Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Illicit Trade
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://michael-niemann.com/
CITY:
STATE: OR
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://literaryashland.org/?p=1751 * https://inside.sou.edu/intlstudies/isfaculty.html * http://www.dailytidings.com/news/20170205/local-author-to-release-second-book-in-series * http://www.mailtribune.com/news/20170207/from-academia-to-mystery-writing
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born c. 1957; married.
EDUCATION:Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität; University of Denver, Graduate School of International Studies, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Adjunct professor, Southern Oregon University, 2008–. Taught formerly at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
WRITINGS
Short stories have been anthologized in Vengeance, the 2012 Mystery Writers of America anthology edited by Lee Child, and Mysterical-E.
SIDELIGHTS
Michael Niemann is a writer and professor. He grew up in a small town in western Germany before moving to the USA. he attended the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität in Bonn, Germany, and received his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver.
Niemann is an adjunct professor at Southern Oregon University. He taught previously at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. His areas of expertise are global and African issues. Niemann lives in southern Oregon with his wife.
In Illicit Trade, Valentin Vermuelen, an employee of the U.N.’s Office of Internal Oversight Services, is tasked with tracking down the source of forged UN letters used by two undocumented immigrants from Kenya. The two immigrants are found dead in Newark and New York, though Vermuelen’s bosses are concerned less with the cause of their murders than with the source of the documents.
Vermuelen is determined to uncover the whole story, and his investigation takes him East Congo, Darfur, Nairobi, Kenya, Brussels, and Vienna. As Vermuelen’s investigation deepens, he and acquaintance Jackson uncover a massive human trafficking and smuggling operation. A contributor to Publishers Weekly wrote, the “unexpected resourcefulness that Vermeulen and Jackson each display in dealing with dangerous foes in their respective quests is highly entertaining.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, January 2, 2017, review of Illicit Trade, p. 39.
ONLINE
Alison McMahan, http://www.alisonmcmahan.com/(April 7, 2017), review of Illicit Trade.
About
Niemann2For over three decades, Michael Niemann has been interested in the sites where ordinary people’s lives and global processes intersect. He’s drunk umqombothi in a shack outside Cape Town, interviewed Morgan Tsvangirai, former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, when he was still a trade union leader, and seen Eduardo Mondlane’s dorm room at Northwestern University, faithfully recreated at the Museum of the Revolution in Maputo. Along the way, he has helped students of all ages and backgrounds to understand their role in constructing the world in which they live and to take this role seriously.
In addition to teaching, Michael has pursued these interests through writing—fiction and non-fiction.
His thriller Legitimate Business, featuring UN investigator Valentin Vermeulen and originally published in 2014, will be republished by Coffeetown Press on March 1, 2017. The second Valentin Vermeulen thriller, Illicit Trade, will follow suit on March 15, 2017. His short stories have appeared in Vengeance, the 2012 Mystery Writers of America anthology edited by Lee Child, and Mysterical-E. An earlier novel, Lincoln Road, takes the reader on a wild ride through Durban, South Africa. It’s available as a free download. The third Vermeulen thriller, tentatively entitled The Grab, is currently in the revision stage.
On the non-fiction side, he is the author of A Spatial Approach to Regionalism in the Global Economy (2000). His academic articles have appeared in numerous journals and several edited books. Copies are available on this website under the Non-Fiction menu option.
Michael grew up in a small town in western Germany before moving to the United States. He has studied at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität in Bonn, Germany, and the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver where he received his PhD in International Studies. He now live in southern Oregon with his wife Joanna and their dog Stanley.
From academia to mystery writing
Previous
HIDE CAPTION
The cover of the soon-to-be-released mystery novel "Illicit Trade" by Ashland author Michael Niemann, the second in a series featuring a Belgian working for the U.N.
HIDE CAPTION
Michael Niemann, Ashland author and Southern Oregon University adjunct professor, has written a series of mystery novels. [Denise Baratta / Mail Tribune]
HIDE CAPTION
The cover of the soon-to-be-released mystery novel "Illicit Trade" by Ashland author Michael Niemann, the second in a series featuring a Belgian working for the U.N.
