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Crafting Crime with James Hill
30 Plays5 months ago
Join me on this captivating episode as we delve into the world of adult urban crime fiction with the talented crime writer, James Hill. Discover the secrets behind crafting gripping crime novels as James Hill shares his unique techniques and storytelling process.
Bio:
James L Hill, a.k.a. J L Hill, is a native New Yorker from the South Bronx, Fort Apache, of the turbulent 60’s. He earned a degree in computer programming, his other love. A multi-genre author, his experiences seasoned his novels and the worlds he imagined. James started RockHill Publishing LLC to publish his own work and give others access to the literary world. The four-part adult urban crime series, The Killer Series, is complete. Killer With A Heart, Killer With Three Heads, Killer With Black Blood have all received five-star reviews. Killer With Ice Eyes, the final chapter of the boys from the Bronx, is available now. He is currently working on a three-part historical fantasy Gemstone Series; The Emerald Lady is in publication to rave reviews. The Ruby Cradle and the third book, The Diamond Warrior, is coming soon. Then there’s the psychological dystopian science fiction thriller, Pegasus: A Journey To New Eden for
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Transcript
Introduction to James Hill and Discussion Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the ereads podcast. I'm your host Liz and this is my podcast where I talk about books, authorship, and all the different parts of the creative process and today I have the wonderful James Hill here. He is a author and a publisher and while I don't pick his brain a whole lot about being a publisher, this time we get into the world of storytelling and he talks about creating crime novels and that have this grit and this edge. And so if that is your style, you will for sure want to listen in for the tips and techniques to create literature that folks want to read.
James Hill Joins and Prepares for Interview
00:00:33
Speaker
So let's jump right in and get to know James a little bit better.
00:00:42
Speaker
James, welcome. I am very excited to pick your brain about being an author. How are you? I'm very good. i'm Well, let me put it this way. I'm very good. I have a sore throat. I caught a cold. So ah I have my cup of tea. I have throat lozenges. I just went through one. So I should be good. I should be good. This like change in weather and like all congested. So I feel you. Plus I work during my day job as a DBA, a database administrator. So I work in rooms full of computers, which means lots of AC. And during the winter, it's not so bad because it's cold outside and cold inside. But when it gets to the type of time when the weather is night outside and you walk in and it's 30 degrees colder, yeah yeah. Oh yeah. Godspeed. Well, thank you.
Werewolves vs. Vampires – A Hypothetical Choice
00:01:40
Speaker
look James, I like to welcome folks by asking what I call a bookish question, which is something about like reading and writing. And I have no idea why, but I know you write in the adult urban crime fiction. And for some reason that made me think of like vampires and werewolves, probably not even in the same realm, but I said, I'll ask you. So if you had to choose about writing about vampires or werewolves, what would you write about? Oh, let's think about that. They're pros and cons to each, a but I probably would go with the werewolf idea better.
00:02:22
Speaker
How come? Well, because the idea of becoming a werewolf is that you're affected by somebody else who was a werewolf. Okay. And people wouldn't know that you're a werewolf because you transform into this thing. And so in your transformative state, they wouldn't be able to recognize you. So you probably be able to survive much longer. But as a vampire, first off, you can't go out there. they know And I don't see why people just don't go in there and just, you know, rip down the house around the vampire why he's in this coffin sleeping, you know, burn down the house and the vampires out in the open during the day. ah The other thing is, of course, as a vampire, you always need somebody to protect you from
00:03:07
Speaker
from different things. Now I seen one TV show, I forget what it was called, ah but it was about vampires and it was the thing. And they go back to the idea, well, this guy was from Europe and stuff like that. And the vampire was this little worm that like was pre-cooked to people and turned them into vampires and all that kind of stuff. It was very good. But again, you know they want they wound up going underground and all this kind of stuff. and you know But if you're a werewolf, you can have one or two days during the month.
00:03:45
Speaker
you know, you're good, you're good. So if I was a werewolf, I might look a bit like one now, but if I was a werewolf, you know, I would have a pretty good life. Plus they're kind of like immortal because, you know, you can't kill yourself by a silver bullet. So, you know, hey, it's a pretty good life. yeah One or two nights. So you don't get to go hang out one or two nights out of the mug. But the rest of the time you're good. I love that train of thought. I definitely love that. And so share with us a little bit about your
Influence of Comics on James Hill's Writing
00:04:17
Speaker
author journey. How did this begin? like Did you always know you wanted to be an author? How did this get started for you? Oh, yeah. I i was writing way back when when I was a kid, we would read comics. And then I was ah Marvel comics mostly. There's some DC, but mostly the Marvels. And ah I would always try to guess what the next comic is going to be. And we used to sit there and trace out the characters and everything. and everybody had their favorite superhero who you were that superhero and you know so that became your story and you would then work it out. I was Thor for a while then I became Daredevil because I got hit by a car flying for a brief moment. I had a concussion most likely but I realized I couldn't see and then it was like oh my god I could be Daredevil.
