Nashville, My Writing, My Idols, My Favorite Food

This is an interview I did with Julia Buckley back in 2006 that I really like. I can't believe it's been ten years, but I mention having spent most of my 80 years in Nashville. It's been 90 years now and the city has changed dramatically in the past few years. I hope you enjoy it.


Hi, Chester. Thanks for chatting with me. You live in Nashville. Are you a country music fan? Whose music do you particularly like?
I cut my musical teeth on the big bands of the thirties and forties. I also loved balladeers like Perry Como and Andy Williams. So my country music tastes favor the old timers in the style of Eddy Arnold and Ray Price. My wife is a pure country fan, but I'm not too familiar with the current scene. Music City references in my books are more generic to the broad picture along Music Row. There's a lot more recorded in Nashville than country.

You got the mystery-writing bug early, and wrote a mystery while you were still in college. Did you have a sense then that you'd write more seriously one day?
Hey, I was dead serious back then. I was a fulltime journalism student during the day, worked a full shift as a reporter on a morning newspaper in the evening, then sat down at my little portable typewriter in my basement room in the fraternity house, whenever I could find time, and banged out the novel. Seriously, I always kept in the back of my head (is that where our memory chips are located?) that I would someday be a published novelist.

You've mentioned that your wife is a great supporter of your work. Does the rest of your family help to sell the books?
Not as much as I'd like--I need all the help I can get. (Just kidding, I think). They do promote the books among their friends and colleagues. Now if I could just get my daughter with two girls in Girl Scouts to sell books like she sells cookies, I'd have it made.

The New Mystery Reader has referred to your work as nothing less than "Campbellish." Are you pleased with the fact that they had to create this word to describe the essence of your books?
I'm thrilled at all the nice things reviewers have to say, like "this is one author a reader can count on," or "he continues to write fabulous mysteries," and "the plot is fast-paced, and the writing is top-notch." Hopefully all my readers will find that "Campbellish."

Tell us about Greg and Jill McKenzie.
The McKenzies have survived nearly forty years together. He's a little past 65, while she's just under that milestone. Greg came from a middle class family in St. Louis--his father was a master brewer for Anheuser-Busch. By contrast, Jill's father was a well-to-do life insurance salesman in Nashville. Both are college graduates. Greg started out as a deputy sheriff in St. Louis County, then enjoyed (more or less) a full career as an Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent (think Air Force detective). Jill studied aeronautics and operated her own charter air service during Greg's military gig. As an investigator, Greg is a no-nonsense, no-compromise, put the blame where it belongs kind of guy. The series starts after Greg is retired, and in book three he and Jill go into the PI business. She's a caring, understanding, non-judgmental person who is especially good at getting information out of women. The really fun part of writing about the couple is doing the occasional humorous digs between them.

Your Greg McKenzie novels take place in Nashville. What makes Nashville a good place to set a mystery?
Having spent most of my 80 years in Nashville, I have watched the city grow from a leisurely-paced town that proudly called itself the "Athens of the South" to a moderately-paced city (we're not New York or LA yet, thank God) known as "Music City U.S.A." Nashville is schizophrenic enough to cling to the old image while beckoning newcomers by smiling through its modern face. It offers lots of contrasts to play with while creating nefarious plots. I put the McKenzies' home in the Hermitage suburb and their office on Old Hickory Boulevard, both references to President Andrew Jackson, who lived nearby. But the stories take them to locations like bustling Music Row and the ultra-modern Opryland Hotel. You can read an article I wrote for Mystery Readers Journal on Nashville as a setting by going to http://www.chesterdcampbell.com/Articles.htm.

Like many writers, you have some manuscripts that were never published. Is there one of those in particular that you would really like to see in print?
Funny you should ask. I have one titled Hell Bound that has been making the rounds lately. I wrote it just before tackling Secret of the Scroll, which became my first published novel. Hell Bound takes place in 1999 and involves a busload of seniors on a church trip from Nashville to New Orleans. One of the passengers, living under an assumed name, is a former Mafia investment counselor who testified against the mob. He is tracked down by a hit squad that doesn't know his current identity but is determined to single him out from among the male passengers. If there are any agents or publishers looking in, it's available!

Among many other jobs, you once worked as an ad executive. What's the best ad you ever created?
I worked on several national accounts like Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Martha White Flour, but nothing I did really stands out in my memory. One of the most challenging was full page ads for a local undertaker who decided to build a high-rise mausoleum. When we got through, I had a great time creating a parody using all the old death clichés I could unearth. Some of my colleagues were afraid the client might see it.

