- A graduate of Georgia State University, high school English teacher, Georgia Author of the Year finalist and author, Christopher Swann uses his education and passions to contribute to the literary world.

His third novel of "Fire in the Night" is a mystery set in the North Carolina mountains, folding in murder, mayhem, and spy thrills for everyone.

I'm Holly Jackson.

Join us as we bring you powerful stories from both new and established Southern authors as we sit by the river.

(catchy instrumental music) - [Announcer] "By The River" is brought to you in part by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, strengthening community, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USCB, the Pat Conroy Literary Center.

(water splashes) - Hi, it's another beautiful day here at our Waterfront Studio here in Beaufort.

And this is part of our love letter to Southern writing "By The River", bringing you powerful stories through all out the Southeast, from established South Carolina and Southern authors.

And we are here with the author of "A Fire in the Night", Christopher Swann.

Very exciting book and book cover.

Thanks so much for coming, and tell us where you came from, and a little bit about your time here so far.

- Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.

I just drove in from Atlanta, and this is book number three that just dropped earlier this month, and I'm really excited to share it with everybody.

- [Holly] All right, well, tell us a little bit about what it's about.

- Sure, this is the story of Nick Anthony.

He is a professor of medieval studies who's grieving the loss of his wife who died unfortunately of cancer the previous year, and he's holed up in their mountain cabin in Cashiers, North Carolina, and just sort of wants to withdraw from the world, and the world comes knocking in the opening of the book.

The sheriff's deputy shows up to tell him his brother and brother's wife have died in a fire.

They think it's an accident.

"And by the way, have you seen your niece?

She's missing."

And Nick doesn't even know he has a niece, who of course ends up appearing on his doorstep with a story that her parents have been murdered.

She's being chased, she thinks that she has some information to give to her uncle, and it goes from there.

- This is action from the very beginning.

- Yes.

- I mean, (chuckles) big time.

Where did this storyline come to you?

How did it come to you?

- The idea of this man grieving and being alone and a teenage girl showing up in his doorstep, that popped in my head, and I liked the age disparity and I liked the idea of Nick is somebody you think he's one thing, and you realize very soon, he's something else.

He's got one foot in different worlds in a lot of different ways.

And I like characters like that, where you think you've got 'em figured out, and then, oh wait, - Oh wait, there's more.

- there's something else.

Yeah.

- Right.

- And Annalise is nieces like that too.

And it was gonna be from his point of view, but once I got Annalise in there, I said, "I really like her and I wanna try to get in her head, and see if as a middle-aged man can come across with a 16-year-old female character."

And I teach high school, so I've got some experience with that.

So- - Yeah, that's where I was going next.

So tell me how teaching high school English and for several years, over 25 years in that field.

So tell me how your experience with the students helped in that Annalise character.

- Well, I went to boarding school in Virginia, and it was all-boys, Woodberry Forest School.

And I loved that, and that shaped me in many ways, but I did sort of miss girls in class and went to go college.

And in teaching high school, I realized I didn't have a whole lot of experience in working with young women that way.

And so I've enjoyed teaching them for, as you said, many years.

I joke, I started when I was 12.

(Holly laughs) And there's teenage girls, there's something innocent and fierce at the same time, and with boys too, but in a different way.

And I just really liked writing the Annalise character and her interactions with her uncle who she doesn't know, and she's grieving the loss of her parents, and Nick's grieving the loss of his wife, and he's saddled with this kid doesn't know anything about.

And sparks kind of fly when they go at each other on the page, and they also form a bond.

And that was a lot of fun to try to figure out, how are they gonna fit together or how are they gonna solve this mystery, what happened to her parents.

So that was a whole lot of fun to try to come to terms with and make happen.

- How do you incorporate these two worlds of high school teacher and author?

Are the kids reading your books?

Is it part of required reading?

- No, I've got ethical issues with that.

Every once in a while, I had a professor in college who says, "Buy my book," and we never use it, but we had to buy it.

- Right.

- No, I wanted to, um...

I like...

