Interview with Charlie Vogel
Charlie Vogel is a veteran of the Navy who
served during the Vietnam War. He’s a retired Coast Guard Reserve Petty
Officer. Additionally, Charlie retired from a career as an Omaha,
Nebraska police officer as well as from Omaha Public Schools. He and his wife reside
in Omaha, Nebraska. He draws on his vast and varied experience to feed his
mysteries.
Charlie
Vogel started writing in high school, but it was after retirement that he
became serious about it as a career often referring
to himself as Charlie-the-mystery-writer. As a member of the Nebraska Writer’s
Guild, Fiction Works, and Nebraska Writer’s Workshop, Charlie studies his craft
and credits individuals from those entities for recognizing his talent,
encouragement and advice.
Glenda: Charlie I’d like to thank you for agreeing to this interview.
You’ve left encouraging comments on some of my past interviews. I enjoy
comments on posts good or bad as they help me grow as an interviewer. That
said, I hope this will be one of my best interviews to date, so here we go with
question numero uno.
I noticed when I read into your Bob Norris
trilogy, you didn’t start him out as any sort of detective or tough guy type at
all. Not in the way most people consider tough men. You started Norris out as
an art teacher, with a wealthy wife. The two have rebelled against her
disapproving father and built their own lives. Then she’s murdered and he
switches from art teacher to crime solver.
With your history in military and as a police
officer, one would expect you to make your protagonist some tough Hammer type.
What made you decide to write Bob in as an art teacher initially?
Charlie: Bob
Norris popped into my mind about thirty years ago. I have a hidden
ego as being an art teacher. I attended
classes at the Chicago Art Institute during my high school days, and I sold
five oil paintings during that time. Being a police officer, I
noticed a lot of Bob Norris’ characters trying to solve crimes themselves, which
gave me the idea of using this character. Most victims in crimes (in
true life) are not really the tough guy.
Glenda: That brings another question to mind. You’ve talked about writing and art
being a part of your life since high school. Can you give us more history of
your interest in the arts?
Charlie:
I graduated from high school in Rochelle,
Illinois in 1961. I attended summer courses at the Chicago Art Institute
during 1958, 59, 60, and 61. I wrote a little while on active duty in the
Navy from 1962 through 1969, but spent most of my leisure sketching. I
attended Metro College in Omaha, majoring in Photography from 1976 through
1980. I started taking writing courses from Metro and Sally Walker from
1990 through the present. I have never entered any writing courses, nor
have I won any awards for writing. I view writing not as a job, but one
of the visual arts I enjoy doing, and to create something is to exercise the
mind.
Glenda: I like what you said about seeing writing as “one of the
visual arts.” It’s hard to get that recognition for the art of writing. It is
sort of like painting a series of pictures in words. To get more specific about
your published work, I found your Bob Norris trilogy enticing and bold. It’s
something that I imagine is very hard to do. To be able to carry the continuity
of the stories as well as the traits of character is something I haven’t
attempted yet.
After doing a trilogy of novels following one
character, do you see yourself doing more serial books?
Charlie: No, I really don’t like doing serial books. The
process takes me too long to hold an interest in the same
character. Once I do one book, everyone knows who the character is,
and it gets boring to keep building this guy up. I’ve got a lot of
interesting characters in my head, and I want to use them. I do
insist in the last chapter of my books, I like to give a hint of a possible sequel
to tease the reader. I learned this from my favorite author,
Lawrence Block, but he’s a master in creating a serial.
Glenda: You’ve had a history of careers that required action,
intellect, bravery, and problem solving. Now that you’ve retired do you miss
that or is your writing enough intrigue after such a long career?
Charlie: I miss being involved with a crisis. The
only way I find to solve a crisis is to make one up. Since high
school, I’ve written a ton of short stories with the possibility of “What if?” Over
the years I enjoyed sitting at airports, train stations, and bus stops to study
the characterization of the people I see. Many of these people are
in my novels.
Glenda: Finally, as a writer myself, I know that each of us uses a
process of some sort for building a story. That process includes developing
character, environment, personalities and so much more. What is your favorite
part of your writing process?
Charlie: Something
to cause controversy. In the Bob Norris series, I made the hero to
fall in love with a very young woman (30 year difference in ages), and Norris
being rich and a CEO, this girl is a street prostitute. A manuscript
I’ve been working on for the past several months involves a secret organization
of German-American Aryans, which did exist in real life shorty after
WW2. The characters I used in this story are children (7-9 years
old), who in their innocent wisdom solves a series of murders in a small town
of northern Illinois. The year this takes place is in
1950. I have a lot of research to do for this time period, but I
enjoy doing it.
Charlie-the-mystery-writer,
like many of us turned out to be an adrenaline junky. Not in the sense of
obsession, but that thrill that comes from action and upheaval, the kind that
builds a thrilling mystery that I try to outsmart and solve before the end. I
don’t often manage to do so, because writers like Charlie keep the reader
guessing.
It’s exciting to see a writer develop and produce
what they love. Charlie, you are blessed with multiple artistic gifts and a
grand sense of adventure. I think I speak for many readers when I say we are
all looking forward to that next book by Charlie-the-mystery-writer.
“What money?" I didn’t spend one dime for
any of this. It’s all Eileen’s (Bob’s wife). And what the hell is time? Time
isn’t something I value. Time is such an abstraction in life.” I
leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, my hands clenched. “Look—How can I
explain this? Eileen was all I had. Now that she’s gone, I have
only one thing, one purpose. I will have the man who killed her.” I
clenched my jaw. “Since time has no importance, I can hunt for him
quietly.” (Bob Norris to brother Donald in To Find a Killer) by
Charlie Vogel
Find Charlie’s books at the following sites
WAVE OF DEATH
FIND THE SECRETS
TO FIND A KILLER
SEARCHING FOR HARPIES
THE DOCTOR IS DEAD
Charlie’s third book in the Bob Norris series
will be published this year.