00:05:05
Speaker
And he's not a bad character at all. And kind of in thinking, of well, he's also a crime fighter. So did he inspire you to get into this genre of adult urban crime fiction? Tell us how that started. Yeah, because ah with Daredevil and with a lot of the Marvel comics, like Spider-Man, Daredevil, a lot of the comics, they're on the other side of the law. Batman is another one. you know they they They're rule breakers, right? So they're not exactly, the whole idea about vigilantes and stuff like that is they don't adhere to the law, right? They're they' they're always just like werewolf type character. you know You have this other side of you that that you can that you that you play in, that you live in.
Crime Novel Inspirations from the Bronx
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah, so actually the reason why I wrote the Killer Series, the urban crime novel, is because I grew up in the South Bronx when there were lots of gangs and everything and grew up with gang, but you need a gang just to go from
00:06:11
Speaker
Well, that side of the street was in one gang and you was on this side of the street, you were in another gang. So I grew up in that type of environment. And then I moved up north into the northern part of the Bronx or mid part of the Bronx, which was mafia territory. So then I had a lot of mafia friends. And the thing about New York is, you know, you hang outside with who you meet as the saying goes, which means, you know, you have to get along with your neighbors and your neighbors are your friends or your enemies. So, you know, so when you move into a neighborhood, either you're going to hang out with the people in the neighborhood and
00:06:52
Speaker
do whatever the neighborhood does or you're not going to live there. So basically I wound up hanging out with some mob mobsters and stuff and knew some other mobsters very good friends and learned a lot and seen a lot and been involved in this type of stuff. So when I decided I was going to write this crime story about this young guy who's falls in with the mob and the two broke see two guys, young guys, ones in the mob or going to be in the mob, you're going to grow up because they don't let teenagers, anybody that's young to become a mafia. They don't let you in the mafia because for one thing, you could not be held to a crime. So they will have nothing on you to hold you in place. Got you.
00:07:46
Speaker
as opposed to the games, which at the time would take it in. people who were young, 12, 13 years old, because you could not be held to a crime. So you know the young gang members are the ones who are carrying the guns and stuff, because if you get caught with the gun and that gun murders somebody, then you'll be the one that's gonna be convicted of murder. And back in the day, if you was under 18, they wouldn't hold you for murder. You wouldn't be tried as an adult, which they changed the law just because of that reason.
00:08:19
Speaker
Interesting. So it seems like you got a little history in your books as well. Yeah, yeah. The books they placed in the 70s and 80s, pretty much 70, 80, a little bit of the 90s, because that was pretty much the second golden age of the mob and crime in New York. It was became very big. They had the mission trials during that time, which is when they sent all the godfathers to jail with the Rico law. The Rico law was already in the effect or on the book. They just never used it against organized crime. And then they, ah Rudy Giuliani, who has fallen from grace these days,
00:09:02
Speaker
was one of the first ones who used the RICO law to get the bosses because they will always arrest the foot soldiers and the other guys, but they could never get to the bosses in the mob because you you arrest the guy on the street, but you don't want arrest the guy who's running the show. But because of RICO, Rico says anybody who's involved in that criminal activity or the ah advancement of a criminal organization is guilty of all the crimes committed.
00:09:39
Speaker
So if I were to kill somebody, because my boss told me, hey, we need this guy gone, I killed him. Well, the boss is also guilty of murder. Right. And so back in the- You got some law in your books too. You got some history, you got some law. Well, I've got some stuff about the government, how the government also get tied into the criminal organizations and things like that. Because you go back to the Second World War, the government was very happy to be in bed with the mafia. in order to protect the Brooklyn piers and the war effort at that time and I forget which one it was but one of the dons right after World War II got deported because he helped them to make sure nothing went from home on the dock they got their supplies out they was able to
00:10:30
Speaker
you know, support the war and everything. And the deal they made with him was they weren't gonna prosecute him for any of the crime they knew he was guilty of and stuff. And so, yeah, that worked really well until the war was over. And then they went ahead and prosecuted him and deported him.
