How this New York Times-acclaimed B.C. writer became a crime novelist

Kelowna, B.C., writer Tyrell Johnson's second novel,The Lost Kings, published last summer, has beennamed by New York Times journalist Sarah Weinman as one of the best crime novels of 2022.

The Lost Kings is a psychological thrillerwith "a killer twist," according to Johnson's website,about 12-year-old Jeanie King, who is forced to confront the darkest moment in her childhood her father comes home covered in blood and disappears the day after.

The 336-page novel has received positive reviews on sites such as Amazon (4.1 out of five) and Goodreads (3.77 out of five).

Johnson, 29, grew up in Bellingham, Wash., and obtained amaster of fine arts at the University of California at Riverside. He published his first novel, The Wolves of Winter, in 2018.

Johnson spoke to host Chris Walker on CBC's Daybreak South about his New York Times review,his style and methodof writing and his next steps.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

What's your last year been like?

It's been pretty fun. It's been emails back and forth with my agents, and luckily we got this book sold, and then it has been emails back and forth with my editor. Luckily, we saw some critical success with this one.

The critical success has come through the New York Times mainly. I wonder if you could just walk me through how that happened and what that has done to your life.

I don't know all of how it happened because I'm kind of in the dark on how my publisher gets it out to all of these people, but whatever they did, they got it in front of the right person at the right time and luckily, that person enjoyed it.

Since then, it's been featured three times in the New York Times, which is pretty wild and fun to my life it changes how the book sells. It changes the reception I get from the book. Itchanges what my next book deals look like, and it puts a smile on my face.

You published an essay last year about how you accidentally wrote a thriller. Can you explain what you meant by that?

When I set out to write something, I'm just writing the characters. I'm writing the story.I'm not interested as much in what genre they're going to place it in. I don't really care about what specific audience I'm trying to reach. I'm just trying to tell the best story I can with the best characters that I can.

This is always surprising to me because I don't tend to read a ton of thrillers. I've got nothing against the genre. There's thrillers that I really love, but it's not my go-to genre.

But somehow, I found myself the author within the genre. I think it's the way that I tell stories. It's the pace that I set, and I like things to happen. Ilike movement.

What's the way you tell stories?

Specifically for thrillers, I had a professor in college that said stories are questioning machines, and I think that's conducive to making thrillers as you read, you should be having more and more questions, even if they are small questions of, like, what's the character going to do next, or big questions like what happened.

I try to keep those questions rolling and keep them buzzing in your head so that you want to keep reading..

As you say, there are little questions throughout a book, but books often have one big question. What's the one big question?

In The Lost Kings, Jeanie King, the main character, is trying to come to terms with the tragedy of her past. In that tragedy, her dad and brother disappeared on the same night, and so that's the big question: what happened?

Where do you get the inspiration for the stories?

That's always a question. I wish I had a really cool answer to it, but it's more or less what you said: It's life. It's the books that I'm reading. It's the shows that I'm watching.It's the conversations I'm having.

You always have to be careful around me because you never know what I'm going to use in a book. It's everything that comes together, and what I want to be reading sometimes plays into that. And if I can't find a book that I want to read, well, I'll go write that book instead.

This book is written from a woman's perspective. You told me an interesting story about how that happened.

Before I had anything published, I wrote mainly from a male perspective because I'm a male, and I thought my voice would lend to that better.

But my wife would always read my work she's kind of my first reader. She said that her favourite characters and everything I'd written so far wereall the strong female characters. She said, "Why don't you write a book from a female perspective?"

That's what I did with my first book, The Wolves of Winter, and that's what I did with this one. So far, she's been proved correct.

How much research goes into a book like this?

I'm the type of author that tries to avoid research because I just like to write so much. Sometimes I don't want to get bogged down in too much research, especially while I'm writing. So sometimes, I'll leave notes and come back to it later.

But I spent a lot of time researching online, looking at maps and things like that. And for this one,specifically, I always try to use other people's knowledge when I can. I make other people who are experts in the field read it. I knew a psychologist that I had read this one because she's dealing with a lot of tragedy in the novel. The psychologist was able to speak into that and make sure I had my vocab right.

You have three kids at home. Where do you find the time to write anything, let alone a book?

I've got a very supportive wife she does all the hard work when I have to go and write, and she takes the kids. But I'm OK with distraction I can be pretty good with the kids coming in.

Sometimes that's a little brain break, and I can get back to the work and start fresh there as well.

Have you started your next one?

I'm the type of writer who's always working on something, and I tend to be a pretty quick writer. I have a draft of the next one, and I'm working on another one. I'm going back and forth with my agent on the next steps and what we want to do with it.

Can you give us a hint?

I'll just say it's along the same lines as the books I've had I care about character, and I care about movement, and so they are always like that in my books.