You've authored some interesting articles, including one about the trial of Charles Manson and his murderous followers. This trial went beyond the bizarre shenanigans of even the O.J. trial; what was it that made you want to write about it?
When the editor of Web Mystery Magazine contacted me about writing an article, she gave me a list of possible subjects, including such famous trials as the Lindbergh kidnapping. I did a little research and was intrigued by Manson's background and the shocking way he manipulated people. There is a subplot in Hell Bound about a mass murderer, where I had mentioned Manson, but I had never looked into his character. One of my earliest non-newspaper jobs was free-lancing for national magazines. This gave me a chance to tackle non-fiction once more.

You've met a lot of other writers in your travels. Is there a writer you haven't met, but would really like to meet?
There are two whose writing I have admired and have heard speak at conventions or conferences but never met. They are James Lee Burke and Robert B. Parker. Maybe I like them because I also use a middle initial with my writing. Actually, Burke's sense of place and Parker's dialogue have inspired me to work harder at my own.

You'll be at Bouchercon in the fall. Do you know what panel you will be on?
I have corresponded with Jodi Bollendorf, one of the programming chairs, about some ideas for panels, but I've heard nothing definite yet. Incidentally, my closest contact with James Lee Burke came at the 2003 Bouchercon in Las Vegas. I was a newby then with one book out. After my panel, I sat at my table in the signing room like the Maytag repairman. Next to me a long line trailed out into the corridor. The table, unoccupied, bore no name. When I departed without signing a book, I inquired about the line. "James Lee Burke is coming," I was told.

I think many of us can relate to the Maytag Repairman analogy. What are you currently writing?
I have just finished the fourth Greg McKenzie mystery titled The Marathon Murders. It involves a bit of Nashville history and a fictional ninety-year-old murder. The Marathon Motor Works built a popular touring car in Nashville between 1910-1914 before falling victim to mismanagement. I've also just written my first mystery short story titled Double Trouble. The protagonist finds a look-alike to take the rap for a murder he plans. I'll soon be working on the fifth McKenzie book. What it'll be about is a mystery to me.

If I were to be invited to your Nashville home for dinner (hypothetically) and you and your wife were going to prepare me your favorite food, what would it be?
The menu would likely include chicken breasts cooked in sherry, green beans, corn, tipsy sweet potatoes (spiked with Jack Daniel's), yeast rolls, and green salad (made with lime Jello, cottage cheese, chopped celery, and pecans). We would drink fruit tea, my wife Sarah's (and Jill McKenzie's) concoction made with peach-flavored instant tea, pineapple juice, and Marachino cherry syrup. We'd have coffee (decaf for us) with the pecan pie dessert. Y'all come.

Thanks, Chester. That sounds fabulous. :)

The Plot's Boiling for Greg McKenzie

One question readers are forever asking is where do your ideas for books come from? I've tackled it a few times in blogs, where I discussed various novels from the past. But I thought I'd bring the subject up to date with a look at where my newest creation is coming from.

I've spent the past couple of months working on revisions of the first two manuscripts I turned out back in the early nineties with the intent of publishing them as ebooks if nothing else. Now it's time to get back to my bread-and-butter series starring that indefatigable former Air Force OSI agent, Greg McKenzie. I decided to hit a couple of new points about his background that hadn't been explored before.

We learned in earlier books that both of Greg's parents (his father was a native Scot, that's the McKenzie tartan at left) died in an airplane accident on the way to his graduation from the University of Michigan. After that he worked a few years as a deputy sheriff in St Louis County, Missouri. His uncle was Chef of Deputies. In the novel whose plot is currently stewing about in the soupy gray part of my brain, we meet the son of Greg's first cousin, a young man who lost a foot in Iraq and is at loose ends after coming out of rehab.

With all his wanderings about the world during and after his Air Force career, Greg had little contact with his uncle and cousins in St. Louis. Then the young man turns up in Nashville, charged with murder. As Greg frets over what to do, the case summons long-repressed memories of events from years ago. What happens and how it will turn out is your guess as much as mine. That's about all the background I need to get the old fingers tapping and see where the characters take the story.

A couple of other points I see through the fictional fog: a small cadre of militia characters and an involvement in drugs. That's all I can tell you for now. But keep watching these pages (bloggarly speaking) and I'll give some commentary as the project progresses.