I teach at school and I try to work at home.

But the students do tell me, "Hey, my mom's reading your book," or, "My granddad picked up a copy of your book," and that's great, but I don't wanna be the teacher's that's, "Well, you know, when I wrote my novel," and kind of pontificate in front of class.

They don't wanna hear that.

- Right.

- But no, they've been very supportive.

The school's been, my students are too.

So it's a lot of fun.

- That's very cool.

- Yeah.

- You have a doctorate in creative writing.

- [Christopher] I do.

- Tell me what made you go for that, and what that experience was like?

- I knew when I was 13, that I wanted to write books, and I had a teacher that gave us a creative writing assignment in social studies, and I loved it and I did well enough at it.

I thought I could do this.

But even then, I thought, "Okay, I don't think writers just write a book and go, 'Well, that's it.

Now I'm gonna take off a year and go to the beach, and maybe I'll write another.'

So what do writers do?

What's their day job?"

I looked at the back of a bunch of books, and a lot of them were teachers, professors.

I thought, "Okay, I'll do that."

And that was literally my sort of career planning, - Right.

- and it worked somehow.

I stumbled into this teaching gig, but at the same time, I was going to school.

I got my a master's at Missouri and my PhD at Georgia State.

And I wanted to get the PhD more as I like the community of creative writers and I learned a lot from the professors there too, but it was just sort of I'd like to go for that terminal degree.

And where I was working, where I'm still working now, supported me and sent me school as long as I was teaching full-time.

So that worked out well.

I learned a lot, and I was exposed to a lot of other writers who were better than I was, and so that helped me up my game.

- I saw, I believe it's a pinned tweet of yours, talking about the need to have that community of writers and what you can get from that.

Will you expand a little on that?

- Sure.

Several years ago when I was writing and not yet published, my wife, Kathy reads everything that I write and is very supportive and gives me very honest feedback, which as I've gotten older, I've gotten more appreciative of.

(Holly laughs) She said, "You need to kind of find your people."

Once I got out of grad school, that was in 2005, and she said, "Why don't you go online?"

And 'cause I'm like, "We have a kid, and we have a job and where am I gonna..." And so I did, I was in Myspace.

I believe that- - Oh yeah, that does date this a little bit.

(laughs) - Yeah, a little bit.

And fence writer Jonathan Evison is in the Pacific Northwest, and he had a group of people who were interested in stories, whether storytellers or not.

And I joined that, and he's now the author of five or six published novels.

Other people that are in that group have published short stories, have made films, novels, myself included.

And that was just a wonderful way to connect with the people who were interested in stories and wanted to talk about how to make stories, how to make 'em better.

And since I've become a published writer, I haven't found a community that's more supportive than the writing community.

And I know there are probably jerks out there, but I'm just gonna stay naive 'cause I haven't really met them yet.

And- - And are you still connected with that initial MySpace group?

- I am, I am, yeah, yeah, and we've moved sort of the Goodreads, and now we're friends in other social media.

And I've only met Johnny once in person.

He came to Atlanta, they made a film out one of his books, and he came, stayed at my house or stayed at 2:00 am, talking about things.

And this is one of the good things about social media, is you can connect with people that you have interest with and they're interested in and they can be a support group, even if it's virtual.

And in real life, I've met so many kind authors, which have been interviewed on your show.

Patti Callahan Henry, Wiley Cash, also generous and kind to somebody like me.

They don't know who I am, and they're like, "Oh, your writing look great.

Let me give you some advice if you like it."

Or, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

That's gold for any writer because we need to support each other, and it's not a zero-sum game.

It's not like, "Oh, you sold your book?"

Well, they can sell their book and I can sell my book.

People buy more than one book.

- Right, right.

- Yeah, so that's a wonderful thing about it.

It sounds like you got into this virtual stuff long before a lot of other authors who were kind of forced into it during COVID.

I'm guessing this was a COVID-written book, right?

That was during that time.

- Yes.

- that you were writing that.