HIDE CAPTION
Michael Niemann, Ashland author and Southern Oregon University adjunct professor, has written a series of mystery novels. [Denise Baratta / Mail Tribune]
Next
By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune
Posted Feb 7, 2017 at 2:00 AM
Updated Feb 7, 2017 at 6:44 AM
Southern Oregon University adjunct professor Michael Niemann had written plenty of academic articles before arriving in Ashland in 2008, but growing inside Niemann was a budding desire to tell the kind of stories he first was drawn to as a youngster in Germany.
An expert in political science who wrote a nonfiction book titled, “A Spatial Approach to Regionalisms in the Global Economy,” Niemann enjoyed his career in academia, but longed to try his hand at fiction. He loved to read mysteries and spy novels, particularly those written by John le Carre, and figured decades of experience studying geopolitics could give his work a certain heft.
Shortly after arriving in Ashland, he joined a group of local mystery writers, one of whom later encouraged Niemann to submit one of his short stories for a forthcoming Mystery Writers of America anthology titled “Vengeance.” Niemann knew it was a long shot but threw his hat in the ring anyway. His story, “Africa Always Needs Guns,” was selected to be included in “Vengeance,” running alongside short stories by “Jack Reacher” novelist Lee Child (who doubled as the book’s editor) and fellow suspense heavyweights Karin Slaughter and Michael Connelly.
Now, Niemann, 60, is about to release the second novel in a series that features his “Guns” protagonist, Valentin Vermeulen, an investigator with the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services, titled “Illicit Trade.” It will be released March 1 and is available to pre-order on Amazon. A book release event is tentatively scheduled for March 3 at the Schneider Museum of Art.
Reporter Joe Zavala spoke to Niemann about his writing process, his influences and the genesis of his Vermeulen series. Questions and answers have been edited for content and brevity.
JZ: Describe your writing routine.
MN: There are those occasions where it doesn’t work but my usual routine is to get to my computer at 8:30 and spend the morning writing. And sometimes that doesn’t quite work out because stuff interferes, but I do write every day. Not necessarily on the weekends. I’m German, so that part of me is still German. I think weekends are important.
JZ: How long did it take you to complete your first novel, from beginning to end?
MN: About a year. And then it was the whole marketing and selling part, and that was really complicated. I did not know how that part worked and so as a result I ended up taking the first offer I got, which was a weird publisher in England. ... They didn’t help me. Basically, their strategy was to throw as many ebooks at the wall and see what stuck. And so when I finished the second one, which also took me about a year ... I shopped around again and then I found my current publisher, Coffeetown Press in Seattle, and it was this revelation, working with a small indy publisher. They’re still doing it the right way — reading events, giving copies to journals and review places, things like that. They also said, ‘We don’t like to start a series in the middle, is there a way you can get the rights back to the first one,’ and that turned out to be easy.
JZ: You wrote “A Spatial Approach to Regionalism in a Global Economy” in 2000. From there, what drew you to fiction?
MN: I have always been an avid reader of international suspense and spy novels and things like that. I grew up in Germany during the Cold War so it was in many ways always present. There were British fighter jets doing patrols every day, basically, and riding my bike to school I would go right past a Belgian NATO anti-air base, see the (missiles) actually pointing to the sky. So, I was very interested in studying this, but also I was interested in John Le Carre and that kind of Cold War spy stuff. That’s always been of interest to me. I’ve read it, and I’ve read a lot of it that was overly nationalistic, good guys versus bad guys. So I was intrigued by that and I thought, I could maybe write that.
JZ: How did your nonfiction work prepare you for writing a novel?
MN: The whole nonfiction part for me was knowing the field, knowing and understanding world politics. ... So that sort of gave me the lay of the land. Shifting to fiction, there’s this idea of writing a compelling story, and that’s something that you don’t necessarily learn in academia — maybe that’s a problem of academia. ... So the continuous feedback from the colleagues in my writing group and reading a lot helped me sharpen my storytelling skills.
JZ: Where did the idea for your Vermeulen mystery series come from?
MN: I’ve always wanted to do something that had some international component to it, but I also was leery of the way in which many thrillers were very nationalistic. They’re always about a country — whatever country, you choose your country — in peril, until the protagonist saves the day. And I came across by sheer happenstance the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight, which is a real office. It was created in 1994 mostly in response to pressure from American politicians who are always complaining that the United Nations is wasting money. So their job is to make sure that the money that the member states pay is properly spent, and they have auditors, and they have investigators, and they have all kinds of things. I thought, that would be cool.
JZ: Do you plot your novels from beginning to end, or do you just sort of know where it was going and work it out as you went along?
