Local author Frank Zafiro was featured on KXLY News tonight. The feature included a shout-out to Get Lit! I’m not sure how I feel about calling novel writing “unconventional,” but anytime media celebrates authors, I’m happy.

Embedding the video in this post eludes me, but you can watch the segment here.

It’s 1998 and the Russian mob claims parts of River City. The only person connecting the patterns of escalating violence and a new ruthlessness of crimes is a female analyst. She tries valiantly to convince the new Chief of Police to pay attention and mobilize resources before this new organized crime group establishes a stronghold, or worse, there’s a turf war between the Russians and the already established gangs of the city.

In And Every Man Has to Die, the officers and detectives of the city’s police department struggle to keep the streets safe while trying to tame this new underworld of criminals. Old friends from the earlier novels and short stories grace the pages: MacLeod, Battaglia, O’Sullivan, Chisholm, and Browning, but there is also a new cast of characters who complicates work and personal relationships within the department.

This book is the darkest of the series. Partly because of the fantastic and fanatical villain Zafiro created in Valeriy Romanov, the Russian mob boss. The sections of the book told from his point of are scary in that I completely believe his justification for why he has to do the terribly things he does—all while being horrified by his twisted and psychotic mind.

Contributing to the bleakness of the book is Zafiro’s ability to show the emotional and physical drain on the police men and women caused by the senseless violence.  The elements that make each River City book so good are here–short vignettes of scenes that speed up the plot, witty and gritty dialogue, three-dimensional and interesting characters—but throughout the book there is an undertone of despair. I can feel how tired and run down the characters are and how hopeless they at times find their situations. Read more »

One of the great things I learned in my MFA program was how to read as a writer. In my very first class, the instructor told us (the students) that it didn’t matter whether we liked the books we were assigned to read. It was more important to learn how to figure out what was working, deconstruct what the writer did to make it work, and then steal that technique for our own prose. The program trained me so well that I have trouble turning the analyzing and deconstructing off. There are times when I’d like to read a book just for the pleasure of getting to know the characters and getting lost in a well crafted plot. I want to get back to being a reader and try to zone out the nagging voice behind me that points out clever craft tricks on the pages.

Reading Frank Zafiro’s short story collection Dead Even was one of those times when it was a possible to both get lost in the words on the page and enjoy picking apart the author’s technique. Zafiro put together the collection with the assumption that the readers were already familiar with his River City series. Those novels are written in third person and one of the things I so enjoyed in  Dead Even was spending time with familiar characters in first person. Katie MacLeod is by far my favorite character of Zafiro’s and the first story in the collection, “Last Day in Paradise,” is in Katie’s voice and takes place twelve years after Under a Raging Moon. There are two more stories about Katie, both told in third person, and each gives me a different perspective of her character than I got from the River City series.  

It’s great fun for readers to visit with old friends and finding out more about them, but it must also have been a blast for Zafiro to thoroughly explore his characters this way. I sometimes try out scenes from alternate points of view and then decide which one works best, but have never thought about exploring characters through both third and first person writing. Usually I pick one perspective and then stick with it for that character. Since reading Dead Even, I’ve been switching between first and third person during free writing sessions and love how it opens up new aspects of my characters that I wouldn’t have discovered if I’d stuck to just one voice. Read more »

Frank Zafiro is the author of the River City crime novels and also writes mainstream fiction under the name Frank Scalise, which is his actual name. Born and raised in Spokane, he joined the U.S. Army after high school graduation and served in Military Intelligence. He’s been a Spokane police officer since 1993 and has served as patrol officer, corporal, detective, sergeant and lieutenant. His current title is captain.

Zafiro has written seriously since he was thirteen, starting out with short stories and poetry. Last week I reviewed his River City series. If you didn’t read that post, let me summarize: I’m a big fan.  As Frank’s latest stalker groupie, I emailed him with a bunch of questions about his journey towards publication and being a writer while working full time.

Here are the questions and his answers. Enjoy!

When and why did you begin writing? 

When?  Well, like most writers, I began pretty early.  Maybe eight or so?  But by ten, I knew I wanted to be a writer, so that is the age I usually give in response to this question.  To be honest, I don’t ever remember I time where I didn’t want to be a writer.

Why? The same reason almost each of you write…because I’m a writer.  

I know that sounds like I’m being a smart alec, but I’m really not.  Much in the same way that a musician plays music or a carpenter works wood, I write because it is who I am.  I’d write even if I couldn’t get anyone to read what I’ve written.  I am a writer.  I write.  I suspect that most of the people reading this understand perfectly.  The rest probably think I’m being pretentious. Read more »

Frank Zafiro is an author that many people have recommended to me, but for one reason or another I never got around to reading his stuff. At a recent book signing I finally purchased Under a Raging Moon, the first book in the River City Crime series published by Gray Dog Press. (Coincidentally, this is where our own Marcus Corder now spends many of his working hours.) I finished the novel in one sitting and then rushed down to Auntie’s to purchase Heroes Often Fail and Beneath a Weeping Sky. Now I’m impatiently waiting for the fourth book, End Every Man Has to Die, which won’t be out until March 2011.

River City is fictional, but readers familiar with Spokane will recognize street names and landmarks mentioned in the books. The novels have fast paced plots and fantastic characters. As many of you know, I’m a fan of women’s fiction with strong female leads, but my other weakness is police procedurals and crime/legal thrillers. (My TiVo also have season passes to all flavors of Law & Order.) I love these plot driven books, but they won’t keep my attention unless I’m invested in and care about the characters. In a recent Willow Springs interview, Jess Walter talked about how crime fiction often focus too much on plot but that the complaint about literary fiction is that there isn’t enough story. He thinks there’s a “sweet spot in the middle” that an author can aim for. Zafiro’s novels hit right at that perfect spot and this is one of the reasons why I’m such a huge fan. Read more »