Jake Needham
The Detective Gone Gray
Short book summary
DOSSIER: You were a screen and television writer before you switched over to crime novels. What was it about film & TV writing that you didn’t like? Was it how the last season of Cop Rock ended? (Dossier checks to see if Jake was a writer on Cop Rock.)
NEEDHAM: That was a long time ago, back in the earlier days of cable television when doing original movies for cable (and I use the word ‘original’ ironically here) was all the rage. Our little company wrote and produced for HBO, USA Network, and a few lesser cable outlets that have since mostly disappeared. No episodic programs. All movie-length stuff.
What was it I didn’t like? All of it. Except the money, of course. The money I liked.
To be completely honest, I guess the painful truth is that I was never a particularly good personal fit with ‘the Industry’ (did you hear the trumpets in the background when I used that phrase?). Maybe it’s just that I’m not enough of a collaborative kind of guy at heart, but I never found any pleasure in creation by committee, particularly when most of the committees were top heavy with no-talent loudmouths of dubious character.
I’ve published fifteen books now, and when I look up at the bookshelves in my study and see them lined up there, I like how real and tangible they are. What’s inside each of those covers is mine. I put it there. Every damn word of it. I hope you like it, but if you don’t… hey, no problem. At least you’re not going to call me up and insist I have to change the main character to a black astronaut before you’ll buy it.
All I miss from the movie and television business is the money. And, boy, sometimes I do miss that.
International sensation
DOSSIER: You’ve had a lot of success with writing about international settings during a time when some acquisition editors and publishers say they’re looking for domestic stories instead. What do you have to say about the popularity of your writing overseas, and how does that transfer to a broader U.S. market?
NEEDHAM: It transfers well to American readers, not nearly so well to American publishing houses. My first novel sold over 200,000 copies in a bunch of countries where English isn’t even the first language, and that novel got me, successively, three of the most prestigious literary agents in New York. Each of those agents was absolutely certain I was going to be the next big thing, but it turned out that American publishers didn’t care how many copies I’d sold outside America.
We heard the same sort of thing from every publisher: ‘His books are too foreign;’ ‘Americans won’t buy books set in foreign countries;’ ‘Americans don’t like foreign books in general, and they really don’t like anything to do with Asia;’ and my personal favorite, ‘We don’t want to be associated with an American who lives in Thailand because he’s probably a pedophile.’ Seriously, and I won’t tell you the name of the editor who contributed that last pronouncement because you’d probably recognize it.
About fifteen years ago, I simply stopped thinking about American publishers. It was a little sad to know that my books weren’t available in my own country, and none of my foreign publishers had the ability to compete effectively in the American market. Hong Kong Magazine called me ‘probably the best-known American writer almost nobody in America has ever heard of.’ Painful, man. Really painful.
It was right about then that Kindle Direct Publishing was becoming a big thing, so I took a leap of faith, terminated my foreign publishing licenses, and dumped all my books into KDP. I’ve stayed right there ever since. And, these days, 70-80% of my sales are to those very Americans who ‘won’t buy books set in foreign countries.’
Go figure, huh?
Barry Award-winner
DOSSIER: Your seventh Inspector Samuel Tay novel, WHO THE HELL IS HARRY BLACK, won the Barry Award this year for Best Paperback Mystery Novel. How the hell did you come up with that title?
NEEDHAM: I love coming up with titles. Always have.
Back when I was an undergraduate, I hung around with a group of friends that included Larry McMurtry. Larry was writing THE LAST PICTURE SHOW then, and we all ragged on him about the title, which we hated. Larry just shrugged it off. He told us that he always started with a title, and then he came up with book to go with it. And I’ve never really forgotten that.
I’ve got a list of at least a hundred titles I don’t have books to go with yet. I sit outside on our terrace, light up a good cigar, and sip a glass of well-aged single malt. Then, man, the titles just come pouring out. Most of them stink, of course, but thank God some of them don’t.
A perfect writing environment
DOSSIER: When and where do you like to write and what environment works best? Are you sitting in a Bangkok coffee shop, a sniper hide writing on all-weather paper, or listening to the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now?
NEEDHAM: I work in my study at home. I like my study at home. There’s nowhere I’d rather be. My books are there, my laptop is there, my cigars are there. Even better, our housekeeper brings me lunch and coffee whenever I want it, and I can count on absolute silence all around me for as long as I need it. Tell me what beats that, huh?
Learning from the world
DOSSIER: Since law school, you’ve worked overseas in one way or another for decades. If you hadn’t ended up living the international writer’s life and stayed in Texas the whole time instead, how different do you think your books would have been?
NEEDHAM: I doubt I would have written any. Pretty much everything that’s in my books is drawn from the experience of nearly forty years of living and working in all sorts of places outside the United States. That’s what’s made me who I am today. If I’d stayed in Texas, I would probably have ended up practicing law in Houston, and I doubt Houston would have pushed me in quite the same directions that places like London, Singapore, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Bangkok have.
A naked commercial plug
DOSSIER: Do you have any breaking news or special announcement you’d like to disclose in your Dossier?
NEEDHAM: Well, if a naked commercial plug is permissible, the eighth book in my Inspector Samuel Tay series is just out. The seventh book in that series is the one that won the Barry Award for me this year, and I’m hopeful my readers think the eighth one measures up to its ancestors.
It’s called THE DETECTIVE GONE GRAY: Inspector Tay book 8, and it’s available at all Amazon stores worldwide. But nowhere else.
Discover more about Jake on Facebook | Website and Amazon Author Page