MN: You’re right, it’s the pantsers and the plotters — the plotters have everything figured out and the pantsers make it up as they go along. I’m sort of in between. I had a scene at the beginning. I had a scene in the middle and I had a scene at the end. The end of this one emerged in a way that I hadn’t foreseen.
JZ: That’s something that, of course, could never happen when you’re writing nonfiction. What is that like to experience as the author, taking a story to a place you didn’t expect it to go?
MN: I think it’s exciting. It’s like you find a door you didn’t know was there, and you walk through that door and suddenly there’s a story there that you hadn’t even thought about yet and it was the character that basically opened that door for you. So that’s always exciting. The old Kurt Vonnegut rule is that every character in a story has to want something, even if it’s only a glass of water.
JZ: You’re kind of making the case for the pantsers.
MN: I think I have a skeleton at best, and maybe that’s even saying too much. And then I just go along and fill it in.
JZ: Who are your stylistic influences?
MN: In terms of character, I’m much more indebted to the complicated characters that John le Carre develops — somewhat ambivalent. And I think in terms of style, it’s probably more like Elmore Leonard and Lee Child. I’ve tried to write more complex sentences like John le Carre and I just can’t pull it off. It got to be too wordy.
JZ: What’s next? Will there be a third Vermeulen book?
MN: I just sent that off to the publisher last Friday, actually. And that one takes place in (Southern Africa), and it’s all about land grabs and ... things like that. And I’m just now really, as of yesterday, doing some thinking, some sketching of some ideas.
— Joe Zavala is a reporter for the Ashland Daily Tidings. Reach him at 541-821-0829 or jzavala@dailytidings.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Zavala99.
An Interview with Michael Niemann
Posted on February 10, 2012 by Ed Battistella
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Michael Niemann grew up in western Germany and studied at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität in Bonn, Germany, and at the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver where he received a PhD in International Studies. A specialist in global and African issues, he is the author of A Spatial Approach to Regionalism in the Global Economy and for many years he taught at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Today he divides his time among writing, teaching, and app development. His short story “Africa Always Needs Guns” will appear in the 2012 Mystery Writers of America Anthology Vengeance edited by Lee Child.
EB: Can you tell us a little about your forthcoming story “Africa Always Needs Guns?” (What’s the story about? How did you place it in the MWA anthology?
MN: The story’s protagonist is Valentin Vermeulen, an investigator for the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services, the internal watchdog department of the UN. He had a pretty nice gig in NYC, but he annoyed some superiors during an investigation and now he’s sent to investigate fraud at UN missions around the world. His job in the story is to determine if weapons are smuggled into Bunia, eastern DR Congo, and how they get there. He’s about to nail the person responsible, but finds that that the bureaucracy and fuzzy lines of authority make it impossible to arrest that person. You’ll have to read it to find out what happens.
When I finished the story, I didn’t know what to do with it. There aren’t many outlets for short stories anymore and even fewer for crime stories. Tim Wohlforth in my writing group thought that the story was perfect for the upcoming MWA competition. The MWA usually commissions ten stories and holds an open competition for ten more for each anthology. I hadn’t even known about it. So, I joined MWA and submitted it.
EB: What was the editorial process like? Did the editors have good suggestions?
MN: The process was easy. The first go-around was mostly fixing the errors that crept in when the file was scanned. I had to submit a paper copy and they scanned it. That always introduces some errors in addition to my own mistakes. About two months later, I got another copyedited version and this one really made some rough spots flow better. I really appreciated those suggestions and adopted almost all. Finally, I got the page proofs in early January. A few new mistakes had crept in, again with the improper transcription of the French and Spanish terms. Overall, it was a good experience.
EB: When did you decide to turn to writing fiction? And why crime fiction?
MN: I think many academics secretly want to write fiction. We write scholarly articles and books and, most of the time, our total readership barely breaks out of double digits. So the seed for it was planted long ago. I just never acted on it. Then in 2002, one of my best friends, Fred Pfeil in Trinity’s English department, taught a free summer fiction writing course at the Hartford Public Library. I participated and caught the bug. I took an advanced fiction writing class with Lucy Ferriss, also at Trinity, where I learned a lot about structure, plotting, description, etc.
There was never a question that, if I were to write, I would write crime fiction. I’ve long been a fan of John le Carré and spy fiction has always interested me. Studying global issues, I was drawn to that. With one exception, every piece of fiction I’ve written so far is set abroad and/or involved some political aspect.
