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All Of It with Alison Stewart
S.A. Cosby's New Thriller 'King of Ashes'
00:26:15
Writer S.A. Cosby discusses his latest thriller, King of Ashes.
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- [00:00]
Tiffany Hansen
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name youe Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. Writer S.A. cosby is the master of the Southern noir and his latest novel. Well, the heat doesn't just come from the Virginia setting or the propulsive plot. It also comes from the flames of a crematory. That crematory is owned by the Carruthers family. The eldest sibling, Roman Carruthers, has fled their small town of Jefferson Run, Virginia. He's become a wealthy and successful financial advisor to C List celebrities and shady characters in Atlanta. Roman's sister Nevaeh has been left at home to help their dad with the crematory. Their youngest brother, Dante is aimless. He's got a drug problem. That addiction causes Dante to become indebted to a dangerous local gang. When Roman gets a call that his father has been in a car accident and is in a coma in the hospital, he heads home to Jefferson Run. There he learns that his dad was targeted as a warning from the gang and. And now he has to figure out how to save Dante, save the rest of the family from gangsters who are hell bent on getting their money or else. The novel is titled King of Ashes. It's out now. SA Cosby will be speaking tonight at the Upper west side Barnes and Noble. But first, he joins us in studio. Hello.
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S.A. Cosby
Hi. Thank you for having me.
- [01:50]
Tiffany Hansen
Okay. I have the first question is going to be very pedantic and it's going to be about crematory. Crematorium. Did you dig into the lexicon on that? Because we had quite a discussion out here before you came in.
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S.A. Cosby
Yeah. My research did include some of what the plurality of that is. So I think whatever you pick is.
- [02:10]
Tiffany Hansen
Fine at this point. Right. I think people know what we're talking about. Exactly. Where did you first get the idea to set this book? Not. It's obviously not set in there only. Right. There's all sorts of locations, small towns, Atlanta. But this idea of being in sort of occupying space and time in a crematorium.
- [02:33]
S.A. Cosby
Well, I always liked the idea of fire as a metaphor for change, change, transformation, for destruction. But also I wanted to set it in a business that, for lack of a better word, was narratively advantageous Because a crematory for a crime novel is a really good setting. It's a really, I think, easy and complete way to get rid of bodies. So that was sort of the idea both thematically and just sort of technically. And then a family business is always, I think, really ripe for interesting stories.
- [03:02]
Tiffany Hansen
Well, as Hollywood has shown us. Right. That is a definite. Listeners, do you have a question for SA Cosby? Question about his books or writing thrillers in particular? You can call us, you can text us your chance to talk to the writer himself. 212-433-969-2212, WNYC. I'm wondering if you're one of those authors that when you get kind of the spark of an idea. Well, first of all, are you always sort of listening, thinking, listening in on conversations and thinking, oh, that might be good, that might be good?
- [03:38]
S.A. Cosby
Yeah. I think one of the prerequisites for being a good writer is actually being a little nosy, being a little able to eavesdrop on people's conversations. Because I love the actual rhythm of conversations. I like to translate that to my dialogue so that the, the dialogue in the book sounds the way people actually talk. So I'm always listening and sort of taking things down mentally. But also I'm always looking for ideas as well. Whether it's in the news, whether it's a book. I read a post on social media. Those things are always sort of percolating under the surface.
- [04:09]
Tiffany Hansen
How do you decide what might be a good idea today, but actually maybe wouldn't be such a great book?
- [04:17]
S.A. Cosby
I always write myself a little synopsis when I have an idea and if the synopsis is interesting enough that I feel like, oh my God, there's more meat on the bone, so to speak, then that'll become a book. Some things I write a synopsis for. It's like, oh, I think that'll be better as a short story that has more of a sort of finite punch to it as opposed to the sort of way a novel can sort of spread and become sort of a tapestry. So I have to find it interesting myself. And then once I find it interesting, usually I can, I think it can make it out into a novel length.
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Tiffany Hansen
Well, I mean, that's the thing, right? If you're not interested, none of the rest of us are gonna be interested.
- [04:50]
S.A. Cosby
Exactly, exactly. I tell stories that I would love to read myself. So that's why I write em.
- [04:56]
Tiffany Hansen
You know, I was thinking about this just in terms of the character names too, which are just, they're such great names. Do you have to love the name in order to continue with the character as well? I mean, if you don't fall in love with that person, I mean, look, not everybody's going to be worthy of our love, but you know what I mean, right? From a writer's perspective, if you don't fall in love with them and their journey, and that may start with their.
