The Junkyard Dick by Gillespie Lamb

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Welcome to It's Raining Books. Why do you write in your genre? What draws you to it?

I’m more of a generalist than a genre-ist. My first book was a middle-grades reader, The Beamy Courage of Gerta Scholler, about an eight-year-old girl who rides an “orphan train” from New York City to Kansas in the 1860s. It focused on how she coped with loss of parents, change, and threats to her life. I envisioned it as a school libraries book, but it was well-received generally. My latest novel is a contemporary mystery, The Junkyard Dick. Then, in July, a nonfiction history book I co-authored was published. It’s about 1920 fliers, The Aviation Pioneers of McCook Field. So, I am writing all over the pace, just trying to produce well-written books with universal appeal. That said, I know I need to settle into a genre to better market my books.

What research is required?

The protagonist of The Junkyard Dick is Tak Sweedner, the owner of a smalltown salvage yard.

The book came about because I was asked by a friend to work for him for a few months in his…salvage yard. While I didn’t replicate my experience in the business, my experience there did help me authenticate the novel. An earlier unpublished novel (I need to get it out and dust it off) was set in a fitness center and was written while I was working in… a fitness center. I see a research pattern here. On the other hand, I never have ridden an orphan train nor been an eight-year-old girl.

Name one thing you learned from your hero/heroine.

I picked up some chutzpah from Tak. He’s a guy who knows his limitations, but sometimes tries to exceed them anyway. And he doesn’t quit. He pushes and pushes to determine why the ranch hand of his friend Roque was murdered and who did it. He bends the rules some to accomplish that and jeopardizes his life in the process. Then he decides his girlfriend Emma is special enough to warrant sacrificing his entire investigation, so he does, swallowing his disappointment and walking away from it. Tak is an all-in kind of guy whom I’m trying to emulate.

Do you have any odd or interesting writing quirks, habits or superstitions?

I chew paraffin. You know, unflavored canning wax. Or I used to chew it before Exxon changed its formula recently and made it unchewable. Till that happened, I kept in a bowl next to my keyboard a chunk of paraffin from which I would bite a chaw. The chewing accompanied my writing rather than influenced it, I should add. It was better than eating candy or smoking cigarettes, plus it was flavorless so there was no taste to tire of. For now, I have gum in the bowl and it is not nearly as satisfying. My writing probably has suffered as a consequence.

Are you a plotter or pantser?

If you mean a seat-of-my-pantser, a little of both. In the beginning, I have an idea of where I want a story to go, but only generally. As I progress, characters come alive and begin to influence the route of the plot. It might be something one of them says that logically requires a change of direction. Or a descriptive passage might introduce an element that begs for a follow-up scene that I never envisioned. My plots are largely organic, if not spontaneous. Where systematic plotting is more likely to occur is when I near the finish line and realize there are holes in the story that need filling. In that case, I am more apt to methodically fill them.

Look to your right – what’s sitting there?

A packet of 8x5-inch canary-colored legal pads. A dozen pads in all. I’m a note-taker. Of course, all my creative writing is on the electronic screen and I write some notes to myself there, too. Yet the paper pads are critical to my functioning. On them I record information from phone calls. Reminders of writing tasks to be done. Schedule changes. Ideas that pop in my head and need preserving before they pop out. Something read online that I want to keep in front of me. Thanks to this system, I get where I need to be on time, finish writing tasks by deadline, and generally stay on top of my life. Also to my right, I should add, is a dispenser of transparent tape that affixes the canary notes to the edges of my computer screen, giving it a ragged yellow beard.

Anything new coming up from you? What?

Two things. First, I am polishing a manuscript that tells the story of a middle-aged businessman who wants to be a part of the national conversation about culture and politics. Short of running for public office, he doesn’t know how to engage. He finally finds a portal through which he can offer his reasoned, middle-of-the-road opinions. It is what happens next that comprises most of the novel: The man encounters serious pushback that threatens his business, his extended family, and his courtship of a woman in the other camp. It is not polemical story, nor an especially political one, but it does fairly address current issues through the eyes of the beleaguered businessman. The novel’s other thread is the middle-age love story. We need more of those.

