Interview with Leonard Ruhl, Author of Bailing Out

What’s the story behind the story? What inspired you to write Bailing Out?

G’s escape from jail in this novel is inspired by a true story from my federal prosecuting days—circa 2006, in Wichita, Kansas. I’d indicted a guy who’d just been caught hauling a large load of meth and was looking at twenty or thirty years in federal prison. When I went to court the next morning for the guy’s first appearance, the marshals told me there had been a little snafu at the local jail. A jailor had mistakenly released the defendant, who had posed as another inmate who’d finished serving his sentence. I often wonder what ever happened to that defendant and his family, wanted by the law and an angry cartel. I took that nugget and crafted an outline around it, and I was off to the races.

If you had to pick theme songs for the main characters of Bailing Out, what would they be?

For G, I think “Devil in My Ear” by the Red Clay Strays would be appropriate. For Carmen, I’ll go with Halsey’s “Without Me.”

What’s your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?

What books are on your TBR pile right now?

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, Nothing to Lose by Lee Child, and Black Hornet by James Sallis.

What scene in your book was your favorite to write?

The scene from chapter 34 comes to mind because there’s a stand-off at gunpoint, much different from any I’ve ever seen in film or read about. Without spoiling things too much, I think I can say that the two characters point guns at each other, each trying to coax the other to shoot, each character having a very specific reason for wanting to die at that moment. When no shots are fired, each character cracks an eye at the other, still at gunpoint, wondering, “What the hell?”

Do you have any quirky writing habits? (lucky mugs, cats on laps, etc.)

Not really, other than with so little time in my life, I’ll write anytime and anywhere, even in a parking lot at one of my daughter’s softball tournaments in a running car with the AC running in hundred-degree heat.

Do you have a motto, quote, or philosophy you live by?

If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.

If you could choose one thing for readers to remember after reading your book, what would it be?

I want to leave them wanting more.

Leonard Ruhl is the author of the new book Bailing Out

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