Richard Godwin's Blog, page 22

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Josh Stallings

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Josh Stallings is your average ex-criminal, ex-taxi driver, ex-club bouncer, film making, script writing, award winning trailer editing, punk.

Over his time in Hollywood he wrote and edited the feature film 'The Ice Runner', a Russian/American co-production. 'Kinda Cute for a White-Boy' an independent feature he directed and co-wrote with novelist Tad Williams, won best picture at the Savannah International Film Festival.

He writes gritty hard edged prose in a strong highly readable narrative voice. His first novel 'Beautiful, Naked & Dead', published March 2011, is garnering great notice from readers and reviewers alike. Its sequel, 'Out There Bad', was published three months later to equally stunning reviews.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about Noir and gender.

Do you think Noir with no sex is lacking and if so why?

Naa, there is plenty of good sexless Noir, BUT being who I am I like my Noir with a heavy smell of lust and desire. Sex is one of the strongest human motivators, it drives people to all sorts of dark behavior and thus is good fodder for… shit I'm starting to talk like a lit professor instead of the undereducated mug I am. Truth; strippers, prostitutes, lap dance queens, bouncers and low rent gangsters are the world I understand. The world I write about. Is this because my pop dated a stripper or the fact that my sister was dancer? Hell I don't know. For whatever reason I write graphic sex like I write graphic violence. Here is the deal, if you put sex in, make it real. No fucking waves breaking on the beach metaphors, give me an erection. If you write about violence make it hurt, make me cringe.

Do you think killing and fucking are related?

They are definitely kissing cousins. Primal. Both can be acts of passion. Then again both can be cold calculated acts. Good question. There is a scene in Saving Private Ryan where a US soldier and a Nazi are struggling over a bayonet, it is as close to sex scene as Spielberg has ever directed. In Moses' (the protagonist in my novels) case I think they are polar opposites. Sex is his way of fighting to feel wanted, killing is how he protects those he loves, it is the net result of protecting others. To do it he lets loose his inner berserker. For the Russian pimps in Out There Bad fucking is all about control over others, the same goes for killing, so for them I'd say they are identical.

You're given a large sum of money to carry out a hit no questions asked. How would you do it to avoid detection?

Years ago I read an interview with a hit-man, he said that he always killed people in public places with the biggest loudest gun possible. Scare the shit out of the witnesses and their minds go fritz, they would alternately say he was a tall white man and a black midget, a bald hispanic, an albino. So I would buy a Colt Walker black-powder pistol. They were made in 1847 and until the 357 Magnum came along in the 1930's to combat mobsters, they were the most powerful handgun made. Italian replicas are plentiful and in the States you can buy black-powder guns without needing ID or registration. The Walker has a 9 inch barrel and when fired it shoots flame and smoke 10 feet out. Fire that in restaurant and I guarantee no one will remember anything but the boom, the smoke and the ruin.

Do you think female killers are motivated by different things to male killers and what do those differences show about gender?

Yes, no, um maybe. Ok I'll go with yes. I think in a broad sweeping generalization, women are more bound to protect life than take it. That said the most ruthless killer I have written is a woman. I think once you push a woman to kill, look out. When my son Jared was little I asked him if he was afraid of me. He thought it over and said "No." When asked if he was afraid of his mother he didn't even wait a millisecond, "Oh hell yes." I think he was pointing out a true fact, I'm a big bruiser of man but at my core I'm a softy, their mother has a will of steel. She has never stuck our boys and maybe once or twice did she even raise her voice, but the potential for mass destruction is there if pushed.

We socialize women to think that to get mad or god forbid violent is a sin. Once let go of it's a powerful lot of pent up rage waiting to come out. Hum, none of that answers your question… Men are motivated to kill by lust for power or pussy, women kill to protect those they love or for revenge on those who have harmed them or those they love. Moses McGuire kills to protect those he loves, and with the hope for future pussy. He is a dualistic character.

Thank you for asking a question sure to get me in trouble with every woman I know.

Do you think traditionally the gods are messengers?

I suddenly have a vision of Thor on a bicycle bag full of parcels. I want to act all smart and shit so I sneak a quick goggle, get Hermes, I try and come up withy clever way to construct a sentence with him in it. Truth is I don't know about god or gods. If they are messengers they must have deemed me unworthy of letters, because I have been stumbling blind my whole life.

Tell us about Beautiful Naked and Dead.

Beautiful, Naked & Dead is a hard-boiled redemption tale. When it starts Moses McGuire has a gun in his mouth. He is trying to decide if he should pull the trigger. This was the scene I saw that made me want to write the novel. The thought that there was nothing more dangerous than a man who doesn't give a shit what you do to him.

Fuck it, I'm crap at pimping my own work, so here is what others said about it…. "gritty, bad-ass, crime-drama. This book is sick." -Julia Madeleine. "Stallings is masterfully understated in his handling of the seamy underworld that is sex for sale in America." -Elizabeth A. White. "a violent, boozy road trip… From Los Angeles to Las Vegas, from the mean streets to the mountains, from bars to bordellos, this is a vivid, exciting, funny and touching piece of hardboiled noir." -Paul D. Brazill. "It is a rough, bleak yet heart warming tale of hopelessness, evil and love." –McDroll. "Moses McGuire is the most elaborate, strong and charming protagonist since Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie… Josh Stallings might be one of the most talented newcomers in the literary landscape this year." -Benoit Levievre "It truly is an amazing book. Hard-boiled, dark, full of suspense and fast cars… Seriously. I didn't call Moses hubba-hubba superlicious in a previous post for no reason, ladies." -Sabrina E. Ogden

Not bad for dyslexic kid from the poor side of town. The head of a local college's English department told a friend how much he loved Beautiful, Naked & Dead. I laughed and was real proud. When most kids were going off to university I had a wife and baby and was knocking out the bills. But the one thing I did was read like a hungry monster, still do.

William Burroughs used addiction in his fictions as an analogy of power structures and explored addicitons to violence, sex, word patterns and power as an extension of the more obvious addictions to substances. What do you make of his view?

Well he was an unrepentant old junky so I'll have to take his as the final word on addiction. Having danced, myself on that dark side of the road it is clear that anything and anyone can become tangled in addiction. The best definition of addiction I know is "when the pleasure to risk equation becomes way out of balance." If getting a blowjob could cost you your marriage and the presidency of USA, and you still get that blowjob, I'd say you are addicted to blowjobs. Modern culture is addicted to the all mighty stuff. If we just get enough stuff it will make us whole. We are willing to mortgage our lives and pound away our futures to get more stuff. Storage space is a huge growth market in the US, we have more stuff than we can keep in our homes and still the addiction continues. There is a real advantage to the power structure at large in us continuing to be addicted. Junkies of any kind are easy to control, keep them supplied and they will whore themselves out just to keep it coming. If we didn't have these irrational fears and desires ruling us, I don't think any one would be ok with the sixty-hour workweek. Hell we would strike to get it down to twenty.

To return to my novels for a second, Moses is dangerous for two reasons: He doesn't care if he lives ore dies, and he doesn't give a rat's ass about stuff, so he can't be bought. Of all the addiction out there I think the need to own more is the most dangerous. I've never seen a heroin addict start a war because he was jonesing.

Do you think the need for degradation is tied to the need for redemption in the human soul and is that in itself an addictive pattern?

I think degradation comes when we take shortcuts to normal human needs. The need to be loved is shortcut by spending shekels to have someone pretend to love us. This degrades both hooker and the John. I'm sitting in a diner, the waitress with a by god beehive hairdo, drops twenty and some singles for change. I notice she miss counted and give her back fifteen dollars. I do this because my self worth can't be bought for fifteen dollars, there is a price I'm sure, hell we all may have one, but it sure as hell isn't fifteen dollars. If it had been two hundred I might have kept it. Hard to say. That is a short cut to money I didn't bother to earn. As a youth I broken into houses and stole, I sold some drugs, ran around with guns, hurt more than one lover with infidelity. I was and am a flawed human, because of this I have to believe redemption is possible. If not then once we slipped why ever try and do better. Striving for redemption is more than a addictive behavior, for some of us it's our only shot at surviving.

Has one particular event influenced your writing?

I have been writing most of my life, I was eight when I wrote my first play. Awful I'm sure, I remember lots of sword fighting. When I was twelve I wrote a sequel to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Awful again I'm sure, lots of shootouts and saloon girls. Writing has been part of my life, thus it is hard to think of one event, when all events influence my writing. I went to high school in East Palo Alto, a notorious northern Californian ghetto, the violence there effected my writing. Having kids changed how I viewed the world, it stripped away my nihilistic teenage world view. In my early twenties I was hit on my Harley and snapped my femur, I learned about pain in a visceral way, I know my writing got more painful after that. Yeah, it all effects my writing. My friend Tad Williams, writer of epic fantasy novels, says he puts a lot of characters in play when plotting a large multi volume book, it will take him six or seven years to complete, and by the time he gets to book four life will have changed him, so he's not entirely sure who he will need standing to tell the tale that is both true to the novel and true to who time has morphed him into. I write short noir novels but each new Moses book is changed by what life has tossed my way. Writing is an echo of my life, a shadow cast on the page by the events I live through.

Why noir crime fiction, out of all genres, why not one that has more, um, money attached to it?

I am a hungry reader, have been all my life, odd seeing as I am also hopelessly dyslexic. I fell in love with Raymond Chandler as a teenager. It was at this same time I discovered Martin Scorsese, I was watching Mean Streets, and committing crimes at the same time. I was a shitty criminal, but that's another story. In Scorsese I saw that it was possible to tell stories that were true to how it felt to be me. This also set me on my path to filmmaking. It wasn't until I got hooked on James Crumley that I started to think about writing crime novels. I read everything he wrote, and then had to wait painful years until he wrote another. I decided that if I wanted that flavor more often I would have to write it myself. Early, um, bad, short stories were mock Crumley. It wasn't until I discovered Moses and wrote Beautiful, Naked & Dead that I discovered my own voice. Now I can't shut it up. Truth is, if I could write a more profitable genre I might take a crack at it, but it's not as they say, in my personal wheelhouse.

Thank you Josh for a low down dirty and honest interview.

Josh Stallings is currently working on the third Moses McGuire novel. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Erika, his bullmastiff Nelson, Lucy the lab pit mix and Riddle the cat.

Stallings links

Website

Out There Bad at Amazon US and UK

Beautiful, Naked & Dead at Amazon US and UK

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview with Gary Phillips

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Mystery and crime writer Gary Phillips has led an interesting life. He was involved in easing racial tensions through community organizing and policy after the 1992 LA riots.

He is a widely published novelist and author of numerous graphic novels, including recently the brilliant 'Cowboys', illustrated by Brian Hurtt, in which a nightclub shooting changes the lives of two undercover officers.

Gary met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about the graphic novel and crime writing.

Do you think kindle lends itself to the graphic novel and what are the differences between writing one for kindle and writing for traditional paperback?

Not sure if the Kindle lends itself well to the graphic novel format. I know from the guy now converting Angeltown: The Nate Hollis Investigations — out now from Moonstone, y'all — for the e-book format told me he's had to break up some of the pages as Kindle scrunches graphics and so say a page with seven panels would have to be two pages on the machine, four on one page and three on the following. That suggests as a writer providing a script to the artist, I would handle the pacing different, where are the dramatic breaks, mini-cliffhangers from one page to the next, and so on, differently if I was writing for the electronic medium.

For instance I've talked to younger guys at the comic shop I frequent, Comics Ink in Culver City, and some have talked about they prefer the printed comic book page as opposed to say scrolling panel by panel on an iPhone. I'm sure there are others who dig it that way. Clearly the various electronic formats create a different set of challenges to storytelling. Fact, I believe there's been a graphic novel written solely for the so-called Smart Phone. I wonder how well it did, how many hits it got — how much was cost a factor?

To what extent do you think writers are motivated by a fear of death?

That's a great question. Yes, I do find some small comfort in the notion that when I'm gone there will be, like this image from the recent film version of Wells' The Time Machine, this massive crumbling library of marble and Ionic columns where among the stacks of crumbling books, there will be a copy or two of my books. Of course as soon as you touch the outside of one, it'll disintegrate into dust. But what about this age of the Kindle? How will my bid for minimal immortality be realized if my books are only in electronic format? For surely there will be this world wide electromagnetic pulse the aliens or our mad scientists unleash and all this information is wiped in the Ethernet. Then what? Man.

Do you see the struggle of Social Darwinism at work in your novels as they portray crime and to what extent do you think the same forces are at work in the police force?

That's a pretty high-minded concept but certainly on some level isn't the crime and mystery story about that? We know there are various levels of crime from the street hoodlum to the Wall Street insider. We also know the one as Woody Guthrie sang, can do more thievery with a pen than with a gun. But really the lowly detective is hard pressed to truly bring down the powerful. Maybe the detective, be they private or on the police force, can hope to alter events to protect an individual or a small group but it's not realistic to think they could say bring down a massive, multi-tentacled entity say in the mold of Halliburton or a Blackwater or whatever it is they calling themselves these days.

That doesn't mean your protagonist can't expose the wrong-doing of such a global spanning organization, but of course they would have at their command a phalanx of lawyers and public relations personnel to spin, obfuscate and delay, for years, justice. The detective at best seeks a modicum of balancing the scales. Not that they wouldn't want more, but I think gone are the days when at the end of the novel or the movie the hero has managed to get the incriminating evidence in the hands of the intrepid reporter and the bad guys goose is coked. These days it's just as likely the evil corporation owns the news outlet and can kill the story that way or more likely, get a few underlings to take the fall.

