How ‘California Bear’ author Duane Swierczynski found the heart of his crime novel

The author talks about his new novel, which features Southern California landmarks, over lunch at Clearman’s North Woods Inn in Alhambra.

Crime writer Duane Swierczynski suggests we look out for bears.

That’s how we find ourselves one December afternoon in San Gabriel at Clearman’s North Woods Inn. As we talk over lunch, classic Christmas tunes play, glasses get refilled, and on either side of the dining room, our quarry awaits.

“They have not one, but two stuffed bears,” says the author of the just-published novel, “California Bear.” “I honestly love historic places that have hung on in L.A. like Clearman’s and others like it. It just makes my day.”

The twice Edgar-nominated Swierczynski (pronounced “sweer-ZIN-ski”) and I are meeting to discuss the book, his first solo novel since 2016’s “Revolver” and most recent since his 2023 bestselling collaboration with James Patterson, “Lion & Lamb.”

A Philadelphia transplant who moved to Southern California with his wife Meredith and two children in 2016, Swierczynski has not only written books, screenplays, comics, and audio originals, but he’s already developed a formidable wealth of knowledge about local landmarks and literary history, including lore about his adopted hometown of Monrovia. He also researches and writes the Field Guide to L.A. Pulp column for bare•bones magazine about forgotten or underappreciated Southern California writers like Paul Cain, Leigh Brackett and David Goodis.

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Swierczynski and I first talked in San Diego at the crime writing festival Bouchercon last September. We picked right back up during our two-hour lunch and subsequent follow-ups that covered books, movies, comics, music, journalism, history and family. We also get into “California Bear,” which mixes elements from true crime, reality TV, serial killer lore, buddy comedies and unlikely team-ups with a moving story about a father and daughter, one based on events from the author’s life.

Oh, and food. We aren’t here solely for the bears; we’re here because food plays an important role in the book — comestibles reveal character — so you might need to loosen your belt while reading the novel.

Philadelphia freedom

For Swierczynski, coming to the West Coast wasn’t a sure thing. Born and raised in a rough part of Philadelphia, the self-described nerd had a job by the time he was 10, spending nights playing keyboards in his father’s bar band, False Teeth.

“I was 10 years old, playing dives,” he says. “There’s two bars we used to play there, right under the EL tracks, literally.” 

While there were plenty of opportunities to get into trouble, he stuck to drinking sodas and playing Donkey Kong in between sets. “I was pretty much a law and order kid. I was terrified of getting busted.”

Swierczynski retired from his musical career at age 25 and worked as a journalist for Men’s Health, Details and Philadelphia City Paper. Though he loves music, he’d long had another goal in mind: Becoming a writer.

“Writing was my way out,” he says, recalling how he’d once composed a story for a friend’s birthday and then watched in awe as his friend read its twist ending. “That feeling was like, ‘I want to do this for a living – this is amazing.’”

This drive ultimately led to writing nonfiction books, novels and comic books. After connecting with comics heavyweight Ed Brubaker, who made some introductions, Swierczynski was soon writing comics featuring characters like Cable, Deadpool, Iron Fist, and Punisher, around 250 issues in all.

Brubaker says the connection was important for both of them. “Duane is a fantastic crime novelist and a great guy. Meeting him back when I was starting my career was like finding a crime fiction cousin or something; we’d send each other books and write back and forth,” he says in a message.

But comics proved to be too much of a good thing, Swierczynski says.

“I fell into the trap that everyone falls into; you say yes [to everything]. … At one point, I was doing five books a month,” he says. “And I realized it was too much.”

Besides the challenge of juggling multiple storylines for all those comics, Swierczynski wanted to get back to writing his own characters.

“I kept busy. I had work. But at one point I realized I was putting all this time into things I don’t own, and that was bothering me,” he says. “It felt really off-kilter.”

Despite pulling back on most of his comics work, he’s maintained a 10-year relationship writing for Storm King Comics, the imprint run by Sandy and John Carpenter of “Halloween” fame.

“Oh, Sandy’s awesome. I can’t say enough great things about her,” says Swierczynski, citing Storm King’s creator-friendly policies when it comes to intellectual property. “That to me is the best place to be in comics. It’s personally very satisfying.”

Swierczynski stayed busy, working on a book trilogy with “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” creator Anthony E. Zuiker, writing his own novels and striking up a collaboration with James Patterson. 

