Scott Graham’s National Park mysteries combine murder,
mayhem and mysticism in spectacular landscapes while embracing a keen awareness
of environmental and social justice issues - a heady brew that’s winning him a
growing audience.
Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and in today’s
Binge Reading podcast Scott talks about why he chose to set his five book
series around an archaeologist sleuth Chuck and his Latina wife Janelle.
Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:
An exciting new field of environmental fictionThe long road to publicationAn archaeologist sleuth leads the wayLiving in the tri-cultural South WestRocky Mountain writersBeing the 'luckiest writer on the planet'
Where to find Scott Graham:
Website: http://scottfranklingraham.com/
Facebook: @scottgrahammysteryseries
Twitter: @sgrahamauthor
What
follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for
word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.
Jenny Wheeler: But now here's Scott. Hello Scott, and welcome to the show. It's
great to have you with us.
Scott Graham: Hi Jenny, I'm happy to be here.
Scott Graham - Author Entertainment-focused environmental mysteries
Jenny Wheeler: You made a reputation for yourself as a journalist and a nonfiction
writer before you started on the fiction. I'm just interested on what made you
switch to fiction and was there something that like a Once Upon A Time moment
where you felt that urge to change to writing fiction?
Long road to publication
Scott Graham: Well, the truth is, I was a
failed a fiction writer for a long time before I was finally a successful,
published fiction author. I've had the
dream of being a fictional storyteller pretty much my entire adult life.
And I've also enjoyed the writing process
my entire life as well. I could make a living as a journalist, as a business writer,
and I was able to then publish some nonfiction books. I was always getting up
early in the morning and doing some fiction writing just for myself because I
loved that idea of being a storyteller so much.
It took me, probably like many fiction
authors, four or five manuscripts that didn't go anywhere. That came close,
came closer and closer before I got what I feel like I'm good enough to find a
true publisher and get rolling with my actual published fiction.
Canyon Sacrifice #1 Scott Graham National Park series
The National Park series
Jenny Wheeler: That's fantastic. So you've now got five books in your National Park
series and these starring an archeologist called Chuck Bender and his Latina
paramedic wife Janelle. What made you
decide on that theme and setting?
Scott Graham: I'm from a small town that's named Durango in the far Southwest
corner of Colorado in the Southwestern United States, and that area is a hotbed
of archeological discovery and old civilizations that are around here. I was
raised here in Durango.
I'm familiar with all the archeological
discoveries that have been made here and throughout the Southwest of the United
States. And I'm fascinated by it, to be honest. I thought readers are probably
going to be fascinated by that as well. I just built that in as one of the
themes or the key aspects of the series; that there is always an archeological
discovery. There is an archeological
dig or an archeological survey that is ongoing as part of the plot for each of
the books.
An archaelogist sleuth
Jenny Wheeler: You're a self-proclaimed outdoorsman and your love of the natural environment comes through very strongly. Lots of reviewers comment on it. Each of the books features one particular national park, doesn’t it? It might be Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone. . . the most recent one is set in Utah in Arches National Park and as titled Arches Enemy. What draws you to the landscape?
Scott Graham: Again, I'm so fortunate that I've been raised in a family by my
parents who were real outdoors people and who loved exploring the national parks
in the West of the United States. So I was dragged around in the old station
wagon to all those national parks when I was a kid, and then I was doubly
fortunate to be able to return to my hometown. My wife and I raised our
children in Durango, which is really in the heart of national park country for
the western United States.
Treasured landscapes
And so I have had a love of national parks
and the Western national parks in America specifically that was put into place
by my parents and then grew by my being able to share these wonderful
landscapes with my own children as they were raised. What I'm doing is sharing my love for these
places with a greater audience.
It's basically a pleasure for me to set my
stories in these places. In addition, the national parks in America and the
public lands in Western America are constantly under threat because there's
always money to be made off of developing places that are undeveloped. I also
then have the opportunity through writing about the national parks to call
attention in each book to a specific, either social justice or environmental
justice issue that is specific to that park.
And so again, that's a part of my love of
the national parks and of my hopes for
their protected future that I'm able to share in my books.
Environmental dangers
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, so in Arch Enemy, it's actually seismic damage caused by mining
- deep ground mining - that is affecting some of the natural features.
Scott Graham: Again, people need to understand is, and I think all people who read mysteries and know mysteries do understand. What you're doing with the murder mystery, of course, is taking things and sending them over the top. Okay, so I've got a bumper truck that is a seismic truck that is doing seismic work outside the park.
It's been allowed by the powers that be to, in the case of the story that I'm telling - the fictional story - to get too close to the park, to the point where it may well have been the cause of the collapse of one of the iconic parts - well they are nearly all iconic in Arches National Park - but one of those natural arches that the national park is known for.
Tri-cultural reach
And that is the inciting incident that sets
off that particular story, but the reality is that such a seismic truck doing
that much damage is probably infinitesimally unlikely. And yet the idea that
these national parks and the Western United States are under threat from
extractive industry development is absolutely true. I'm just basically taking
some of these threats that are there and expanding upon them in a way that
makes for what I hope is a fascinating and interesting story.
Jenny Wheeler: Sure. And then you've got the social justice aspect of it. As we've mentioned, Janelle has Latina heritage. There's quite a lot of little bits of Spanish dotted through the book.
It's quite clear that she's a very well-integrated character in the book. She isn't just there for her looks, so to speak, and I gather you've got quite a strong background in Spanish culture as well.
Up the Rio Grande
Scott Graham: Yes, I do. In the culture that I'm been raised in here in Southwestern United States, it's really a tri-cultural place. There are the indigenous peoples, the tribal peoples who have been here long before Caucasians showed up.
But then the first real Caucasians or Europeans who showed up were the Spaniards coming up the Rio Grande Valley in the 1500s. At about the same time that the original pilgrims were coming across to the Eastern coast of the United States from Northern Europe, the Spaniards were coming up from the South.
They have left an indelible mark across the Southwestern United States before the European 'Manifest Destiny' crossing of the covered wagons and whatnot, brought in more of a Northern European culture to this part of the world.
Integrating a Latina family
And so we've got this wonderful tri cultural
world that I was raised in that I wanted to share with my readers because the
books that I'm writing are based in the Western United States where these three
cultures are still coexisting and learning to get along, and hopefully growing
together and becoming more aware of one another.
And so I've got my Caucasian archaeologist who then marries a Latina wife who comes into his world with two Latina, in his case, stepchildren. Not only is he having to learn to deal with being a father to these children and a husband to a wife after a lifetime of being an established bachelor and an established loner, he's also having to learn to recognize these other cultural values that have suddenly come into his world. He's having to learn to deal with those as well.
Multiculturalism in action
And so it's been a really fun progression
that I've been able to put him on, that I've enjoyed going to. There wasn't so much Spanish in the earlier
books, and in particular, Chuck himself didn't really use any Spanish. And now by the fifth book he's using Spanish
as well with his wife in the same way that she's using Spanish with him. I feel like that's the real progression that
would occur in this relationship. And it's been one that I've purposely built in
order to share with the Southwest and the West of the United States, and show
how that multiculturalism plays out here.
Jenny Wheeler: And I gather that you've found a publisher who is very much behind
the environmental push to highlight things like species eradication in Yellowstone
or those sorts of issues. Chat to us a bit about your publisher.
'Luckiest author on the planet'
Scott Graham: I have to tell you, I feel like I'm the luckiest mystery author on
the planet in terms of where I've landed with my mysteries. At the end of my
nonfiction writing run when I finally put myself to the task of wanting to be a
successful author of fiction and to be a mystery author,
