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Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ: To kick things off, how did you start writing?

S.A. Cosby: I grew up in a house full of readers. My mother read a lot. My uncle, my aunt, my grandmother—all were voracious readers. And I used to critique fairy tales because I didn't like the logic in them. Like, why didn’t the three little pigs build their houses out of bricks in the first place? My mother encouraged me to write my own stories, so I started writing when I was around seven or eight.

GR: I heard about your Three Little Pigs observation, and that you wrote a story about spaceship-flying gnomes. Do you still have that story?

S.A.C.: My mom saved it. It was spacefaring gnomes that land in our backyard. That was my very first story I wrote. I’ve tried to improve upon my narrative since then.

GR: This new one, King of Ashes. How would you summarize that in a few sentences to folks who are new to your work?

S.A.C.: It's a crime story that is told through the lens of a family dynamic, a family drama. It is basically a story of how we are given roles in our family—sometimes we ask for, sometimes we don't—and those roles, and the miscommunications, and the misunderstandings that exist can have devastating effects. This is family that loves each other but maybe doesn't know how to communicate with each other.

GR: You've talked about four pillars of Southern fiction: class, religion, sex, race. Would you say that this book hits those four categories? What themes come up in this book?Ìý

S.A.C.: I would say it hits three out of the four. I don't know if religion plays as much of a part in this book—it has its moments—as much as All the Sinners Bleed. But I think King of Ashes, even though it's not hitting all four, it is definitely in that same tradition of Southern Gothic, Southern fiction, where class and race and sexuality are all the foundational structure that the stories are built upon.Ìý

If you look at Faulkner, you look at Flannery O’Connor or Carson McCullers or anyone like that, who's a traditional Southern Gothic novelist, those three or four pillars are always at the base of the story that helps build it.

GR: What would you say is the central pillar or theme for this one?Ìý

S.A.C.: I would say it's class. The family in the book started out poor, but they made it to the upper-middle class, but even once you achieve that, they still have issues that are tied to their race but also tied to their class, tied to their position in town, and how that is viewed, and how they are viewed. That's probably the defining one, but all the other ones make cameo appearances as well.

GR: In your writing, would you say you do much exploration between the cycles of crime and the cycles of poverty, even just looking at this family and how it's hard to break out of what you've been put into?

S.A.C.: I've been talking about poverty and crime since Blacktop Wasteland, which is a different exploration of someone trying to use the underworld, the undercurrent, to escape this—use a micro, macro chasm to escape the macro chasm of larger poverty in the larger society.Ìý

The family, the Carruthers, in King of Ashes financially escaped it and then through unfortunate decisions and mistakes, they find themselves put back into a place where money is the root of their stress.Ìý

I do think there is something to be said about that, the mindset, of how you navigate a new world, even if you come from an old world. I do think there's something to be said there in the story and in that book. But I also think it has a lot more to do with their own personal decisions and the traumas that they're dealing with.

GR: In the story, you have Roman, who's the acting patriarch of the family with the father in the hospital, you've got the middle-child sister, and you've got the younger brother. How did you develop these characters in terms of archetypes and birth order? What did you lean on?Ìý

S.A.C.: This one definitely leans into my Shakespearean influences. I love the Shakespearean tragedies, where a lot of times there's characters offstage that aren't very important to the dynamic, they speak through asides, or, in my case, they speak through flashbacks, like the father. I do like the structure, the birth order with, I would say the hero's journey, the oldest son who thinks that he's the one who's supposed to lead the family in the absence of the father. But really, it's the second born, it's Nevaeh, who really holds that family together. And Dante is someone who's there as the fool, saying the wise things that people don't want to listen to. There is a lot of traditional classical structure there that I was looking at—the classical ideas and archetypes that I tried to use in the book, of course, looking at it through a modern-day prism.Ìý

GR: When I was reading, I was thinking that your influence would determine how many of these characters were left alive at the end. (Laughs.) I also heard King of Ashes described as a Godfather-inspired Southern crime thriller. Do you think that's accurate?

