Scott Geisel’s new mystery, suspense, action, thriller, romance novel set in the Pacific Northwest, “Orcas’ Call,” was released by Fox & Possum Publishing this summer and is available at Dark Star Books and Comics.
Villager’s new novel heads west
- Published: December 2, 2025
Readers who know villager Scott Geisel through his “Jackson Flint” mysteries are used to seeing familiar Yellow Springs turf reflected back at them: the Emporium, downtown streets, bends in Miami Valley roads. In recent years, however, Geisel has expanded beyond Ohio to other locales — and to explorations of other genres.
At the end of 2022, he published “Miller Knew,” a stark, Appalachian-Virginia tale he described as “Appalachian noir and suspense.” His newest novel, “Orcas’ Call,” stretches even farther — more than 2,000 miles west, into the dense forests, islands and inlets of the Pacific Northwest.
As with Geisel’s earlier work, the physical settings in “Orcas’ Call” map directly onto real places: Orcas Island, the Salish Sea, the Olympic Peninsula. A hand-drawn map at the book’s front lays out locations featured in the novel, as well as nearby orienting landmark cities.
Geisel told the News this month that the idea for “Orcas’ Call” grew during a two-week trip he and his wife, designer and artist Pam Geisel, took two summers ago. The couple met friends at Port Angeles, Washington, and later headed to the Olympic Peninsula and on to Orcas Island. It was June, and the couple were visiting just in time to catch the island’s colorful Solstice Parade.
“Pam said, ‘This is the coolest parade in the coolest town ever — you should set a novel here,’” Geisel said. “Then we went down into the redwoods, and she said, ‘Oh, this would be a great place for that novel.’ The whole week, she just kept saying, ‘Wouldn’t this be a great scene to add into that novel?’ So how could I not?”
The book’s dedication nods to the source of inspiration: “This one is for Pam. Other people go on vacation and get a T-shirt and photos. She gets a mystery novel.”
Scott Geisel (Submitted photo)
The novel follows Nilson “Nils” Garner, an itinerant wilderness guide fresh off a backpacking trip among the Northern California redwoods. On the way north he crosses paths with Bly Milkov — or rather, she finds him. When Nils finally learns why she’s pursuing him, the pair end up on the run together, pulled into a mystery that unfolds across ferries, forests and coastline.
To say more would ruin the mystery, suspense, action, thrills and romance in the novel. All of the above, Geisel said, are good descriptors of “Orcas’ Call,” but he’s amalgamated the book’s basic genre into two words.
“I just called it an ‘adventure novel,’” he said.
Geisel added that, though he did often envision the action of “Orcas’ Call” in cinematic terms, he wasn’t consciously drawing from film or other thrillers as he drafted. Nevertheless, he pointed out that all writers inevitably draw from echoes of other works as they write, intentionally or not. He noted that readers might catch shades of the first “The Bourne Identity” film, and a little of the structure and pacing of “Speed,” with characters thrown together under escalating pressure.
Geisel, who has taught writing since the 1990s, said he’s always written novels while also pursuing his other work.
“I usually say it takes about six weeks to write a novel — but those six weeks are stretched out over about nine months,” he said.
For “Orcas’ Call,” however, Geisel was able to take advantage of a luxury he hadn’t yet experienced: He wrote the novel in one, unbroken four-and-a-half-week stretch, spending every day focused solely on writing.
“I’d get up in the morning, write, run in the woods, lift weights, eat, write. And then before I went to sleep, every night, I would think about what comes next,” he said. “If you do that, the next day it’s like you’re just right back in the race.”
A major portion of the novel is dialogue, since the novel primarily follows its two main characters. Geisel said he leaned into it, and considered the dialogue between Nils and Bly to be “the most fun part of the novel.”
Geisel said he initially considered writing “Orcas’ Call” from Bly’s point of view; without spoiling too much, she is something of a bad-ass, with hard-earned gifts that often mystify Nils and make her a pleasure to read. In the end, however, Geisel said the novel’s structure made more sense anchored in Nils’ point of view.
“He doesn’t know what’s going on,” Geisel said. “The mystery works better if you’re in the same spot as the protagonist.”
Once Bly stepped onto the page, however, Geisel said she reshaped the story.
“The way that the two characters interacted, I thought, ‘Oh, I really like her,’” he said. “So I decided, ‘Well, I’m going to make it more about her and include more of her backstory, because she’s a great character — and she keeps showing him up. He thinks he’s this tough guy, and she shows him up every time.”
Geisel said he enjoys grounding the worlds of his novels in the real world, though the approach comes with its own challenges: After all, with the “Jackson Flint” novels set primarily in Yellow Springs, local readers will know if he misplaces an alley way here or a window pane there.
“You have to get it right enough that people don’t say, ‘Oh, that’s wrong,’” he said.
At the same time, setting novels in his own town means he can walk, bike or drive to every place he describes. Not so with “Orcas’ Call.” Geisel said Google Street View was useful to his research as he revisited, in memory, the places of his vacation: ferry docks, redwood groves, rocky beaches. The trip’s texture shows in the novel’s geography: the Solstice Parade on Orcas Island; the lavender farm in Sequim; the foggy coastline running south to the redwoods.
Geisel said fans of his locally based mystery series have not been forgotten: Geisel is currently at work on the next “Jackson Flint” installment. At the same time, he has branded “Orcas’ Call” as “A Nils & Bly Novel,” signaling his intention to follow the pair beyond their first adventure. Though Geisel said he had originally expected “Orcas’ Call” to be a one-off departure, by the time he finished the first draft of the new novel, he realized there was ample room for a sequel.
“I’ve already envisioned where the next one’s going to start,” he said.
“Orcas’ Call,” from Fox & Possum Publishing, is available now at Dark Star Books and Comics.
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