Steven Horn says the key to a good fiction thriller is exploring a real-life issue with a lot of tension. Horn is the author behind the award-winning Sam Dawson Mystery series, and just published the sixth part, “Lost & Found Cafe.” Horn is a wildlife biologist by training and spent years working in conservation and agriculture in Colorado and Wyoming before publishing his stories. He spoke with Wyoming Public Media Program Director Grady Kirkpatrick about his latest book.
Editor’s Note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Grady Kirkpatrick: Welcome Mr. Horn. I wanted to first ask you a little bit about your background. You're originally from Iowa, correct?
Steven Horn: That's true. Eastern Iowa. But [I] left home a long time ago.
GK: What initially inspired you to write?
SH: Well, I've always written. I've enjoyed writing even clear back in high school, but I never thought about publishing. I just enjoyed writing.
I had a number of things that I used to write on a regular basis when I was dean here [University of Wyoming]. College of Agriculture publications that people seemed to enjoy, where you would blend fact and story to get people's attention about issues.
After I retired, I decided I might want to try to publish something. So I've been writing since I retired in 2009.
GK: How did the idea for the Sam Dawson Mysteries come about?
SH: I had a number of ideas about writing mysteries, and I needed a Wyoming protagonist that would fit the bill, and came up with the name Sam Dawson.
GK: Can you describe his character?
SH: Sam is an interesting guy. He has a pathological curiosity. I mean, he just has to get to the bottom of issues, has to find out the answer to a mystery, and always is interested in ensuring that the antagonist in the book gets their due just rewards.
GK: And is he a photographer?
SH: He is a photographer. He publishes tabletop or coffee table type books, large format color, some black and white, but mostly color. And he gained some notoriety. His earlier publications were, I think, very successful. He photographs lost and abandoned cemeteries, which we have many in the state of Wyoming.
He then started doing this in other states. He's done it in Iowa and Minnesota and Nebraska, and travels around photographing cemeteries.
GK: Give us just a brief synopsis of the sixth book now in the series, “Lost & Found Cafe.”
SH: In this book, Sam and his daughter are out for a father-daughter outing. They find themselves embroiled, I guess is the word, in a mystery where there's murder, lots of intrigue, all the while isolated in a very rural, very isolated cafe in eastern Wyoming.
The area that they find themselves isolated in, which is right on the state line, it's a little town called Van Tassel in Niobrara County. It has the privilege of being the least populated town, in the least populated county, in the least populated state in the nation. I chose that for a reason in this book because one of the main characters is on the run and has been for 13 years and needed to be in an area where no one could find him.
GK: What are some of the elements in your writing that propels the story?
SH: Writing mysteries, and in one of the books, the one that I published before this, “Yesterday Calling,” was a mystery thriller. I think that people when they read mysteries or thrillers need to have some break in the tension.
My plots have always been formulated so that it builds tension at the end of either a scene break or a chapter. Then you pick up on it again a few moments later when you turn the page. That's what I attempt to do in my writing, is to get the reader to turn the page.
In order to keep the reader interested, it has to be entertaining and that's what the purpose of writing novels is.
GK: Sure.
SH: It's to entertain and I like to blend a lot of fact with my fiction and address issues that need to be told about, oftentimes real issues. If you can do that and tell a story, and keep the reader interested, you find that they learn more and they become more sensitized. They become sympathetic, empathetic with characters and will stick with the story better.
GK: Can we look forward to another novel in the Sam Dawson Mystery series? I know you've come off a number of book signings that have taken up most of your summer.
SH: I get that question a lot. You just get one out and the first question out of a fan's mouth is, ‘When's the next one coming out?’ Well, I'm gathering information now. I'll continue to write, but at perhaps a slower pace.
