Interview with suspense author Brian Finney

Today’s special author guest is Brian Finney. We’re chatting about his new psychological suspense novel, Dangerous Conjectures.

Bio:
Brian Finney has won national awards for his biography of Christopher Isherwood and for his debut suspense novel, Money Matters. His writings have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The LA Weekly, The Irish Times, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle and numerous other journals and anthologies. He has published seven nonfiction books and two novels. Money Matters (2019), his first novel, was a finalist for the American Fiction Awards in the Best New Fiction category. The second is Dangerous Conjectures (2021), a novel featuring a couple living in the Bay Area whose lives are threatened by the spread of the coronavirus and the rise of conspiracy theories. In his former life, he was a literature professor in London University and several universities in Southern California. He now calls Venice, California home.

Welcome, Brian. Please tell us about your current release.
Dangerous Conjectures is a psychological thriller that focuses on Adam and Julia, a professional married couple in their thirties who live in the Bay Area. Set in early 2020, when the coronavirus is beginning to spread widely across the United States, the marriage comes under strain when Julia encounters an old boyfriend who becomes obsessed with her. Simultaneously she is increasingly stressed by the growing menace of Covid-19.

A professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, Adam finds it hard to understand her fear and is tempted to compensate with an attractive female colleague. Against a political background of untruths and conspiracy theories such as QAnon, Adam sets out to discover what gives QAnon its mass appeal, and what its connections are to the White House. His excessive trust in objective truth is challenged by Julia’s susceptibility to unproven media rumors. As tension escalates between them, they risk becoming victims of a climate of misinformation that is spreading irresistibly across the nation like the virus itself.

What inspired you to write this book?
Like Adam, I couldn’t fathom how a conspiracy theory as ridiculous as QAnon could acquire the huge following that it did. How could even some members of Congress subscribe to a belief that a Satanic cult of child sex offenders constituted a deep state that only President Trump could overcome? Clearly, followers of such a conspiracy theory found in it a compensation for the disappointments in their own lives. My trust in facts and science blinded me to the power of such an emotional appeal as QAnon generated. Sharing this stance with Adam was enough of an impetus to drive the narrative along its own course.

 

Excerpt from Dangerous Conjectures:
JULIA VISITS HER PARENTS 

They first went to Julia’s parents’ home. Laura, her mother, led all of them into her small, dingy living room and asked what they would like to drink. Julia and Adam opted for water, Liz for milk. Once they were settled down Julia asked her mother how her dad was.

“Not good. What do you expect? He’s suffering from end-stage liver disease.”

“And what caused it?”

“You know the answer to that” she said bitterly. “Whiskey.”

“He always did drink a lot.”

“Well, he’s been drinking a lot more since you left home.”

“Like how much?”

“Like a bottle a day…on good days.”

“Have they thought about a liver transplant?”

“They say there’s no way they are going to waste a good liver on someone who’s not willing to swear off drinking. They will only perform a transplant if a patient has stayed off alcohol for six months.”

“But can he stay alive that long?”

“Very unlikely.” Laura spat out most of her answers.

“He’s not ready to give up his whiskey to save his life?” Julia asked.

“No. He makes me bring him a bottle of whiskey every time I visit him in the hospital.” She paused and her tone shifted. “But a new liver could prolong his life for a number of years.”

“And where will he find a donor willing to give his drinking habit a new life?”

“That’s where you come in.”

“Me?”

“If you’re a match, you could donate twenty-five percent of your liver and extend his life.”

“Are you kidding me?

“They say that a healthy person’s liver can return to normal in two to four weeks and regrow to its original size in less than a year.”

“If he was ready to stop drinking I might consider it. But we all know how likely that is.”

Julia’s mother came to a halt directly in front of her.

“What kind of daughter do you call yourself?”

“You know I owe him nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t want me to dredge up the past, do you?” Julia said.

“You always did exaggerate what happened to you as a child.”

“You mean, you always did minimize it, when you’re not outright denying it.”

Liz was closely following the conversation, her brow furrowed. So, Adam interrupted.

“Liz and I need to take Lucky out for a walk. Put on your coat, Liz. Let’s have a little outing.”

“I’ll come with you,” Julia surprised all of them by saying. She turned back to her mother. “You and I can go to see Dad together after we get back.”

“He sees me every day. You go visit him on your own. I know he’d want that.”

In the car driving home Julia filled Adam in on how it had gone with her father at the hospital. He’d greeted her by asking where the whiskey was that he’d asked her mother for. When Julia told him she wasn’t going to bring him liquor, he immediately started shouting at her and demanded she go out for it that moment. When he realized that was getting him nowhere, he asked her whether she’d told the doctors yet that she was willing to donate a part of her liver. She told him that she would only consider doing so if he stopped drinking. That led to another outburst when he accused her of wanting him dead. Julia held her own and pointed out that he was the one killing himself. That infuriated him even more. He began cursing so loudly that the nurses rushed in. When he shouted at them as well, they gave him a sedative. One nurse had to hold down his arm. Once he started to doze off Julia left. “I couldn’t get myself to kiss him goodbye. I think I would have been better off never having had a father,” she concluded bitterly.

 

What exciting story are you working on next?
I’m not sure yet. I have started playing with a story about a single older homeowner who has a homeless middle-aged woman and her young daughter park the van they live in outside his home and refuse to move. Eventually, he lets them move in with him. That leads to a series of incidents that dramatize the differences in age and circumstances between them. It could be a kind of love story, not necessarily sexual. But it would focus on the gradual meeting of minds between two very different individuals.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
When I was invited to write a short book about Samuel Becket’s later fiction by a small press called Covent Garden Press. This involved me in contacting and meeting Beckett in Paris, and that gave me my first taste of original research. That, in turn led me to undertake a biography of Christopher Isherwood, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for nonfiction. After that, there was no stopping me. I have now written seven nonfiction and two fiction books.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
My first seven books were written while I was a full-time English professor at London University, then various universities in Southern California. Most of my writing had to be done during the summer vacation. Once I became a professor emeritus, I had complete freedom of choice over what I wrote. To my surprise, I found I wanted to write novels rather than more nonfiction.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I love writing dialogue. It is such a natural way of losing yourself in your characters’ personalities. I always have difficulty ending an exchange as there’s always a reply to whatever was said last.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A movie director. (Glad I became a writer instead – more control over content).

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Dangerous Conjectures was published in late March 2021 and can be bought from Amazon in any of three formats: e-book, paperback, or audiobook.

Links:
Website | Amazon | Instagram | Twitter

Thanks for being here today, Brian.