- I just finished my second, and then thankfully, I'd written the first draft of this before COVID hit - Okay.

- because once that happened, March, 2020, I was finding it hard to read for several weeks, let alone write.

So thankfully, I've gotten the bulk of this done by then.

- Tell me more about that because I have found that very fascinating throughout the season, talking to different authors.

I figured that it would be just a blessing you're at home, you have all this time to write, and the answer's complete opposite.

People just can't do it.

Why do you think that is?

Just the stress of- - I think so.

And some of of people said, "I always thought that I'd get my house clean if I just had time."

Turns out that wasn't it.

- Right.

- It was sort of like that with writing.

It was just, I think because a lot of us were just, "What's happening?"

We're in sort of a fight or flight mode.

And okay, we're wearing masks and now we have to clean all our food when we get it from the grocery store these first several weeks.

- [Holly] Right.

- And because of that, we were just also, "Okay, I've got it together.

It's fine.

And no, we were all instead of one big traumatic event that now we can process, it's this ongoing thing.

It's still ongoing, and we're still processing it.

And it took several weeks for me to be able to sit down and read again at a sustained level.

And then to write again, that again, with this book, I had the first draft on, I was getting edits back from my editors.

And so that was- - Thankfully, right.

- Okay, that's something I can focus on, sort of targeted.

I don't have to make up a whole story out of my head.

And thankfully, that ability came back.

At least I hope so, I'm working on my current book.

But yeah, it was again, I'm very lucky that this, and like every author in 2020, that was not the year you wanted to have a book come out because you're not able to go meet readers, you're not able to go places, and everything's on Zoom.

The nice thing about that is once you were done with a book stop or whatever, you could just close your laptop, and I could walk in the kitchen and get dinner.

Sort of hop in to my car.

- Sure.

Let's talk about the genre itself and why you choose crime.

- Crime's something that can hit everybody, but it affects everybody different ways.

When I was in college, I went to get my car to get a spot to get to class.

And reached down and turned the radio on, and my hand went right through a hole in my dash.

And I looked down, the wire was coming out.

Someone had broken into my car and stole my stereo, and I was outraged.

- Right.

- It was locked and it's in the parking lot, next to other cars right next to where I live.

I drove to the police station, Holly, I filed a report.

- [Holly] Right.

- As if part of me is thinking, the police can be like, "Yeah, it sounds like George.

George is the town near you.

Well, we're gonna go arrest him.

You'll get your stereo back."

(speaking faintly) You cannot get back your stereo when it's gone.

But for me, it was more, I had to call my parents.

I was embarrassed, and they're like, "Are you okay?

Is the car okay?

All right, well, we can replace those things.

That's fine."

And that was kind of the end of it.

But for a lot of people, that wouldn't be the end of it.

For some people who say they've gotta drive two hours to their job, the radio might be the only time they get to listen to the news or listen to music.

And I'm just annoyed that I don't get to listen to Led Zeppelin for 10 minutes on my way to class.

- Right.

- I didn't think about that until much later.

But crime's something that can happen to anybody, and it affects everybody differently, and it's a violation of what you think the world's gonna be or should be like.

- Right.

- And we like crime stories where somebody comes in, detective, police, civilian, whoever, and can kind of restore that order, it makes us feel good.

And when I was a kid, I loved Sherlock Holmes stories.

All these things happen, no one can figure out what happens, and Holmes sweeps in with his deduction and his logic.

He's like, "No, this is what happened and this is how you fix it."

Okay, and everybody's nice ending.

Those are the kinds of stories I've always enjoyed.

And crime doesn't always have to be violent.

Though in my stories, there's some violence or at least implied violence.

And I think people, if they don't relate to that specific incident, they can relate to the idea of, okay, this is wrong.

This ought to be fixed, I hope it gets fixed.

- Let's get into the research process.

I've heard you mention, of course, it's true that so many writers of this genre are former detectives themselves or that sort of thing.

And that's not your past.

So what extra research do you have to do, and kind of how do you navigate your way through some of these actual crime scenes and that sort of thing?

