Interview with Phil Halton – S. 12, Ep. 7

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Interview with Phil Halton – S. 12, Ep. 7

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This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime fiction and nonfiction author, Phil Halton His website poses a question: How do we create meaning in the face of chaos? Riddle me that, eh? 🙂 You can download a copy of the transcript here. Debbi (00:52): Hi everyone. Today I have a guest who says he didn’t plan to become a writer, but as a soldier and later a security consultant, he’s traveled extensively throughout the world to most places and situations that very few people get to witness. What better background for a writer, I say. (01:16): It’s my pleasure to introduce my guest, Phil Halton. Did I say that right? Phil (01:22): Perfect. Debbi (01:23): Phil Halton? Phil (01:24): Perfectly. Debbi (01:25): Excellent. Good. Good to have you here, Phil. How are you doing? Phil (01:29): Good, good. It’s good to be here though as it’s odd to be here on the 11th of September. Debbi (01:35): Yes, it is. Very odd indeed. The whole day has felt slightly strange for that reason, that it’s the 25th anniversary and all, because I remember the day it happened a little too well for comfort. So you didn’t plan to be a writer, so what made you decide to be one? Phil (01:59): In some ways I kind of fell into it. I identify I think more as a storyteller, and so I was always the guy who had the stories. I had a bunch of experiences that I didn’t want to write about directly, but I though, oh, I can rework some of this and tell some stories that I think are actually of use as well, of value. Because my first novel in some ways is kind of the origin stories of the Taliban. It ends when the Taliban begins and it’s based on my experiences working with former Taliban and others in Afghanistan. And so I had things I wanted to say, I had things I wanted to express, and so that’s how I decided to do it. Debbi (02:43): Sounds like you got some very interesting inside information in your work. Phil (02:49): Yeah. Well, I think too that when I dig and dig and dig and dig in these things, I always find humans at the base of it. And so I think of my stories as really human-centered stories, even if they’re in strange places and with strange customs and strange. It doesn’t matter. You can always find the human element of it. Debbi (03:12): Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s absolutely true. I think that’s what draws us into reading the books. If you can’t find the humanity in the character, how are you going to care? Phil (03:23): Yeah, I think so. I think so. And I think in the end, that’s a positive message that we all have this common humanity and perhaps aren’t so different after all. Debbi (03:35): I love that message. I wish there were more of that out there. Were there certain steps you took to get started as a writer or did you just fall into it naturally and know how to tell a story from the get-go? Well, Phil (03:51): Well, I don’t know about that, but yeah, certainly I started with writing screenplays and I worked with an established screenwriter, and so we partnered up on a couple projects that actually didn’t really go anywhere. People loved them and didn’t want them. And so we did that a couple of times and I decided I’m going to write my own thing here, my own screenplay. And again, people loved it, nobody wanted it. And so I realized this might do better as a novel, so I rewrote it as a novel and wouldn’t you know that I sold the novel and the screenplay within a week of each other. Debbi (04:32): Wow. Phil (04:33): Yeah. Debbi (04:34): My goodness. That is remarkable. Phil (04:38): It is. The screenplay was never produced. It died in production hell, but that’s okay. I got paid and the novel was published and became This Shall Be a House of Peace. Then from there I just kept building on my experiences and kept working at it, though my military background really gave me a mindset about professional development, that that’s important. I pursued that as well as a writer. I just finished a doctorate in English literature and I see it as my development as a writer. Debbi (05:17): Well, that’s going to develop you all right. That sounds like quite the program. A lot of people don’t go through that kind of rigorous development for sure. How do you choose your particular topics and your particular characters? Are they based on people you’ve known, situations you’ve been in or just made up? Phil (05:45): Well, I think like a lot of writers, I’ve got 20 stories in my drawer here that I’m trying to pick which one I’m going to do next. So it’s never a shortage of stories. It’s always like will I live long enough to tell all these stories? And they’re typically not drawn directly from any experience of mine. The characters are often kind of a hybrid of people I know, and sometimes it’s kind of surprising that there’s a villain in a book and someone’s like, “Well, who are they based on? They seem really realistic.” And it’...

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