Interview with literary mystery author Reed Stirling

Today’s guest is literary mystery author Reed Stirling to chat with me about The Palimpsest Murders.

During his virtual book tour, Reed will be giving away a $15 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too.

Bio:
Reed Stirling lives in Cowichan Bay, BC, and writes when not painting landscapes, travelling, or taking coffee at The Drumroaster, a local café where physics and metaphysics clash daily. Before retiring and taking up writing novels, he taught English Literature. Several talented students of his have gone on to become successful award-winning writers.

He and his wife built a log home in the hills of southern Vancouver Island, and survived totally off the grid for twenty-five years during which time the rooms in that house filled up with books, thousands of student essays were graded, and innumerable cords of firewood were split.

Literary output:

Shades Of Persephone, published in 2019, isa literary mystery set in Greece.

Lighting The Lamp, a fictional memoir, was published in March 2020.

Set in Montreal, Séjour Saint-Louis (2021), dramatizes family conflicts.

The Palimpsest Murders, a European travel mystery, was published in September, 2023.

Shorter work has appeared over the years in a variety of publications including Dis(s)ent, Danforth Review,Fickle Muses, Fieldstone Review, and Humanist Perspectives.

Intrigue is of primary interest, with romantic entanglement an integral part of the action. Greek mythology plays a significant role in underpinning plots. Allusions to art, literature, philosophy, and religion serve a similar function.

Welcome, Reed. Please tell us about current release.
The Palimpsest Murders, as originally conceived, is strictly a murder mystery, which is somewhat of a departure from my earlier novels, although having a protagonist uncover what’s going on behind the scenes is essential to previous works.The Palimpsest Murders, which I call A European Travel Mystery, is literary in tone. In some ways it fits the cosy murder genre but in no way is it all that cosy because it necessitates travel, even in the imaginative sense, and a basic familiarity with characters in Homer’s The Iliad, especially with the royal murders involved in the aftermath to the Trojan War.

The plot of The Palimpsest Murders revolves around thirty or so characters who have embarked on a week-long Boat and Bike excursion through Holland and Belgium. The storyline begins in Amsterdam, continues in Paris, and ends in Greece. During this time, two murders happen in real time and other suspicious deaths are uncovered as part of the backstory. All are reflected in events that echo the classical past. Significantly, the name of the boat is The Iphigenia.

What inspired you to write this book?
The ideafor this novel arose when I took a one-week Boat & Bike excursion through the Lowlands. All was agreeable among the thirty guests onboard. Very enjoyable. But why not, my imagination prompted me, introduce the clash of different personalities in close quarters and have that lead to inevitable conflict that would result in two murders? Geoff Canter, a sound editor with a penchant for figuring things out, became protagonist and narrator.

Most fun in moving the plot along:what songs to have salient characters sing, when the group engages in a karaoke session onboard the Iphigenia, that points them in the direction of either victim or perpetrator. For instance, given his paternal persecution, Boyd Alexander’s rendition of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” or Flex’s version of “Mack the Knife” following shortly after his sudden and unexpected arrival on the Iphigenia.

Excerpt from The Palimpsest Murders:
We took our empty jars back to the bar and called it a night.

In my dispatch to Penny, I began with a note on Boyd Alexander.While some of our table klatch had a rather low opinion of Boyd Alexander, I explained how, after watching and listening, I was developing a sympathetic affection for him and so provided details that would give Penny as complete a portrait of the young man as seemed relevant at the time of the writing. Monk called him a gomer. Aimée thought he was a sad sack. Melinda and Olivia referred to him on more than one occasion as a prat with unearned privileges. For the record, these silver-tipped sibyls had the habit of referring to Conrad Steele as a tosser and Mitchell Monk as a knob and wanker. I provided Penny with no equivalents for what she might consider obscure appellations. Colloquialisms, I wrote by way of explanation. Vanessa was kinder when she dubbed Boyd Alexander the mook who moved like a mountain.

I related seeing a parallel in the behaviour of our son David, who for a time in his adolescence seemed to have withdrawn into self-imposed isolation; this was the case, seemingly, with Boyd Alexander. The Oedipus factor? Possibly, but resolved. David proved resourceful and resolute. I saw no reason to deny Boyd Alexander similar inner strengths. Hadn’t Isla warned against underestimating him because, if pushed, he could shove back with surprising force most aggressively? That notion was seconded by Alexsis who claimed his Alexander didn’t always play second fiddle to his Boyd, by which she implied, I reasoned, that he was like Alexander the Great when push indeed came to shove. If her understanding of him was correct, he was emotionally, mentally, and physically capable of striking out against oppression in whatever form it presented itself.

