Confessions of a wandering scribe
My professional breakthrough happened in 2010 with the publication of The Dead Women of Juárez. It made a big splash in the UK and was nominated for the first of four Crime Writers’ Association Daggers, which I’d receive over the next two books. After four years in the trenches, the dream finally came true.
The thing was that The Dead Women didn’t represent me as an author. Likewise, Tequila Sunset and Missing weren’t reflections of where I wanted to be for the rest of my career. So, when I switched to writing about Camaro Espinoza, many people were confused. What was this stuff? Was it a money-grab? No, it wasn’t. It’s what I felt like writing at the time.
I’ve always written whatever I wanted. If that was crime fiction, it was crime fiction. Action thrillers? Yes. Westerns? You bet. Even fantasy? Sure. Whatever I might read, I also write. I’ve even done romances, and Harlequin wanted one back in the day, though my then-agent spiked the deal. That’s always disappointed me.
Being told what to do has never suited me. Maybe I could have been a bigger deal over the past fifteen-plus years if I’d found a groove and stayed in it, as the people in my professional orbit wanted. But you know what? This is how things panned out. I can’t go back, only forward. And that means the next book, the next book, and the next one after that, whatever it might be.