- [05:24]
S.A. Cosby
Name, it definitely does. The names are very important, as are the titles of my book. I have a superstition that I can't start writing a book, no matter what the idea is, until I come up with a good title. I have to have the title in place first, and then I have to write a story that earns that good title. And same thing with the names of the characters. Names of the characters always mean something. Whether it's Roman in King of Ashes, who is sort of like the Roman Empire, he sort of thinks of himself as this rarefied protector, but really it's sort of falling apart on the inside, like the last days of the Roman Empire. Nevaeh Heaven backwards. She's sort of stuck in this purgatory, so to speak. And then with Dante, of course, that's a, you know, a reference to Dante's Inferno, because Dante is the one that drags his family down to hell in this story.
- [06:06]
Tiffany Hansen
Nevaeh, you said it very fast there. But for listeners, Nevaeh Heaven backwards basically means Nevaeh is heaven. The word spelled backward also. Great name. All right, so let's just talk about. Let's start by talking about this town where it is set. Jefferson Run, Virginia. How would you describe that town?
- [06:26]
S.A. Cosby
I would say Jefferson Run is a town that in many ways, their best days are behind them. It's a form of manufacturing center. And a lot of towns in the south, in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, were manufacturing towns. But in the 70s, you know, pulled up stakes. Places where textile factories closed, where manufacturing, metal and iron factories closed. And so Jefferson Run is a town just like that. And so in that space where when manufacturing moves out, sort of crime comes in, you know, nature abhors a vacuum, and so something has to fill it. And a lot of what goes on in Jefferson Run goes on because of the fact that it has been sort of forgotten and lost. And so the manufacturing, the economic stability of the town is gone. And so something else had to come in and replace it.
- [07:11]
Tiffany Hansen
What about that place acts on the characters or makes them act in a certain way? Because I do think sometimes place is its own character.
- [07:23]
S.A. Cosby
Yes, definitely. The town and its sort of timber affects the characters in different ways. For Roman, it's a place that he wanted to escape, a place he wanted to get away from. And for Nevaeh, it's a place that she feels she can't get away from, that she sort of accepted her fate. For Dante, it's the place that he wants to try to forget. He doesn't want to leave, but he doesn't want to remember all the harsh things that have happened there. And so that town really weighs on either and sort of affects the decisions they make, which also affects the plot.
- [07:52]
Tiffany Hansen
We have a text here. If you are taking texts, tell him a fan is very disappointed to be out of town because they can't be near the Upper west side Barnes and Noble. And I would have come out for it. But the question is, have you ever considered a story in a different genre?
- [08:10]
S.A. Cosby
Oh, yeah, definitely. When I first started writing, I wanted to be a horror novelist. My first books that I read that I felt like were grown up books were novels by Stephen King and Clive Barker and Richard Matheson, so on and so forth. And so I sort of fell into crime fiction. Where I come from, I come from a very small town. And so a lot of times I always thought crime fiction wouldn't be a viable genre for me because in my hometown, like I say, it's never a whodunit. Everybody knows who did it. It's like, can we prove it? But I found that there were stories to be told within that sort of space and in sort of the larger Southern rural crime fiction space as a whole. But I still love multiple genres, and I'd love to write stories in different genres eventually.
- [08:49]
Tiffany Hansen
We were talking about romance novels earlier this hour. The essay Cosby Romance Novels to a story near you.
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S.A. Cosby
A little bit of romance in this book. So that might be.
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Tiffany Hansen
I'll take it. I'll take it. All right. And we are taking your calls for SA Cosby. Do you have a question about the process of writing what makes a good thriller writer? What makes a good thriller period? Do you have questions for the author? You can call us. You can text us at 212-433-9692. Just to get back to that hometown. New York is full of a lot of people who left their hometown. Of course, there are a lot of New Yorkers for whom this is a hometown and they end up leaving here and taking pieces of this place with them. But I think that notion of taking our hometown with us in bits and pieces for good or Bad is something that a lot of people experience. And I'm wondering what is interesting to you about that in terms of how it shapes a person?
- [09:51]
S.A. Cosby
I think where you are raised, where you grew up, and what do you do when you leave that place? And like you said, the pieces you take with you, I think it's very fascinating how you're able to sort of compartmentalize those pieces in your new place. Whether you come from a small town, you move to a city, what are the things that you learn in the small town that you can use in the city, and what are the things you have to let go and what are the things you have to sort of move on from? What are some of the things that maybe you're ashamed of? Is it your accent? Is it your clothes? Is it the type of food you eat? And do you sort of embrace that and meld that with your new home, or do you sort of hide that away? And all of that is telling a story about who you are as a character and who you are as a person?
