#ThisorThatThursday Author Interview with Charles Philipp Martin

I’d like to welcome Charles Philipp Martin to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday.

Hardest thing about being a writer: Reading my manuscript for the tenth time and trying to keep the perspective of a new reader.

Easiest thing about being a writer: Finding things to improve in my writing. Every time. Even after it’s been published.

Things you need for your writing sessions: Seclusion and quiet; I knew a writer who worked in his living room with his family and Great Dane milling around. I’d go insane.

Things that hamper your writing: Noise, people, any distractions, including and especially my own thoughts and wandering mind.

Words that describe you: Funny. Musical. Cat dad.

Words that describe you, but you wish they didn’t: Procrastinator. Preoccupied and distracted. Author of dad jokes.

Something you’re really good at: Writing. If I do say so myself.
Something you’re really bad at: Marketing myself. I’m the original light-under-a-bushel guy.

Favorite music or song: As a musician, I appreciate anything in any genre composed by a genius.

Music that drives you crazy: Anything blasting at window-rattling volumes from the Dodge Charger next to me at the stoplight.

Things you’d walk a mile for: A cat who lives to be petted.

Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: People who say, “between you and I.”

Things you always put in your books: Something funny. I like to lighten the tension with a laugh.

Things you never put in your books: I have a long list of pet peeves. Example: making people take nonexistent turns, as in, after Sally shakes her head, writing, “It was Fred’s turn to shake his head.”

Some real-life story that made it to one of your books: There are many in my novels. In Rented Grave, the police needed to find a flat in Mongkok, a Hong Kong district that’s the densest square half mile on earth. All they had was the key to the flat. So they made a hundred copies of the key and sent police constables to try every lock in thousands of apartments. They found the flat and rescued a kidnapped child.

Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not: The hero in my first book, Neon Panic, was an orchestral bass player, as I was. But he was a brilliant musician; me not so much.

The funniest thing to happen to you: As a child, I was in the kid’s chorus at the Metropolitan Opera. As the first act of Tosca finished, the great gold curtain swept down, and I was on the wrong side of it. It was just me, looking out at the audience, all of whom were in hysterics. I dived under that extremely heavy curtain and got away.

The most embarrassing thing to happen to you: See above.

Things to say to an author: I just bought your book. I can’t wait to read it—loved your last one!

Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: “I’d love to read your book. Will I get a free copy?”

About Charles:

Charles Philipp Martin grew up in New York City’s Greenwich Village in a musical family. After a six-year paid vacation as a bassist in the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, he quit to become a newspaper columnist, broadcaster, and magazine writer.

His suspense novels Neon Panic, Rented Grave, and East Hell featuring Hong Kong police inspector Herman Lok, have earned critical praise for shedding light on the fascinating world of Hong Kong crime. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies as well, most recently the Bouchercon 2026 anthology The Lines We Cross, featuring his story “Dragon Meat in Heaven.”

Charles now lives in Seattle with his wife Catherine. Another Inspector Lok novel is in the works.

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Website: https://www.neonpanic.com/about