The South End
Wayne State University's Student Newspaper
Interview with Bill Stackhouse

By Paul Hefka II

PAUL HEFKA II: Is writing something you always wanted to do, or is it something you recently discovered?

BILL STACKHOUSE: I didn't start out to be a writer. I am, or was, by education and training an engineer, with a Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Engineering from General Motors Institute in Flint and a Masters from Wayne. However, as a Staff Quality Engineer at Ford Motor Company and later as Director of Quality Systems and Training at an automotive parts supplier, writing became a bigger and bigger part of my job. Oh, there were the tedious policies and procedures, of course, but then came training programs—first for engineers and technical people, then for shop-floor-level personnel.

Now the shop-floor-level people—punch-press, lathe, milling machine operators and floor inspectors—had been out of school for a number of years and, for the most part, they didn't like it all that much while they were in school. Consequently the "Here, I'm going to teach you something" approach definitely wasn't going to work with them. I found that I had to use a bit of creativity in taking technical subjects like Basic Measurement and Statistical Process Control and make those topics interesting enough to hold people's attention while at the same time get them to learn the subject matter.

Those stand-up sessions led to videotape training, where I had to write scenarios (playlets, actually) that demonstrated technical concepts using dialogue and humor. Those were what hooked me—the scenarios. They weren't only effective, they were fun to write. And they were infinitely more fun than being out of town four or five days each and every week visiting the plants for which I had functional responsibility.

What made you want to become a writer?

When I finally burned out on the travel schedule and sat down to think about what kind of work I could do instead of what I had been doing for fifteen years or so, my wife said: "Don't think in terms of what you can do. Think of what you'd like to do." I thought back to those scenarios—those playlets. What I really wanted to do was write.

How did you fall into playwriting?

It was a confluence of events that started me out. I had watched a TV episode of a detective show that had a pitiful plot. My wife and I had just seen a Pulitzer Prize-winning play that we both thought stunk, and I figured. "Heck I can write better than that!". Then I realized that there were hundreds of theaters around the country—all doing four to six plays per year.

"Stage plays!" I decided. "With stage plays I'll make a killing."

My first play, Encore to Murder, received a showcase production at a small teaching theater in NYC—no money, just the production. I had arrived. I was on my way to the big-time.

My second play, A Tradition of Service, received a showcase production in the L.A. area. Again, no money, just the production—and a dreadful production it was. They added two characters, plus a monster in the floor, and ended it with a Rockettes kick line to the theme from Oklahoma. The reviewer wrote: "Every playwright deserves a traditional performance so that he or she can see their work, learn from it and grow. Unfortunately, Bill Stackhouse never got that opportunity. A rather amusing little play, A Tradition of Service, was completely engulfed by the director's rather surrealistic vision."

By the time my third play, To Serve and Protect, won the Mid-South Playwrights Competition and a completely-rewritten A Tradition of Service won the National New Play Program sponsored by the Waterloo Community Playhouse (I did get a couple hundred bucks for those productions) some facts of playwriting life had begun to sink in. Aside from those few theaters that get grant-money to sponsor new play contests, most will not produce a play which hasn't been published. New plays have no name recognition and don't draw very well. But, at the same time, play publishers want a play to be produced before they'll consider it for publication. A classic Catch 22.

"Novels," I thought. "That's what I'll do. I'll write novels. Look at all the millions of people who read books. And all those book publishers. With novels I'll make a killing."

Tell us a little about Ed McAvoy.

Ed McAvoy is a former homicide captain with the Detroit Police Force who has had to take a medical retirement after his leg is shattered by a drug dealer's bullet. Although McAvoy feels he's too young to be put out to pasture, he retires to a cottage on the banks of Deer Shanty Brook in the heart of New York's Catskills where he wiles away his time tying trout flies, fishing, and slowly going out of his mind with boredom.

When he's offered the job as Chief of Police in the sleepy little village of Peekamoose Heights, McAvoy jumps at the opportunity. Even though he thinks it will be a far cry from what he's been used to, it still will be police work. With the slower pace in the Catskills, being Chief of Police in Peekamoose Heights will be sort of like running a country club, or so he thinks. After all, how much crime can there be? Some occasional petty theft, maybe a little vandalism, perhaps a few drunk-and-disorderly incidents? And every so often, he figures, someone might die—but, then, it probably will be an old person whose time has just run out, or a victim of an unfortunate accident.

McAvoy soon discovers that his skills as a homicide detective will not atrophy from lack of use in Peekamoose Heights. Murder, as it turns out, is an equal-opportunity crime that not only resides in large bustling cities like Detroit, but in sleepy little Catskill villages like Peekamoose Heights as well.

What was it about Ed that made you want to tell his story?