EB: As an academic, did you have to unlearn some things about writing when you turned to fiction?
MN: That goes without question. There are plenty of similarities, but writing an analysis of the role of abstract space in world politics is quite different than setting a scene or writing dialog. My writing went from presenting an argument to telling a story. The argument requires logical consistency, the story is more free flowing. I must say, though, that my last academic writing took on some of the qualities of story telling.
EB: Your professional training is in international studies, and you have written about migration in southern Africa, the AIDS pandemic, human rights and global trade. Have your research interests and travels informed your fiction?
MN: Yes, they are intricately connected. Everything I write benefits from what I have learned about the world. A common bit of writing advice is to write what you know, and that’s what I know. Much of my work and teaching was on Africa, specifically southern Africa, and several of my stories are set in Africa. The choice of a UN investigator as a protagonist turned out to be a great choice. It allows me to sent him all around the world without straining credulity. Since “Africa Always Needs Guns” I’ve sent him to the Golan Heights in Syria and to Yamoussoukro in the Côte d’Ivoire. Those stories are currently submitted and I’m waiting to hear. I’ve also started a novel featuring Vermeulen. It is set in Darfur, Sudan and centers on a kickback scheme involving the delivery of armored personnel carriers.
EB: What attracted you to Ashland? And how is it to be a writer here? Do you have a writer’s group? A routine? What’s your writing life like?
MN: We moved to Ashland in February 2008. I had a sabbatical, my wife had been here for a workshop earlier and suggested we come here. In September 2007, we lived here for a month to check it out and liked it so much that we quit our jobs and moved here. It was the best thing for my writing career. Going part-time as a professor gave me the time to focus on fiction writing. I joined a writing group headed by Tim Wohlforth right away and that the group has kept me writing.
My routine is less routine than I’d like. I try to write every weekday in the morning. Most of the time that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Other interests come up, like learning how to create an iPhone app. In short, I’m not as serious about writing as I think I ought to be. But I don’t beat myself up about it.
EB: I know you are also working on a novel called Lincoln Road, set in South Africa. Can you tell us a little about that?
MN: Lincoln Road has gone through several stages of revision and is done. I’m seeking an agent but haven’t been successful yet. I’m also not as persistent about that as I ought to be.
The novel is set in Durban, South Africa. Musa Khumalo, the protagonist, is a poor squatter who ekes out a living fixing people’s cell phones and illegally connecting them to electricity. He is drawn into a conspiracy involving a corrupt city councillor who is selling off the land on which the squatters live to the highest bidder. He joins the protests, the councillor is killed and Musa is the key suspect. He’s got to clear is name and find the killer. There are car chases, abductions and a climactic scene right on the famous Durban beach front.
EB: Which do you prefer, the novel form or the short story?
MN: I like short stories. I like the opportunity to create a complete context where a crime occurs and is solved in 5,000 words. The form forces me to be judicious in my choice of words. But, as I said, there are very few outlets for short stories. Magazines are disappearing left and right. Yes, there are websites that publish short stories—I have a story (Kosi Bay) on Mysterial-E—but the vast majority of the websites don’t pay. Fifty years ago, a crime writer could live on short stories. These days are long gone.
Novels are big complex things. They require planning and structure, things that don’t come easily to me. But, as I said, I’m writing my second novel. Obviously there is something to it that keeps me coming back.
EB: You also have some expertise in technology issues and development. Do you have any thoughts on the impact of technology and e-publishing on authors and readers? Is it breaking down the barriers or opening the floodgates?
MN: The process of supplanting the traditional book with e-readers is well on its way. I’ve been an early adopter. I remember using a bulky e-reader back in the late nineties. It weight a lot but it let me take a bunch of public domain novels on vacation. I now own an iPad and use it frequently for reading all kinds of documents including novels.
The process of turning your writing into an ebook is easier than ever. My writing program let’s me export both in ePub (Nook, iBook and Sony) and Kindle format. Amazon has made it very easy to submit one’s books and so publishing has been democratized. Just check out the number of free or $0.99 novels for the Kindle reader. The gatekeeper function of agents and publishers has disappeared.
Is that good? Probably. Publishing has changed dramatically in the past two decades. As publishing houses consolidated, the need for profit (read bestsellers) trumped everything else. Being a mid-list author is no longer good enough. On the other hand, quantity does not mean quality. I’ve seen some poorly prepared novels. The plot might have been okay, but the lack of copyediting undermined my reading pleasure.
