Chris Beakey is a cool, friendly guy.
At his weekend home in Lewes, he talks openly about the long road that led to the publication of his first novel. He says the book is gory, shocking and too intense for some of his friends to read.
And he’s right. Not far into the novel, “Double Abduction,” is a murder, grisly to say the least, and the unveiling of one seriously sinister character. The murder involves drugs, sex and lots of blood, but it’s hard to compel the reader to turn away from the story, at the center of which is the abduction of a young boy.
Beakey’s book is a nail-biting page-turner of a thriller with great twists and turns and some real surprises. It may not be what one would expect to come from the mind of a nice, career writer like Beakey, but reading the book, one has to admit, he’s mastered the scary story.
It took some time, it took some rejection and it took lots of persistence, but Beakey, who lives part-time in Lewes after vacationing here for 20 years, has accomplished his long-standing goal of being a published novelist.
He wrote four books before “Double Abduction” made it to print. He was 30 when the first one was finished. He peddled each to book agents. Some letters were complimentary - great work, but not sellable. Others were pretty brutal, said Beakey.
Far from discouraging him, the rejections spurred him on to rewrite and tighten up the stories he had, then, to start new ones and make each better than the last. “What kept me going ... I’m just tough, it’s this persistence thing,” said Beakey, explaining that success will come from loving something enough to keep at it and keep at it, even when it’s hard or discouraging. And, he admits, part of him wanted to prove wrong those publishing agents who slapped him with nasty rejections.
Talking to him, it seems that it was much more a love of the craft than a need to prove himself to book editors that kept him moving. Some people love to be entertained, he said, but some love to do the entertaining, make the movies, craft the stories. “I want to do this. I couldn’t imagine giving it up,” he said.
Beakey, a Virginia native, began writing when he was 10 years old, a self-described daydreamer who spent many hours with his head in the clouds. “My writing was something that always appealed to me,” said the son of a military family that moved often when he was young. He hesitates about his early skill level, and even says he wasn’t terribly talented, but he was dedicated.
“When you love something enough - that’s more important,” he said. The early novels were a learning experience. They taught him how to write and helped him develop an eye for what the publishing industry was after. “Those books enabled me to find my voice,” he said.
“Double Abduction” went through the same process as the first four. Beakey turned over the first draft to family and close friends and waited for their evaluations. Suggestions in hand, he examined the initial 2002 draft for rewrites, and was about to give it to an agent in 2004, when a book-editor friend agreed to have a look.
She gave him a list of editing suggestions, which he followed before using the contact she had given him for a book agent. Convinced he had the best draft he could give the agent - book agents are notoriously selective, said Beakey, and take only about 5 percent of the material they see - he turned the manuscript over.
Nine months later, the book was sold.
Beakey, a ghostwriter, who always dreamed of having his book, with his name, up on his shelf, was happy the journey had reached its end - but he didn’t go dancing through the city streets showing his book to every passerby. It wasn’t shocking, said Beakey, who had worked around enough authors by then that he knew his life would not change much as a result. It felt like a great accomplishment, but not a miracle, he said.
He has lived in Washington, D.C., since he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1984. During college, his first story sold, and it won a literary award. “I knew I’d have to get a regular job and support myself,” he said. He has been working in the city ever since as a writer for a communications firm, where he is a ghostwriter, copywriter, advertisement-and speechwriter. It’s a tension-filled career, said Beakey, one that helps his fiction writing quite a bit.
“I like the double life,” he said. He borrows on the tension he feels at work and in the city to help him develop stories that are full of suspense and anxiety. “A little tension keeps me connected with my characters, who are tense,” he said.
For that reason, he said, he writes better in the city than he does in Lewes. Lewes is the anti-Washington, D.C., with its well-worn porches and friendly neighbors, said Beakey. It’s more reflecting on work written than writing new material when he’s in Lewes, decompressing from a week in the city, said Beakey. “The fiction is good for my day job because it reminds me all good writing is storytelling,” he said.
Beakey writes stories about what scares him most. He sat down to write this story and decided to write it without worrying about failing. It was like holding a knife to his own throat, he said, of writing “Double Abduction.”
“I just decided I really wanted to write fiction, to be a novelist,” he said. “I knew I’d have to write every day and work hard,” he said. Hard work meant trading in some fun stuff, such as late nights and concerts, for getting up to write at 4 a.m. every day. “It’s important to get up well-rested to create my stories,” he said. He saves reading for nights when his mind is tired from work.
“I gravitate toward really good people who are caught in really bad situations, in situations of desperation. I love stories about people who are flawed,” he said. Beakey’s characters are inherently good people, but to save themselves, they must make acts of desperation, acts that may jeopardize them. He has drawn on time spent shadowing D.C. cops, learning about them and their jobs, and crime-watch meetings during five years he spent living in one of D.C.’s rougher neighborhoods.
He said there are a plethora of books for novelists, to help them write well about police work and crime scenes. But, the characters he makes up. “Some of them, you don’t make up, you know them,” he said.
“They are like imaginary friends. One of those stick-with-you characters has a big role in “Double Abduction,” Beakey said, but she first appeared in one of his earlier books.
He says he’s two-thirds of the way through his next thriller.
