Latest / Arroe Collins Like It's Live / Tiller Galloway Returns In Yucatan Blue From Author David Poyer
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: I know it always seems kind of fun just to
- 0:01Speaker 1: jump onto Spotify or iHeartRadio and, oh, there's my favorite podcast.
- 0:06Speaker 1: But what would happen if that one author that you've
- 0:08Speaker 1: got for a podcast host is actually hosting 21 different podcasts?
- 0:13Speaker 1: It's the thing. We're all doing a network of podcasts.
- 0:17Speaker 1: That's why I always say go to their websites, arrow.net, A-R-R-O-E.net.
- 0:23Speaker 1: It's that one place where you can find four stories.
- 0:26Speaker 1: You've got your favorite park. You've got your favorite place
- 0:29Speaker 1: of solitude. Where are you writing this down to preserve
- 0:32Speaker 1: for a future self? A little bit too heavy for
- 0:34Speaker 1: you today? Oh, it's not when you go to four stories.
- 0:37Speaker 1: Only on arrow.net. A-R-R-O-E dot net. Enjoy your exploration. Hello
- 0:44Speaker 1: and good morning, everybody.
- 0:45Speaker 2: Hello, it's just me here.
- 0:47Speaker 1: Hi, just me. Most people call you David, though, right?
- 0:51Speaker 2: Exactly, Mr. Collins. How are you? I'm doing well.
- 0:55Speaker 1: Dude, I am so proud of you for this book.
- 0:57Speaker 1: And the reason why is because I feel like that
- 0:59Speaker 1: you took me on a staycation. I mean, I didn't
- 1:02Speaker 1: leave my reading space, but yet you took my imagination
- 1:06Speaker 1: to places. It was like, how did he even do this?
- 1:10Speaker 1: What a beautiful gift you've got.
- 1:11Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you. I appreciate it, and
- 1:16Speaker 2: I'm glad to be here.
- 1:17Speaker 1: Well, I've often wondered, with your writing, and my wife
- 1:20Speaker 1: and I openly talk about this all the time, I
- 1:22Speaker 1: always wonder what Mark Twain would have done if he
- 1:24Speaker 1: could have walked a mile in your shoes. and how
- 1:27Speaker 1: it would have changed him as a writer, because you
- 1:30Speaker 1: really do bring something like you have lived it, and
- 1:34Speaker 1: now you're putting it in a story form. I'm going,
- 1:36Speaker 1: I swear to God, Mark Twain didn't do it like
- 1:38Speaker 1: you do it.
- 1:40Speaker 3: Oh, yes, Twain did. He was a river boater. He
- 1:44Speaker 3: was in the Civil War, not for long, but he
- 1:47Speaker 3: was there. Definitely, Twain was out west in silver country.
- 1:52Speaker 3: Twain lived it before he wrote about it.
- 1:56Speaker 1: So now, who is Tiller in your life? Is it
- 1:58Speaker 1: the inner you? Because, I mean, I want to know
- 2:02Speaker 1: that I can go to a Home Depot, or I
- 2:04Speaker 1: can go anywhere in Charlotte here, and Tiller's going to
- 2:06Speaker 1: be looking at me going, you know who I am.
- 2:07Speaker 1: You know who I am. You've read about me. You
- 2:09Speaker 1: know what I'm all about.
- 2:10Speaker 3: Yeah, he's kind of a North Carolina guy, and he's
- 2:15Speaker 3: based on some divers I've known, and he's kind of
- 2:20Speaker 3: antithetical to one of the other characters in my in
- 2:24Speaker 3: my other series. I guess I'm mostly known for the
- 2:28Speaker 3: Navy books, the Dan Lenson books.
- 2:31Speaker 1: And yet my father always called him, you're going to
- 2:33Speaker 1: think he's weird, but I love him to pieces. And
- 2:36Speaker 1: I think it's because he was in World War II,
- 2:38Speaker 1: but he used to call these books like this Westerns.
- 2:40Speaker 1: He says, go read a modern Western. And I would say,
- 2:42Speaker 1: what are you talking about, dad? Go read a war book.
