This issue's author interview is with Jim Michael Hansen, author of Night Laws (of which you can find a review elsewhere in this issue). Hansen is a lawyer by profession, but you shouldn't hold that against him. Night Laws is the first in a projected series featuring Denver homicide cop Bryson Coventry. The second in the series (Shadow Laws) is due out late 2006 or early 2007 with a third, as yet untitled, in progress. The book hasn't made him give up his day job and information on Hansen the lawyer is available at www.jimhansenlawfirm.com.

For information on Jim Hansen the writer you can visit Hansen's website at www.jimhansenbooks.com, where you can find links to interviews, reviews, photos and possibly more than you ever wanted to know.

We were lucky enough to catch up with Hansen in cyberspace (he wouldn't spring for the air fare to take Russel out to the US) to chat about his books, his characters, his BYOB wedding and the unusual route he took to publication along with the prejudices he faced bringing out this book.

Russel McLean: Jim, welcome to the Crime Scene Scotland interview. Night Laws has been compared by a lot of people to Grisham, a comparison that’s inevitable, I suppose given your background – but it’s not really a legal or courtroom thriller. It’s far more in the Thomas Harris mode, albeit without the overriding theatricality of the later Lecter. What was it that made you approach the story as a thriller and what would you say the appeal of the thriller is for the reader?

Jim Michael Hansen: Even though I’m a litigation attorney with over 20 years experience, and should be writing about what I know, you won’t see any boring courtroom drama in Night Laws, Shadow Laws, or any of the other upcoming Laws novels. That’s because trials are basically pretty tedious events if portrayed realistically. I’m much more interested in lawyers and law firms than legal situations. For example, in Night laws the law firm purports to do something slightly illegal to help an important client. This gets it into all kinds of trouble to the point of even becoming mysteriously involved with a vicious killer. That, to me, is a more interesting concept than a judicial resolution of some legal matter.

Night Laws is designed to appeal to both mystery and thriller readers and here’s how I went about doing that. I drop the characters in the book midway into the action and watch them scramble. They move fast—they have to—which appeals to the thriller reader. But because they are motivated and driven by prior undisclosed events, it’s fun for the reader to try to figure out what has already happened. I peel those prior motivators back layer by layer as the “thriller” action unfolds and then tie everything up at the end. For that reason, it’s actually the kind of book you can read twice and still enjoy.

RM : One of the things that I liked about Night Laws was the lack of a near supernatural killer. Far too many serial killers/lunatics these days seem to have amazing physical ability, moustache-twirling ego trips and out-of-proportion sexual kinks, and yet what makes our killer here so frightening is the fact that he is incredibly grounded and, perhaps more importantly, we are not given a sob story to make him more palatable. What were the influences behind this bad guy? And how close is he to your own darker side?

JMH: Night Laws is primarily a crime thriller featuring Denver homicide detective Bryson Coventry. Of course, any good crime thriller needs a very believable bad guy who poses an imminent threat to certain people. Over-the-top, one-dimensional, single-minded, cartoon-cardboard bad guys are sometimes interesting but in the end never really scare anyone because they’re just too foreign and abstract to take seriously.

Believability, as you note, comes from grounding the character in reality and making him/her three-dimensional. In Night Laws, the bad guy—David Hallenbeck—has fears, apprehensions, doubts, questions, wants, needs, likes, dislikes, good days and bad days, just like the rest of us. That causes the reader to overlap with him on a personal level which in turn makes him much more realistic.

The overlap is developed in Night Laws by showing the bad guy’s emotions, likes and dislikes on a constant basis, which is easy to do in point-of-view (POV) writing, since the reader is in his head. As an example, at one point he gets so scared that he pisses in his pants. Although that degree of fear might at first be perceived as distraction from his badness, in effect it shows that he does in fact have very real emotions, which in the end make him more real and therefore more scary overall.

To help make him a continuing imminent threat, he’s constantly forced off balance by situations he can’t predict or control. Even he doesn’t know what he’s going to do half the time. This unpredictability helps create an air that he could explode on any one at any time.

Since he presents the noir side of the book, it was important to color him with the proper degree of darkness. After the first draft of Night Laws was completed and I read the manuscript from cover to cover for the first time, I decided that he needed to be darker to give the book the vibration I was looking for. So I went back and added several scenes where he’s at his worst. Then the book popped the way I wanted it to.

RM: Bryson Coventry—the hero of Night Laws—is an interesting hero in these dark, noiresque times. He’s got a coffee addiction, but aside from that he seems like a regular cop. He’s not been severely damaged. He’s not battling alcoholism and he’s not overly empathetic with the guys he’s trying to catch. At the same time he doesn’t seem to play the “sympathetic hero” card too hard either. What drove you to create Bryson and how much did you have to get to know him before you could start writing about him?

JMH: Bryson Coventry is basically me, except he’s cooler, taller, younger, smarter, and gets all the women. So I always pretty much know what he’s going to do in any particular situation. Of course, I’m still learning about me, which mean’s I’m still learning about him.

With your protagonist obviously being one of the good guys, I’m interested to know where you stand on the moral ground concerning crime fiction – should the good guys always win? Or is there a chance we could see a bad guy slip away from the determined pursuit of Bryson Coventry?

Since a novel is fundamentally a form of entertainment, it’s important that readers go away satisfied and happy. They want a good ending. That doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be a morally good ending, though. Take the storyline in Basic Instinct, for example. Sharon Stone gets away with killing her rock star boyfriend but no one walks away saying, “Damn, what a crummy ending, why isn’t she behind bars?” All you really remember is that she’s a deliciously devious femme fatale with a propensity to cross her legs. Chicago is another good example—two killers (Thelma Kelly and Roxie Hart) end up on stage to thunderous applause. A fun, although not morally correct, ending. Yet no complaints.

