Out of the Blues — behind the story with Trudy Nan Boyce

Out of the Blues author Trudy Nan Boyce served on the Atlanta Police force for thirty years. Boyce says she feels writers write in order to understand life and make sense of things. The debut author said, “Although I’m ‘of a certain age’ I’m still very interested in learning to be better; a better person, a better wife, mother, grandmother and learning to be a better writer. It fits with the goal of writing to better understand myself, life and others.”

Boyce said some of the content in Out of the Blues came about because of questions she had or issues she was interested in exploring. “Growing up white in the segregated South, I felt cheated when I learned about the blues and I wanted to know more both about the blues and the cultural context in which the music was created and nourished. And I’m constantly interested in the beautiful and complicated city I call home, Atlanta.”

Taking the reader on a journey in which they solve a crime while finding answers to other mysteries is what Boyce keeps in mind as she writes. One of those mysteries was the death of a renowned blues guitarist. Boyce said, “Michael Bloomfield was one of the finest guitarists in the history of the blues. The circumstances of his death still remain unclear. He was found dead of a drug overdose in his car. Bloomfield’s death served as a gateway for me to investigate both a murder and the influence and origins of the blues in Atlanta.”

I was on slow patrol, windows down to better hear, see and smell trouble coming, when out of the shadows leapt a woman…

Coming up with complex characters can be a difficult task. Not so for Boyce, who had thirty years of exposure to them. “The characters in Out of the Blues are mostly amalgams of people I worked with, citizens I met on the job and folks on the other side of the law. One of the challenges in writing is to stay inside the shoes of the characters when they’re ‘on stage.’ That’s also a challenge for cops, to both resolve situations while remaining empathetic with the people involved. And when one achieves that in either writing or in life it feels like a joyous win.”

Boyce recalled one encounter she had late one night in a very destitute neighborhood. The houses were dilapidated, the lots vacant, and all but one street light shot out. “I was on slow patrol, windows down to better hear, see and smell trouble coming, when out of the shadows leapt a woman, all skin and bones, hair patchy, someone the street would call a ‘geek monster,’ a person whose life had been consumed by a crack addiction.

“She was all herky-jerky, jittery and asking me to help her find her man who she’d ‘cut.’ She said they just always fought and when I asked her why they stayed together she pranced in front of my headlights, grabbed her crotch and sang out that it was because, ‘He loves my cooda-pot-pie!’ The woman’s fictional counterpart became central in the beginning story that led to Out of the Blues, as did her fictional family, Lil D, and the rest.”

Find out more about Trudy Nan Boyce at trudynanboyce.com.