Hello!
Today, Once Upon a Crime Books presents 7 Minutes in Book Heaven, the podcast where we interview LGBTQ authors about the new books they have coming out for us to love and cuddle up with.
Visit them online: onceuponacrimebooks.com
Once Upon a Crime Books is an independent bookstore specializing in mystery fiction. Located in Uptown Minneapolis, you can shop in their store Monday through Saturday 11am – 5:30pm. Or, visit their website! There, you can browse all of their books, from new releases to classic mysteries.
In this new episode, Once Upon a Crime Books introduces us to John Copenhaver and his new novel: Hall of Mirrors which is available to buy in paperback in-store, or on their website, and it is also available as a digital audio book.
John Copenhaver won the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery for Dodging and Burning and the Lambda Literary Award for Best Mystery for The Savage Kind. He is a co-founder of Queer Crime Writers, a board member of Mystery Writers of America, and co-hosts the House of Mystery Radio Show. He teaches in the University of Nebraska Omaha’s Low-Residency MFA program and at VCU. His new novel, Hall of Mirrors, is the sequel to The Savage Kind.
Buy Hall of Mirrors
Visit Once Upon a Crime Books in-person or buy online: https://onceuponacrimebooks.com/book/9781639366507
Connect with John Copenhaver
website: johncopenhaver.com
website: queercrimewriters.com
facebook: johncopenhavenauthor
instagram & threads: @JohnCope74
tiktok: @JohnCope74
Credits
Presented by: Once Upon a Crime Books
Host/Founder: J.P. Der Boghossian
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Theme music: Summer Mood by lesfm
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated through speech recognition software by our podcast recording service Riverside.fm. It may contain errors. Timestamps may not be accurate based on editing out of non-essential information such as re-starting a question, drops in internet connection during interview, etc. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that’s not on the page. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
[theme music]
J.P. Der Boghossian (00:03.118)
Welcome to 7 Minutes in Book Heaven, the podcast where we interview LGBTQ authors about the new books they have coming out for us to love and to cuddle up with. I’m your host, JP Derpagosian. Today’s episode is presented to you by Once Upon a Crime Books. Once Upon a Crime Books is an independent bookstore specializing in mystery fiction. Located in Uptown Minneapolis, you can shop in their store Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 530 p.m. or visit their website.
There you can browse all of their books from new releases to classic mysteries and what I continue to love most about their website is their recommendations tab. If you’re in the mood for espionage or psychological thrillers, action thrillers or just want to read books by writers of color or queer authors, you can get full recommendations for each of those categories and more in the recommendations page. Their website is onceuponacrimebooks.com.
On today’s episode, Once Upon a Crime Books introduces us to John Copenhaver and his new novel Hall of Mirrors, which is available to purchase in paperback, in-store or on their website. Hello, John. Welcome to 7 Minutes in Book Heaven.
John Copenhaver (01:21.054)
Hey JP, thanks so much for having me on.
J.P. Der Boghossian (01:24.2)
Absolutely. So thank you for being here. How our podcast works for new listeners. I have seven questions for John and we’re going to spend approximately the next seven minutes in this virtual studio talking about Hall of Mirrors. So, John, are you ready?
John Copenhaver (01:41.32)
I am. Let’s go.
J.P. Der Boghossian (01:43.456)
All right, I’m going to set the timer and here we go. Question number one, please describe Hall of Mirrors as if you’re sharing it with your celebrity crush and telling us who that special person is.
John Copenhaver (01:58.51)
well, my celebrity crush is Gillian Anderson because I’m such a huge X-Files fan. she’s just amazing. Everything she does is amazing. And she just gets more and more.
J.P. Der Boghossian (02:03.118)
hahahaha
John Copenhaver (02:15.35)
So, Jillian, I want to tell you about my novel, Hall of Mirrors, which I think you’re going to find is fantastic. I even have a great part for you in it. But it’s set in 1954, Washington, D.C., and it’s in the wake of the Lavender Scare, which is this anti-gay crusade that was spearheaded by Joseph McCarthy during that time period. But it’s about these two mystery novelists.
