Dallas Gorham - Murder, Mystery, and General Mayhem With a Touch of Humor

Dallas Gorham’s books combine murder, mystery, and general mayhem with a touch of humor—all done with a PG-13 rating. His Carlos McCrary series can be read and enjoyed in any order. Dallas writes in the mystery, thriller, and suspense genres. (Take your pick: His novels have all three elements) His stories will get your heart pounding and leave you wanting more. He writes to hit hard, have a good time, and leave as few grammar errors as possible (or is it “grammatical” errors? Hmm.) In his previous life, Dallas worked as a shoe salesman, grocery store sacker, florist deliverer, auditor, management consultant, association executive, accountant, radio announcer, and a paid assassin for the Florida Board of Cosmetology. (He is lying about one of those jobs.) If you ask him about it, he will deny ever having worked as an auditor. Dallas is a frequent (but bad) golfer. He plays about once a week because that is all the abuse he can stand. One of his goals in life is to find more golf balls than he loses. He also is an accomplished liar (is this true?) and defender of down-trodden palm trees. Dallas is married to his one-and-only wife who treats him far better than he deserves. He and his wife spend waaaay too much money on their love of travel. They have visited all 50 states and over 90 foreign countries. As our Author of the Day, he tells us all about his book, Yesterday's Trouble.

Please give us a short introduction to what Yesterday's Trouble is about.

Cleo is a rising young country singer who just wants to make music for her thousands of new fans. NBA superstar Marvelous LeMarvis Jones, Cleo’s fiancé, bankrolls her first concert tour. Things are upended when an unbalanced cyber-stalker takes issue with the couple’s interracial relationship.

Cue the private eye, and an onstage murder

Cleo won’t take the threats seriously, but LeMarvis hires Private Investigator Carlos McCrary to provide security for Cleo’s Summer Fun Concert Tour. At the tour’s first stop, a backup singer with a dangerous past is murdered onstage by a sniper. Was the bullet meant for Cleo?

Despite Carlos’s urging, Cleo refuses to cancel the tour, even as more bodies pile up on the tour’s journey across Florida. In Jacksonville, the stakes are raised when the killer tires of Carlos interfering with his quest to do “God’s work.”

What is Cleo hiding? Has the yesterday she thought she’d escaped finally found her?

With the killer outsmarting Carlos and the cops at every turn, has Carlos finally met his match? Will he wind up taking a knife to a gunfight?

What inspired you to write about a country singer/NBA super-star couple who is threatened by a cyberstalker?

The first inspiration was the villain, not the singer/NBA player couple. In 2016 my editor, Marsha Butler (Butlerink.com) emailed this comment: “Chuck fights many bad guys in his books and that gives him lots of opportunities to show off his combat and gun skills. I'd love to see a story where Chuck faces a mastermind criminal (maybe a serial killer) or a terrorist and he and the mastermind play cat and mouse. I mean something very challenging to Chuck… I'd like to see him really up against the wall, not literally for a change, but mentally. A book in which we don't know who the bad guy is and Chuck has to not only catch the bad guy but has to figure out who he is… [T}his would be a story where the mastermind works alone and Chuck has to… figure this one out and Chuck nearly gets offed several times but not in a "see it coming" gun battle. By very devious means to be devised by the author.

Tell us more about Cleo Hennessey. What makes her so special?

Cleo was raised as a poor hillbilly and used her talent to overcome her disadvantages. She grew up in a rural Southern society rife with racial prejudice, yet she saw through the illusion of race and always followed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s advice to “judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”

This is Book 7 of a series. How does it tie in with the other books in the series? Can it be read as a standalone?

All of my books are standalones. They can be read and enjoyed in any order. I am blessed that so many readers tell me they began with one of my later books, then went back and read all the others in the series.

Besides writing, what other secret skills do you have?

I am an amateur photographer and love to memorialize my wife’s and my travels around the world with pictures.

Why do you write mystery and thrillers? What drew you to the genre?

Before I retired I read mostly mysteries, thrillers, and suspense. By the time of my retirement, I must have read over 200 novels by the likes of Robert B. Parker, James Patterson, David Baldacci, Richard North Patterson, and even Mickey Spillane. I had written several non-fiction professional books before I retired and decided to take those writing skills over to fiction.

You also like to include humor in your stories - why do you take this approach?

I am a huge fan of Robert B. Parker, Janet Evanovich, and Robert Crais. I also was a big fan of the old TV show “I Spy” which was adventure mixed with humor. My humorous touches to my books provide a break from the tension and reflect the attitude of Carlos McCrary, who never takes himself too seriously.

How much research into the minds of psychopaths did this story require from you?

None. It’s all a result of a vivid imagination.

Readers say the book is fast-paced, keeping them at the edge of their seats. How did you pull this off?

Well-constructed, tight plots combined with short chapters and lots of action.

Tell us more about the cover and how it came about.

I asked my cover designer to find a picture of a woman who met Cleo Hennessey’s description. The broken mirror was my idea.

When starting on a new book, what is the first thing you do?

Come up with a tentative title. As an aside, the original title often changes by the time I finish. For example, Six Murders Too Many was drafted as The Accidental Heiress. By the time I finished the first draft, I thought my tentative title sounded too much like a romance novel. McCrary’s Justice began life as Don’t Blink Twice. And Yesterday’s Trouble was originally titled Trouble Never Sleeps.

Do you have any interesting writing habits? What is an average writing day like for you?

I only write about three to six months per year. When in writing mode, I’m at my computer by 8:00 a.m. and write until dinner time with a break for lunch and a short nap.

What are you working on right now?

My ninth Carlos McCrary novel Debt Of Honor is at the publisher right now. We hope to have it out by the first quarter of 2021. The tenth Carlos McCrary novel has a working title of Sometimes You Lose or maybe Too Late for Luck. I’m shooting for having the manuscript to my editor by year-end.

Where can our readers discover more of your work or interact with you?

My website www.DallasGorham.com has info on all my books. I’m also an occasional Facebook user at https://www.facebook.com/DallasGorhamBooks and https://www.facebook.com/DallasGorham . I’m occasionally on Twitter at https://twitter.com/dallasgorham.