- [10:29]
Tiffany Hansen
Well, let's talk about that then, in reference to your character, Roman, because he sort of falls in the camp of wanting to leave his past behind. How did his hometown shape him?
- [10:42]
S.A. Cosby
I think it made him someone who is incredibly ambitious, someone who has a certain type of moral flexibility. I think, for the job that he's done and the world that he finds himself in, I think he feels like, well, there are rules that are meant to be bent, and there are rules that can be broken, because the only rule is that you win. And he's a very ambitious character. I think that comes from coming from a town, a small town that was economically depressed, a town that was dangerous. And so I think for Roman, he sort of created the fantasy life that he always wanted when he was a little boy.
- [11:14]
Tiffany Hansen
Do you feel like you. You're driving around Atlanta? Let's pretend. Do you feel like you could, like, find him there? Do you look for him?
- [11:24]
S.A. Cosby
I definitely could. I definitely could. I think there's a certain type of character, a certain type of person who goes to, like, in Atlanta, a New York City and Los Angeles, and who reinvents themselves in a new way in a way that is in many ways the hyper, realized version of themselves. And I think you definitely can find people like that. You could definitely find people who come from a small town, and I think you could definitely talk to them for a few minutes and find themselves dropping right back into that cadence, because you never leave it all behind.
- [11:51]
Tiffany Hansen
We are talking with author S.A. cosby about his new book. The title of the new book is King of Ashes. We're going to continue this conversation. We're inviting you to join us in that 212-433-9692. And I want to little bit more about this hometown idea, but we're going to take a quick break. You're listening to all of it here on wnyc. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Allison Stewart. Don't go anywhere. This is all of it. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. And we are talking with SA Cosby about his new book, King of Ashes. It's out now. And the author himself is talking at the Upper Westside Barnes and Noble and and is here with us in studio. So I'm curious when we talk, we were talking before the break a little bit about this nature of home and how we take home with us. It's a powerful motivator. There are other powerful motivators that you explore in this book. Guilt money. Do you think about those sort of meta influences on your characters, or is it just a case of you follow these people around for a while and then those sort of themes kind of float to the top?
- [13:25]
S.A. Cosby
No, I think there are definitely themes with this book that I wanted to explore. I definitely wanted to talk about, as I call it in the book, the acidity of money, the way money can sort of burn through relationships, burn through connections, the way money burns through us. So I definitely wanted to talk about sort of the class aspect of that. There's a scene in the book where Roman talks about when you go in a room with rich people, they look at you like a show horse. They check your teeth and your feet. And that's something I've experienced. And as my career has gone on, I've been in rooms with people who were very wealthy. And you can sort of feel that sort of even subconscious judgment. And as a person who came from meager means, someone who grew up in poverty, I can definitely feel it. I'm aware of it. And so I think it's interesting to talk about it and how we navigate it. But also the themes of guilt are huge in the book, and not just guilt for something major, but for the minor parts, the things that we have as family members, this sort of interconnectivity that sometimes we have to apologize for or sometimes we don't know we have to apologize for. Like in the book, you know, the sister, Nevaeh, she feels very abandoned by Roman. Roman left. He went to college and created a new life for him in another city, and he left her to take care of both his father and their little brother. And so that animosity is sort of couched with this sort of also relief that he's finally home. And so those. And then, of course, the both of them, I think, are worried about Dante. So there's this sort of really, really fascinating sort of spiderweb of connections and feelings. But at the core of it, I think, for these three characters is sort of this love that they have for each other.
- [14:58]
Tiffany Hansen
Sean, let's bring Shane from Brooklyn into the conversation. Hi, Shane.
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Shane
Hi. Hello.
- [15:05]
S.A. Cosby
Hi.
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Shane
Thank you for having me on. Essay. I'm a huge fan of your work. I've read a lot of your past works. All Sinners Bleed. So many. So many different ones, and they all end really well. And I'm somehow left wanting to know what happens to some of those characters, what happens to Montague, what happens to some of these other guys. And I was curious if you've ever considered writing a sequel to any of your previous books, or do you feel like you're just always one and done with these things? Because they're great.
- [15:39]
S.A. Cosby
Oh, thank you so much for that, and thank you for the call. I used to say no. I used to think I just wanted to write things as what I like to call a closed loop. But there's two books that have really connected with people that make me think maybe I'll do more in that world or that universe. The first one is all the Sinners Bleed. A lot of people love the main character, Titus Crown. A lot of people would like for him to come back. I get a lot of fans who say he's their literary boyfriend, which I think is always hilarious. So maybe we'll see Titus come back, and I have to think of a way to bring him back. And then I'm hoping maybe one day to write a very soft prequel to Blacktop Wasteland and talk about that main character's father. And for those listening, the main character of Blacktop Wasteland is a man named Beauregard Bug Montage, Another great name. Thank you. So maybe see what happened to his dad and what was his dad's life like before he was a father. So, yeah, I definitely have interest in returning to those worlds.
