The creative evolution of Stare Down was circuitous. Well, I suppose they’ve all been circuitous. More on that below.

After sixteen Thorn novels I had tested Thorn in every way I could think of and I’d used up a lot of easy subjects (environmentalists vs developers, pirates, eco catastrophes of various kinds, not to mention animal smuggling). So finding a new subject wasn’t as easy as it was when I started out back in the early 80’s.

Then the air was on fire with cocaine smugglers, scar faces, exotic bad guys who seemed to show up on the local news every night. Bales of marijuana and bullet-riddled bodies came ashore weekly in the Keys. Easy pickings. And like other Florida writers, I picked those up with gusto.

But after a while (4 or 5 books) those subjects were well-worn, full of cliches, and I was tired of repeating the same formula. So I explored some other subject lines and geographical areas and tried to break out of the Florida novel mold. Flexing new muscles.

State Down spends a lot of time far from Key Largo, Thorn’s home. But in some ways this novel’s themes and propulsion is fueled by a feature of the very first novel. The relationship between Thorn and Sugarman.

It’s always been a struggle for both of them. A shaky, but deep bond between an unpredictable, slightly amoral guy whose approach to solving mysteries is to throw a monkey wrench into the works, and a guy who has a rule book embedded in his DNA. Sugarman lives by a strict moral code.

I wanted to find a way to test their friendship, to put them under extreme pressure and see how they would react. It took a while to put the other pieces of the story into place, but that problematic friendship was always front and center in my plotting.

Since I don’t use a road map (outline) , I sometimes make a wrong turn and head down a road that looked pretty at the start but ends up going nowhere. Months of work must all be deleted. And that’s what happened in this case. I was almost a hundred pages down that pretty road when I realized there was a dead end sign up ahead. Save what you can, then delete, delete, delete.

“No thrill for the writer, no thrill for the reader,” said Robert Frost. Although he said “tears” not “thrill.” But that’s my motto as a writer. I’m guided on my journey through each book not by some pre-set destination, but by the tingle of excitement I get as scenes unfold in unexpected directions.

Sometimes that process causes me to waste a lot of time, as was true with Stare Down. Thus the two year gap between this novel and the last. I like to think I gave Thorn a good long break to recuperate from his last beatdown and gave him time to make some new friends since some of his old friends aren’t around anymore.

The image I began with this time was a total solar eclipse that happened years ago. Not the most recent one. My original hometown, Hopkinsville, Kentucky, was one of the places where totality lasted the longest of anywhere in the US. Thousands of people descended on Hopkinsville and the surrounding area, and it was that fact that was on my mind as I began this novel. In one sense, I wanted the chance to write a little bit about my hometown, and I also wanted to tap into the celestial power of that rare event.

The first problem was the one I always wrestle with at the beginning of a Thorn novel. How do I get this agoraphobic, isolationist anti-social hermit out of his stilt house and in motion? In the past I’ve had to kill one of his relatives or friends to get him galvanized and out the door. As a result, I’ve trimmed his friend list way down over the years. This time as I solved that initial problem, a second and far more interesting problem appeared.
Thorn agrees to take his goddaughter to see the solar eclipse way the hell away from Key Largo because he’s trying to satisfy the young lady’s passionate wish to see it. Off they go, Thorn and Stetson to Kentucky, against the wishes of Stetson’s parents (and Thorn’s closest friend). Since the parents are off on a faraway vacation, Thorn figures they’ll never be the wiser.

How wrong he is. But it is that fateful decision that drives the action and Thorn’s emotional journey.

The other challenge I set for myself in this novel is hiding the killer’s identity. In every past novel, there’s been no mystery about who dun it. The reader sees whodunit when they do it. I’ve never concealed the identity of the killer till the final scenes before. And boy, is that a different writing challenge than any I’ve tackled before. Gives me a whole new respect for the Agatha Christie approach.

So anyway, hoping you enjoy the new one. By the way, I’ve started on the next one already, and still no roadmap.