Q:   River Runs Red has been described as the second book in a “loose trilogy” that started with Missing White Girl.  What does that mean?  Is Buck Shelton back for more?

A:  No, what is meant by a “loose trilogy” is that the books don’t share characters or storylines.  Instead, these books are what I fondly call my “border trilogy.”  They’re all supernatural thrillers set in the U.S./Mexico border area, which has been in the news a lot these last few years but which most people don’t really know.  I hope these books give people a better sense of the area, and some of the issues surrounding life here, but in the context of suspenseful, terrifying stories, not dry newspaper accounts.  Missing White Girl was set in the Arizona area of my home, and the story combined elements of the rural police procedural with supernatural horror.  River Runs Red is set in the West Texas border area and includes elements of espionage fiction along with the terror.  Finally, next year we’ll see Cold Black Hearts, set between the first two in the New Mexico border region, and where the thriller element involves a Phoenix cop who is forced by an accident into an early retirement, only to find herself facing something worse in rural New Mexico than she ever imagined up in the big city.So no more Buck in these books.  That said, I wouldn’t mind doing more with him in the future, so we’ll just have to see.

Q:  Tell us about the spy elements here.  What is the CIA’s Operation Moon Flash?

A:  The main CIA agent character is James Livingston Truly.  He’s a guy who has made a lot of enemies at the agency, but his father is a former United States senator, so he’s perceived as being a protected individual.  Instead of being fired, he is put in charge of Moon Flash, which is a (barely) fictional continuation of genuine, historical CIA programs Grill Flame, Sun Streak, and Star Gate.  These were psychic research programs, meant to study ESP, remote viewing, and other psychic powers for their possible use as intelligence assets.  The programs were officially discontinued in 1996.  But it’s the CIA we’re talking about, so who knows?  One of Truly’s “psychic friends network” dies while trying to investigate a massive occult anomaly, and then when another is murdered while trying to help Truly look into that first death, Truly gets sucked into the whirlwind of events centered around Texas’s Smuggler’s Canyon area.

Q:  Are Smuggler’s Canyon and the small town of Palo Duro real?

A:  They don’t appear on any maps, but they’re not far from real.  Smuggler’s Canyon was largely based on a place in West Texas called Hueco Tanks, as well as on other rock art sites I’ve visited in the west.  Palo Duro is a fictionalized version of Fort Hancock, Texas, a tiny border town.  The other locations, in and around El Paso, Victorio Peak in New Mexico, and in Juárez, Mexico, are all absolutely real, and pretty much as they’re described in the novel.

Q:  Sounds like you did a lot of research for the book.

A:  I did.  I made several trips into Texas and eastern New Mexico.  I went across the border into Old Mexico in a couple of different places.  I went onto the White Sands Missile Range.  I’ve lived around Washington DC and studied up extensively on the CIA’s Langley campus and on their psychic research programs.  It’s not a history text or a travelogue, but I enjoy reading—and writing—books that take readers into worlds they don’t already know, but that are real enough that the people who are part of that world will recognize it.  The supernatural aspects of the novel get pretty otherworldly, with an entirely new creation myth being explored, among other things, so I think a solidly realistic background is necessary to ground the readers before we get into that.