- 2:44Speaker 1: You need to go learn a modern Western. Do you
- 2:47Speaker 1: feel like that's what you write are modern day Westerns
- 2:49Speaker 1: through my dad's eyes?
- 2:51Speaker 2: Well, Western's a good thought.
- 2:54Speaker 3: I think that Westerns are adventure stories set in.
- 3:03Speaker 2: A different milieu, if you will.
- 3:06Speaker 3: And I guess you could call my novels Westerns set
- 3:10Speaker 3: at sea, mostly.
- 3:12Speaker 1: I mean, because I mean, you've got the adventure, the
- 3:14Speaker 1: underwater scenes, and we're with the Mayans this time. And
- 3:17Speaker 1: of course, that grabbed my attention immediately because now I'm going,
- 3:21Speaker 1: what are you doing to mess around here? Because they've
- 3:23Speaker 1: got something here that can go the same route as
- 3:25Speaker 1: the Mayans.
- 3:27Speaker 2: Oh, you like Mayans?
- 3:28Speaker 1: Oh, well, it's what I study. Because I love when
- 3:31Speaker 1: it comes to history such as that, indigenous as well
- 3:34Speaker 1: as history, because it's that question. If I want to
- 3:37Speaker 1: live in my presence of now, I've got to know
- 3:40Speaker 1: what happened before I got here. I rely on people
- 3:42Speaker 1: like you, David, to be able to tell me stuff
- 3:44Speaker 1: like that so that I can at least understand where
- 3:46Speaker 1: we are now.
- 3:48Speaker 2: Oh, we call that backstory when we're writing.
- 3:51Speaker 1: Do you really? That's fascinating, though.
- 3:54Speaker 3: Yeah, backstory, I think, sets things up. It sets your
- 3:57Speaker 3: characters up. It sets your setting up. And then it
- 4:00Speaker 3: sets your plot up. So I think backstory is very important.
- 4:04Speaker 3: On the other hand, you can't cram too much of
- 4:07Speaker 3: it up front in the book because that's what they used.
- 4:10Speaker 2: To do in the old days.
- 4:12Speaker 3: They'd give you the characters– their whole genealogy, and they'd
- 4:17Speaker 3: talk about, you know, the history, and then they'd talk
- 4:21Speaker 3: about the birth, and then they'd talk about the early years,
- 4:24Speaker 3: and finally they'd get up to the present action, and
- 4:27Speaker 3: we just don't do that anymore. And I understand people
- 4:32Speaker 3: wouldn't sit still for it. They want something exciting up front,
- 4:36Speaker 3: and then fill in the backstory as we go along,
- 4:40Speaker 3: sort of let it bleed in to the present action.
- 4:44Speaker 1: So now when you talk like that now, because I
- 4:46Speaker 1: call that defragging. In other words, when I come up
- 4:48Speaker 1: with a writing idea or if I'm doing something with
- 4:50Speaker 1: a podcast, I'll come up with that and with your
- 4:52Speaker 1: backstory that you're talking about. But I break it down,
- 4:55Speaker 1: break it down, break it down so that if I
- 4:57Speaker 1: can understand it in an easy way, then hopefully the
- 5:00Speaker 1: listener or the reader can pick up on that as well.
- 5:02Speaker 1: Do you break down the scenes as well?
- 5:05Speaker 3: I'm not sure what you mean by break down the scenes.
- 5:08Speaker 3: In other words, I think it even goes deeper than
- 5:11Speaker 3: an outline. It's one of those where it's like you
- 5:13Speaker 3: can sit there and you envision it. And because you've
- 5:16Speaker 3: experienced it, now you've got to tie it into where
- 5:18Speaker 3: is my reader right now? Maybe it's a radio thing.
- 5:20Speaker 1: Who is she? Who is he? What are they doing?
