I’d like to welcome the multi-talented author, Mark Bergin, to the blog today for #ThisorThatThursday.
Hardest/easiest things about being a writer: I find the actual writing, the putting down sentences and paragraphs, then polishing it pretty, is the easiest part. The hardest parts are thinking of what to write, so I carry a notebook everywhere. And I get stymied because I write chronologically, so if a scene or chapter comes hard, I can’t figure out how to push my characters through it and tell what I want, I can’t step past it. Sometimes I just put a lot of crap down to get moving, and in my new book I did that and it turned out fine. I said Kelly’s not coming out of that office till he learns what caused… whatever, and I ended up with a useable scene.
Things I am good at, or not: I am very good at public speaking and breaking down issues in ways people can understand. I was a training officer and enjoyed teaching new officers how, and sometimes why, we do what we do, and I try to do that in the books. Although my first, APPREHENSION, suffered for it, much too dry and detailed. I am not good at computer programs. I have tried to teach myself Scrivener twice and can’t get the hang of it. I was a cop for 28 years, and only in the last one did I have two desk jobs that required extensive use of computers and data systems. And that’s the year I died of two heart attacks and had to get out of the cops. All the years on the streets were fun, exciting, dangerous, rewarding, and I never had any issues. Deskwork killed me
Words good: goal oriented; I decided to get published, then I decided to get really published by a real publisher. Optimistic: I bought Ruth’s wedding present after three months of dating and a year before I asked her. Friendly. Supportive; I have had the most fun recently being able to work with new and experienced authors with police issues and procedures. I like to see writers get it right, and usually that can be done without losing the drama. I will admit, though, that I completely fabricated the procedures for burial of an indigent jail prisoner in my first novel. It had to go the way I wanted, and I didn’t want to know if I was completely off-target. Words bad: Arrogant: if you’re wrong, you’re wrong and that usually pivots on whether you think like I do. Forgetful; I can’t remember a name to save my life, so I have actually excused myself from parties to go write a name down if I think I will need to talk with them again. Lousy skill failure for a cop, but I am good with faces and, if you‘re a cop, you can ask their name.
Music: I like Americana/hard country/singer-songwriters. My first personal purchase of music was the album American Woman by The Guess Who. I hate gangsta rap. I don’t think it is a threat to society; it’s just offensive. Why would you say that about yourself and think that endears you to me? @#$% You kiss your mom with that mouth?
Things I always put in my books: I like to humanize my heroes, so I have them do things other than their specific tasks. In my new book, I have Kelly dive into a crashed car that is leaking gasoline to comfort and help rescue a driver, actually an armed robber who was running from police. (Almost a true story. On a recent vacation I saw a car crash and overturn. I got into it through a broken window and was tending to the not-terribly-injured driver when gas started dripping on us. We got out. Never in books: killing a cop. It is too easy a shortcut to amp up emotion and anger, and it is never portrayed accurately in any fiction I’ve read or seen. In my new book I started writing that scene, but realized I could cet the same emotional impact if I had the international criminal kneecap a detective instead of killing him, plus such a death would completely overshadow all the other things I had to have my characters do. Killing a cop is devastating to a department, the loss of a friend, the reminder of our tenuous hold on safety, the fear in our spouses and families. My wife and I stopped watching Will Trent last year when they very casually killed a cop, a female bomb-squad officer setting up to be the hero’s love interest. It meant nothing on the show.
Favorite places: The southwest coast of Ireland, the craggy, rough almost fjords and the deep sea. I visited there ten years ago and found a setting that will emerge in Book Four, whenever I get to it. Santa Fe and the American Southwest, just love the environment, the sand, the huge blue sky. Least favorite place: Las Vegas. Went once because everybody has to, and I go back because the Public Safety Writers Association meets there every year, but what an ugly, brutal and fake environment.
Favorite book and author: The Secret Ways by Alistair MacLean. The perfect thriller by one of the most gifted writers. I remember carrying the paperback in my pocket and deliberately mouthing off in Mr. Fenicle’s ninth-grade music class so Id be sent out to sit in the hall. And read! I discovered Alistair MacLean in my early teens, and remember getting his books out of the library a second time so I can try to figure out how he did it, how he built suspense, how his stories laid out. Still haven’t figured it out, and I can’t write like him but he’s great. Books I wouldn’t buy: none. I attend the annual Creatures, Crimes and Creativity conference with authors of all kinds of genres. Each of them works hard to craft their stores, hard as I do (but when you can just conjure a dragon to deus ex machina your hero out of her plight, it seems too easy and cheap.) And the first writers I ever met, after I decided to try, at a mystery writers library panel were cozy writers Sherry Harris and Maya Corrigan who just died this week, may her memory be a blessing. I came out of the presentation thinking these are just some ladies writing soft mysteries, what can I learn from them? But their writing was tight and clear. Had to be, they couldn’t just shoot or punch somebody to move their story along.
Coolest person I ever met: I was in the Mystery Bookstore on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia in about 1982, talking with the owner, a novelist, when he looked past me, walked to shake the hand of a customer just entered and said, “You’re Warren Zevon, aren’t you? I’m Art Bourgeau.” We talked mysteries for about a half an hour. Cool guy, very unprepossessing, in town because he was dating a local FM DJ (Cindy Dru if you have to know.) I also thought it was cool that Bourgeau introduced himself too, as if being a novelist was also cool. And now I know it is.
Daring thing: Tandem skydove out of a helicopter down the north face of the Eiger in Switzerland. My son and I came up with it, I told my wife, she said, “You know my answer.” Well, I knew her answer but it apparently shocked her when I actually went ahead and did it. A long time to recover from that one. Chickened out: I rowed in the World Championships in Villach, Austria in 1976 (took fifth) and on the plane back to the United States I learned that two girls from my high school class were aboard, having just spend the summer in an Israeli kibbutz. And I was too shy to go talk with them. Here’s me, at the height of my game, international athlete, and here they are, just having done something so cool. But they were pretty and above my class and I was so shy.
Real-life story in a book: One night when I was a patrol officer I stood outside an apartment waiting for partners to finish something up. A little old lady tottered by and looked at me and remarked, “Oh, you look just like that Father Mulcahey from that MASH show.” (Glasses and such.) I made the sign of the cross in front of her and said, “In nomine Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti.” She said, “Oh, is you Jewish?” I wrote that into my first book APPREHENSION, and later discussed it on a blog with another writer. Later, I found I had actually edited that scene out for length. It may rise. Not real: In my books my hero John Kelly dates then marries a public defender, Rachel Cohen. While I did marry a public defender, Rachel is not my wife Ruth, and the personal things between them in the book are entirely fictional. Fictional Rachel does not conduct herself in the way Ruth does, and Ruth hates her for it.
Nicest thing anyone said: Two ex cops who cowrite mysteries sought me out at BoucherCon Dallas and asked me to blurb their upcoming book. “Me? Mark Bergin? You sure you mean me?” I didn’t know anyone knew me or knew of me. Worst thing: Maybe oddest. A friend, in my wife’s book club after they ready my first, said, “Oh, there was too much sexy stuff in it.” One line! Where Kelly is imagining the curve of Rachel’s hip. Oy vey!
