Interview with Paul L. Hall - Author of "places the Dead Call Home"

Interview with Paul Hall
places that the author of Dead Call Home
iUniverse (2006)
ISBN 0595410715
Posted by Richard R. Blake for Reader Views (4/07)

Today, Juanita Watson, Assistant Editor of Reader Views talks with author / writer Paul L. Hall on his last book "poses the Dead Call Home", which won the bronze, West-Mountain - Best Regional Fiction Awards 2007 in the Independent book publisher.

Paul L. Hall is the award-winning author of "Our Father" and its sequel, "The Big Island". He is also a prolific business writer, public relations advisor and instructor of writing, and has published poems, short stories and articles in several publications including The Paris Review, The Sun, Reader Digest, and is listed number. He lives in Troy, Michigan, but spends much of his time in the American Southwest (the setting for "places the Dead Call Home") and Rome, Italy.

Juanita: Welcome to Reader Views Paul, and thank you for the opportunity to talk with you about your new mystery novel. "Places the Dead Call Home" This is your third book, how long was in the works?

Paul: I wrote the first draft of the book quickly - perhaps in six weeks. The research actually came after the first draft. Then the revisions. Six weeks stretched into two years.

Juanita: Paul, you've had a long history of writing in many genres. Want to give us a bit 'of history? What led to this area, and what keeps you going after all these years?

Paul: I won my first writing contest as a child of six years in primary school. I went on to win competitions like this right through college, where I won awards has registered as a student and as a graduate student. After college, I was drafted into the army (among the last to benefit from this quaint ritual), where, with a logic that has rarely prevailed military service when it comes to assigning jobs based on skills, I was trained as a journalist . What has evolved in a process of promoting all-volunteer army. After his discharge, he remained to the media / public relations / advertising field (with many trips in college as a teacher and doctoral student in English). I stay with him because it's interesting and what I do is a life to (although not much of a life as I would like).

Juanita: There is a common theme that weaves its way through your work?

Paul: The limits of human understanding.

Juanita: Hmm, what exactly does it mean .... ;-)?

Paul: Nominally, I write short stories of mystery, but are not exactly conventional. They are not well resolved at the end. The tension I see in my books is one of the human need to have things explained and the reluctance of the world in meeting that need. There is a "good vs. evil" thing. It's more about how humans delude themselves into thinking that eventually all will be revealed.

Juanita: Paul, it seems that you want to set the novels in the places you've lived or visited. Want to comment on your use of familiar settings and how important he feels it is to bring this element of reality in a novel?

Paul: I'm just able to write about places I've set foot in. I tried and it did not work. It feels fraudulent even though I'm writing.

Juanita: What happens in "Places the Dead Call Home"?

Paul: In a summer night in 1958, bullets tear through the body of a young man on a lonely road, Oklahoma. Nineteen years later, a soldier is in the pool of his blood on a military base in Virginia. Josh Kincaid is an element common to both events. In 2002, when his cousin Kincaid suggests an urgent trip to the Anasazi ruins of Mesa Verde to solve the riddle of one of these dead, Kincaid reluctantly agrees. Soon, he and a van full of misfits are on the way to the cave dwellings of the "ancestral enemies" where enemies await more contemporary ruins.

Josh Kincaid is happy with life in Phoenix, where he runs a bar and sell some drugs on the side. Its serenity is soon shattered, however, by a phone call from his cousin, Frankie McKnight, who claims to know why Josh's father died far from his home in Detroit in the parking lot of a gas station in Oklahoma City.

Endicott General Herman is looking for Josh, too. The highlight of his military career was winning the Silver Star for valor in Vietnam, followed by a few years after his promotion to general. But between those events, the death of a friend and the betrayal of an old companion have brought shame to a grieving widow and her unborn child. This secret could destroy the General, and Josh Kincaid knows that secret.

Endicott General Tommy takes on Three Hands, an Indian who lives in the Phoenix area, to kill Josh and Frankie, along with a reporter named Jeffrey Bonus and his traveling companion, Jeanette Koskos, who also demonstrated with questions about the death of Bonus father. Tommy is an ex-con who distrusts and hates white people, enjoys a reputation for violence and betrayal and has a cruel streak when it comes to women. It also has a grudge against Josh and his cousin Frankie.

All these characters converge on Mesa Verde, where the secret of the mysterious - and possibly violent - death of the Anasazi still seems to inhabit the ruins. As Josh and Frankie seek the answer to the fate of the legendary Jimmy Kincaid in heritage park and Bonus hopes to learn the true fate of his father, Tommy, and the general are making their own plans to ensure that the dead stay where they belong - the places that we call home.

Juanita: The mystical setting of the American Southwest - Four Corners region - this story backgrounds. Want to deepen your relationship with this region and how does the mystery?

Paul: I have a preference for the area on the basis of several trips I made in the last 20 years or so. I think a sense of place is important and this area of ​​the country suggests to me an eternity and continuity with the past that I find somewhat comforting or reassuring (though certainly not illusory). I wanted that kind of environment to tell this story.

Juanita: Would you tell us about your main characters?