- 5:23Speaker 1: What are they doing right now while this book is
- 5:25Speaker 1: being read? And so I really try to put myself,
- 5:28Speaker 1: where is my reader right now? And because when I
- 5:31Speaker 1: feel this and I see this about Dr. Benton and Kinsey,
- 5:33Speaker 1: I'm going, my God, he feels like I just know
- 5:36Speaker 1: these people. And it's like, how does he do that
- 5:38Speaker 1: where it feels like that if I go anywhere, I
- 5:40Speaker 1: know them.
- 5:41Speaker 3: Well, I'm not really certain that I do that consciously
- 5:46Speaker 3: a lot. I think for the first draft, at any rate,
- 5:50Speaker 3: I am right there in the scene. I am running along.
- 5:52Speaker 3: I try to do my first drafts fairly rapidly. I
- 5:55Speaker 3: try to do 2,000 words a day. I've already got
- 5:59Speaker 3: an outline, so I know what's going to happen, although
- 6:01Speaker 3: sometimes the characters surprise me. And when that happens, of course,
- 6:05Speaker 3: I'm totally open to it. But I'm going along that
- 6:08Speaker 3: first draft, and I'm just in the flow. I'm living
- 6:13Speaker 3: things along with Tiller and everyone else. And then on
- 6:16Speaker 3: the second draft, I start to think about, okay, what
- 6:20Speaker 3: can I do without? And then I think about, okay,
- 6:23Speaker 3: what does the reader need to know? And then I
- 6:25Speaker 3: think about, how do all the plot points line up?
- 6:29Speaker 3: And then I think about, are the character names, are
- 6:33Speaker 3: they too similar? Is that going to confuse the reader?
- 6:36Speaker 3: Because I had a mentor named Frank Green. And Frank,
- 6:41Speaker 3: he would say this almost every time that he reviewed
- 6:46Speaker 3: our work. He would say, the reader is always in trouble, Dave.
- 6:49Speaker 3: The reader is always in trouble. And what he meant
- 6:52Speaker 3: by that was, you have the picture in mind. You
- 6:55Speaker 3: have what John Gardner called the fictive dream going in
- 6:59Speaker 3: your head, but the reader doesn't. The reader needs clues.
- 7:03Speaker 3: The reader needs sensory clues. They need description. They need
- 7:08Speaker 3: to understand, you know, a lot of what I write
- 7:11Speaker 3: is fairly technical. Diving, Navy procedures, going to sea, things
- 7:18Speaker 3: about archaeology, especially in this book. And sometimes you need
- 7:23Speaker 3: to slow down and explain that.
- 7:26Speaker 2: But then you.
- 7:26Speaker 3: Can't get, you know, too explanatory, can't get too deep
- 7:30Speaker 3: in the weeds. So it's a balancing process.
- 7:33Speaker 2: Like you said.
- 7:35Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, readers have changed so dramatically, especially
- 7:38Speaker 1: when it comes to looking for a lost city, because
- 7:40Speaker 1: there's a lot of reality shows out there and there's
- 7:42Speaker 1: armchair quarterback people that are going, I can figure out
- 7:45Speaker 1: where that lost city is. Well, of course, I'm going, Dr.
- 7:48Speaker 1: Benton and Kinsey, I'm going, I can help you out here.
- 7:52Speaker 1: I've seen this show on TV. And what I love, though,
- 7:54Speaker 1: is that you keep it original and in your way.
- 7:57Speaker 1: I can't predict it. There's no way. But yet I
- 7:59Speaker 1: think I've got the confidence to do it. And that
- 8:01Speaker 1: that's kudos to you for staying one step ahead of us.
- 8:05Speaker 1: so that we can get to the end of the book.
- 8:07Speaker 2: Oh, I really enjoy pulling these twists on the reader.
- 8:11Speaker 1: Oh, my God, you're so good at it.
- 8:14Speaker 2: That's fun.
- 8:15Speaker 3: And, you know, sometimes it's the characters pulling the twist
- 8:18Speaker 3: on me. In the Hemlock County series, they're set in
- 8:21Speaker 3: western Pennsylvania, and they're kind of eco-thrillers. But I had
- 8:25Speaker 3: one character, W.T. Halverson, who just sort of walked on
- 8:29Speaker 3: the scene, stole everything, you know, for the next three books.