Plot Overview of James Hill's Crime Series
00:10:47
Speaker
Okay, so tell us, because you have all this history and all this context, tell us more about your book, right? Who is the main character? What is going on? OK, the main character is the guy from the South Bronx. He's the gang he' the gangster, the gang leader from the South Bronx. He moves into the mob neighborhood and be friends, the an up and coming mobster. So these two guys are really the crux of the book. So they they become very good friends. And it's because one guy is black and one guy is white that
00:11:18
Speaker
the rest of the world don't see them as being so tight they think okay they're going to turn on each other you know they can't be this and that right the crust of the story is that they get together and now Nikki who is the mobster ah He's always coming up with the great ideas, you know, he's always come up with the criminal ideas to do. And Morris, Mojo, which is one of his nicknames, because his name is Morris Johnson, his and Nicky calls him Mojo. ah He always has to help Nicky straighten out his plan, because Morris is a true, dying wall criminal.
00:12:00
Speaker
He's the type of person who goes to the go through the wall for his friends. And for him, family is everything. Loyalty is everything. But Nikki is business. It's loyalty, family, and stuff, but he grew up in the Mafia, and the Mafia is a business enterprise, whereas in the games, it is all about gang loyalty.
00:12:31
Speaker
Okay. Right. It's more family loyalty or the game becomes your family. Right. So the these two dynamics that go together. So it's a business and it's a family and they get together and they do the crimes. Well, the crime starts off with the fact that Nikki thinks that these guys are skimming money off the mob in his neighborhood. And it's a rival faction of the mafia. Because in the mafia, you have families. So they may all be part of the same general family, but you have a capo here and a capo here. So you have different factions.
00:13:14
Speaker
And so he thinks these guys are skimming money ah and stashing it in his neighborhood. So his big idea is he's going to rob that guy. Oh my god, I can already see the pen. So yeah, so so he gets Morris and and his friends. you know He got all his is junior your friends that's going to rob this guy and everything. And they and they do. But in the meantime, they need Morris to keep the keep the boss's daughter busy while they rob this place. So you can see where I'm going, the black guy with the Italian girl and all this kind of stuff. It's almost like Romeo and Juliet. Yeah, and things go horribly wrong. Of course, they five they find out about it. Don't go horribly wrong in the beginning, but it's not an easy
00:14:01
Speaker
pickings as Nikki says. So they wind up finding out once they robbed them, they automatically know what these guys who did it. ah huh And so it sparked a mild war between Nikki's family and the other family. And of course, they want Morris dead because he screwed around with the girl. Oh my goodness. All right, so where do we find your book? Where do we go when we pick this up so we can read it? Okay, you can go to my website, Rock Hill Publishing, because I'm an independent publisher. I published it on my book, but I also published other books like Pies and Fantasies and Romances and other adult novels. So you can go to rockhillpublishing.com or one word.
00:14:46
Speaker
Or you can find me on Amazon, of course, and Barnes and Nobles and all that kind of place. Excuse me for a second. this Okay.
00:15:01
Speaker
So um I'm out there on the internet, you know, so you can just look up. You can look up either the killer series, or you can look them up by book name, killer with a heart, killer with three heads, killer with black blood, and killer with eyes eyes. And I can see why you might think that they were about vampires and werewolves with titles like that. But they're about organized crime. Listen, they sound so intriguing.
Elements of Good Crime Fiction
00:15:28
Speaker
um What makes a good crime fiction? like What are like your top three things that you should have if you're you're writing the genre? okay First, you have to have somebody who is not just bad. Your criminal has to have some redeeming qualities.
00:15:48
Speaker
ah One of the things that someone told me when they were reviewing my book and looking at my book, I was mentioning for a movie, the guy told me, yeah, but your characters have no redeeming qualities. And I was like, of course they do. And he said, they're killers and criminals. I said, yeah, but they're good to each other. They are good to each other. So in this story, they are very loyal to each other. In fact, at one point, Nicki's father told him, hey, you know you're going to have to kill your friend here. you know he He killed a main man. he He's going to have to die. And Nicki said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But you know I owe him the chance to get even with these people. Nicki had no intention of killing his friend. They wound up killing the godfather instead, because that's the loyalty. That's the redeeming quality of these folks. And of course,
00:16:44
Speaker
Morris knew that he had to do this thing for Nikki in order for Nikki to extend to the Godfathership. And in one of the books, he he come back and somebody tried to kill Nikki. So Morris had to come in and take over the mob because he had to find out who tried to assassinate his friend. So in one of the books that killed with black blood. So one thing, your main characters, if they're bad or good, have to have some other qualities. Like a your if the protagonist and he's a good guy, you also have to have some bad streaks to him. He has to have some flaws. So you can't have perfect people in your book. ah hu In a crime story, the crime can't be the main thing.
00:17:40
Speaker
it there has to be an underlying reason why you would commit the crime. but You just don't rob a bank just because you want the money. bra my Because there's other ways of getting money. So bank robbers don't rob a bank because they want the money. Bank robbers rob a bank because of the challenges that are there. So the crimes that you're writing about have to have more to it than just the commission of the crime. And lastly, and a lot of people want to say crime doesn't pay, but it depends upon from which view you're writing the story. If you're writing it from the viewpoint of the criminal, then the crime has to pay off. Right. If you're writing it from the viewpoint of the police or of society, then no, the crime has to fail.