Of course, if the author is concerned with a morally-politically-correct (is that a real phrase?) ending, then the good-guy-wins, bad-guy-loses ending is almost always a safe bet. The problem is, if the author always adheres to this formula, the reader will always know how the book ends, thus making it boring. So in my opinion authors need to shake it up.

So, Bryson Coventry will probably lose some bad guys before all is said and done. But I need him to catch a few first to show he’s not a bumbling idiot. He’s still on his 90-day probationary period as a main character. After that, who knows, he might even let some bad guys escape on purpose when I’m not paying attention. I wouldn’t put anything past him, especially if he has too much coffee in his gut, which is usually the case.

RM: I assume it’s not a secret, so we can mention this: Night Laws is self-published. It’s a commonly misconceived approach to publishing, something that people tend to get worked up about when they think that I-universe and Publish America offer something similar. What made you go down this route? Could you explain a little about the self-publishing process and more importantly how it differs from, say, paying I-universe to do their thing?

JMH: Night Laws is self-published? You’re kidding! What are we even talking about it for, then? It’s got to be a flaming piece of crap!

Actually, Night Laws is published by Dark Sky Publishing, Inc., which is a duly licensed and registered Colorado Corporation wholly owned by (you guessed it) me. Like any other small publisher (irrespective of who owns the stock or controls the day-to-day operations), Dark Sky had to perform all the traditional publishing tasks to successfully bring the manuscript to market. These tasks include editing, cover design, printing, obtaining book reviews and author blurbs, distribution and marketing. There’s no shortcut.

Fortunately, booksellers are receptive to buying a book from any sized publisher, established or new, so long as (1) they perceive it to be a competitive and sellable book; and (2) they can order it from established distribution venues under traditional terms (e.g. 40% discount and returnable).

Any small publisher can become an established vendor with Baker & Taylor Books, which is a national book wholesaler in the US. Virtually every bookstore, from the large chains to the independents, has an account with B&T. Thus it is very easy to make any book physically available to booksellers for order, provided they want to order it.

Booksellers will want to order the book if they perceive it to be competitive and sellable. The larger chain booksellers (Borders, B&N, etc.) have departments that evaluate books and welcome submissions by all sized publishers. The book, however, must stand on it’s own at this point. It must be well manufactured and must also be something that readers will likely pick up and be interested enough to buy. Rave book reviews and author blurbs on the cover of the book obviously help, particularly if the author does not yet have name recognition. Fortunately, many established authors are kind enough to help out new voices with blurbs. There are also now a ton of e-zine book review sites that will also review new authors.

RDM: All that considered, what advice would you give to anyone considering self-publishing?

Let someone else self-publish it for you. If that doesn’t work, reach down and feel your balls. Are they made of steel? If not, then don’t do it. Go watch a sitcom or take up needlepoint instead.

However, if you’re still serious, begin by getting brutally honest feedback from knowledgeable people (other authors, book reviewers, etc.) on whether you have a compelling manuscript that has a serious chance of competing in the marketplace. If and only if you have that foundation to build on, then learn all the myriad tasks involved in the publishing business. There are tons of good books on this subject at your local bookstore. Then check your wallet. You’ll need money. Did I mention that? Then go for it. You’ll have as much of a chance of success as any other publisher trying to take a book successfully to market, meaning very little.

RM: I have to ask, on a non book related subject, about your wedding… I’ve noticed it says somewhere that you “won a free wedding” (Presumably you had to bring your own bride). How did this come about?

JMH: True, it was a BYOB. Luckily I already picked up one of those at a disco about six months earlier.

We got married at the Octoberfest in Cleveland. The original Octoberfest in Germany was actually the celebration of a wedding. So, the Cleveland celebration used that theme and started each year’s festivities with an actual wedding, attended by the governor, mayor, etc. We somehow won that wedding. Lots of people say it’s because they were having a beauty-and-the-beast theme that year. Guess which one I was.

RM: I love to know about writing habits of authors. Some authors are meticulous plotters, others write as it comes and some wake up from a long night of drinking to find the book in front of them. How does Jim Michael Hansen sit down to write?

JMH: I’m not smart enough to meticulously plot. I’ve woken up from more than one long night of drinking, but never with a book in front of me; Coyote-ugly women, yes, upside down pizza on the carpet, yes; police pounding on the door, yes; but a novel?—not even close.

I have a general idea where the book is going plot-wise before I start writing, the kind of thing that I could probably summarize on one sheet of paper. Then I outline the backstory, which is the part of the novel that has already taken place before you even get to page one. Then I drop the characters in and basically just follow them around like a lost puppy dog. Frankly, I’m never really quite sure where they’re going to go. I have to keep a chart of “Chapters As Written” which summarizes each chapter in two or three sentences, because my memory’s only about as long as my . . . oops, better not go there.

RM: What has been the greatest obstacle to getting Night Laws out there?

JMH: It’s tough for a new author to get the “big” book reviews, meaning most newspaper book reviews, NYTBR, etc. Those forums cater to the masses of readers, which in turn want to know what the bestsellers are all about.

RM: And finally, aside from the day you knew Night Laws was going to be out there (and the day you knew you were getting a review from us) what would you say has been the defining moment of your life so far?

JMH: That would be the day I discovered coffee.

Jim Michael Hansen, Crime Scene Scotland thanks you for taking the time out to talk to us.