Interview with Dan Flanigan – S. 10, Ep. 12

The Crime Cafe

This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with lawyer and crime writer Dan Flanigan.

Dan started off writing poetry. Check out the story of how his writing journey began.

To download a copy of the transcript, just click here.

Debbi: Hi, everyone. My guest today is a lawyer, author, playwright, and poet, who among other things, has taught legal history and jurisprudence and practiced civil rights law, as well as worked in financial services, so he has an impressive resume. His written work includes the Peter O’Keefe hardboiled crime series, which has earned praise and awards. He has also written stage plays and short stories. His novella Dewdrops was adapted from a play. It’s my pleasure to have with me a lawyer and acclaimed author, Dan Flanigan. Hi, Dan. How are you doing today?

Dan: Good enough, thank you. As I said, better than I deserve I’m doing.

Debbi: Oh, dear me. Oh, I’d hate to think that. You always wanted to write a novel but ended up going to law school. How did that come about?

Dan: Well, I’m not sure.

Debbi: I know the feeling.

Dan: I wanted to be a writer from the time I was a sophomore in high school, and found many ways to avoid or evade it. When I look back on it, I punished myself a whole lot all those years, and unfortunately punished my wife as well for selling out, not doing what I was supposed to do. But when I look back on it now, I wonder if I really had anything to write and you’ve lived your whole life. You have had a lot happen to you.

Debbi: There’s a lot to be said for waiting before you start writing, because then you have more content to draw from.

Dan: In any event, I never thought it would, but it worked out well.

Debbi: Absolutely. Yeah. What was it that started you? You started with poetry, correct?

Dan: Yes. I had written in sort of spurts occasionally over a long period of time, between my sophomore year in high school and when I really started writing in earnest, and I had a period in the 1980s when I was on kind of a two-year break from practicing law and I wrote several plays. I wrote some poetry, a couple short stories, and I wrote a novel. One thing led to another. For example, I had an agent, I had a publisher for the novel. The publisher went bankrupt, and I had a stage reading of a play in New York. I thought I was going to be on top of the world for about five seconds. Where do you go eventually with any of that? So I decided I’m going to quit punishing myself and have nothing to do with writing.

And about 20 years later, if you got something like that in you, I guess it stays in you. My wife died in 2011, and I thought I’d do a kind of tribute, I guess – she might not think so – to her with a book called Tenebrae, which is a book of poems, mostly focused on her last illness and death. That sort of broke the dam, if you will, and sort of led me back into writing in a very serious way, and I really kept to it since.

Debbi: What inspired you to create Peter O’Keefe, this character? What kind of a person is he and what do you draw on to create stories about him?

Dan: The way I ended up there is odd, but I had no thought of ever writing crime fiction or detective fiction or anything else. I had read some of it over the course of my life, but never was steeped in it in any way, and the first two books, one was poetry and one was a short story collection, Dewdrops that I guess – not to be pretentious – but you might call literary fiction. But then I wanted to write this novel, sort of a fall in reparation sort of thing. I thought I want to make this more interesting than just navel gazing, and so I said, you know, I’m going to try to put it in this sort of private detective format and see how it goes. And that was the book that I wrote, and got accepted by a publisher.

I had no thought of ever writing crime fiction or detective fiction or anything else. I had read some of it over the course of my life, but never was steeped in it in any way …

But in the course of … I’m now in 2013 – in the course of writing the book of poetry, I pulled that book out of the box and said, you know, this is okay. This ought to be. So I rewrote it very extensively, and that’s Mink Eyes, the first in this series. Then I thought, oh, that’s one book, and I’ll go onto something else. But then I had this notion of doing it as a series. The first book was set in 1986. I thought it would be interesting to take this group of characters and deal with serious “literary” kinds of subjects, but in a more interesting format, and move it along as much as possible, and do the history of our times.

This guy starts out, he’s a Vietnam vet. Like everybody else, he’s a recovering cocaine guy and an alcoholic and has PTSD, although he won’t acknowledge it or do anything about it. He’s divorced, has a daughter who’s 9 years old in the first book, and he’s really at the bottom. His childhood buddy, who’s a big time lawyer named Mike Harrigan sort of plucks him out of jail, gets him a deal with the cops to be free of it if he goes straight and narrow. I’m going to make a private detective out of you, and that’s the start, the origin story, if you will.

The books attempt to be standalone, but one theme in the first three is him struggling and dealing with the Mafia, and it’s also about really the decline and disappearance really of the traditional Mafia in that period of time through RICO prosecutions and wiretaps and all that.

The first several books are really him trying to come to terms with being a new person. As he describes it, a more useful person, and then there’s a whole theme. He gets crossways with the Mafia in the first book. The books attempt to be standalone, but one theme in the first three is him struggling and dealing with the Mafia, and it’s also about really the decline and disappearance really of the traditional Mafia in that period of time through RICO prosecutions and wiretaps and all that.

Debbi: Interesting. Where is the series set and how much does the setting play in the book?

