1–What is the title of your latest release?
ALWAYS SOMETHING SINGS. The title is from the Ralph Waldo Emerson poem. And that poem, or a portion of it, provides an important clue to solving the mystery.
2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Nothing ever happens around here; Ada Reed was told when she agreed to step in as “acting” sheriff. But the murder of a young woman at a gold mine was hardly part of the bargain, nor was the troubled soldier who admits to the crime. Disrespected, unprepared, but undaunted, Ada must find and bring to justice the real killer.
3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
Time is an important part of the setting: 1951. America in the post-war years was suddenly safe and prosperous but frozen with fear over atomic bombs and flying saucers. It was a time of innocence, but also of deep prejudices. Narrowly defined women’s roles, disproved by war-factory work, were still being pushed in movies and magazines. We were on the cusp of the modern age, but barely on the cusp.
My own family’s campfire stories seemed to be set in those years, as well, and told of brawling uncles, lost gold mines, and friends and family who had gone away—to war, to jail, or to start somewhere better. Those stories made the mid-century seem a lost romantic age, and it still holds that wonder for me.
Geographically, central Idaho is a land of tall sage and deep pine forests, afternoon sun on your neck, and magpie chatter. The country, like the time, has always called to me, and not just because I stomped around there in the years after college when I was flush with youth, and friendship, and beer. It is where my parents and their parents settled and where all our romantic, tragic family tales took place. Not coincidentally, the Yankee Fork country was where I first worked as a geologist, and I spent many hours underground in most of the damp, crumbling mines I write about.
4–Would you hang out with your sleuth in real life?
That is a dangerous question, as my wife already accuses me of spending more time with Ada Reed than with her. But yes, Ada is a remarkable person. She begins the story as a 1950’s housewife before stepping in as “acting sheriff” when her lawman husband is recalled to duty in Korea. It takes Ada till late in the book to admit to herself that she was not forced to take the job. She’d wanted it—more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life.
Ada is hardly a superhero. She’s not afraid to admit discouragement, and she’s not afraid to cry—although she’ll try to hide it from the guys. The job she takes on opens her eyes not just to the grittier corners of her town, but to injustices she’d never questioned, and to her own long-estranged self-respect. Her girlfriends aren’t comfortable with her anymore, and she’s not taken seriously by fellow lawmen. But she persists, learns to trust her unique insights—and learns to shoot. And if she reminisces now and then about tea dresses and open-toed heels, well…
5–What are three words that describe your sleuth?
Unassuming, insightful, determined.
6–What’s something you learned while writing this book?
In ALWAYS SOMETHING SINGS, I was struck by how little we differ. I realized early that I had to write the story with a woman in the lead role. It couldn’t be done otherwise. And it was, at first, intimidating to explore the feminine side of a mystery. Time and again I wrote it wrong and wrote it wrong and re-wrote it wrong. It turned out, I was over-doing it. I was trying to put in different feelings for my female characters, and different reactions to bullying and the like. But they’re not different. We all laugh and cry, and we all feel incensed by unfair treatment. We all struggle the same way with self-confidence in new situations. So, I learned to relax a bit with those fundamental things. The fun, then, was appreciating the superficial differences: Ada recognizing that a print in the mud was not made by a boy’s shoe but by a Lady Lane lace-up Oxford; and Ada understanding immediately, where her male counterparts did not, that the victim was not dressed to meet a lover.
7–Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Wait until I’m totally done—are you crazy? I edit constantly. I wear out the Read-Aloud feature in Word. And I’m not just editing the words, I am changing plot points, scene sequences, motivations, and clues from the beginning until the last word is written. And then I rewrite that last word and all the words that preceded it. I’ve heard the opposite advice, that you should write the story straight through so as not to lose the “flow.” But I think that is not a good idea if you’re flowing in the wrong direction.
8—What part of your protagonist, if any, is you?
I have been asked this more than once. In fact, there may be a number of ways I project myself onto Ada, but most easily recognized, I think, is the estrangement and isolation she feels due to her choices. When she took the job of acting sheriff, she did not expect it to be so …just her, all by herself, all the time, as she puts it. But her girlfriends go on with their lives in their spring dresses and sunhats, leaving her on the sidewalk in boots and Stetson. She doesn’t feel at ease with Junior League luncheons anymore, yet she isn’t comfortable, either, around the businessmen and law officers. She has put herself between social worlds. Being a “tweener” is something I’ve recognized in my own life. I’ve never felt comfortable with the educated professionals I seem to have weaseled my way among. But neither do I feel wholly at home whenever I return to my back-country roots. This is something Ada will deal with in Volume 3 of the series.
9–Describe your writing space/office!
This question is not as easy as it sounds, because I (we) are homeless—sort of. Susan and I are travelling, writing, and painting out of her Honda SUV and my Toyota pickup.
Actually, I have to apologize for making light of it, because we are not at all homeless in the way so many others are tragically without places to live. We sold our house in Santa Fe a couple months ago the same way we bought it a couple years ago: without thinking. We expected to buy back into our old neighborhood in Colorado, but no one is selling. Consequently, we are spending the summer on a series of sea islands from Maine down to Georgia. We’ll head back west when it cools a little.