- 8:33Speaker 3: He was the centerpiece of the series.
- 8:35Speaker 1: Please don't move. There's more with David Poyer right around
- 8:38Speaker 1: the corner. The name of the book, Yucatan Blue. Ooh,
- 8:42Speaker 1: and the stories that are going with all the other
- 8:45Speaker 1: books that he's written. We are back with David Poyer.
- 8:49Speaker 1: For you to write the books, I mean, I'm at
- 8:51Speaker 1: 34 years of writing. You're at 50. To get to
- 8:54Speaker 1: that level, there's got to be a lot of creative
- 8:57Speaker 1: permission as well as forgiveness. What is that journey like
- 9:01Speaker 1: for you?
- 9:03Speaker 3: Well, I think that's important in that it focuses on
- 9:08Speaker 3: your relationship with your unconscious. And I have a pretty
- 9:13Speaker 3: good relationship with my unconscious because I began as a
- 9:17Speaker 3: freelance writer for magazines, newspapers, and so forth before I
- 9:21Speaker 3: became a novelist. So my unconscious understood that if it
- 9:25Speaker 3: didn't help out, we didn't eat. And and so we
- 9:31Speaker 3: work together and I depend on it.
- 9:35Speaker 1: Do you foresee this inside your imagination as a movie,
- 9:38Speaker 1: as it's writing? In other words, like when I'm writing,
- 9:40Speaker 1: I really am living that character and the things right
- 9:43Speaker 1: there as it's happening. And my fingers aren't moving fast enough.
- 9:47Speaker 1: So so do you envision it, too, as something that's
- 9:49Speaker 1: playing out inside that head?
- 9:51Speaker 3: I think I envision it as a real scene that
- 9:54Speaker 3: is playing out, not as a movie scene. No, I'm
- 9:58Speaker 3: pretty detached from the movie world. I don't write these
- 10:01Speaker 3: things intended for movies. Some have been optioned and so forth,
- 10:07Speaker 3: but I'm pretty much a print guy.
- 10:10Speaker 1: Was it a teacher that brought you toward writing? Because
- 10:13Speaker 1: there's an article that was just released about me this week,
- 10:15Speaker 1: and I credited my second grade teacher for making me
- 10:17Speaker 1: the writer. allowed me to step into those shoes and
- 10:22Speaker 1: to explore it. What was your first step into writing?
- 10:27Speaker 3: Well, it was pretty early. I recall this pretty distinctly.
- 10:32Speaker 3: I was sitting on the back porch in Brockway, Pennsylvania
- 10:37Speaker 3: with my mom, and she was reading to me. And
- 10:40Speaker 3: my mom had this, yeah, if you have kids, please
- 10:45Speaker 3: read to them. That's the greatest gift you can give
- 10:47Speaker 3: to them. is to be able to read and to
- 10:50Speaker 3: enjoy reading. Now, we were sitting on the back porch,
- 10:53Speaker 3: as I said, and my mom had a stock answer
- 10:56Speaker 3: when I would come out with my many, many questions, like,
- 11:00Speaker 3: where do butterflies come from? She had a stock answer,
- 11:04Speaker 3: which was, God made them. Okay, so I accept that,
- 11:08Speaker 3: you know, and then I say, where did the sky
- 11:11Speaker 3: come from? God made it. Okay, I accept that. And
- 11:16Speaker 3: as she was reading to me, I asked her, where
- 11:18Speaker 3: do books come from?
- 11:19Speaker 2: Yeah. And she said, writers write them.
- 11:22Speaker 3: And I knew then exactly and intimately what I was
- 11:26Speaker 3: here for. So I nursed that all the way through
- 11:32Speaker 3: my naval service and made notes and eventually moved into
- 11:37Speaker 3: that world.