“He’s great; he’s really awesome to work with,” says Swierczynski, who credits Patterson’s work ethic and remarkable list of collaborators. “His small talk is like, ‘Yeah, I was hanging out with Dolly Parton last week’ and my small talk is, ‘I walked my dog.’”

Swierczynski’s range of creative endeavors led him to launch a personal project in 2018, creating a daily regimen of generating story ideas.

The project not only led him to read a newspaper story that would inspire “California Bear,” but it also gave him an anchor and a purpose when he needed one.

Evie’s story

In May 2018, Swierczynski’s teen daughter, Evelyn, or Evie, was diagnosed with leukemia. While Evie was being treated at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Swierczynski and his wife took turns sleeping overnight in her room so she wouldn’t be alone.

During the long evenings, Swierczynski turned to his idea folder and began writing a story about a former police officer named Cato Hightower who works to get a convict, Jack Queen, sprung from prison; the duo end up at Patrick’s Roadhouse in Santa Monica where Hightower hopes to while away a few days eating and drinking with his new friend. But Jack just wants to see his daughter.

Food helps illustrate what characters are feeling throughout the novel. “No one’s pointed that out before. The book is, yes, loaded with food references,” says Swierczynski. “I think you really get to know people through their food choices.”

The focus on food, as well as the visit to Patrick’s Roadhouse, arose from real-life moments with his daughter Evie.

“That was inspired by my daughter. My daughter loved food, and that was her biggest complaint about the hospital: the lack of choices. Like, ‘I’m stuck here and I can’t go to this cool yogurt shop with my friends.’”

Matilda, Queen’s funny, whip-smart daughter in the novel, is based on Evie, who died five months after her diagnosis on Oct. 30, 2018.

“After we lost Evie, I put the book aside,” says Swierczynski, who let years pass before returning to it. “I thought, I’m not sure I can finish this.”

“I really thought the stages of grief were a finite number,” he says. “But you spin through them like a roulette wheel … sometimes you get acceptance, sometimes you’re angry.”

“With grief, it’s like you can have an ordinary day and I can almost pretend that she’s off with friends, she’s at school,” he says. “Milestones, holidays, days that I know that she really would be here? That’s the hard thing.”

He pauses, concerned he’s laying too much on the listener. “I mean, our family, we laugh, and we have a good time. That doesn’t mean we don’t miss her,” he says. “Believe me, we have plenty of time to be back there, being pretty devastated.”

“You learn,” he says. “Feel your feelings. … Sometimes, I just have to lay down and feel what I’m feeling and then it’s better.”

In the wake of Evie’s death, he and his wife created the Team Evie foundation to honor their daughter. They sponsor book drives and blood drives to benefit Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, including a recent one at Vroman’s in Pasadena.

The author credits his wife Meredith for her strength. “She is the unsung hero of this book because she encouraged me to do it,” he says. 

“I thought, I do want to finish this,” he says, and was relieved by his wife’s response after she’d read the novel. “The best thing I heard was, ‘Wow, that’s our daughter.’” 

“I was nervous about that, honestly,” he says about showing the book to his wife. “She’s the only critic I want to please.”

Swierczynski says he believes Evie would be happy with the book, too.

“I think she, I don’t know, maybe approves. I hope so. She was proud of me; she did like what I did for a living. And I do embrace that,” he says. “She dug what I did, or do, so that was cool.”

The next steps

Swierczynski says there are more stories to tell about the characters in “California Bear,” but we’ll have to wait for that. He’s researching a nonfiction book that digs into his Philadelphia roots and a century-old story involving an ancestor.

“What does a guy do after losing his daughter? Well, if you’re me, you go off and investigate a 100-year-old murder,” he says. “I was trying to make sense of a really weird experience and I grabbed onto history. 

“I think Evie would approve because she loved history. I think she would have become a history professor. That was her dream,” he says. “She wanted to go to Columbia and study history. Knowing her, she would have done it.”

Swierczynski has more projects on the horizon, but it’s too soon to talk about them. He does reveal one of his future plans, though.

“You know, if there’s a sequel to ‘California Bear,’ Clearman’s is going in there, for sure.” 

‘California Bear’ book events

When: 2 p.m., Jan. 20

Where: Book Carnival, 348 S Tustin St, Orange

Information: https://www.annesbookcarnival.com/events/

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When: 7 p.m., Feb. 1

Where: Vroman’s, 695 E. Colorado Blvd Pasadena

Information: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Duane-Swierczynski-discusses-California-Bear

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For more about The Evelyn Swierczynski Foundation, visit https://www.teameviefoundation.com/