- Well, I don't write police procedurals in because I don't know that well enough and I don't know if it's because I respect that field too much, and, or I'm too lazy to do as much research to get that right.

Hopefully, it's more of the former than the latter.

Most of what I try to do, the internet's a wonderful thing.

So you can find out all kinds.

It's a whole lot easier than it was, say 15, 20 years ago to find out, okay, for instance, what if I'm gonna have a scene set in Afghanistan or Paris or something?

Okay, I can actually go look at it now online.

- [Holly] Mm-hm.

- Mostly for me though, while I enjoy these plots, for the stories I write, I'm much more interested in the characters 'cause there's only so many plots in the world, but every character's unique.

And a thrilling plot to me is sort of like getting in a rollercoaster.

It's fun, but it's short, and - That doesn't look right.

- you don't think about it afterwards.

"That was a whole lot of fun.

That experience, I learned so much."

No, you were there for the rush, and then it's over.

But I'm always interested in trying to find interesting characters.

And if you find a character when you're reading a book, you're like, "I like this, I hope something good happens, and I hope something bad happens to that one."

And you're willing to follow 'em through the pages, that's when the plot can help you.

I do research on plots in settings, and I wanna get things right.

So someone who's there in real life, like, "No, you can't see Whiteside Mountain from there, or that kind of thing.

- Oh, yeah.

- And I try really carefully to get all that stuff right.

- [Holly] Right.

- And a lot of the setting here, I know.

I used to live in west North Carolina.

My grandparents are from Cashiers or live in Cashiers for 50 years, I should say, not from there, they were from away.

Pennsylvania, New Jersey, so they were from away.

It took 'em about 20 years to get accepted.

- Yeah, I know how that goes.

- Yeah.

- You said the internet is an incredible thing, and it is because I've heard that a lot from authors who have been not been able to get on planes and go how they had thought they were gonna do their research, and they're doing much more of it virtually.

But I was very interested in something I heard you say on one of your other former interviews, and it was about how the phone has kind of messed some things up in writing.

- [Christopher] (laughs) Yeah.

- Please retell that because I thought that was cool.

- Emily Carpenter, who is a friend of mine, is another Southern Gothic author.

She writes fantastic fiction.

We were on a panel together, I think where we first met and I think it was Augusta.

And we were talking about the kinds of stories we like to write.

And one of our phones rang.

I'm like, "Ah, turn that off."

And she's like, "I hate phones.

I like my phone, but do you like it in writing?"

I'm like, "What are you talking about?"

She goes, "There's so many things where people like, 'What are we gonna do?'

He's like, 'Why don't you just call?'"

- [Holly] Right, 'cause everybody has phones.

- "This is written in Italian.

I don't know Italian."

"Just Google it."

- Uh-huh.

- And 'cause these aren't really phones.

They're computers that we use as phones, and you can access anything with them.

- Right.

- So yeah, I like to try to find, there's only so many times you go, "Oh, I ran out of battery, I forgot to charge it."

- [Holly] Right.

(laughs) - I wanted a remote location for this book sort of for that and also because again, I know that location pretty well.

So I wanted to keep that.

But yeah, phones.

Phones for writers of mysteries and thrillers, they can be kind of annoying 'cause they solve a lot of problems that you couldn't solve even five years ago.

- Makes perfect sense, but something I had not thought of before you mentioned that.

All right, tell me what's next for you.

- I'm writing my fourth book.

It is a sequel to book number two, "Never Turn Back", but from a different character's point of view.

And working on that.

More immediately, tomorrow, I'm gonna be at Litchfield Books with a luncheon, and promoting this and talking to some folks.

And then I go back home and I go back to teaching.

- Back to teaching, and your wife, she writes too.

So is this- - My wife does write, and so if there's anybody out there that is looking for a writer, she's your go-to.

Yeah, she's working, she has an agent, and so fingers crossed in that.

- That's great, so do you write together?

How does that go?

'Cause I guess you're not talking if you're writing.

