2021 Kansas Notable Book; Michael D. Graves; Unknown

initially imagined hard boiled detective sam spade philip marlowe in wichita i'm kate mcintyre they include pr presents the latest pg stone mystery all hallows shadow i am poor either micheal tea craze mike it is great to see you again they so much kate de que fresh new bigger every year the state library of kansas picks the fifteen best books by cancer sufferers or about kansas and every year it interview as him many of the kansas notable actors as possible all hallows sat out is the second p stone book to receive the kansas notable award my congratulations jake you so much we first met pete stunned back in two thousand sixteen when your book to leave a shadow was named kansas notable book remind us who is pete stelling are thank you for that did stone was inspired by my grandfather who was not a detective but he did live a nineteen thirties wichita and his last words were to my father were told boys not

to forget me and now fifty years later i look back on and i hear those words and i realize i never knew my grandfather's was i hope i would have so i just decided i had the time and i had the inclination i i thought i would make up a story pure fiction that featured pizza stone and and make him a detective in nineteen thirties wichita and even though the stories are fictional i tried to when i write i try to do wonder and imagined what my grandfather might have done during that time so i mention a movie or a ballgame or something that that is taking place i try to make it accurate i like to go back in and see what was you know playing at the movies at that time maybe he didn't go to that movie but he could have and so i had tried it just recapture what the life might have been back here i don't want to get too far into the applied in any spoilers but can you give us a quick synopsis of all how a shadow

thank you sure well when i sat down to write this the first thing i want to do is i want to pick some elements that that i really enjoy i decided that i would have a background in and have a setting that i had that i really liked and this book takes place in october of nineteen thirty seven october is as long been my favorite month years and lied about it is a wonderful time a year it begins with the world series which i look forward to the area's with halloween which i've always found a fun time and so is it is you know as we agree it's a beautiful time of year especially in kansas so i decided to sit in in october the setting is largely on the campus of wichita university now wichita state university city university of wichita at that time and i wanted to include something like that and and so those were the things that it had decided to to make sure what happened in this book at the setting the way i want it then he visits the campus many times worked with a professor there is there is

murder that takes place at the beginning of the story and end the set up is the professor who calls peter stone to tell him about his feelings about who might be the killer the police have already captured who their suspect is he's behind bars but this professor's convinced that he does this person is not the murder and soul that that leads people on his adventure and it takes place begins at the beginning of october and ends with a halloween party i'm visiting with my grades he's the author of all hallows shadow it's the latest in the pizza stone mystery series and a winner of the kansas notable book award winner pete stone series features a couple of recurring characters his recession as agnes and a love interest lucille talk about pee and the women in his life a teacher well my grandfather

pete curry use palm actually it will be married to his second wife was lucio nets and that's the one that i knew growing up as a small boy was lucille so i would i want to bring that's that's where she comes from and i bring her in in the first book and they are not married yet and they're probably won't get married for awhile at bay because i want him to remain at least the detective independent detective for for awhile agnes just it was created out of thin air but if it looked like it might be a love interest at first before lucille came into the picture but it turned out that they found that they enjoyed working together more than they did and they decided to put the romance away so they couldn't do both the new record newport so there was no romance i do unfortunately probably refer to are from time to time as his secretary but she's more than that she she takes care of pete she takes care of the office and quite

frankly she has a pretty good head on her shoulders when it comes to doing detective george great persistent both in the office and on the field there's another recurring character that comes back and that's one and that's ralph waldo when ralph waldo is the son of a gentleman who shines shoes in the hotel he's in the eden hotel in in this particular book and ellis waldo is is a character who due to his time he is a black man and he only has education through you know but a few years in grade school with pete knows seen as the most well read man he's ever met when he has a question about literature poetry any kind of shakespeare doesn't matter what it is he goes alice waldo and and it's the answer ellison else knows this rauf is his son and he said little bit of trouble in the past that people came out of and he does some work for p from time to