Conversely, it's still compelling to read stories of thieves who operate in their own underworld and when they clash, it's a head up kind of confrontation be one of the thieves a crime lord or even a crooked politician. There are rules after all to screwing the public and these chaps step too far out of line.

In terms of the police versus the little guy, that's a different story. There are far too many stories of the poor and people of color being ground up in the machinery of the criminal justice system. There are now numerous cases of men who were convicted by juries of their peers, where damning eyewitness testimony was introduced against them who now 10, 20, 30 years later DNA evidence clears them. How many studies have demonstrated the unreliability of eyewitnesses. Or the power of the police to coerce confession after grilling you over and over for hours in the interrogation room. Big dog eat little dog indeed.

Tell us about 'The Underbelly'.

The explosion of wealth and development in downtown L.A. is a thing of wonder. However, regardless of how big and shiny our buildings get, we should not forget the underbelly, the ones who this wealth and development has overlooked and pushed out. The Underbelly is a novella with this as context as a semi-homeless Vietnam vet named Magrady searches for a friend in a wheelchair gone missing from Skid Row – a friend who might be working a dangerous scheme against major players. Magrady's journey is a solo sortie where the flashback prone protagonist must deal with the impact of gentrification; take-no-prisoners community organizers; an unflinching cop with whom he has a past in Vietnam; an elderly sexpot out for his bones; a lusted after magical skull; chronic-lovin' knuckleheads; and the perils of chili cheese fries at midnight.

Roland Barthes introduced the concept of anchorage, in which linguistic elements can serve to 'anchor' the preferred readings of an image, he used this primarily in relation to advertisements but also to comics. How much more freedom do you find as a writer when writing comics and do you think the juxtaposition of image and words allows you to do things that you cannot when writing pure text?

So, on comics, well, it's this great bastard form of storytelling, isn't it? relatively cheap and disposable, tales of super heroes and monsters and all manner of fantastic going-ons. Then there's crime comics too and even mixtures where the incredible mixes with the criminal. Batman certainly embodies this has he is both costumed adventurer yet employs the classic methods of detection — computer analysis, hairs and fibers catalogued in his brain, and so on — and like Mike Hammer on steroids, can beat the holy crap out of a suspect.

Anyway, scripting comics is great because the writer gets to use visuals along with words to tell the tale. It does allow you a certain short-hand you can't do in prose. After all in prose, you have to describe the PI's seedy office, what the nightclub looks like in the smoky gloom and what have you. In comics these atmospheric ques are the purview of the artist and colorist. How much more then does it make the stuff in your head be realized on the page. But comics scripts like teleplays and screenplays have their limitations in the form of little room for long passages of text — dialogue in particular. This is a short hand process so the leisure you have of real estate in a prose novel is severely curtailed when the idea is to have visuals and text work in concert in comics.

It's not inherently more freedom, rather another way to excite the senses…I hope.

Is there a particular experience that has influenced your writing?

Huh, I'd say all of it but in particular when I wrote what would become my first published novel, Violent Spring, set in the aftermath of the 1992 civil unrest, riots, uprising, describe it as you will (this the result of the not guilty verdict for the four cops who beat motorist Rodney King) here in L.A., I drew on immediate experience. I was a co-director of a non-profit begun after the riots to better race relations through community organizing and affecting policy. So I would be at some meeting in the morning in a downtown highrise talking with the so-called insiders of the city, the movers and shakers, and at night be in a meeting in a housing project (estates you call them I believe) with gang members looking to spread their gang truce — which had been formulated prior to the uprising.

Do you think political correctness is workable and has improved racial equality or is it the patronising attempt by a white liberal mentality to ease its own conscience and has it exacerbated racial tensions?

Oh what a loaded question. Like most things, and I'm not exactly sure where political correctness sprang from, though I suspect the halls of academia, the initial impulse was a good thing. Certainly it was a reaction to having others define the realities of people of color and what we used to call the Third World and now we refer to as Emerging Nations. I'm down with that. But as these matters go, some practitioners of PC-ness took themselves too damn seriously and there was a backlash. But I don't feel PC has contributed to racial tensions. There's plenty of teabaggers, gun nuts, GOPers and neo-nazis out there who did that day in and day out.

Do you think sexual pathology is behind extreme crime and how does it differ between the sexes?

I can't say on the first part of your question as I'm no headshrinker. I will say as someone who utilizes pop psychology in hardboiled stories that sexual tensions, lust and mutual attraction of course play a role in the make up of the male and female characters who populate those tales. These attractions are part of what compels these folks, people who pay the gas bill and mow the lawn and do the dishes, to take a step out of line or pursue what any reasonable person –you the reader — can see is a foolish undertaking. But they are engulfed in a hormonal fog…they are in its spell and what chance do they have?

What do you think of the present administration in the US and its relationship to the pharmaceutical companies?

I don't know what the Obama Administration's relationship is to Big Pharma other than, like any administration, Dems of GOPers, I assume they dance to their tune to a lessor or greater degree. I've always been fascinated by Big Pharma concerns, their inter-locking boards, other companies their have monies in, and of course, as an example, withholding a pill that can help prevent HIV infection – or really charging way too much for it — can literally adversely affect countries in Africa. That is immense power. In the past I've tried to plot out a storyline involving Big Pharma with little success. The lone scientist who invents the miracle cancer drug and the scramble to either kill this guy or buy this guy off by the forces of Big Pharma. But we've kind of seen that. Your question has me thinking more on this…

Why did you become a writer?

I became a writer somewhat by default. When I was a kid growing up in then South Central L.A., I read comic books – still do in fact and occasional do some story writing in that medium. Anyway, me and my cousin Wayne used to trace over these dynamically drawn panels in say Captain America by Jack Kirby and put in our own dialogue. This hooked me to want to write and draw my own comics and tried to do that over the years, creating my own characters and taking art lessons and so on. Turned out I'm not much of an artist but the idea of being a storyteller – it also helped that while I played sports in school I was a big recreational reader – had me hooked. I've at least been able to "paint" with words.

Thank you for an insightful and wide ranging interview Gary that I hope will introduce your work to many readers.

Gary's graphic novel 'Cowboys' can be had at Amazon in the US and UK and many other online bookshops – see Goodreads for a complete list of online stores. Read a review on Barnes & Noble here.

'Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail!' is an anthology Gary co-edited with Andrea Gibbons. Read more and see the full list of contributors at PM Press. Get a copy there or at Amazon US and UK, Barnes & Noble, or Powell's.

Check out 'The Underbelly' and all of Gary's other books on his website.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Paul D. Brazill Plus A Surprise Appearance by Darren Sant

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Paul Brazill is the irrepressible force of online Noir that is kicking its way into traditional publishing by dint of its sheer resilience and readability.  He writes crackling good Noir stories, always observant of the traditions of Noir, and always pushing them to stretch the envelope.  His support for online writers is well known, as is his humour.  He is currently releasing his brilliant Drunk On the Moon Series as E Books, based on his werewolf detective Roman Dalton. So far contributors are Julia Madeleine, Allan Leverone and BR Statetham. My story Getting High On Daisy is the next one up.

Paul met me at The Slaughterhouse with some hooch that we cracked open as wolves gathered by the windows. And as we talked about Britain today and E Books a surprise visitor turned up.

Do you think Noir without sex is lacking something?

Well, noir is about making a bollocks of things, and most people make a bollocks of sex and/or relationships at one time or another but I don't think you need to have sex in a story for it to be noir, no.

Tell us about your present writing projects.

Okay, hey ho, let's go:

The Drunk On The Moon horror, noir series continues. I wrote the first story -about werewolf/PI Roman Dalton – and a host of other writers are continuing the series. Book Two -by Julia Madeleine- is out now and future stories will come from Allan Leverone, Br Stateham and Richard Godwin, amongst others.

This weekend will see the launch of Brit Grit Book One, a little collection of my short stories. The second Brit Grit book will be an anthology of short stories from some of Britain's best new crimewriters- including Ian Ayris, Nigel Bird, Richard Godwin and Nick Quantrill.

I have another short story collection-13 Shots Of Noir coming out soon, though no date yet.

I have a story in Nigel Bird and Chris Rhatigan's Pulp Ink anthology and in the debut issue of Noir Nation- An International Journal Of Noir.

Anne Frasier's Deadly Treats Halloween antholgy will be out soon, with one of my stories in it and I've a story due up at The Flash Fiction Offensive.

After that: well, I will have a book coming out from Pulp Press, but I can't say much more about that at the moment, and a story in the December issue of CrimeFactory.

To what extent do you think male criminal sexual pathology differs from female and what do the differences show about gender?

I don't think it does too much.I assume the general view is that male crime is more violent and power based, but I'm sure there are millions of examples that don't fit that view! generalisation is always dodgy, I think.

What makes you passionate?

Oh, I don't think I'm very passionate person. I try not to anyway. Indifference is the secret of happiness, eh?

Do you think Bob Holness could save Britain?

Well, since he was the first James Bond, it is quite likely.

How do you feel about Britain today?

Well, I only visit once a year but it mostly seems the same as it ever was. The rich are rich and the middle classes are as dull as a Coldplay B-side – and just as whiney. The only difference is that the working class seem to be melting away and the underclass- with their gleeful nihilism seem to have a much more amplified voice than before. This seems to frighten or worry some people, it seems, but it doesn't bother me. It still seems a varied and vital country.

I've heard the phrase dumbing down bleated loads, apparently because they don't show Becket & Pinter on TV anymore or something. But no one ever watched that stuff anyway and Match Of The Day and The Black and White Minstrels always were more popular. And is there anything more dumb than sport?

The Rolling Stones, classic band or a bunch of wankers?

Both, of course. It's impossible for me to feel exactly how significant they were at their peak but they did create some amazing music. It took me until Martin Scoerse's Shine A Light documentary to appreciate them as a live band and funny people. Wyman's a kiddy fiddler, though.

If you redirected Scum today what changes would you make?

I'd make it in the style of the Step-Up films… No, I wouldn't touch it. It made a great impact on me when I saw it as a young person and every time I've seen it since then it hasn't disapointed me.

Alan Clarke knocked out some cracking stuff. I was thinking of him when I saw Fish Tank recently. Cracking film. Shows you, like Clarke did, that the style of social realism doesn't have to be a heavy handed one.

Who is the most famous drunk you've seen in real life?

The Pink Panther's Bert Kwouk in Gerry's bar in Soho, before I was kicked out by someone who may or not have been Cathi Unsworth.

At this point Paul gets up to pour some more hooch from the fridge and Darren Sant, covered in icicles, jumps out clutching a bloody Mary.

'What am I meant to say, not now Cato?', Paul says.

We sit Darren down by the fire and I ask them both about the digital publishing revolution.

How effective a marketing tool do you think it is to use the E Book for the serialisation of short stories?

Paul:  There are two groups that, I think, will embrace the ebook series/serial:

Young people who are into technology but would be put off by reading a massive whopping book.

And older folk who are not really into reading longer pieces on a screen.

Darren:  The good thing about digitally downloading literature is the immediacy of it. You don't have wait months for new releases, things move quicker than that. There is no waiting for the book shop to open either. You don't have to spend a fortune. People are going to take a chance on a new series when all they have to shell out is 86p or 99p. Everyone loves a good series too. There is a degree of emotional investment in the characters and setting. Reading from the same setting feels satisfying if you have enjoyed the previous volumes. You don't have to "start" all over again, everything feels familiar. From a personal point of view I know I sometimes put off reading a stand alone novel because I don't always have the time to get too involved. Whereas with Paul's Drunk on the Moon series with the third story due for imminent release I can immediately dive into that as I know the main character and the world it is set in. TV producers have always known this and that is why programmes like 24 and the Sopranos do so well.

Pricing is important. You want people to buy that initial story and there are so many low priced e-books out there that you risk selling a lot fewer if it is overpriced. With a series you are not putting all of your eggs in one basket. If people like the first volume they will most likely buy the second.

To what extent do you think that historically the publishing world has invited its own disaster if that means we no longer need distributors or the conventional publishing route?

Paul:  It depends on how quickly publishers get on board the ebook train.

If they ignore it, they do so at their own risk.

I think the comparisons that have been made between the new ebooks and the golden days of the pulps seems about right.

Darren:  I think there will always be a demand for print books but the traditional publishers will have to seriously consider pricing more competitively if it wants to stand a chance against the digital market. They need to diversify and speed things up too.

It's a fast world out there and everybody wants their goods immediately. The traditional publishers are victims of their own greed. They want to move large volumes of books fast and don't want to take a chance on unknown authors. They've always turned their noses up at speculative fiction or books that don't fit neatly into a genre. This snobbish attitude and frankly avaricious mentality has been their undoing. New writers now have somewhere else to go and they are going there in droves.

To conclude I'd answer that to a very large extent their inability to move with the times has been their undoing.

Thank you for an entertaining and thought-provoking interview Paul. Darren good to see you here, thanks for your insights and perceptions.

Paul D. Brazill

Get Drunk on the Moon at Amazon in the UK and US.