- [16:32]
Tiffany Hansen
Definitely sounds better when you say Titus Crane than when I say it. Say it. Will you say it again?
- [16:38]
S.A. Cosby
Titus Crown.
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Tiffany Hansen
Oh, Crown. Yeah. Sorry. Thank you. Yes. I love it. All right. We have a text that relates to character names. You're gonna like this. I think my grandfather from Smithfield, Virginia, Used to say, if you give a dog a bad name, you might as well kill him. In other words, give your character a good name, I think is the advice there. Right. All right, let's. Let's bring in somebody else into the conversation to get me out of that hole. Jesse in Fairfield, Connecticut. Hi, Jesse.
- [17:08]
Shane
It's funny. I finished this book ten minutes ago.
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S.A. Cosby
Oh, wow.
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Tiffany Hansen
No spoilers. No spoilers.
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Shane
Got in the car and turned on the radio listening to this conversation. So what one. This book reminds me of the Godfather. I don't want to go too much into it, but the relationships among the siblings, the. You know, Roman is the sort of strong car. The Michael character, it's about legitimacy and money and how he moves this conversation over there and all of the other sort of mayhem that goes on behind. The Godfather is very similar in this book.
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S.A. Cosby
Yeah, definitely. And I've been very open that the Godfather was a big influence on this work. I think a writer, a crime writer has four or five different types of novels that he's gonna write at least, or she's gonna write at least once in her life. You're probably gonna do a heist novel. You're gonna do a true mystery. You're gonna do a revenge novel. And I thought the crime epic is one of those novels too, and I wanted to do a crime epic. And so the Godfather and the shifting loyalties and the family dynamics and also the idea of legitimacy versus being nefarious, I think was a really strong motivator for the story and the idea of how you want to find legitimacy and who decides what legitimate means and what it is. And so that definitely was a big influence.
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Tiffany Hansen
Did you ever see There's a series out. I don't know which streamer it's on, but it's about the making of. Did you watch that?
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S.A. Cosby
An offer you can't refuse.
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Tiffany Hansen
Yeah, that's it. So there's a great. There's a great pitch that the character who plays Mario Puzo in there makes about the book to be making it into a movie. And he says something to the effect of, like, it's evil versus evil. It's fun. It's. It's not about the mob. It's about family. Do you think that someone. Oh, and by the way, I'm really bad about doing this. Thank you, Jesse, for the call. Do you think that there's a notion here that someone like Jesse will, who just finished the book, will come away and go, that was really a book about family?
- [19:25]
S.A. Cosby
Oh, yeah, definitely. I think, you know, for me, Crime fiction is a wonderful prism to talk about things that are important, including the bonds of family, the relationships of siblings, talk about poverty, race, masculinity, tragic and toxic masculinity. For me, crime fiction is the gospel of the dispossessed. And so I use it as a way to talk about things that are important to me. You know, this book has a lot of mayhem and murder and violence and action, but at the core of it, it's about family. It's about the relationships. It's about the way we view each other in our families, the roles that we're given or the roles that we give others. And so that's the main core thing that I think you'll take from it. But it's wrapped in, hopefully, an exciting and thrilling story that sort of makes you sort of fall in love with these characters and be concerned about them.
- [20:12]
Tiffany Hansen
You mentioned the violence part of this. I mean, it is a thriller. People, you know, we're gonna get a little violence in here, but it gets pretty dark even for you.
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S.A. Cosby
Yeah.
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Tiffany Hansen
How do you decide how far to push things? What does the scene tell you that it requires when you're writing it?
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S.A. Cosby
I think if you're writing a story like this, you have to make the reader understand that everybody's in peril, because it won't work. This sort of tragic story, this sort of interconnected crime story won't work if the reader doesn't believe everybody is on the line, that everybody is in danger. And so for me, for this particular, I had to push it and make it a little bit more dark, a little bit more intense, because I wanted you to really believe, oh, this. Anybody could get taken out at any time. And that creates a sense of dread that makes you be concerned about these characters and makes you sort of become a part of their team.
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Tiffany Hansen
How does violence move a story forward?
