Author Interview with Bryan Gruley

Bryan Gruley is the acclaimed author of seven crime-fiction books, including Edgar-nominated Starvation Lake. His new series is set in fictional Bitterfrost in northern Michigan. The latest book, River Deep, portrays a woman accused of drowning her twin infants. “Crime fiction at its most human," says award-winning author Danielle Girard. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Gruley lives in Michigan with his wife, Pam. His website: www.bryangruley.com.

How did you become a writer?

I started writing as a boy, making up stories in Sister Rosella’s second-grade class at St. Gemma Elementary in Detroit. I longed to write novels but, lacking skill and experience, turned to journalism after college. I wound up specializing in long-form narratives for The Detroit News, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg Businessweek magazine—great training for novel-writing. I took my first cracks at fiction in the late 1990s. My first novel, Starvation Lake, was published in 2009 and was a finalist for an Edgar Award. I’ve since written six crime-fiction novels, including my latest, River Deep.It’s challenging and fun and frustrating and rewarding, like just about anything worthwhile.

How do you develop your plot and characters?

Short answer: by sitting down at my laptop and writing. Longer answer: Unlike some of my novelist friends, I don’t outline my stories or create character profiles. I just come up with an inciting incident—a woman drives her car into a river, drowning her twin infant boys—and start writing. I wish I could outline. Believe me, I have tried. But I’ve learned that I can’t make plans for characters I don’t really know, and the only way to get to know them is to put them on the page and have them say and do things. They develop as I go, and as I go, I constantly seek ways to make those characters more relatable, more complex, more beguiling. Same with the plot: I figure if I’m surprised, the reader will be surprised. Readers like surprises.

Tell me about your protagonist.

Several characters play significant roles in River Deep and its 2025 precursor, Bitterfrost. But Devyn Payne is closest to the protagonist. Devyn is a thirty-something single woman who, at times, longs to be somewhere other than her northern Michigan hometown of Bitterfrost. She’s also a tough, smart, relentless criminal defense attorney who loves to joust with Bitterfrost’s powers-that-be—as well as a skilled hockey player and member of one of the town’s two prominent families. In both books, she takes on clients who look terribly guilty and does what she can to get to the truth. Readers tell me they love Devyn.

What are your current/future projects?

In addition to promoting River Deep, which came out in July, I’m writing the third Bitterfrost book, tentatively titled Savage Falls. It’s about a wealthy builder of AI data centers who falls or is pushed or jumps from a waterfall to his death, and the mistress who is accused of killing him. It’s a mess at this point, as all my books are, but I’m pretty sure I’ll get to the end (fingers crossed). After that, I have a contract to write a fourth Bitterfrost book, but am not thinking about it now.

Do you have a routine you follow when writing?

When I was working fulltime as a journalist, I’d get up early most days, hit a coffee shop, write made-up stuff for an hour or an hour-and-a-half, then forget about it and go to my cool day job. Since retiring in late 2020, I don’t usually write fiction until later in the day, often midafternoon. I’m writing this now around 4 p.m. in a Traverse City brew pub. I know writers who crank out thousands of words a day, but if I get 500 down, I’m pretty happy. Having grown up in clattersome newsrooms, I can write pretty much anywhere—planes, trains, even automobiles (so long as I’m not driving).

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Simply this: Ass in chair. Fingers on keyboard. Write.

My friend Michael Harvey was a successful lawyer and TV writer/producer when he decided he wanted to write a novel. He started out writing five minutes a day, then ten, then fifteen … and now he has written nine or ten novels. The words piling up give you confidence and momentum. If they’re not exactly The Old Man and the Sea, you can fix them. As the saying goes, you can’t edit a blank page.

I used to say there is no software that will write a book for you. AI has changed that. But I don’t understand the point of having a bot write something that should come as much from your heart as your head. If you want to be a writer, you must write, not dream about it or talk about it or have some anonymous thing write for you. One smaller thing: I find it useful to print out a chapter or two I’ve just written and mark it up with a pencil. It's amazing what you see on a printed page versus a digital screen. Plus, I love the tactile feel of striking out words. If it’s getting shorter, it’s probably getting better.

What is your preferred method for readers to get in touch?

I’m on Facebook, Instagram, Substack, and X. You can also email me at bryangruleybooks.com.