If you’re traveling West this Memorial Day week to kick off a summer vacation and you find yourself in a place outside of Van Horn or Fort Stockton or Monahans, you can understand why the area might be dubbed The Far Empty, the title of J. Todd Scott’s debut novel. However, you might also see that its vast desert might prove fertile ground for a writer’s mind on the road.
That’s exactly how DEA special agent Scott crafted his Western crime noir that launches this upcoming week: while driving back and forth between Midland and Alpine. We caught up with him via email on the eve of his high school senior’s graduation and launching his first book tour in El Paso.
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: When you were growing up in Kentucky, do you ever imagine you might find yourself spending a portion of your life in Texas? What were your impressions of Texas as a youngster?
J. TODD SCOTT: Growing up I never really thought about ever living in Texas — of course, I never imagined all the places I would end eventually end up living, such as Los Angeles and Port Au Prince, Haiti. Until I moved to El Paso in 2013, my only prior experience with Texas was visiting some family in Galveston when I was in high school in 1983, the same week Hurricane Alicia made landfall. Needless to say, I didn’t get to stick around town very long. I actually think the rest of that vacation took place in Texarkana!
What sort of books do you recall reading as a young person? Did you come from a family of storytellers that influenced your writing?
I didn’t come from a family of storytellers, but I definitely came from a family of readers. Books were a huge part of my life growing up, and my parents’ literary interests were far-ranging and varied. I read everything from Michael Crichton to Stephen King to Robert Ludlum to James Michener. However, I think some of the best storytellers I’ve ever heard are the cops and agents I’ve worked with for the last twenty years. I’d like to think those stories, traded back and forth during long surveillances, influenced me as much as the books I grew up reading.
By college you chose to go to law school; what inspired that decision?
As I was graduating from college, I seriously considered getting an MFA in creative writing, but decided to do something I thought (at the time) was more practical. My interest in law enforcement had already taken hold by then, so I applied to become a federal agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). However, the hiring process was rigorous and long, and while I was waiting to finish that, I decided to go to law school.
As a DEA agent you had the opportunity to work in D.C. overseeing “special projects,” which included media projects (including news and documentaries) related to DEA or DEA investigations. What was that experience like?
After many, many years in the field, I faced my mandatory rotation to DEA headquarters in Washington, DC, and was fortunate enough to get assigned to Public Affairs, where one of my duties was overseeing DEA-related TV, film, and book projects. As a consequence of this, I got to spend a lot of time with writers (both film/TV screenwriters and novelists), and as much as they were picking my brain about what it’s like to be an agent, I was picking theirs on the creative process in general, and writing, in particular. I think my time there was the additional push I needed to take my own writing seriously again.
Then from 2013 until a few months ago you served as a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent in El Paso. What attracted you to that assignment?
My assignment to El Paso was a bit of strategic luck and timing. I have three younger daughters who still live in Arizona (my assignment prior to Washington, DC) and I was honestly looking for any opportunity to get back closer to them. When the position in El Paso was announced, I figured out the mileage to their front door, and realized it was a drive I could do in a single afternoon, so I decided that’s where I had to go. My prior experience working along the border gave me a competitive edge, and I was fortunately selected. I arrived in El Paso sight unseen, knowing next to nothing about the city or Texas. However, it didn’t take me long to fall in love with the entire region. The move there wasn’t necessarily planned, but I know I [wouldn’t be] talking about The Far Empty now if it hadn’t occurred.
You actually started crafting the story in your mind on the drive from Midland to Alpine. How long did it take from original idea to finished manuscript?
I actually had the opening line of the book — My father has killed three men — on a scrap of paper for some time; almost a year, I think. I was about forty or fifty pages into another novel when I made that drive between Alpine and Midland, and I got to thinking about that single line I still had sitting around. A first line without a story. But occasionally something like that sticks with you (that’s still the mystery of the writing process to me), and by the time I’d passed through Monahans, I had most of The Far Empty sketched out in my head, and somewhere between Odessa and Midland, I knew the ending, right down to the final line. I started typing a day later, and it took me about six months to write the first draft, and then another three months to edit it pretty much into the story it is today. I pitched it to my agent as a combination of Friday Night Lights and No Country for Old Men, although I think it ended up much more of the latter than the former!
In your own words, can you tell us what The Far Empty’s about?
Everyone always asks: What’s your book about? And the answer I most often give is it’s a story about a corrupt sheriff, his missing wife, and their seventeen-year-old son. That’s a one sentence description of the plot, I guess, but I’d like to think the book is about a lot more than that. One of the reasons I use so many different viewpoint characters (even though some readers find it challenging) is because I believe the book is about a whole lot of things: grief and loss; isolation; what it means to truly carry a badge and gun; and maybe there’s even a love story tucked away in all those pages. I hope each reader who sticks with it will latch onto a different character or theme and find their own meaning there.
For our readers who have never been to Marfa, Alpine, Terlingua, Marathon, Lajitas, and Big Bend National Park, can you describe it for them—since much of your book takes place there?
Stark, rugged beauty. A violent beauty. At times, it feels like you’re looking at a half-finished sketch, particularly where the mountains give way to the desert and the horizon. Maybe the book’s title describes it best: it truly is the far empty…
What’s next for you?
There are more Big Bend books on the horizon. Next year the sequel, tentatively titled “High White Sun,” comes out, and then a third book the year after that. These books carry on the stories of some, but not all, of the characters introduced in The Far Empty. Although I still have a few more Big Bend ideas, I’ve actually also got a standalone novel with Putnam we’re calling “Thirteen Days.” It’s due out in 2019, and it’s another suspense/crime novel set in Texas, this time around Midland-Odessa.
For someone who didn’t grow up in Texas, I’ve sure found my home writing about this state I’ve come to love.
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Praise for J. Todd Scott’s THE FAR EMPTY
“Federal agent Scott’s knowledge of the border country of West Texas is on fine display in his outstanding debut.…Scott’s skills as a storyteller are impressive, and his tale of an ambitious young lawman has echoes of the movie Shane and the books of Cormac McCarthy.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“This thriller sprawls like the West Texas land of its setting, and, like all those arid miles, it’s fraught with mystery and echoes of a violent past. . . . Scott tells his story in a style placid on the surface and churning underneath, like water about to boil, and, when it does so, it erupts into a series of fine, violent action scenes. Does the finale really clear up all the mysteries? Not all of them, but some should stay mysterious. That’s their power—and part of this edgy novel’s appeal.” —Booklist
“J. Todd Scott’s Far Empty is so good I wish I’d written it. The poetic and bloody ground of west Texas has given birth to a powerful new voice in contemporary western crime fiction.” —Craig Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of the Walt Longmire Series
“J. Todd Scott is the real deal. The Far Empty is an astonishing, accomplished debut crime novel worthy of award consideration.” —New York Times bestselling author Michael McGarrity
“A haunting, gritty novel of modern Texas that brings to mind John Sayles’s seminal film, Lone Star. As a real-life federal lawman, Scott not only knows the battered terrain but the wounded people who call it home. I loved the authenticity of this forgotten wasteland and the last breaths of the Code of the West.” —Ace Atkins, New York Times bestselling author of the forthcoming The Innocents
“Balancing both the brutal and beautiful, J. Todd Scott has delivered a story that hangs around the neck long after the final page. Fearless, searing prose that reeks of honesty, The Far Empty is as gritty and raw as sun-scorched earth.” —David Joy, author of Where All Light Tends to Go
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