Robert Weibezahl
The Dead Don’t Forget, from Oak Tree Press, is the second in a crime fiction series featuring screenwriter-sleuth Billy Winnetka. The books are set in Los Angeles in the 1990s. In this installment, Billy meets a screen legend—a now 80-something woman who was a huge star in the silent film age. Gwendolyn Barlow is living in her deteriorating mansion, largely forgotten. But someone remembers her, because she has been getting disturbing phone calls, threatening her with death. Or so she says—no one really believes her at first. But things turn uglier when someone actually makes an attempt on her life. Billy is soon mired in an investigation that suggests more than one person may have a reason to want Gwendolyn dead. Meanwhile, Billy is spending his days on the movie set where his screenplay, Perchance to Dream, is being filmed. It is not going well. A hothead novice director is wreaking havoc, and, being Hollywood, innocent heads will roll. Billy’s only solace is a new romance—with Gwendolyn’s attorney, Kate Hennessey. But in Billy’s world, nothing, especially not love, is without complications.
Please tell us about that moment in seventh grade when you decided that you wanted to be a writer.
Seventh grade is when I read two Steinbeck novellas, The Red Pony and The Pearl, for class assignments. Perhaps they were the first “adult” books I had read, I can’t be sure at this point, but they both left very strong impressions on me. Around the same time, my English teacher singled out some essay I had written and told the class I was a talented writer. All that coalesced into a kind of “ah ha” moment when I started thinking I would be a writer.
How much did your BA in American Literature aid you writing process?
I’m not sure! Certainly majoring in literature gave me the opportunity to read a lot of great works in college, but I don’t know how much that academic approach influenced me as a writer. When I was in school, there was a lot of snobbery against contemporary literature (and “contemporary” was a pretty broad designation and included writers who were already dead). With the exception of one contemporary poetry class I took, it was as if writing had stopped in the 1920s. I rebelled against that notion, which probably sealed the deal and deterred me from continuing on to graduate school. I think things are different now, but that was my experience.
What was your time like in Ireland?
I spent part of my junior year studying at the School of Irish Studies in Dublin, and it was a transformative experience. I chose Ireland because of my love of W.B. Yeats, and I did have a chance to study his work there with the renowned poet Eavan Boland. But once there, I also discovered a lot of other Irish writers—and there are too many wonderful ones to mention—and was immersed enough in Irish culture to really understand where that great national literature comes from. It was the early 1980s, long before the Celtic Tiger roared, and Ireland was still a “less developed” country than the U.S. or Britain, at least as far as the creature comforts. It was a throwback to a gentler time I had never experienced, and I loved every minute of it. I also made some lifelong friends.
You began your working life in publishing so please tell us a bit about this.
After I graduated from college I returned to my home city of New York and found an entry level job in book publishing. I worked for a couple of trade houses for about three years and loved it, but decided I wanted to leave New York. I moved to Los Angeles and started working in film and television, but after about seven years I returned to the world of books, and I have worked as a freelance writer ever since.
How much did this experience help you to promote your own books?
I’d had a lot of experience promoting other people’s books, so when the time came to promote my own I understood the process—I knew how to contact the media and how to position a book. Of course, when I stared in publishing we were still using typewriters, telephones and snail mail, so things had definitely changed. Technology, particularly the Internet and social media, have dramatically changed the way books are publicized and sold, which makes it easier and less expensive for the “little guy” to promote, but harder in some ways, too, because it has greatly increased the number of people vying for a limited amount of attention.
Your first book was born from a telephone conversation, so please can you expand on this for us.
My friend, Jo Grossman, with whom I’d worked in the film business, had moved to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts and was in the throes of opening a café-cum-mystery bookstore. We were on the phone and Jo was expressing excitement, but naturally a bit of apprehension, too. I said something like, “Don’t worry, a year from now you’ll be writing The Mystery Café Cookbook.” About six months later she called me and said, “Remember that idea you had for a cookbook?” I told her I had no idea what she was talking about, so she reminded me about my offhand comment. What would a “mystery cookbook” entail we wondered? We decided it should celebrate food in classic mysteries—Christie, Sayers, etc.—but also feature recipes from contemporary mystery writers. We began soliciting those recipes and the project, A Taste of Murder, took off. The book was a hit, was a finalist for the Agatha and Macavity Awards, and spawned a sequel, A Second Helping of Murder, which was also nominated for those awards. It was great fun and proved a wonderful entrée into the world of mystery writers and fans.
Who are your favourite reads and why?
With my behind-the-scenes work for publishers as well as the book review column I write for BookPage, I am “forced” to read a broad spectrum of books, including a lot of stuff I would never pick up on my own. I think this provides a good education for a writer. When I have the luxury of choosing my own reading, I gravitate toward sharp-edged fiction rather than long, epic reads. If I had to choose my favorite book, it would probably be Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, which I think is a perfect novel. I like a lot of other writers who might be categorized with Greene for one reason or another: Muriel Spark, Evelyn Waugh, J.M. Coetzee, Joan Didion, Sadie Jones, Ronan Bennett. Longer books I love—Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Known World, Middlesex. It is so hard to narrow the field! And, of course, so many Irish writers—Edna O’Brien, William Trevor, etc. And I suppose everyone is now claiming Alice Munro as their own, but I’ve been reading her stories since the Seventies (honest!). I think it is so much harder to write a short story than a novel and she is a peerless practitioner of that form.
What is next for you?
I confess I have a number of unfinished irons in the fire (starting them is always easier than finishing them!). I am working on a “noir” novel set in the early 1960s in New York and another novel based on a real crime in Hollywood in the ’30s. I’ve also recently complete a play, Which Way the Wind Blows, which I’m “shopping around.”