George Shuman

BIO

George D. Shuman is a twenty-year veteran of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police force, in which he served as an undercover narcotics detective; a sergeant in the Special Assignments Branch, Internal Affairs Division; operations commander of the Metropolitan Police Academy; and lieutenant commander in the Public Integrity Branch, Internal Affairs Division. He lives in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. 18 SECONDS is his first novel.

AUTHOR TALK

April 2006

After working in law enforcement for 20 years, George Shuman has decided to pursue his lifelong interest in writing with the release of his debut novel, 18 SECONDS. In this interview, Shuman explains how his experience as a police officer has strengthened his voice as a writer and describes a childhood memory that inspired elements of his book. He also draws comparisons between the two sexes and gives his two cents on the crime-solving psychics he's encountered.

Question: You were a Washington, DC, cop for 20 years. How has your experience as a cop influenced your decision to become a writer?

George Shuman: Looking back, I wanted to write long before I became a seasoned police officer. In fact my first year on the job, when LEAA (Law Enforcement Alliance Association) was throwing around some grant money for cops seeking higher education, I signed up for a creative writing course at American U. I only took one class and never returned, I wasn't a very good student in those days, but the interest was there.

If anything, I would credit my law enforcement experience for how I write. That experience, that street education provided a voice, a dialogue that I would not otherwise possess. I know with all certainty that I would have written no matter what my career was. It's the fiction part of writing that interests me most, the creation of people and places that never before existed, so you'll never get a story from me about the streets of DC.

Q: How did 18 SECONDS come to be? What was the inspiration for the story? Did you have a specific goal in writing the novel?

GS: I was caught up with the idea of a serial murder being interrupted. That happens all the time in real life --- a rash of burglaries or rapes or bank robberies suddenly gone dry. The police have no idea why, guessing that the perpetrator moved out of the area or was killed or is in jail for some unrelated crime. There was a case in the early 1970s in the Washington Metro-area that may have unconsciously led me to 18 SECONDS. Someone was dumping young women's bodies around the Capital Beltway, the press called him the Freeway Phantom. They never solved the case or at least as of my retirement date they hadn't solved it, but homicide detectives had long suspected a man that was in prison doing life for an unrelated murder.

As to specific goals of the writing of the novel, I write because I must. No agenda. I'm only trying to satisfy an internal need.

Q: Much of this book takes place on the Jersey Shore. Why did you choose the setting? How important is place in crime fiction?

GS: When I was in my early teens our family vacationed in Wildwood. They were good memories. I'll never forget walking back to the hotel at night, leaving the carnival atmosphere of the boardwalk, clopping south on the boardwalk into darkness. Your footsteps get suddenly hollow. You become aware of people walking in the shadows, interrupting the line of white surf that marks the end of the dark beach. There was something a little eerie in all that darkness. It was an "anything could happen here," kind of place.

As for the importance of place in crime fiction, I will tell you that to me, place is everything. I first see place, I imagine the mood, then I drop my characters in to see what they will do. Place is the very tenor of the story.

Q: 18 SECONDS features some very strong female characters, particularly Sherry and Kelly. Was there a specific inspiration for them? Do you find female characters more or less challenging to write than male characters? Do you approach the creation of a female character any differently than a male character?

GS: I had no model for either Sherry Moore or Kelly O'Shaughnessy in mind. Sherry developed with the storyline. My original protagonist was Jack Loudon, depicted now as the police chief in the book. I was using him as a world weary man whose memories would link Sykes's crimes from past to present. But then I thought, what if I had a character who could see beyond death. That would be an interesting way to bridge time. Now that's a lot easier said than done with me. The character had to be believable in my mind. I don't read science fiction, and I couldn't write it. The premise had to be plausible, so I developed the Short Term Memory theory. After that I had to define my new main character. Why not a blind person whose other senses would be so utterly keen? Why shouldn't it be a woman, a beautiful, confident, blind woman like Sherry Moore?

Once Sherry was born, it only followed that my police official should be female. I liked the idea of a woman's interplay in the story. Their personal lives barred, the often unspoken understanding between people of the same gender. Kelly wasn't difficult to write at all. Every new police official has to prove themselves at every rank. Here she was in a male-dominated office, and the jealous, agitating Sergeant Dillon making life hard from the sidelines. She's also separated, but still in love with her husband and dating a high profile attorney in a gossipy town. In addition, she is raising young children while working shift work. It's a lot for anyone, but as events begin to go all wrong, suddenly she is without a friend. And then Sherry comes along.

To me, writing a female character is no more difficult than writing about men. When you've lived as long as I have, you realize that people aren't all that different. Life teaches us lessons that cross all human boundaries. You don't need to be from America, you don't need to be black or white, male or female, religious or agnostic to connect with the ache of loneliness, to feel fear or anxiety, to crave love or ponder right and wrong.

Q: Were there any characters or aspects of the book you found terribly difficult to write? If so, which and why?

GS: I can't say the writing was particularly difficult at any time, but I had issues in sequence of events. I've said that Sherry Moore developed as a character after the story was in progress. Once she appeared, I realized I had a whole new thing on my hands --- that the story had to expand around her. That required some re-write.

Q: Have you ever worked with Psychics?

GS: No. And they'd be the last people I'd call if I was scratching my head over some homicide. But let me qualify that. I'd like to believe. I want to think our minds are capable of more than we allow. But until the day a psychic nails a prediction, and I mean nails one, points to the city, street, house and room that a missing person is being kept in --- without being indicted for the crime themselves --- they can keep their wind, water and "near an Interstate" predictions to themselves. Until then, I see them as an impedance to true law enforcement and opportunists unnecessarily distressing the victim's families. But that's just me.

Q: What made you decide to tackle a mystery as your first work? What attracts you to the crime genre? Which authors are you most fond of reading? Are there any authors that you feel have influenced your writing?

GS: There are plenty of people that enjoy comedy, but I don't. And there are those that can curl up with a good romance, but I can't. It's always been the serious side of life that resonates with me. To me writing crime is an opportunity to portray not only the darkest hearts of humankind, but heroes that we can identify with. I never understood the whole Robo-Cop mentality, the James Bonds jumping off rooftops. There are real heroes in the world and they are the common people just like us, doing common things. People wondering how life got so screwed up around them, wondering if they are being good parents or sons or daughters, people scared to death at times and bored to tears at others and always, always asking themselves that most human of questions: Do I have a meaning in this world?

I was the lousiest student, but an avid reader. I devoured Ludlum, Forsyth and Sanders; then I discovered La Carre, Greene and Furst and these were writers that truly nailed life to the pages. If anyone influenced my decision to become a writer it was none of these. It was those that couldn't write worth a damn. The ones whose books I couldn't finish. Those were the ones I have to thank the most.

Q: What's in store for your next novel? Are you making a Sherry series?

GS: I'm polishing a novel for Simon & Schuster, currently titled RATTLEMAN --- a story set entirely in the Appalachians that is about a psychologically disturbed boy gone untreated.

I didn't write 18 SECONDS with a sequel in mind, but having created Sherry, I am loath to leave her on the shelf. In many ways she has only begun to live, she has only discovered things about herself. So yes, I am working on the sequel and I see more adventures for Sherry Moore.

Copyright © 2006 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

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