Bookpleasures.com is delighted to welcome as our guest, Verlin Darrow, author of Murder For Liar. 

Award-winning novelist, Verlin Darrow is a psychotherapist who lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near the Monterey Bay in northern California.

They diagnose each other as necessary.

Verlin is a former professional volleyball player (in Italy), unsuccessful country-western singer/songwriter, import store owner, and assistant guru in a small, benign spiritual organization.

You can find out more about Verlin and his books on his WEBSITE

Bee: What is your favorite scene in the book? Why?

Verlin: I still laugh when I read the scene in which Tom–the psychotherapist protagonist–accompanies a quirky character to her woman’s group since he’s serving as her bodyguard. An attempt was made on Dizzy’s life the day before.

The assortment of group members includes snarky, argumentative, and placating personalities, all of whom project onto Tom various attributes and attitudes that Dizzy encourages.

He never speaks at the meeting, but having a man there changes everything, anyway. I included the scene as comic relief to give the reader a break in following the whirlwind plot and vicariously experiencing Tom’s multiple dilemmas.

I’ve led a lot of different groups in the past–therapeutic, spiritual, sports-oriented, etc–and I find group dynamics fascinating. In this case, I drew from my experiences, and then heightened the absurdity of what sometimes happens.

Bee: Where do you get the names for your characters?

Verlin: In Murder For Liar, some of them just popped into my head and felt right, which is a process I trust, although I can’t explain how that works. George Arundel fits that version of naming a character.

I’d seen his last name on a sign for a wholesale plumbing outfit, and later I discovered there’s an Anne Arundel County in Maryland.

The main character’s name was selected because “Tom” is easy for me to type–short, with all the letters reachable by my right hand. Zig-zag and Dizzy needed memorable, jazzy names as a way to help establish their personalities.

I plagiarized Zig-zag from an unpublished manuscript of mine, while Dizzy is a take-off on a previous partner’s unusual name, which I won’t mention here. Sadie the dog is what I would name a border collie if I had one.

All the names in the book have connotations and associations for me which fit the characters and the plot. While that’s not likely to be true for my readers, what other criteria can I use?

Bee: How completely do you develop your characters before beginning to write?

Verlin: I’m almost totally a seat of the pants guy. I think of one major idea and one person who’s at the center of it. Everything else emerges/falls out of me as I write. I tried developing characters ahead of time once just to see how the other half lives.

I felt shackled to what I wrote, which inhibited my creative flow, and the process was boring. I enjoy finding out what’s going to happen next and who’s who along with the reader. Sometimes good guys turn out to be bad guys and I’m surprised.

Once I wrote a complex mystery with no idea who committed the murders or how to resolve the plot until the last few chapters. To me, that’s fun. I have to get really creative to solve the puzzles I create for myself.

On the other hand, this process can lead to a lot of rewriting to keep characters consistent, and sometimes I have to throw away entire sections which no longer fit as I proceed.

The important thing is that the finished product reads as though I was organized all along.

Bee: How does being an unsuccessful country-western singer/songwriter influence your writing?

Verlin: That’s a question I’ve never examined, but I’ll give it a try. I guess I learned as a singer/songwriter that I was braver than I thought I was–capable of meeting my fears head on.

I had terrible stage fright. Back then, I was mostly fear-based about everything, and depressed as a result. But I went for it with my music. I performed in public, on the radio, and I made a CD I still feel proud of.

Ultimately. it was the fact that I didn’t enjoy performing that made me give it up. I think I pursued that career mostly to prove to myself I could do it, not because it truly suited me.

My writing parallels this process in some respects, but it has proven to suit me well. I began writing to prove to myself I could finish a book (I did, and it was awful.)

Then I bravely faced a long stretch with no success, enduring the critical feedback I received gracelessly at first. Now I welcome it. 

In both careers, I was creating something and letting the world make of it what it will. I had to learn to let go of outcome and focus on process to keep going, especially as a writer.

Four books in, I still feel that if I use sales and reviews as the measure of the value of my work, I’m setting myself up to be discouraged. Even Murder For Liar, which has garnered incredibly positive reviews (well, I’m incredulous) could serve as a demotivating influence.

What if the next review is negative? What if no one buys the book? What if my wife hates it? If sinking or swimming is in the hands of others, I’m in trouble. Sooner or later, The universe will not cooperate with how I want things to be.

