Hello,
Today’s interview is with Kevin Chapman, author of Deadly Enterprise.
Please enjoy.
Best,
-Vincent Lowry
Interview:
1) What is your author name and in what state do you live (or country if not in the US)?
Kevin G. Chapman – West Windsor, NJ (USA)
2) What is the title of your newest book and what is the genre?
Deadly Enterprise (Mike Stoneman Thriller #2). This is crime/thriller, police procedural.
3) What is the book about?
Mike Stoneman, the titular character, is a NY City Homicide detective. He’s a somewhat crusty veteran and in the first book of the series, he was paired up with a young Black detective named Jason Dickson. In this next book, (avoiding spoilers), Mike and Jason have two parallel investigations. One is a pretty straightforward murder of a Bronx bodega owner who wouldn’t play ball with the local protection and money-laundering racket. They have a pretty good idea of who the killer is, but they are not getting any support from the task force working on the larger organized crime syndicate. Meanwhile, the death of a young woman is flagged as suspicious by the Medical Examiner, Michelle McNeill, who also happens to be Mike’s love interest (a romance that started in book #1). Cause of death is a heroin overdose and drowning, but Michelle thinks it might be murder. When Mike and Jason try to look into that, they discover that the young woman may not be the only victim. But, again, their efforts are impeded by internal obstacles, as files are missing and they get no cooperation from the vice unit, and it appears that she, and at least one of the other possible victims, were visited while in lock-up by a mysterious man impersonating a detective. When Internal Affairs gets involved, and when the sister of the dead girl shows up in New York, the investigation becomes anything but routine. Mike and Jason have to figure out who the bad guys are, and some of them may be other cops.
4) Where did you come up with the idea?
The core of the story was inspired by real events. In the spring of 2018, a group of New York cops, including a retired vice detective, were arrested and charged with running a prostitution and gambling operation in Queens. The active cops helped shield the retired detective’s operation from detection. The bad cops were vilified (properly) by the Poilce Commissioner and the head of the Internal Affairs division. The news stories about that police-run prostitution ring led to the Mike Stoneman story, in which a young woman who got caught up in the scheme winds up dead. The cops have to cover their tracks and certainly don’t need Mike poking around in their business. This shell story provided the superstructure for everything else, including the development of the characters, and in particular the relationship between Mike and Jason.
5) How long did it take you to write it?
Publication of Deadly Enterprise will be just over one year after publication of book #1 in the series. Not bad for somebody with a day job.
6) Did you learn anything from the project?
I had to research details about the NYPD for the story, which was fun. Mostly I learned that trying to market one book while you’re writing the next book is hard!
7) Do you have an author website and/or blog? How about a book video?
My website is http://www.KevinGChapman.com. My blog, which includes reviews of other people’s books, resides there. I have not created any videos about these books, although it would be a wonderful project.
8) Do you have any success tips to pass on to fellow authors? How about any great editors/cover artists?
My editor is wonderful. She’s freelance and is super thorough and has a good eye, particularly for female-centered issues that I am sometimes blind to. She is great with story development and characters. I can recommend her highly. http://www.samanthachapmanediting.com. (Full disclosure, she’s my daughter, but she really is terrific.)
My book covers have been designed by Bespoke Bookcovers (www.bespokebookcovers.com). Peter is very easy to work with and very responsive. I drove him a bit crazy on this cover design because there is an image of a dead girl floating in the East River and we had to get the image right and then figure out how obvious to make it. In the end, he suggested an opaque image that is visible, but which doesn’t jump off the page at you. His service is wonderful and the price is quite reasonable.
The biggest lesson learned on this project is to give it enough time. I announced the date for the book launch (Dec. 2) because I wanted to have the books available for the holiday season, but I now wish I had not announced the date until I was further along in the final editing process. I’ll make the deadline, but I’m rushing a bit now and I’ve missed some marketing opportunities, including getting some pre-publication reviews, because there is not enough time before publication date. Next time, I’m going to be more patient.