Meanwhile, if you haven't read any of the books draped down the right side of the page, click on a cover to get more information, like plots, reviews, opening chapters, where to buy paperback or ebook. Enjoy!

Hitting the Mark

This is a bit of a departure for me, but with the first review in for my fifth Greg McKenzie mystery, I decided to feature it in today's blog. The review is written by Larry W. Chavis for The GenReview. The site is devoted to reviewing genre fiction, which it describes this way:

"Referred to as 'popular fiction' by many (and as 'trash' by some snooty members of the pseudo-intelligentsia), the term genre fiction usually connotes stories written primarily for their entertainment value.  While this may seem to be a very broad definition, what is implicit is that the genre fiction story or novel is mainly intended to pass the time rather than expand your consciousness."

Having said that, the site adds, "the line between genre fiction and so-called 'literary fiction' is a very fine one and often is obscured.  Certainly The Maltese Falcon is genre fiction, but it also explores the dark side of the human psyche and what drives people to do what they do.  So, it’s not always clear-cut.  However, while most authors of genre fiction would be pleased to have their work called 'literary,' most authors of literary fiction would be offended to have their work described as genre fiction."

Here's the review of A Sporting Murder:

In the week before Christmas rumors have surfaced that something is amiss with a proposed deal to bring a National Basketball Association franchise to Nashville. Local P. I. Greg McKenzie, with his wife and partner, Jill, are hired to investigate by a group of hockey fans opposed to the NBA’s coming, fearing loss of the hockey team’s fan base.  An informant promises information on the deal that will “blow your mind,” but turns up shot in the face instead. Is his murder the result of being in the wrong part of town or connected to the case? Greg and Jill determine to find out.

But this will be no ordinary Christmas week. Besides the murder and Greg’s finding the body, an old case rears it head in the person of a former Air Force lieutenant whom Greg had helped convict of drug-dealing back in his days as an OSI investigator. He’s out of prison, and still carrying a grudge. As the book moves along at a fast pace, the McKenzies are hard-pressed to unravel the events and dangers into which they are thrust. Are they connected to the NBA deal or to Greg’s old enemy? We are kept guessing until the disparate threads all come together on Christmas Day in a rousing and satisfying climax.

Readers of Mr. Campbell’s previous books will be pleased to be back in his Nashville with Greg and Jill McKenzie. His writing is clean and spare, giving us enough sense of place and character to feel as if we’ve settled in with friends, and then in turn ratcheting up the tension and suspense. Greg McKenzie is not a hard-boiled private investigator, but he’s tough and smart, well aware of the qualities Jill brings to the partnership. The way the case plays out against the backdrop of their lives gives them a genuineness that makes the reader feel these would be good folks to spend an afternoon with - or to have along in a gun fight. Once again, Campbell has hit the mark.

Copyright 2010 Larry W. Chavis

The book will be available in early fall. It can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com.

Homecoming at a country church

I attended services this morning at a little country church that normally attracts around thirty or so people on a Sunday morning. This was homecoming, so there was more than double the usual congregation. It was the Scottsboro United Methodist Church, where my wife, Sarah, grew up. She was a Scott, for whom the community was named.

This is a rural area on the fringes of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County. The "business district" is the intersection of Ashland City Highway (State Route 12) and Old Hickory Boulevard, a circumferential road that runs around the outer edge of the county. It has a service station/market and a small grocery.

If you head on down Old Hickory Boulevard past the cutoff to the church, you pass through Bells Bend, one of numerous twists the Cumberland River makes on its serpentine path through Nashville. This is a large primarily agricultural area that includes some expensive homes along the river. Metro has developed two city parks in the area.

More recently, Bells Bend has been in the news over a proposal to turn a section of it into a multi-billion-dollar urban development called May Town Center. According to a website sponsored by opponents, the "proposal calls for a city the size of downtown Nashville, with 40,000 workers (downtown has 47,000 right now), 5000 condos (downtown has about 3000, with many vacancies), a 15-story hotel, and all the related amenities - all on 600 acres of cowpasture in Bells Bend."

People in the area banded together to fight the planned development and so far have prevailed. It was approved by the Metro Planning Commission staff but after public hearings was turned down by the commission. The developers are trying to get a rehearing.