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S.A. Cosby
I think violence can be very expository, whether the person meting out the violence and how they react, but also the person that's receiving it and how they react to it and how they deal with it. For me, violence doesn't have to be four or five pages. I think it's easy, and I think it's more effective to just say what happens, put it out on the page, and then you can move on to the next thing. But it's the way those characters react to both, again, the meting out and the accepting of the violence on the person that's the victim and the person that's the aggressor. I think it can tell you a lot about a character and how strong a character is or how weak a character is and how they deal with physical pain and how they're able to translate that to either, you know, emotional courage or does it make them fall apart? And so for me, violence is very telling on the character and who that person is.
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Tiffany Hansen
So we're getting a couple of texts here about the audiobook version. Everyone is in love with the person who's reading your audio. So tell us about who that is.
- [22:14]
S.A. Cosby
Yeah, that is Adam Lazar White. He's an actor, director, producer. He does all my audiobooks. He started with Blacktop Wasteland, and he's done them all up to and including King of Ashes. And I like to say Adam's just an amazing performer. He has an incredible sort of sense of what my stories are about and how to interpret them. And for me, the moment I heard him when he auditioned to be for Blacktail Wasteland, I was like, that's Beauregard. That's Bug. That's how he sounds in my head. And then he's done it with every book since that he's able to find the voice of the characters I create. And I couldn't be happier to have him narrating my work.
- [22:52]
Tiffany Hansen
You never thought about doing it yourself?
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S.A. Cosby
People ask me that sometimes. I've had people.
- [22:57]
Tiffany Hansen
I think it's because you have a great voice.
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S.A. Cosby
Yeah, people compliment me, my voice. But I think, as Clint Eastwood said, a man got to know his limitations.
- [23:06]
Tiffany Hansen
Okay, so just to get back to this notion of violence really quick, I wonder where's the line, though? Because at some point, it might cause your readers to give up on a character, give up on a storyline, to give up on someone's redemptive value. Where is that line?
- [23:30]
S.A. Cosby
I think the line is wherever the character feels that they've sacrificed their morals, wherever that character feels like they've done an unforgivable act. You know, there's a line in the book where Roman thinks about this. He thinks about, you know, there aren't really any lines. There are just choices. You know, there aren't any lines to cross. They're just choices that you're gonna make. And for me, the choice is necessitated around, am I creating a situation and relating a situation that is going to test this character and push them up to the line of their morality? Because if I feel like I'm pushing them over it, then I feel like I'm doing them an ill service as a writer. With Roman, though, the character. What was interesting with that was his own personal morality. Kept shifting. So me pushing the line as a character, he would just keep moving it. And then I realized at some point, he is becoming the thing that he's fighting, which I thought was fascinating. And how far can you justify that to yourself? Because he keeps telling himself, I'm doing this for my family. And that's a noble cause. That's a righteous cause. But, you know, do the ends really justify the means?
- [24:37]
Tiffany Hansen
How much do you enjoy making your characters squirm and making you should, like, twirl your hands when you give that evil laugh, make your character squirm. Squirm, and make your readers squirm.
- [24:53]
S.A. Cosby
I don't really wanna make my characters squirm, but I do wanna test them. I do wanna see how much they can take. And there are characters that I have that I've created where they can't take a lot at all and they fold rather quickly. And then there are other characters that end up being the protagonists who can take as much as I'm willing to dish out. But I never wanted to be gratuitous. I never wanted to feel that. I'm just doing it to put them through pain. The pain, the choices, the, you know, the things they face are the test to see how they can handle it as a character. Because the part of the story is, I don't want them to be the same at the end of the book as they were in the beginning of the book. And so for me, there is a line, there is a way that I want to put them through that. Well, as far as the readers, yeah, I want to make readers squirm. If a reader tells me this book made me cry, I had to close it. I had to walk away from it, but I couldn't leave it alone. That's a win. That's a win for me. So a win is a win.
- [25:43]
Tiffany Hansen
On that note, that's a good place to end. All right, the name of the new book is King of Ashes. It's out now. The author is S.A. cosby. We've been talking with him about the book, and you're going to be at the Upper west side Barnes and Noble tonight, and you're going to read from the book.
- [25:59]
S.A. Cosby
I don't know if I'm doing reading, but we'll do some talking and I'll tell some stories.
- [26:02]
Tiffany Hansen
I like it.
- [26:03]
S.A. Cosby
It'll be interesting.
- [26:04]
Tiffany Hansen
I like it. All right, the book is out now. You can show up at the Upper west side Barnes and Noble if you didn't get your question in. SA Cosby, thanks for your time. Thank you for having me and hope you'll come back tomorrow because Alison will be back. It's Juneteenth and she's having a conversation with Jonathan Ig about his new book, King A Life, the first comprehensive biography of the civil rights leader in 30 years. I'm Tiffany Hansen. Thanks so much for listening and we'll be back here tomorrow with Alison.
- [26:36]
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