My books in the Silicon Valley Mystery series are humorous murder mysteries. Silicon Valley is not your typical, cozy mystery locale and Marty Golden doesn’t fit the normal profile of a mystery protagonist. Despite finding himself thrust into challenging situations, Marty isn’t exactly hero material. He brings a combination of wit, irreverent humor and sarcasm mixed in with nerdy insecurities, absent-mindedness, and fumbling but effective amateur sleuthing skills. With an active inner voice and not a lot of advanced planning, he throws himself into solving problems.
To get a better understanding of Marty, his Silicon Valley and his friends, here’s a recent interview I did with Marty.
Marc (author): To start off with the obvious question, how have you been holding up during this pandemic with all the sheltering-in-place time?
Marty: To tell you the truth, I’ve been pretty okay with it. Fortunately I’ve still got my job and I’ve always ordered my groceries online. In general, I don’t really like a lot of people and I definitely don’t miss the traffic, seeing my boss, or going to dumb meetings. I do feel terrible about everyone who’s been affected so I’ve donated money and volunteered on some non-profit coding projects to coordinate getting help for people who can’t go out.
Marc (author): Wow. That’s really good of you. I wouldn’t have expected you—
Marty: Yeah, my girlfriend thought I should do it. I’m impressed I followed through, but it’s actually been fun and definitely nice to see the feedback from all the people we’ve helped.
Marc (author): You mentioned not missing dumb meetings, but aren’t you still having business meetings over video conference for work? I hear all these stories of the funny, stupid, and boring online meetings since this all started.
Marty: I, uh, well, you gotta promise you won’t publish this anywhere. Right?
Marc (author): I promise no one at your company will see it.
Marty: So, me and some of the other engineers sort of hacked our video conferencing system. We recorded videos of ourselves in work clothes sitting in front of the screen where we nod our heads and shift around. Then we put those videos on endless loop and have them attend most of the work meetings for us. My video has attended our all-hands meetings and most of my boss’ staff meetings.
Marc (author): Genius! Didn’t you get in trouble though?
Marty: That’s the best part. My boss never clued in. After our last staff meeting, he even sent out an email thanking everyone for our best one ever.
Marc (author): Love it. Let me switch gears and ask you how you feel about all the attention from the latest novel?
Marty: What novel? I really don’t have a chance to read these days. Work’s been busy and spending time with my girlfriend and nieces seems to chew up all the rest of my day. I barely even managed to help out my friend Brody recently.
Marc (author): Yeah, all that is in Hit and Mist, my latest novel.
Marty: Wait, you published a book about what happened to me and Brody?
Marc (author): Calm down. I told everyone it was fiction so they’ll never believe it really happened.
Marty: Hmm. Does that mean no one will even know how I solved the crime?
Marc (author): Well they will if they read the book. It seems like you really enjoy solving crimes. Did you want to be a detective when you were growing up?
Marty: No, I wanted to a superhero. Not so much for the costume, but I’d like to have some superpowers and really cool gadgets and cars. Oh, oh, instead of a cool car, could I have something that flies? Then I could bypass all the traffic around Silicon Valley. Since I work at Rover, I get free access to our self-driving car service anyway.
Marc (author): I’ll see what I can do about the superhero gig, Marty. Thanks for your time today!
Marc (author): Hit and Mist, book 4 in the Silicon Valley Mystery series, can also be read standalone. All the books in the series are free for Kindle Unlimited readers. The first three books have also been released as audiobooks by Tantor Audio everywhere audiobooks are sold. Buy the books on Amazon at: amazon.com/gp/product/B07PHNT7XM.