EB: Any advice for aspiring fiction writers?
MN:I’m not sure I’m the right person to give advice. I learned a lot from the classes I took. So, take classes, even at your local community college. There is a craft to writing that can be learned. I also find that it helps me not to think of my writing as better than it is. I know I still have a lot to learn and I know that even my third draft still has a lot of problems that require attention.
EB: What authors do you like to read?
MN: I’m re-reading John le Carré’s Karla trilogy at the moment and love the meandering pace of his writing. I enjoy Alan Furst’s spy novels set at the beginning of World War II. Stories set in Africa, especially by African authors always capture me. In the mystery genre there are Michael Stanley. Deon Meyer’s last novel Trackers was very well done. Chimamanda Adichie doesn’t write crime fiction, but Half a Yellow Sun is a wonderful novel set around the Biafra war of independence. Elsewhere in the world, there is a host of Scandinavian crime authors, Mankell, Nesbø, Olson who capture my interest. I’m always intrigued by William Gibson’s writing. His last trilogy has some of his best writing. Michael Chabon hasn’t let me down yet.
I could go on.
International Studies Faculty
Michael Niemann, Ph.D. World Politics, Human Rights, International Political Economy
Local author to release second book in series
Previous
HIDE CAPTION
The cover of the soon-to-be-released mystery novel “Illicit Trade” by Ashland author Michael Niemann, the second in a series featuring a Belgian working for the U.N.
HIDE CAPTION
Michael Nieman, Ashland author and Southern Oregon University adjunct professor, has written a series of mystery novels. Daily Tidings / Denise Baratta
HIDE CAPTION
The cover of the soon-to-be-released mystery novel “Illicit Trade” by Ashland author Michael Niemann, the second in a series featuring a Belgian working for the U.N.
HIDE CAPTION
Michael Nieman, Ashland author and Southern Oregon University adjunct professor, has written a series of mystery novels. Daily Tidings / Denise Baratta
Next
By Joe Zavala
Ashland Daily Tidings
Posted Feb 5, 2017 at 1:50 PM
Updated Feb 5, 2017 at 1:57 PM
Southern Oregon University adjunct professor Michael Niemann had already written plenty of academic articles before arriving in Ashland in 2008, but growing inside Niemann was a budding desire to tell the kind of stories he first was drawn to as a youngster in Germany.
An expert in political science who wrote a nonfiction book titled, “A Spatial Approach to Regionalisms in the Global Economy,” Niemann enjoyed his career in academia, but longed to try his hand at fiction. He loved to read mysteries and spy novels, particularly those written by John le Carre, and figured decades of experience studying geopolitics could give his work a certain heft.
Shortly after arriving in Ashland he joined a group of local mystery writers, one of whom later encouraged Niemann to submit one of his short stories for a forthcoming Mystery Writers of America anthology titled “Vengeance.” Niemann knew it was a long shot but threw his hat in the ring anyway. Surprise! His story, “Africa Always Needs Guns,” was selected to be included in “Vengeance,” running alongside short stories by “Jack Reacher” novelist Lee Child (who doubled as the book’s editor) and fellow suspense heavyweights Karin Slaughter and Michael Connelly.
Now, Niemann, 60, is about to release the second novel in a series that features his “Guns” protagonist, Valentin Vermeulen, an investigator with the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services, titled “Illicit Trade.” It will be released March 1 and is available to pre-order on Amazon. A book release event is tentatively scheduled for March 3 at the Schneider Museum of Art.
The Tidings spoke to Niemann about his writing process, his influences and the genesis of his Vermeulen series. Questions and answers have been edited for content and brevity.
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DT: Describe your writing routine.
MN: There are those occasions where it doesn’t work but my usual routine is to get to my computer at 8:30 and spend the morning writing. And sometimes that doesn’t quite work out because stuff interferes, but I do write every day. Not necessarily on the weekends. I’m German, so that part of me is still German. I think weekends are important.
DT: Do you have a word count you try and hit every day or is it more of a time frame?
MN: I think it’s more like three, three and a half hours than a word count, although sometimes I’m happy having gotten a number of words.
DT: How long did it take you to complete your first novel, from beginning to end?
