Judith Copek, longtime SinCNE member and co-recipient of the first New England Crimebake Lifetime Achievement Award, answers our questions about her newest book, CHASED BY DEATH, and writing.
What excited you most about writing this story?
Chased By Death is the first novel in which I’ve used multiple points of view.
Maxine, the main character, is conflicted and pulls some illegal shenanigans, but she has noble motives and at bottom, she is a good person. Lotto, the drug lord, is also conflicted. His business is illegal and his product (cocaine) brings misery to many. But some qualities redeem Lotto. He loves his wife and children and he has a sad backstory. He is also haunted by fear of getting arrested, and feels hectored by the Russians and the Mexicans. And he is funny. The third point of view is Maxine’s long-lost sister Honora. She also has a tragic backstory of her own doing, and has been down low and has pulled herself up as far as she has been able. She loves her son and luxury clothes and shoes. Two of these characters are not of the finest people; in fact, they are pretty bad. I had no idea it would be so much fun to be in the head of bad people and enable them to do awful things. Who knew?
Is there a setting in the book you would like to visit?
I always try to do in-person research and this was the first novel where I used a few settings I had never visited: Havana, Panama, and the coast of Colombia. Cuba is a country I have long yearned to visit, but the money and the time were elusive. Panama is a place I still plan to visit because I want to travel through the canal. And Colombia, where Lotto constructs his subs and does business and visits family is a fascinating country. I did so much research that I have to keep reminding myself that I have not actually visited. The web is a wondrous construct where you can find out what a place is like and get to know it well. The only locale where I don’t want to be is the waters between Cuba and Key West on a boat. The Gulf Stream courses strong and the strait is particularly nasty in a storm. I’ll gladly skip that locale.
Which of your skill sets were useful constructing the plot?
My research skills were challenged, but I dug in and found out everything I needed to know, spending hours and even days on the most arcane details. For example, in Cuba, the Hemingway Marina, the Maleçon, the Cuban taxi into Havana, and how the land looks when the plane takes off. In Panama, I researched the good and not-so-good neighborhoods and the hotels and bars. With Panamanian banking, the rules of changed while I was writing the book. Too bad about that. Imagination, the near opposite of digging down into research was the other tool. They both feed off each other. This novel came to me when a character named Maxine sat on my shoulder and began to tell me her story. “This is the craziest thing,” I thought, but I continued to channel Maxine until she got me to South Florida and things were getting somewhat dire. “Okay, you can finish this tale,” she said, and departed my shoulder never to confide in me again. I figured out the rest of the plot (with many blind alleys) and Maxine and I were still friends at the end of the book, but she didn’t share one scrap after she left me. I still regard this whole business as very odd, but whatever gets you into the story is a good thing, even if bizarre.
What is the hardest part of writing a book?
Plant butt in chair. You won’t get writing done elsewhere. Oh, you can plot and imagine what happens next and have all manner of crazy ideas in your head, but to get the story onto your computer, you must plant butt in chair. Many things happen daily to distract us and delay us, but staring at the screen and writing one word after another and then rewriting again and again will eventually produce a manuscript. That manuscript will undergo many revisions, also with butt in chair. There’s no getting around it. Plotting is hard, characters are hard, writing action, conflict, and all the things that make the reader turn the pages are hard. But, also pleasurable. And when the end is in sight, it’s a wonderful thing.
Were there indispensable people without whom you couldn’t have written the book?
Boston writer and professor Gary Goshgarian gave me the title when I had none. He was also the first one to tell me the manuscript had promise. My friend and colleague Joan Michelson drove me from Fort Lauderdale to Key West and we bummed around there for a few days, taking in the sights and figuring out the lay of the land. We also scoped out Miami. This trip was indispensable. Then there is my writing group and my husband, who insist that I can do better, much better, than the miserable draft they are reading. And they are right; it’s still a matter of plant butt in chair. Lastly, my oldest son has a tiny home in Nevada in the little (very little) town where the final action is set. He has hosted me countless times and now I have a feel for the place. It’s would not be possible to write about it without knowing it well because there is nothing generic about it. The writer always brings the reader along, and the reader is not satisfied with bland facts and blah descriptions. The reader wants to be there with the characters as they struggle through the story. She wants to experience it with them.
Judith’s current novel, Chased By Death, is a woman-in-jeopardy story that ranges from Boston to Northern Nevada. In 2017, Judith and her husband were honored with the first New England Crimebake Lifetime Achievement Award. Short stories and memoir as well as three earlier novels are part of her published writing