In Which a Librarian asks a Talented Author a Small Number of Questions:
Bryan Gruley, Michigan author (now local!) is an Edgar nominee, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and fiction writer. If you haven't read his stuff--you are missing out! Vivid,suspenseful, nail biting, you won't be able to put his books down. His newest, Bitterfrost is the first in a compelling new crime thriller mystery series. We asked him a few questions (3 to 5) to get to know him and his writing better.
If you were a dewey number, what would you consider yourself to be?
Crime 364 or Hockey 796.962 or Jokes 808.882. Or all of the above.
Have you found that fiction is easier to write than nonfiction?
I wish. With non-fiction, you know essentially what the story is and how it ends before you start writing. You know those things because you've reported and researched them, which of course is hard if done well. And you can't make things up that you imagine would make your story better. You are constrained by what you have uncovered in the real world. With fiction, you are unconstrained, which itself is a problem: you can write about anything. Now, some novelists outline their books before they start writing, which I suppose makes the writing easier. But still the outlining is challenging and difficult work. I have found myself to be incapable of outlining. So I start with a few characters and something bad that happened and start writing. It's like driving a car in the dark, with only your headlights to guide you the next few feet.
Is there a particular author or person that gives you inspiration now or when you began writing?
Many. When I was a boy, the Hardy Boys mysteries inspired me to create my own version of Frank and Joe Hardy. I wrote little stories and read them aloud to my second-grade class at St. Gemma Elementary in Detroit. Later, it was Salinger and O'Connor. John Irving's Garp novel made me think I could write a novel, but it was really Dennis Lehane's superb Mystic River that inspired me to take a shot at it.
Did you throw your shoes up into the shoe tree in Kalkaska before they took them down in 2024?
Never did, although I drove by the tree many times, wondering why the hell those shoes were up there. At one point when I was working for The Wall Street Journal, I tried to write a story about the tree, but I couldn't get a reliable bead on why the shoes had ended up tangled in the branches. I finally used it in my second novel, The Hanging Tree, writing, "They found her hanging in the shoe tree outside Starvation Lake." I regret not making that the opening line of the novel.
If you were to come back as an animal, what animal would that be and why?
Definitely a dog, because dogs live incredibly blessed lives.
Thanks, Bryan! (As I struggle to not to write "Mr. Gruley")
:)