MN: About a year. And then it was the whole marketing and selling part, and that was really complicated. I did not know how that part worked and so as a result I ended up taking the first offer I got, which was a weird publisher in England. ... They didn’t help me. Basically, their strategy was to throw as many ebooks at the wall and see what stuck. And so when I finished the second one, which also took me about a year ... I shopped around again and then I found my current publisher, Coffeetown Press in Seattle, and it was this revelation, working with a small indy publisher. They’re still doing it the right way — reading events, giving copies to journals and review places, things like that. They also said, ‘We don’t like to start a series in the middle, is there a way you can get the rights back to the first one,’ and that turned out to be easy.
DT: You wrote “A Spatial Approach to Regionalism in a Global Economy” in 2000. From there, what drew you to fiction?
MN: I have always been an avid reader of international suspense and spy novels and things like that. I grew up in Germany during the Cold War so it was in many ways always present. There were British fighter jets doing patrols every day, basically, and riding my bike to school I would go right past a Belgian NATO anti-air base, see the (missiles) actually pointing to the sky. So, I was very interested in studying this, but also I was interested in John Le Carre and that kind of Cold War spy stuff. That’s always been of interest to me. I’ve read it, and I’ve read a lot of it that was overly nationalistic, good guys versus bad guys. So I was intrigued by that and I thought, I could maybe write that. So before (moving) here I lived in Connecticut and I worked at Trinity College there in Hartford, and a friend of mine was an English professor. I took sort of a summer writing course with him (in 2005), and that’s what got me really interested. When we first moved here, Maureen Battistella organized these nice mystery author readings at the Book Wagon once a month, and that’s where I met Tim Wohlforth, who was the convener of the writing group, and I said, ‘I’d like to join,’ and he said, ‘Have you written anything?’ and I just really had the beginning of a draft of a short story. And he read it and says, ‘Well, I like it, so why don’t you join us and see if you like it.’ So I joined in the fall of 2008, and I’ve been with that group ever since and it’s been a wonderful experience.
DT: How did your nonfiction work prepare you for writing a novel?
MN: The whole nonfiction part for me was knowing the field, knowing and understanding world politics. ... So that sort of gave me the lay of the land. Shifting to fiction, there’s this idea of writing a compelling story, and that’s something that you don’t necessarily learn in academia — maybe that’s a problem of academia. In academia, your writing is so dry because I think all of us have forgotten that even in academia we’re still storytellers, right. But that gets shunted to the side, unfortunately. So the continuous feedback from the colleagues in my writing group and reading a lot helped me sharpen my storytelling skills.
DT: Where did the idea for your Vermeulen mystery series come from?
MN: I’ve always wanted to do something that had some international component to it, but I also was leery of the way in which many thrillers were very nationalistic. They’re always about a country — whatever country, you choose your country — in peril, until the protagonist saves the day. And I came across by sheer happenstance the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight, which is a real office. It was created in 1994 mostly in response to pressure from American politicians who are always complaining that the United Nations is wasting money. So their job is to make sure that the money that the member states pay is properly spent, and they have auditors, and they have investigators, and they have all kinds of things. I thought, that would be cool. So I just went to their website and studied very much what they do and I thought, OK, I could have a person there. So I just played with that, and just about that time I saw the Lynn Nottage play at OSF called “Ruined,” which took place in the eastern Congo during the civil war there. So I wrote a short story about this guy Vermeulen, who was at that point still very shallow and not very much formed as a character, being stuck in the eastern Congo during this job trying to track down somebody smuggling weapons. That was my lucky break, really, because that short story was chosen and included in a Mystery Writers of America anthology in 2012, which was edited by Lee Child. ... That was a real surprise and a real big breakthrough, and I actually still get a royalty check from that short story.
DT: Do you plot your novels from beginning to end, or do you just sort of know where it was going and work it out as you went along?
MN: The first one is set in Darfur in Sudan during the civil war there and I had come across a report that the United Nations was refusing to pay Nepalese peacekeepers because they had brought lousy equipment — they had brought poor armored personnel carriers. So I started with the what-if question, and I know that these armored personnel carriers were used for patrols in refugee camps, so I knew it was going to be in a refugee camp. I knew that much, and I knew that Vermeulen was going to be there and he was going to sort it out, but that was about it.
DT: So you had a lot to figure out.
