"MOST EVERY SCENE WAS WRITTEN WITH DISCOVERY...": BLOOD RED SUMMER'S ERYK PRUITT

Eryk Pruitt has returned to Jess Keeler, his podcaster heroine from Something Bad Wrong, for Blood Red Summer. Auditioning for a TV show, she looks into both a rash of sniper killings and murder of a couple of bootleggers in 1984. The story also connects with a newspaperman and deputy involved in the cases at that time. The Hard Word interrogated Eryk about the book, his approach to it, and southern crime.

Scott Montgomery: What made you decide to continue with Jess Keeler in another book?

ERYK PRUITT: SBW was based on my experiences as an investigative reporter producing my own eight-part podcast of an unsolved local murder called THE LONG DANCE. After that was released, people were always asking if I would produce another one. I looked into some local unsolved crimes, but could get no interest from any of the money people because the crimes involved what they deemed "a criminal underclass." They were looking for a story about another missing white woman, which is what most people with money think "crime" is. Also, since this story involved a criminal organization which still exists, there was an element of danger for anyone investigating. For those reasons and more, I shelved my research, but was always thinking about how to turn it into an interesting fiction story. When Thomas & Mercer offered me money for a follow-up with Jess Keeler, I jumped at the chance.

S.M.: This is a story with several characters that bounces between two timelines. How did you keep it all together and coherent?

E.P.: I had a good grasp of what happened and why, so all I really needed to do was decide who was telling it and "when." Most every scene was written with discovery in both timelines, so I just had to decide which one was most interesting and how to tell it. That's why it takes me so long to write is because I write everything from every possible angle so that the DNA of the story is so carefully woven into my own and I can tell it from the POV of a random passerby in another timeline and then I just choose which one is the most interesting.

S.M.: I dug the fact that you had a newspaperman, Hal Broadstreet, in the 1984 section who works with Jess across time in a way. What did you want to explore about the two different forms of journalism?

E.P.: Most of my research is done by digging through old newspaper archives. I've come to really enjoy reading how journalism has changed over time. 1984 was a big year in journalism because a lot of cities with two or more newspapers were downsizing to one paper due to the rise of cable TV news. As advertising etc dried up, many newspapers were losing staff and being forced to make hard decisions. Also, the bigger papers were often working in tandem with police to ensure they had access, which means they let a lot of things slide. A lot of reporting read like police press releases. So I wanted to dip my toe in that.

S.M.: What do you enjoy about going between the two timelines?

E.P.: I really like letting the audience in on something that the main character in a present timeline may or may not ever learn. That level of frustration is fun to foist upon the audience. It's fun to let them see something that happens in the past, then in the very next scene, the present day investigator comes soooooo close to finding out what the audience already knows but then juuuuuuust misses it due to happenstance.

S.M.: With authors like yourself, S,A, Sosby, and Ace Atkins, Southern Crime fiction is continuing to grow. What do you think plays into the appeal?

E.P.: I think audiences have always been into crime fiction. From Poe to Agatha Christie, to Truman Capote, to James Patterson and Jeffrey Deaver and now this little batch of firecrackers we got popping....People like crime. The only thing is figuring out what they classify as "crime" and bringing them around to your definition. Crime to a lot of people is a husband killing his wife or maybe The Staircase  or OJ Simpson or some shit. I like to dig around for the underlying reasons for crime and have that discussion.

S.M.: If you couldn't write, what other art form would you pursue.?

E.P.: I would make a kickass safecracker.