Jonathan Dyer's Blog: The Nick Temple Files, page 7

Plots drive the Nick Temple Files. A recent review of Switchback even noted the emphasis on “plot-plot-plot.” That’s a fair observation and one that tracks with my intent when I write the books. Most of the characters in the series are not deeply developed. One concern driving that choice is keeping anything that gets in the way of the plot to a minimum. However, credible characters assist the movement of plot along in ways that are also credi...

I believe I’ve read all the fiction Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. I have also read a good deal of biographical information about both men. As a result, I have a good sense for how much their personal lives influenced their fiction, and how many details of their lives appear in their fiction. However, those two are the exception. I don’t know enough about most authors whose works I’ve read to determine how much their fiction owes to t...

I see a good deal of discussion on the internet – some of it insistent, some of it less so – about the “proper length” for a short story and a collection of short stories. I assume that most of those who advocate for one number or another have commercial viability in mind. What attracts a publisher? What sells? The opinions are often couched in terms of what “readers” are looking for without disclosing any objective criteria that led thos...

I view reflection as a valuable exercise, particularly when it yields unexpected insight. Whenever I release a new book, as I did yesterday with A String of Beads, I’m inclined to reflect on its creation and its place among my prior works. That process in this case has resulted in my considering three of my books together as a trilogy, or nearly so.

Webster’s defines a trilogy as “a series of three dramas or literary works or sometimes...

I released a new collection of short stories today, A String of Beads. The following is from the back cover of the book: “A String of Beads is a compilation set primarily in the 1960s about a boy, his brother, and his sister trying to survive in an environment soaked in alcohol, marked by a distant war, and scarred by the rarely suppressed demons of the adults around them. Dyer’s skills as a writer are on full display here. Fr...

The Cold War produced victims. I’ve never seen a complete accounting of how many men and women on either side were killed or wounded during the Cold War. I have seen an estimate of 382 Americans killed during the Cold War outside of the wars in Korea and Vietnam. That estimate is usually defined in terms of direct military action. Presumably, it does not include covert civilian casualties resulting from other than military action, many of which are lik...

We are shackled to the past, either through our own deeds or the deeds of others. Witness the reverence for the actions of this country’s founders when such reverence results in the severest of quantifiable harms, i.e., death, with little to no quantifiable benefit. That reverence may be little more than a veneer covering personal preferences, but it is trotted out by those wishing to sound serious, contemplative, and profound. It isn...

I’ve been on and off Twitter a number of times over the years. I’ll stick it out for a while, grow weary of the experience and withdraw, and later convince myself that it’s important for me to be on it to (barely) market my books. I recently returned after a several-month hiatus. My strategy on this go around was to avoid political Twitter as much as possible given the vituperative nature of the public “debate” on the platform. I tried to limit myself to what...

The Nick Temple Files can be read as historical fiction. Each book is set during the Cold War, and each references and is influenced by events that are contemporaneous with that book’s plot. I’m working on number seven in the series. It has a working title of Nonessential Personnel, and is at the moment centered in Berlin in 1970.

One obvious requirement for writing historical fiction is res...

“The TV was still loud, but it was nothing more than background noise since I’d grown accustomed to its noisy clack-clacking indelibly competing with my parents’ riotous profusion of human exhaust.”

That’s the last sentence of my short story “Domestic Partners.” It’s one of 27 stories in my collection A String of Beads. I’m in the process of shopping the collection around, seeing if I can drum up any interest in it. That last sentence of “Domestic Partners” t...