Dan: It’s different in different books. When people ask this question, I say a place like Kansas City. That’s where I’m from, and we had quite a Mafia group in town, too. But I don’t ever say it’s Kansas City, because I don’t want to be tied down to streets and I want to be able to do something purely fictional if I want to, so I never say that, but people would recognize it as that if they knew Kansas City and it’s a whole Midwestern thing. And then down in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, not far from us, it’s the Ozarks. The first book Mink Eyes is in fact about a Ponzi mink farm scheme down in the Ozarks and all kinds of other crazy stuff. The latest book, An American Tragedy … no, pardon me… the book I’m working on right now is another kind of Ozark-set book, where a lot of hate groups and fundamentalist Christian survivalist kind of stuff was going on in the 80s and 90s. So I make use of all that but without ever saying. I call it the Lake Country instead of just saying it’s the Ozarks.

Debbi: Well, that’s interesting. I noticed in an article about you that it says you described the 80s as not being a golden era where everything was just so much better than it is today, and with more hairspray.

Dan: Yeah. And that’s not me. That was the author of the article.

Debbi: I noticed that. Yeah, it wasn’t exactly an exact quote.

Dan: Right. And she’s very young, and I think she probably had this exalted view of the 1980s.

Debbi: I find that very fascinating. I think we have a tendency to do that. Go back 20 years and say, oh, gee, things were so much better then.

Dan: With a whole lot of things. And I never thought so, even though it was in a lot of ways good to me, financially but it was fairly rotten in its heart, you know?

Debbi: Oh, yeah. I mean, there was some really bad stuff going on in the 80s, and don’t even get me started about the 60s. Talk about an overrated decade! Okay, moving on. You’re still practicing law, so where do you find the time to do the writing?

Dan: Well, luckily we have this great sabbatical program in my firm where every five or six years, you take three months off if you want to, and that let me sort of jumpstart this series business. And, then also, I do a lot less law practice than I did at one time, and I’m sort of … let’s call it moving toward the horizon.

[W]e have this great sabbatical program in my firm where every five or six years, you take three months off if you want to, and that let me sort of jumpstart this series business.

Debbi: Yes, I know the feeling.

Dan: So I have more time, but I think maybe in that article, I don’t know, somebody asked me, how do you do all that? I said, well, it helps start out being a workaholic and …

Debbi: And living for a while.

Dan: A very helpful thing in certain ways anyway.

Debbi: I think that lawyers tend to be a bit workaholic generally.

Dan: Yeah, right and so that could carry over, although I don’t have the same discipline writing that I did as a lawyer where you’re writing for clients and their expectations and deadlines and all that, and especially in the era that I practiced, everything changed to “I want it yesterday.” But, with the books, I wish I would get up every morning and write two or three hours, and every day and all that, but it doesn’t happen now. I need to sort of wallow around in it for two or three days. But on the other hand, I’ve gotten six books out now, so …

Debbi: There you go. Whatever works. That’s the way it works. How much research do you do for your novels?

Dan: Varies a little bit, but a lot. The most recent one – An American Tragedy – I did lots and lots of reading plus I did a lot of different things as a lawyer, but one thing I never was a criminal defense lawyer. And the book is about a trial, and so I had to really, even as a lawyer, had to do all kinds of research to make sure I was doing it right.

I never was a criminal defense lawyer. And the book is about a trial, and so I had to really, even as a lawyer, had to do all kinds of research to make sure I was doing it right.

Debbi: I get it!

Dan: I also made sure that I had a couple of really experienced trial lawyers review it to make sure. You know how whatever field you may know or you watch Law & Order, if you’re a lawyer, you go, that’s ridiculous. That can never happen. I just didn’t want that to happen to me. I hope it didn’t.

Debbi: Yeah, exactly. You don’t want that.

Dan: And then for the Mafia thing, I sort of immersed myself in non-fiction stuff about the Mafia, and so I never want to be exactly like what really happened, but just to try to be versed enough in it. One of the things I did a lot of was bankruptcy, and Kansas City, they were all around that. I was a naïve kid when I was practicing law. I was all around those guys and didn’t really know what I was doing.

Debbi: Oh my!

Dan: So anyway, it depends on the situation. I’m no good at firearms, so I have to not only research, but get some help from people. I have one book where venomous snakes play a significant role. I had to research that. It’s like, you go down that road, you say why did I do this?

Debbi: I know the feeling. Do you tend to outline or pants it when it comes to writing?

Dan: I do an initial very rough outline, and I usually know where the book’s going. I really mostly have the last page in mind and stick to it, but there’s a whole lot in the middle that I don’t do, that changes, so it’s a combination really. It’s not pure pantsing, but it’s more pantsing than plotting, I think. It’s plotting, but not a detailed outline.

I really mostly have the last page in mind and stick to it, but there’s a whole lot in the middle that I don’t do, that changes, so it’s a combination really. It’s not pure pantsing, but it’s more pantsing than plotting, I think.

Debbi: Exactly.

