Here we are in January 2020, with months of winter ahead of us and the multitude of best of 2019 lists still buzzing in our brains. But January is also the start of a brand-new year and a cause for celebration and contemplation. In the spirit of looking back and looking forward, we’ve asked three crime writers who had very, very good years in 2019—Adrian McKinty, Rob Hart, and Steph Cha—about their best moments of the year past and what they will be up to in 2020.
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ADRIAN MCKINTY
AUTHOR OF THE CHAIN
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Lisa Levy: How is your life different in Jan 2020 than it was in Jan 2019?
Adrian McKinty: Life in January 2020 is VERY different. Before I would publish a book that only a few hundred people would read and I’d get pretty good reviews and the book would vanish. There was zero weight of expectation. But now I’ve written a bestseller I’m actually feeling pressure for the first time in my entire writing career. Can I top The Chain? I mean of course not. You don’t get high concept elevator pitches like that very often but I am going to work hard to do an interesting followup.
When you were working on this book was it different than previous books?
The Chain was a very different book to write than the Duffy books. I knew I couldn’t fuck around here. A woman’s child has been kidnapped she’s not going to spend three pages listening to Led Zeppelin albums describing every song while smoking pot like Sean Duffy would do. This story had to be about economy and pacing and it had to move. I had to unlearn how to write a crime novel. As either Thoreau or Grasshopper’s master in Kung Fu said, “When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.”
What was your best moment of 2019?
I am not going to tell you what the best actual moment was. But my best professional moment was seeing my name at number seven on the New York Times bestseller list. I mean what the living fuck? After 15 years as a writer and NEVER cracking the Amazon 1000…
What were your top three crime fiction books of 2019? What are you looking forward to in 2020?
The final book in Don Winslow’s Cartel trilogy, The Border; Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe (which was sadly not fiction but powerful true crime writing); I really liked Tana [French]’s book The Wych Elm. I’m looking forward to the new Steve Cavanagh—that twisty bastard always comes up with something from his warped mind; Hilary Mantel’s final Thomas Cromwell thriller is out in the summer and every bloody year Attica Locke does something amazing. I betcha next year is no different.
What’s next for you in 2020?
I’m going to finish the second book in my Little Brown contract as yet untitled and I’m going to finish FINALLY the new Sean Duffy novel, The Detective Up Late, which was supposed to come out last year but I got sidetracked.
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Rob Hart
AUTHOR OF THE WAREHOUSE
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How is your life different in Jan 2020 than it was in Jan 2019?
Rob Hart: In January 2019 I was sort of at the beginning of the Warehouse lunacy—I was still eight months out from release—so it hadn’t even really sunk in. Now the book is out, I’m writing full-time, I visited a bunch of countries, I’ve met a ton of new readers. So in a lot of ways, my life is really fundamentally different. And in others, it’s the same. I’ve got my head down and I’m focusing on the next project. That’s the thing about writing: there’s no final battle. It’s just a lifelong collection of failures and victories.
When you were working on this book was it different than previous books?
I went from writing a very personal, almost intimate first-person noir to this big sprawling speculative sci-fi thriller with three point-of-view characters. It couldn’t have been more different, but it was the challenge I needed to set for myself.
What was your best moment of 2019?
There was a lot. An embarrassment of them. Here’s the first one that comes to mind: In February I went to London to spend a day visiting bookshops, dropping off galleys of the UK edition of The Warehouse. It was an unseasonably warm and sunny day, to the point where me and Tom, the publicity manager from Transworld, ended up skipping the tube and walking a lot of the route. At the end of the night, my publisher Bill took me and Tom and the rest of the team out for dinner and drinks. We had such a lovely time. At the end of the night I opted to walk the mile or so back to my hotel and strolling down a crowded thoroughfare in London, the lights bright and people spilling onto the street, there was a moment where I became a little overcome with emotion. I just felt very, very lucky to be where I was. So… that was a good one.
What were your top three crime fiction books of 2019? What are you looking forward to in 2020?
I could name a dozen but here are the first three to pop into my head: American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson (which I read on that trip to London), Three-Fifths by John Vercher, and Miami Midnight by Alex Segura. As for 2020, I’m looking forward to the release of Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby, so everyone else can find out what a damn fine book it is. I’ve also got the new Rachel Howzell Hall burning a hole in my Kindle and I cannot wait to dig into that.
What’s next for you in 2020?
I’ve got a book I’m working on that I don’t want to tell you about just yet, and a comic book project I’m very excited about but I can’t tell you about yet either. Oh, and a side-project I’m doing for fun during my down-time—a TV pilot because why not?—but can’t talk about that. So… I’m keeping myself busy. Hopefully, soon I can tell people how.
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STEPH CHA
AUTHOR OF YOUR HOUSE WILL PAY
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How is your life different in Jan 2020 than it was in Jan 2019?
Steph Cha: In January 2019, I was wrapping up edits on Your House Will Pay and constantly fantasizing about its release, feeling good about having an almost-finished book in the pipeline. Now that book is out, the anticipation is over, and I have to get back to work. I spent the second half of 2019 working as a staff writer on a TV show, and that was a fantastic experience, a whole new road opened, and I hope to write for TV again. For now, though, I’m excited about starting a new novel. I’m also going into 2020 over five months pregnant with our first kid, so that’s certainly different. The current plan is to get knee-deep into the next book before this baby comes and fucks everything up.
When you were working on this book was it different than previous books?
Yes, very. I spent four-and-a-half years on this book, which is close to the amount of time I spent writing the first three books combined. I was working within a well-established genre with Follow Her Home, then once I wrote that book, I knew how to write the others. I’d figured out Song’s voice and character and a lot of the secondary characters, and I was working with a pretty straightforward structure. With Your House Will Pay, I had to learn how to write a different kind of novel. It was my first time writing in the third person, and the first time writing from the point of view of a character who wasn’t a Korean woman roughly my age. I had to do much more research for this book, both to get Shawn’s character right and to understand the complexities of L.A.’s recent history. It took a lot of time and labor to wrangle this novel, especially without the structural guidelines of a strict genre novel.
What was your best moment of 2019?
I’m gonna cheat and pick two. My book launch was pretty wonderful. My friends and family have all known about this book for years, so it was great celebrating with them when it was finally out in the world. Also, this is a wanted pregnancy, and I was totally blown away by the first sonogram where the baby was kicking around in my uterus, looking surprisingly like a baby.
What were your top three crime fiction books of 2019? What are you looking forward to in 2020?
I think I have to go with Miracle Creek by Angie Kim, A Student of History by Nina Revoyr, and Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke. I also loved Pretty as a Picture by Elizabeth Little and Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden, which will be out in 2020. I’m also looking forward to City of Margins by William Boyle, Take Me Apart by Sara Sligar, and The Coyotes of Carthage by Steven Wright. I’ve heard great things about all of them.
What’s next for you in 2020?
A new book and first-time motherhood. So far, I know frighteningly little about what either will be like.
