BookWire - Meet The Author - Brett Bartholomaus

Neela Sakaria: Thank you for joining us, Brett. Let me start by asking if you can tell us a little bit about your background and the background of the book.

Brett Bartholomaus: First of all I'd like to take this moment, Neela, to thank you and all of the staff at Bookwire for granting me this interview about Reflection of Evil. I really appreciate it. Reflection of Evil was basically conceived about 42 years ago. I saw a clipping out of the Milwaukee Journal at the time, in regards to an incident that happened at the Port of Milwaukee at the Great Lakes - Lake Michigan, about a robbery and a drug heist between mafia factions and several of the Milwaukee police deparment's under cover agents. I was only about 17 or 18 at the time, but for some reason I clipped it out and at the time I was writing a lot of vignettes, novelettes, poetry and basically things for my English class at my high school. I vowed that some day possibly if I were to undertake my Great American Novel, I would use this incident in the Milwaukee Journal as protocol for the format of a novel and a mystery book. And believe it or not, some 42 years later, that's exactly what I did.

Neela: Were you experienced with writing professionally before writing this book?

BB: No. Basically, at that age I was still in high school and in English Literature and in writing courses. My teacher was Virginia *** and she had been a harlequin novelist and a best-selling novelist at that time when I was in high school and she was impressed with my writing abilities. She always thought I just had an innate ability to get out there and put things out on paper and make them come to life off the page. So people always got a three dimensional image of what was coming out inbetween the sentences. So she kind of inspired me to write at that time. And I really started undertaking Reflection of Evil about thirty-five to thirty-seven years later.

NS: You mentioned that the setting of the incident in the newspaper was Milwaukee. I wanted to ask you why you chose the particular setting of the book? Was it simply because that is where the actual newspaper incident took place?

BB: Well we lived on Lake Michigan -- we lived about a block off. I spent so much of my youth basically down there with friends and my two colleagues at the time -- beach combing, at beach parties and I love the Great Lakes. It's really a beautiful area and I thought this would be the perfect spot to follow up on the incident that happened there on Jones Island on the Port of Milwaukee. And then take everything basically within a 30-40 mile radius to start. And of course as you know it (the book) continues around the world and goes over to Europe - comes back to San Francisco.

NS: Have you ever been to the places in Europe that you write about?

BB: I haven't been overseas as far as Europe goes but I've done a lot of research on everything from friends and travelogues and travel agencies. I've been to San Francisco a number of times, it's one of my favorite towns.

NS: Do you find that it's difficult to write about places that you have not been to?

BB: No not necessarilly. I have a vivid imagery in my mind - a very very colorful imagination. So if I read enough travelogues and talk to enough people about the places I'm writing about, and get a good background and input into things, I can conjure that up on a piece of paper.

NS: Throughout the book there are different situations where you describe medical details extensively. What kind of research went into that?

BB: Well, it took me three years to write Reflection of Evil and it was one year of research before I even touched a pen or pencil to a pad of paper. Good friends of mine in the medical profession basically gave me all of the criteria that I needed for medical scenarios and different drug interactions and reviewed some of the chapters of the murder synopses. I interviewed people in the psychiatric profession and like I said, basically all the laymen that were familiar with the technical treatises and so forth, that I needed to have. I went into the coroner's - I went into wards in Milwaukee and talked to people -- hospital attendants, basically getting the full description of everything I would need to make everything sound authentic.

NS: Tell us a little bit about the meaning of the book's title. It is mentioned throughout the book in different ways, but can you expand on it a little bit for our readers?

BB: Sure. I believe that we all have two images we present. One that we want the public and our close friends to see -- affable, charming, happy and gregarious. Basically there is the other side - the darker side of man's soul. I think that in the book, Ron Holland, my protagonist and antagonist, confronts that mirror. You see both of these images coming out of him. It's like looking into a lake or a river and seeing one's reflection coming back at you, but it's not always exactly what you want to see. I used Reflection of Evil because it is about a man who is a police officer who is out there trying to do a good job and be a good semaritan, and yet there is the darker side of him.

NS: There are a lot of different characters in the book. In terms of writing a suspense novel, is it hard to keep track of all of the different characters?

BB: Definitely. If you have a number of characters and they are very diverse from one another, you have to get into their heads. Before I even touch a pencil to the paper and am working on a character, I will lie back and close my eyes and try to conceive what I want the character's traits, habits, his thinking, mannerisms, his nature, to be. Is he trying to be good, is he a bad person who doesn't care about being a decent citizen? I will take a look at all of these facets and then I will try and get inside his head -- and then from there I will let the character take over and write himself. I've done this with all of my characters. A lot of my characters in Reflection of Evil are very dark, very esoteric. Yet you take a look at today's world, you look at the situation that just happened in the beginning of the week in New York. And there are so many facets within our society where the Reflection of Evil appears within people and our society. But I basically try to get inside my characters' heads - each of my characters and think as they would. It's not always easy.

NS: Where do you get your inspiration for different characters? Are any of them based on people you know?

BB: Oh sure. As they say, I've knocked around in life and you meet people from all walks of life. A lot of my friends were police officers and we lived in Milwaukee where there was one situation when I was an adolescent. On one side we had a family of Vice squad officers. I went to their parties, their weddings and everything. And right on the opposite side of them, there was a mafia family. It was kind of like in the novel, A Stone For Danny Fisher where you have the different factions of society all coming together. All of these people basically wined and dined together and were friends when they were off of their jobs. It was basically an Italian community down there. Like I say - all different walks of life and nobody thought much about it. I met so many different people. I worked as a fisherman for a while, as a bouncer to get college tuition, I was a boxer for a while. Moving about in all different circles, I was able to slide in and out of them. I was able to meet all different types of individuals and personalities. I used a melange of these to form different characters. Not one character in my book is based on just one person -- they are basically melanges of four or five different types of people - composites.

BB: Being masculine and everything and I consider myself machismo, I will probably kick myself, but I like Ginny Calvato. I have my wife sitting right here and probably shouldn't say this but I have long had a fantasy love affair with Liza Minelli - I loved her in Cabaret. When I wrote Ginny Calvato, who is obviously the daughter of a mafioso don and a very powerful one and knew that a lot of the things he was doing for her and her family were illicit -- I wondered what a girl like that who had a degree from a university, who is just absolutely beautiful, stunning, vivacious, and very intellectual -- how she felt knowing that her parents and her background were of that origin. She fascinated me. The complexity of the girl and the complexity of what she had to deal with in her life, and being able to tell herself that being the daughter of a mafioso don was all right, that she could cope with that and still be a decent human being and live under our society's rules. So she was my favorite character and I enjoyed getting into her head.

BB: Well iuniverse.com and myself have talked. Basically they'd like me to write the sequel eventually. I'm going through a crisis in my life with my wife's health...but I am going to definitely write the sequel to Reflection of Evil.

NS: You mentioned having the book turned into a movie. Can you tell us about that?

BB: We have been dealing with people that are in the trade, screenplay rights and things. I can't get into that too much right now - it's been a slow process. But I think eventually this will develop into a full blown motion picture or mini-series.

NS: Well thanks very much. I think our readers will enjoy finding out about what went into writing this book.

BB: I thank you so much for having me here today, Neela. Like I said, thanks so much for everything in order to make this possible.