“In jazz the beat doesn’t fall where you’d expect it to fall. In my poetry my sense of rhythm owes a lot to jazz,” says Dr. Allan Hoey, poetry writer, novelist, and college professor.

Hoey owes a lot to jazz music. It’s a passion, an insight to his poetry, and the topic of his first published novel. “Chasing the Dragon” is a historical fictional account of jazz saxophonist Wardell Grey, whose mysterious death in 1955 is being investigated two years later by a white journalist who became friendly with the late performer.

“Eight years ago I got this idea for writing a jazz novel,” says the jazz enthusiast. The novel illustrates glimpses into the lives of jazz performers of the late 1940s and early 1950s such as Billie Holiday and John Coltrane, and Coleman Hawkins.

“I did a lot of research, I knew the jazz, and it’s my favorite period in jazz music. I had to find out what would be on television, baseball at the time, what kind of cigarettes did people smoke,” says Hoey.

Before writing the novel, Dr, Hoey published four books of poems including “The Precincts of Paradise.” Although Hoey is an accomplished poet, when he began his undergraduate degree at State University in Potsdam, NY, he was mostly interested in writing fiction. Later he embarked on poems and when entering graduate school at Syracuse University was a poetry major.

When asked the difference between writing novels and poems, Hoey responded simply “Novels are longer.” He says neither is easier to write than the other.

Always an avid reader, Hoey recalls: “When I was first going to the library I was really interested in the civil war and pretty rapidly grew through the children’s library. They made an exception for me to borrow books from the adult library.”

There is more to come from this writer and college professor including a series of mystery novels and many more classes here at Bucks.