In his novel, Day One, Bill Cameron unleashes a story so thrilling that New York Times bestselling author Chelsea Cain says, "Day One combines philosophical first person wit with a spider web of a plot. It is an utterly engrossing page-turner, but you'll force yourself to slow down, just so you don't miss any of Bill Cameron's crackerjack writing. A reluctant hero, a damsel in distress, a kid with a secret, plenty of Oregon references, and oh, lots and lots of murder. What more could anyone want?"
Born and raised in southern Oregon farm country, Ellie Spaneker flees her home and abusive husband, her trail dogged by a brutal ex-cop in the hire of her vengeful father-in-law. In Portland, retired homicide detective Skin Kadash fills his idle days drinking coffee and searching for Eager Gillespie, a teen runaway of special interest as the only witness in a troublesome and long unsolved murder. Eager, meanwhile, is on his own, grifting and working the angles in the homeless underground, oblivious to the unfolding events which will force him to face the consequences of a crime, and a longing, which has haunted him for years.
These disparate trails converge at a bloody standoff, the harrowing end of a string of violence which stretches from the high desert to the streets of Portland.
Bill Cameron is the author of the dark, gritty Portland-based mysteries, Lost Dog, Chasing Smoke, and Day One. His stories have appeared in Spinetinger, Killer Year, Portland Noir, and the forthcoming First Thrills.
I had a chance to catch up with Bill a few days ago and ask him some questions.
Is there anything special you'd like to tell us about Day One?
With each project, I like to try something new. Both Lost Dog and Chasing Smoke unfold through a straightforward chronology: A followed by B followed by C, and so on. In Day One, I explore the idea that our understanding of events is independent of the order in which they occur. The story unfolds in a staccato, fractured chronology which jumps back and forth in time and from character to character in a way which I believe both reflects and illuminates the turbulence in their lives. And while Skin Kadash returns and is central, he's not the single focus the way he was in Chasing Smoke. One of the advantages of introducing multiple point-of-view characters was I gave myself the chance to explore new territory without giving up the pleasure I take in writing about Skin.
Did any particular event inspire the plot?
Day One started with a single paragraph, a couple of sentences I dashed off one afternoon before I had more than the vaguest sense of what I might want to write about. That paragraph, Skin reflecting on a kid who gets shot in the street outside of his house, became my starting point. Though the scene develops into a police standoff with Skin's neighbor, when I wrote those first few lines, I didn't even know who the kid was, and the police standoff wouldn't occur to me for months.
Still, I have goals when I start a novel, themes I want to examine, settings I want to use. I was interested in digging into Skin's feelings of isolation and uselessness in the period after he retires from the Portland Police Bureau. That grew into a larger theme of emotional and social isolation in general, something each of the characters grapple with in their own way. The city of Portland figures heavily in my tales, and with each new project I like to integrate a new and personally significant part of the city. For Day One, much of the local action takes place in Mount Tabor Park, an extinct volcano in the middle of the city which serves as both one of my favorite places and as setting for the most dramatic moments in the story. (One way to tell I like a particular location is if I make some horrible trauma occur there.)
What are you doing to promote your book?
I'll be making appearances around the Northwest, starting May 24 with a talk on character-driven mystery for the Oregon Writers Colony, and followed by a May 27th panel with the Portland-area Friends of Mystery. The release party for Day One will be June 10th at Portland's Murder by the Book, with subsequent visits to the Seattle Mystery Bookshop, Powell's, and a trip to southern Oregon for the Ashland Mystery Readers Group. I'll also be blogging at 7 Criminal Minds, a group blog I joined in April, and at Kaye Barley's Meandering and Muses in June (http://meanderingsandmuses.blogspot.com/). All my events are listed at http://www.billcameronmysteries.com/events.shtml.
What's next?
I'm working on a follow-up, tentatively titled County Line Road, which focuses on Ruby Jane Whittaker, a close friend of Skin's who has been an important figure in all three of my books to date. In County Line Road, Ruby Jane goes missing and during his search for her, Skin finds himself digging into a part of her past she's long kept hidden. Once again I am trying something new, telling a major part of the story from the perspective of Ruby Jane as a teenage girl, a tremendous challenge and so far very rewarding. I plan to finish the book this summer.
When you're not writing, what are you doing (hobbies, family, etc.)?
My wife and I are amateur birdwatchers, a hobby we share with Skin (though he's much more knowledgeable than we are). We like to walk around the city with our poodle and go on long bike rides. We're mellow sorts.
What didn't I ask you that I should have?
The thing which strikes me is the way my series has developed. Each time I finish a book, I think this is the last about these characters. I never expected Lost Dog to lead to Chasing Smoke, nor Chasing Smoke to Day One. A year ago, I was working a new character, certain the world of Skin Kadash and Ruby Jane Whittaker was exhausted. And yet by fall, I was deep in the weeds on County Line Road. It's starting to sink in that Skin may be with me for a while. That said, I'd like to try something new after I finish County Line Road. But you never know.
During Don Helin's career in the military, he spent three tours in the Pentagon, then worked as a lobbyist for industry. These two "Washington Insider" careers have provided him ample material for his thriller novels.