Paul's world-famous blog, You Would Say That, Wouldn't You? is here

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Darren Sant

Darren Sant is a 41 year old writer from Stoke-on-Trent who has lived in Hull with his wife Julie for over a decade. He writes short fiction that could be called urban and gritty. He has been published in Byker Books excellent Radgepacket series of anthologies twice.

He has a collaborative short story in ePocalypse: emails at the end by Pill Hill Press with his friend Nick Boldock.

He has been published online by The Flash Fiction Offensive, Shotgun Honey, Pulp Metal and Thrillers Killers 'N' Chillers.

He has three kindle stories published by Trestle Press currently available on kindle:

Tales from the Longcroft Estate – A Good Day

Tales from the Longcroft Estate – Community Spirit

Flashes of Revenge – A collection of stories based around the theme of revenge.

He writes for the following blogs:

Close To The Bone (as Old Seth)

Daz's Short Book Reviews

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Monica Brinkman

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Monica Brinkman is the author of The Turn of the Karmic Wheel. She writes speculative genre fiction which contains the paranormal, spirituality, horror and suspense.

She hosts the Meaningful Writings as well as the online radio site Two Unsynchronized Souls.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about the media and gun culture.

Do you think we are manipulated by the media?

That's an easy question to answer for all we need to do is look around us and see how much the media influences our lives.

One of the first things you are advised to do when turning your life into a positive, goal-seeking path is to turn off the television. It is the most important part of achieving your personal success. The media delivers tons of negativity into a persons' life.

Think about it for a second. You wake up in the morning, a bit groggy, get your coffee or tea, sit down and turn on the morning news. Not only are you being told news that is 'sensationalized' to get large ratings, you are reported news to keep you in fear.

Fear that the economy will collapse. Fear that a tornado will hit your town. Fear that there are no decent jobs. Fear that someone will walk into your child's school and shoot them. Moreover, don't even get me talking about the Fear of those who have different political views than you or those who are of a different ethnicity. These are just a few examples. In addition, much of the news is simply someone's opinion.

On top of this, you are bombarded with useless, silly and many times senseless advertisements.

Credit card companies trying to get a laugh while, in reality, they suck many middle-class working people into their clutches until these people over extend their credit, which can be ruinous. Car manufacturers showing the new, improved, sleek model with all the bells and whistles, which costs more than most average households can afford.

It goes on and on, cleverly attracting our children to plead and beg for the latest electronic gadget or delicious cookie.

Then there are the movies. Sex, violence, and corruption fill the screen. It has made many of our youth numb to the finality of death. The killing of anyone should be shocking and unacceptable, yet it is treated as if it is just another statistic…look the other way…be glad it didn't touch your life.

I could go on and on about this topic but will end in saying it is time this country and the world stopped allowing the air-waves to lead our lives and tell us how to act, talk and what makes us happy. For true happiness is reaching for your passions in life, making that journey until you are able to work doing something you truly enjoy.

Media has taken away our imagination, replacing it with their thoughts, images and concepts. It is a form of control. For me, yes I watch television but try to focus on shows that have meaning, truth and purpose or just make me laugh. For laughter will heal your heart and soothe your soul.

As an author, I wish our youth would read books, for that is where your imagination goes wild. It is your perception of the story, which is personal to you alone. Imagination also brings forth creativity, without which, nothing new would come into the world.

Who are your literary influences?

As so many authors have influenced me, this is a more difficult question to answer.

Readers will notice I start each Part of a novel with a poem and I will continue to do so with each book written. The works of the Brothers Grimm, Edgar Allen Poe, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are innate within my spirit as I grew up reading and listening to their works.

More recently, I have favoured none other than Mr. Stephen King, perhaps because he chose to take a unique look at normal, ordinary objects and situations and add that bit of magical realism. Truth be told, to me, his books are more frightening than any other horror writings to date.

Some very recent influences have been found reading new authors books. Take for example, Kenneth Weene, author of 'Memoirs from the Asylum, Oana, author of The Healings and Sal Buttaci, author of 'Flashing My Shorts' and '200 Shorts.' I've marveled at their creativity and well-crafted stories. It makes me wonder why their books are not on the NY Times Best Sellers List today. I implore any inspiring authors to look at some of the unknown authors for they are the future of writing.

My own writing tends to lean toward speculative genre, which many say is death to an author. Are they kidding?

Many traditional publishers shy away from this genre fore they are unable to place the work in any one area and they do not have the knowledge to market the books. All I can say to them is they are underestimating readers intelligence and placing the readers of the world in their self-made 'box.' Every person whom has read 'The Turn of the Karmic Wheel' has not only given it fantastic reviews, they are asking when the next book will be available. So, why then are publishers failing to offer speculative genre to the public? Simply put, it is economics. They rely on what has worked for them in the past and are afraid to put money into something different. It is a shame.

Do you think the idea that the people around us are unknowable is the ultimate source of horror and how true do you think this idea is?

What a great question, Richard. I tend to disagree with this statement.

It is according to your prospective. I see true knowledge available to the masses, yet they hide from it, deny it, or sometimes even scorn it. Thus, if they are not knowledgeable, it is due to their own lack of interest. This scares me.

One example is you point to the sky, state it is the proverbial blue and those around you say no, it is yellow. The knowledge lies right above them in the blue sky yet they bury their head in the sand, wanting to be right, and call it yellow. You see this around you every single day.

On the other hand, as an author, I find the most frightening stories come out of nowhere, jump out at you when you least expect it. In this instance, it is not lack of knowledge but rather the knowledge itself that frightens. You know that the man travelling alone in the wilderness is soon to meet that ghastly apparition, so knowledge in this case, provides the fright factor.

Do you think gun culture is prevalent in the Unites States?

Unfortunately, this culture has been prevalent since our forefathers made their way from England to the new land.

The right to bear arms is not specific to guns, though many will use this part of the Bill of Rights as an excuse to own guns. If you look up arms in a thesaurus, you will see it lists weaponry, armaments, missiles, artillery as well as guns. We, as a people, have the right to bear arms against our enemies when threatened.

If you take Canada, for example, more people own guns in that country than in any other yet they have one of the lowest shooting death rates. Why, you may ask. Because they realize the purpose of guns is for hunting, not killing each other.

It runs much deeper than gun culture. It is our views of war, power and superiority that create a culture sustained on supremacy where we will accept peace only on our terms. Instead of seeking a solution via communication or understanding, we rely on force. Until the United States comes to grips with the fact, we are part of the world and look for peaceful solutions instead of almighty force, our society will continue to embrace gun culture.

You see it in our films, our music, our media, our beliefs, and in our everyday lives. I fear without changing our views, American, once so loved and respected by other countries, will find even more hatred from what were once friendly nations.

My one hope is our youth will stand up and be unafraid to change the paradigm.

Do you think a female killer thinks and acts differently to a male and if so how?

Women tend to act on emotions, therefore when they kill it is very personal, for the most part.

I believe we have two types of female murderers. One, the battered partner who either, snaps one day or carefully plans the execution of the source of her abuse. In both instances, she kills from a place of deep-seated resentment and passion. These women usually over-kill; wanting to be certain, their abuser cannot strike back.

The other type of murderess kills for self-gain, cunningly, carefully, methodically, obtaining the trust of the victim. She will blind sight this person without batting an eyelash. Cold and heartless, is this type of female. The poor sap who gets into her clutches will never know what hit him.

Now men, on the other hand, will murder for the feel of power and control. It is much a game to them. Most feeling they are smarter than the authorities, believing they shall never be caught. Part of the pleasure they seek is in the initial plotting of the murder. They may daydream about it until it consumes their mind and they must act upon the impulse growing within.

Some will kill at random, unable to suppress their sick, sexual desires or need for complete control.

So I must answer yes, I definitely feel female killers, overall, think and act quite differently than a male murderer.

What are the most interesting experiences you have had on your radio show?

On the top of list would be the day a guest didn't show up. Instead of letting it get us down, Oana, my co-host, and I proceeded to discuss the topic, Marketing and Promotion, in great detail treating it as a joke rather than allowing it to affect the show.

There are two shows that peaked my interest more than any other and that was when we had authors, Robert Rubenstein and Jonathan Maxwell as guests. The topic of discussion on both shows was Nazi Germany. It was interesting to see the different approach both authors took on this difficult topic.

Mr. Rubenstein had written a book called Ghost Runners. He centered on two characters, based on non-fictional men, who were expert runners and journeyed to Berlin during the Olympics. Though they were outstanding athletes, they were denied entry into the Olympics as they were Jewish Americans. This book is a testimony to two very real figures.

Jonathan Maxwell took a look at the Elite in his book, Murderous Intellectuals. It covered the years prior to the Nazi takeover, giving the reader an inside look into the participant's background and minds.

Another that caused my ears to perk and drew my attention was our guest James Goi, Jr., author of 'How To Attract Money,' which was based on the Laws of Attraction. The conversation between Mr. Goi and Phil Harris, publisher of Allthingsthatmatterpress, was simply fascinating.

One last show that touched my heart was our Valentine's Day Special with guest Salvatore Buttaci. Who wouldn't feel a tug at their heart hearing Sal read poetry he had accumulated, for years, written on special occasions for his beloved wife?

One, I'm looking forward to is the chance to speak with Animal Psychic/Medium, Patricia Bono. She will be a guest on June 8th. This is sure to be fascinating, though by the time this interview is out, people will be able to view the show in our archived broadcasts.

I've also had my share of technical difficulties, which can be interesting. You must go with the flow and do the best you can. The audiences seem to understand when a speaker stops working or the line hangs up on the host. You never know what to expect.

Michel Foucault writes in 'The Archaeology Of Knowledge' : 'The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network.' What do you make of his observation?

Richard, I thought long and hard on this question.

Being an author, I want to say it is mine exclusively, the ideas, the words, and the thoughts.

After all, aren't I the one who conceived the story, the characters, and the meaning? So, putting whatever small ego I have left aside, I tend to agree, for the most part, with Mr. Foucault. I know somewhere there is a character somewhat like mine. I certainly see that among the millions, if not billions, of stories throughout the world and the decades, someone may have come up with text, sentences similar to my own.

Nevertheless, with that said, I also feel each good book has its own style, unique to the author. Without creativity and imagination, new forms of writing would not exist.

Personally, I strive to bring to the world something a bit different, something that may rock the traditional accepted rules of authoring a book. In addition, if an author is using what has already been done, then I do not believe it is consciously written in this way. It is like saying; someone wrote the sky was a deep blue. I will use this example again, the sky is blue at times so the verse may be utilized time and again through different adjectives and verbs. You cannot change a constant from what its reality may be, thus we will continue to hear about blue skies in writings until eternity.

Joseph Conrad in 'Heart Of Darkness' suggests that civilization is a lie. Do you think that we are ruled by the irrational?

Richard, there are so many forms of civilization that it is more of an illusion than a lie.

We come into this world, taught what our own society's values, rules and expectations should be. In part, it is irrational, for many of the instructions given us are indeed senseless and with little worth. Yet, if we all ran amok, centered solely on our own wants, aspirations and passion; never caring for our fellow man or what is good for our particular society, state, town, we would surely turn into savages.

I'm sure the governing forces would love all of us to follow as sheep, never questioning their rule but if we did this, it would be the ruin of civilization. Nothing new would come into the world. Therefore, in that sense, civilization is a half-truth but not an out and out lie.

"Never fear being the fool" is one of my favourite sayings. I have found that in order to live a fulfilling life, you must first be true to yourself, yet so many people fail to live their life instead settling on mere existence.

Civilization, of course, is a set of rules we agree should be in place and handed down from generation to generation. Not complete illusion, but hope for our future especially when irrationality is part of the mindset. Thus, I tend to agree with Mr. Conrad's statement for the most part.

Do you think some readers are addicted to word patterns?

What an insightful question, Richard.

After much thought, I had to conclude that I believe most readers are addicted to word patterns.

How could they not be? What we have heard from the day we were born etches familiar groups of verbs, adjectives and nouns together that are stored in that memory bank called our brain.

Take for instance the fairy tales from our childhood. Would they have meant so much and made such a deep impression if not starting out with 'Once Upon A Time'?

Would we be able to recognize a tale of horror if not for such delightful sentences that speak of 'ghastly, ghoulish figures looming in the dank, darkness of the night'?

Word patterns allow a reader to comprehend the essence of a story and relate its meaning. So, in ending, I feel not only readers are addicted to word patterns, but every person who listens to someone speak, watches a movie or listens to a song's words.

Most authors write because it is their passion and they must write. Assuming this to be a given, is there any other reason you chose to become an author?

Certainly not for fame or fortune, though that would be a wonderful gift.

Richard, the main reason I write, other than the fulfilment of telling a story that I hope will bring pleasure to others, is one of great importance to me. You see, I donate a portion of each book sale to EBMRF, a foundation that uses 97% of donations on actual research. You can view their web site at www.ebkids.org

Several years ago, I became aware of an incurable, genetic, disease called Epidermolysis Bullosa or E.B., for short. Like most of the world, I did not know of its existence. When I viewed a young girl who was born with E.B., my first thought was she had been in a terrible fire as her arms, hands, legs and feet were covered with gauze bandages. After learning about the disease, being a fire survivor would have been a much easier choice, if given.

