Robert Swartwood
The Killing Room
DOSSIER: When you’re at your writing desk, and your dog, Bishop, isn’t in his bed nearby, does everything feel just a little bit off?
SWARTWOOD: Like many writers, my office is a book wasteland. Like, stacks and stacks of hardcovers and trade paperbacks all over the place. Honestly, there isn’t much room to navigate (my wife, as you can imagine, HATES it), but Bishop manages to find a cozy spot to doze while I’m in my office. And as much as I do love having him nearby, he can be a bit distracting. When he’s sleeping, he often snores quite loudly (which is probably due to a deviated septum), and there have also been times when he’ll audibly flatulate while I’m on the phone or on a Zoom call. And don’t get me started on when he gets his Kong! If anyone has a dog who enjoys a good Kong, you know just how … unpleasant the sound can be, so more than once I’ve had to text my wife to come get him out of my office while I was in the middle of a meeting. Still, I smile every time he trots into my office and lies down with a heavy, world-weary sigh.
DOSSIER: You have a solid grasp on the state of today’s publishing industry and its history. If you were starting out today with a book like THE KILLING ROOM, would you pursue the agent/traditional route, indy, or self-publish it?
SWARTWOOD: You’re much too kind. I don’t know if I have a solid grasp of today’s publishing industry or if I’ve just been lucky (personally, I lean toward the latter). Back when self-publishing was kicking into high gear (during the gold rush days, as I like to call them), I had several manuscripts two previous agents had shopped around New York without any luck, so I figured what the hey and uploaded those to Amazon and elsewhere and started to have some success. It was a lot of work, a lot of trial and error, but now I’m at a place where self-publishing feels almost natural. Having said that, my success in self-publishing has become a double-edged sword. While I’ve built a readership via mostly digital sales, I don’t have much print presence, and because of that, bookstores are less apt to carry my newest book. So if I was starting out today with a book like THE KILLING ROOM, which route would I pursue? It’s impossible to say, I’m afraid. Because if I have learned one thing about the publishing industry, it’s that a lot of it comes down to writing the right book at the right time and getting it in front of the right editors and readers at the right time. Of course, it helps to have also written a great book, but even great books tank more often than not. Because ultimately nobody knows what’s going to hit and become a runaway bestseller. If publishers knew that, every book would be a bestseller. And, if you think about it, that would be kinda boring.
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (Music/silence/heart-shaped bed in the Poconos?)
SWARTWOOD: Unfortunately, my heart-shaped bed in the Poconos burned in a fire when assassins tried to take me out, so now I mostly just either write at my desk in my office (usually late at night, after my wife and the dog have gone to bed, or if I’m on deadline during the day or evening wearing noise-canceling headphones and sometimes playing Mozart on low volume for background noise [my God, how pretentious does that sound??]), or I sometimes go to my local library and find a nice quiet spot to hunker down and bang out a chapter or two.
DOSSIER: You went to ThrillerFest this year, and you’re going to Bouchercon 2023. Your panels and discussions are always great, but what’s the craziest thing you’ve seen off stage at one of those conferences?
SWARTWOOD: I’m sworn to secrecy due to several ironclad NDAs, so I can’t tell you the craziest thing I’ve seen. But I do wish I’d gone to more panels while I was at ThrillerFest this past year, though it’s impossible to be in several places at once because they often have several great panels running simultaneously. This past ThrillerFest featured a discussion between Jack Carr and Brad Thor, and one of the things Carr said has stuck with me: how somebody’s gear (their weapons, outfits, etc) tells a story. Such as: somebody who trains as a Navy SEAL uses a specific type of gear, as opposed to, say, somebody who trains as an Army Ranger. So Carr said just by looking at the guns and knives someone carries (not to mention how they carry themselves), he can tell some of their history, which he incorporates when he creates his characters.
DOSSIER: The extraordinary Edoardo Ballerini is one of the very best audiobook narrators in the business. Can you discuss the nature of the bet you won to get him to do THE KILLING ROOM?
SWARTWOOD: Blackmail, plain and simple. Or, well, to be a bit more boring, Edoardo was one of a handful of wishlist narrators I gave Blackstone, and I’m thrilled he signed on, as he’s perfect for the book.
Website: robertswartwood.com
Jeff Circle 