Matt Cost on From Beginning to End

It’s time for a new interview series… like NOW. No really, actually it’s called NOW (Newly Omniscient Authors). This blog has been publishing since 2011, and some of the earlier posts feel too hopeful dated. To honor the relaunch of the site, I thought I’d invite some of my past guests to read and ruminate on their answers to questions from oh-so-long-ago to see what’s changed between then and now.

Today’s guest for the NOW is Matt Cost, author of Velma Gone Awry: A Brooklyn 8 Ballo Mystery which releases on April 12

Has how you think (and talk) about writing and publishing changed, further into your career?

I don’t believe that much has changed in how I think about writing over the course of my career. I have always loved learning new things and creating stories. I’d like to think that my writing has become better. My upcoming historical PI mystery, Velma Gone Awry, is a culmination of all of my writing that has come before. It is a combination of my mysteries, which there are two separate series, the Mainely Mystery series, and the Clay Wolfe Trap series, and my historical novels. What I have come to better understand is how hard and how many people are striving to become successful writers. While I believe that everybody who writes a book is accomplished, financial prosperity is much harder to achieve. 

Let’s talk about the balance between the creative versus the business side of the industry. Do you think of yourself as an artiste or are you analyzing every aspect of your story for marketability? Has that changed from your early perspective?

My writing has refined into a more business-like aspect, without, I hope, losing the artistic side of things. I absolutely think of myself as an artiste, but at the same time, I have realized the importance of the rhythm of writing. My books, written fast and furious, usually run about 80,000 words at the end of the first draft, and generally I add approximately 8,000 words to that in rewrites as I flesh out characters, scenes, and the plot. That being said, in my first draft, something significant has to happen every ten-thousand words to drive the book forward. This is every 12.5 % of the book. I like to start with the hook that sets the mystery in motion, rising up throughout each climatic occurrence, and then receding, only to rise again. So, there is a business side to my writing, but I do not write for the market, I write for myself, and the market can choose to follow or not. 

The bloom is off the rose… what’s faded for you, this far out from debut?

If anything has faded, it would be the insatiable desire to have people read and love my books. I wrote a book about Joshua Chamberlain and the Civil War titled At Every Hazard for my first, and it was well received and well-reviewed. My second historical, I am Cuba, ran into more criticism, mostly because readers didn’t like the fact that I cast Fidel Castro in a good light. It was then that I began to realize that most reviews are a matter of taste and opinion, and that these were not always going to jive with my chosen work of art, no matter how well written, and that was okay. I’ve gotten poor reviews for foul language, violence, politics, and far more obscure reasons. The lesson? You can’t please everybody. 

Likewise, is there anything you’ve grown to love (or at least accept) that you never thought you would?

I never thought that editing would be something that I’d embrace. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that this is a place where the magic happens, and a good book can be transformed into a great book. The global development edits strengthen and fill in plot holes, flesh out characters into talking, thinking, and breathing individuals with fears, anxieties, and hopes. Line edits can be a thing of beauty as you rearrange a sentence to be stronger, tweak a scene to become haunting, and change a single word to resound in the reader’s mind. 

And lastly, what did getting published mean for you and how was it changed (or not changed!) your life?

I self-published my first book, At Every Hazard, and that was a fantastic experience, as I learned how to fend for myself in setting up the book pages, creating a cover, getting copies printed, and how to promote and market myself and my book. The rest of my books, ten of them as of last count, have been published by Encircle Publications. Taking the load off my shoulders in regard to creating a cover and a book has been awful nice. It has allowed me to write more efficiently and productively. Thus, in April, my twelfth book, Velma Gone Awry, will be published. In August, the fifth book in my Mainely Mystery series, Mainely Wicked, will be published. And in December, the fifth book in my Clay Wolfe Trap series, Pirate Trap, will be published. What did traditionally published has been huge for me. I can now focus on the business of writing. 

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries. Cost has published four books in the Mainely Mystery series, with the fifth, Mainely Wicked, due out in August of 2023. He has also published four books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, with the fifth, Pirate Trap, due out in December of 2023. For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. In April of 2023, Cost will combine his love of histories and mysteries into a historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn, Velma Gone Awry.