Nick Petrie
The Price You Pay
DOSSIER: After writing three books that didn’t get published, do you look back at your national bestseller, THE DRIFTER, (your fourth) and wonder if there was a secret sauce to that book, or was it just a matter of practice and getting better that really launched your writing career?
PETRIE: I’ve gone back and read those unpublished books, and it’s clear to me that those books just weren’t good enough. The saving grace was that each book moved me farther along the road to publication, from getting a few encouraging agent’s rejection letters, to finding a bad agent, to finding a good agent who got real interest from a big 5 publisher. That’s the agent who finally sold THE DRIFTER in a 2-book deal. When I finally became a part of the crime fiction community, I realized that it’s incredibly common for writers to pen a couple of unpublished books before finding their stride. Writing a novel that people want to read is not easy, and takes years to learn. I’m still learning, trying to raise the level of my craft. I think the new Peter Ash novel, THE PRICE YOU PAY, is my best book yet.
DOSSIER: You’ve been a friend to a lot of writers like TR Hendricks, Bill Schweigart, and many more. Despite that all writers are at different places on their publishing journey, what kind of help have you found to be most beneficial to newer writers on their path to publication? General industry advice, developmental direction, or something else?
PETRIE: Because writing novels is such a solitary thing, and work that many non-writers really don’t understand, I’ve found it incredibly important to be part of a larger community of writers, both newer writers and folks who’ve been at this a lot longer than I have. When you talk with other people who share your disease, it helps to normalize the challenges inherent to the work, like self-doubt, getting stuck, and getting your work out into the world.
When I talk to newer writers, I think that’s what I want to get across the most – that this life is not for the faint of heart, and it’s not easy for anyone, but you’re not in it alone. I don’t think of myself in competition with other authors – I’m only in competition with myself, to keep getting better – so I always do what I can to support other writers. I’ve been the beneficiary of so much support myself – I’m just trying to pay it forward.
DOSSIER: You’re known to turn off your phone and have an internet blocker on your computer, (I may or may not have replied to two text messages, checked my email, and gone through three social media feeds while coming up with this question) but when and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (Music/silence/overlooking the river at your house?)
PETRIE: My brain is always running a few RPM’s past the safety limit, so I’ve found that a calm and quiet environment helps keep me focused. Turning off the phone made an enormous difference with that challenge. My wife often works at home, too, and while my work requires quiet, hers is full of phone calls and video meetings. To help with that, I wear noise-cancelling headphones and have a couple of different playlists depending on how much sound I need to block out. I’ve found an 8-hour podcast recording of a thunderstorm that works well when the house gets REALLY loud.
In terms of the physical space, my office has a view of my small backyard, and good light. I tend to get slow and sleepy in the winter, so I also have a couple of full-spectrum lamps to keep me cheerful on gloomy days. I recently switched to an adjustable-height desk, and now work a chunk of every day standing up, which seems to help mitigate some of the physical issues that happen when you spend way too much time sitting in a chair and staring at a screen.
DOSSIER: With the setting locations in your book almost being characterlike themselves, do you find it necessary or helpful to get your butt out of the chair and physically visit them or do you just rely on personal memory and Google searches? The Dossier imagines you driving aimlessly through rural Nebraska counting rows of corn until magic strikes and you plot out an entire novel at a rest stop along I-80.
PETRIE: Setting is very important to me, and while you can get a lot from Google, there is no substitute for getting out of the office and a) driving around and b) meeting the locals. As the saying goes, you don’t know what you don’t know, and I pick up countless small details of character and place that add up into a greater whole. This process really helps me visualize the physical and emotional weight of both setting and action, and I think that’s why the Peter Ash books feel so vivid, alive, and cinematic.
For THE RUNAWAY, my Nebraska book, I realized early on that I wasn’t going to make any real progress with the book until I went there, so I just threw my camping gear in the van and started driving. My van is quite elderly – no phone connection – so I cruise in silence and watch the landscape and let my backbrain put things together. By the last day I was dictating into my phone as I drove home. It’s amazing what happens when you’ve got boots on the ground.
DOSSIER: If you weren’t continually being pushed to write your Peter Ash novels, and you went off into another series (or a standalone) what kind of direction, besides the obvious historical romance thriller option, would your next book take?
PETRIE: How did you know about my sideline in historical sci-fi romance novels? Kidding. I’m actually working on a standalone right now, although I can’t really talk about it yet. Let’s just say that I’m a crime writer, and anything I write will explore those same issues and themes that are part of the Peter Ash books – good and evil and the many shades of gray, with the same attention paid to setting and character and conflict and action.
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