TL: BROKEN WING is an FBI thriller set in post-Katrina New Orleans.  It’s the third in a series of novels featuring a pair of FBI special agents, Mike Yeager and Peggy Weaver.  In this third installment, Mike Yeager — a talented profiler with something of a checkered past — returns to the New Orleans field office to go undercover with a notorious mobster.  Along the way, he’s forced to confront some old demons and a great deal of unfinished business.  If you’d like a fuller explanation, go to my website (www.thomaslakeman.com) and click on the tab for “Books” and the link for BROKEN WING. 

TL: The most important change was to update the story from Victorian England to present-day America.  Because of the traditional stage adaptation of Dracula by Balderston and Deane (the one that gave Bela Lugosi his start), we tend to have this stereotyped image of Dracula fixed in our minds — capes, rubber bats, French doors, Victorian maids, and melodramatic dialogue.  It’s a lot of fun, but for audiences used to Twilight and True Blood, it can seem very dated and hokey.  Which is a real shame, because the original Bram Stoker novel was anything but.  When I re-read the book, I was struck by how modern and forward-thinking it was for the late 19th Century.  There are references to Edison phonographs, typewriters, blood transfusions, and other innovations that were cutting-edge when the book was first published.  I also noted the extreme youth of the characters (except for the Count himself, of course).  I decided that the best way to get back to this sense of youth and vitality was to update the play to modern times.

Comparisons to TWILIGHT are inevitable.  All respect to Stephanie Meyer’s work and her many fans, I feel that the modern incarnation of vampires — as sensitive, doe-eyed Romeos who sparkle in the sunlight and are reluctant to drink human blood — misses the whole point of what vampire stories do best, which is scare the crap out of people.  My version of DRACULA is an attempt to update the myth in some respects, but also to bring it back to its roots, by presenting what I consider to be the “pure” archetypal vampire — proud, haughty, cold-hearted, and predatory.  I also think it’s good to remind people that while vampires do live forever, that isn’t necessarily a good thing, and maybe there are one or two things about being human that aren’t so bad.

Doc:  What inspired you to write about an FBI agent?

TL: The first mission of the FBI (back when it was simply called the Bureau of Investigations) was to dig through the dirty laundry of politicians and look for scandal.  Then, in 1932, the infant son of Charles A. Lindbergh was kidnapped.  Although the boy was later found murdered, one good thing came out of the terrible tragedy:  the Lindbergh Law, which gave the FBI priority in kidnapping investigations, and gave federal law enforcement a much nobler path to follow.  I’ve always loved this idea of the FBI as an organization that finds lost children.  Of course, they do so much more — some of it controversial, not all of it honorable, but for the most part conducted in the best traditions of law enforcement.  FBI agents are the elite:  as such, they are prone to greater failings when they go off the true path.  I wanted my hero, Mike Yeager, to be a guy who’s made mistakes but has a deep sense of decency and a lot of brains.  He’s also a person who specializes in finding lost children.  As he says himself in BROKEN WING, “protecting the innocent is the only part of our job that ever meant anything.  Everything else is bullshit.”

TL: I have a fourth book in the works — a Peggy Weaver adventure, as a matter of fact — but currently I’m taking a break from the series to write a stand-alone thriller.  It’s in the very early stages, but suffice to say that it represents a departure from the Mike-Peggy books.  There’s a note of cutting-edge technology to it and possibly even a touch of the supernatural (working on DRACULA has opened my brain to the dark arts).  I’m excited about it because as much as I love Mike and Peggy, it’s good to get out of the strait-laced world of the FBI on occasion.  I never thought of myself as a detective writer, or a southern writer, or belonging to any single genre or set.  Eventually I hope to try my hand at everything. 

TL: Much of what I have to say is conventional wisdom, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable.  The first is not to worry so much about getting published as proof that you’re a real writer.  Even in these dismal days of recession and shrinking publishers, it’s easier to get into print than it looks from the outside.  What’s much harder is to write something that you can be proud of.  To do that requires constant practice and a great deal of curiosity about the world around you.  You build confidence as a writer by constantly keeping your eye on the next challenge.  Finishing a project is more important than making it perfect — nobody pays money to cross half a bridge.  One of the great advantages of writing plays over novels is that you can finish the project in a month and get it staged before the doubt has time to undermine you.  And doubt is the true enemy of every writer.

You asked specifically what advice I have for Coastal Alabama writers, so I’ll offer this:  being a writer on the Gulf Coast does not restrict you to writing only about local and parochial matters.  The dictim “Write what you know” does not mean, “Write only what you know.”  Tolkien and Shakespeare wrote about places and people that were inspired by their native England, but they became so much more than that in the telling.  It’s good to write what you know to be true, and to use what your experience teaches you about human nature.  It’s also good to use the experience of writing as an opportunity to learn and strike out into unfamiliar territory.  Writing is partly about telling the truth and partly about making stuff up.  Give yourself permission to write things you know nothing about, and let your curiosity fill the empty spaces.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lakeman