- 11:38Speaker 1: Where do you go when you're writing with suspense, drama,
- 11:42Speaker 1: and destruction, and just everything that the Tiller-Galloway really has
- 11:47Speaker 1: brought to so many readers? And what I mean by
- 11:49Speaker 1: where do you go? I have a writing space. Do
- 11:51Speaker 1: you have a writing space that you have to check
- 11:53Speaker 1: in with every single day to where you're– I don't
- 11:55Speaker 1: want to cut you off from the world, but you
- 11:58Speaker 1: definitely go into that area. Yeah.
- 12:01Speaker 2: Are you talking about a physical space or a mental space?
- 12:03Speaker 1: How about both? Because physically, if I'm not in my
- 12:06Speaker 1: writing chair, I don't know if I can write as
- 12:09Speaker 1: deeply as I want to. Because I tried to write
- 12:11Speaker 1: in Charleston and I felt nothing.
- 12:14Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I don't think I have that specific attachment
- 12:18Speaker 3: to a space. Of course, I have a dedicated office
- 12:22Speaker 3: here at home. It overlooks the Chesapeake Bay.
- 12:24Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
- 12:25Speaker 3: I can look out at saltwater whenever I want to
- 12:28Speaker 3: and sort of get in touch with my inner sailor. So, no,
- 12:33Speaker 3: I've written in a lot of places and, you know,
- 12:36Speaker 3: bars and at sea and in ships and travel and overseas.
- 12:41Speaker 3: And I don't seem to be fixated or dependent on
- 12:47Speaker 3: being in a certain space the way some of the
- 12:49Speaker 3: 19th century authors were.
- 12:51Speaker 1: That fascinates me that you wrote on a ship, and
- 12:53Speaker 1: the reason why, and this is so personal, but I
- 12:55Speaker 1: have a writing desk that sits on your laptop, and
- 12:58Speaker 1: it came from a soldier or somebody who was in
- 13:01Speaker 1: the Navy, and he even wrote a letter from 1942,
- 13:05Speaker 1: and that desk is with me at all times. So
- 13:07Speaker 1: when I hear that you're on a ship writing, oh
- 13:10Speaker 1: my God, you just ignite me when you talk like that.
- 13:15Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad to excite you, I think.
- 13:17Speaker 1: Well, it's just one of those things that we don't
- 13:19Speaker 1: think of you being on that ship writing stories. And
- 13:23Speaker 1: so that, to me, humanizes what writing is all about.
- 13:27Speaker 1: Because my focus is always that person that's at home
- 13:29Speaker 1: that wants to become a writer or has got writing
- 13:32Speaker 1: and it's hidden. And I depend on people like you, David,
- 13:34Speaker 1: to sit there and say, get your stuff together and
- 13:36Speaker 1: get that writing out here. It doesn't belong to you.
- 13:38Speaker 1: Get your story out here for the world to feel.
- 13:40Speaker 3: Well, I would like to add a little bit to
- 13:44Speaker 3: my previous statement, and that is... Rather than a physical
- 13:49Speaker 3: space where I write, what I like to do is
- 13:52Speaker 3: go and participate in the places that I'm writing about.
- 13:57Speaker 3: For example, in Hatteras Blue, I came to the idea
- 14:01Speaker 3: of Hatteras Blue and Tiller Galloway and the Outer Banks
- 14:05Speaker 3: from doing guidebooks set in that area. So I was
- 14:10Speaker 3: down there interviewing people for guidebooks. And I was interviewing
- 14:17Speaker 3: old folks. And in fact, later on, I did a
- 14:20Speaker 3: book called Happier Than This Day and Time, which is
- 14:24Speaker 3: an oral history of the Outer Banks. And they were
- 14:27Speaker 3: telling me such great stories. Eventually, I thought, these have
- 14:31Speaker 3: to find their way into a book. So in Hatteras Blue,
- 14:34Speaker 3: we used a lot of that oral history. We used
- 14:37Speaker 3: a lot of those World War II stories and even
- 14:40Speaker 3: before that. And then I went to, then I go
- 14:44Speaker 3: to the Bahamas, you know, when I wrote Bahamas Blue.