time he heaved it by the time we get to this third book he said he's now become as his own detective but earlier and in the other books he helps p from time to time and pete uses him as what he calls an invisible man he's he hangs back he what he is able to go through doors appeal is not able to go through he hears things the peak doesn't here and report back to him and that it's kind of a convoluted thing that i decided that i would put together that it came from the writer or rauf waldo ellison who wrote the book invisible man shortly after war were too and so waldo is ellis' son ralph waldo ellison son will come when and if you can have that with your character assumes is terms in a work like if i mentioned that this is your third if he'd

stone but how has he changed over the years or maybe i should ask how is your relationship with him changed over the years a very good my relationship has changed in that i trust him a lot more than i did when we first started i was unsure where were going back my wife often as we said whoa what's going to happen next and i said i really hope it hasn't told me we have we have to get together and cecil peep peep has become a larger and larger part of my life i enjoy that when i'm writing the manuscript he usually wakes me up in the morning at four five o'clock in the morning i'll wake up in an end i realise that he's doing something that i have i either i've i wrote something yesterday and i have to correct it or i left him hanging in a position now i have to make sure the idea back to him it it often wakes me up when i'm reading and so he's become is become very close and visit with my grades he's the author of all

hallows shadow it's a winner of a two thousand twenty when kansas notable book award and the third in the peat stone mystery series its investigation takes him to your town emporia and as he is driving along the flight health he says i've always turn to back roads and baseball for answers to life's rebels mike is that it cost on for you have values that i thought i've thought that many many times i spent part of her business career on the road and i liked the driving the back roads and i've also found that baseball is has been very important to me when i when i'm just confused about waiving the way things are going in the world either or something that was a nine inning ballgame plenty of between the lions and turning off the clock now worry about how much time it tasted in an inning them down there'd been a disappearance may have i like i like the poetry and i like at the same time

the rhythms and i like the rules there's just nothing about baseball and i don't enjoy it has been a way since i was a young person so when i went to my first yankee baseball game in nineteen sixty and we had boxes behind the dugout i still have my ticket stub there were two dollars and fifty cents and you can you know how as and two dollars and fifty cents for a oxy ticket and i can almost reach out and touch my hero make email sly was great pickles are good experiences that i've turned a bit back rows of baseball is just a good place for me to get away and do my thinking even today hagel on the back roads in and loved her to travel first thing in the morning you could just be was a coffee cup and one hand on the steering wheel and the other down the back roads one of my favorite things about the pizza stone series is how you weave kansas history end of the stories like i would throw out a couple of kansas pacific mentions from all hallows shadows can you tell me a little bit about each one of

those and i'll start with keeps car his jones six roadster joe six roadster i wanted to use that within this keep this came about when we when i first was doing research is taking notes and my wife and i would be would walk around wichita we ended up at the el wichita century county history museum and we reached the second floor and they have that jones roadster up on the second floor of the museum is not interesting shape but it just looked magical to me and when i read about it and read some more outside when we got away from the museum jones motorcar company existed from nineteen fourteen and nineteen twenty i hope i'm not often as pre close about six years and they will they built a beautiful car but as as i read more about kansas is not just kansas history history at that time so many wonderful businesses and buildings were destroyed by fire and

this was no exception they they burned and down disney were never able to recover so they had a six year history so i have a nineteen nineteen roadster that that town repeat stone is driving bodies in nineteen thirty seven so i had to work out a way that that he'd he received as payment for a job from a wealthy client who have a lot of lot of wealth but not much cash back in the depression and so heat effecting the keys in it a one point he says something like id id id ticker tape about as long as i'm a fly on a date for me to say this is a pretty good deal for him so he drives a roadster another piece of wichita business history the wichita watch company that came to me that was a wonderful addition that i didn't even know about and i happened to be at an er right giving a reading in that wichita and a young man came up

