About Rick Neumayer

Frequently Asked Questions

Cn you tell us a little about you and what you write?

I started trying to write fiction seriously soon after graduating from college. I wrote part-time at night, on weekends, and during the summers when I was teaching. One year before my daughter was born, I taught half-time while trying to write my first novel. I failed. Now I am a full-time writer and have been since 2004, when I retired after thirty years of teaching.

Are you writing stories or concentrating on novels?

I haven’t written a short story in over five years. But I’ve always created them sporadically and wouldn’t rule it out. As you can tell from Three Foggy Mornings (2025), I have written a lot of short stories; that collection includes 33, many of which were published in small magazines between 1974 and 2020.

My first book, Journeyman, published in 2020, is about an epic road trip taken by two guys from Louisville in the early 1970s. Hotwalker, published in 2021, is the first Jim Guthre, P.I. mystery novel. It’s set in the present at Churchill Downs. The Little Green Men Murders, published 2024, is the second Guthrie mystery and is set in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. A third Guthrie mystery, tentatively titled Murder At The Blue Star Inn, is in the works, along with several other novels.

What’s the difference between writing novels and writing short stories?

Length, obviously. Short stories are impossible to market unless you’re famous. But that also means you don’t have to aim a short story at a wider audience. Freed of this obligation, the short story form offers limitless possibilities of expression. Also, my novels usually grow out of my short stories.

How important is autobiography in your writing?

Fiction writers all use the canvas of their lives and experiences to create characters. It is almost impossible not to do so, at least for me. The chief advantage of writing autobiographically is that I know everything about the character and thus can be very authentic in my portrayal; the chief risk is that I may limit myself unnecessarily to the facts rather than creating something new and different.

My late wife, Corie, believed all art is self-portrait, even her abstract paintings. My fiction is autobiographical, combining real life events with fictive elements for dramatic effect. My story “Climbing Marble Hill,” for example, is a barely fictionalized retelling of my real-life solo protest and arrest at a nearby nuclear power plant.  Journeyman refers to an actual hitchhiking trip I took in 1971. When asked if I really did all that stuff in the book, I answer, “I did some of it, and the rest I made up.” 

What inspired you to write a mystery series?

I’ve loved mysteries all my life and once spent twenty years trying to write one. The great fictional sleuths appear in series, from Sherlock Holmes onward. In the 1970s and 1980s, the classic American P.I. hero began springing up in places other than NY, Chicago, or LA. I loved this development and decided why not in Louisville?

What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing? What do you think makes a good story?

Motivation is number one through 100. No writing can exist without it. I look for voice, a polished prose style, authenticity, and a strong sense of place. There is no story without interesting characterization, obviously, and I prefer plotted fiction to amorphous narratives. Every. Word. Counts. So does every sentence and every paragraph.

Here’s a quote from a creative writing prof that I admire: “I can’t teach you to write, but I can teach you to rewrite.” Two separate skills really, and rewriting is by far the more important. If I like a writer, I will try to read every word he or she has ever written. I hate it when my favorite writers die because they won’t be writing any more books for me to read.

Where do you get your ideas?

I stumble across them, usually. Rarely do I know what I’m going to write when I begin. I have some ideas but until I write the epiphany — I’m a James Joyce disciple — I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m speaking now of short fiction. My longer fiction tends to grow out of my shorter fiction. An exception is my mystery writing, where I start with the final clue and work backwards to the beginning of the story.

Some of the stories in Three Foggy Mornings were inspired by incidents and anecdotes from family, including the centuries-ago experiences of my wife’s ancestors.  Many were inspired by travels to Central America and Europe.  Several grew out of my wife’s long participation in a co-op art gallery, and others were inspired by news and current events.

What is your writing process like? On a typical day, how many hours do you spend writing? What time of the day do you usually write? What is your work schedule like when you are writing? What is the best part of your day?

It varies. I have worked for ten or twelve hours straight, day after day. Nowadays, I write from after breakfast until late afternoon—somewhere between four and six hours. That’s every day, seven days a week. The best part of my day can be the moment when I write something I consider really good.

What is the most difficult part about writing for you? How do you handle writer’s block?

Getting it right is the hardest part, whether in the initial inspiration stage or the rewriting. None of it is easy. Rewriting over and over, making sure there are no clunker sentences, no errors, nothing that belongs there left out—this is the laborious part, but also the glory of it all because once you do get it right you feel wonderful. I seldom have writer’s block anymore, though I did at first. I believe it is usually just self-doubt.

