Review of Viper by John Desjarlais

Summary: (From http://www.johndesjarlais.com)
Haunted by the loss of her brother to drugs and a botched raid that ended her career with the DEA, insurance agent Selena De La Cruz hoped to start afresh in rural Illinois. But her gung-ho former boss needs her back to hunt “The Snake,” a dealer she helped arrest who is out of prison and systematically killing anyone who ever crossed him. His ‘hit list’, appended to a Catholic Church’s All Souls Day ‘Book of the Deceased,’ shows Selena’s name last. Working against time, small town prejudice and the suspicions of her own Latino community, Selena races to find The Snake before he reaches her name while a girl visionary claims a “Blue Lady” announces each killing in turn. Is it Our Lady of Guadalupe or, as others believe, the Aztec goddess of Death?



Mini Review:

Another excellent mystery by John Desjarlais. Too often anymore, you read a thriller/mystery and have to wonder if the main character is even human for all the abuse and emotional trauma they live through in the course of a book. The thing I enjoy most about John's books is that he doesn't rely on over-the-top action or heart-clutching angst to get you through a story. Rather, he begins with a strong mystery with believable characters you could expect to find living next door, and he lets the excitement and the emotion flow naturally from the story. The result is a novel that will keep you reading through the end, but not leave you feeling like the characters--and you--need a long vacation on a deserted island just to recover! The Catholic and Hispanic culture, so well researched and deeply infused in the book, add flavor and uniqueness. Definitely worth reading!

Interview with John Desjarlais, Author of Viper

Yay! Tomorrow, I'm heading off to the Catholic Writers Conference Online. One of the many fantastic people I'll meet there is John Desjarlais, who writes awesome mysteries with Catholic characters. His latest, VIPER, came out July 15. I'll have a review up on the 8th, but here's an interview of him. Enjoy!



A former producer with Wisconsin Public Radio, John Desjarlais teaches journalism and English at Kishwaukee College in northern Illinois. His first novel, The Throne of Tara (Crossway 1990, re-released 2000), was a Christianity Today Readers Choice Award nominee, and his medieval thriller, Relics (Thomas Nelson 1993, re-released 2009) was a Doubleday Book Club Selection. Bleeder and Viper (Sophia Institute Press, 2009 and 2011 respectively) are the first two entries in a contemporary mystery series. A member of The Academy of American Poets and Mystery Writers of America, he is listed in Who's Who in Entertainment and Who's Who Among America's Teachers. Today, we're talking with him about his latest book, Viper, out from Sophia Institute Press.

Where did you get the idea for the murderer putting her name in the Book of the Dead?

I’m a relatively new Catholic, and so I’m very excited to observe the many customs, traditions and practices I never knew about in my many years as a devout Protestant. Soon after I finished BLEEDER, my first mystery, I was considering a sequel and on the lookout for a story idea when around All Souls’ Day I noticed an announcement in my parish’s bulletin reminding people to write the names of departed relatives in “The Book of the Dead” so they could be remembered and prayed for. To a mystery writer, a phrase like “Book of the Dead” sounds like a premise and a title! The wheels began to turn: what if there were names in the Book of people who weren’t dead yet? What if they were being killed in the order in which they were listed? Who would they be, and who would kill them, and why? And what if the last name in the list was one of my characters? It had to be Selena De La Cruz, especially since this observance has a close connection to the Mexican festival in November called “The Day of the Dead,” which became my working title along with “The Book of the Deceased.” (It ended up being “VIPER” to match the two-syllable title “BLEEDER” and to refer to the snake-themes in the story: the drug dealer named “The Snake,” the snake handling, the Aztec interest in snakes, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose name in the native Nuahtl language means ‘she who crushes the snake’).

Did you have fun looking up women's footwear for Selena?

I learned early on in the research that Latinas dig the zapatos. At the elaborate coming-of-age celebration for fifteen-year-old girls called a Quiceañera, one custom calls for the father to give his daughter her first pair of high heels as a symbol of her womanhood. For Selena, the stylish shoes are a sign of her Latin identity, her social class and her empowerment as a woman in a man’s world – besides handing a P226 SIG Sauer and racing a muscle car! I found all I needed in Latina magazine and zappos.com, and my Latina reader/translator had some suggestions. I have no particular attraction to women’s footwear, lest anyone wonder about that. And I’ve never actually tried wearing them to get an idea of their balance. My research only takes me so far. The aim was to make Selena both unique and authentically Latina.

What was your favorite part to write?

The climax, the final showdown, is always a gratifying part to write since it is the dramatic pay-off that you’ve been setting up for a long time. Apart from that, I enjoyed all the ‘flashbacks’ and brief remembrances of Selena’s upbringing and family life. These intimate interactions made the character come alive for me and absolutely real for readers. I didn’t include all these parts in the novel; one must be judicious with backstory. I’ve saved them and I might use them in my blog (http://jjdesjarlais.blogspot.com) when Selena writes there as a ‘guest.’


What's next for you?

I’m brewing ideas for the third mystery in the series to address a few unresolved issues left over from VIPER. Insofar as VIPER considered Selena’s relationship with her mother (an immensely important figure in Mexican families), the next story will examine her troubled past with her father. This has always affected her relationships with men, and until she deals with this she cannot move ahead in her relationship with Reed Stubblefield. So I’ll have Selena investigate the mysterious circumstances of her father’s early death, which is somehow connected to his former position as an executive with PEMEX, the Mexican national oil company, and his sudden transfer to the Mexican Consulate in Chicago.