S.A.C.: I'm a big fan of The Godfather the movie, but I'm more a fan of Michael Corleone. I'm interested in an idea of a character who is skilled, who is smart, who is someone who is not trying to be a part of a criminal underworld, and what happens when you find out that you're very good at something that's bad? Michael Corleone finds out he's an excellent crime boss. Roman finds out that he's an excellent crime boss. He's an excellent crime associate, and he's good at it. And Roman, as Dante accuses him later on in the book, he enjoys it. And so, what is the structure? What is the character arc when you find out that this is your skill set? How do you process that?

GR: The last scene of the book, was that an homage to the end of The Godfather?

S.A.C.: [Laughs.] Absolutely. Absolutely.

GR: Then the plot, it’s like a family drama within a drama with the unsolved mystery of the disappearance of Roman's mother. Why have that as part of this other, quite intricate, crime story?Ìý

S.A.C.: A lot of what informed the crime plot comes from the tragedy of their mother disappearing. We know that tragic circumstances formulated when we're younger have a definite impact on us, and all three of the siblings handle the disappearance of the mother differently.Ìý

Dante, obviously, self-medicates; Nevaeh has complicated, self-destructive relationships; and Roman has stepped into the world of dominant and submissive relationships to punish himself for what he feels is his responsibility. The way that trauma touches on these three characters is also very indicative of how it influences the crime narrative—the decisions that are made and how they made the decisions, which are based on how they process their past traumas.

GR: Your story is so tight, you tie up everything in an incredibly skilled and suspenseful way. How do you map things out? What is your process?

S.A.C.: A lot of it's in my head, and I write myself a synopsis. It's basically a stream of consciousness with me telling myself the story. Then I use a whiteboard, and I do use flow charts to maintain the continuity. I use it in such a way that I have room to expand on the stories I choose, so I'm not giving the rigidity of an outline. I'm using the flexibility of a synopsis with a flow chart, and that gives me room to spread out or move around if I like.Ìý

I usually write one or two drafts. The first draft is just a rough draft, then I do minimal edits for the second draft. On the second draft, I'll send it out to friends or people that I trust, beta readers, or however you want to describe it. Then once I get it back from them, I'll take their suggestions and see if they are reasonable for the narrative. Once I'm done with that, I turn the book into my publisher, and they edit from there.

GR: How long did it take you to write this one?Ìý

S.A.C.: About a year—October 2023 and I finished September 18, 2024.

GR: And the threat to Roman and his family—the Black Barron Boys, Torrent and Tranquil—they seem to go beyond villain and into psychopath territory.

S.A.C.: The main thing is, with these characters, they are characters who have stayed in Jefferson Run. They’re not somebody like Roman, who's gone away and went to college and left and moved to Atlanta. They stayed there, and so some of that comes from their idea about themselves, that they are the survivors. They are the ones who are going to run this town.Ìý

Of course, they are sociopaths, psychopaths, and they have issues of anger management, issues with rage, but also issues of their own self-worth. It is interesting to see a villain who's brutal, who's vicious, but that viciousness and brutality comes from a place inside that is sort of broken. Both these characters are broken in different ways.Ìý

There's a scene where you get to see them in their element, but also you get to see them a little bit vulnerable. I think all villains, no matter how terrible they are, have moments and times that they're vulnerable. When you see that, it makes the villainous aspects of them even worse, because you realize, “Oh, you could be sensitive, you could be human, but you choose not to.�

GR: Talk about Roman’s evolution in that way? He seems someone very motivated by doing the right thing, but he’s trying to accomplish it by doing it by the opposite. Hero or antihero?Ìý

S.A.C.: He's an antihero, maybe moving over to benevolent villain because of what he decides to go through, and how he decides to handle things, and how that darkness appeals to him after a while.Ìý

GR: Because, like you said, he's good at it.

S.A.C.: He's very good at it. He finds out that he's maybe too good at it.

GR: How is this book different from some of your others?