What advice do you have for writers?

The single most important lesson I have learned about writing is to finish what you start. I cannot say I have always done that. Never throw anything away. I tossed my first short story out of embarrassment and have regretted it ever since.

What are the most important books to read?

The ones you enjoy. I’m a firm believer in the pleasure principle. Nobody willingly does stuff that makes them unhappy. Once you develop a love of reading, of course, wise adult guidance can be invaluable.

Who are your favorite writers and why?

I have difficulty picking my favorite anything. Hemingway had a huge effect on my writing because of his style and courage and because he’d been a newspaper reporter, which I was myself as a young man. Mr. Russell, my fourth-grade teacher in Torrance, California, read Don Quixote aloud daily, and I thought it was about the funniest, wisest thing I’d ever heard. Still do in many ways.

Who are the mystery authors you most admire? What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?

I’ve always read mysteries for pleasure. But they have also been my textbooks as a mystery writer. Again, this would be a very long list. But any list would have to include Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Robert B. Parker, Ed McBain, Dick Francis, Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block, John Lutz, Loren Estleman, Peter Corris, James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, James W. Hall, Tony Hillerman, Sue Grafton, Ian Rankin, Jonathan Valin, and Randy Wayne White, to name but a few.

Check out my essay, “How To Write A Page-Turner,” on this site for a detailed discussion of these writers and how they weave their magic.

What is your favorite quote?

“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” —Ernest Hemingway.

How many books have you written, including unpublished and half-finished books?

My short story collection will be out soon, three of my novels have been published, and another half-dozen books are still in progress.

What was the inspiration for Journeyman?

In 1971, I hitchhiked across the country with a friend. I also taught in an inner-city school that year, which helped to inspire the other part of the tale. It was a story I had wanted to write for half a century but didn’t know how—until I did.

What was the inspiration for Hotwalker?

I read a newspaper story about an unsolved murder on the backside at Churchill Downs, and it occurred to me that I’d never heard of that happening before. It remains unsolved today. The fact that the victim was Guatemalan and part of a world that few outsiders ever see or understand made it more intriguing. I had already invented a detective hero. All he needed was a case. I’d never read one set on the backside at the Downs. The idea seemed irresistible.

What was the inspiration for The Little Green Men Murders?

During the pandemic, when we were all afraid of each other’s germs, something wonderfully wacky happened. A 12-foot-tall metal monolith of unknown origin was discovered in a remote desert canyon in Utah by surveyors in helicopters. The thing resembled the monolith in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and it had been hidden there where nobody on the ground could see it for five years. Who does that?

Soon, the monolith disappeared. But over the next two months, over 100 more monoliths turned up all over the world. This had never happened before. Who was doing it and why? Aliens? Practical jokers? Weird artists? I found it amazing, fascinating, and wonderful. I wanted to write a book about it. Then I remembered reading about this Little Green Men Festival in western Kentucky, and thought, whoa!

What is the significance of the Hotwalker title?

The title refers to the job, of course, usually performed by low-paid immigrant workers who are at the bottom of the pecking order in the racing world. When a racehorse returns from its workout or a race, it is untacked and given a bath by the groom. Then a hotwalker leads it around with periodic water stops for a half hour, or until it is thoroughly cooled out. I love the word because I find it both poetic and slightly obscure.

What is the significance of the Journeyman title?

The title refers to the hitchhiking trip out West. It also alludes to the protagonist’s level of life experience (a journeyman in earlier lingo was a tradesman who was no longer an apprentice but not yet a master of his trade.) My late writer friend Joe Peacock suggested the title.

How much is there to do before you dive in and start writing the story? What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?

Before writing the narrative, I try to find out everything I can about the setting, real-life events and people connected to the story, and all manner of technical information. Sometimes, it takes a couple of months, sometimes less. I continually go online to learn more about the subject of the book. I use my library card, and Mr. Google and Mr. Wikipedia are my close friends.

What did your years as an English teacher do to influence your fiction writing?

Great literature is the writer’s role model. If you want to understand something, teach it.

You participated in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Spalding University, and for many years have worked with a small writers’ group.  How have these relationships influenced your work?