J.P. Der Boghossian (02:27.534)
Woo.
John Copenhaver (02:45.058)
Lionel Cain and Roger Raymond who actually write under a pseudonym and one of them dies mysteriously soon after he was exiled from the State Department because of the Lavender Scare. It also ties into my first novel which is called The Savage Kind. It’s actually the second book in the trilogy and my trilogy characters Judy and Philippa from that book who
become friends and then lovers in this book, you know, help the line, all the surviving author solve the crime. But it’s a lot about passing and this time period, whether it’s passing as straight, passing as white, and this oppressive environment that was created in the 1950s in Washington, DC.
J.P. Der Boghossian (03:36.45)
I cannot wait to read this, particularly having just seen the limited series, fellow travelers, which is also on my to read list. So this is very exciting that there’s all this new attention being paid to this very crucial part of history.
John Copenhaver (03:42.741)
Yeah.
John Copenhaver (03:50.358)
I agree. Obviously.
J.P. Der Boghossian (03:51.776)
Okay. All right. Question number two. What is a sentence from a novel, essay, poem or other book that every time you read it, it gives you all the feels?
John Copenhaver (04:04.854)
So I’m cheating a little bit here because it’s what popped into my head and because I think about it all the time. But it’s from actually a film called Heavenly Creatures, which I believe was Kate Winslet’s debut, another celebrity crush. And it’s about these two girls, it’s based on a true story, it’s about these two girls who commit a horrible crime, but it’s a lot about their relationship and definitely inspired my writing. And the line is, all the best people have…
J.P. Der Boghossian (04:19.212)
Mm-hmm.
John Copenhaver (04:33.096)
Excuse me, all the best people have bad chests and bone diseases. It’s frightfully romantic, which is just sort of this crazy. It’s this crazy romance between these two girls that somehow they commit this horrible murder of their mother, but you are rooting for them. I think that sort of that feel is what with Judy and Phillipa, particularly my series character, I wanted to capture. So I’m always drawn to that.
J.P. Der Boghossian (04:58.542)
That’s a good sentence to be drawn to. Okay, well, question number three, the cruelest of all of our questions today. What do you feel is the best sentence you wrote in Hall of Mirrors?
John Copenhaver (05:01.418)
Hahaha
John Copenhaver (05:12.136)
this is just an impossible question. You’re right. It’s so cruel. So I’m going one with I think that it’s Judy kind of talking to herself. And as I mentioned, the book is a lot about passing and how you show up in the world versus who you feel you are. And she is thinking this in the midst of a conversation where she’s trying to navigate these ideas. She says,
It is impossible to be yourself around other people, excuse me, is it possible to be yourself around other people or was there something about other people that made it impossible? And I think that kind of encapsulates what the overall kind of themes of the book are.
J.P. Der Boghossian (06:00.376)
Dang, I like that.
John Copenhaver (06:03.126)
It was hard to choose.
J.P. Der Boghossian (06:05.302)
I like that a lot. I can see how that could set up the theme of the book. That’s a great question. Okay. I mean, it’s a question, but also a great sentence. So congratulations on that.
John Copenhaver (06:16.084)
Yeah.
J.P. Der Boghossian (06:19.278)
Question number four, what’s the best scene in a mystery or crime book that you’ve ever read?
John Copenhaver (06:27.918)
man, this is just another cruel one. I am choosing, because it’s so amazingly complex and handled so beautifully. Sarah Waters’ book, The Paying Guests, there’s a scene in which there are two characters, Frances and Lillian, who are falling in love, and Lillian is pregnant by her husband, who she really despises, and they’ve decided…
through quite dire means to get rid of the pregnancy. And the husband finds out, and in this scene, the husband becomes very violent, and ultimately the women murder him. And so it’s so layered and complex, and of course the rest of the story is them figuring out what to do because of this, and how to cover it up, and how to survive.