The character of Ed McAvoy and the Catskill setting were introduced in my stage play Encore to Murder. I liked the character and the setting. McAvoy isn't a brute-force type of guy. He uses his wits and guile to solve crimes. And I also liked my play. When I decided to go the novel route, I tried to turn Encore to Murder into a novel. The first attempt failed. The play was still too fresh in my mind and the novel turned out to be just one extra-long stage play. However, I did enjoy the novel format, so I set that particular one aside and decided to write a new novel from scratch, unencumbered by a playscript. I still liked the characters, though—even more so now that there were more of them than there had been in the play—so I decided to stick with them for the new book. The rivulet that would one day become Stream of Death was born.

What makes Ed McAvoy stand out from the other great sleuths like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Thomas Pitt, Miss Jane Marple and all the others?

I'm not sure I'd use the phrase "stand out." I'd opt for the word "differ." For one thing, he's a working cop. He doesn't have just one big case that he can devote all his time to. He has to administer a department, obey the laws of search and seizure, not violate anyone's civil rights, and he also has to worry about village politics. Like the others, though, he's cerebral in his crime-solving approach.

Tell us about the village of Peekamoose Heights.

Peekamoose Heights sits in the saddle where Slide, Wildcat, and Hemlock mountains all come together in Ulster County, New York. Only a two-and-a-half-hour drive from New York City, it has a lot of wealthy part-time residents with second homes and, in many cases, second mansions dotting the mountainsides. It's taxation without representation at its finest. While the wealthy part-timers can't vote in village elections, their taxes afford the locals with the finest village services money can buy.

Among the locals you'll encounter are McAvoy's sister-in-law Lucille, with the body of a goddess, the face of a bulldog, and the voice of an unmuffled chain saw. John Desmond, a CPA, is also an Episcopal priest and the Rector of St. Mary's-in-the-Hills Church. Porky Jarvis, a world-class chef, and his sister Stevie Henderson, own The Plough and Whistle Pub, the hub of village social life. Dr. Ben Krider runs The Poplars, a private clinic and rehab center owned by Katherine Duffrin-Winthrop, the wealthy village matriarch. Then there's Danny Henderson, Stevie's fourteen-year-old son, and his yellow Labrador retriever Sandy, as well as Patrick Blackstone, a retired magician, and Beverly White who is the managing director of Mountain Gap Repertory Theatre.

What was your experience with writing Stream of Death like? Was it good, bad, etc.?

Originally christened Fish Story back in 1993, it was a finalist in the prestigious St. Martin's Press Malice Domestic Contest. I figured I had arrived. I was on my way to the big-time. Even though St. Martin's passed on acquiring the publication rights, I figured, "Hey, an independent judge liked it and recommended it. A few more submissions and I'll be a published author."

Those few submissions turned into a half dozen, then a dozen, all returned with photocopied notes that read, "Thanks, but not right for us." or "Thanks, but our list is full." or "Thanks, but ..." (you fill in the blank).

By now I had followed up with two more Ed McAvoy novels and a Caitlin O'Rouke novel—two of which also were recommended by St. Martin's Press contest judges for publication, but, again, passed on. Meanwhile, each time I wrote another Ed McAvoy novel, I revised Fish Story. And with each revision, I liked the story even better. But now the Fish Story rejections had increased to two dozen and were rapidly approached three—all accompanied by photocopied "Thanks, but ..." notes.

Then an email showed up on my computer-from Poisoned Pen Press. The tone was cautionary. They only publish a few mysteries each year, probably wouldn't end up publishing mine, but would like to see the entire manuscript anyway. "What the heck," I thought. "It's less than ten bucks in postage and I have copies galore sitting around gathering dust."

After three months or so, the response came. And not a photocopied rejection note, either. This was an honest-to-goodness personalized rejection note from editor Barbara Peters. The bad news was that, no, she didn't think my novel was publishable in it's current form. But she also gave me a glimmer of hope. If I would make these cuts here, reorder those chapters there, and make other modifications throughout, she'd be happy to take another look at it.

The returned manuscript itself looked as if someone had butchered a hog on it. There were red edit marks everywhere. Barely a page was left unscathed. "My story," I whimpered to myself. "She's ruined my story." But as I read the suggested edits, I discovered that she hadn't ruined it—anything but. The cuts and modifications needed to be made—even the words that I had thought were so cute and perfect. When they were gone, the story read so much cleaner and clearer. And rearranging a few chapters made the plot work so much better.

So off it went again. After another three-month wait, I received another response—but not a rejection this time. It was an offer. They actually wanted to publish my book.

Now after two name changes (initially from Fish Story to The Dog Wore Diamonds) and four more sets of revisions, Stream of Death is finally flowing into that big literary ocean with all the other new books published this year.

How do you prepare for the story you are working on? Does it differ between play and novel? If, so how?

A play doesn't depend so much on a sense of place as does a novel. It's dialogue-driven. With Encore to Murder, the play, it was a single interior set of a second home on the slope of Slide Mountain. All the action took place inside and all I required from the outside was that it snow so hard that my characters couldn't leave. When I decided to turn it into a novel, and with the subsequent Ed McAvoy Mysteries, I had to go up to the Catskills and get the flavor of the area, since the action in the novels takes place in and around the village.

