Featured Interview With Craig Terlson
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
As a true Canadian, I’ve moved around a lot, west and east, big cities like Toronto and little ones like Weyburn, Saskatchewan. I now live smack dab in the middle, in Winnipeg, a city of about 600k. Our house has always been full of pets, cats, dogs, and even a goat once. The current roster shows 2.5 cats (include a neighbour cat who thinks we are his owners.) Rumours have it that a dog may be joining us.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I was a voracious reader right from childhood. At the same time, I loved drawing and painting, which led to my career as a professional illustrator. After drawing pictures for magazines and books for more than 25 years, I decided that I’d finally start writing the stories that the pictures went with. I began seriously writing in the early 2000s.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I read across the genres, from classics to modern, to post-modern and beyond. I’ve always been inspired by literary writers like Hemingway, Carver, and Alice Munro. As well I’m a fan of the South American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I count his 100 Years of Solitude as one of my all-time favourite books. More recently I’ve fallen in love with everything that Jennifer Egan writes, and her recent book, The Candy House, was my book of the year.
When I started writing crime fiction it was because of writers like James Crumley, John D. MacDonald and Elmore Leonard. Discovering authors like James Lee Burke showed me that I could combine my love of literary fiction with crime fiction and suspense.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest book, Three Minute Hero, features a guy who denies he’s a detective, but keeps getting hired to find people—and he’s very good at it. It is the third in the series featuring Luke Fischer, but all the books are standalones.
I worked on this book for just over two years, and then a bit more after I delivered it to my wonderful editor, Jim Thomsen.
A recent review really captures the spirit of the novel, “If you are a fan of crime novels with caustic humour and offbeat characters, this one is for you. There are fistfights, double crosses, and action—and it is funny as hell. There are shades of Crumley, Elmore Leonard, and vibes of a film like Blood Simple. Terlson also has a keen visual eye, and at times when you’re drifting through the landscape, you feel as if you’ve stepped into the hallucinogenic emptiness of an Edward Hopper painting.”
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