My friend and mentor at the University of Louisville, Sena Jeter Naslund, invited me to participate in the program she created at Spalding. Doing so gave me a wonderful opportunity to have my work critiqued by many published writers. Like Sena, each taught me important lessons about my craft. Here are a few examples:  

Briefly, Silas House stressed the profound importance of creating a sense of place, which revolutionized my writing. I learned in a very ingraining fashion that story is rooted in character, but character is rooted in setting. When the reader parachutes into the novel, the writer must provide a road map to understand where they are and what it’s like there. Imagine the difference between a desert setting and a frozen mountain range setting. Or New York City v. Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

Kenny Cook offered many vital lessons, including patient scene texturing (not letting one mode, especially dialogue, dominate). Each scene ideally advances plot, deepens character, provides emotional and physical texture, heightens suspense, and builds the theme. Scenes and chapters all need a mini arc of initiation, complication, and resolution.

Eleanor Morse helped me trust my work. About an early draft of “Snow Day,” she said, “I thought you caught the small things in life beautifully: the narrator’s desire to have only Eulan cut his hair, at the same time not wanting to make the new barber feel bad. His guilt at coming in for a haircut when his hair had gotten too long. I loved the moment where the narrator saw all the Eulans in the mirrors, which felt like story heaped upon story, generation upon generation, the seven great uncles, the snow of 1918, the snow of 1964.

“Having said all that, I think you’re likely to get feedback to the effect that the story doesn’t have a real story arc. But I believe that it does, a very quiet arc, and it’s fully revealed in the last paragraph: ‘In the end, I decided to let it go. Why trouble my uncle? If I’d worried all these years for nothing, whose fault was that? We all have our secrets.’”

I loved Spalding’s brief residency program so much that I took 10 years to complete the four semesters for the degree. Many want an MFA to teach in college. I did not. I just wanted to be a better writer. After each semester, I took time off to practice what I’d been taught. But I still hung around the program for lectures and readings.

I missed the workshop critiques so much that I founded the Grasmere Writers group to continue doing them with Michele Ruby, the late Joe Peacock, and two years after that Bob Sachs. We’ve been at it for nearly 20 years now, and I owe these talented, generous writers a huge debt for their support and feedback on my work.

Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?

As with most either/or questions, both are desirable goals. Fictional world-building can be fun. Faulkner created Yoknapatawpha County for his fictional realm. Everything James Joyce ever wrote is deeply rooted in Ireland. In his Dark Tower series, Stephen King attempts to link characters from many of his fictional worlds.

I want all my fiction to be connected, too, but that is probably too ambitious. However, all three of my novels are set in Kentucky, and in the short stories, several characters and places around Louisville and Kentucky recur. Hopefully, this further convinces readers to willingly suspend their disbelief in the narrative.

What comes first, the plot or the characters?

This is a chicken-or-egg question to me. It can, and has been, either one. If I hear an anecdote or of an incident that I find interesting, I’ll make a note of it and try to explore its fictional potential. Same thing with people. Storytelling is all about details—choosing the right ones and getting them right—and knowing what to leave out, like a sculptor discovering the form concealed inside the marble block.

You have written both mystery and “literary” novels. Do you have a preference? Is one easier to write than the other?

I loved doing both. Neither is easy. Plotting a mystery is generally far more difficult than plotting a literary novel. But plot matters much less in a literary novel, where characterization and figurative language are more valued. Check out my essay, “Mysteries Are Literature,” on this site.

Do you find it more challenging to write the first book in a series or to write the subsequent novels? How do you keep a series fresh?

I think they are equally challenging but in different ways. Of course, if the first book is no good, then you’re doomed. But if it works, then you have a protagonist and other equipment already going for you. You must give the reader “the same thing, only different” in the sequel.

Have you always wanted to be a writer?

I wanted to be a baseball player. My grandfather played ball, and I wanted to be just like him. I did play baseball for many years and remain a big fan of the L.A. Dodgers. I also wanted to be a singer—and was lead singer in local rock’n’roll bands for fifteen years.

There were no writers in my family (although I later learned that my father had some unrequited writing—and singing—ambitions). So, it never occurred to me that I could be a writer any more than I could be an astronaut. But almost everyone in the family was a reader. And as a kid, I adored being read to. I memorized entire books just for the fun of it. One early one was “The Night Before Christmas.” I also memorized Poe’s “The Raven,” which of course is a long poem, not a book.

Where can readers find out more about you and your books?

Right here. I am on Facebook, too, and am always happy to communicate with my readers.

If you had to describe yourself in three words, what would they be?

A writer. That’s three words, but brevity is the soul of wit.