These brave, beautiful children were born without the first layer of skin, inside and outside of their bodies. What that means is doing something as normal as hugging, swallowing food, or being lifted, to name a few, cause painful blisters on their skin. These blisters must be torn and kept clean and the child will get them anywhere she has skin. It could be the face, the neck, fingers, inside her mouth, throat, feet, legs; you name it. I won't go further into the details. Let's just say each child lives in constant and continual pain and as they age, the disease gets worse until their little fingers and toes become clubs, their legs and arms distorted and they will ultimately pass away.

Therefore, in answer to your question, more than anything, I write and continue to write so I can open readers' eyes and minds of the need to generate funds to EBMRF and one day find a cure for these children. In fact, my latest release, The Turn of the Karmic Wheel, has a character whose little girl was born with this disease. It is yet another way to get the word out to the world of E.B.'s existence.

If anyone would like to know more about EB, they may look at my web site, Meaningful Writings, www.monicabrinkmanbooks.webs.com, as I have several videos of the children.

Thank you for engaging with these questions with such gusto Monica.

Links

Monica's website

Her radio show  Two Unsychronized Souls

'The Turn of the Karmic Wheel' can be found at Amazon.com here

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Sheila Quigley

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Sheila Quigley is a bestselling crime author, who became a national news story when Random House acquired her first novel, Run For Home, with major coverage throughout the press and television. Many of her novels are set in the fictional estate of Seahills, in Houghton-le-Spring in the city of Sunderland. Her latest novel Thorn In My Side is a tight and brilliant thriller which is impossible to put down. In it DI Mike Yorke returns to the north east and is immersed in his most bizarre case, which involves a flogged corpse and children disappearing the length of the A1. The novel takes the reader to Holy Island and an explosive secret going back to the dawn of time. If you haven't got Thorn In My Side on your bookshelf you don't know what you're missing out on.

Sheila met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about pathology and revenge.

Is there a particular experience that has had an influence on you as a writer?

The short answer…Life!

When I was around seven years old I could not read a word, too busy daydreaming in the class room, and being really good about avoiding the issue when it was my time to stand up and read.

Eventually, of course it was always going to happen, I was caught and made to stand up and read out of this book that held nothing but squiggly lines in it. I ran home crying that day and determined to learn how to read I picked up the local newspaper, and pointed at a word to my mother. I learned five new words every night by staring at each one and repeating it over and over. Within three weeks I was top of the class for reading and already way in advance of my years. I raced through all the Enid Blyton books and anything I could get my hands on and pretty soon I was into sci fi, and horror. That was when I discovered Steven King. I guess you could say he has been my biggest influence, he doesnt waste words and gets right down into it, thats the way I love to read and the way I love to write.

Tell us about Thorn In My Side.

Thorn In My Side is slightly different from the Seahills series, more thriller than crime although in my mind the two genres can only be seperated by a whisker.

DI Mike Yorke is coming home. After three months in London, he's looking forward to being back in the north east, but he's barely off the train before he's deep into the most bizarre case of his career.

A viciously flogged corpse. Teenagers disappearing the length of the A1. Horrific new street drugs, and buried somewhere is a deadly secret that will lead him down paths so dangerous, he will question the very fabric of society.

I throughly enjoyed writing Thorn In My Side. I think when you have done 5 in a series a change is refreshing. Nowhere Man no. 2 starts within hours of Thorn finishing, a third is planned but then it's back to the Seahills.

To what extent do you think the class system in England informs crime and influences crime fiction in the UK?

There is a class system in the UK, no doubt about it, even though people, mostly the middle, upper classes will try to deny it.

Greed, mostly of the high classes, plenty of cash but feel the need for more. Difference being they can afford an expensive lawyer and within hours be free.

Love, when a mother steals new shoes for her children, she cant afford an expensive lawyer and ends up banged up for a year or sometimes more.

Jealousy, a human trait which stretch's across all classes and brings out the worst in us all.

Rich pickings for a crime writer, and stories people love to read about. I think crime writing defines us all, people like to think, there but for the grace of God go I.

Who are your literary influences?

I fell in love with Enid Blytons books, and also loved the Bobsy twins, my first taste of american writing. Quickly moved to Fantasy, loved Anne Mcafferys Dragons of pern series. Then found Steven King. The Stand is my all time favorite book.

Do you think that there is a difference between crime and pathological crime. If so what is the difference and how does it present itself in fiction?

Ordinary crime, shall we say a break in, a stolen bag snatched off some ones shoulder, are mostly spur of the moment, as is a man or a woman on a night out spot their ex with a new boy or girl friend and totally lose it, and someone ends up in hospital and the other behind bars. In fiction, these sort of crimes can provide nice little fillers, but rarely the main plot.

Pathological crime on the other hand is mostly planned, and the bad guy, evil to the core mostly can make for entertaining reading. There is such a guy in Thorn In My Side.

Do you think revenge is a popular theme because it shows ordinary men and women stepping outside the law?

Revenge now then, haven't we all wanted to get our own back. right down to nursery school. when the first boy you met pulled your hair or the first girl kicked your shin.

In the adult world Im counting teenagers in this, some seek revenge in cruel gossip and spreading lies. Some with a darker mind find only actual bodily harm can ease there need. The latter makes for great fiction.

Do you think that for a man or woman to slip over into killing they need to dissociate from their perceived selves into someone else and what does that someone else throw away in terms of gender conditioning and all it is intended to socialise?

Depends what sort of killing. Does a soldier have to leave himself behind when he goes on the battlefield. I don't think so he does what he's trained to do.

A spur of the moment killing, doubt if there's time to step outside of yourself nine times out of ten its just reaction, kill or be killed.

Even a planned killing which is totally different from the above, now that has to be already in you, I think ninety percent of us do not have they ability to plan a murder.

Graham Greene said that writers have a piece of ice in their hearts. What do you make of his observation?

Ice melts very quickly.

Personally I think a thick skin is what's needed most, to bounce back all of the rejections a writer meets at the begining of his/her career. And in the middle.

Sometimes it takes years and years to get published, then the ice is gone at the first smile from a publisher. But never shed the thick skin, you'll never know when you will need it.

What are you working on now?

Now I am working on the second book in the Thorn In My Side series, Nowhere Man.

It starts within a few hours of Thorn In My Side ends.

DI Mike Yorke goes to london to search for the man he grew up with who he is convinced is in with a hidden group of people called the familes who have ruled the world for the last thirty centuries. And who now plan a cull of the human race.

Meanwhile Smiler a used and abused street kid is left behind on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne with Brother David a monk, to protect Aunt May who is in a coma.

Smiler insists he has the same abilty as was given to St Cuthbert the gift of second sight. Mike Yorke however does not beleive this and finds a reason for what ever Smiler comes up with. In an uncertain world they all come together to end the yoke the world has been under without even knowing it.

Do you think crime fiction seeks to deliver justice when there is none in the real world?

Possibly yes!

I think people love it when the bad guy gets caught and justice is served, it gives them that feel good feeling. Because we all know in real life that it doesn't always happen.

Sheila I am sure this compelling and perceptive interview will bring you new readers.

Find all things Sheila Quigley at her website here.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Ahmad Ali

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Ahmad Ali is a jazz and R&B guitarist. He is also the host of WUSB's radio show Cafe Ali, in which he discusses topical and artistic issues with a wide range of guests.

He is a man who is interested in many issues to do with higher consciousness and creativity.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about music and the Long Island murders.

You're an accomplished musician in whose guitar playing I hear the tones of George Benson. Who are your influences and what do you make of Carlos Santana's observation that music can alter our molecular structure?

I originally wanted to be a Bass player inspired by Bootsy Collins. My father insisted that I play Guitar, and that I would be able to play bass also, which was accurate in his era and from a rudimentary view. The Bass has become a very different instrument in the last 40 years. My father really dug Wes Montgomery and by the time I started playing he had passed away well over a decade. George Benson however was conquering the Pop and Jazz charts. His appeal is inescapable. He is a very slick polished, virtuoso of guitar. A singer who is poised to be historically recognized for his Pop success. So Yes I dig Mr. Benson a lot. When I met him the first time I called him the "Holy Prophet of Jazz Guitar. I do tire of being compared to him, I am not really at that level. Maybe if this was my livelihood and I woke up every day to work at Music, I could get there. Johnny Guitar Watson was a favorite also. He combined Blues and Funk with Jazz overtones. George Clinton, Michael W. Hampton are great influences on me. Jimi Hendrix (I often wondered why George Benson never covered Hendrix, Wow).

Carlos Santana emerged as a favorite of mine early, because his music is easier to play. I am amazed at the second Question. I am an Advanced Reiki Practitioner and so many things I have studied in life are coming together. Chanting has been used to open the Chakras since ancient times. Amplifying the chant and adding a little reverb, creates a resonance. Using instruments like a guitar amplified and over driven to the extent of creating harmonic feedback, utilized by someone who knows the correlation of notes to chakras, can from a new age perspective, enhance and elevate the vibrations of the people before them. In some cases the more finely attuned audiences begin to move, unable to stop themselves from Joyous Gyrations and Frolicking about. Every thing in creation is vibration, from solids to liquid to gas, sound, light and the ether that the Angels communicate through. Exposure to all of these effect our molecular structure. That is why, it is of the highest importance to let love guide your actions. Our actions send out waves just as a pebble dropped in a pond creates a wave. Its vibration affects the water even as the eye no longer sees the ripple.

Fabien Maman developed Tama Do and claims he uses sound frequencies to heal people. Do you think the distant healing as used by Reiki practitioners is using sound that falls beneath our conscious level of hearing and how does Western medicine fail when compared to the Eastern model?

As I was saying earlier everything in creation is a vibration. Sound is vibration that our ears sense and other parts may feel when it's amplified. Energy that is unseen or inaudible is of a higher vibration. We often do not acknowledge higher vibrations as a conditioning of a materialistic society. The Still Small Voice in your conscience the voice of the "Higher Self" or the "Holy Breath". The ability to read the Acacia. To heal from a distance is more a reality that the tangible point "A" to point "B" of western ideology.

Western medicine will save your life when catastrophe is upon you. Living in balance can avoid catastrophe. Eastern wisdom is that of self sufficiency and balance. A life style that can not be capitalized upon there for a threat to western medicine. These are the modern day money changers that would be run out of the Temple by Jesus (Yahashua Ben David). He was the Master of Masters of Healing on all levels. In Heaven and Earth our Father's Will, (a Vibration) be done. Thoughts are vibrations. The spirit of creation is described in Torah as Elohim, Koran describes, the Creator as saying "Kum Fia Kum" (Be and it is). Torah also says God said "Let there Be Light!". All sounds and vibrations. Not only healing but creating.

The Laws of the Universe are that which we need to be as close to unison as possible or at least harmonizing with. Then the "Force" is with You.

William Blake wrote 'God appears and God is light to those poor souls who dwell in night and does a human form display to those who dwell in realms of day'. Do you think if we get closer to the divinity of our own beings we are more apt to see god in others?

The Creator speaks to us through each other. We all have moments of Higher consciousness. When our intentions are built on Love, Mercy and the Harmonies in life. We hear as well as speak for God. He is closer to us than our own heartbeat. His voice is ever present around us, and in us and all of creation, when we tune in. Love is the principal. We all need to learn to love instead of hate. Love is the divinity. Love is the vibration, the sound, the Force that heals and creates. The one thing the human form is capable of is Misery. Misery is the darkness and self fulfilling prophecy. We have the ability to shine a light on that darkness by controlling our thoughts. Accentuating the positive. There are many tools in the workshop of the mind that we can use to build up our character and keep our thoughts within the boundaries of positive navigation in life. This navigation and the fellowship with like minds draws us ever near to the Divine Architect.

Tell us about your band and how important playing live is to you.

I have to say I am recuperating right now from last night's performance at a little club on the water in Amityville (hometown of the Amityville Horror). The thing I told the crowd at one point is they needed to get up and dance because we don't get paid a lot and we need them to entertain us also. Make us feel appreciated and loved, which they had been doing all night but were just taking a break. The dance floor immediately filled back up! This band is called Snap and we play high energy party music. Funk and R+B. Live performance is as much of a mood enhancement for me as it is the audience. The vision of music is a dancer. Seeing and interacting with the crowd is fun especially when they are a happy bunch. My other projects the Ahmad Ali Trio and Duo are less of a thrill but usually more rewarding financially. As I get older I enjoy the zone of entertaining more.

What do you think is motivating the Long Island murderer?

Actually from the rumors that have gone around, that area has always been a dumping ground. The area is very desolate. At the same time it is accessible feeding into many highways and a large waterfront without a great deal of police visibility. The residents usually have a lot of privacy and space between communities. This makes it easy to slip between the cracks.

The idea I have in my head is that some of the murders were done by organizations that needed to silence or dispose of uncooperative sex workers. People disappear all the time. Cases go cold and there must be this great limbo. Unidentified remains and missing persons. Someone with a boat, could carry a body from the Gulf or Caribbean and pull up to shore on our Island and dispose of it.

A few years ago a ship with immigrants in it, was caught near the Rockaways. What they were slated to do when they arrived we won't know. We may have sex trafficking activity on many levels. This is all my speculation and overactive imagination.

Do you think that the West is imposing its own concepts on other cultures?

