Why I Write a PI Series

I was­n’t going to write the lat­est Dako­ta Stevens mys­tery.

Back in June of last year, at a read­ing I gave from my then-new pas­toral nov­el One Hun­dred Miles from Man­hat­tan, an audi­ence mem­ber asked me whether I would be writ­ing anoth­er Dako­ta Stevens nov­el.

I had writ­ten the first draft of what became A Truth Stranger Than Fic­tion (released today), but I was­n’t sure I was going to fin­ish it (rewrite it sev­en times) and pub­lish it. So, to the audi­ence mem­ber’s ques­tion I replied, “Prob­a­bly not. I mean, does the world real­ly need anoth­er detec­tive nov­el?”

Obvi­ous­ly the answer to that ques­tion is, “No, it does­n’t. There are already thou­sands of detec­tive nov­els.”

 

Photo by DAVID ILIFF

Pho­to by DAVID ILIFF

 

Yes, there are thou­sands of detec­tive nov­els out there, but there aren’t a lot of nov­els about a detec­tive, which is what I’m try­ing to write. (My role mod­el in this is the great Ray­mond Chan­dler.)

From the begin­ning, I’ve striv­en to write books that are good, well-writ­ten nov­els in and of them­selves, where the mystery/detective stuff is a bonus.

A num­ber of artists, from G.K. Chester­ton to Picas­so, have advo­cat­ed the idea that “Art is limitation”—that is, by lim­it­ing the para­me­ters of your artis­tic work, you can give the remain­ing aspects deep­er dimen­sion. Put anoth­er way, you force your­self to be more cre­ative.

TSTF_Enhanced_04This is why I enjoy writ­ing a PI series. I like the lim­i­ta­tions that the mystery/PI genre impos­es on me. Because I know that each sto­ry is going to have a mys­tery and be writ­ten from a sin­gle point of view (Dako­ta’s), I’m then able to chan­nel my cre­ative ener­gies into oth­er facets of the craft: voice, char­ac­ter, dia­logue, humor, metaphors, sen­tences and noir atmos­phere.

With all three of the Dako­ta mys­ter­ies, I set out to write books with mem­o­rable, quotable lines; fun turns of phrase. But I have to say, I think that, of the three, A Truth Stranger Than Fic­tion con­tains the most of these lines. As a friend remarked to me this morn­ing (said friend hav­ing read the book with­in six hours of it arriv­ing on his Kin­dle), “I don’t drink, but I assume this is what the finest bour­bon tastes like.”

I wrote back, “If by ‘finest bour­bon’ you mean, clean, smooth, a lit­tle smoky and mys­te­ri­ous, and sexy with a bite, then, yes, it is like fine bour­bon.  :)”

(Actu­al­ly, I’m a sin­gle-malt Scotch whisky and Stel­la Artois man myself, but I’ll take “finest bour­bon.”)

I sin­cere­ly hope that every read­er of A Truth Stranger Than Fic­tion enjoys it as much as my friend.

—Chris

 

Buy A Truth Stranger Than Fic­tion for Kin­dle

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Pho­to Cred­its: The pho­to “New York Mid­town Sky­line at Night” (the orig­i­nal is in col­or) is by David Iliff and is shown here under a Cre­ative Com­mons license: CC-BY-SA 3.0. This is a link to the orig­i­nal pho­to: http://goo.gl/n7FMVq. The pho­to “Guns and Ammo 1” is by a pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Ken on Flickr. The orig­i­nal pho­to was in col­or, and here is the link: http://goo.gl/L8glx5.

By Chris Orcutt

CHRIS ORCUTT is an American novelist and fiction writer with over 30 years' writing experience and more than a dozen books in his oeuvre. Since 2015, Chris been working exclusively on his magnum opus. Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome: The Legendary Adventures of Avery “Ace” Craig is a 9-episode novel about teens in the 1980s. It’s about ’80s teens, but for adults (in other words, it’s decidedly not YA literature), and he’s applied this epic storytelling approach to the least examined, most misunderstood, most marginalized narrative space in American literature: the lives and inner worlds of teenagers.

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