A Conversation with J. A. Jance

 

LOWE:  Hi, Judy.  You've had two series going for quite a while.  The detective Beaumont series and the Sheriff Brady series.  Obviously the first is more popular with men, and the second with women. Or am I wrong about that?

JANCE:  Actually, J. P Beaumont may be more popular with male truck drivers, but I find the people I talk to–men and women both–pretty much evenly divided when it comes to preferring Beaumont to Brady.  And, as long as they read them both, I don't care which one they like better.

LOWE:  Gary Challender at Books in Motion, a mutual friend of ours, tells me that truckers are huge fans of Beaumont.  Have you had any feedback from truckers or from people listening to the audiobook versions in their cars?

JANCE:  Yes, I have heard from truckers.  Actually, whenever there's a blizzard on the east coast, I receive fan mail written on Motel 6 stationery from all up and down the eastern seaboard.  And, from what I can tell, they like the reader, Gene Engene, almost as much as they like the books themselves.  As for me, I think Gene Engene is pretty slick, too.  When I heard him read the first few lines of Until Proven Guilty, I was covered with goosebumps because his voice was just so right.

LOWE:  I agree with that.  Now, let's say you have an audience of men who like Beaumont so much that they're going to try Sheriff Joanna Brady for the first time, or vise versa.  How do you get new readers up to speed on the characters in a series without boring readers already familiar with the characters?

JANCE:   When it comes time to start a new book in either series, my job turns into a kind of tight-rope walk.  Knowing that I'll be meeting some readers for the first time, I have to include enough of the background so new readers will feel as though they've had access to the information they need to understand the characters.  The problem is, if I give too much background, my long-time readers will be bored and new readers won't feel compelled to go back and read the other books.  I try to sprinkle the background into conversation and action rather than devoting a lot of expository writing to it.

LOWE:   Brady and Beaumont get together in Partner in Crime, and are almost romantic.  I was wondering if you did that to merge your readership.

JANCE:   My readers have been suggesting a joint book for years while I resisted the idea.  Then my editor suggested it was time to put them together, and so I did.  It's usually best for writers if they listen to their editor's suggestions!   But, you're right.  It did merge my readership, and people who had read one series and not the other are now reading both.  So it turns out my fans were right and so was my editor.  I was the one who was wrong.

LOWE:  I've heard that you like to surprise yourself in writing a mystery, and that you don't outline, and sometimes don't even know who the killer is until the end.  Does this make it more fun for you to write, or is there another reason?

JANCE:   Not knowing what's going to happen makes the process of writing a book more interesting to me.  If I knew everything that was going to happen in a given book, I don't think I'd find energy enough or sufficient curiosity to finish it.  And yes, you're right.  I do hate outlines.  I've hated them from the first time I met them in sixth grade geography.  I wonder if there's a nice handy Greek word for someone who suffers from a phobia of Roman Numerals.

LOWE:  How about  Togaphobia?  What do you think of the narrators of your audiobook versions, and do you ever listen to audiobooks yourself on the road?

JANCE:  I like my narrators.  As far as the listening public is concerned, the readers are the characters.  As for listening to audio books, in October of 2001, in the aftermath of September 11, my husband and I had to drive from Seattle to Nashville and back by way of Tucson, Arizona.  The news on the radio was still totally focused on the terrible happenings in New York.  Finally, about the time we reached Dallas on our trip out, we went into a bookstore and purchased the first unabridged Harry Potter books.  Harry and his friends were our constant companions from then on.  We'd be in restaurants talking about the latest Quidditch match while the whole rest of the world was talking about Osama and his pals.  We finished the last of the four books as we crossed back into Washington State on our way home.

LOWE:  You grew up in Bisbee, which I've been to several times, as it's not far from Tucson.  What do you most like about the place?  And are you now what we call a "snow bird?"  Or should I say "Snow Bird of Prey?"

JANCE:   Snow Bird of Prey? That's incredibly cute and I think I WILL be one of those. Where can I get a license plate surround like that?  I'll put one on the Arena Red Porsche Boxster as I charge around Tucson this winter because yes, I am now an official snowbird.  I like Bisbee because it's a place apart. It's not exactly the same place it was as I was growing up there in the fifties and sixties, but it's not all that different. The Mule Mountains kept it out of the mainstream then and they do the same thing today.

LOWE:  Unlike Tucson, and our growing traffic problem. Does the character Beaumont in Partner in Crime like Bisbee or not?

JANCE:  Beaumont is from Seattle. More than that, he's from the Denny Regrade, which means he's uncomfortable once he gets out of reach of The Bon. He's not familiar with the desert, so of course Arizona makes him uncomfortable. His first impression of Bisbee is that it's terribly brown.  My first impression of Seattle was that it was terribly green.  I think we're both right.