Q & A with Author David Alan Ek
1.What inspired you to write this book?
The inspiration for Bisbee and the Haunted came from my visit to Bisbee during a 2022 road trip.
Road trips immensely help my writing. They not only clear my head and put me in creative mode, but so much of my writing is place-based. As such, road trips allow me to gather the necessary personal experiences and absorb local vibes—essential elements for my place-based stories. I highly value authenticity.
For example, I set my novel Lizard People: Death Valley Underground in the mountains surrounding Death Valley. Since I used to work and live in Death Valley, I incorporated landscape elements and the local vibe with a high degree of authenticity. However, I did not have as intimate a relationship with the landscapes and communities that I set some of the stories I was developing at the time. I centered one of my projects on Arizona’s San Pedro River region. However, it bothered me that I did not know the San Pedro River or its communities. I planned a six-week road trip from Virginia to Arizona to correct that deficiency. In addition, I planned to visit the setting for my upcoming novel, Pedro’s Pickles and the American Dream. Although I’ve extensively researched Texas’s North Central Plains region, I wondered how I could speak with authority if I hadn’t at least visited where Pedro planted his fictional pickle farm.
On this road trip, I sorely wanted to drop into Bisbee. Not for any writing that I had planned, but simply because I’ve always wanted to visit this intriguing community.
I loved Bisbee the moment I rolled into town. I did not stay long, but the general framework for Bisbee and the Haunted came to me that first night. Bisbee exuded charm, and it had the history and vibe that struck me as an ideal setting for a new novel. So, after finishing the works that were already in development, I turned my sights to Bisbee and began crafting the story that became Bisbee and the Haunted.
2. Can you tell us about the main characters and their development throughout the story?
While Bisbee and the historic hotel are individual characters in my narrative, I wanted to focus my story on the dynamics of two main human characters—Graeme Greene and Jordan Smithers. So much of my writings, including Bisbee and the Haunted, explore elements of the human condition. While nature built Western landscapes through dramatic forces, it also built struggle into human DNA. While people struggle with one another, individually and collectively, the most dramatic forces wired into the human brain lie deep within each of us. The high class, the working class, the young and the old, and the perfect and flawed—everyone. We all struggle in our own way. As such, I wanted to develop a story of two people working their way through the multiple layers of not only their internal demons, but those created by their shared and intertwined histories. Such interplay between the interconnected Graeme and Jordan appeared to be the perfect pairing to explore these relatable elements of the human condition.
3. Did you have any challenges while writing this book? If so, what were they?
Knots. Knots under every stone and at every turn of the page. I got countless knots in my stomach trying to resolve the unresolvable. I constantly heard that modern readers don’t like elements that I had already built into my story. I agonized over whether I should go with the flow and give readers what online guides suggest that readers expect. Or should I buck the trend and trust my gut. Incident after incident, I trusted my gut, but collectively, I worried that I may have painted myself into a corner. In this lonely corner, I had visions of me fighting with myself over who gets to wear the aluminum foil hat.
I overcame each reservation by reading books by respected and established authors. As I read, for example, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany and Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, I saw that they used similar literary techniques and elements I also used in my writing. I then thought, maybe it’ll be okay. Maybe that approach is not as unacceptable as an internet community board led me to believe, because those books did quite well with modern readers. Granted, I’m not John Irving or Barbara Kingsolver, but they are not me. We each have our own style, and reading other successful books by other authors gave me the confidence to revisit Bisbee and the Haunted. Regardless, to say that I struggled with these confidence-related spurts and starts would be an understatement—more so than I did while writing my other three books.
4. What is your favorite scene in the book and why?
As the father of all my works and all my scenes, it seems inappropriate to have a favorite. That said, certain scenes subconsciously lodge in my mind more often than others. I’m quite fond of the scene where Graeme meets Carlos Rodriguez, and they discuss their vision for Bisbee’s future. Not only do I believe the scene is a page-turner, but it also incorporates many elements of “layering.” Intertwined with the readable narrative flow, I layered strands of Bisbee’s history, insights into characters’ conflicting worldviews, and offered foreshadowed glimpses that later connect in unsuspecting ways. I especially enjoyed this scene.