MN: Yes. I did research a lot on the peacekeeping mission in Darfur and I learned everything inside and out that I could about that. I had written one version and gave it to a friend of mine, who read it and said, ‘You know, it’s OK, but it’s kind of like, meh. The stakes weren’t really there.’ And I knew he was right. It wasn’t like you just had to turn the page because it was so good. So I rewrote the whole thing. But by that time I had a better sense of what needed to happen.
The second one I did not plot as carefully. You’re right, it’s the pantsers and the plotters — the plotters have everything figured out and the pantsers make it up as they go along. I’m sort of in between. I had a scene at the beginning. I had a scene in the middle and I had a scene at the end. The end of this one emerged in a way that I hadn’t foreseen.
DT: That’s something that, of course, could never happen when you’re writing nonfiction. What is that like to experience as the author, taking a story to a place you didn’t expect it to go?
MN: I think it’s exciting. It’s like you find a door you didn’t know was there, and you walk through that door and suddenly there’s a story there that you hadn’t even thought about yet and it was the character that basically opened that door for you. So that’s always exciting. The old Kurt Vonnegut rule is that every character in a story has to want something, even if it’s only a glass of water.
DT: You’re kind of making the case for the pantsers.
MN: I think I have a skeleton at best, and maybe that’s even saying too much. And then I just go along and fill it in.
DT: Is Valentin Vermeulen based on anybody?
MN: He’s totally fictional, not modeled on anybody I know. I purposely picked somebody from a small country, like Belgium. They don’t have any global agenda anymore. He wasn’t going to be German, that’s for sure. And I did not want him to be an American because once you have an American doing that kind of work, it’s the whole idea of it is, is it the U.S. agenda? Is it another agenda? And so forth. So I purposely wanted to have a character from a small country who wouldn’t have any ax to grind, at least not anymore. And I’m a big Lee Child, “Jack Reacher” fan, and I knew that I could never write a novel with a Jack Reacher in it or somebody like him. Jack Reacher is this super human monster if you think about it — he’s like 6-5, he’s like 250 pounds and there’s nothing he can’t beat up, no weapon he doesn’t know. He’s an intriguing character for what it’s worth, but I knew it wasn’t going to be like that. But at the same time I needed a character who could handle himself. So my character gets beaten up more often.
DT: Who are your stylistic influences?
MN: In terms of character, I’m much more indebted to the complicated characters that John le Carre develops — somewhat ambivalent. And I think in terms of style, it’s probably more like Elmore Leonard and Lee Child. I’ve tried to write more complex sentences like John le Carre and I just can’t pull it off. It got to be too wordy.
DT: Did your style evolve as you worked through your first novel?
MN: I think the style in many ways emerged from the short story that I wrote, and I’ve written several other short stories that I aren’t published yet. And then I wrote short stories before I wrote a novel, so the short story kind of pushes for economy because you have 5,000 words and you have to get a lot in there. ... I think by the time I was starting writing the first Vermeulen novel I had gotten far enough in my writing to know that I had to let go of my academic inclination of explaining things. I still bring a fair amount of information in there, but I do it through action and through dialogue, rather than exposition. And that’s something I had to learn.
DT: What’s next? Will there be a third Vermeulen book?
MN: I just sent that off to the publisher last Friday, actually. And that one takes place in (Southern Africa), and it’s all about land grabs and ... things like that. And I’m just now really, as of yesterday, doing some thinking, some sketching of some ideas. Basically, my protagonist basically has to go wherever the United Nations is going. I’m playing with the idea of sending him to Turkey because there are 2.8 million refugees from Syria there right now and the United Nations spends a lot of money there. One of the complaints I’ve been reading about is that the way the money is spent is not very well documented. And then I read news stories about Syrian refugees working in sweat shops making camouflage uniforms for ISIS soldiers, so I’m starting to realize that there might be some story there.
— Joe Zavala is a reporter for the Ashland Daily Tidings. Reach him at 541-821-0829 or jzavala@dailytidings.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Zavala99.
