Joseph Pittman

I always envisioned myself as a mystery writer; it was something I wanted to do from my teen years, when I first discovered Agatha Christie.  But then one day I started working on a book called TILTING AT WINDMILLS, an idea that just came to me during a personal crisis.  I imagined the story of a man who gives up all he’s worked for and finds a new life in a small town.  That was the first book I got a contract for.  So it was expected of me to write more books in that genre, and I did, with WHEN THE WORLD WAS SMALL and LEGEND’S END.  But I never gave up on my love of mystery novels and so I wrote London Frog.  In fact, one reader who said of Windmills, “You wrote that sweet book?” then read London Frog and said, “oh, there you are.”  So I guess I have a bit of a Jekyll & Hyde personality when it comes to my writing.

Linden Corners is a fictional town in New York State’s Columbia County.  It’s located along the very real Route 22, somewhere between the real-life towns of Craryville and Hillsdale.  The name comes from Lindenwald, which was the birthplace of Martin Van Buren, the eight president of the United States.  It’s located in the Hudson River Valley.  I added “Corners” to my fictional town’s name for a quainter feel.  Some of my Upstate New York friends believe the name is derived from Lyndon Corners, a busy intersection just outside of Syracuse.  Pure coincidence, though given the number of time I’ve been stopped at those long traffic lights, perhaps something sunk into my subconscious.

Beats me.  I was traveling on Amtrak from New York to Albany, with a great view of the Hudson to my left the entire ride up.  By that time the idea for TILTING AT WINDMILLS was percolating inside my mind, and as phrase in the book I was reading hit me:  the author stated that a character of hers was tilting at windmills.  Just then I imagined what it would be like to come upon a real-life windmill along my train journey.  The Hudson River Valley has a strong Dutch history, so it’s not unlikely a windmill could be part of the landscape, though to my knowledge none exists.  But I feel its power when I write about Linden Corners.  It helps make my fictional world all the more special.

Write what you know?  I’ve lived my entire life in New York State, both in New York City and Upstate New York, notably the Syracuse area.  I went to college outside of Rochester.  So I know a thing or two about small towns.  I also know a thing or two about New York City, so that’s why my stories tend to mix the two settings.  In both TILTING AT WINDMILLS and LEGEND’S END my characters leave the big city for their respective towns of Linden Corners and Turner Junction.  Georgie from WHEN THE WORLD WAS SMALL has a slight detour in Manhattan before returning to the security of Lincoln Point.  But I do suffer from wanderlust as well, I like to travel, and so the Todd Gleason series was born.  From London to Los Angeles and beyond, it will be interesting to see where my con man alter-ego winds up next.  But his background may just lie in some upstate New York town.

Ah yes, my con man with a heart of gold (mostly stolen), a dimples to die for.  He’s not so shady that you can’t like him—in fact, I like to think he’s very likable.  Todd Gleason is the star attraction of my mystery series, appearing in LONDON FROG and CALIFORNIA SCHEMING.  I’m working on his next adventure now, which should be published early 2013.  He also appears in the mystery anthology Crime Square, Edited by Robert J. Randisi.  It’s the first short story I’ve ever written that features Todd, and it’s called The Perils of Penelope Pitttson.  I had a blast writing it.

I remember a teenage me discovering writer after writer after writer.  It started with Christie, but soon expanded to Dick Francis, Lawrence Sanders, Anne Perry.  I love spy novels, so Robert Ludlum, Ken Follett and Nelson DeMille quickly became favorites.  I’ve read every Stephen King book, some of them twice; he’s probably tops in my book.  Contemporary authors I like include Dennis Lehane, Carl Hiaasen, Daniel Silva, Lawrence Block, Tom Robb Smith, Martin Cruz Smith.  So a lot of genre stuff.  But one of my big influences in my earlier writing days was Irving Wallace, one of the world’s great storytellers.  He wrote long, complex, “big idea” books like THE PRIZE and THE FAN CLUB and THE MIRACLE.  I even wrote him a fan letter once, and he answered back by sending me two signed books.  I still have them.  I always will.

I’m not an “every day” writer.  It just doesn’t work for me, especially as I work during the day.  So I tend to take a week or two and go away, where I can get the book started.  Then once I’m into the story, it happens very quickly. TILTING AT WINDMILLS took four months for the first draft; LONDON FROG took a four-week stay in London to complete.  CALIFORNIA SCHEMING took a bit longer, more than a year.  Just didn’t have the time to focus on that one for awhile. But generally I write very quickly, working from a bare bones outline.  I don’t like to be locked in; the fun of the writing is the unknown, the blank page before me.

Back when I was a Senior Editor at New American Library (Signet Books), the company was preparing its 50^th Anniversary celebration.  The publisher at the time, Elaine Koster, hand-picked me to assist in compiling an anthology of original stories from authors who were stars of the Signet list.  The book came out in hardcover under the title THE BEST OF THE BEST: 18 Original Stories from America’s Leading Authors.  (I never liked the title).  It was the first time my name was on the cover of a book.  The paperback edition was re-titled CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS.  I also edited with my then-assistant, Annette Riffle, AND THE DYING IS EASY, a collection of mystery stories from some of Signet’s top-selling mystery writers.  FYI, Elaine Koster would later represent me as a literary agent and would sell Tilting at Windmills to Pocket Books.

A CHRISTMAS WISH is available in all ebook platforms, including Kindle and Nook.  TILTING AT WINDMILLS will be available in early 2012, I believe.  WHEN THE WORLD WAS SMALL and LEGEND’S END will shortly be available on Kindle.  Stay tuned for more updates, as we are working on getting LONDON FROG up there.

Yes, though I’m not even sure what’s in print any more.  TILTING AT WINDMILLS was published in Italian, German, and Finnish.  LEGEND’S END was published in Italian and Finnish.  They are beautiful editions with hard to pronounce titles (certainly the Finnish ones).  One of my greatest thrills was, when in Rome, Italy, I went into a bookstore and found a few copies of Annie Che Amava Il Vento (their title for Windmills).  I have a great picture of me holding the book.  We are currently trying to sell foreign rights to the Todd Gleason series.

Lots.  CALIFORNIA SCHEMING, the second Todd Gleason crime novel, comes out in early 2012 from Vantage Point, and I’m under contract to them for the third book as well.  That one will take Todd to the South of France.  Kensington has signed me to write another Christmas-themed book, and again it will take place in Linden Corners.  They will also publish my new stand-alone novel, tentatively entitled Beyond the Storm.  After that, we’ll see…more Todd Gleason, more Linden Corners.

Oh yeah.  I wrote my first suspense novel, RIGGED, in college.  FAMILY LOYALTY came next, followed by the first Thomas Van Diver mystery, LIBERTY MANOR, written just after college.  A second Van Diver mystery, FOR THOSE WHO BENEFIT followed.  Then I wrote THE PRODIGAL SON, a glitzy saga of a wealthy New York family with lots of secrets and scandals.  All of those manuscripts—some hand-written–are in storage and deserve to stay there.  One other novel, a big suspense book called THE ORIGINAL CRIME, is still hanging around and I hope to publish it in the next year or two.  It’s the start of a trilogy set in the upstate New York village of Eckert’s Landing.