Q&A with Doug Kurtz

Doug Kurtz

1. Your book is about bio-terrorism and corporate scandal. How do current events play a part in your writing?

Bio-terrorism and corporate scandal function more as backdrops in Mosquito than as central forces in the story. My interest in them arose as I worked with my protagonist, Ben Baxter, who’s an adventure tour guide struggling with post traumatic stress issues. I wanted to torque Ben’s personal conflicts by getting him embroiled in events that would really motivate and develop his character. Once I knew that he’d be up against a corporate version of bio-terrorism, I started looking into current events to find a viable storyline. At the time I was writing, a lot of big corporate scandals were happening, as was some interesting research in biology. To get the right backdrop for my story, I put the two together.

On the corporate side, these very normal-seeming people were being caught in complex, underhanded schemes, and always seemed so humbled and humiliated. From this, Dana Carmichael, another character, was born. I put her at the center of an embezzlement scheme involving a biological sciences conglomerate called GEOSol. Because Ben’s story takes place on an adventure tour through major US national parks, I wanted the GEOSol scandal to involve the park system somehow. Then it was just a matter of figuring out the mechanical and biological angles of the embezzlement scheme, which ended up using mosquitoes to infect isolated wildlife populations in the parks. Some of this came from current events and some from current science—but most of it is straight-up fiction.

I don’t feel drawn to the news for story ideas—I’d rather start with a character and look for motivation—but I think using current events in fiction can be a great way to add a layer of character identification. If a character is concerned with the same things that readers are, then there’s something extra in common, and that creates interest and immediacy, and in some cases higher stakes. The danger I think is relying too heavily on headlines and subverting a character’s personal conflicts and motivation, which to me are always more interesting to read about than something happening in the news.

2. What is your favorite book, and how has it inspired you?

Oh, man, this is like asking my favorite ice cream flavor—impossible. I admire different books for different reasons, and would be hard pressed to narrow it down to one. I think my greatest influences were books I read as a kid. C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia come to mind—the sheer adventure of traveling to other worlds. I loved Jack London, too—his outdoorsy characters, and all the dogs. Animals play a huge role in my writing. Old Yeller, My Side of the Mountain, White Fang—books like these really hooked me as a young kid. I also loved The World According to Garp, by John Irving. This, I think, still tops the list of the most engaging books I’ve read. I tend to focus on authors whose skills and talent are way beyond mine, because it helps me to think bigger and stretch myself. Lately, I’ve been reading Ian McEwan for his psychological precision. His characters’ inner worlds are razor sharp and always emerge into the exterior world in surprising and disturbing ways. I love this, and it’s something I would like to emulate in my own characters. I thought Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections was an amazing book, and I go back to it often to marvel at the ingenious sentences and characterizations. I love Don DeLillo, too, and David Wallace, and Martin Amis, and Jhumpa Lahiri—anything that makes me ask, How did they do that?”

3. What is the writing process like for you? Do you develop characters first, then plot lines?

I usually start with a character and a setting that interest me somehow. For example, with Mosquito, I asked, “What might happen to a psychologically fragile tour guide on a cross-country adventure tour?” A problem, or conflict, usually emerges, and then I take it from there. Once the thing starts rolling, the plot begins to take shape and drives the protagonist along his or her arc, and vice-versa.
My stories tend to be pretty involved and complex, so I have white boards all over my office to track what’s going on with the different characters and plot lines. I find that having a visual component to my writing really helps when it comes to tracking all the threads that have to be pulled through.

My first drafts are absolutely horrible—painful to read, especially for me. A typical sentence might look like this: “And then he goes into house and finds a thing that maybe somehow determines what happened in the scene when the car went into the ditch.” There’s a lot of explaining things to myself the first time through, a kind of hybrid between writing about the story and actually writing it in scenes. I don’t worry too much about the furniture until the house is built; details come after I get the big picture worked out. The second draft is when everything comes together and starts to click for me, and subsequent drafts are about fine tuning and polishing.

For me, and for a lot of writers I work with, it’s important to remain flexible throughout the drafting process. I might have a good sense of where I want the story to end after I write the first draft, but in the second draft things can change direction, sometimes dramatically. I’ve learned that there’s a big subconscious component to my writing, and the story often knows where it wants to go before my conscious mind catches up, so flexibility is crucial. So is trust. The more complicated the story, the more drafts it takes me to get it right, and the more flexible and trusting I have to be with myself and my process. The novel I’m working on now seems impossibly complicated and never-ending, but because I trust my instincts and remain flexible to the end, I know it will eventually gel into the vision have for it. For me, one of the great rewards of writing fiction is paying attention to and “evolving” my personal process. I love it.

4. How long did it take for you to write Mosquito?

It’s hard to say exactly, because I was doing a lot of other things while I was working on it. I’d say it took about two years to produce a draft that read the way I wanted it to. Once agents and publishers entered the mix, I did a couple of rewrites, and that added on a lot of additional time. By the time everybody was happy and the book was in print, four or five years had gone by.

Everybody writes at a different pace and with different intentions, so I think it’s important to get comfortable with yourself and not worry too much about timelines. What’s most important to me—and most satisfying—is getting the project to work the way I want it to, however long it takes.

5. Are you currently writing any other books? Are they mysteries? Can you ever see yourself writing something other than a mystery?

I’m just about finished with the second draft of my next novel. There are definite mystery elements to it, but I wouldn’t call it a mystery, per se. I like to think of it as character-driven suspense. I never want my readers to stop wondering what’s going to happen next. There’s always conflict developing and resolving, on every level of the book: plot, character, internal, external, etc.—always multiple threads being pulled through every scene, chapter and section. If you can put the book down without canceling an appointment or missing your bedtime, then I haven’t gotten something right. I want to create engagement in every sentence and put my readers in a deep, exciting, suspenseful, mysterious, disturbing, elating dream. Whatever category that puts me in—mystery, suspense, thriller, etc.—I’ll take it.

As for other writing projects, I have a couple of non-fiction ideas in the works that stem from my life coaching business. I primarily coach other writers, and I’ve found that developing a positive outlook and mindset regarding writing is just as important for long-term success as learning the technical aspects of the craft. There’s a myth that a writer has to be disturbed to produce good work. This is nonsense. Writers can harness and build their personal power to maintain motivation and inspiration for the long term, and learn to counteract the limiting thoughts and beliefs that often hold them back. My next project is a self-help book for writers that focuses on these ideas, but I don’t want to give too much away just yet.

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