Paul: Two of them, Josh Frank Kinkaid and McKnight, are connected. Kincaid is a transplant of the Phoenix area, but his life, as his choice of clubs, is random. And 'an orphan who has never substantially exceeded its status as an orphan. His cousin Frank is a former Detroit police officer with a hero / quest mentality burdened by a sense of responsibility too developed. Bonus Jeffrey is a young reporter who wants to discover how and why his father, a career military officer, committed suicide while the bonus was still in the womb of his mother. Jeanette Koskos is a failed model, a vagabond, a former drug addict / prostitute and a vital force. Now that I think this book is an orphan crusade, because each of these characters has physically or psychically lost his parents.

Juanita: Paul, the novel offers a lot of back-story in the lives of your characters. Want to comment on this aspect of your writing style and the character-driven aspect of this novel?

Paul: For me, it all starts with the characters. I try to see them as much as I can and let them loose in the narrative. In the case of "places the Dead Call Home" the first character I had was that of Jimmy Kincaid, Josh's father, who died in a robbery attempt in 1958. At the time, Jimmy's girlfriend, Gretchen, was pregnant with her only son. Actually suffers a mortal wound to the site of robbery as well, but she continues to exist in a comatose state until the birth of Josh. So, from there, I wanted to see how this "boy genius" would turn out. His cousin, Frank McKnight, had adored the old Jimmy Kincaid as a child and it was perhaps more motivated to discover what drove Jimmy on what turned out to be a suicide run from Detroit to the south-west.

To sort of balance this story, I introduced General Endicott and his lackeys, Gary Grote (who had been a military policeman with Josh in a previous life). In the novel, the fact that Josh Grote and you knew, if only the most casual of terms, is central to the plot. Another "couple" in the book is Jeffrey Bonus and Jeanette Koskos. Bonus has also lost his father-problems (Bonus was dead before he was born, just like Josh's father had), and Jeanette is the wild card in the group. As a defense mechanism, his identity is always provisional. It gives the story much of its vitality. Finally, I saw Tommy Three Hands, the obvious villain in the book, how to play against type. It 's an Indian, but at least in his mind is a mass murderer rather than a victim and there's very noble of him.

Juanita: Jeanette Koskos is the only woman in "Places the Dead Call Home." How do you compensate for the predominantly male cast, and what you enjoy writing through the voice of a woman?

Paul: Jeanette Koskos is perhaps the most important character in the book, in contrast with the "main". And 'weird (at least from the point of view of her male co-characters), but incisive. The male characters tend to behave in a conventional way, ie, how well they expect to behave. She offers spontaneity, intelligence and danger. It does everything that will happen. I imagined a character who was to be so cautious and risk-tolerant, idealistic, but practical. My feeling is that women are just more flexible than the men. Now I have no idea how true it is, but this is the "voice" in my head for Jeanette.

Juanita: The intertwined stories of your characters and murder various blend in Mesa Verde, CO What can you say about this convergence?

Paul: I can tell you that did not work in advance. The "revelation" of Mesa Verde came to me only at this point in the writing of the book.

Juanita: There is meaning in terms of travel or "moving toward the truth," as played in this story?

Paul: Yes. I saw this from the beginning as a road book. I wanted a sense of nomadic temperament between the characters. I am anxious for the truth and that truth is infinitely elusive.

Juanita: What is the underlying message of "Places of the Dead Call Home"?

Paul: I think that readers would prefer to provide that for them, but I wanted to say something about the futility of trying to reconcile or justify history.

Juanita: Any plans for a sequel? Do you have other projects in the pipeline?

Paul: I have nothing stirred in the direction of a sequel yet. I finished the third in a series of books that began with the Our Father and followed up with The Big Island. All three of these books involve a reluctant "detective" named Stephen Fargo. They are also working on a novel about a writer whose works have inspired almost universally ignored a violent society subsoil, to his dismay.

Juanita: What do you like most about writing this story?

Paul: This book was very fun to write. Since I had no idea how it would end, I was writing and reading at the same time, if that makes sense.

Juanita: How was the experience of writing your first novel mystery? You have found significant unique aspects of this kind?

Paul: Considering that the mystery is involved in my books, do not see them as mysteries or whodunits as conventional detective stories. My books have never Plot. I like to see how things play out when I put the characters that I developed in a certain situation.

Juanita: Do you think you've grown as a novelist through the progression of each of your books?

Paul: I try not to make the same mistakes, with varying success. I think you do get more confident, not necessarily that you're becoming a better writer, but that things work. The nightmare for most novelists, I would say, is that a book will only go on forever, and never will be solved.

Juanita: How can readers learn more about you and your efforts?

Paul: you can visit the website of the book http://www.placesthedeadcallhome.com.

Juanita: Paul, it was great talking with you today, thanks for the opportunity to interview for his new book "Dead House places the call." We definitely recommend the readers to search for all books at bookstores and online. Before leaving, do you have any last thoughts for your readers?

Paul: When I think of places as I have described, and all my books, for that matter, I always think that what is missing is the humor in them. Of course, it is always dangerous to proclaim what is funny - you hear comedians alert their audience that they should prepare to laugh - but I always shoot for humor among the stories of pain that I produce. Thanks for the opportunity to make that point and for this opportunity to talk about my work ....