5. Were there any specific books or authors that influenced your writing of this book?
I cannot name any author that directly influenced Bisbee and the Haunted, but in general, I draw tremendous inspiration from a long lineage of authors. As such, I’m sure some of these influences subconsciously bled into my creation of Bisbee and the Haunted. Authors such as John Steinbeck, John Irving, Edward Abbey, Tony Hillerman, Robert Michael Pyle, John McPhee, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Annie Dillard constantly influence my writing approach, style, and technique. Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek had a profound influence on my writing, especially in my layered approach.
I was just a youngling when I first read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I immensely enjoyed what I viewed as nature writing and her occasional philosophizing. But later, when I discovered her motivation for writing the book, it turned my life upside down. An entirely new world opened and revealed itself—as if reborn as a reader and then later as a writer. What I viewed as entertaining nature writing turned out to have deeper roots and purposes. I later read that she meant for the book to be a philosophical exploration of Neoplatonic Christianity’s two pathways to God—via positive and via negative. While I had no idea what any of this meant, and still don’t, I marveled that a book could contain multiple layers of enjoyment and appreciation.
I view Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in similar ways. The book serves readers who just want an exciting whaling adventure and a charismatic character that sails into exotic waters. However, other readers may appreciate the philosophical and religious undertones and their symbolic meanings. Does the white whale represent God? Dark elements of the human condition? Perhaps it represents different things each time someone reads the book, or at different ages. I can imagine the book would hold different meanings for a youngster than for someone deep within their twilight years. I marvel that readers hotly debate the symbolic meaning and nuances of books such as Moby Dick or Pilgrim at Tinker Creek decades after publication. This is what I mean by books that hold multiple layers and serve multiple audiences. This is the approach that I strive for in all my writings, including Bisbee and the Haunted.
6. Can you talk about your writing process and how you approach writing a novel?
I rarely start a story at the beginning and end at the conclusion. I jump around and flesh out scenes as inspiration takes me. I’ve tried detailed plotting, but it never worked. For me, scenes do not flow into one another through a structured outline or schematic map. Ideas that seemed good at the time may not resonate as well while creative juices flow. As such, not long after I begin writing with an outline, I realize that I will need a different approach. While I have a broad outline of where to take the story, as I write, I soon discover the story develops a mind of its own. Therefore, it becomes a collaboration between thoughts in my head and the forces driving my fingertips.
However, such an unstructured approach later requires extensive massaging of scene fragments into a naturally flowing, cohesive entity. During such endless reworking, reorganization, and editing, I envy writers who can follow a more structured process. I’m reminded of John Irving. His approach is highly structured, but instead of writing from the beginning to the conclusion, he writes backwards. He writes the ending sentence first. He then writes the sentence that leads into the ending. In succession, he writes each sentence, and each scene, in reverse order—until he arrives at the novel’s opening sentence. While I envy that skill, I could never write that way.
Besides outlining, or lack thereof, drama influences my writing approach and style. Drama fills all spaces around all of us. It’s everywhere. Most people experience both external and internal drama. People continue their life-long struggle trying to define themselves—to grow into the person they want to be versus the person they show to others. We are all imperfect beings stumbling through an imperfect world. That’s drama. That is one reason I often choose conflicted, multi-faceted, and flawed characters. Their stories are the most interesting.
There’s also external drama—our environment, our communities, our culture, and our politics. As such, a part of my writing approach is to choose language and a writing style that accurately reflects the drama inherent in each story. It is also the reason that in Bisbee and the Haunted I leaned towards rich, vivid language and settings. It’s a balancing act that I constantly strive to improve with each passing word and phrase. Where the journey will take me, I cannot say.
7. What was the most difficult part of writing this book?
Confidence and self-doubt. I do not doubt my story or storytelling but worry and stress over whether a wide audience will accept my story and writing style. My preferred stories and writing style may not be the latest fashion, for I am not like most people. As such, I realize on a fundamental level that I don’t want to write the kind of stories everyone else is writing. Even if I could pull it off, such an effort would bore me immensely. While these concerns do not affect my writing, I admit that I stress over whether I’m writing to only an audience of one. This stress had been much higher during the development of Bisbee and the Haunted than it had been for my earlier two novels.