Absolutely (Do you think of Vodka when you see that word?). The hypocrisy of using war in some countries to establish democracy and not others is an example. Imposing sanctions on others who don't submit to us. Taking resources from countries and selling them back to them. Our lack of knowledge on word history makes us prime vics for corrupt, greedy law makers and the corporations who support them. The "New World Order" looks more like the Leviathan. The faceless, soulless and evil entity that governs us now, the Market Economy. It is traveling to and fro the earth seeking whom it may devour. When the fleecing has hit a high mark a donation will be made in the name of corporation x to remember the great culture they destroyed.

Has any one event changed your life?

That is difficult to narrow down. The Birth of my children and the passing of my Parents. The world my children will have to deal with, and me having to deal with the world with out the counsel and friend ship of my parents. It is however great to grow friendships with my children as they are becoming themselves. I will describe that as one event, my life.

The Murders of Yusef Hawkins, Amadou Diallo, and Jesus, also prompted me to be active in the community.

The war.

Do you think that humanity is at war with itself and religion has stoked the flames?

From the time of Constantine adopting the appearance of following the teachings of the Messiah. Creating a state religion and making him self the representative of God on earth (or does Vicrius File De, mean in place of the Lord). After all Ceasars are the only God allowed to be worshiped under Roman law. Alexander burning the libraries to control the media of that time. The conquest of Mohammed The First Over Byzantine. The Crusades, the wars between the Hindus and Muslims. The Protestants and the Catholics in Ireland. The new fundamentalism of Al Qaeda and the K.K.K The word it self is descriptive Re-Legionizing people instead of uniting. "The Peace of Society Dependeth on Justice". If a religion promotes political, material gain and control of people as opposed to Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom, and Justice for all Nations, then it is stoking the Flames.

Who do you like reading and why?

I am intrigued by crime mysteries and the process of reconstructing the crime and getting into the head of the Detective and the killer. I was trying to read Keith Richards' book and it didn't hold my attention. C. E. Lawrence has a way of telling the story. Introducing characters living around real land marks. For instance she has a scene that takes place in the morgue. The description is stomach churning in its effect. Being from the region where the story takes place is an added perk. The way events weave in and out of each other also keeps you on the edge. There is an intangible quality in the story that GRIPS you.

What are the most extraordinary experiences you have had on air as DJ?

So many wonderful interactions have occurred it would be easier to mention the less extraordinary. To pick one is almost criminal. C.E. Lawrence is one of the most intriguing and well versed personalities I have spoken with. Dr Veronica Andersen was an excellent guest. I wish I had more time with her. Mike (Kidd Funkadelic Hampton) my guitar hero, is not talkative. He is more expressive with his guitar. Roy Ayers struck me though. He made me feel like I had known him for Years. Seventy years Young, he is youthful in his approach and view towards life. Yet he has an abundance of knowledge and experiences to share. A true gentleman. Our conversation extended from the studio into the street, and onto the subway and he had to tell me my stop was next. I almost rode all the way uptown with him. The conversation was that good. I felt the connection of friendship. He is a people person, as we walked down the street he greeted people and had small conversations with them. All this while still engaged in our conversation. We spoke (in studio) for an hour I edited down to half an hour for WBAI. I used the entire interview at WUSB.

Thank you Ahmad for giving an insightful and memorable interview.

Find all things Ahmad Ali—music, videos, radio show info, press articles and more—on his website here.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont

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Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont is a student of Stuart history. She is a widely read deep political thinker who has an extensive grasp of the history not only of England but the world. She is not afraid to speak her mind on issues that are contentious. She is also extremely well read in fiction. Her analyses of current and historical situations are individual and outside the stereotypical tired political thinking that is prevalent. If my opinion is worth anything her historical analyses deserve to be widely read. She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about government and politics.

I made sure the sommelier fetched and decanted the finest Gevrey-Chambertin from The Slaughterhouse cellar.

John Locke, known as the Father of Liberalism, developed his theory of the social contract which looked at appropriate relations between individuals and their governments. What do you think of his analysis of the state and how would he have viewed the liberty granted or denied by the Big Society of Britain today?

Richard, for the long answer I would refer you to I must be free or die, a piece I wrote on my blog at the beginning of December last year http://anatheimp.blogspot.com/2010/12.... The most pertinent extract is as follows;

I believe in freedom; I believe the state to be an intrusive imposition, an attempt to place limits on freedom. Still, we life in communities and communities have to be ordered, so I accept the state as a necessity, just so long as it is kept at a maximum distance. I dislike any form of welfare or state subsidy, which I believe to be corrosive of self-respect and economic freedom. More than that, the high levels of taxation they require do much to bleed the life out of enterprise, impacting on the very people that welfare is supposedly meant to help.

I think Locke would have been horrified by the development of the modern state, particularly the degenerate form created by the previous government, intrusive and authoritarian to a quite obnoxious degree. I still have no clear idea what our present Prime Minister means by the Big Society, undefined and nebulous, the intellectual child, I suspect, of the woolly-minded Philip Blond, that well-known 'Red' Tory. I do not want the big battalions; I want the little platoons that Edmund Burke placed so much reliance on, a point on which I think Locke would agree. I'm in the process of discovering the work of Frédéric Bastiat, whose views on liberty and the state accord so much with my own.

In 'Manufacturing Consent' Chomsky put forward the theory of the Propaganda Model, which posits that corporate-owned news mass communication media distort news reportage because they are businesses subject to commercial competition. To what extent do you think Britain today is subject to these distortions and how effectively do you think the propaganda machine is working?

I could easily make out an argument to the contrary, that insofar as corporate owned media are in competition with one another, and with other sources of communication, a premium is placed on gathering genuine news, on not distorting stories for simple political ends. Rupert Murdoch may be politically motivated but he is a business man first with enough sense to leave news gathering to professional journalists.

Journalism is a cut-throat profession and we have seen from some of the less scrupulous newspapers that people will break all rules to get a story, or create a story where there is none. That's a form of distortion, I suppose, but it's on the margins, the kind of thing one sees in the newspapers I never read. Newspapers as pure propaganda would quickly end up dead. People may be stupid, but not so stupid that they are blind to a message, blind to the fact that they are being manipulated. Josef Goebbels was a propagandist of genius because he recognised this simple fact. Consent can never be manufactured. I have to say, as a general principle, I'm far more concerned by super injunctions and the invidious effects this legal tactic is having on free expression.

Laurence Sterne's innovative novel 'Tristram Shandy' uses John Locke's 'An Essay Concerning Human Understanding' to explore his theories of empiricism and raise the question of how much we can really know of ourselves. Do you think his theories still hold good today and are we living in an age of heightened narcissism?

Is this an age of heighten narcissism or degenerate narcissism? The latter, I suspect, the age of reality TV, of Big Brother, of a succession of mediocre celebrities, of people famous for being famous. How Locke would have hated this unreflective time and its unreflective people, whose empiricism, if I can even use that term, is one without any interior examination, simply an animal-like response to one bogus stimulus, trend or fashion after another. Maybe Sterne would have understood better:

With all this sail, poor Yorick carried not one ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world; and at the age of twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his course in it, as a romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen.

Do you think under current anti-terrorism laws it is arguable that burning Guy Fawkes is incitement to terrorism and if you were alive at the time of the gunpowder plot how would you have legislated against the plotters?

Sorry to burden you with yet another reference but I give you to this, a piece I wrote last year, a response to an article by Frank Skinner calling for the scrapping of Bonfire Night.

http://anatheimp.blogspot.com/2010/11...

Actually, people burning Guy Fawkes, by contemporary lights, should really be pursued for incitement to hatred against a religious minority. I'm sure there must be something under the previous government's laughable blasphemy legislation.

It's impossible to legislate in advance against plotters, for the simple reason that their schemes are devised in secret. If the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded it would have wiped out virtually the whole of the English governing class, causing monumental political chaos. In 1605 legislation against traitors like Catesby and Fawkes was already in place; there would have been no need for any additional measures. But if I had been alive then, and in a position of influence, I would certainly have argued against a general campaign against all Catholics, few of whom were traitors in words or deed.

In 'Metahistory' Hayden White posits the theory that a historian begins his work by putting together a chronicle of events which is organized into a story before the material is put into a plot which is latently expressing an ideology. As a historian what do you make of his theory and how do you avoid narrative prejudice when writing history?

It's a good question. If I understand White correctly he seems to be saying that the whole process is already mapped out before a single document is examined. Of course no researcher comes to a topic in the raw, so to speak, as she or he will have already gone through the background literature and to that extent have already formed a broad impression.

However does this necessarily mean that a strict explanatory framework is already in place, that there is necessarily a narrative prejudice or an ideology determining how the evidence is interpreted? I'm not saying this can't happen but the best, the most original historical writing, is free, or should be free, of any marked political or philosophical bias. I would like to think that my argument would always be driven by the evidence; that I can, with the right approach, understand what motivates a Whig as much as a Tory.

Elias Canetti in 'Crowds and Power' writes 'No political structure of any size can dispense with order, and one of the fundamental applications of order it to time, for no communal human activity can take place without it. Indeed one might say that the regulation of time is the primary attribute of all government.' What do you make of his observation?

Right, OK, this is a difficult one for me because I have such a poor opinion on Canetti! I've read Crowds and Power and Auto-da-Fe, his novel, and was impressed by neither. But I had already been soured, I suppose, by a reading of P. J. Conrad's Iris Murdoch- A Life. Here is what I wrote a couple of years ago about the relationship between Canetti and Murdoch:

Elias Canetti lived in England for nearly forty years, seemingly hating the experience. In his resentment he turned on Iris Murdoch, with whom he had had an affair, seeing in her all of the perceived faults of the country. She was, in his eyes, a 'complete Oxford parasite'. She dressed badly, her figure was wrong; she was promiscuous, bisexual and religious. She was a person who had enjoyed 'vulgar' success, in novels that were far too Oxonian, with characters that were merely caricatures of her friends and pupils. She was, unlike him, an illegitimate Poet or Master of Transformation. And so his memoir continues in this sour and silly tone. At one point he uses literally hundreds of words to criticise a revealing blouse she wore to attract Sir Aymer Maxwell, who, though homosexual, was grandson to a Duke of Cumberland.

It all reveals so much about Canetti's character. It also, perhaps, reveals some lack of judgement on Murdoch's part in ever entering into a relationship with such a shallow egoist. As far as I am concerned his writings, both his fiction and his non-fiction, are amongst the most grossly overrated of the last century.

So, there you are! Sorry, I'm getting so far from the point of your question. I think the regulation of time has precious little to do with government. Government has existed for centuries, back to a time when time was no more than the rhythm of the seasons. If time has become quicker and more intrusive that's because of the general changes within society that emerged with the Industrial Revolution. Time gets faster by the minute, if that makes sense, too fast often for government to keep up let alone regulate.

How do you think matriarchal and patriarchal social structures differ?

In answer to your question all I can say here is that patriarchy is a practice and matriarch merely a hypothesis. I imagine matriarchy, understanding this to be a society run specifically by mothers, would be a lot less competitive and far more nurturing. By that definition Amazons are not matriarchs; they are just female patriarchs! Feminism, I should add, is not really part of my intellectual makeup. I can see and I can understand the artificial barriers that a society dominated by men erects against the advance of women, but the higher the barrier the greater the challenge. I suppose I must be something of an Amazon too.

As a historian specialising in Stuart history you are dealing with a period in British history where there is an Interregnum. During this period England was dominated by Puritan literature and official censorship, as exemplified by Milton's 'Areopagitica' and his later retractions of that statement. Although some of the Puritan ministers of Oliver Cromwell wrote poetry that was elaborate and carnal, such as Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress', this poetry was not published. What do you think the literature of the period reveals about the time and why do you think the Commonwealth failed?

My focus has chiefly been on the political literature of the period, particularly the polemical pamphlet, in which the age excelled. To some extent these still colour our view of the whole period: we are still influenced by some of the myths, as you will discover if you keep your eye on my blog! I will be publishing an article in a day or so showing how modern day perceptions of the Puritans continue to be influenced by John Cleveland, a minor Royalist poet.

Generally speaking the literature of the period, thinking specifically of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, is quite barren, setting Marvell and Milton to one side. Censorship, despite Milton 's appeal, was the dominant force, not just political censorship but also the censorship of artistic expression. The previous golden age of the theatre was brought to a juddering halt by Puritan intolerance. The sterility of the Interregnum with what went before, and what was to come with the Restoration, is quite startling. Even Milton 's greatest work came in the reign of Charles II.

By the Commonwealth I'm assuming that you mean the whole period of the Interregnum, from the execution of Charles I to the Restoration of Charles II? The experiment failed simply because it was impossible to find a permanent political settlement, one that was not backed by military force. By the time of its dismissal by Cromwell in 1653 the Rump of the Long Parliament was hopelessly unrepresentative, even of that narrow part of the nation that was allowed to vote. It was also self-serving and corrupt. Its successor, the Nominated or Barebones Parliament, was ineffectual.

What then? Why the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, a restoration of the monarchy in all but name. He was even offered the crown shortly before the creation of the Second Protectorate, only refusing because of the hostility of the army. Although Cromwell was not a dictator in the modern sense, in that he continued to seek parliamentary legitimacy, his power did not depend on his narrowly selected legislatures but on the New Model Army. The rule of the Army, particularly in the period of the Major Generals, was hugely unpopular and ruinously expensive.