who works at a watch company and he told me about this watch company and i you don't hear much about that if you see the pictures of the wichita watch company was a huge structure and it was over on the west side of town i think it was it really was a pastor wes street i believe or in that in that neighborhood where street was actually as it down back in nineteen thirty seven and for whatever reason this thing never got off the ground soon as they build that i think i believe what it was we we had a quite a depression in our country only eighteen hundreds at night and i think that's what took down i've never found that out for sure but they made it you know i mean if you watch as a few cox unfolded and then it and the building is gone there's no sign or anything else but this young man sent me an article about that and i quote him in the back of the book he's he it was all wonderful addition and in that's one of the beautiful things about about doing readings or meeting people

people have been so generous with what they know about wichita i knew nothing about history it i was born in wichita but i wasn't raised their my dad was transferred all over the country and so i didn't i never live there and people were so generous with their time librarians museum people this to an end is people i meet just to like see it reading stage is wonderful and so that was that's where they came from i can't really was more about there really is a much more to save a big we built a building and started up into four stores immediately and the same with my grades he's the author of all hallows shadow the latest pete stone mystery and we're talking about some of the kansas references in that book about pete's terms of beverage of choice store it's beer stores period story here came to this came from a menu we were my wife i get more work walking around a wichita this time

we were driving in or we reached senator has all sandwich shop over there and three women have a sandwich we found that its issue really a tavern and again on their menu they talk about his real place and lawn the hole that opened in the nineteen thirties and stores beer was out of omaha nebraska and they had and they had a deal back then that if you if you they sold their beer on tap they put in a martini bar in the tavern and so tom as it was called toms in thomson sheeran and so he opened up many poor stores near from by ms mahogany bar in a bar still exist today we know it today is rolls in wichita on senator mike as a radio person perhaps my favorite kansas reference wasn't a radio station k f eight hopkins says fires toto you better leave that was at a downtown top of a

hotel lawson well compressing them properly and there and and that's been that was or color skin says his finest hotels a labor accurate as a hotel one end and the radio station in downtown uncle ben hamm and uncle glenn hammond was a was a real character who read the funnies on the radio every sunday morning and he had a couple of puppets that he would come on and they would read the funnies with him on the radio up in summery own habitat ii of century change voices now is about oh they were puppets and a radio he had to visualize everything back then of course and that and so he did he read the funnies and p looks forward to her every sunday we're going to remember that some time if i'm hosting weekend edition sunday and things seem a little slow maybe pull out the comics and see what i can do with the fact that this year it's a great great idea where you they were a baseball announcers was was talking about a

recent visit with a parent with a straight face heated he used to talk about some of the radio is is you'll recognize him from the silent movies and thinking that way i'm a scenario where regulators gave him as a lawyer and a chuckle like you also made reference to the kansas others climb i do they've been very very important to me the cans office club is one of the oldest if not the oldest office club in america and i was i happen to be doing some research for this book and found a wonderful picture of of their annual meeting in october of nineteen thirty seven when this takes place and they were they were much more formal back then the ladies were wearing evening gowns and so i'm aware in tuxedos but but the importance of the kansas author spoke for those of for those of us who are writers and there are many out there it's a lonely sport you know you hear you you are locked up you are doing your own research you're doing your own writing and it's such a supportive group of fellow writers here in

kansas were divided into seven districts throughout the state meet district meetings and then we have our annual meeting in october for your story in this war ii we missed our annual get together we had a meeting or electronically last year but that this year we're going to be back in topeka and therefore anyone who is interested with like to meet someone who writes and the like to be a member of our club we love to hear from you just google google kansas author squirrel them and go for today on k pr prisons and visiting way if my grades he's the author of the pizza stone that syria's the latest series is all hallows shadow it's a winner of a twenty twenty one kansas notable book award and mike on that trip to amp or year that pete stone takes he has a chance encounter with the sage of emporia william allen white he says he's he's a hebe is wanting to meet with a former roommate

of the victim who has been murdered and she's working at the red x pharmacy which will also existed downtown in emporia so he's waiting for it to show up is a little diner on on commercial street and he's reading his newspaper has really retreated copy a wichita eagle and elmore says joan one end and he repeat recognizes william allen white right away you know he's well known throughout throughout the area of course and he knows who it is but the william allen white is an opiate stone and is it in seoul a banter back and forth for just a moment the scene and he pulls out his own newspaper be importing is at the sincere want to see what's going on here locally and he dies and in that any injury is a newspaper very much my grace is the author of the peat stone series the third in the series all hallows shadows is a winner of a twenty twenty one kansas notable book award as i've mentioned this is the third in the series mike how is all hallows

