Huntzman Publishing: Cop Drama👮📘🚔

How did you transition from being a retired police officer into a novelist?

It was a very circuitous route! My first foray into writing occurred back in 2000 when I wrote the original chapter of Perfect Pawn. It actually started out as a dare from my wife. Both of us are avid readers. One evening she commented that writing a book must be very hard. Silly me responded that I didn’t believe that it was. My reason for this belief was that I’d just spent the last decade writing investigatory reports on criminal investigations. After the first dozen or so you looked for ways to keep the reader’s attention. The thesaurus and I became quick friends. You also have to recall a lot of details from the scene. Writing for me is like watching a movie in my mind. I see the scene play out and then I write it. At the time, she encouraged me to continue writing, but then 9/11 occurred and our lives were thrown into upheaval for a few years. Over the years she kept urging me to finish the book, but it wasn’t until 2012 that I actually committed myself to it.

For our readers who are just learning about crime fiction some of the categories are as follows: police procedural, hard boiled, detective, spy, cozy crime, cozy mystery, caper, legal dramas, thrillers, private detective, tartan noir and last but not least my favorite supernatural crime fiction. What type of crime novels do you write?

I’d have to say that I view my novels as sort of a hybrid. There are elements of police procedural, coupled with traditional mystery, some hard boiled, a bit of cozy, and a dose of thriller thrown in for good measure. I want my readers to be fully engaged with my books and not know what is coming next. I have had letters from some readers complaining that it was after midnight and they couldn’t put the book down. Some of them were mothers with children to take care of. To me, as a writer, that is the ultimate compliment.

Having been a real police officer how did that serve you with writing police procedural novels?

Well, like they say, the devil is in the details. In my opinion, unless you have lived it, you can’t truly appreciate it or write about it. Cops pick up on minor things that most folks wouldn’t normally see. Things which I believe can take the writing to another level. It’s not just the procedural side, but the conversations that they have with one another. The conversations, the joking, the pain, to me it all goes toward making the story a more realistic experience for the reader.  

How do you keep your plots unpredictable without sacrificing believability?

Life is unpredictable, so why shouldn’t writing be that way? Unless you witness the actual crime, most investigations start out with a theory. This can be based on several things, such as witnesses, locations, and known perpetrators, but I have personally seen theories go up in smoke very quickly. I imagine my readers in the investigators role, giving them the information as it develops and challenging them to ‘figure it out’, but, just like in real life, just because something seems one way, doesn’t mean that it is.

How did you learn to write effective plot twists and red herrings without giving
anything away? 

In interviews I have done, I have explained that murder is murder and it has been going on since Cain slew Able. The fact is that the only thing that ever changes is the backstory. Most readers will pick-up a book and figure it will end like ‘and they lived happily ever after.’ Unfortunately, that’s a lie. Twenty-two years in law enforcement taught me that good doesn’t always triumph over evil and bad guys sometimes come out ahead. I describe what I write as being fictional reality. That is, the underlying crimes are all real, just the details are made up. When I write a plot, I imagine a magician using sleight of hand. At the end, you realize that the answer was there all along, I just made sure you were looking someplace else. I also like to toss in elements that no one expects, completely out of the blue, because that is what life does.

Do you think having been a police officer helps you write this element into your stories more naturally then crime writers who do not have a law enforcement background? 

Oh, Absolutely. It is certainly an advantage having a law enforcement background. If I am writing a particular scene, I can draw from my personal experiences. I don’t need to call an expert and say ‘hey, how would this work?’ I hate that when I am reading a book or watching a show and see something that would just never happen. It actually happens more often than you would imagine. It could be just one minor thing, but it is enough to make you question everything else.

When you write forensic and/or CSI elements into your novels who do you consult to help you make those scenes realistic in your fiction or do you use creative license for that component of the police/crime story? 

I tend not to use too much creative license in my writing. I don’t think it is smart as a writer to establish your bona fides and then go ‘and now, suspend your belief system.’ I choose to not get too caught up in the forensic elements. That’s just not my writing style. If I discuss anything in that nature it is usually a quick commentary, based on my experience, for a particular scene. I think there are other authors who deal with this niche quite effectively and they don’t need an amateur jumping into the deep end of their pool.

What are your favorite lines from the book? Please share them with us from the book the Perfect Pawn