With the death of Oliver Cromwell he was succeeded by Richard, for no better reason than that he was his father's son. But Richard had no legitimacy whatsoever, no power base in either parliament or the army. His fall in 1659 was succeeded by complex political manoeuvring, but in the end it was obvious that the only real solution was to restore the monarchy and the ancient constitution of the country, subverted by Cromwell and the Puritans, a far greater threat to English liberty than Charles I had ever had.

To what extent do you think the problems between Israel and Palestine were exacerbated by the Balfour Declaration?

So, on to Balfour. Did you know that Robert Cecil, his predecessor as Prime Minister, was his uncle? When Balfour succeeded in 1902 people clearly amused by this perceived nepotism invented the expression "Bob's your uncle." Doubtless you knew this already. 

I think there would always have been problems between Jewish incomers to Palestine and the Arabs who already lived there. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 – made when he was Foreign Secretary in Lloyd George's government – was a clear hostage to fortune, a promise made under a particular set of circumstances, a political investment that was to flower into some truly intractable problems for the British, especially after they obtained the Mandate of Palestine. It was simply impossible to reconcile the two sides. A promise made and then cynically ignored made the British look hypocritical and untrustworthy, a fact that made a final settlement all the more elusive. To encourage Lawrence and the Arab Revolt while promoting Zionism (incidentally in the belief that this would keep Russia in the war because the country was supposedly dominated by the Jews) was a monumental miscalculation. The Jews and the Arabs may have hated one another, but they ended up hating the British more.

Do you think New Labour was bordering on totalitarianism and how many elements of George Orwell's '1984′ do you see in their policies?

I wrote a piece in May of last year I called Bad Law, a gloss on Philip Johnston's book Bad Laws. Since we are on the subject of Stuart history, and since I've already mentioned the rule of Cromwell's Major Generals, I think this provides a more pertinent example of the forms of killjoy governance favoured by Blair and Brown than the totalitarian tyranny of Nineteen-Eighty Four. BB they may be but they were not BB, if you take my meaning!

Yet, as I wrote in Bad Law, there are some parallels with Orwell's dystopia and New Labour Britain. The Religious Hatred Act effectively introduced thought crime into English law. The various pieces of anti-terror legislation created a greater threat to our liberty than Al-Qaeda ever could. The Regulation and Investigatory Powers Act, something that could have been put in place by O'Brien of the Thought Police, allowed officials to read private correspondence and monitor the movements of even the most law-abiding citizens. The spread of CCTV meant that we were all under closer observation than even the citizens of Cuba or North Korea . I concluded my argument with another Stuart reference;

…each and every one of us has become a potential suspect, guilty until proved innocent. Sweep the lot away, sweep away the legacy of a dreadful thirteen years, either that or reintroduce Royal Absolutism, my favoured solution. We were much freer under its gentle guidance.

Yes, we were. 

Thank you Ana for a brilliant and refreshing interview.

Anastasia's blog; Ana The Imp

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Shaun Jeffrey

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[image error]Shaun Jeffrey is the author of three published novels, 'The Kult', 'Deadfall' and 'Evilution', and one collection of short stories, 'Voyeurs Of Death'.

His writing is dark and tense and among his other writing credits are short stories published in Cemetery Dance, Surreal Magazine, Dark Discoveries and Shadowed Realms.

'The Kult' was optioned for film by Gharial Productions. His next novel 'Fangtooth' will be released by Dark Regions Press shortly.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about monsters and the current world of publishing.

Do you think the worst monsters are humans?

Absolutely. When dealing with human monsters such as serial killers, they actually exist. These are no made up ghouls. They could very well be out there now undertaking everything from cannibalism to ritual murder. Some people have no moral compass and that is a terrifying thought. Even more terrifying is that you or I could very easily be their next victim.

Dictators have turned to cannibalism. To what extent do you think the ultimate manifestation of control is the desire to consume another's body and what does this illustrate about the horrors fiction authors write about?

I guess that would be called ruling with an iron stomach. If it's not for a survival purpose such as during famine, then cannibalism seems to be more to do with esoteric purposes, acquiring the power of the person they consume in the same way that people will eat animals such as tigers in the belief that they will become as strong or virile as said animal. In horror fiction, I believe writers want to get underneath a readers skin (rather than eating it) and cannibalism is one of the greatest taboos, so it makes for a disturbing subject with which to illustrate horror in its rawest state.

Do you think that horror fiction is the literature of subversion?

It's not so much about rebelling as much as it is about getting to the root of fears and giving them form. To me horror fiction should elicit an emotional response. It's the stuff of nightmare, the stuff that should make you look over your shoulder; check that the doors are locked; leave the light on. By writing and reading about that which scares us we are in some way facing those fears. And it's a safe way of achieving this aim without risking life and limb.

Ultimately this is a good thing and it stems back to primordial times I guess when we would have been chased by sabre toothed tigers and such like, providing the 'fight' or 'flight' response necessary for survival. Now that we don't face as many natural predators, and unless you put yourself in dangerous predicaments, I think that fiction and film can still help us tap into that emotion and give it an airing.

Who are your literary influences?

I started reading from an early age and used to devour books. I still prefer reading a good book to watching a film as it's a much more intimate and personal adventure. As a kid, I distinctly remember enjoying books, such as The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron. Imaginative books such as this opened my eyes to the power of words. Then in my teens I discovered short story collections such as The Pan Book of Horror Stories edited by Herbert Van Thal, which featured lurid, gory tales that I thought were absolutely fantastic (I remember borrowing a friend a book called The Satyr's Head and Other Tales of Terror and said friend having to give the book back to me because it had scared him too much. I found this quite funny at the time, but again it made me realise how powerful words can be).

Then I started reading authors such as Guy N. Smith, James Herbert, Shaun Hutson, Graham Masterton, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King etc, so I guess my early literary influences were from what I think of as the golden age of horror, when new books seemed to appear all the time, books with cheesy covers that epitomised their pulp status. I guess add to that the fact that I grew up in a house in a cemetery and I was never going to be writing for Mills and Boon.

Do you think it is possible to write a made for film novel and if so what are its characteristics?

Interesting question as I get a lot of people saying that my novels are 'cinematic' in nature and that they feel that they are watching a horror film – I guess that might be the reason why The Kult has just been filmed by an independent production company called, Gharial Productions, and I was lucky enough to fly out to the US last year to see some of the shoot. I think that to write a 'made for film' novel it has to be very visual in its execution and that said novel has to paint a picture with words that make people believe they can 'see' the image you are describing. The story has to come alive on the page and it has to be engaging. As with anything to do with literature, it's all about the words. Finding the right word to describe what you are trying to get across. Some people have a knack for it. I wouldn't personally put myself in that category, but other people seem to think so and who am I to argue?

Do you think that certain types of murder are sexually motivated and what do you think the pathologies behind them are?

Yes, without a doubt. There are numerous high profile sexually motivated serial killers, people like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Peter Sutcliffe and the Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

It's reported that many of the perpetrators come from broken homes and have a history of being neglected or abused as children. This is why they pray on vulnerable victims such as children, young women, prostitutes, and adolescents. Of course this isn't true of everyone that has been raised in these circumstances. Learning plays a big part in the way a person behaves; as does their true personality, which comes down to the nature or nurture argument.

Are people born evil (nature) or made evil (nurture). Some scientists believe that people behave as they do according to genetic predispositions. This is known as the "nature" theory. Other scientists believe that people think and behave in certain ways because they are taught to do so. This is known as the "nurture" theory. I found this a fascinating subject, enough so that my latest novel featuring the protagonist from The Kult, is based around this theory and questions whether killers can be nurtured, or whether it's something they have to be born with.

In my opinion, the pathologies behind these crimes are a combination of both nurture and nature. The seeds are probably already there, but something happens that makes them sprout.

Tell us about 'The Kult'.

OK, without reciting the back blurb verbatim, it's a story about Prosper Snow who made a pact with his school friends to exact revenge on anyone that wronged them. This usually took the form of anonymous beatings, but then once they've grown up, a member of the group comes and asks for their help. But this time he doesn't want someone beaten up. He wants them killed. This of course poses moral dilemmas, not least because Prosper is a police officer sworn to uphold the law. Blackmailed into helping, Prosper and his friends try to get away with the murder by blaming the crime on an active serial killer called The Oracle, but then things go from bad to worse when the serial killer starts hunting them down.

As I mentioned, the book was optioned for film and was shot last year around San Diego . Post production has just finished and although I don't know all the details, I guess they are now looking for a distributor. Sadly since then the original publisher of the novel has gone bankrupt, but the book is available for download via all the major eBook distributors such as Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble etc. The story is quite graphic in the vein of Saw or Se7en, so it's not for the easily disturbed, but it's the book that I'm most proud of, and which I think is my favourite of all my works because I tried to make the characters as real as I could. Prosper is not an inherently bad man, but when he tries to do the right thing, things invariably go wrong and he ends up breaking more laws than he upholds. I've just finished a second novel featuring Prosper that once again puts him in a difficult position. It's a stand alone novel, but obviously events from The Kult have shaped who he now is. I've already signed a contract for the novel, so I'm hoping to see it released later in the year.

Elias Canetti in 'Crowds And Power' writes: 'In the mental disease whose processes most closely resemble the workings of power the urge to unmask appearances becomes a kind of tyranny. This disease is Paranoia and there are two characteristics by which, among others, it is particularly distinguished; one of these, in psychiatry, is called dissimulation… paranoiacs are so skilful at dissembling that many of them are never identified as such. The other characteristic is the continual urge to unmask enemies.' How relevant do you think this observation is to crime and horror writing and the characterisation of the pathologies that inhabit it?

All writers are crazy. They have to be as writing is hard work, often for little reward. I remember seeing a sign that said, 'You don't have to be mad to work here, but it helps'. That should hang above every author's desk.

Now whether consciously or not, I think authors dispel a lot of their demons through their work, so perhaps this is us 'unmasking our enemies', enemies in this case being those internal dilemmas that need a form of release. As the old adage says, 'write what you know about', so it's easy to imagine that authors the world over are putting a little bit of themselves in all they write, writing what they know, which is their thoughts and deeds. Whether these are dressed up in sci-fi, crime, horror or fantasy, all stories have characters, and all characters are given life by the author.

What do you think about the current world of publishing?

The past few years have seen vast changes. The internet has opened up whole new avenues, first with the way work can be submitted, and now with the way it's published. Before the advent of the internet I used to submit all my work by snail mail, and then waited weeks or months for a response. Now most markets allow an emailed submission, which means that your work and your enquiries arrive almost immediately (of course the responses can still take weeks or months). And then now of course we have the arrival of the eBook, a format that many authors are taking advantage of. This has both good and bad points. Some authors are making a lot of money via eBooks, while others linger in obscurity. What was once thought of as taboo is now becoming acceptable: self-publishing.

And of course, while there are some good books available, there is also an awful lot of unedited dross. In this brave new world it's also not true that the cream will always rise to the top, as some of these works are priced so cheaply that people buy them anyway if it's something they think they might like. The marketplace is huge, as we're talking the whole world where anybody can download a book at the click of a button and have it delivered immediately, but competition is fierce.

With this in mind I think that publishers should be worried. Bookshops are going bankrupt and many high profile authors such as JA Konrath are becoming ambassadors for the merits of self-publishing (and Barry Eisler reportedly turned down a $500k publishing deal in favour of self-publishing his next book) and while there might only be one out of every 1000 authors that has a modicum of success, there are thousands more stretching their literary wings and bypassing the conventional route of agents and publishers and going it alone in search of fortune and fame.

Graham Greene said writers have a piece of ice in their hearts. What do you make of his observation?

Although I'm not familiar with the quote, I think he probably meant that authors sometimes have to be cruel. We create characters and situations that need emotional involvement, but as the creators of said characters we sometimes have to kill our babies. It can be hard to do this when you've spent so long creating them, and so sometimes it's not just a piece of ice that we harbour, it's a whole chunk. I guess it could also refer to the kind of detachment a writer has to have, to be able to look at a something objectively, no matter how disturbing the subject matter may be. We also create situations that most people wouldn't like to ponder, as a good story is all about conflict, and to do that can take a certain detachment. I guess we're all cold hearted to some extent. Some more than others.

Thank you Shaun for giving a perceptive and informed interview.

Visit the online home of horror writer Shaun Jeffrey here.

'"The Kult" – People are predictable. That's what makes them so easy to kill.'

Watch the film trailer on Shaun's website or on YouTube.

Read a sample of 'The Kult' here.

'The Kult' and other books by Shaun Jeffrey can be found at Amazon in the UK and US and at Smashwords.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With B.R. Stateham

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B R Statetham writes gritty hard boiled Noir that inhabits the tradition comfortably and with style. He is a regular contributor to A Twist of Noir. His blog In The Dark Mind Of B.R. Stateham contains insightful and interesting posts, not least about E books. The latest in his Smitty series is out, A Dish Served Cold, and his story "Hotel Beaumont" was recently published in The Ultimate Six-Pack with five other authors.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about crime fiction and what makes him passionate.

Do you think murder or the resolution of crime is at the centre of crime fiction?

I think it depends on the kind of novel you are trying to create. Some writers whip up a psychological profile of the murderer. Some write the traditional cozy. Some explore the bloody deeds of a serial killer. Some writers (like me) write a scene–a vivid scene that uses all the five sense we have so you can feel, see, smell, touch and hear. And from there build a story.

