Ed Duncan is an mystery author I promoted on my previous website. Only now, I am reading his books and have found him to be an incredible story teller. As far as the mystery genre, Ed is a standout writer. His writing is lean and clean. His plots are exciting and frightful. I plan to review his books and those reviews will be posted on the Book Reviews page of this website.
Please introduce yourself. Tell us about your personal life, family, education. I grew up in Gary, Indiana, which is about 30 east of Chicago. At one time Gary was home to the largest steel mill in the country, and I worked there during some of the summers while I was in college. After graduation from high school, I went to Oberlin College in Ohio, where I majored in Spanish. Following college, I entered Northwestern University Law School. The main campus is in Evanston, Illinois, but the law school and medical school are located in downtown Chicago just north of Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile near the shores of Lake Michigan.
Upon graduation from law school, I accepted an offer to become an associate at, by 1974 standards, a large Cleveland law firm. In due course I became a partner and practiced for 38 years before retiring in 2012. In 2008 I wrote a legal text entitled Ohio Insurance Coverage, a reference work for lawyers and judges. I updated that book annually through 2012.
I live alone in a Cleveland suburb, and I have three adult children and two lovely granddaughters.
What do you like doing in your spare time? I spent six weeks in Monterrey, Mexico when I was 15 as part of a study group, and I spent a summer studying in Granada, Spain and two weeks in Paris while I was in college. These trips gave me an appreciation for travel. Since retiring I’ve been to Madrid and various cities in Mexico, as well as Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Panama, Argentina, and Cuba trying to practice my Spanish. I also enjoy traveling in general, so I’ve been to Brazil, South Africa, Hong Kong, China, and Japan. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic caused me to cancel trips to Spain, Portugal, London, and Paris this year.
My only other pastimes are regular exercise, reading, writing, and watching TV and movies.
Strictly a Writer
If you are active in career fields other than writing, what do you hope for the future of that business? Describe your work or business activities in which you are presently active. I’m not active in any career fields other than writing.
If you are a writer, are you an avid reader? Yes, I am an avid reader. My genre is crime fiction, so I enjoy reading novels in that genre as well as general fiction. I also enjoy biographies, historical fiction, and Civil War and World War II literature.
What is your ultimate writing goal as you see it today? I’ve written my Pigeon-Blood Red Trilogy, consisting of Pigeon-Blood Red, The Last Straw, and Rico Stays, but I’ve also written an eponymous screenplay for each novel. I adapted the first two screenplays from the novels, but I wrote the third screenplay first and adapted the novel from it.
After much effort, I have finally located a producer who is interested in bringing my trilogy to the screen or to television. Although these days there are many more companies seeking content than in the past, it continues to be very difficult to get a movie or a series actually produced. However, I am keeping my fingers crossed!
While I await word from Hollywood, I have not decided whether to write another novel or another screenplay. At this stage of my life, perhaps I will write neither. But if I do write one or the other, I suspect I will end up writing both, with the second being adapted from the first.
What inspired you to write your first book? The idea for a crime novel came to me while I was attending a legal seminar in Honolulu a very long time ago. I was taking a stroll one evening when I saw in my mind’s eye a woman traveling alone and transporting something valuable that bad people – dangerous people – wanted to get their hands on, and I saw a lawyer coming to her rescue. That was the germ of an idea which became Pigeon-Blood Red. It turned out that the “something” in the woman’s possession was a priceless “pigeon-blood red” ruby necklace. That descriptive phrase was coined centuries ago by Indian gem dealers. It describes the color of the rarest and most valuable rubies in the world, the same color as the first two drops of blood that trickle from the nostrils of a freshly killed pigeon.
How do you decide on the title of a book? Pigeon-Blood Red was a natural for the first novel since a ruby necklace that color precipitates all the action and, but for the necklace, there would be no story. Also, it is an exotic phrase that should grab the attention of potential readers.
I truly struggled searching for the title The Last Straw. I checked famous quotations and even well-known verses from the Bible, but nothing seemed to fit. Eventually, the title just came to me. It’s not original or unique but I think it fits.
Finally, I took Rico Stays from a line in an old Barbara Stanwyck movie called Baby Face. At one point in the movie a lover of the main character, played by Stanwyck, strongly suggests that she get rid of her maid/friend, who was named “Chico.” Stanwyck’s defiant reply is “Chico stays!” I just changed “Chico” to “Rico,” the name of the charismatic anti-hero in all three novels in my trilogy.
About Style
Have you developed a specific writing style and why? I’m not sure I would be presumptuous enough to call it a “style,’ but I think what characterizes my writing is the use of crisp, authentic dialogue.
How much of your books is realistic and experiences based on someone you know, or events in your life? Paul Elliott, the protagonist in the novels, is a greatly exaggerated version of me. Therefore, his values, for the most part, are the same as mine. Some of his back story also is similar to mine, and some of his experiences recounted in the novels are based on actual events in my life, most of which, however, I’ve changed for dramatic effect. As to which are fact and which are fiction, I can say that nothing that casts him in a negative light actually happened!
Who is your favorite writer, and what is it about their work that really strikes you? It is difficult to say who my overall favorite author is because I generally have favorite works of fiction or nonfiction by various authors. That said, my favorite writer in the crime/thriller genre is Lee Child. His iconic hero Jack Reacher shares many of the traits of Rico, my anti-hero. Also, few writers can elevate the level of tension in a scene as well or as often as Child does. When Reacher is in one of his frequent tight spots, the reader feels as though he is right there beside him.
Do you remember the first book you read? I have no idea what the first book was that I read! I can tell you what the first three were that I recall having an impact on me: A Stillness at Appomatox by Bruce Catton, How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn and Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham.
Is there an author, past or present, you would love to meet? Why? I would love to meet Dashiell Hammett because he, more than anyone else, probably inspired me to write crime fiction. His writing, particularly in The Maltese Falcon, is masterful. Spade’s long monologue near the end where he explains to Brigid O’Shaughnessy that he “won’t play the sap” for her and that he’s “sending her over” is simply perfect. In fact, it is so good that the monologue appears almost word for word (as does much of the dialogue from the novel) in the classic 1941 movie version written and directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart. I would love to learn from the master.
And Advice
When you see new authors struggling, what single piece of advice could you give them on a moment’s notice? The single piece of advice I could give new authors would be to write draft after draft and then write more drafts until they were satisfied that they had produced their best work.
How do you want others to see you or remember you? Is it important to you? I would like to be remembered as someone who led a good and honorable life. It is only important to me in the sense that how I am remembered may have an impact on my children and my surviving relatives, and I would not want that impact to be negative.
Do you have a blog or website viewers can visit for updates, events and special offers? Include links to any and all of your sites.
Readers can view my author page on Amazon (www.amazon.com/author/edduncan).
They can visit my web page (www.eduncan.net).
I am also on:
Facebook (www.fb.com/ed.duncan1210)
Twitter (@pigeonbloodred)
Pinterest (www.pinterest.com).
Nice to meet Ed and find out more about him. 🙂