The keep Bells Bend as is people say they "have a new cooperative organic farm project, an long-standing commercial turnip patch, two sod farms, free-range chicken eggs, a commercial cut flower business, a number of beef cattle, and an endless array of personal gardens. We have two knock-out city parks, and have had a rare pair of whooping cranes spend several weeks here over the last two years."

Visiting the Scottsboro church gives you an idea of what people in the area are fighting to preserve. These are down-to-earth folks who live in a small community and love it the way it is. My wife grew up with a lot of them and enjoyed revisiting old times. The choir was seven-strong, including the preacher, who joined in the anthem. Two young boys passed the collection plates.

After the service, we enjoyed a tasty meal comprised of numerous meat, vegetable, salad and dessert dishes brought in by those attending. There was enough food for twice as many people as passed through the line. My wife cheated a bit, bringing fast food chicken, but she baked the cupcakes.

You might think such churches are doomed because so many of their members are aging, but this service was attended by a number of young families with kids. It's a refreshing experience to get out of the urban area occasionally and see how life is lived at a slower pace.

To keep this on the mystery subject, Scottsboro is having a Fall Festival on October 24, and I'll have a table there selling my books. It should be a fun day.

A flying dream adventure

What we did as kids no doubt set the stage for what we’d do as adults. In my case it was to dream adventures that would lead me to write equally hair-raising stories many years down the line. And some of the dreams actually took place.

I was fascinated by airplanes at an early age. I glued many a strip of balsa pinned onto the plans for a World War I Fokker or SPAD or Sopwith Camel. Johnny Green, the boy next door who was a year older, lived in a bulky three-story frame owned by his grandparents. It had a small one-room house in back that must have been for servants originally. We played there flying our imaginary aircraft. Once we scrounged up a world map and plotted a global flight.

Johnny and I were thrilled no end at the news of Wrong Way Corrigan’s small plane flight from New York to Ireland in the summer of 1938. My interest was piqued further by my father's habit of driving out to Berry Field, the Nashville airport, on Sunday afternoons to watch the airplanes take off and land. When I was 12, he bought tickets and took my brother and me up for a ride in an Ogden Tri-Motor.

Johnny's uncle further whetted our appetite for flying. A member of the National Guard’s 105th Observation Squadron, he took us to the airport and let us climb in one of their O-47s. It was a squat, single-engine airplane that sat low on the ramp. It had a long greenhouse type canopy. I used one of them in the plot of The Marathon Murders.

The memory is a little hazy after 70 years, but it was probably the following summer when I was 14 that Johnny Green and I began saving our pennies and nickels and dimes with a plan in mind. On trips to the airport with our parents, we had seen a sleek WACO biplane with a snazzy radial engine and streamlined fenders over the wheels, piloted by a smiling young man with a windblown look. He sold 30-minute joy rides for something like five dollars.

We lived in East Nashville, a genteel middle class area a few miles from the Cumberland River and downtown. We had pedaled our bikes all over the area and knew our way around. Sneaking a map from one of the cars, we plotted our route to the airport, which was about 10 miles away. Using our normal excuse, he told his mother he was going somewhere with me, and I told my grandmother, who kept us while my mother worked, that I was going somewhere with Johnny.

With our $2.50 each in our pockets and small brown bags of peanut butter and crackers, plus a couple of candy bars, we embarked on our journey. Rather than head south toward town, we rode north to the Inglewood suburb where a ferry took us across the river. From there, all we had to do was follow McGavock Pike to the airport.

We had picked a bright, sunny day and encountered no problems along the way. The trip took a couple of hours. After resting up a bit while we ate our goodies, we headed over to the fence area where the pilot hung out. We showed him our cash and said we were ready to ride. I think he would have preferred $5 each, but the plane was a two-seater, and we would only occupy one seat together, so he led us out to the plane.

We hadn’t left the ground, but we were flying high. He boosted us into the open cockpit and strapped us down. A little prop cranking to start the engine, and we were off into the wild blue yonder. It was the most exhilarating feeling you can imagine. He did some steep turns so we could see the landscape below. I think he looped it, but I wouldn’t swear to that. This was around 1939 and there was no FAA to bother with.

The 30 minutes was over all too soon. With that thrilling experience to chatter about, we didn’t start worrying until we got close to home. “Where have you been?” was the first thing we heard. We admitted to crossing the river and peddling around McGavock Pike, but nothing about the airport. Things were pretty tense for awhile.