Dan: Jeffery Deaver type …

Debbi: Jeffrey Deaver just amazes me with what he does. I could never do that. It’d be like, okay, the book’s written.

Dan: And I do believe – not that I set out with that philosophy – I’ve done so many things that I hadn’t planned to do that I think worked out very well because you let the story kind of take you places soon.

Debbi: Exactly.

Dan: So I’m pretty happy with that approach.

Debbi: It’s when you have the most fun, I think when you’re writing, when the characters just kind of tell you to go this way, or the situation just seems to lend itself for going a slightly different way than maybe you anticipated. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in having a writing career?

Dan: That’s really hard because mine is so strange, but this is probably just what’s on my mind today is to be careful about following expert advice too much. There’s so much advice out there that is really formulaic that will turn you into a formula writer. A lot of it is very good and very important, but what you need to do is be able to say, that’s good and I need to think it through. That may or may not be for me, that sort of thing. It’s one of those things where you have to want to be taught, but be careful about just following along with your teachers instead of what you really think you need to do. I don’t want to say stick with it no matter what or any of that sort of thing, but in my own case, it just turns out if it’s really driving you, you’ll end up there one way or the other probably.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: I always wanted to do a little play where people like Shakespeare and the Russians and Faulkner and Fitzgerald and those guys were all students in a MFA class that all got Ds because they didn’t follow any of the rules.

Debbi: Nice idea. I like that. What are you working on now?

Dan: This is the fifth book in this O’Keefe series, and I managed to finally get out of the 80s into the early 90s here. It’s about the rise of the survivalist, anti-government, Christian identity, racist, neo-Nazi groups around that time. The whole witch’s brew that ultimately led to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Debbi: Mmm. Interesting. Sounds like you cover some really interesting topics in your books.

Dan: That’s what I like so much about this series. I mean, having started out not even thinking about writing crime books, then writing this one, it has provided me both an anchor and a compass in terms of where to go and hopefully dealing with some major issues in human life and in our lives as Americans, and doing it in a little more interesting way, trying to be somewhat thrilling but realistically so. That’s the intent anyway.

I mean, having started out not even thinking about writing crime books, then writing this one, it has provided me both an anchor and a compass in terms of where to go …

Debbi: That’s great. That really is wonderful what you’re doing. Is there anything else you would like to add before we finish up?

Dan: All of the O’Keefe books and the newest one, An American Tragedy is just in production right now, they are in every format you can think of, including audio books. I’ve resurrected the Dewdrops book, and I’m doing a new edition of it. Hope I’m not running out of time here, but I added a new story, so I’m doing a new edition and doing that as an audiobook. And this one part of it, the novella that was the play Dewdrops is a full cast audiobook. I tried to do it as a podcast but I don’t know how to distribute or market a podcast, so things like that are in process. And also, I probably should mention my website, danflaniganbooks is the website. Got some things on there.

Debbi: Interesting that you’re thinking about doing that as a scripted podcast, because I’ve been thinking about doing a scripted podcast for years.

Dan: And since I converted it from a play, it’s almost all dialogue anyway, so it’s set up really well for that.

Debbi: So you just add in some sound effects, a little sound design.

Dan: Yeah. I even have a song or two in it and stuff like that.

Debbi: All right. Sounds awesome. That’s fantastic. Well, I have to tell you, it’s been a pleasure talking to you, and it sounds like you’ve got some really cool things lined up.

Dan: I appreciate it. I started late. I have to get moving here and get things done.

Debbi: You are an indie author, right? Self-published still?

Dan: Yes.

Debbi: One of the awesome indies. Yay. Yay for us. Thank you so much for your time.

Dan: Thank you. If I have time, I want to add one more thing.

Debbi: Okay, sure.

Dan: I call O’Keefe a soft-boiled detective, not a hard-boiled detective.

Debbi: Oh, I like that. Soft-boiled! So not quite hard-boiled, but …

Dan: He doesn’t fit the cliché.

Debbi: Yeah, yeah. He’s not a cliché. He is his own private eye. Well, that’s awesome. I love it. I will definitely have to check out your books, because I was looking at your third book in the series, and I was like, oh my God, what happened to him with the … I won’t say it, but…

Dan: Oh yeah. A lot happened to him. I had to ease off that a little bit.

Debbi: Oh my gosh, yes. Wow. I was just like, oh, I can really feel that. It’s like, oh, oh, ouch. So anyway, I won’t tell you what happens in the beginning of the third book, but check it out for yourself. For everyone listening, I just want to say thank you for listening, and if you enjoyed the show, please leave a review on your favorite podcast platform, Apple or wherever. We also have a Patreon page where you can get early access to ad-free episodes, as well as bonus episodes and samples of my work. I’ve been posting chapters from my novels there, so paid members at a certain level can get access to those. And I’m also going to be putting some new stuff up there, so that should be interesting. In the meantime, our next guest will be Ted Flanagan. No relation that I know of. Different spelling.

Dan: Oh, really?

Debbi: Yeah, really. Spelled differently. So in any case, I will see you in a couple of weeks. Take care and happy reading.

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