We don’t publish with any particular theme in mind, so it was a surprise to realize our first three stories have all centered on family relationships. Maybe that says something about us, or maybe there’s something about family dynamics that particularly inspires great crime fiction…
Andy Boyle’s story of brothers, revenge and regret quickly became one of our most-read posts since we began publication in March. Used to Be Some Kind of Badass opens with a killer hook, then keeps up the pace and the pressure on until the very end.
We were eager to learn more about Boyle, the process of writing Badass, and his development as a writer. Spoilers ahead, so be sure to read his story if you haven’t already.
COLD CALLER: Tell me a little about your path as a writer. Have you always wanted to write fiction?
ANDY BOYLE: I wrote (and horribly drew) my first short story in elementary school as part of a storytelling competition. It was about Superman, and after stopping some bank robbers, he learns they were stealing to pay for food for an orphanage. So he lets them go. I got in a bit of trouble (and also won the competition), but the love of the moral gray area that fiction allows started around then.
In college, I eventually majored in journalism, falling in love with the ability to tell true stories. I wrote two nonfiction books, but I was always trying to write fiction on the side. But it wasn’t until I got into my 30s I started to try and get anything actually published.
What books or authors most influenced your own style and development as a writer?
A few who impacted me: Stephen King’s love of character and grounding the reader in the real world. Dennis Lehane’s ability to craft amazing realistic dialogue and lush sentences. Tana French’s deeply rich settings, full characters and long-but-you-don’t-even-realize-it scenes that are jampacked with emotion and suspense. Don Winslow’s punchy sentences and to-the-point descriptions. Megan Abbott’s ability to do more with a single line than many can do with a full page.
One of the things I loved about this piece was the layering of the initial mystery. When the story opens, Jeremy has a lot of questions about what he’s found in Denny’s box. But you don’t reveal the heroin right away, either, so the reader has all Jeremy’s questions plus one. How do you decide what to conceal and reveal in a story like this?
The story, like much of what I write, started with an image I had: A brother in funeral clothes finding a box with heroin. I didn’t know whether or not the heroin had anything to do with the death, or why the brother would even have it, so it sprung from there as the story opened itself up to me. I took a writing class with the wonderful Lori Rader-Day (oh my god) about a decade ago, and she talked about setting up questions and appointments (things characters plan to do) in your fiction. Both keep the reader interested and in suspense. But you have to answer the questions eventually (and, hopefully, it leads to more questions and/or appointments). And you need to have just enough questions that it keeps your reader wanting to continue reading. So during rewrites, that’s when I focused on when to really conceal/reveal.
There’s a sense in this story of both sons failing as stand-ins for their absent father. Jeremy should be there for Denny, but gets in trouble and has to leave home at 18. Denny tries to take care of his mother, but gets himself killed. How consciously did you add these family dynamics into the story? Were they there from the start?
They were there from the start. My favorite stories give me a reason to give a shit about the characters, and strong connections with family, or friends, or something else you can be in solidarity with others, is what works for me. So I often try and use familial dynamics like that. Most of us have families, and most of us can understand the lengths we’d go because of those relationships. It’s kind of a storytelling shortcut for me.
As a writer, what do you find most interesting about the crime and mystery genre?
I was a crime reporter early in my career, and later did a lot of larger scale projects that dealt with the human impact, on a city level, of how communities are devastated by crime and violence. So I’ve always been interested in why people do what they do, but also, more importantly, the political decisions that lead to crime, which are often left out of regular journalism (and a lot of crime and mystery fiction.) You’ve got offenders and victims, and often the offenders are themselves victims. I was also raised Catholic, and while I’m not religious now, I strongly believe in the idea of redemption and forgiveness, which often flies in the face of our criminal justice system as well as how society at large deals with people who do wrong. We’re all sinners, including myself, and I’ve worked hard to be a better person than I used to be. And through crime fiction, it’s a way for me to explore those themes even more.
What have you found the most helpful for improving your craft as a writer?
Reading a lot. Nonfiction, fiction, poetry, plays, television, films. Just any kind of storytelling. Especially outside of the genre you want to write in. When a piece of writing moves me, I try and understand what the author did to make me feel like that. Same thing when something isn’t for me—why don’t I like it? What is it doing that I want to avoid in my own writing? Being able to break something down and figure out how the pieces worked is a great way for you to learn new craft tricks for your own writing. Because you’ll come to a point in your own work and won’t be sure what to do—then you’ll remember the 50 ways other authors did it that you liked. And you can use that for inspiration. Everyone always says great artists steal, but they don’t include that great thieves don’t steal from the same place repeatedly. And lastly: You only get better by doing and by sucking a lot. Eventually, you’ll discover more of what your own taste is, what sort of writing you want to be doing, and you’ll get closer to achieving it by practicing regularly. (And I do mean practicing: Not everything you write is meant to be a story, or a novel. Sometimes it’s just practice for the sake of practice.)
What are you working on now? Any projects you’re especially excited about?
I’ve always got a few plates spinning, but I’m currently working on crime novel set mostly in western Nebraska ranching country that deals with family, climate change, revenge, the old ways dying under the boot of extreme greed and committing some goddamn heists.
Andy Boyle is a Chicago-based writer whose work has been in Esquire, NPR, NBC News, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe and more. As a journalist, his work was cited in the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. The author of two non-fiction books with Penguin Random House, his short fiction has appeared in Philadelphia Stories, Rock and a Hard Place Magazine and Uncharted Magazine. He is also the winner of the 2023 Mystery Writers of America Midwest's Hugh Holton award. Find him at andyboyle.com or on Bluesky.
Another excellent interview. Thank you.