Thanks for letting me visit with you, Karina! Your readers can stay in touch with me at jjdesjarlais(at)johndesjarlais.com. Visit my web site, www.johndesjarlais.com.

Information: Reuse, Recycle, but Don't Reduce!

On Sunday, the Catholic Writers' Guild meets in a chat room to talk about writing or faith or whatever. Last Sunday, we actually got to talking about what we were working on, and John Desjarlais, author of the very good mysteries Bleeder and Viper, told us that he was researching life insurance for his next mystery. However, he's found an interesting angle. Did you know that companies can buy out your policy, much like mortgage companies buy out other banks' mortgages? Their payout comes if you die within two years of their having purchased your policy. How bizarre is that?

I'm sure you can see the implications for a murder mystery, but never underestimate the power of good information.

The following Tuesday, I was thinking about Neeta Lyffe: I Left My Brains in San Francisco. I have a sporting event that takes place on an unfinished bridge, and a comment Carole Nelson Douglas made on a panel gave me an idea. One of her books has a CSI-type show, except that people can audition their own deaths. So, thinking along such macabre lines, I decided that there should be a prize for the most flamboyant death in my bridge jumping contest. Then I thought that life insurance should be part of the entry fee.

...and as long as I have life insurance, why not have someone buy out the insurance policies, betting that at least one of the contestants will die? Right now, I'm thinking the City of San Francisco will do it, hoping, perhaps, to raise money to build a bridge they can finish themselves.

Thoughts on Marketing Your Books

Recently, I was on a marketing panel at the Catholic Writer's Conference Live. John Desjarlais was the moderator, and he kindly supplied me with questions ahead of time. I made some notes, which I never really got to because of the flow of questions from the audience. I thought I'd share with you today.

How does a non-artist get good promotional material?

• Use the cover art
• Get help
• Remember that “good” does not have to mean expensive or flashy—capture them with the story

In the modern age, has the web trumped public presence? Do you still need to shake hands and kiss babies?

• If in bookstores, I think physical presence is more important.
• However, it is fun and helpful to be available, to make live contacts (like Ann said in her opening speech) Not just for sales, but support and future publishing
What marks you as a professional when you market? How do I market on the cheap without looking like an amateur?
• Know what you’re doing—take some classes, get some examples of what works.
• Don’t hard sell. They say writing is an isolated art, but at the core, it’s about establishing a relationship, however temporary, with the reader. Marketing is the same.

example: There’s an author I friended on Facebook. Every post I see of his is really just an ad—often the same ad—for his book. A review quote and a buy link. Sometimes when he sees me on facebook, he IMs me to ask when he “can send me my copy.” Compare that to Carolyn Howard-Johnson. She has several books on book promotion and writing. She has a twitter account and a newsletter for promoting them and she mentions them fairly regularly, but mostly, she has interesting things that help authors. People learn to trust her, then they buy her books.

What do you think of getting your name out in tangential ways - teaching classes, apearing at conferences, etc.?

• I definitely recommend it. I sell a lot of stuff and gather new readers—and new friends that way.
• You don’t need to teach either. I always use conference workshops to work on a work in progress, like from my DragonEye. People get sucked into the characters, and I can mention that I already have one book out.

Your thoughts on appearing as original vs being compared to other authors? (Example: all the fantasy authors whose works are described as points on a line with Tolkein in the center.)

• I like what Terry Pratchett said on his website. “I’m having a real identity crisis, since apparently there are four or more of me.” I love Terry Pratchett and I aspire to write on his level, but I don’t want to be the next Terry Pratchett. However, when asked what my books are like, I have been known to say “Discworld meets Harry Dresden Files.” Or “Terry Pratchett meets Jim Butcher.”

Do you blog? Doesn't it take away from your writing time?

• I have a love-hate relationship with blogging. At one point, I had three blogs I kept up regularly, but they didn’t do anything for me except, as you say, take away from my writing—and my imagining time. This year, I narrowed it to one blog, twice a week. On Mondays, it’s anything goes, and I share news or review others or whatever. Thursdays, I write about my latest work in progress. That way, it does help me—it keeps people up to date, gives me a chance to give back to others who have hosted me on their blogs, and it gives me a little reward because I can talk about what I’m writing.

Do you do anything to determine what marketing methods are giving you hits and - more importantly - sales?

• I can’t get my head around SEOs and all that. One thing I found has helped is not depending on my own sites. For example, I started publishing my Dragon’s Eye View newsletter on myebook.com. Before, I only had a few readers each issue, now I average 10,000 reads. I’m still not sure how well that’s translating into sales.

What is the first thing I should do when I go home tonight to start marketing well?

• Set up a regular time or a regular task list. One thing about marketing is that you have to plug away at it, even if just baby steps. I actually publish a weekly newsletter, 30-minute marketer, that gives 4 tasks that take about 30 minutes each, to help folks organize that, and I have some samples. But really, the key is find that tasks that work and keep at them, a little each day or a little each week.

If you'd like a sample issue of the 30-Minute Marketer, check it out at www.fabianspace.com.