Interview with Crime Writer Dana King – S.4, Ep. 10

Debbi Mack interviews crime writer Dana King on this episode of the Crime Cafe. Check out the show notes below! Or, if you're in a rush, download your copy here! Debbi M: [00:00:06] Hi everyone. This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense, and thriller writing. I'm your host Debbi Mack. [00:00:25] Before I bring on my guest, I'll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two ebooks for sale. The nine-book boxed set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy links for both on my website debbimack[dot]com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You'll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon. Along with our eternal gratitude for doing so. [00:01:02] It's my pleasure to have as my guest today the author of two series and a standalone novel as well as several short stories. And he is also a Shamus nominee and nominee for other awards. [00:01:19] It's Dana King. Hi, Dana. It's great to have you on today. Dana K: [00:01:23] It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Debbi M: [00:01:26] It's my pleasure to have you on, Dana. I was at the C3 conference with Dana, and he told the funniest story during Noir at the Bar. But we won't go into that. It was great, though. That was a wonderful take-off on the Sergeant Friday Dragnet thing. And had a lot of hardboiled humor in it. So I'm a big fan just based on that. So you have two series: Penns River and Nick Forte--is that correct? Dana King writes the Penns River and Nick Forte series. Dana K: [00:02:02] That's right. Nick Forte. That's right. Debbi M: [00:02:04] And is Nick Forte a private eye? Dana K: [00:02:08] Yes. Debbi M: [00:02:08] Okay, tell us a little bit about that series. Dana K: [00:02:12] He's a private eye based in Chicago. It got started actually you mentioned that the satire on the Joe Friday stories. He was the first character actually created. I was coming out of a musical career and I wrote a short story that was supposed to be a satire on Mickey Spillane that used a bunch of friends of mine as part of a story with a musical background to it. And it was so well-received by a lot of people I wrote another story about the job I was at and included them. Same type, too. He was investigating something at this job, and I went to another job and they read the other two stories and pretty soon I got to thinking maybe I should do something more serious with this character and that's where the idea for writing the novels came from. Nick Forte is a private eye based in Chicago. Debbi M: [00:02:57] Aha. Okay, and how did you choose Chicago as a location? Dana K: [00:03:03] I was living in Chicago at the time, and I really enjoyed my time there so there were a lot of locations, a lot of things about Chicago that came to mind when I was putting it together. Debbi M: [00:03:14] Interesting. And the Penns River novels. I'm reading one now and enjoying it. They're based in a small town near Pittsburgh, correct? Dana K: [00:03:28] Yes. Debbi M: [00:03:29] Because you are originally from that area? Click on the cover to check it out! Dana K: [00:03:31] Yes. Penns River as a town is actually an amalgam of three small cities about 20 miles up the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh, and I grew up sort of in all three of them. I was born in Warren and the hospital is no longer there. My parents took me to an apartment in another of those three cities. That building has since burned to the ground is now a vacant lot. And then I grew up in the third one and lived there--in fact, my parents lived there until just last year. My father passed. So I know not just the area, but I know the people, I know the kinds of things they are interested in. I had an idea for a police procedural story. I wanted to tell it. I needed a new setting, because obviously Forte wouldn't work for a police procedural.