Patricia Ann Browning didn’t see the deer standing in the middle of the road until it was too late, not that it would have mattered.
The Seven-Three was a place where cops grew accustomed to gunfire. It became almost a normal part of the background noise.
He hung the dress up in the closet, smoothing out the fabric and stepped back looking at it. Then the thought crossed his mind, what exactly was she wearing when she left?
When Maguire was done he was certain of two things. First, the search was conducted by well intentioned, yet completely inexperienced, individuals. Second, and more importantly, he was absolutely certain that Tricia had never stepped foot into these woods.
“It’s just when you upped and left the stories grew more interesting with each and every passing day. I swear after a few years they had you living in some tent in the Middle East shepherding goats around.” Maguire laughed. “You know, there were more than a few days where that would have actually sounded good to me.”
“When you come to the difficult choices in life, don’t choose the easy way. Choose the ones that you believe in and by doing so you will remove all of the ‘what ifs’ that will haunt you in twenty or thirty years. In doing so you might very well find yourself living in a cardboard box under a bridge, or surviving on spaghetti-o’s and cigarettes. That is the price we must sometimes pay for our folly.”
“He just wanted the arm candy girlfriend for the attention and he kept her on his arm by threats and intimidation. I look back on it now and it was just another form of his bullying, except this was on a psychological level.”
The average criminal failed simply because they couldn’t think beyond the moment. They lacked clarity of thought and sound judgment. They had no vision. No, he wasn’t like those fools, he thought. He had a plan, a purpose.
[he had] a heavy gold plated chain dangling from around his neck to which a big medallion of Jesus’ face was attached. The image was so comical that Maguire almost laughed in the kid’s face. There was nothing like bringing the good Lord along when you’re committing a crime.
“Is it human?” McDermott asked. “How the hell am I supposed to know, McDermott? I’m the sheriff not the damn medical examiner.”
“I’m not overly impressed by the caliber of your investigatory skills. I mean let’s be honest, you don’t even have the rudimentary ability to even answer the nagging question of ‘what happened to my wife and where is she now?’”

Agatha Christie wrote in her autobiography about her dislike of mysteries having a romantic subplot. Several Crime Fiction writers have complained that romance has no place in crime fiction. Do you agree or disagree with Agatha Christie’s views? Do you think romance is necessary in police novels? 

Far be it from me to argue with Agatha Christie, but I’m a NY’er, so I will. I think you have to take her answer in the context of what she wrote. If you are talking about a traditional whodunit, then I would probably have to agree with her. However, in books like mine, it is as much about the mystery as it is about the characters. They might be dealing with a life or death situation, but they are also dealing with the everyday issues as well. I think you can effectively mix the two and not take anything away from the main premise. In fact, romance ca even be an effective vehicle to move a plot line in a particular direction.

What is the Perfect Pawn about?

Perfect Pawn introduces you to James Maguire, a retired NYPD detective, who returns to his childhood home to help search for his missing high school sweetheart who disappeared from a one car accident in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. When he arrives, he is shocked to find that no one, not even her husband, who is the county sheriff, is interested in finding her. As he begins to investigate, he soon realizes that her disappearance was just the opening move in a much larger game and that the next target might just be him.

How much did you rely on your police background to write the mystery thriller the Perfect Pawn?

Perfect Pawn was interesting because it is a composite. A lot of the characters are based on actual people I knew throughout my police career. A lot of the descriptions of scenes are based on actual places I have been as well as things I did during my career. I adopted the whole ‘write what you know’ mentality.

Tell us about your books/series?

Without giving anything away, the series is based on a primary protagonist, James Maguire, a retired NYPD detective and former Navy SEAL. I’m a big fan of character development, ala Tom Clancy, so, as the series progresses, you are introduced to a continuation of the characters development, whether through personal relationships or career. In a side twist, I wrote a short story, called Small Town Secrets, which introduced a secondary protagonist, Alex Taylor, Maguire’s former partner. It was intended to be an interim story for my readers between Maguire novels. However, after my wife read it she fell in love with the character and made me write a full length novel. So I have these two really great characters and they weave in and out of each other’s books. Each has their own separate and distinct personalities and it is a blast to write them.

As a former Police Officer do you have any real life ghost stories, alien visitations, Bigfoot or Chupacabra sightings that you can or are allowed to share with us? 

It’s funny, I have never personally experienced those things, but I do believe in them, to a degree. I think we have to maintain an open mind about things, especially since we are continually ‘learning’ about our world. I have a good friend, Larry Wilson, who is a paranormal investigator in Illinois. Larry is one of the most credible people I know and I have spoken to him at great lengths about his investigations. No matter how many times we have talked about a particular investigation he has done, or a location, the facts of the story never change. That’s significant for me, because I have interviewed a lot of people during my career. It’s been my experience that people have to ‘remember’ the tale, but they just tell you the truth. I’ve listened to the audio and watched videos he has taken and I have no explanation for what I am seeing or hearing.

Huntzman Publishing was created for the sole purpose of helping indie authors, can you please elaborate? 

Actually, Huntzman Publishing was started after I wrote Perfect Pawn. When I had completed the book we began to look at the whole process for submitting a book to an agent / publisher. It is quite draconian. So we figured out how to self-publish and did it on our own. There is something to be said to be fully invested in your book, from conception to print. I think that knowing exactly how everything works makes you a better author.

What do you look for in submissions for Huntzman Publishing?

Like traditional publishers, we look for books that are well written. I think that the one problem with indie authors is that a lot of very raw material gets out there, that shouldn’t be. Not saying that a person shouldn’t write, but they should at least have it polished before they put it into print. You only have one chance to make a first impression. Bad cover graphics, horrible grammar and spelling mistakes are book killers, no matter how great the storyline.

To find out more about one of New York’s Finest visit him at:
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Elizabeth Simmons is a blogger and writer. To read her zany tweets follow her @literaryebooks and visit her at Pinterest chat with her at Goodreads.