shadows similar and perhaps different than the other pizza box it's a that's a good question i think this one has more calm elements of ministry perhaps one of the things that i had read about and enjoyed reading about wonder include in this was a little bit of the four humorous of of the personality and how before humor's funnel many wonderful places many wonderful books and and websites that i focused on one that ties in using before humor's and shakespeare can you remind us what the four humorous are sure there's a sanguine flamenco lyric melancholy and it each one refers to not only of personality type of it but in references it to greek mythology vaguely also indicate different periods in our life he

from young to old and different body parts and peach stone and covers clues that are that are tied into these four humor's he doesn't see this right away until he reads something i'd rather not even mentioned that yet but but he read something that leads him to determine who the murders one last question about sort of the literary part of this and again we're not going to get too far into the plot but poetry plays a part in all hallows shadow mike i know you as a mystery writer but are you also a poet well i was a wannabe poet witnesses put it that way i have written some poetry and some of it has been published the way hey really what led me to using the poetry as much as anything it was a book that my uncle left me pete other son my dad's older brother and and that is a book that i referred to

often it's written by lewis under my hair and it was very popular book back then so the poetry it is called modern poetry but it's from the nineteen thirties so so i like to pull some some poetry out of bad news that is cruz also just as low memorial or memory for my uncle and the same with my grades he's the author of all hallows sad as the latest in the peat stunt mystery series mike what have you read in and served and maybe you want to set it up for us okay sure this takes place early in the book peter stone has been out all night most than a he's only had a couple hours sleep when the phone rings and it's someone from the campus warning him to to come in look into this murder after he hangs up then he calls agnes at the office so the setup is it's early in the morning for pete because he hasn't had much sleep but he's checking in with ideas

good morning my sweet golson the year busier don quixote calling year knight errant incurable romantic torture at windmills and writer of wrongs well the day's young agnes said but you sound like you're already into the sauce are you starting earlier had even nursing your habit all night long wrong on both counts sister and i'm offended if your insinuations as a matter of fact on nursing is coffee straighten black i'm a sober is a school mom and i'm perpendicular to the world thank you very much it's early in the ballgame but i'm betting two for two first or diageo deny or babe ruth if either one of years and p stone you might ask him to give me a call it like the hero things went last night the stones live and welcome thanks for asking the hooligans or in those count viewing the world from behind cell bars thanks to yours truly the streets of our peerless princes of the planes are safer this day than they were the day before and this

was referring to my most recent case i spent the previous evening and several of the wee hours that morning on a stakeout involving a break in in stolen goods to recent graduates of the kansas state penitentiary at lancing had celebrated their release by boosting a truck from a warehouse near second watch i had done some work for the owner of the warehouse in the past with satisfactory results all i i could that that every item of his inventory would pass muster under the eyes of the law i was a private investigator and a judge when he told me that the truck in question carried a load of crates more carnation milk he offered a modern awake so was it really malcolm the crates it was no skin off my nose like i mentioned who was i to judge when i worked for him earlier we both were pleased with the outcome so i didn't ask unnecessary questions i accepted the job the thieves left a trailer three blind mice could fall i traced them to a

neighborhood near lewis and laura and had and auto repair shop on the corner in a welding shop next door across the street was a brief roll frame houses two white and one gray a stolen truck was parked in the driveway of the great house that's my grades reading from all hallows sad as the latest in the pizza stone mystery series and a winner of the twenty twenty one kansas notable book award mike what's ahead for pizza stone well where we're going to move into nineteen thirty eight with the next story come and i'm going to this may come as no surprise and then started on opening day of baseball season in nineteen thirty eight and this this next book is them a little a little bit different where were going to start getting into some some espionage and some other things that happened with the aircraft industry a perfect plot line for wichita where there were there were really go back and desist you're an aircraft just just as the time about the