- No, I have friends like, "How could you do that when you..." And we write very different things.

She says she's like upmarket women's fiction, - Okay.

- and I'm writing more crime, thrillery type stuff, but she reads everything that I write, I said earlier, and gives me really good feedback.

- Right, she's always your first eyes on yours.

- She's usually my first eyes, and she's very honest about if I go too much, what she calls mission impossible.

- [Holly] Uh-huh, to let you know if you can take it.

- She's like, "This is getting a little, is this really believable?"

"Hmm, you're right.

Let me change that."

- Before we go, I wanna kind of rewind to, you said that moment when you knew that you wanted to be a writer, I think you said you were 12 years old.

Did that involve a teacher?

We like to kind give a shoutout to any teachers that might have been influential.

- Absolutely, yeah.

I was 13, I was in eighth grade, and Mrs. Corpening was frog-marching us through the Revolutionary War and said, "There's gonna be a project due at the end."

And we all rolled our eyes 'cause we knew it was usually, we're gonna do a book report in Johnny Tremaine, or do a poster project now on musket work, and I didn't wanna do any of those.

And she said, "This year, we're gonna do something different," and gave a sheet of other kinds of options.

And one of them was write about a make-up character.

Fictional character, can't be Ben Franklin or Betsy Ross.

Fictional character who was seen or participated in some event from the Revolutionary War, and write a diary or for the boys, journal.

She added that entry.

- Uh-huh.

(laughs) - And I thought, "I'm doing that."

And my friends thought I was insane and like, "Do the poster project.

I'm like, "I'm not gonna be the ninth guy in the class that says here's a musket and you put the flash powder in.

No."

So I did that, and I wish I had a copy of it.

It was terrible, I'm sure, but it was a lot of fun.

I had to do research for that, and I had to come up with a story and an event and my character, and it was great.

And my teacher praised me and my classmates said that wasn't bad, which for a 13-year-old boy is huge.

- [Holly] That's a compliment, right.

- And so I thought I could do this.

I would like, "How does one do this?"

And it's been a while since I've been 13, but I'm here.

- Here you are, doing exactly what you set out for.

Very cool.

Well, thank you so much for coming.

This has been a real pleasure talking to you, and we look forward to book number four as well.

- I appreciate it.

Thank you so very much.

- All right.

And we're talking to Christopher Swann, "A Fire in the Night", book number three.

And thanks so much for being here, and thank you all for joining us here on "By The River".

We are gonna leave you now with a look at our "Poet's Corner".

We'll see you next time by the river.

(water splashes) (upbeat music) - [Jaki] Oh, how I want to sit here and sing into your night.

Lean deep inside the elbows of this river, where blood is born.

Seeing a litany into this open book of your story, my story.

This river shrugs its belly, births kindness for all things yet to be born.

Oh, how I want to sit here and feast from your wet palms.

This river, wounded heart, holding the locked secrets of ancestral crones, kneeling, feeding the doorways of all my, your drowned seasons.

Oh, how I want to be born inside of this river as a lone wild burst of yellow, becoming more and more an eclipse of wind, becoming more and more an eclipse of freedom.

We are all this low, we are all this river where blood is born.

Oh, how I want to empty the veins of my life story, yearning inside this nameless pregnant river.

Like you, like me, it also struggles to remember its own birthing, its own flow.

Wide, deep story that swallows forest, that births newness inside the whisper of this story.

This hungry thunder.

Oh, how I yearn to bear such freedom.

Hold the stones, the bones, the skeletons of moon, sun, dust, inside mouth, womb, spirit, tomb, conjure a dervish of primal, ancient becoming.

We swallow more and more of this river where blood is born.

We shapeshift into the sweet shadows of this river's dance.

This river's prayer, howling when it runs backwards, remembering other names, other skins, other songs, its birth, and some.

(catchy instrumental music) ♪ - [Announcer] "By The River" is brought to you in part by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, strengthening community, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USCB, the Pat Conroy Literary Center.

(relaxing music) (rousing music)