One morning in Ketchikan, Sitka writer John Straley climbed down a barnacle-encrusted ladder at low tide, a subpoena for a sleeping fisherman in his briefcase.<\/p>\n
A blue heron flew away beneath the dock, croaking in alarm. He could smell the old wharf, and the coastal world around him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was climbing down there, and I thought, this is the greatest job in the world,\u201d Straley said.<\/p>\n
Straley retired in August from 30 years as an investigator for the Alaska Public Defender\u2019s Office in Sitka. Moments like the one on the barnacle-encrusted dock (and another in which he became the target of bar napkins, cocktail swords, and, before he fled the bar, a glass) have made it into his award-winning crime and detective fiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just keep track of those as if my brain were a camera, or an experience collector,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He writes them down in a journal, which helps him remember them when it comes time to get creative. He also has a folder of articles, notes, and photocopies of library documents, especially for historical fiction, which will be the topic of a Nov. 12 talk at the Hangar on the Wharf ballroom, hosted by the Friends of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum.<\/p>\n
A 2008 novel, \u201cThe Big Both Ways,\u201d is based in 1935, when two characters \u2014 a former logger and an anarchist \u2014 make their way from Puget Sound to Alaska.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou do want to do your best to (be) accurate,\u201d Straley said of historical fiction. \u201cI\u2019ve made mistakes and particularly Alaskans hate it. They just hate it. Alaskans are notoriously unforgiving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Straley and his wife, marine biologist Jan Straley \u2014who studies whales, organizes Sitka\u2019s annual Whalefest, and is editing a book on game-changing ecologist Ed Ricketts, in which John Straley has an essay \u2014 moved to Sitka in the 1970s after Jan took a job there. It was a few years later that John began working as a private investigator.<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t a stranger to the private-eye world before that, though. He estimates his parents read one or two private eye novels a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had thousands of books,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I had read a few growing up, but it wasn\u2019t until I actually worked as a private investigator in Alaska that I seriously thought\u2026 well, maybe I should try.\u201d<\/p>\n
He sent the manuscript for \u201cThe Woman Who Married a Bear,\u201d to a New York agent. That agent wrote him back and told him no one in New York would take him seriously \u2014 he\u2019d misspelled \u201clox\u201d in \u201cbagels and lox.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then Sitka naturalist, anthropologist and writer Richard Nelson\u2019s agent recommended Straley try SOHO Press, which happened to be looking for \u201cliterary crime fiction from far-flung places,\u201d Straley said. They published the book. It went on to be lauded as the best detective novel of the year.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t write about the cases he\u2019s worked on, though he\u2019s worked on some high-profile cases. The most notorious may be the \u201cInvestor\u201d murders in Craig in the 1980s, Alaska\u2019s worst unsolved mass murder. (Eight people were murdered on board the seine boat the Investor.) Or it could be his work as a criminal defense investigator for Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of the Exxon Valdez. He does, however, find inspiration and fiction models in real-life characters, conversations, places and Alaskan scenes.<\/p>\n
Now, he\u2019s ruined for everywhere else, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, everything starts with writing about place,\u201d he said. \u201cMy characters grow up out of the ground in my stories, and the water, and the coast, and the fog, and the rain.\u201d<\/p>\n
He loves the contrast between the \u201csmooshed together\u201d downtown Sitka, where he and Jan live, versus the wilderness of the rest of Baranof Island.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like a little city (downtown),\u201d he said, \u201cwith the harbor, fish plants that are working, and there are people of different ethnicities, and there are the Tlingit people, who are the first people, and there\u2019s the conflict involved in all of that. City problems, conflicts and arguments going on in city government. Then right outside of it, just 100 yards up the mountain or a mile out to sea, you have wilderness. True, genuine wilderness with no human influence whatsoever. And that\u2019s just an amazing, almost miraculous feature. That\u2019s a natural setting for drama, for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s such an artistic juxtaposition where you can be in the middle of an argument, where you think the whole world is involved in it, but look out and up a mountain, and catch things \u2014 a deer swimming in the channel, a bear walking across a slide \u2014 and realize there\u2019s a whole world that\u2019s totally indifferent to your drama going on. I love that, and that\u2019s what \u2014 it\u2019s not just scenery that compels me to write about this place. It\u2019s also the thematic element to the place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alaska is a perfect setting for the mood of the stories he writes, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I can live anywhere else anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not that I just totally love every bit of it. I was vacationing recently where I used to live in Eastern Washington, the northern slope of Cascades. The climate was perfect. Dry. The light was crystal clear. Everybody\u2019s walking around in Spandex. I\u2019m sure they have problems down there, but I don\u2019t see anybody with problems\u2026 I came back (to Sitka) and I was thinking \u2018I could never live there anymore\u2019 \u2026 because this is where I belong now. And it\u2019s not that I\u2019m gloriously happy in Sitka, it\u2019s just that it\u2019s where real life happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s now working on a new collection of poems, sorting through about 120 he\u2019s written, and writing more.<\/p>\n
Part of the way he\u2019s been able to be a successful writer while working is discipline, he said. When he\u2019s writing a first draft, he writes a certain number of words per day and \u201cjust gut(s) it out,\u201d he said. After that, he\u2019ll take a break from it, then revise for a certain number of hours a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI try to keep to that fairly religiously,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce you get rolling, it\u2019s usually not that bad\u2026 every day has to be a success (because you\u2019ve written,) and that\u2019s all that matters. If you wanted to be a writer, and every day you do it, you\u2019re a writer, and that\u2019s it. Nobody can take that day away from you.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to the collection of poems, he\u2019s also working on a new Cecil Younger novel now (Cecil is the protagonist of, and private investigator in, many of his books) that he wants to make more plot-driven.<\/p>\n
\u201cI resurrected him (Cecil), and now he has a teenage daughter, and she\u2019s giving him hell, and driving him crazy,\u201d Straley said. \u201cHe\u2019s going to really just suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Straley will discuss \u201cthe nature of truth and the importance of historical and scientific accuracy as an essential quality of lively storytelling in fiction and even poetry\u201d according to information about the event, on Thursday, Nov. 12. He also said he\u2019ll read some favorite writings by others, some of his own writing, and historical poems.<\/p>\n
That talk is at the Hangar on the Wharf ballroom and begins at 7 p.m., with the Friends\u2019 annual meeting beforehand, at 6:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
Friday, Nov. 13, he\u2019ll read from his writing at KTOO\u2019s 360 North as part of its Writers\u2019 Showcase event. Filming for 360 North begins at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n
Straley has won two Shamus awards \u2014 the award for the best novel of the year in the \u201cdetective fiction\u201d genre \u2014 for \u201cThe Woman Who Married a Bear,\u201d his first book, and \u201cThe Curious Eat Themselves.\u201d He was Alaska\u2019s Writer Laureate in 2006.<\/p>\n
He writes a thoughtful and frequently affecting blog about life in Sitka and writing at www.johnstraley.com.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly staff writer Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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