Garrett Hutson, Historical Mysteries and WW2 Spy Novels
Garrett Hutson is from Indianapolis, where he’s lived most of his life. At the age of 46, he shares his life with David Lee, his husband, and is the father of one adult daughter. Aside from writing, he has a career as an HR/Benefits specialist, “which I like about as well as I can like any day job.”
At age nine when Hutson was in the fourth grade, he entered a story he’d written in the Young Author’s contest. “I got a ribbon both years, which I think was the sole prize--you either earned a ribbon or you didn't, there wasn't first place, second place, etc.” From that experience, the passion of an author was born and taught Hutson that “I could tell a good story that people would want to read, and that I wanted to be an author when I grew up. It was a dream I never grew out of, and here I am. It was early encouragement at a time when it mattered, and it contributed to my sense of identity, that this was what I was meant to be.”
What did Hutson do with the burning passion years later? He’s published The Jade Dragon (Death in Shanghai Book 1), and his third book, Hidden Among Us, will be released in May 2018. He is currently working on a sequel to The Jade Dragon series, “tentatively titled Assassin’s Hood—which will be the second of at least three in the series.”
Interviewer: Tell us about your books?
Hutson: My books are character-driven, and the plots grow from the characters falling into tough circumstances. I love exploring difficult relationships and moral dilemmas. My protagonists change over the course of the stories, and I love crafting a good character arc. Representation matters—we all want to see ourselves in the books we read—so my stories always have LGBT characters, though not always the protagonist. Queer people have existed in all times and places, in all situations, but we are rarely depicted in art and literature. From my point of view, most novels have unacknowledged queer characters. In my books, they are acknowledged and seen. I try to make this natural. It’s not an agenda, it’s just what I know.
Interviewer: Which is your favorite of all the books you’ve written?
Hutson: Gray Paree—the story of an American bohemian (and reluctant spy) in Nazi-occupied Paris. It’s still unpublished at this time. I’ve been submitting it to agents off and on for almost four years, but I recently got some professional editorial feedback that has given it new life.
Interviewer: Which is your favorite of all the characters you’ve written?
Oliver Carmichael, the protagonist of Gray Paree. He’s talented and confident, caring, really likable. Even though he has great intentions, he often bungles things up because he doesn’t know what he wants, and clarity usually comes when he’s in a real mess.
Presently, Hutson has published at least one book a year, but over the next five years, he will attempt to change that, “…but we’ll see if I can maintain that pace.” It may very well happen because this writer is driven by story ideas and has seven WIPs (Works in progress) that will keep his passion burning.
Hutson chose to become an indie author because “I’m not as diligent with agent submissions as I really should be to get traditionally published, and even if you get an agent there is no guarantee they’ll be able to sell your book to a traditional publisher. Plus, the traditional publishing route can take almost two years, even after your agent sells your manuscript. I’m not getting any younger, and I kept thinking how many books I could self-publish in that amount of time. So after 13 years of telling people I write novels, but not having anything published to show for it, I finally decided in 2016 to just publish one myself. I don’t regret it for a moment.”
Hutson says he usually writes in the evenings, devoting at least one hour to either writing or editing. But after a long work day, sometimes he uses the time to enjoy reading a good book. That’s the weekdays. “On a Saturday morning, I may write for a couple of hours. In November (NaNoWriMo), I squeezed in writing time whenever I can, as much as I could. My husband is super understanding of my need to write and edit.”
Interviewer: Which do you prefer writing in, 1st or 3rd person
Hutson: Third person. It feels natural to me to write that way, and I like the advantages of being able to zoom in and out as I need to. Third person can feel as intimate as first person, but you can also incorporate the POV of significant secondary characters when the scene calls for it.
For Hutson, literary success consists of “Writing books that connect with a reader and evoke something in them. Good reviews matter more to me than sales figures.” His books, In a Safe Town and The Jade Dragon are both recipients of five-star reviews.
Interviewer: What in your personal life have you included in one of your stories?
Hutson: I write a lot of characters with difficult familial relationships, and I draw inspiration from real life for much of this—though I carefully avoid inserting specific situations from real life, choosing instead to make things up that feel the same or share the same basis.
Interviewer: Do you think your writing has improved since your first book and what would you change about that book if you could?
Hutson: Most definitely! My debut had too many POV (Point of view) characters. During the editing process, I consciously reworked things to put them in the MC’s (Main Character) POV, but the way the story was structured it wasn’t always possible without seriously altering the storyline. I was able to cut the number of POV characters in half, but in hindsight, I can see it was still too many. My writing style was also not as polished then, but the book has had good reception. People seem to like it, so I leave it be.
Mistakes are learning processes and vital for the indie author. Hutson shares his lesson: “Formatting matters! And what the internet tells you isn’t always so. My debut novel has 1” margins and 0.5” paragraph indents—which would be fine if it were 8”x11”, but for a 6”x9” paperback it’s an awful lot of wasted space. I did better on my second novel.”
To learn more about Garrett Hutson, follow his social medias.