- 14:48Speaker 3: I went there, did some diving, went to some of
- 14:51Speaker 3: the small islands, sailed around, learned what drugs were doing
- 14:56Speaker 3: to the people of the Bahamas.
- 14:57Speaker 2: Now everyone thinks, you know, drugs are our problem.
- 15:00Speaker 3: Well, the Bahamas are on the way here, and believe me,
- 15:04Speaker 3: they've got a drug problem too. Then I did Louisiana Blue,
- 15:08Speaker 3: went down to Chacahoula and And New Orleans and the
- 15:14Speaker 3: oil field country down there, the offshore oil rigs.
- 15:17Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 15:18Speaker 3: And, you know, got embedded with the divers, wrote that.
- 15:23Speaker 3: Went to North Florida for down to a sunless sea,
- 15:27Speaker 3: embedded with cave divers. Now, that's a terrifying, terrifying little
- 15:32Speaker 3: sport there. I did some cavern diving, but they were
- 15:36Speaker 3: not going to get me into those caves.
- 15:40Speaker 1: Do you record any of the voices of the people
- 15:42Speaker 1: that you meet only because, I mean, because I really
- 15:44Speaker 1: feel like that every single character has a unique accent
- 15:49Speaker 1: or a twang or a feeling about them. And I'm going,
- 15:52Speaker 1: how does he remember this?
- 15:56Speaker 2: Oh, I guess that's how my brain works. No, I don't.
- 16:00Speaker 2: I don't record them. I guess I do in my head.
- 16:03Speaker 3: I have that video recorder in my head, but no,
- 16:06Speaker 3: I don't use an audio recorder.
- 16:08Speaker 1: Wow. Just so fascinated by your writing style. Where can
- 16:11Speaker 1: people go to find out more about you, David? Because
- 16:14Speaker 1: I want them to really jump into your entire journey.
- 16:18Speaker 3: Oh, the whole thing is at www.poyer.com. P-O-Y-E-R www.poyer.com. That
- 16:29Speaker 3: is the place to start, I would think.
- 16:31Speaker 1: I love it. You got to come back to this
- 16:33Speaker 1: show anytime in the future. I love it when an
- 16:35Speaker 1: artist and an author can be so open and genuine
- 16:37Speaker 1: with their writing. I just love the way that you
- 16:40Speaker 1: love sharing the story.
- 16:41Speaker 3: Oh, the stories are fun. I mean, that's what I'm
- 16:44Speaker 3: here for, is to share stories with folks. And I
- 16:46Speaker 3: got to say thanks to you and thanks to my
- 16:49Speaker 3: readers over the years, because they have made this a
- 16:52Speaker 3: wonderful life.
- 16:54Speaker 1: What would you be doing if you weren't writing? Do
- 16:55Speaker 1: you think you, oh my God, I would explode because
- 16:58Speaker 1: creativity is everything to me.
- 17:00Speaker 3: Oh, if I weren't writing or if I couldn't write,
- 17:03Speaker 3: I think I sometimes daydream about being a marina manager. No,
- 17:11Speaker 3: I think that would be a lot of fun, being
- 17:13Speaker 3: a marina manager and working with boats and boaters and
- 17:17Speaker 3: sea people and fishermen and trawler men and, you know,
- 17:21Speaker 3: all that sort of thing.
- 17:22Speaker 2: That would be fun.
- 17:23Speaker 1: Do you mind if I would put you up there
- 17:24Speaker 1: at La Push, Washington? Because that's my favorite place in
- 17:26Speaker 1: the world when it comes to oceans. Either that or
- 17:28Speaker 1: down there at Santa Barbara on that marine.
- 17:31Speaker 2: That'd be fun.
- 17:34Speaker 1: Well, please come back to this show anytime in the future.
- 17:37Speaker 1: The door is always going to be open for you, sir.
- 17:40Speaker 2: That's great. And thanks for the invite.
- 17:42Speaker 1: You be brilliant today, okay?
- 17:45Speaker 2: Roger.