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. He has also turned his hand to writing crime fiction, with his latest title just released, Murder for Liar.
In Murder for Liar, private investigator-turned-psychotherapist Tom Dashiel doesn’t know it yet, but he’s hurtling towards discovering where his threshold lies—the point of no return for his sanity. So begins a surreal spiral when George Arundel enters Tom’s Santa Cruz office on a Tuesday afternoon in April. To say George Arundel is a puzzle is an understatement: the local psychiatrist who referred Arundel to Tom described him—rather astutely—as "a substantial challenge." Working to treat the enigmatic Arundel, Tom soon realizes he has been tasked to treat a client unlike any he’s ever encountered.
But how is George Arundel related to the uncanny coincidences Tom begins to encounter? Are these mere coincidences…or something else? Could a young woman named Zig-Zag really be an angel? How could a dog—a rather cute one at that—reveal one of the most important clues? What’s the deal with that alluring, albeit mercurial, woman named Dizzy? And what’s Arundel’s connection to the escalating spate of unsolved murders plaguing the typically calm but always colorful Santa Cruz community? Swept up in a perilous world where nothing is as it seems, Tom struggles to make sense of the decidedly dangerous, downright deadly scheme in which he has somehow unwittingly become a key player. Tom is about to discover that in this treacherous reality, the truth is far, far stranger than fiction…but the real danger is not knowing which is which.
Verlin Darrow stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing the book:
My need to research/prepare/plan varies a great deal from book to book. In general, as a distinctly seat of the pants writer, my plots flow after an initial notion or two occurs to me. And the characters say or do what they will, usually guided by God knows what. My first drafts are mostly comprised of dialogue and plot, so I need to add description, inner monologues, and all the rest later.
About a quarter of my projects have legs and make it past the first fifty pages, and all the early chapters need major revising. So this is a hit or miss process for me. When it hits, then research and preparation sometimes comes into play. Or not.
In my latest mystery novel, for example—Murder For Liar—the protagonist is a psychotherapist in Santa Cruz, California. So am I. Almost all the dialogue in sessions, especially with the bizarre client who draws Tom Dashiel into a baffling conspiracy, is drawn from my actual experience. Minus the murders, I have worked with some unusual, difficult to help clients in a variety of settings. Who would believe that someone would be deathly afraid of walking under trees because a bat might be in one, and it might be rabid, and it might drool, and the drool might fall into the client’s mouth? I’m not making that up. I wish I were for my client’s sake.
In this and other challenging therapy sessions, I know what went through my mind, so I’m able to realistically get into the head of the first person protagonist. I’m glad I’m not actually him—that our similarities as people are superficial now. But his depression, alienation, and cluelessness—his starting point in the book before he begins to transform—were the cornerstones of my much younger self. I believe I can accurately convey what it’s like to have these problems as well. So I didn’t need to do research about these central elements of my book.
Without divulging too much of the twisting mystery, I feel comfortable writing that some of the characters espouse eccentric, mystical spiritual beliefs, which drive their behaviors. Once again, for better or worse in this case, I can draw from personal experience to give the reader an authentic feel for dealing with these folks.
Quite a few years ago, after several years as a spiritual seeker and a pilgrimage around the world, I helped found a small, relatively benign cult, serving as the assistant guru—running a branch office, if you will. Ironically, when the head of our group sent me to graduate school to become a therapist, I learned that he had a delusional disorder, and I graduated myself and all the other members back into the world.
I think another author would’ve needed to do a great deal of research about the psychology of zealots, and how they speak about what they believe. I guess this is a case of my writing what I know. One of the reasons I chose to do this is that I consider my expertise in these arenas to be relatively rarified in the author world. I don’t mean to imply it’s better or any more valuable—just less common.
Of course, the meat and potatoes of a mystery is the mystery itself, and here’s where I needed to start googling like mad. I needed to be well-schooled in means, motive, and opportunity to create believable action. I never worked with murderers as either a therapist or a spiritual teacher. If I was going to imagine one (or more than one—no giveaways here), that character(s) needed to match up with reality. I also needed to look up hallucinogenics, a specific medical condition, angel and demon names, an arcane book, and several other details essential to the plot.
Here’s part of the blurb for Murder For Liar: “Private investigator-turned-psychotherapist Tom Dashiel doesn’t know it yet, but he’s hurtling towards discovering where his threshold lies—the point of no return for his sanity.”
Pushed to his limits, Tom has to learn how to accommodate all sorts of intense, confusing experiences in order to survive. So like most books, there’s an arc of change—how and why does the main character change because of what happens? In my case, letting readers such as my wife and others examine my ms helps a lot to ascertain if I’ve done a good job with this. Does Tom seem different as the novel progresses? Are the changes believable? Putting your self in his shoes—as authors must—can you see yourself responding similarly? Believability is essential in a mystery, especially one with an outlandish plot. It’s very challenging to know how a reader will experience the plot twists, the choices various characters make, and the solution to the mystery. So I needed outside eyes.
What else do I have to share? I guess I would add that over-preparing can be a problem, stifling the free flow of ideas, however misguided or inaccurate they might be. I find that writing something and then fixing it later works much better than halting my word production to delve into the real story about something. Almost everything can be fixed later if you can put aside your ego and let go of the original version you’ve created. Occasionally, I’ve had to toss entire sections of a ms because they just didn’t make sense in the light of day—and the glow of Google on my iMac. That wasn’t fun, but it also wasn’t any sort of tragedy.
The main thing I’ve learned is that everyone has his or her own process—whether it’s about writing, grieving, or anything else. Some authors research and plan a lot. Some don’t. Once you discover what works for you, trust it. Second-guessing or comparing your process to others’ when you’ve got something that works is counterproductive.
Thank you for the opportunity to share all this.
You can learn more about Darrow and his books via his website and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. Murder for Liar is now available via and all major booksellers.
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