baby spit, which turned out to be almost as dangerous as milking a cobra, believe me. JON: Who do you like to read? KENT: My perennial favorite in the genre is James Lee Burke. Outside the genre, I’m fond of, among others, Russell Banks, Toni Morrison, Kent Meyers, and Kent Haruf. (I’ve got this Kent thing going, what can I say?) JON: So here it is, the movie question; who would you cast in a movie based on your books? KENT: At the moment, my top choice for Cork would be Ed Harris, an interesting actor who, physically, much resembles my own image of Cork. For Jo? Maybe Jessica Lange. JON: Do you plot out your books before you write, or do you let them come to you as you work? KENT: Generally, I outline significantly before and during the writing of a novel. I’m one of those people who has to know as much about what’s going to happen as I can. I need to know who done it and why, where the moments of suspense will occur, what the clues are. I don’t do huge character dossiers. Usually the characters come to me as the action unfolds and more often than not, they reveal themselves to me through their dialogue and their actions. JON: Are you a morning person or a night person? KENT: Morning!!! When I was a young man, I wanted to be Ernest Hemingway. One of the things I knew about him was that he loved to rise at first light and spend a couple of hours writing. He felt it was his most creative time. Early on, I established the same discipline. I get up around 6:00 a.m., head to a local coffee shop (the St. Clair Broiler), and spend an hour or two composing. Then I return home and do the grunt work. Now that I support myself full time with my writing, I usually head back to the coffee shop for another creative stint in the afternoon. By nine at night, I’m dead. JON: What question do you here more than any other? KENT: When is the next Cork book coming out? JON: What are some of your favorite films? KENT: All time—and I know it’s a cliché—The Wizard of Oz. After that come several: To Kill A Mockingbird, Friendly Persuasion, Rear Window, North By Northwest, Young Frankenstein, almost anything by John Ford, almost any early Disney animation. JON: What’s the toughest part about writing? KENT: Accepting that I will never be as good as I dream of being. JON: What’s the one thing always in your refrigerator? KENT: Mold. And ice cream.
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Interview
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KENT: There was so much about The
Devil’s Bed outside my direct knowledge or experience that I did a good deal
more research than I typically do when I’m at work on a novel in the series. I
read volumes about the organization and politics of the White House, the Secret
Service, developmental psychopathology, weaponry, and the technology of
protection. I tracked down and interviewed a lot of primary sources including
the S.A.I.C. in charge of the Minneapolis field office of the Secret Service, an
expert in human development, the facilities director of the state’s security
hospital, an ER nurse, and a career army officer who trains soldiers in covert
operations. For me, the techno research is the least appealing aspect of
writing. Preparing to do a book in the series, I love reading the Ojibwe
material and talking to people who know the culture, but everything else tends
to be a necessary chore. Knuckling down and doing the hard work of research for
The Devil’s Bed was something for which I had to gear myself up mentally.
JON:
What was the biggest change in your writing for The Devil’s Bed?
Was it different knowing it would be a stand alone?
it?