So, our straights are not dire. Nevertheless, there is something unsettling about being unsettled; I have no office but my laptop, and Susan paints en plein air.
10–Who is an author you admire?
I like Cormac McCarthy, but everyone likes Cormac McCarthy. His prose is close to perfect, and he knows exactly how to use a semicolon: never.
11–Is there a book that changed your life?
The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury. That might sound flippant, but if it were not for Bradbury and Heinlein and Azimov, those science-fiction fabulists of my middle-school years, I might never have taken to reading. (And I might never have gone into the sciences.)
12–Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)
I sent out a hundred query letters for my first book, The Reclamation, and got no serious bites. I ended up self-publishing. The same with my second book, The Magpies’ Song.
So, when I got to about sixty query letters with Always Something Sings, I was feeling a little down. But Jennifer at CoffeeTown Press called, and I think her first questions were, “Is this going to be a series?” and “How many do you intend to write?” I laughed and said, “How many do you want?” As of today, Volume 2 of the Ada Reed series is with the editors and Volume 3 is complete through first draft. I’ve done an extended outline of Volume 4.
13–What’s your favorite genre to read?
First, I like traditional writing, and I do not particularly care for experimental writing and “clever” writing that is more about the author than the story. At the end of a book, I want to remember every scene and every sensation, but not remember a single word the author used. In terms of genre, I do like sweeping, historical fiction. But not too historical; keep it to the 20th century.
I hate to say this, but when I read mysteries anymore, I am working.
14–What’s your favorite movie?
Probably Out of Africa. Again, it is the history and romance and tragedy of a by-gone age. It reminds me in that way of Gone with the Wind.
15–What is your favorite season?
Autumn, but not for the cooler days, although they can be a relief, nor for the colors that are always fun. It is about the harvest; about everyone working together to prepare for the cold months ahead. As a child there was always a wonderful feeling of hope, and family, and belonging as we brought in the garden and put up stores for the winter.
16–How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Close family and maybe a couple good friends. Or maybe just the two of us. I like to cook my own birthday dinner; something big and slow, like a cassoulet or a paella. Susan will make a cake, and we’ll open a bottle of wine we really can’t afford.
17–What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I really enjoyed Adventures of a Mathematician (Netflix) and more recently, Oppenheimer. But mind you, I’m a geek.
18–What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
There comes a time in life when “favorite cuisine” means “favorite cuisine that won’t make you fat or inflame your arthritis or raise your cholesterol or drop you dead.” We’re leaning contritely into Asian rice bowls.
19–What do you do when you have free time?
We try to find hikes wherever we go, and with all our recent traveling, I have enjoyed visiting historical sites around the country. Antique malls, I’m told, are also historical sites. Among the things we carry with us in our footloose wanderings are two inflatable kayaks. I have been putting in the miles recently along the coast of Maine.
20–What can readers expect from you next?
In Lightning Caused, Ada Reed must solve the perplexing deaths of an entire family who seemingly sat down and let a forest fire overtake them. It’s a twisting story with unexpected forensics, moonshining, and a suspect who is a former inmate of a Japanese internment camp.
In the third volume, The Lambs of Spring (working title), Ada dredges up a car that has been at the bottom of a reservoir for sixteen years. Inside she finds the brutalized remains of two young people: high school classmates of hers. She and her friends try to unravel the final days of the Bonnie and Clyde-like couple and identify their killer, while dealing with the guilt of not helping more when they could and with deep regrets in their own personal lives.
ALWAYS SOMETHING SINGS by Roger Howell
Ada Reed stands in as sheriff of a backwoods county in Idaho when her husband is recalled to the Army. The war in Korea won’t last but a couple of months, and it would be simpler this way-“less trouble,” the businessmen whisper. But a young woman found beaten and drowned at a gold mine was not part of the bargain, nor was the disabled soldier who admits to the killing.
The locals say the victim was stepping out at night, and the town leaders want Ada to wrap things up. But she was not dressed to meet a lover, Ada can see. And from his wheelchair the soldier could not have inflicted the wounds that sent his wife into the pond; nor did he forge the chain of gold that sank her.
Mystery Cozy [Coffeetown Press, On Sale: October 10, 2023, Mass Market Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781684921171 / eISBN: 9781684921188]
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About Roger Howell
Roger Howell was raised in a somewhat migratory family and mostly in a score of houses in Boise, Idaho Falls, Aberdeen, Cobalt, Butte, La Push, and Baker. There were a couple of wall tents along the way, and a Studebaker for a very short time. Things settled down eventually, and he attended Boise State University, U.C. Santa Barbara, Gonzaga University, and Clemson University. Notwithstanding an international career as a geologist and environmental engineer, Howell has lived and worked all over the western U.S. He has walked the two-track roads and danced and drank and fished the length of the Rockies. Not coincidentally, his stories tend to be set in small towns in the west, and usually take place in the mid-century-a time of prosperity and innocence, but also of paranoia and prejudice. A father of two, he lives in Santa Fe now with his wife and their second-hand dog.
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