So, unlike my music career, I write because I need the process of writing in order make my life and my psyche work. Is that a curse or a blessing? Take your pick.

Bee: How has your profession as a psychotherapist influenced your writing?

Verlin: In almost every way possible, actually. Perhaps the most important element is having the opportunity to learn how, why, and when people change. If a fictional narrative arc doesn’t include a character changing as the plot unfolds, the end result can be unsatisfying.

What did the protagonist learn? How did he need to grow to cope with what comes his way? Where does he end up? Wiser? Broken? In prison? If a main character is the same schmo from start to finish, I feel cheated. Maybe that’s just me.

 Therapy is all about helping clients move forward in their personal evolution– to get unstuck. To facilitate this, or whatever other agenda a client may have, I need to understand motives, attitudes, personal history, psychology (of course), and a host of other things.

Left to my own devices, without being in service to others, would I thoroughly explore all this on my own? Probably not. But this is the meat and potatoes of character development, as well as therapy. This stuff needs to ring true in one’s writing.

In addition, having worked in a variety of settings, some including folks with quite non-mainstream ways of being (psychotic, personality-disordered, phobic, spiritually emerged, homeless etc), I’ve had deep conversations with a much greater variety of people than I would’ve otherwise.

I understand different, odd, eccentric personalities and foibles. I can believably weave these kinds of characters into my books–and I do.

I’m realizing that this answer sounds self-aggrandizing, and I apologize for that. I can’t recant what I believe to be so, but I certainly understand that clients have taught me more than I’ve taught them. I’m humbled by this process.

Bee: What writers have you drawn inspiration from?

Verlin: Donald E. Westlake, Elmore Leonard, Daniel Pinkwater, Thomas Berger, Jonathan Carroll, and Thomas Perry. They’re all maestros at what they do.

Bee: What was your first job?

Verlin: I ran a punch press in a sheet metal factory. It paid the worst in the area, so my co-workers were mostly alcoholics who’d been fired from better places. All the safety equipment had been removed.

Almost everyone had at least part of a finger missing. It was extremely loud and filthy.

They’d forklift over a huge box containing thousands of metal strips. One by one, I placed them under the huge piston that crashed down and shaped them into test tube holders for hospital lab equipment.

I kept my sanity, such as it was in those days, by whistling guitar solos from rock and roll songs.

All this for twenty-seven cents above minimum wage, as negotiated by the AFL-CIO. Unbelievable. Why that didn’t immediately drive me to college is a mystery.

I endured a series of low-end jobs for another six years before I realized I had a brain someone might pay me to use.

Bee: What do you do when you are not writing?

Verlin: I work with therapy clients remotely, I golf, I effusively greet every dog I meet, I hang out with my loving wife, I read, I watch movies, I take walks–nothing especially noteworthy, I guess. Occasionally, I mentor spiritual seekers. I don’t hunt them up, they find me.

Bee: What books are you reading at present?

Verlin: Lately, I’ve been going through a series of legal thrillers, none of which I’d recommend to anyone. When I’m devouring a given genre, I’m not picky. I also enjoy mysteries, suspense novels, spy stories, and science fiction.

I read for enjoyment, not to learn (I learn experientially), so I don’t like to work too hard. For that reason, most literature isn’t appealing to me. In fact, I think a lot of famous authors are actually bad writers.

Bee: What are you currently working on?

Verlin: The editor at my publisher and I are between the first and second edits of my next book–The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth. Here’s the current version of the blurb that’s going on the back cover. Believe it or not, I still need to get approval from the “blurb committee.”

Ivy Lutz leaves her life as a Buddhist nun in Sri Lanka and returns home to northern California when her elderly mother suffers a stroke.

After Ivy’s stepfather is murdered, and his background as an exotic animal smuggler is revealed, she adopts the role of amateur detective on behalf of her mentally unstable sister, who believes their mother was also killed. 

The reader views the world through Ivy’s eyes and discovers, along with her, how her imperfect application of principles such as mindfulness, compassion, and radical acceptance both help and hinder her in her search for the truth.

Thanks for the opportunity to reach readers.

©Verlin Darrow

Thanks once again and good luck with all your future endeavors. Bee

Follow Here To Read Bee's Review of Murder For Liar.