George D. Shuman, author of the murder mystery “18 Seconds,” talked with members of the Beanery Writers Group at their first anniversary meeting March 9, 2007. He spoke about his books and his writing process.
Shuman, a twenty-year veteran of the Washington D. C. Metropolitan Police Force, said he would have been a writer no matter what his career was.
“18 Seconds” is his first published book.
Two segments of this article, Shuman’s Background and Shuman’s Writing Process are posted today. Visit our blog site tomorrow night when the second two segments, “18 Seconds,” the Book and The Finished Book, will be posted. SHUMAN’S BACKGROUND As a high school and college student Shuman was not the stellar performer. For whatever reason, he found classes, even literature, tedious. His first jobs following school were in the steel mills in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He was laid off when the industry began to decline. Then he could only find work on the State Road Crew in Somerset County. Like most youth, he needed to “get out of” his hometown. So he packed and drove to the nearest large city, Washington, D. C. He worked for the police force there for twenty years before he retired as a lieutenant. For ten years after that he was an executive in the luxury resort industry in both Long Island, New York, and Nantucket, Massachusetts. After 9/11 he returned to the area and started a security consulting business. He was awarded a certification in Industrial Security held by only 4500 members world wide. However, instead of marketing his business he kept finding himself dusting off old novels he’d written and sending them out to agents and publishers. “I sat in the office and wrote and forgot all about consulting,” he said, noting writing is hard work but he likes the solitude of the work. SHUMAN’S WRITING PROCESS Shuman doesn’t think there is a right or wrong way to write. What works for him is constant “combing” and reediting, after which he has a writing that is in pretty good editorial shape. When he finds something needing research he immediately goes on the Internet. He noted that Stephen King said it best: Talent is as common as table salt. It’s hard work that gets the book written and published. “There’s nothing truer. You have to get to the keyboard. I can’t imagine what writer’s block is…” He said he finds it easy to determine how his characters behave and respond, noting everyone knows people whom they can sense what they would do or say or how they would react to things, while other people would react differently. He dares write in a woman’s voice, he said, because many issues cross the man-woman line. When he writes he lets the characters lead him. He considers it very important that a novel reads like it could happen. “I once read this book with terrific dialogue, great setting and great characters. Three quarters of the way through I found the bad guy was a werewolf. I tossed the book aside immediately. “I need plausible explanations for things. Even writing a psychic, I had to make her believable, and that was the crowning achievement of Sherry Moore. That, in the end, is what the publisher bought. I hope when you close the book you’ve found it was moving.” He prefers to start with “place” when conceiving an idea for writing. PART 2 “18 SECONDS,” THE BOOK He chose the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey, as the “place” for “18 Seconds.” “I was thinking about the boardwalk. I’ll never forget walking the boardwalk,” he said. “Where you’re beyond the noise, you can hear the hollow clip clop of your steps and see the white surf and it’s an ‘anything can happen’ type of place.” Next he began to drop the characters into the scene. His villain, Earl Sykes, is a psychopath whose criminal career was interrupted by twenty-five years in jail. Thus he existed under the wire of law enforcement suspects. “Although Sykes is indeed a horrible villain, I do not write gratuitous gore. We all have minds. There is no need to spell out every act,” Shuman said. Sykes is a loathsome character. He represents men in maximum security prisons everywhere, Shuman explained. There are hundreds out there like him, who, if they were to get out of jail, would return to crime. “Sociopaths aren’t looking to have mid-life careers and to better themselves in society.” The heroine of Shuman’s murder mystery is Sherry Moore, a blind psychic with an ability to “see” a victim’s final 18 seconds of life. She uses this ability to help police departments solve a series of murders committed by Sykes. The great amount of time studying memory and researching how to create a character with psychic abilities led him to short-term memory, which lasts about 18 seconds. “I thought, what if someone can see this RAM memory of human beings and not archives of something else? I tried it and played with it.” Shuman himself never worked with psychics during his twenty years as a Washington, D. C., Metropolitan Police Force member, and isn’t a proponent of paranormals in police work. “But the idea of psychics is exciting.” Moore wasn’t meant to be the main character, according to Shuman. “I liked the idea of the old weathered cop---he was my guy. And the idea of an underdog hero appeals to me.” THE FINISHED BOOK After writing a book Shuman said he sometimes looks back thinking he wouldn’t have guessed the way it turned out. It took hard work, perseverance and many rejections before Simon & Shuster published “18 Seconds,” according to Shuman. Although his book opening at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D. C., was followed by months of radio and television shows, Shuman prefers the solitude involved in the activity of writing. “I think writers, typically, aren’t entertainers, nor do they want to be,” he said, noting he would rather “lay on the beach and write forever.” Translation rights for his murder mystery were sold to seventeen countries, including Korea, Indonesia and Argentina. On March 27, “18 Seconds” was published as a Mass Market Pocketbook with Stephen King’s endorsement on the cover. Shuman’s second book, “Last Breath,” continues Moore’s story. It will be available in bookstores on August 7. He was recently contracted to write “Lost Girls,” the third book in the series. On March 17, 2007, the International Thriller Writers Association announced “18 Seconds” is one of five nominees for this year’s Thriller Award in the category of Best First Novel. This announcement was made at The Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in California. His competitors are: Shadow of Death by Patricia Gussin; Switchback by Matthew Klein; A thousand Suns by Alex Scarrow and Mr. Clarinet by Nick Stone. A native of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, he now lives in southwestern Pennsylvania. For further information on “18 Seconds,” its sequels or the author visit Shuman’s website, www.georgedshuman.com Put our blog site, www.ProBlogs.com/beanerywriters in your “Favs” list and click on it daily to see the new posts on a variety of subjects in a variety of genres. |
|