00:18:36
Speaker
So it depends on which which side of the coin you're on. If you're right in where you have the bad guy, at some point, even if they don't get away with the crime, they have to get away. you know, that kind of thing. So maybe the, maybe they don't get the money, but they get, but they escape. Okay. okay In some cases they get the money. It's just not the way you think or something like that. ah Like I said, if you're writing crime story from the idea of the detectives police side of it, that somehow he had to figure out what the crime was and the rest of the person who did it. Okay.
Advice for Aspiring Crime Writers
00:19:19
Speaker
James, I'm out of time today, but I have to have you come back and talk about publishing. um But um any last words that you would say to people that are like, I want to get into this genre, I want to write about crime, like any words of advice or hope for them? Yeah, do your homework. Okay, if you want to write about crime, look up criminals. Okay. Because you have to know about the character behind them. ah You got to know the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath. Right. All right. Because a lot of criminals are sociopaths. Very few of them are psychopaths. There's ones where psychopaths usually don't last very long as criminals because they are so out there that they're going to get caught. Sociopaths are much more likely to be susceptible criminals and it will take years to catch them. That's the new homework. you have to
00:20:16
Speaker
And when you write about crime. It's more about people than it is about any particular crime or any particular situation. It's more about the people involved in it. So if you're writing about the mafia. OK, there's a whole thing about the mafia and everything, but it's about the people in the mafia, you know, just like, you know, the the Italian mob is different from the Russian mob, which is different than the Chinese mob. You know, there's different dynamics that put these people together and that, you know, that that they will
00:20:52
Speaker
You got to do your, like you said, you have to do your homework. Yeah. Yeah. Because you just can't say, well, you know, I'm just going to make the people, ah you know, Chinese and they're going to do that. Well, no, because the Chinese act on a very different principle. You know, there's very different dynamics in a mob full of Chinese people. ah I had a friend who was ah took us to a Chinese restaurant two o'clock in the morning, one of my high school friends, and I could tell looking around the room that all these people in that restaurant at that time was monsters. And his uncle ran the restaurant, came out and told us
00:21:35
Speaker
came out and told him in Chinese, I didn't understand the word he was saying, but I knew what he was talking about was what the hell are you doing here and who the hell are these people with you? And so we got our food and everything and everybody would just sit in there looking at you and I was like, we probably shouldn't be here. It looked like they have a very important business going on. And he was like, no, no, no, it's okay, it's okay. So we got our food. eight, got up and left. And then you can see activity started again. Because a single person in that restaurant said a word why we were sitting there. Because they probably figured that one of us was a cop. And I was only like 17 at the time. Like I said, I was in high school. So my friends- That's a good scene in a book though. Yeah, that might make it into a book someday.
00:22:24
Speaker
Oh my goodness, James, it has been ah such a pleasure having you. I definitely have to have you come back to talk more about your publishing company.
Tips for Writing a Book Series
00:22:33
Speaker
um Any last words before I ask my last question? All right, ah if you're writing series, and this is a little, you know, helpful hint to people, because everybody nowadays think that they have to write a series, right, in order to become, you know, payments published or whatever they, you first off, you're going to be a serious writer, you're going to write more than one book, don't write one book, and sit there and wait for it to sell, write the next one and the next one and the next one, but you're going to write in series,
00:23:03
Speaker
You have to finish each story in the book. Every book, even if it's a series, should be able to be read alone. They should be a complete story. Don't write the book with the idea, oh, but I'm going to finish this story in the next book. Because when the person gets to the end of that book, and it's not done, and they got to wait another year or two for you to finish the next story, they're not going to like you. and they're not going to buy the next book because they're going to feel cheated. So if you're writing a series, and like I said, when people ask me about my say, which book should I read, ah I would start with the beginning, read the first book. But if you want to start with the second book is the reason why I wrote all the other book was because of the second book that I wrote. ah I had the second book in mind and I started writing the first book.
00:23:53
Speaker
So, and I had it all planned out but each book ah in the series there's four books in the series, but each book is standalone so you can read them in any order but there's a flashback and oh all that kind of stuff that would get you up to date with the people in the story. But make sure you tell the complete story in whatever you write. I love that advice. And I love like when people have series, but you can pick up anywhere. um I love that. um Again, great advice, great interview. Thank you for being on the show. You're welcome. and Thank you for having me. Anytime. And i again, I have to have you come back and talk more about publishing. Oh, definitely. Definitely. Thank you.