J.P. Der Boghossian (07:23.456)
Mmm.
John Copenhaver (07:24.546)
And it’s such an amazing emotional and because it’s a murderer that is in many ways justified, but they’re in an environment which they can’t, know, it will not be seen as justified in the 1930s. So I think that that just sort of is an amazing scene, but there are so many, that’s another hard choice to make.
J.P. Der Boghossian (07:51.82)
Well, thank you for sharing that one. We’ve got about a minute here, but question number five, what are your favorite smells to write about?
John Copenhaver (08:02.679)
well, the blend of sweat and spicy cologne comes up a lot.
J.P. Der Boghossian (08:07.438)
Mmm. And I’m assuming it comes up in Hall of Mirrors.
John Copenhaver (08:13.464)
yeah, it does, it does. There’s some good scenes with spicy cologne and sweat, so, you You’ll have to read to find out.
J.P. Der Boghossian (08:20.992)
Excellent. All right. Well, question number six. When it comes to writing a mystery, what is the worst writing advice you’ve ever got?
John Copenhaver (08:34.432)
So the worst advice really I’ve ever received was essentially not to write mystery. Back in the day when I was going through my MFA program, we were told that genre was inferior and that if you brought a mystery story into a workshop, were often, it snubbed.
J.P. Der Boghossian (08:42.702)
Mm.
John Copenhaver (08:57.31)
And so I thought that was all wrong and we’re not doing that anymore, hopefully in MFA programs, but that was the worst advice I’ve ever received.
J.P. Der Boghossian (09:05.61)
Ew. I’ve heard of stuff like this in an MFA program. It hasn’t been in the cards for me to do it, but I’ve heard about that kind of nonsense happening there. So I agree. hope all that is done with an MFA programs. question number seven, promote yourself. How do we connect with you and follow you on social?
John Copenhaver (09:08.064)
Yeah.
Yeah.
John Copenhaver (09:25.98)
Sure, so my website is www.johnkopenhaver.com and you can find me on Instagram at JohnCope74 as well as threads. I’m also on Facebook, John Kopenhaver author and I’m on the Twitter for now, we’ll see. And I also do a
that’s daily sentence or talk about a sentence that I think is really great on YouTube, excuse me, not YouTube, but on TikTok. So you can find me there under John Cope at 74. I also wanna mention that I co-found an organization called Queer Crime Writers, which supports and amplifies queer crime writers. So if you’re interested in that kind of thing, I wanna shout that out too. And that’s www.queercrimewriters.com.
J.P. Der Boghossian (10:22.414)
Perfect. And do you have a podcast?
John Copenhaver (10:26.07)
I don’t have my own podcast, but I co-host on House of Mystery radio show. Al Warren is a show runner and I will interview writers. It’s a longer format podcast, but check it out too. There’s a lot of great, if your interviews with crime writers and mystery writers and that.
J.P. Der Boghossian (10:47.435)
Well, so much to add to our reading and listening and watching to-do list. Thank you so much, John, for joining us today. This has been lovely.
John Copenhaver (10:56.928)
Thank you so much for having me.
J.P. Der Boghossian (10:59.616)
Ed, this has been another episode of 7 Minutes in Book Heaven presented to you by Once Upon a Crime Books. To purchase your next mystery or thriller and to purchase Hall of Mirrors, visit Once Upon a Crime Books in Uptown Minneapolis or online at OnceUponACrimeBooks.com. My name is JP de Bogosian. This podcast was produced by This Queer Book Productions, LLC. Visit us at ThisQueerBook.com to learn more about our podcasts.
And if you are a bookstore or publisher and want us to produce an episode of this podcast for you, visit us at our website. And until our next episode, see you queers and allies in the bookstores.