9) What genres do you like to read? Are you open to reading new authors and reviewing their work?
I regularly review other authors’ books. I enjoy science fiction and legal drama, as well as crime. I’m a lawyer, and I’m happy to give advice to authors who are not lawyers who need a check on legal procedure etc. I also love sports books. I have really enjoyed working with the authors who have given me pre-publication quotes for my book cover, and I’d be happy to do the same for others.
10) What is your favorite book of all time and why?
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. It’s technically science fiction, but it’s really about society and justice and religion and morality. Heinlein used the SciFi genre to write a social commentary that still stands up after 50 years. I love the characters and the cynical wisdom.
11) Fun Question: Do you have any pets? If so, what kind?
Sadly, our Bichon Frise, “Bunches,” passed a while back and we have not replaced her with a new dog. My wife and I are definitely dog people.
12) Fun Question 2: Do you own an electronic reading device? If so, what kind and how do you like it?
I was a late convert to the Kindle Paperwhite, but now I don’t go anywhere without it. As much as I still like paper books, lugging around multiple books on vacation, or loading down my briefcase with a paper book for the train adds unnecessary weight to my commute. The Kindle is easy to use, easy to read (even outside), and I never have to worry about what will happen if I finish a book during a trip – there is always another one waiting.
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Additional questions:
Q: Do you have any law enforcement in your background or in your family?
A: No. My father was a sportswriter in a small town in the state of Washington. I have three brothers, but none worked in law enforcement. I’m a lawyer, but practicing labor & employment law on behalf of employers is pretty far from criminal defense. My writing about detective Mike Stoneman and his cohorts in the NYPD Homicide division are purely the product of my imagination, supplemented with a little research.
Q: Is there anything in the current novel that is out of your personal experience?
A: There are a lot of physical locations in the book with which I am personally familiar. Mike Stoneman’s apartment, for example, is where my wife and I used to live in Manhattan, on 68th street between Amsterdam and Broadway. Mike’s jogging route and the other scenes on the Upper West Side of Manhattan are not imagined – I’ve been there. In Deadly Enterprise, I have Mike and Michelle take a roadtrip to my home town of Port Angeles, WA, which was fun to write about. But, the characters are all totally fictional, and the the murders, the cops, and everyone else are completely imagined. I used a few names that are similar to names of real people I know, but the characters bear little or no resemblance to them.
Q: Where is the relationship between Mike and his love interest, Medical Examiner Michelle McNeill going?
A: In book #1, Righteous Assassin, Mike clumsily starts his romance with Michelle. By the end, they were definitely dating, but the end of that story created some doubt about whether the relationship would continue. Some of my readers were very worried about them, which is great because it means the readers care. Now, in this book, they are a couple, but still with some rough patches. If you read my first novel, Identity Crisis, and examine the relationship between the primary character, Rick LaBlonde, and his long-time girlfriend, you’ll see a relationship that is both solid and on the verge of breakdown because Sybil wanted to get married and Rick was stringing her along. We’ll see if Mike and Michelle get to that point about ten books from now. For the moment, their romance is still in its early stages, so we’ll let them have some fun with it before we worry about exactly where it’s heading. The more interesting question is where Jason’s love life is headed. Stay tuned for an answer to that question in book #3.
Q: Did you have the ending in mind when you started writing?
A: Actually, yes. I wrote the ending first, although a few things changed along the way. The book came together more like a screenplay, with each scene linking to some other part of the story, not necessarily in linear temporal order. But I always knew where it was going and how it was going to end.
Q: What other authors or books have inspired you?
A: As a kid I read a lot of science fiction, and loved Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Isaac Asimov. And, of course, Tolkien. As an adult, I read a lot of mystery/detective stories and love Sara Paretsky and Michael Connelly. There’s a little bit of Harry Bosch in my Mike Stoneman character. The main thing for me is a good plot and a story that I can really follow and get involved with. I think Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” may be my favorite book, partly because of the depiction of the legal system of the future.
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