Penny knew I was an inveterate listener. She needed no detailed explanation of my modus operandi among the guests on the Iphigenia. She was already cognizant of certain areas of misunderstanding and conflict among them. I explained how I was tempted to intervene, to interpose myself between this one and that one, which was by and large uncharacteristic of me, my normal course of action being to fall back into the shadows or slide to the periphery and merely observe. I’d hear what others intended me to hear, offered understanding, and that would be the extent of it. In effect, I’d be looking on from the shelter of anonymity, from the computer screen of my mind where a script was being enacted beyond a sound editor’s ability to influence it in any meaningful way. I was okay with that. In contrast, Frank Veridis inserted himself right into the mix to make a relevant comment or cast doubt on the argument on one side or the other. Lucy Hunter would contribute some droll observation while Melinda Mancipal would come out with something cynical but insightful. Objectivity, right? I concluded the point by suggesting that had Penny been with me and party to the same influences, we would in the after hours be indulging in bavardage and kaffeeklatsch and expanding our very own version of the wry sanction file.

What exciting project are you working on next?
At present I am playing around with ideas for another novel that I’ve speculatively entitled A bouquet of Darts. Although the setting is similar in places to that if The Palimpsest Murders, and despite the overlap of setting, this work in progress represents a completely new direction. It is not part of a series.

Eros, the Greek god of love and desire, is my narrator. I think he will prove the most interesting character of the lot I’m calling into being. He will certainly have much to say about himself and the individuals he feels impelled to observe, eavesdrop on, and take shots at with his arrows.

In revealing his personal history (so far), Eros mentions that “in the cauldron of evolution there was a time —centuries, millennia— when I was dormant in terms of human involvement, bored in fact, spent much of my time shooting arrows at the stars, to no avail, of course, other than to create minor fiery effects. Those that came into being and gave me voice and stature were ignorant of that fact, the long hiatus between spectacular nebulae and the birth and death of stars. Though they were conscious of the significance of stars and the constellations.

“All of this is to say, we so-called immortals evolved lockstep with them; the more sophisticated they became, so with us. They gave us substance, personality, powers, and through us they began to understand themselves more thoroughly and the world they inhabited. Mutual dependency. They created us to explain what they didn’t understand, which is, as I have maintained since the outset, the central paradox that defines our existence. We were always there in potential just as life in Gaia’s domain, which is the universe writ large, was always there in potential, human life in particular. We gods and goddesses hung out in the green room of possibility. But as to immortality, forget it. Eternal life for us is a phantom concept: we will cease to exist with the death of the last human. In this assertion, I paraphrase the ideas of a French philosopher I once became intrigued with. I shot no arrows in his direction.”

Often pitted against the designs of Eros is Eris, goddess of strife and disorder. Of the classical contrariness of Eris and Eros, it can be said that they are mythical manifestations of the yin yang of being.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I first considered myself a writer when at university I got an introspective prose poem published in a student journal. Since then, having over thirty literary pieces published in academic journals and reviews and laying claim to four full-length novels helped confirm that fact.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I do not write full-time. When I have a project on the go, then I give it my all. Then I sit down to write every day. I try to come away from the desk having achieved at least a workable page. Frequently what comes of my effort amounts to no more than a paragraph, but one I am satisfied with. Having coffee out or nursing a beer in a pub can lead to observations that connect to themes I’m developing. It could be a bearded face or the shape of a table leg or a tune playing in the background. However, sometimes a writing session will net no more than a single sentence or a metaphor that might work in a context yet to be imagined.

Hard to say what actually comes first, character or plot? An idea for a story takes root and then things evolve from there. Who a character is as a representative human being, say the protagonist, can determine where his or her choices lead. Plot will put obstacles in the way. Occasionally a setting will fire up the imagination, and I’ll want to see something dramatic take place there. That requires characters. Plot develops from that.

Regarding research: most enjoyable is research done in situ, Greece for Shades Of Persephone, for example, and Montreal in large part for Lighting The Lamp and Séjour Saint–Louis. Being on a Boat and Bike excursion provided me with much usable information for The Palimpsest Murders. Simple observation of people helps in many ways, verisimilitude being the objective of the observation whatever the setting. Reading other fiction can also be a source of inspiration.

When not involved with writing I paint and have produced work that others appreciate and are willing to purchase. Other interests include the following use-it-or-lose-it activities: cycling, skiing, golf, travelling, and, or curse, reading.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
Re-reading the previous day’s output before continuing the narrative. I’m always looking for inconsistencies.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be an athlete.

Anything else you’d like to share with readers?
The most difficult piece I’ve had to deal with comes from a chapter in my second novel Lighting the Lamp. It was published in Humanist Perspective (Fall 2019) under the title “Glorious Disorder.”

On the one hand, the selection deals in a straightforward manner with the nature of metaphysical belief, which can be a very sensitive topic for some readers. On the other hand, my characters have to come to grips with the destructive nature of the Guillain-Barré syndrome. Deeply conflicted about the whys and wherefores of the devastating illness his granddaughter suffers, my protagonist explains that the tragic situation facing the family is not divinely sanctioned but “is simply a disorder arising out of the seeming randomness of the evolutionary process that the cosmos contrived, one that brought us into being, and one that can take us out.”

In reality, my neighbours’ young daughter suffered for months at the hands of this insidious affliction. The whole family was displaced and suffered much. In time, the girl recovered, as does my imagined character.

Thanks for having me as a guest on your blog site to talk about my latest release and my interests as a writer of fiction. Very much appreciated.

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