Sure, plenty of them. I hadn't thought much about his childhood and upbringing, only his recent past. I tried to create a history that jibed with his personality and characteristics.
What do you think readers of this book will be surprised to learn about Nate?
That the source of his troubles and the reason for his self-imposed exile in Wyoming can be traced to a little known true incident in the mid-1990s. And that if he'd acted differently during that incident history would have been changed.
How would you describe Nate? How are you similar to Nate and how are you different? And how are you similar and different from Joe?
Nate is an island with his own customs, laws, and sense of justice that have very little to do with society and he won't adapt or bend. He'd rather go down fighting than conform. I think many of us wish we could be more like that but we don't want to take the risks involved. Joe Pickett is more conventional: a state employee with a job that focuses on enforcing the law. I think I'm somewhere in between.
What have been the high and low points of your literary career so far? There haven't really been any low points since the publication of the first novel, Open Season. It's been a wonderful and very rewarding ride in every aspect. My job is doing what I love to do most. The low points were probably prior to finally getting published. It's a very humbling experience to think of oneself as a failed novelist. I was a newspaper reporter for many years and it affected me as a writer. You wrote, I believe, for a small-town newspaper. How did that work affect you as a person and as a writer?
Being a small-town newspaper reporter and writer was the best training imaginable for what I do today. I really think more fledgling novelists — and many current and even established novelists — should get out into the real world and cover local politics, sports, culture, and crime and write it up on deadline. It exposed me to people from many walks of life I never would have met otherwise, and allowed me to observe people and situations I'd be completely ignorant to if my path to writing had been an MFA degree. I still draw from those years in every novel I write.
Can you talk about how you research your books including for this one?
Article Author: Scott Butki
Scott Butki was a newspaper reporter for more than 10 years before making a career change into education... then into special education.
He reads at least 50 books a year and has about the same number of author interviews each year and, …
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