8. Do you have any favorite quotes from the book?
I suspect that any quote that I provide would likely contain spoilers. Besides, Bisbee and the Haunted is a different kind of story than the highly quotable Monty Python and the Holy Grail or The Princess Bride. Therefore, I will answer more broadly and say that you can find my favorite
passages within Graeme’s and Jordan’s Room 27 experiences.
9. Can you give us a hint about what you’re working on next?
I do not develop my writing linearly. I usually have five or six projects at any one time. I let inspiration and undefined forces guide me in what to work on at any given moment. I may draft one novel to the halfway point, but then let it sit and gestate as inspiration, or a fresh idea, takes me to another partially completed story. I try to be more structured—to see one completely through before taking up another, but it seems so unnatural, and the result ends up feeling forced. I need to let ideas sit so that I may come back later with a fresh perspective. Perhaps I subscribe to Ernest Hemingway’s philosophy, when he said, “Easy writing makes hard reading.”
I currently have two partial drafts that are high priority. I deeply immerse The Potlatch Entanglement in Pacific Northwest Native American legends. This was the first novel I started. I had nearly completed it, until, only recently, the realization dawned on me that my approach was all wrong. I cut one-half of the manuscript after the epiphany hit me. I discovered a much better framework and narrative arc—one that will do the story justice. While these changes will greatly improve the novel, I can only guess when I will complete it to my satisfaction.
Metalline, Rosemary, and Rue, also set in the Pacific Northwest, touches on environmental justice within a small mining community, but more fundamentally, it delves into how people interpret things differently based on their individual worldview, self-interest, and who signs their paycheck—despite everyone having identical baseline information. As the townsfolk stumble upon themselves through a cascading series of unanticipated events, they begin to realize that, as in real life, things rarely go as planned.
10. How do you hope readers will feel after finishing your book?
I often choose my words purposefully to evoke emotions; however, I prefer not to prescribe which emotion or to lead the reader towards only one outcome. Emotions are more personal than that. Maybe a specific word, phrase, or turn of events taps into a distant memory or conjures vivid imagery. How one feels after reading a book also changes as the reader’s experiences evolve. It is these organically grown personal connections that make a story more engaging, meaningful, and memorable.
Besides just tapping into the reader’s emotional well, I also encourage readers to think about the characters, their motivations, and what drives them. People and the world around us are not one- or two-dimensional. I like characters and situations that are not black-and-white. Everything around us is awash in shades of gray and in constant and contradictory motion. This is what makes life interesting.
In Bisbee and the Haunted, I strove to provide not only an interesting story but one that exists on multiple levels. If, after finishing the book, the reader comes away thinking about the story from different angles or debating different interpretations while in book club meetings, then I will have succeeded in my highest writing goal.
About the Author:
David Alan Ek held a successful and award-winning career with the National Park Service, where he led science and natural resource management teams throughout the country. His natural resources work often tackled complex issues of regional and national scope. David’s extensive natural resource-related writings have appeared in dozens of science and management publications—and in countless forms intended for audiences of all ages.
On the literary side, David writes both fiction and nonfiction. Authentically blending science, history, myth, real landscapes, and psychological suspense, his fiction digs beneath the surface, both literally and metaphorically, to expose the hidden forces shaping the biggest mystery of
all—the human condition. His short stories and essays have appeared in Canary—A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis, Weber: The Contemporary West, and elsewhere. Pedro’s Pickles and the American Dream was his debut novel. Since then, he followed up with the novel, Lizard People: Death Valley Underground, and a nonfiction book, Nowhere Bound: A Spud’s Reflections on Climbing and Caving—and Other Useless Toils. David is a member of the Virginia Writers Club and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association.
When not sciencing or writing, David has been an active rock and mountain climber, caver, and explorer of the American wilds. A native of Seattle, Washington, he currently lives with his wife and dogs in rural northern Virginia.