S.A.C.: For one thing, I wanted to give the story a more epic saga feel. With All the Sinners Bleed, I wanted that to feel like a religious chapter, or a book in the Bible—I wanted that to have an almost Old Testament feel.Ìý

With King of Ashes, I wanted it to feel big. I wanted this story to feel momentous and epic. Even though it's one small town in the South, I wanted the stakes to feel momentous and over-the-top, and again, that Shakespearean setup, because I wanted it to feel like a big book. When you get to the end, I want you to feel that Godfather feeling that you've watched something epic.

GR: What is the most fun part for you with writing a book like this?

S.A.C.: There's a lot to be said about the middle of a book, but I'm a first act, third act kind of guy. The second act is just a bridge to get me there. I like tying everything up and seeing where everybody ends up. I use chess as a metaphor in this book, but it really is like moving pieces on a chessboard and seeing where the pawns end up.

GR: Then the names of your characters—Roman, you've got Nevaeh, which is heaven spelled backwards, Dante, Torrent, Tranquil, the list goes on. Is there meaning in them?

S.A.C.: Especially for the main characters, the names do mean something. Roman is much like the latter-day Roman empire, where he thinks he's one thing, but on the inside he's something else. He wants to be a person of note, of consideration, of family honor. But much like the Roman Empire itself, he goes about it a very different and unusual way,Ìý

With Nevaeh, heaven backwards, she's not in hell. She's trying to do the right things, but she also feels like she's trapped there in that family dynamic. Dante, he's the one that starts us on this voyage into the netherworld, this criminal underworld, this hell of his own making. His is the path that sets us on our story.Ìý

Torrent is both his nickname, but also his personality, how he uses his force of personality to wash everything away. And of course, his brother Tranquil, that's an oxymoronic name because that character is in seemingly constant rage. But his anger, his rage, looks like tranquility, and a lot of people feel like that. The names definitely do mean something.

GR: I read that you started writing horror and then you transferred to crime fiction.Ìý

S.A.C.: I think that horror and crime fiction are very close in the thematic world. They’re in the same church, just different pews. I do think both of those see people in their most extreme, whether physical or emotional, and that's a good place for me to start telling my stories out there on the outer edge of where we are when we're pushed to our edge.

GR: And then you . Did you ever imagine�?

S.A.C.: It feels very surreal. In the end it came down to the folks at Netflix and Amblin and Higher Ground, and their understanding my work and wanting to be the home for it. So that's how we got back to working with them again. I did speak with Steven at the end of the process, which was really just mind-blowing. The word surreal comes up again, but it's just that's how it feels. It's a very surreal sort of, “Where am I? Who am I?� sort of moment when you’re looking at a Zoom screen and there's Steven Spielberg talking to you in a little box.

GR: What writers are your favorite when it comes to crime fiction?

S.A.C.: I have my own Mount Rushmore of crime writers, which is Walter Mosley, Elmore Leonard, Sue Grafton, and Chester Himes is on there as well. Currently, I love some of my contemporaries that are out there. Jordan Harper I think is one of the finest crime writers working today. Laura McHugh is an amazing noir crime writer, Kellye Garrett and Jennifer Hillier both write incredible domestic suspense. I'm also a fan of the classics, like Chandler and Hammett and Ross Macdonald. I like Donna Tartt—I’m a huge fan of The Secret History, Jane Smiley, and A Thousand Acres is one of my favorite books. I have a ranging sphere of influences that have really shaped me as a writer.

GR: What books are you reading now?Ìý

S.A.C.: I just finished an advanced copy of El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott and was blown away. I thought it was amazing. And I just finished a rough draft of Eli Cranor’s new book, Mississippi Blue 42, about the world of college football and gambling in college football. Both of those were really amazing.Ìý

GR: Last question: How did you arrive at the title of this book, King of Ashes?Ìý

S.A.C.: I have a superstition that I don't write the story until I come up with a really good title. I think about Roman and think about the character, thinking about the kingdom that his father created for him. I like the contrast between the idea of a king, which some people can think is everlasting, and, of course, the idea of ashes, which is the end result. That incongruity, for me, made a really cool title.
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