Other times I like the 'whodunit.' Your 'resolution of the crime.' The complex puzzle to be solved.

I guess what I am saying is that there is no one single answer. Each writer, even each reader, comes to this genre with their own expectations. My hope is to find that readership that can identify with my style of writing and appreciate it.

Do you think certain politicians should be viewed as criminals?

We start down this road in wanting to arrest politicians because they are criminals, we should think about stepping back and seriously considering the motivations and/or the consequences for such actions. All decisions carry with it unintended consequences. Hardly ever are those possible consequences thought about until after the fact. And then it's usually too late.

What is the motivation of arresting politicians? Are we basing the arrests on the evidence that genuine crimes have been committed? Statutory, clearly defined wrong doing? Or are we reacting blindly to supposed injustices done to us? If they are not clearly defined wrong doings, then who's parameters are we using to incarcerate politicians?

This kinda smacks to me like the clear outrages of the French Revolution when mass arrests and executions nearly destroyed the fabric of French society in the 18th Century. Maybe we should just vote them out of office and tell them to go back home and plant turnips. I think we all need to step back and take a deep breath.

Who are your literary influences?

Oh gosh, lot's of'em. If you write noir/hard boiled somewhere on your list is a guy by the name of Raymond Chandler. Many believe he was the master when it came writing the tough, hard boiled detective. Including me. But there were others. Dashiell Hammett, Ed McBain (especially McBain when it comes to writing a police-procedural(, John D. McDonald, Agatha Christie, Earl Derr Biggers, Earle Stanley Gardner. Gardner, especially early Gardner and his Perry Mason novels, were some of the best, tightly scripted reads I've ever come across. Everyone remembers the TV series–but early Gardner was especially clear and concise.

My love for sci/fi and fantasy came from guys like Edgar Rich Burroughs, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven. But there was Rafael Sabatini–wrote lots of action/adventure books a young boy growing up would fall in love with. And Robert E. Howard. Everyone knows Howard was the creator of Conan The Barbarian. But his other creation, Solomon Kane, had far more potential, and a more interesting, character.

Writers who impress me today are becoming more rare. I think it's due to acquiring some age and some experience. I find it odd and a bit depressing that there are a lot of authors out there writing but damn few good ones. And hardly any original ones. Mind you, this is my opinion only; subject to debate and/or out right rejection. Still, the older I get, the more critical I become of writers and how they write–and what they write.

But that's a whole different discussion.

What one experience has had the most influence on your writing?

To be honest no one experience stands out when it comes to my writing. The only time I'm impressed is when some kind reader decides to write a review, or send me an email, and say something about something I've written. Good or bad things, oddly enough. I appreciate readers who open up to me. Even those who take the time to tell me my writing is like watching grass grow in their back yard.

Sometimes you learn more about yourself and your writings from the bad reviews.

No. I don't get too impressed with myself, or my writing, any more. I enjoy the writing experience. I want to write good stories. I want to build up a fan following–not for any kind of ego trip, mind you. But because they, like me, prefer reading a certain kind of story in a style that is different from that found in other writers. Or they have discovered one of my fictional characters and find him intriguing enough to read more.

What issues make you feel passionate?

What makes me feel passionate? Hmmm . . . .

Passion is such a fierce word. It means taking something that either you believe in, or are adamantly against, and extending that emotion to the ultimate extreme. No. I try not to do that. Invariably when I get passionate about something I say or do something uniquely stupid. Words are exchanged. Actions are committed. Neither which, mind you, can truly be erased from someone's memory.

This is not to say I am a passive, vanilla-based pudding that just sets on the table like some inanimate bowl of . . . . well . . . . pudding. You can tell instantly I have emotions burbling close to the surface if you read my Facebook page. I talk a lot about my writing. About politics. About how people treat people. Usually badly. About both the fascinations of this universe and the dregs of the universe. Sometimes I get loud. Obnoxious. Even angry. Mostly I try to convey a wiry sense of humor. Mostly.

No; passionate I try to stay away from. Attuned and committed; yes. Curious–absolutely. But for me, I try to stay away from the extremities of emotions. That's walking into dangerous territory filled with hidden pitfalls

What kinds of killing can you relate to and at what point do you cease to understand certain types of killing?

Oooh, what an interesting question. Can I relate to killing? As a writer, yes. Intellectually I can paint all kinds of scenarios in my head that would justify killing. That's what a writer is supposed to do if they write noir/hardboiled. Pragmatically, being human, I realize that humans sometimes are more irrational than rational. That word–passion–slips in here. People get passionately angry, passionately crazy, or passionately religious and go off and do quite brutal things. Violent harm to fellow human beings has to be, unfortunately, expected in this world.

In fact, I would suggest that being both creative, and naturally violent, are two hallmarks of being human. Remove either one and we no longer can call ourselves Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

The killings I find difficult to deal with are the senseless ones. The killing of the young. The killing of those who disagree over religious beliefs. The ritual executions over some mythical set of taboos.

Serial killers I can understand. Label them completely, absolutely, pull-your-hair-in-despair NUTS. Their minds are warped. The wiring in their brains were stretching a little too tight. Or their are just plain evil.

Remember me telling you in an earlier question that I don't like to go passionate in one direction or the other? Well, here is one of those instances. Trying to justify, or not justify, what forms of homicide I can accept is asking me to go passionate. All I can tell you is this: Shit happens.

Do you think the e book is revolutionising publishing?

Absolutely. Ebook publishing has shaken the very foundations of traditional publishing. Profound changes are rippling through the industry with each passing week. Main line publishers at first wanted to brush off the ebook phenomena as some blip on the radar screen soon to disappear. But it hasn't. In fact its growing at an exponential rate. So fast in fact the main line publishing conglomerates were forced to enter the market, albeit belatedly, and try to play catch up.

What ebook publishing has done is open up the market like never before. Plunging prices for books and other printed material drastically as a consequence. But with that plunge in pricing, the market has expanded into even larger audiences. Compare a book that, in hardback form, costs approximately $25–and then look at the same book in an ebook format for $4.99, and you can see how millions more of readers have suddenly shown up.

And I think it is just the tip of the iceberg. Ebook publishing is going to evolve. I can see where motion-picture/animation techniques are going to be incorporated into the printed ebook format. In fact I think we are going to see the re-invention of the 'illuminated' book. But this time the illumination will actually move.

Do you think William Blake would have liked the e book?

Hmm, I would say 'yes.' I think authors across the board, across generations, across historical periods, would find the ebook revolution as exciting. To open up the printed word to millions, if not billions, more readers at a fraction of the current cost of modern traditional print? What's there not to like?

Do you think excessive description kills a crime story and there needs to be a greater proportion of dialogue or do you think it doesn't matter?

This is a key foundation stone for any writer in developing his one style. How much description is too much? Should a writer paint a bare minimal portrait for description in his stories? Or should he go the other extreme and describe so much nothing is left to the reader to imagine.

My answer: short stories. To write a great short story you must be very economical in words. And yet very rich in description. A phrase, a sentence–no more should be used in describing a scene, a person, an incident. Master the writing of a short story and you're set. For me, perhaps the writer that was so minimal in his words, yet so elegant in his prose, was Ernest Hemingway. A fabulous writer. One who could paint vivid pictures in the least amount of words.

Using dialogue to supply the descriptions , I think, is as cop out. Yes, some writers do it very well. But most writers don't. And, to be honest, reading a novel filled with nothing but dialogue is boring to me.

I think a lot of writers today think descriptive writing is passe. So they don't. They paint an outline of descriptive work and then expect the reader to fill in the details. At first this sounds like a good idea. But I take a different tack. Paint too little of a portrait and you send the reader down an entirely different road in their reading. What you want, as the writer, for the reader to understand and what the reader decides for themselves, can be entirely opposite in positions simply because too little–or too inept–descriptive efforts took place.

So a writer should struggle on finding that happy middle. And struggle with it every time they sit down to write a piece of fiction.

What do you think the key differences are between classical literature and crime fiction?

Ah. A simple question! (smirking broadly and shaking my head). To be honest, all the definitions about 'classical' literature–in my opinion–are nothing but a collection of worthless opinions by people who sign their names with letters from the alphabet added at the end of their names (like, Ph.D).

English professors have to occupy their time somehow. So they collective point to this piece of literature and define it 'classical' and point to another and call it 'pulp fiction unworthy of serious study.'

Okay. That's their opinions. But I don't have to agree with them. And often do. Sorry, but I think the best of Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Chandler are as good as anything found in the hall of academia. Throw in Ed McBain, or Lawrence Block, or Ian Fleming. Hell, a good story is a good story. If the author can bring out some hidden meaning–draw in words the darker side of the human psyche, how could this not be worthy of being labeled 'classical' literature?

Thank you Bryant for giving an insightful and revealing interview.

Books by B.R. Stateham can be found on Amazon.com, here.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Timothy Hallinan

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Tim Hallinan has had an interesting career. He started writing in the 1990s with a series of LA private-eye books. At the time he owned an international television consulting company advising corporations like IBM, GM, ExxonMobil, Hallmark, Bank of America. In 1993 he had the idea for the Bangkok novels. In 2001 he wrote A Nail Through The Heart and found himself in an auction situation for the series. Since then he's written several novels in the Poke Rafferty/Bangkok series. Little Elvises and Pulped will be released this summer.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about E books and revenge.

How has your experience of owning a television consultancy company and advising large businesses on their corporate image influenced your writing?

I found my way into business after having spent years in college and then other years as a sort of post-hippie guy in bands (one of the bands I was in went on to sell a trillion records as Bread) and as a somewhat substance-addled free-lance writer.  The business experience was like a rocket into another world, or several other worlds. To put it mildly, it greatly expanded my frame of reference.

At one time or another I spent time with everyone from the then-CEO of General Motors to Cary Grant.  I spent huge amounts of time in corporate boardrooms and got a pretty good sense of how corporate culture works.  There are bits and pieces of that in the Simeon Grist books.  I also spent months and months on the sets of films, television shows, and plays.  I got to know stars, extras, directors, producers. I learned a lot about how the television industry works.  There's quite a bit of that in the Junior Bender books (especially CRASHED, with its doped-up former child star and the film sets in the book) and it also plays a role in the Simeon Grist books, probably most heavily in SKIN DEEP, in which the sadistic dream-boy TV star is based on a real star I worked with back then — a total horror show who looked like the boy next door if the boy next door were a TV star.

And business also took me to Thailand, where the Poke Rafferty books are set, for the first time.  I was working on a PBS documentary about the first tour of Japan by a Western symphony orchestra (the LA Philharmonic) and I had a few weeks of vacation scheduled, but Japan was like zero degrees, so I headed for warmer climates and ended up in Bangkok.  Within five days I'd taken an apartment there.

What kind of killings do you relate to and at what point do you cease to relate to a killer?

I "relate" to all killings and killers, although I relate to some of them very badly indeed.  The kind of killings I find most interesting, though, are the ones in which the killer feels he or she is acting morally – that the killing is an appropriate and justifiable thing to do.

I don't mean spur-of-the-moment self-defense, because that may be thrilling if it's written well, but I don' t think it's any more interesting than any other largely instinctive behavior.  To take an example from the Poke books — without giving the story away — when I wrote A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART, which is the first in the series, I was trying to establish Bangkok as an environment that's especially rich in gray areas, which is the moral territory in which I'm most interested.  (I think an absolute sense of right and wrong is a luxury of the well-fed.)

So I was taking this middle-class American guy, Philip Rafferty — nicknamed "Poke" because as a little kid he poked his nose into everything — and plunking him down in a city that's all gray areas.  I figured one way to do it would be to turn the detective story part of the first book inside-out — to make all the murderers innocent and all the victims guilty.  I wound up giving a lot of thought to what comprises a justifiable murder, and in the end Poke commits one himself.  It's partly self-defense but there's a conscious decision before he pulls the trigger, and that very brief decision process is one of my favorite parts of the book.  Some readers have said they laughed when it happens, and I take that as a high compliment.

I don't actually believe that murder is ever truly justified, but at the same time I do believe that there are people who shouldn't be allowed to live.  So that puts me in a moral conundrum.  Generally speaking, Poke doesn't kill people because my concept of his character won't allow it.  In NAIL he does it partly in self-defense, but there's a really glaring exception to this rule in THE QUEEN OF PATPONG, where he quite deliberately administers the final, fatal injury to someone who's already down, helpless, and badly hurt.  I deliberated over this for weeks and then went with it, in part because the man HAD to die, and in part because it prompts my favorite line in the book: "A sigh escapes the circle of women."  (Obviously, that line needs to be read in context.)  I was surprised when my publisher accepted it.

Poke, I always have to remember, is a writer, not an action figure.  He doesn't have killing skills, as Jack Reacher does.  He's not an ex-cop, like many fictional private eyes are.  He's a writer who fell in love with a city and then with his wife and the street child they adopted, and all he really wants to do is have a traditional, healthy, loving existence with his wife and daughter.  He wants to build a family to replace the one his father abandoned, and he wants to preserve that family.  So he can't be running around killing people all over the place.  In the book I'm writing now, all he really wants to do is paint the apartment.  So I have to structure a relationship with violence and murder that's consistent with a guy who just wants to paint the apartment for his wife and kid.

Do you think e books are revolutionising the publishing world and do you see a future for the traditional paperback?

