Author Interview
with Frederick Key
Author of: McMann & Duck: Private Investigators,
Larry and the Mascots, Cobalt Agonistes, and more
Please tell me a little about your current
work in progress.
Last year
I completed a mystery novel entitled McMann & Duck: Private
Investigators. It takes place in 1951 in a small Texas town. As I write
this I am polishing up the outline for a sequel that takes place eight years
later. I became so interested in the main character, a World War II army vet,
that I envisioned a series of mystery novels about him because I enjoyed his
company so much, and much about him remains secret. We don’t have much in
common, however, although we are both usually polite.
As to
whether he will survive these books, well, that remains to be seen.
Where did you get the idea for this book or
series?
A boring
meeting. I am an inveterate doodler. I doodled my way through school. I had
college notebooks that looked like the walls of pyramid chamber. One day I was
in a dull meeting and I started to sketch, and a man in a suit and fedora
looked back at me, smoking a cigarette. By his side was a duck. I wondered who
they were, and off I went. C. S. Lewis famously started Narnia with a vision of
the lamppost and a faun under it in the snow, and this kind of struck me the same
way.
Do you write in more than one genre?
Yes. I’ve
written mostly mysteries, but also contemporary fantasy novels. Larry and
the Mascots, where a college student meets a crew of living advertising
mascots, and I’ve Got This, a middle-grade book about a boy with an
unusual superpower, fall into that category. Cobalt Agonistes,
which is half-drama, half-comic book story, runs along those lines as well.
My two
MacFinster books are comedies, but they have elements of crime fiction because
crime is a great plot driver. It’s why so many of Wodehouse’s stories have
(usually comical) felons about.
Tell me about something that you believe
makes your writing unique or worthy of attention.
To my
personal credit and professional detriment, I have never been able to go along
with the zeitgeist. Often it’s just my own orneriness; the music I hated in
college, for example, I like now, because now it is painted it over with nostalgia.
On the other hand, it has saved me from following more people off intellectual
and artistic cliffs. A thousand people doing a stupid thing doesn’t make it a
smart thing. Doing something of worth (as I hope readers will find in my work) means
I didn’t go off a cliff following the fads and formulas I see elsewhere.
Is there anything about your personal history
or personality that manifests strongly in your writing?
I
struggled with a lot of things in my early adulthood that had to be discarded
down the line—paganism, atheism, alcohol abuse. I can’t say I was born again in
the common sense, only because to me that always meant a lightning-bolt like
experience—if only! I still struggle with faith, because I was not raised in a
religious home and it’s always a second language to me. I also think that like
all Christians, the faith itself is like a second language—who wants to be
humble, who wants to forgive those who hate you? I hope that my actions and
thoughts are informed by my faith today.
Of course
my personal experience features in one way or another in all my writing, but in
a practical sense, I think my attempts at humility get me to try to be more
concise. Brevity is the soul of wit, after all, and I never want to be a dull
writer. The reader’s interest is paramount.
You
wouldn’t know concision was important to me based on my answers to your
questions, however.
What else would be helpful for readers to
know about you?
Like most
writers, I became a dedicated reader from childhood—big fan of comic books and
the Hardy Boys mysteries, later classic pulp fiction characters like the Shadow
and the Avenger—and my entire professional career came from that. I’ve worked
behind the scenes for decades at book and magazine publishers. I grew up in the
friendly confines of New York City—from my bedroom window I could see cars go
by on the highway all day and all night. I have two enormously hairy dogs who
have confounded the best vacuum cleaners money can buy. And I blog daily at
vitaminfred.blogspot.com.
While I
hope readers will visit my blog, I mention it here because it began as a
discipline, to make sure I wrote or drew something creative every day. As they
say, writers write; they don’t sit around talking about writing. Putting the
onus on myself to produce something I hope people will enjoy every day, be it
writing or a cartoon, is a great motivator.
Excluding your own work, what underrated
author or book would you recommend that more people read? Why?
In high
school I discovered a huge book of the short stories of Henry Kuttner, a
science fiction writer in the 1950s who died much too young. Kuttner was
incredibly inventive and prolific. There are few books I have ever enjoyed as
much as that one. Science fiction dates terribly, and its stars fade quickly,
which is a shame.
Which of your books do you most highly
recommend? Why?
Like most
authors, the book I think is my best is whatever I just finished. So as of
today it would be McMann & Duck.
Which break, event, decision, or fortuitous
circumstance has helped you or your writing career the most?
I
mentioned earlier that I was a fan of the Hardy Boys books when I was a child.
The first one I got was in a Christmas grab bag event, and I was hugely
disappointed. Tried to swap it with something else, anything else—a Slinky, a
pack of gum, whatever—but there were no takers. So one day I just sat down and
read the damn thing.
It sounds
stupid, but my whole love of reading, and thus wanting to write, came from that
incident—that some parent was boring enough to put a book in a school gift grab
bag. Go figure.
What question do you wish you would get asked
more often?
“May I
pay you fifty million dollars for the rights to make your book into a movie?”
would be a pretty good one. Failing that, I would like to be asked, “How much
of what you write comes from reality?” because I would like to say “None of it,
and all of it,” because it sounds pithy and Wildean. So no one ever asks me
that.
Do you have a catch-phrase or quote that you
like? What is it? And why do you choose it?
Today it is “A
proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as
you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” C. S. Lewis
again.
It reminds me
that pride is the king of the sins, and most to be avoided. All the other sins
come from telling myself that I Know Best and I Deserve More.
If you ask me
that question tomorrow, I would probably have a different quote. This is why I
can never get a tattoo.
Thank you for
asking me to participate in your authors’ profile series!
_______________________
You're Welcome Fred.
I can't let this pass without mention: As I write this I am polishing up the outline for a sequel that takes place eight years later. I became so interested in the main character, a World War II army vet, that I envisioned a series of mystery novels about him because I enjoyed his company so much, and much about him remains secret.
In other writing news, I've completed In Death Bedrenched, the prequel to the Tomahawks and Dragon Fire series. A free ecopy is available here simply for signing up for my newsletter.
And also here if you prefer to checkout BookCave.
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