What kind of writing schedule do you have?

When I was free-lancing, I'd write for myself in the mornings and do client work and run errands in the afternoons. Now that I'm working fulltime as a scriptwriter for a multimedia production firm, I have to write my own stuff whenever I can catch a few spare hours between the necessary errands.

When is the next Ed McAvoy mystery coming out?

There are three more on the shelf, including a completely revamped Encore to Murder, and two more in my head. We writers like to think of what we do as art, but it's also a business. Whether any of those Ed McAvoy Mysteries ever see the printed page will depend a great deal on how well Stream of Death is received. So far, the reviews have been quite favorable, but the review that will ultimately count is the one the publisher will do of his balance sheet.

When you were young, what did you want to do with your life?

I wanted to be an English Lit teacher. But when I found out that GM would send me to school and pay me a salary, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go to GMI and become an engineer.

Are you where you thought you would be?

It depends on from where you're looking. From when I started writing stage plays, the answer is "no." I honestly thought I'd be the next Neil Simon. From two years ago after almost three dozen rejections for Stream of Death, I guess the answer is still "no," but for a totally different reason. At that time I was very discouraged and thought I'd never get published.

\What was it like to write training films for the US Government?

Whether it's a stage play, a novel, a training film, or a commercial, it's still a story of some sort. For the play or novel, it's my story as I want to tell it. For a training film or commercial, it's the client's story as he or she wants it told. But, regardless, it all boils down to storytelling.

Might we have seen any of the commercials you'd written?

No, they were all local. But if you're a Country Music fan, you may have seen me in Chely Wright's Single White Female music video or Ray Stevens' Juanita and the Kids music video.

What was it like to have your own theatre group? What plays did you produce?

Fun, mentally rewarding, financially frustrating, grueling, and at times bazaar. We traveled to six medium-sized towns in Northern Alabama and Southern Tennessee, setting up on a Thursday night and performing Friday and Saturday nights. At one location (a high school theater that had a bare stage the day we booked it) the local community theatre group had just done Neil Simon's Rumors and left the set up for the high school drama class to use. "Is that going to be a problem?" the principal asked me on the Thursday set-up night. Fortunately the show we were doing was an interior set, but all the entrances were reversed. We had to do our show in mirror-image from the way we were used to doing it.

For the one season before I ran out of money, we did My Heart Reminds Me, First Night, Eleemosynary, The Deal, and Murder at the Howard Johnson's.

What was your experience like at Wayne State University?

Because I worked during the day and got my Masters at night, I didn't really get the full flavor of campus life. One incident has always stood out in my mind, though. It was the late 60's and the antiwar protesters were at it hot and heavy. I'd get off work and come down to the Student Union to study before class. One night, although there was more commotion than usual, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to what was happening around me. All of a sudden some guy hopped up on a table and yelled: "The building's ours!" Everyone cheered. I looked up and I was the only one there in a suit. I closed my briefcase and quietly removed my establishment self from the premises.

What advice do you have for aspiring novelists and playwrights?

Six pieces of advice, actually. First, on dialogue: Read your dialogue out loud to see if it rings true. And, remember, people often don't speak in complete sentences. If dialogue is your weakness, read a few plays by David Mamet or Lee Blessing to see how it's done extremely well.

Second, on writing what you know: Better still, write what you like. If you enjoy your story and your characters, so will your readers.

Third, on creative writing classes: They certainly can help you with mechanics but, then, so can some good reference books. It's still up to you, however, to come up with a good story and engaging characters. Don't get caught up in technique and go rigid with all the rules that creative writing instructors seem to love. Pick up a John Grisham novel and see how many of those rules he routinely breaks. He's not being published because of a slavish adherence to rules. He's being published because he writes a darn good story.

Fourth, on reading fees: You'll get enough rejections for free. There's no point in paying for them, be they from publishers, agents, or contests. For an agent or publisher, reading manuscripts is a cost of doing business. For contests, they usually have an Arts Council grant, anyway. And if part of the contest prize for a book doesn't include a bonafide publishing contract with a reputable house, or if the prize for a play doesn't include a production contract, why waste the postage even if it is free?

Fifth, don't give up. Remember, Stream of Death was rejected by thirty-some publishers and about as many agents before it found a home at Poisoned Pen Press.

Sixth: I know that many people, especially students, are reluctant—and rightly so—to spend close to $25 for a hardcopy of a first novel from an unknown author, despite some very nice reviews. The first three chapters of Stream of Death (as well as the still unpublished books) and a few of the stage plays can be downloaded from my website (http://www.billstackhouse.com). If you're unsure, download the chapters and take Stream of Death for a test drive before you make up your mind whether or not to buy.