Illicit Trade: A Valentin Vermeulen Thriller
Publishers Weekly. 264.1 (Jan. 2, 2017): p39.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Illicit Trade: A Valentin Vermeulen Thriller
Michael Niemann. Coffeetown, $14.95 trade paper (244p) ISBN 978-1-60381-589-5
In Niemann's intriguing second Valentin Vermeulen thriller (after Legitimate Business), the New York--based Flemish employee of the U.N.'s Office of Internal Oversight Services fields a complaint from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that someone at the OIOS office in Nairobi used a fake invitation letter to get a Kenyan man, Joseph Odinga, a visa to enter the U.S. Odinga, who was detained at JFK airport because he was acting suspiciously, is now at a detention center in Elizabeth, N.J. When Vermeulen tries to visit Odinga, he learns that the Kenyan is dead. An anonymous phone caller later tells him that Odinga was murdered by a fellow detainee. Meanwhile, Earle Jackson, a small-time hustler in Newark, N.J., encounters another Kenyan man, who dies in his arms on the street; Jackson takes the man's wallet and passport. Readers may figure out the criminal enterprise behind the visa scam before the heroes do, but the unexpected resourcefulness that Vermeulen and Jackson each display in dealing with dangerous foes in their respective quests is highly entertaining. (Mar.)
Michael Niemann and Valentin Vermuelen
Submitted by amcm-admin on Fri, 04/07/2017 - 20:18
Illicit Trade Cover
Lee Child has Jack Reacher. Michael Connelly has Harry Bosch. Walter Mosley has Easy Rawlins. Patricia Cornwell has Kay Scarpetta.
And Michael Niemann has Valentin Vermuelen.
Vermeulen first made his appearance in the short story “Africa always needs Guns,” published in the Mystery Writers of America Anthology Vengeance, edited by Lee Child (Mulholland Books, 2012). This story introduced readers to a man with a clear-cut sense of justice, a taste for kick-ass women (though he exhibits a chivalric concern for all women), and a propensity to get kicked out of jobs and marriages.
Vermeulen’s armor gets grittier in Niemann’s next two novels. The first was Legitimate Business, in which Vermeulen investigates the death of a United Nations peacekeeping constable, a death declared a random shooting by his superiors, but which he is sure is a murder.
In Illicit Trade, Nieman’s second Vermeulen novel, (Coffeetown Press, March 2017) two undocumented immigrants from Kenya are found dead in Newark and New York. Vermeulen’s superiors don’t care how they died. They want Vermeulen to track down the source of the forged UN letters that the men used to get into the US. Vermeulen finds that the two men are just the tip of a large smuggling ring that gives a new meaning to the term human trafficking.
Niemann gives his readers a powerful contrast. His hero is Belgian (Flemish) with his shock of blond hair (an errant strand always in his eyes), who investigates fraud for the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (yes, that’s a real thing).
Then there are the settings. Multiple settings, but all of the kinds of places where UN peacekeepers have a strong presence. So far the main action all happens in Africa, from the East Congo in “Africa Always Needs Guns,” to Darfur in the Sudan in Legitimate Business, to Nairobi, Kenya, in Illicit Trade. For those who aren’t sure where these places are, Niemann puts maps and images of the settings that inspired him on the book’s webpages. Darfur and Kenya.
Vermeulen might start out in Darfur or Kibera, (the slums outside of Nairobi,) but he climbs the puppet-strings of responsibility until he finds the real sources of criminal control in places like Brussels, Vienna, and New Jersey. (With a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor, Niemann provides maps of those places on his web page as well.)
Vermeulen is often helped in his search by the already-mentioned kick-ass women, whether it is an intrepid journalist, a UN peacekeeper, or his own daughter.
In Illicit Trade a new supporting character makes an appearance, a small-time con artist from Newark named Jackson, who becomes Vermeulen’s investigative doppelganger. I was glad that in spite of his ability to find trouble, Jackson lives to see another day. And hopefully, we will see him again in another Niemann novel.
Niemann’s theme is hopeful and nihilistic at the same time. On the one hand, Vermeulen pursues justice for the people he encounters without considering the risks to himself. On the other hand the power of the evildoers he is up against, the corruption of those who should be backing him, and what Niemann calls ‘the fuzzy lines of authority,’ makes bringing about real change seemingly impossible.
You don’t need to read the short story and the books in order, like I did, to get the most out of Illicit Trade, but it would be a shame to deprive yourself of the experience.
Find the books here:
Amazon
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Indiebound
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Michael Niemann Author Foto
Michael Niemann grew up in a small town in Germany, ten kilometers from the Dutch border. Crossing that border often at a young age sparked in him a curiosity about the larger world. He studied political science at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität in Bonn and international studies at the University of Denver. During his academic career he focused his work on southern Africa and frequently spent time in the region. After taking a fiction writing course from his friend, the late Fred Pfeil, he switched to mysteries as a different way to write about the world. Twitter Facebook