Secrets are revealed here in the Eric Beetner confidential Dossier -

Eric Beetner
The Last Few Miles of Road

When Carter McCoy learns he hasn’t got long to live, it’s time to take care of something he has wanted to do for years–kill the man responsible for his daughter’s death. But Carter has no experience killing and isn’t even sure he can do it.

A Dossier Update 2/25/2025: Beetner is back with REAL BAD, REAL SOON.

DOSSIER: Carter McCoy is back with his trusty sidekick Chester for another thrilling story. With Carter kicking things off by being on the run for his life, how important is that kind of desperate action to jump off right on page one?

BEETNER: I like to start a story in motion. Dropping a reader into action is a great way to propel the story along and readers don’t mind playing a little catch-up, as long as you don’t delay long enough and as long as they want to know the answers to the questions you raise. It can be a tricky balance, but I do love starting with little to no preamble. For Carter’s story, he has this ticking clock hanging over him all the time since he knows he is dying, so there is urgency in everything he does. Part of that is more existential in that he only has a short time to also reconcile his actions and decide what note he wants to leave this world on, which all plays out in his head. It’s what makes Carter such a fun character to write. He’s struggling externally with threats to himself and the people he’s trying to help, but also there is a deep internal struggle within him about what he’s doing.

DOSSIER: Your film noir poster collection is so extensive, you keep part of it in storage Is that for space issues or security? More importantly, since you’re planning on doing a year-long social media video series to show it all to us, what are a few of your favorites we can look forward to?

BEETNER: To be clear, “Storage” is my closet. Not like I have a warehouse or anything. So purely space issues. As much as I’d like to have Film Noir movie posters in every room of the house, oddly my wife doesn’t see that as a good design strategy.

One of the reasons I’m doing it is I do like to dig everything out from time to time to look at it because I enjoy them, and I get to decide if I want to swap out anything on my wall which is fun to rotate some titles now and then. I have a few that are very large – U.S. 3-sheets and a few Italian posters that are quite large. I simply don’t have wall space for them and they don’t make ready-made frames for that size, so getting those out will be fun. Titles like Crime Wave, Odds Against Tomorrow, T-Men, The Big Heat. Some of my favorite films and the scale of these images is impressive. One day when I sell a million books and get to buy a house with a home theater, the plan is to get them framed and hung. So if y’all could buy about 1000 copies each of the books, that would be great.

The Writer’s Dossier 12/16/2024 – The Eric Beetner Interview

Always love the dog

DOSSIER: With your latest novel, THE LAST FEW MILES OF ROAD, a man at the end of his rope decides to go kill somebody. That seems desperate and a little dark (as it should!), but how important is Chester the dog to the story? Not just to the plot, but is there a bigger purpose or method behind writing trusty sidekicks like animals into books without screwing it up?

BEETNER: I hope I’m not pulling the curtain back too far on this one, and it’s been great to see how readers have embraced Chester, but beyond me being a dog lover/owner (we have 3) the real reason Chester ended up in the story is that I wanted Carter to have someone to talk to. Since Carter spends so much of the story alone I wanted him to be able to speak some of those inner thoughts out loud and have someone to react to, and Chester was the perfect addition to the story. So what started out as a narrative necessity, became one of my favorite parts of the book for sure.

A top panel moderator

DOSSIER: When I saw you moderate a panel at the Midwest Mystery Conference in Chicago lately, I thought, “This guy knows how to moderate a panel!” What’s your biggest goal when you’re interviewing people? Disclose something interesting, make listeners take note, learn something, what? (Your podcast, Writer Types, is fantastic, too.)

BEETNER: I try to come to any interview from the perspective of a reader. It’s easy to talk shop and get in the weeds on writerly stuff, but most readers don’t want to know that. They want to get to know the author for who they are. I’ve seen it happen so often that you show up to a panel for Big Author A and then you get charmed by someone else on the panel and you end up buying their book, but really it has nothing to do with the plot of the novel or anything, more the connection you made with that author.

I’m also naturally curious and I like asking questions. Part of that, I know, is deflecting the attention away from myself. I’m a classic introvert in that sense and while I can absolutely psyche myself up to host or moderate an event, I need to decompress after and take some alone time to balance the scales.

But if I can tap into something a little quirky, a little off-beat from a writer, that is always more interesting to me than asking process questions about how they plot. And having a good laugh goes a long way. I try to have conversations, rather than a formal Q&A, and if we’re both having fun while we chat, then the audience is having fun too. So if I ever interview you, I expect we will end up laughing for most of it. That’s how I know it went well.

Getting some space

DOSSIER: When and where do you do your best writing? On a TV set you’re working on, sitting in traffic?

BEETNER: I have my office at home which is set apart from the main house a little. It’s where my wife stuffs me and all my books and movie posters. I like silence, I usually write at night. I like to focus completely on the task without any distractions. With two kids and 3 dogs it hasn’t always been easy, but once the whole house is asleep and I can get to work, I really love those quiet hours.

I’m not the type to go write in a coffee shop or do it in quick snatches for ten minutes at a time, though I admire anyone who can. I like to block off an amount of time, though usually not more than 90 minutes, where I can dedicate all of my brain power to the writing. Maybe it’s because there isn’t a whole lot to spare that late at night.

That special Beetner voice

DOSSIER: One of the things critics have said about your many books is your particular voice in which you write. How would you describe that, and what do you think makes it special? Is it your everyday way of speaking?

BEETNER: I do love dialogue, which comes from my screenwriting background and love of films, I think. I enjoy a healthy dose of (dark) humor in my books. I try not to over-write and keep things simple. All of that combines into my “voice”. I do like to change things up now and then so the books don’t all sound the same. Switching between first and third person, setting something in a different region so people talk differently. I wrote a whole book once with no speech tags, no he said or she said, just to mix up my own rhythm so it would feel different. I loved that and have always been surprised that nobody seemed to notice. It made me reevaluate how essential most speech tags are.

I also keep things pretty tight. My books move swiftly and are rarely over 300 pages so they get called “cinematic” quite a bit, which I take as high praise. I like an efficient story and a quick read. That adds to my voice since things are kept succinct.

There’s a secret!

DOSSIER: Do you have any breaking news or special announcement you’d like to disclose in your Dossier?

BEETNER: Oh, I have one thing I’d dearly love to talk about, but I can’t yet. But I’ll say that Carter McCoy book 2 is called Real Bad, Real Soon and it comes out Feb of 2025.

I’m pretty sure I have a title for book 3, too, which was very exciting because that had me stumped for a while. But it’s taking shape. That will be out in 2026.

Thanks for having me!