Johnny moved away by the time I got to high school, but we kept in touch. Both of us went into the Army Air Forces after graduation. Not long before World War II ended, I wound up at the San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center, now known as Lackland Air Force Base. It was split off from Kelly Field, one of the oldest U.S. air bases. One of my mother’s sisters lived in San Antonio, and her husband was a mechanic at Kelly Field. In a visit there as a boy, I toured the shops at Kelly and saw where they repaired the aircraft. I’ll never forget going into the paint shop, where they applied dope to the fabric covering of the planes. The smell penetrated everything. It was like sitting in a pool of mashed bananas.

Though long retired from the Air Force Reserve, I still love airplanes. My Greg McKenzie character is retired Air Force and his wife, Jill, flies her own Cessna. For me, the whole flying business got a hefty boost that summer day at Berry Field back in 1939.

What's behind The Surest Poison?

After getting four books published dealing with the often-quirky ventures of a retired Air Force investigator and his wife, PIs in their mid-sixties, I decided to try something more gritty. I had started my mystery-writing career with post-Cold War spy stories, a gritty species if there ever was one. They didn’t sell, however, so I turned to private investigators.

The Surest Poison is a lot more hard-boiled than my previous series. After a bit of debate, I put PI Sid Chance in Madison, the northeast suburb of Nashville where I live. That eliminated the necessity for a lot of research. On that phase of the project, anyway. Turned out I had to do much more digging as the story unfolded.

To keep things interesting, I gave Sid a female associate. The popular term is sidekick, but Jasmine (Jaz) LeMieux is more than the normal sidekick. For one thing she’s rich, majority owner and chairman of the board of a lucrative chain of truck stops. And she’s had a rather checkered career, including Air Force Security Police, professional boxer, and Metro Nashville policewoman. She was responsible for getting Sid into the PI business. He had been a National Park ranger for 19 years and a small town police chief for 10. He left that job after false accusations of bribery.

Okay, now I had two characters, so what to do with them? Thinking about newsworthy areas they might get involved with, I considered the topic of environmental pollution. While splashing that idea around in my gray matter, I happened to mention it to a friend who is fairly well known as a private investigator specializing in locating missing persons. She once tracked down a bunch of people for Oprah and appeared on her show. She has done other network shows and written a couple of books.

“I had a case involving trichloroethylene down around Jackson a few years ago,” Norma Mott Tillman told me. That was in West Tennessee, a fair distance outside my territory.

She was hired by the attorney for a company that faced a huge cleanup cost resulting from the toxic chemical being dumped on its property by a previous owner. (For another look at a similar situation by an attorney check Murderous Musings). The guilty party was no longer around and her job was to track him down. It sounded like the perfect plot for a mystery, after a bit of tweaking.

I wanted it set around Nashville but away from the considerable resources of the Metro Police Department. We’re surrounded by five counties, three with well over 100,000 populations. Of the other two, one has less than 40,000 people. So I had my location, a small plant near the small county seat, Ashland City.

Norma Tillman’s case lacked the ingredient of mayhem. I had to give my PIs plenty of trouble to deal with. That meant dropping a few bodies along the way. I also arranged for the company responsible for the pollution and its owner to virtually vanish from the scene.

All well and good, but no self-respecting mystery would be caught without a tantalizing sub-plot to preoccupy the sleuths. Jaz came to the rescue. She lives in a mansion on the more classy side of town, as opposed to where Sid and I live among the middlin’ folks. She has a live-in couple named Wallace, family employees since Jaz was a girl. When the Wallaces’ grandson disappears, then reappears frightened out of his wits, Jaz enlists Sid’s aid to ferret out the problem.

All set, right? Not quite. The popular term among readers is “murder mystery.” So I needed a little murder to get things going. You’ve heard the argument over where the murder should come. On page one? The first chapter? I’m a believer in put it where it belongs. In this case, it fit in the opening chapter of the book.

I started with murder on page one. Hit ‘em right between the eyes. Then I segued to my protagonist who, at the same time, was waking up in his hillside cabin 50 miles away. My editor thought it would be more effective to switch the scenes. After a bit of reflection, I agreed. You can see how it turned out by reading the opening chapter at my website.

Now you know the hoops I jumped through in putting the story together, at least in getting it started. Since I’m a seat-of-the-pants plotter, at that point the characters and I took off running. It was a fun run.

Starting Wednesday, April 15, I’ll be doing a Blog Book Tour, making 15 guest spots by May 1. I’ll give away several books during the tour. Scroll down to my April 6 post to see where I’ll be and how to win books.