Author Tim Cockey sold his first novel to a major publishing house and sparked a fiction series like no other. FictionAddiction.NET's Apryl Duncan talked with Cockey about his books, writing style and his advice for writers to land their own publishing deal.

How did you come up with the idea for your hearse series books?

Like all the best ideas, this one hit me when I wasn't looking. I knew that I wanted to develop a series featuring a civilian sleuth (I prefer this to 'amateur sleuth') but I had no clue whatsoever as to who my protagonist would be, what his profession was, etc. I didn't even know that the series would be set in Baltimore. Baltimore is my hometown, but I had lived in New York City for twelve years at that point.

I sat my character down in an office, stuck his feet up on his desk and began to imagine what it was he was seeing out of his office door. And just like that, I saw a bunch of people passing through the front hall on their way to a wake.

A wake? No, no, no, I said to myself. I wouldn't want to read a book about an undertaker so why would I want to write one?

But I just noodled around with the scene and was delighted to hear the voice that was coming out in this guy. He certainly didn't fit the general undertaker stereotype. And that's when it all began to fall together.

Why not swim upstream a little bit? Go full force to make the guy as appealing as possible. Irreverent yet respectful and all the rest. And once I took Hitch into the wake (in The Hearse You Came In On) and confronted him with the 'mystery woman' who wanted to discuss arrangements for her own funeral...well, I was as intrigued as Hitch.

It became clear to me that Hitch and his sidekicks were Baltimore types, not New Yorkers. Making that switch opened things up for me. It wasn't until I was well into the first book that it dawned on me how lucky I was to have come up with the undertaker notion. These are murder mysteries after all. Requirement Number One: dead bodies.

Sewell comes across as a sexy guy - not your typical undertaker. How did you flesh out this character to make him so believably real?

My first concern was to let the reader know that Hitch wasn't a person who had always hankered after this profession, so early on I explained how it was that he came to be raised by his aunt and uncle in the funeral home. In fact, creating Aunt Billie as another character who doesn't seem 'undertakery' went a long way towards keeping Hitch more of a 'regular guy.'

Essentially I paid little attention to Hitch's profession. In giving him an unusual relationship with his very unusual ex-wife, in making him an amateur actor, in giving him a favorite bar to go to, in having him chase a skirt or two...voila, the guy became 'believably real.'

In presenting Hitch in first-person, I'm able to give the readers access to his way of thinking and seeing. He is outrageously honest - I feel - and effortlessly self-effacing. I think these are terribly appealing qualities in a person.

Do you plan on continuing the hearse series? If so, what new tale would you like to see Hitchcock in?

It's always a tricky matter, how far to take a series. Of course I say this having never written a series before. So I'm only pretending to know what I'm talking about.

Sure, I'd like to continue the series. I enjoy Hitch and his cronies and would love to be able to visit with them. I can't say how ready I am to crank out a Hitch-book every year. But at this point it is difficult for me to imagine not slipping into the Hitch voice.

As for 'new tales', I don't have a trajectory in mind. I suspect that things with Julia could well get a bit more complicated/interesting as time goes along. And readers are pressuring me to go out there and find a man for Billie. So who knows?

Bestselling author Philip Pullman recently said novels must contain morality to be of any value. "You can't leave morality out unless your work is so stupid and trivial, and so worthless that no-one would want to read it anyway," he said. What's your take on this statement?

Well, I don't think that 'stupid and trivial' and 'worthless' are judgments I'd care to make. But I do see the point and I do agree that there ought to be something humane going on in a novel, something that a person can relate to. Of course the level or degree of the 'humanity', or the 'morality' is pretty subjective. Some people require very little of it...otherwise no one would be watching all of those 'stupid and trivial' TV shows out there.

I feel fine with my books. They are designed to entertain and to give the reader a puzzle to solve. Hitch spends plenty of time weighing in with his opinions, his perspectives and ruminating in his own way on human nature. He is flawed and he readily admits it. And he does have his particular morality. I try to wrap all this up in a humorous package. My greatest reward has been in my managing to balance the heavy with the light. Now, if I can only get that balance out here in the real world...