Featured Interview With Martin Roy Hill
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’m Southern California born and raised, and grew up in the beach community of Redondo Beach, just south of Los Angeles. I still live in Southern California in La Jolla, a suburb of San Diego, with my wife, Winke, son, Brandon, and our feline supervisors, Harry and Alex.
When I’m not writing novels and short stories, I am an U.S. Navy analyst in the field of combat casualty care. Before I went to work for the Navy I was a journalist, having worked as newspaper crime reporter, a magazine investigative journalist, and the editor of a business newspaper. While it was a great influence on my writing, I eventually grew tired of journalism. Over the years, I’ve also been a medic of one sort or another in U.S. Coast Guard Reserve, the Navy Reserve, the California Nation Guard, the San Diego Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Reserve Detail, and a federal Disaster Medical Assistance Team. That experience gave me a whole other set of skills, which I use in my Navy position. Those experiences also influence my writing a great deal.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I can’t remember not being an avid reader. Book mobile days were my favorite days in grade school. In high school, I took an English class where we could read any book, but we had to write an essay about it. My teacher liked my essays and encouraged to write, so I took a journalism class and the next thing I knew I was thinking of writing fiction and nonfiction as a living.
I sold my first published piece to Reader’s Digest in 1973. It was a Humor In Uniform item based on my brother-in-laws experiences. By that time, I was in Coast Guard boot camp myself. My parents sent me a letter telling me about the piece being published and I got very excited. My drill instructor stopped me and demanded to know why I was so excited. I told him and he responded with a straight face, “Hill, you are a joke in uniform.” That was my first experience with critics.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I grew up reading a lot of the post-World War One Lost Generation authors like Hemingway, Remargue, and Dos Passos. I also read a lot of science fiction by H. G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut, and still read them. I’ve read everything written by the late Patrick O’Brien, who created the Jack Aubrey novels like Master and Commander. I’ve also read Navajo detective novels by the late Tony Hillerman and the National Park mysteries of Nevada Barr. All three of those writers have such talent for giving the reader a sense of place. In recent years, I have become a fan of such authors as David Morrell, James Rollins, and Doug Preston and Lincoln Child. They all write great thrillers.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest mystery thriller, Empty Places, takes place in the California low desert in the area around Palm Springs in mid-1980s. My first novel, The Killing Depths, takes place aboard a crowded submarine in the middle of the ocean, and Empty Places takes place in a desert. Sort of the yin and yang of fiction.
Peter Brandt, the protagonist and narrator of Empty Places, is a war scarred news service correspondent who returns to his old haunt of Palm Springs to attend his ex-wife’s funeral. His return holds many shocks for him. The country is clawing its way out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, and even the wealthy enclave of Palm Springs is looking a bit seedy. Then Peter discovers his ex-wife, TV reporter Robin Anderson, was murdered and the local cops aren’t trying to find the murderer.
Peter is a man with many ghosts, including those of the people whose murders he covered as crime reporter for the local newspaper, and of a young Salvadoran mother whose murder he couldn’t stop. He also suffers great amount of suppressed pain and guilt he feels over the break up with Robin, whom he still loves though he won’t admit it to himself. Despite Peter’s attempts to hide the feelings he still has for Robin, he finds himself compelled to solve her murder. He and his close friend, retired cop turned private investigator Matt Banyon, start their own probe and uncover a rat’s nest of corruption involving politicians, drugs,and illicit sex. Soon, Peter and Matt find themselves the hunted instead of the hunters.
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