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| Jonathan Hayes, Author of Precious Blood |
Jonathan Hayes, a veteran forensic pathologist, has worked in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York performing autopsies and testifying in murder trials since 1990. Jonathan's first novel entitled Precious Blood, has been described as a "Taut and chilling...fast-paced thriller written by a real player in the game of forensic sleuthing" (Kathy Reichs). The sequel to Precious Blood, A Hard Death will be available in the US in the winter of 2009. Join us today for an interview with Jonathan Hayes.
How does a forensic pathologist/food and travel writer foray into the thriller market?
That's funny – most people ask me how a forensic pathologist ended up writing about food! The answer to that would be that an editor from a trendy NYC magazine named Paper noticed my writing on a bulletin board and invited me to write for them. From there I was quickly picked up by Food & Wine magazine, then by Martha Stewart Living, then the New York Times, GQ, New York Magazine, etc. When I used to see Martha out at parties, I'd never introduce myself for fear she'd be horrified to learn what I did for a day job, and fire me because I didn't fit in, but later she knew what I did, and was always really good to me.
I love writing about food, particularly when I get to travel to write about food, but after pounding out, say, 500 words on edible flowers for the third time, the heart and the pen yearn to be free. I loved the idea of not having to write in a particular voice specific to a magazine, and being able to talk about forensics and murder, and to use swear words liberally. Very, very liberally.
How much of Precious Blood is based on first-hand knowledge and events from your own career?
One of the difficult things about being a forensic pathologist is that you see a lot of extraordinary things that you really almost need to talk about, but the ethical strictures of the work forbid that. Death, particularly when sudden, violent and unexpected, is a hugely traumatic thing, and discretion is critical in a medical examiner. I'm not saying that I'm perfect, but I try not to discuss my cases outside professional circles. That said, I do sometimes talk about the particularly difficult or painful things with the person who is closest to me – it kind of helps you stay sane.
The great thing about fiction is that it lets me take things I've seen in my own case work or those of my colleagues, extract what I found most striking or moving, and rework it into something new, something that won't be a real case, but that could be. I'm a fan of poetic license with science when writing fiction – I'm one of the relatively few people in forensics who doesn't get all huffy over how "inaccurate" CSI is – but I was surprised to find I didn't take any shortcuts in Precious Blood: all the forensics in the book is real. I put the characters in extreme situations, but the forensic science follows through just as it would in real life.
Long story short, I guess that the answer to the question is: all of it.
What is it about death that attracts such great interest in the media and in fiction?
The thing about death is that it really is the only universal experience – contrary to that saying, not everyone pays taxes. All of us will die – no one's escaped yet – but the subject borders on the taboo. The evolution of science and culture has been such that death has been quietly pushed aside into a little curtained room off the main corridor of daily life. For something that is effectively ubiquitous, we're really underexposed to it. And the fact that it is effectively invisible, but always waiting around the corner for us, makes it compelling. We want to know, but we don't. We want to see what happened to other people, and wonder how it will happen to us. And in fiction, we read the book, we see the killings, but we survive: we experience a model of death, and yet we remain alive - we have triumphed! Murder raises the stakes, and high stakes make for a gripping read.
What inspired the creative process of your first book?
I was doing some food writing in Oaxaca in Mexico, and was spending the siesta starting to work on my first novel. Some of the ideas in the book were crystallized by my visits to Mexican churches, particularly the cathedrals, with their insanely rococo detailing – all the gilt and murals and mosaic. I was thinking about how devotion and obsession teeter into each other; that's something that cuts across all religions, from the pyramids to those beautiful mosques in the middle and far East, with their painstakingly detailed marquetry. And the notion of that connection, the notion of the closeness of the sacred and the profane, was a little epiphany that really brought everything into focus for me.
Who are your favorite authors, and what are you reading right now?
I think I became a forensic pathologist largely because of Arthur Conan Doyle and the Encyclopedia Brown books, so I have to give them their props. I don't really think in terms of favorite books or authors, but I guess I'd throw out Faulkner, Cheever, TS Eliot, George Perec. I'm not as up to date as I should be with contemporary thriller/mystery writers. I like Thomas Harris – his books blast along at an incredible pace, but he's great at really lyrical, horrible touches. Stephen King, of course, although sometimes I feel like he could've done with a tougher editor, particularly back in his drug-fueled days.
I'm thinking about Stephen King because I've been reading – and thoroughly enjoying Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, his son. And I've started reading Tim Hallinan's Bangkok books – I love that city, and he brings it out beautifully.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
Write! And: Read!
If you're going to be an author, you're probably already writing now – a journal, a blog, a short story, whatever. Keep doing that, be critical of your own work, show it to others who'll be critical of it. Persist. Keep persisting (you might read Stephen King's On Writing for inspiration – his stories of rejection letters are great!).
The thing is, so many people start writing a novel only to abandon it 40, 70, 150 pages in. DON'T! Just keep going. As Hemingway said, "The first draft is always shit." And if the first draft isn't perfect, maybe the second will be. Or the third. Or the fifteenth. Guillermo Arriaga, who wrote the screenplays for Amores Perros and Babel, rewrites his screenplays over and over again until they're perfect, sometimes fifteen, twenty times – the whole screenplay. He doesn't edit them – he goes back and does a page 1 rewrite over, and over again, until it's where he wants it to be.
I'm not saying that's what you should do, just that if Arriaga can work like that, you can rewrite your manuscript a couple of times!
Would you give us a sneak peek into your upcoming novel and provide us with a release date?
I'm still writing A Hard Death, the sequel to Precious Blood; it's the second of five planned Jenner books, and should be out in the US in Winter 2009. The book takes Jenner out of New York City - he's covering for an old friend in southwest Florida. It's supposed to be an easy gig in a low crime region, but things quickly go to hell.
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