Second, my just published novel, The Junkyard Dick, is set in the multicultural Texas town where I live… Uvalde. After the horrifying school shooting in May, I realized that normal marketing of the novel would be a problem. It has a strong sense of place—that place being Uvalde with live oak trees in the middle of streets, favorite gordita restaurants, the clear-water river north of town for swimming, and so on. I knew promoting a signature Uvalde story at this time would be seen as trying to capitalize on a tragedy. So, I created a nonprofit I named The Story Inventors Club Inc.. Into the nonprofit will go any royalties I receive from the book plus contributions from my Texas publisher. That will seed a fund that will support creative-writing programs for elementary-age children in Uvalde. The organization is not a memorial or a shrine to the shooting victims. Rather, it is an ongoing educational initiative to help the community and its children move on from tragedy. You can learn more by visiting the nonprofit’s website. Click below to go the website.

Do you have a question for our readers?

Sure. Does anyone know where I can order chewable paraffin?

Salvage yard operator and part-time sleuth Tak Sweedner is asked by a buddy, Roque Zamarripa, to investigate a murder. Tak says OK and for his trouble is assaulted with a tire iron. Then he's run off the side of a cliff-the investigation really goes downhill at that point!

Tak calls up gal-pal Emma to help him and soon discovers his feelings for the woman go beyond palling around. When she asks him to give up his investigation and concentrate on her, Tak balks. She might better have asked a bulldog to give up its bone. It would be like quitting, Tak said, and he wasn't a quitter.

Can this blue-collar crime-solver hang in there to get the bad guy... AND win his girl?

Read an Excerpt

Pushed off a mountain…

The collision jarred me. I was thrown against the door, the steering wheel almost twisting from my hands. I regained control of the wheel, but not until the rollback had begun to drift off the pavement at an angle that I recognized was irreversible, not with that much momentum behind it.

From instinct, I turned the wheel back toward the roadway. The loaded truck tipped right in response and began to roll over. I had lost the battle to stay upright. The ground seemed to tilt and the tumble down the long hillside began.

The noise of what followed was nearly as excruciating as the physical pummeling. I thought my eardrums would burst from the shrill screech of metal being wrenched apart. The booming of steel sheeting repeatedly being smashed against rock was so terrible it scared me all by itself.

Glass from the windshield sprayed me as it exploded under pressure. My eyes closed an instant before I felt my face pelted with the shards. Time and again, I was thrust against my seatbelt so hard that I expected the nylon either to part and send me flying or to bury itself in me like an extra diagonal rib. My jaw began to hurt after I banged my head against the door frame or the steering wheel or something unyielding while the truck and I tumbled and bounced.

The noise level finally reached a crescendo and began to recede and the jolting ride morphed into what seemed like a long, long skid. And then nothing.

About the Author:

Gillespie Lamb developed writing skills as a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist before leaving journalism to become a freelancer and pursue less formulaic writing. He published his first novel in 2017, a middle-grades reader about a girl who rode an “orphan train” from New York City to Kansas. It is titled The Beamy Courage of Gerta Scholler. This second novel is his initial foray into the mystery genre. The setting of The Junkyard Dick is the rural Texas region where Lamb lives.

Website: https://www.gillespielamb.com/
AUTHOR'S NOTE My latest novel, The Junkyard Dick, is a mystery set in Uvalde, Tex. It contains numerous allusions to Uvalde streets, restaurants, swimming in the Nueces, and so on, and positively characterizes this multicultural, county-seat town where I happen to live.

One week before I began marketing the book through my website, Uvalde became a national byword for school shootings. A minor consequence of that tragedy is that suddenly my book became awkwardly positioned in the marketplace. Many people naturally will see promotion of a book about Uvalde at this time as shamelessly cashing in on the tragic event. I want neither the perception nor the reality of that.

So, I have created a nonprofit that will benefit elementary fiction-writing programs in Uvalde—or create such programs out of whole cloth. Any royalties I receive from the book will go into the fund along with contributions from the publisher, Black Rose Writing. That will just be seed money. I will be soliciting donations to the fund from the literary industry and associated artistic ventures, from local and regional community organizations and businesses, and from readers anywhere who find comfort, escape or inspiration in fiction.

I am calling the nonprofit “The Story Inventors Club,” which is appropriately juvenile so that it might appeal to young people. It will be dedicated to the proposition that young imaginations are capable of producing fictional stories of merit and enduring value. The hoped-for legacy of the Club would be creation of a new generation of prose (and poetry) to delight readers, and the instilling of enhanced cognitive, language and communication skills in some young people.

So, as a consequence of all of the above, I now will be promoting two things: (1) a novel that I believe in on its literary merits, and (2) a Club that I believe can build a new and creative legacy upon the ashes of misfortune.

For more information on this Club, please go website.

Black Rose Writing: https://www.blackrosewriting.com/mystery/thejunkyarddick
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Dick-Gillespie-Lamb/dp/1685130178/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61257463-the-junkyard-dick

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