My pitch begins: <<Dear ___, In WITNESS TREE, an upmarket suspense-thriller, complete at 87,000 words, a newly sober ex-con is trapped at the center of a white supremacist plot when he is the only witness to an execution, turning his hopes for a new life into a fight for survival.>>
Is that what the book is about? Yes, and no.
In many ways, I think I’ve written the anti-pitch novel. Witness Tree is set in Oregon’s wine country, the Willamette Valley, where I have spent 36 years on and off.
As I stare through the words on the page, at what I hope someone out there is actually reading, I imagine an in-person pitch that quickly runs off the rails (like John Mulaney’s imagined pitch for Back to the Future).
“So,” says my imagined agent/editor, “Oregon, wine country…it’s about wine and wine-making…?”
“No.”
“Is it a kind of legacy, power dynamic, of who will get control of a vast, vineyard empire…sort of Yellowstone meets Succession?”
“No.”
“The protagonist is struggling through addiction, so it’s a kind of a slumming tour with lots of gin-soaked, hard-boiled wisdom?”
“No. He’s trying to stay sober. And out of jail. To rebuild his life.”
“Ah, but he’s forced into one last job that goes awry…”
“No.”
“But he has some special skills from his time in prison, something he can draw on…”
“Not really. A bit?”
“Then what is it?!“
It portrays everyday people and the whiplash of living in precarity amidst plenty, revealing the slug in the heart of the rose that quietly, relentlessly fouls and devours it. I wanted to depict the self-seeking contradictions that are baked into authoritarianism, and how its foundation contains the seeds of its destruction.
“Ah, so a political tirade!”
“No.” It’s not a screed against Oregon. Far from it. Even if reactionaries have found fertile ground in rural Oregon. My protagonist wants desperately to live a “normal” life, to get back all that he’s lost to prison and drugs, and he has dreamed for eight years of doing just that when he finally gets “home.” But he’s forced into action.
I wanted conflicted people buffeted by lack of choices who grabbed at a chance, but who will be screwed as badly, or worse, than they already are. They have invited the vampire in. And I wanted to explore how you maintain friendships within that dynamic. Indeed, can you maintain friendships? I didn’t want to write a sympathetic ode to white supremacists either.
The antagonists are rotten people who’d like to jump over the revolution part and just have the reign of terror, much as my protagonist would like to jump over and dismiss the life he led prior to getting sober. I’ve been inspired by Attica Locke, S.A. Cosby, Charles Dodd White, Henry Wise and others.
As I slogged through Witness Tree rewrites, I went back to many of their books seeking some reassurance that I was on the right track. The novel must deliver a story, but a great part of its beauty is its capaciousness, its scope. Each of the authors listed above, as well as a great many more, deliver the story, and they situate it within a larger context that resonates through story.
I titled this post “It’s the Hope that Kills You,” but I’m far from dead yet.
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James McCrone writes upmarket thrillers that raise questions about the nature of power, the choices we make and the lessons we don’t learn.
He is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network , and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. Bastard Verdict, his fourth novel, is about a conspiracy surrounding a second Scottish Independence referendum. His current novel is Witness Tree, where a newly sober ex-con is trapped at the center of a white supremacist plot when he is the only witness to an execution, turning his hopes for a new life into a fight for survival. Set in Oregon’s wine country, it’s a (pinot) noir tale of murder and corruption.
All books are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon. eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.
He’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, and he’s the current president of the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime. He lives in Philadelphia. James has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle.
For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And follow this blog!
You can also keep up with James and his work on social media:
Bluesky: @jmccrone.bsky.social
Facebook: James McCrone author (@FaithlessElector)
and Instagram/Threads “@james.mccrone”
