Meet Greg Stout

‍Please tell us about your current line of work and how you got started in it. Please include any awards or upcoming projects.

I have been retired since 2010 (and I recommend it). These days, I am a writer and serve on the board of the Missouri Writers Guild.

Altogether I have 28 commercially published titles (22 nonfiction, two YA/middle grade novels and four PI novels so far). The first PI novel, Lost Little Girl, won the 2021 Shamus award for best first PI novel. At present, I am working on completing my contractual commitment for two more PI novels. The fifth in the Jackson Gamble series, Goodbye is Forever, is complete. I just now starting on the sixth and final book covered by my contract. I have not decided what I'll do after that, but I'm considering starting a new series. I'd also like to write another YA novel. My YA books are written for boys, in large part because, when I was teaching, I found it was harder to find good books for boys. When I wander through the young adult section at our local Barnes & Noble, it looks to me like about 75% of the books are written by women for girls. Not a bad thing, but, based on my experience, it's harder to get boys to read, and so that's the direction I want to take with my writing.

Do you have any mentors or sources of inspiration?

Not a mentor as such. I started writing the YA books because I was a middle school teacher for 12 years, including a section of reading every year. After a while, I started to think I had a pretty good handle on what 8th grade kids read, so I thought I'd see if I could write something kids that age might like. It took a while, but i found a publisher. I started writing the mysteries because I was commuting to work on the train, and I had time to kill, so I read a lot of mysteries on my way to and from work. Eventually, I thought, "I can do better than this," so I took a shot at writing PI mysteries. It only took 39 years, but then I became an overnight success. I'd say my primary source of inspiration is books by other mystery novelists, including Dennis Lehane, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Michael Connelly and James Ellroy.

What parts of your work do you enjoy most? Why?

I enjoy the actual writing part. I struggle with developing plot lines, I think, because my imagination does not work that way. So instead, I write the first chapter, which is easy, and then go from there, thinking, "what might reasonably happen next?" I've read (and reviewed) a few classic "thrillers," but I get put off by the implausibility of the plot lines, e.g., how does the hero leave dozens of bodies in his wake without the local police ever noticing?

What are your favorite things to do when you have free time?

I enjoy railroad photography and generally take one extended trip with a friend to visit phot locations. We have been as far east as Maine, as far west as eastern Washington, as far north as Winnipeg and as far south as Galveston, Texas. May of my photos have been featured in railroad-related books and magazines. I also take one extended trip each year to go fishing, and have been to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Texas, Arkansas, Alaska, Canada and Belize.

Are there any dream projects you'd like to pursue?

I think it would be fun to write a screenplay (and have a studio actually option the project) for either Lost Little Girl or Long time Gone.

How can we learn more about you?

www.gregorystoutauthor.com

https://www.facebook.com/greg.stout.560

I am also a co-host of a St. Louis-based radio show called Authors Edge. The link can be found at www.authorsedge.org.