Ask the Author: Roddy Thorleifson
Answered Questions (6)
Roddy Thorleifson
Coffee and dessert.
Roddy Thorleifson
I got the idea for Tim Curious from a history of New York City. It told of how, during the revolution, north of Manhattan Island, there was a region called the "Neutral Ground" where neither side had full control. Half its population was gone and those who remained lived in danger of raiders, spies and smugglers. I seemed the perfect setting for a murder mystery. Once I started doing research I was surprised how some things were so similar to today, and in others were so profoundly different.
Roddy Thorleifson
I’m at work on another in a series of murder mysteries set in the American Revolution. A 16-year-old boy wants to be a Patriot war hero but things get in his way. Things that tell a lot about what life would have been like – predicaments that actually could have happened, 240 years ago. My research into the colonial and revolutionary period has been obsessive. But except for indented passages at the end of chapters, Tim Curious always reads like a murder mystery.
Roddy Thorleifson
I figure a writer of fiction ought to write the book that he or she would have written, just for pleasure, and even if it was never published, and if no one else ever read it.
Roddy Thorleifson
For me, writing fiction is fun so long as I write the sort of book that I wish I could have found in a bookstore, if only somebody had written it. I’m expecting that large numbers will share my tastes, and when they start reading my book they’ll say “At last!”
Roddy Thorleifson
If I start a book at the beginning and just see where it leads me, then I'm sure to get writer's block. It happens when I realize that I’ve led myself to a dead end. What I do now is to start a novel with a summary. I write a vague description of a cool idea. Later I revise it, adding and deleting to bring it into focus. I repeat this until I have a clear outline of the whole story. It’s about one tenth the length of the finished product. Each time I work on it, I do as much as I can do, and then I put it aside. When I look at it again, later on, I can see what’s needed. When I’m happy with it, I start the first draft.
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