time when boeing we'll be taking over stern like you go back in time a little bit and talked to me about a book or books that made you decide that you want to be a writer ha well there have been a number of unfortunate in that when i was when i was young my mind father's brother and my mother sister were career librarians and my folks were reader so we had lots of books in the house can i i don't remember not having a ball so i've always have always enjoyed reading it i grew up with what i call of the three b's i needed books baseball and a bicycle had fired the three b's i was good to go so i have always read it now what got me to arrive early in my life i enjoyed reading a mystery

story start with hardy boys as many of us did and then later in life after i started reading just more and more written histories ii fellow with sam spade in and fell in love with the maltese falcon and those books and it's it's a little difficult what i'm writing about pizza stone i say he's inspired by my grandfather but i i still see humphrey bogart and and i enjoy those movies to be you know the maltese falcon and in the animals so and dashiell hammett was has always been a favorite writer of mine and and i think i knew when i started writing that's the title amid heavy to cuff your right or hat for a moment and turn your reader hat what are you reading right now are really know last night i finished i read this before but last i read that of his salesmen short play by my arthur miller and that really had a profound impact on me each time i read that it leaves me

feeling you know more more eerie it rained a lot of jim harrison jim harrison he was an author he'd he passed away about five years ago i believe twenty sixteen because when he died and he wrote a lot of aig wrote legends of the fall which they think most of the snow and that's what put him on the map and he has quite a number of good books in iowa he's one of my favorite authors also tom and i i don't buy i think my reading is somewhat eclectic pow iran i really don't have one genre that i that i try to stay with now what i read i i i recently read i guess one of the last books i read was a graphic novel first first and only graphic novel i've read so far is called the secret a superhuman strength by allison bechtol it's a bit so it hasn't been over a long as this

new i had read review about it in the new yorker and thought you know if i see that the black and i did you stare at me right in the face as i took off the shelf and i really enjoyed it and i read it twice as soon as i finish and i read it again and passed it on soul you know that's there's absolutely no relation between that book in any of the island's i've mentioned so i don't i don't think i have a particular book that i like but that's when the sticks to mind who have written the last three days or so say you are an eclectic greater high i guess you know i i don't know if i i tried to read different things on the new yorker took me through the covert season i had not subscribe to the new yorker and when we started i said i got to have something coming into the house so it i took that may when it and that opened up as you know if you've read the new yorker you read authors that you wouldn't have read otherwise

and that's been good for me my kids' high unless at emporia state university for many years you're retired now what advice would you give to young writers knowing what you do now has an excellent question and i don't want to say this when i first started writing even when i was taking notes and have you or in the first word i was absolutely convinced of only one thing i couldn't write the book i knew i couldn't write a book i know why i felt that way and it's no i couldn't and i had written had written shorter pieces that was no problem but i knew i could write a book and that and i found that once you start it they're truly is an energy think things happened and when that when i was doing research and i was walking around wichita when i was reading old newspapers from the nineteen thirties for one thing leads to another

i promise you this if you go in and you think you know where you're going to go with your writing before you ever started you have every detail out why and it won't come out the way judges won't because a book is like life you simply don't know what's going to happen you may think you know in a plan you should plan but don't think you're gonna fall the play because i'm a nike inc p stone told it was going to happen next i have to wait and see and if i be if i try to make him do something it's not natural if he does it it becomes natural so trust yourself as what i would say give it to the young authors trust yourself with the first word out and put another word african peacekeeping oh that's a bit less and zest for life in general tell me and then there's not much less of course thats i leaned on many shores when i say that that's just that's just the way life

is you have to trust in people that they spot and long drives in the country but those afford the works to have been visiting with my grades he's the author of all hallows sad as it's the latest in the pizza stone mystery series it's also a winner of a twenty twenty one kansas notable book award mike is laying great to talk to you and congratulations again thanks so much kate de france to me to be here as always good to see you appreciate you so much and j mcintyre kbr prisons as a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas