WHISKEY SOUR by JA Konrath (2004, Jack Daniels, Charles Kork)
The One That Didn't by Blake Crouch and JA Konrath (2004, Luther Kite)
FAMOUS by Blake Crouch, (2004, Lancelot Blue Dunkquist)
Break You by Blake Crouch (2004, Luther Kite, Andy Thomas, Violet King)
BLOODY MARY by JA Konrath (2005, Jack Daniels, Barry Fuller)
RUSTY NAIL by JA Konrath (2006, Jack Daniels, Alex Kork)
SNOWBOUND by Blake Crouch (2007, Javier Estrada)
DIRTY MARTINI by JA Konrath (2007, Jack Daniels)
Truck Stop by JA Konrath and Jack Kilborn (2007, Donaldson, Jack Daniels, Taylor)
Serial by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch (2008, Lucy, Donaldson)
Killers by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch (2008, Lucy, Donaldson, Luther Kite, Kurt Lanz, M.D.)
A Schizophrenia of Hawks by JA Konrath and Blake Crouch (2008, Luther Kite, Alex Kork)
AFRAID by Jack Kilborn (2008, Taylor)
DRACULAS by Jack Kilborn, Blake Crouch, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson, (2008, Clayton Theel, Kurt Lanz, M.D.)
FUZZY NAVEL by JA Konrath (2008, Jack Daniels, Alex Kork, Swanson, Munchel, and Pessolano)
ABANDON by Blake Crouch (2009, Isaiah Brown)
CHERRY BOMB by JA Konrath (2009, Jack Daniels, Alex Kork)
TRAPPED by Jack Kilborn (2010, Taylor)
ENDURANCE by Jack Kilborn (2010, Sheriff Dwight Roosevelt)
SHAKEN by JA Konrath (2010, Jack Daniels, Mr. K, Luther Kite)
Lovebirds by JA Konrath (2011, Lucy, Donaldson)
STIRRED by Blake Crouch and JA Konrath (2011, Jack Daniels, Luther Kite)
RUN by Blake Crouch (2013, Kiernan)
Thanks for reading!
Blake Crouch
Interview with Blake Crouch by Hank Wagner
Originally Published in Crimespree, July 2009
According to his website, Blake Crouch grew up in Statesville, a small town in the piedmont of North Carolina. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2000, where he studied literature and creative writing. He currently resides in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. Crouch’s first book, Desert Places, was published in 2003. Pat Conroy called it “Harrowing, terrific, a whacked-out combination of Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy.” Val McDermid described it as “An ingenious, diabolical debut that calls into question all our easy moral assumptions. Desert Places is a genuine thriller that pulses with adrenaline from start to finish.” His second novel, Locked Doors, was published in July 2005. A sequel to Desert Places, it created a similar buzz. His third novel, Abandon, was published on July 7, 2009.
HANK WAGNER: Your writing career began in college?
BLAKE CROUCH: I started writing seriously in college. I had tinkered before, but the summer after my freshman year, I decided that I wanted to try to make a living at being a writer. Spring semester of 1999, I was in an intro creative writing class and I wrote the short story (called “Ginsu Tony”) that would grow into Desert Places. Once I started my first novel, it became an obsession.
HW: Where did the original premise for Desert Places come from?
BC: The idea for Desert Places arose when two ideas crossed. I had the opening chapter already in my head... suspense writer receives an anonymous letter telling him there’s a body buried on his property, covered in his blood. I didn’t know where my protagonist was going to be taken though. Around the same time, I happened to be glancing through a scrapbook that had photographs of this backpacking trip I took in Wyoming in the mid 90’s. One of those photographs was of a road running off into the horizon in the midst of a vast desert. My brain starting working. What if my protagonist is taken to a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, by a psychopath? What if this cabin is in this vast desert, and he has no hope of escape? That photograph broke the whole story open for me.
HW: Why a sequel for your second book? Affection for the characters?
BC: It was actually my editor’s idea. I was perfectly happy walking away from the first book. But once she mentioned it during the editing of Desert Places, I really started to think about where the story could go, wondered how Andy might have changed after seven years in hiding, and I got excited about doing it. And I’m very glad I did, because I would’ve missed those characters. Even my psychopaths are family in some strange, twisted way.
HW: Of all the reviews and comments about your books, what was the strangest? The meanest? The nicest? The most perceptive?
BC: The strangest: This was a comment about me and the reviewer wrote something to the effect that I was either a super-talented writer with an immense imagination or one sick puppy. I think that’s open to debate. The meanest: From those [expletive deleted] at Kirkus. Now, keep in mind, this is my first taste of reviews and the reviewer absolutely savaged my book. It was so mean it was funny... although I didn’t see the humor for some time. The review ended, “Sadly, a sequel is in the works.” The nicest: That’s hard to choose from. I particularly loved the review for Locked Doors that appeared in the Winston-Salem Journal. The reviewer wrote, and this is my favorite quote thus far, “If you don’t think you’ll enjoy seeing how Crouch makes the torture and disembowelment of innocent women, children and even lax store employees into a thing of poetic beauty, maybe you should go watch Sponge Bob.” The most perceptive: The reviews that recognize that I’m trying to make a serious exploration of the human psyche, the nature of evil, and man’s depravity are the ones that please me the most.