In my opinion, e-books are the most important transformation in publishing since the mid-19th century, when the surge in the popularity of novels gave birth to the triple distribution whammy: the practice of serializing novels in magazines, the publication of hardcover editions, and the rapid growth of "circulating libraries."

That's pretty much what we've had ever since, until about five years ago.  Books were printed at substantial, sometimes serialized in magazines, sold in stores, and circulated through libraries.  What changed?  Prices, mostly — cheaper hardcovers and paperbacks made books available to the lower (economic) classes and made publishing a big business.

But even with a more democratic distribution system, barriers to publication remained in place.  There were two big ones: first, cost and know-how — publishing and distributing a book was expensive and required an encyclopedia's worth of info about stores, critics, etc.  Most people simply couldn't afford it and didn't have the expertise.

The second barrier was geographic – if someone's book didn't appeal to a small number of people living and working in a few blocks of Manhattan, the rest of the country would never read it.

Well, e-books have lowered the cost of self-publishing essentially to nothing, and broken the New York stranglehold over which books Americans get to choose.

But when we disposed of traditional publishing, we also eliminated the biggest crap filter.  I'm not saying that the big publishers don't put out crap — of course, they do.  But they rejected 1000 pieces of crap for every one they published.

Now all that crap is available.  Tens of thousands of terrible books, at our fingertips.

Of course, there are also thousands of absolutely terrific books that would never have found a way into a legacy publisher's spreadsheet.  They weren't "commercial" enough or they weren't "trendy" enough or the publishers who rejected them were boneheads.  So now the people who wrote then have a way to make their voices heard, and that's great.

But still, this new publishing phenomenon needs to develop its own crap filters, or at least a sifting mechanism that makes it easier for readers who are looking for a specific kind of crap to find it.  And I think that's what'll happen next.  I just hope that when it comes, it's not elitist and based in New York.

Tell us about your Poke Rafferty thrillers.

The Poke Rafferty books are intended to be thrillers, as opposed to mysteries.  For me, the difference between a thriller and a mystery is the central question asked by the book.  In a mystery, it's "Whodunnit?"  In a thriller, it's "How do you survive it?"  Thrillers often gain in suspense from the bad guys/girls being on the page, apparently out-thinking the protagonist or setting traps for him or her.  One of the tools thriller writers can use that mystery writers can't is the kind of irony where we see our hero planning meticulously for something we know in advance is doomed to fail.  Or going somewhere, feeling as safe as an oyster, when we know that he's walking into a giant shucking knife.

Still, there are mystery elements in the Poke books, too.  We don't know who's behind one sequence of events in BREATHING WATER until just before the book ends.

But for me, the center of the books is the continuing story of that little hand-built family made up of Poke, the American travel writer; Rose, the former bar girl he's married; and Miaow, the street child they've adopted.  They're what interests me most, and when I look at story ideas, the first criterion is always, "What'll it do to the family?  How will they get through, and how might it change them?"

You have three people from vastly different backgrounds, different religions, languages, expectations, ranges of experience — and they're trying to find their way to each other across these very deep divides.  With all the moral gray areas in Bangkok, all the violence, the amorality, the exploitation, the victimization, they're trying to build a life together that's based on love.

I think that's the bravest thing in the books.

I gave Poke a family in the first place because I thought it might serve as a kind of moral counterweight to some of the other story elements.  I didn't expect it to move front and center to the extent it has, but it makes me very happy that it did.  The series has turned into a continuing family saga, told in chapters that take place about eight months apart, each of which has a thriller wrapped around it.

There are times I look at the whole series as Miaow's story — abandoned on a sidewalk at the age of three, surviving an enormously cruel environment, being adopted by two people she initially distrusts and comes to love, although she's never secure.  In the book I'm presently writing (or trying to write), Rose learns that she's pregnant, which is a life-threatening development for Miaow.  They're going to have a kid who's REALLY theirs.  Where does that leave her?  That, combined with one of the book's sub-pots, takes her pretty close to the edge, an edge she might not be able to re-cross.  And since I haven't finished the book, and I never plot ahead, I don't know for sure that she will re-cross it — at least, in this book.   In this series, nothing is necessarily safe.

Do you think revenge is lawless justice and its appeal lies in the fact that it involves men and women stepping outside the law?

I think that the appeal of revenge in crime fiction is the same appeal exerted by the genre in general — in an age where most of us feel we live increasingly passive lives, our concerns dwarfed by the sheer complexity of the problems and challenges of the day, in enacting vengeance (or solving a crime in a whodunit, or surviving the challenges of a thriller) the protagonist takes direct action.  Cuts through the complexity and the equivocation and does something we probably all fantasize doing from time to time: going from Point A to Point B in as direct a line as possible, no matter what's in the way.

Then, of course, there's the difficulty with the word, "lawless."  We all know that the law these days (and probably throughout history)  is flawed. It's weighted to the advantage of the rich and powerful.  It's made to look stupid by skillful, amoral defense attorneys.  A merciless serial killer dies of old age in prison twenty years after being sentenced to death.  The letter of the law is manipulated (or so it seems) until the spirit of the law becomes almost beside the point.

So vengeance and vigilante behavior have a strong appeal.  And, when you think about it, we've always wanted to read about people who went out and challenged the beasts, one on one.

Who are your literary influences?

I have two sets of literary influences, one for quality of writing and one for approach to writing.

Those who influence my writing style — the "quality" crew — are people who write character-driven books that push the envelope in one way or another, and do so in prose that doesn't call attention to itself, but instead serves as a sort of clear window through which we see the action. I strongly dislike books in which people do stupid or uncharacteristic things because the plot demands it, and I dislike even more strongly writers whose prose seems continually to be saying, "Look how clever I am."

These writers include Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, T. Jefferson Parker, Sue Grafton, Thomas Perry (whose prose is virtually invisible), the early Thomas Harris, Bill James, Robert B. Parker, and many, many others.  John Lescroart wins applause from me for how skillfully he wove the story of Dismas' family into the books.

The other group — the "teach me how" group — are Chandler (again), whose letters provide more good writing advice than any other single source I know of; Anthony Trollope, my favorite Victorian, who wrote five hours by the clock every day, seven days a week — at home, on ships, in jolting carriages, wherever he was — and who, if he finished a book with four minutes to go, would grab a blank piece of paper and begin a new one.  And among writers who have written writing books, Anne Lamott, for the amazingly helpful "Bird By Bird."

And then there's a third group, writers I just hopelessly admire for the length of their reach and who inspire me, although I know I'll never be listed among them, to go up on tiptoe in my own work.  They include Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto for magical realism and (in Yoshimoto's case) a surgically precise knowledge of the human heart; Trollope and Anthony Powell for the depth and breadth of their multi-volume novels, respectively THE PALLISERS and A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME, both of which tell stories far too complex and highly populated to be crowded into a single book; William Gibson for the spiderweb-dry, deeply three-dimensional worlds he creates; and many, many others.

The trouble with answering this question is that I'll be up for several nights thinking of all the people I've left out.  Everyone I've ever read who made a character breathe, or convinced me that he knew what was behind the windows in every building he or she described, or startled me with a recognition of something I felt I'd known all along but had never verbalized — they're all my influences.

Do you think crime fiction is about resolving moral conflict?

I actually think that crime fiction is about the restoration of moral order and is therefore one of the most optimistic of all genres.

It always puzzles me when people say crime fiction is too dark for them.  In 95% of crime novels — whether they're mysteries or thrillers or something in between, you can trace this essential line: a break in the moral universe — a theft, a murder, an injustice — prompts at least one character to take action and, after a certain number of failures and reversals, the moral order is restored — crime solved/culprit apprehended/death avenged/some sort of closure, to use a modern word, achieved.

This is an ancient progression, when you think about it — all the way back to Greek tragedy, and certainly forcefully present in Shakespeare.

I find a lot of so-called literary fiction to be much less bleak and reassuring than most of crime fiction.  There's a kind of fashionable nihilism that's crept into modern literary fiction (and practically taken over modern literary criticism).  Anything that ends happily, or even moderately well, is scorned as Hallmark pabulum, unrelated to "real life," whatever that means. Personally, I find that real life is full of happy endings, however temporary they may be — the X-ray is clean, the automobile accident is averted, people actually fall in love and marry (or not) without one of them being mangled, mutilated, or killed somehow.  Sure, they're both going to die eventually, but that's what picture frames are for — to tell you that the part of life we're looking at begins over here and ends over there.  Otherwise, all paintings would have to be infinite and all books would have to open with the Big Bang and not end at all.

So we're taking a segment of life as our story, and I think there's nothing more "real" about a bleak ending than there is about a happy one.  It's not at all necessary for me to have a story end with the family shattered, fog on a beach, and a child's colored sneaker washing up onto the sand.  Actually, thanks anyway.

I'll stick with good crime fiction and literary fiction by people who actually enjoy some aspects of being alive.

Do you think literature should disturb us?

I don't know that literature needs to disturb us, except in a broad sense of the word.  It should penetrate our surface deeply enough to provoke some thought or feeling, and it can't do that without stirring the waters of our consciousness, so to speak.  Maybe my problem with the word "disturb" is that I equate it with sensational effects — skyrockets of violence or noir for noir's sake – noir that isn't rooted in any kind of real world vision but simply in the conviction that noir is cool.  Fireworks are spectacular, but they're the shallowest form of entertainment, beauty without connections to the world we live in.

I think good writing opens us up to speak to inside us and because it does that, we're able to use what we're reading as a sort of mirror that reflects light, even if it's only for an instant, on things that matter in our lives.  It can do this with a joke or a tragedy or anything in between.  If we put down a book with the feeling that it's touched us in a personal way, then it probably has.  Doesn't have to be a conversion or a massive illumination.  The word "recognition" used to be used a lot, especially in religious literature, and I think good writing provides us with recognitions: I do that; I should have done that; oh, that's what she meant; why didn't I appreciate that when I had it; that's a blessing I share.

Even if if's just on the level of That reminds me, I think that's good writing at work.

Let me finish this woolly answer with something even woollier: I think the responsibility of good writing is to entertain, if only because it has to hold the reader before it can do anything else at all.  Lots of bad writing and bad films entertain without doing anything else, and I think we've come to underestimate the importance of a writer being entertaining.  But when you think about it, almost all "great" writing is entertaining writing, or readers wouldn't have stayed with it.

To what extent do you think that sexual pathology is a motivating factor in extreme crimes and how relevant do you think it is to crime fiction?

I imagine crime more than I research it, but I'd venture a guess that sexual pathology is ninety-five percent of serial killing, whether the victims are of the same or the opposite sex as the murderer; I'd say that virtually all sadism is sexually based.

But to answer the question, I have to divide myself in two.  As a person, I'm certain that these crimes are in large part sexually motivated and that the psychosexual tangle is Gordian in complexity.  As a writer, though, I don't usually deal with this kind of material.  Having read dozens and dozens of serial killer and sadism novels, some brilliant and some dreadful, I decided that in my books we'd meet these people the same way their victims do.  This is partly an aesthetic choice — I don't really want to spend time in these monsters' heads when I could be exploring the almost equally complex tangle of good and not-so-good, love and resentment, love and loathing that characterizes people who are (I hope) more like my readers.

I've only written a couple of serial killers, and I have to admit that I didn't find them the most interesting characters in the books.  What I thought was interesting was how a life is blown to pieces when one of these beasts lumbers into it.  In THE QUEEN OF PATPONG, I could have spent tens of thousands of words on how Howard Horner got that way.  But I decided that it didn't matter a damn how he got that way.  What mattered was how my characters would deal with him, how they would try to survive him.  And in retrospect, I'm glad I did it the way I did.

Other writers handle this materially very well, so I'll let them have it.

What is your view of cozies?

Cozies trouble me — not that I don't think they should be written or that people who like them should be denied an unending stream of them — but they bother me.

First, I think they're sort of literary Neanderthals — they evolved for a different environment and then a new species arose, better suited to the environment of today.  So far (as I'm sure happened to the Neanderthals, too), the cozies have found a niche where they can continue to exist, even if they're now exchanging genes among close relatives at an alarming rate.

The sensibility of the cozies is of course the sensibility of the so-called "classic" mystery, in which murder, blood, spattered brains, and bone fragments are banished just beyond the margins of the page, in favor of focus on the dry logic of detection and a wistfully envious glimpse of the so-called upper classes (or, in America, the rich).  In essence, they take one of the human world's most emotional acts, murder, and turn it into an intellectual puzzle.

This is in turn (I think) a reflection of the post-Victorian world in which these books came into being, a world in which the man of the house scanned the papers first to delete the more vivid bits before the little women read them.  The classic cozy had it both ways — a thrilling jolt of evil, relegated to a tiny, well-fenced corner of the book, and an Age of Reason response.  In a time in which Darwin was thought to be in bad taste, these books demonstrated that man/woman had risen from, rather than descended from, the apes that represent the natural world.  (And one of which Poe even uses as an instrument of murder in RUE MORGUE.)

But the cozies seem increasingly sterile and artificial to me in today's post-Darwin, post-Freud, post-Hitler, post-Pol Pot world of the 24 hour news cycle and Huffington Post fascination with the more scabrous human crimes.  Murder is no longer a rumor.  Murder is a daily, perhaps hourly fact, an act in which someone's life is brought prematurely to an end, often painfully and messily.  We've seen the pictures.  We understand (or think we understand) that it could happen next door,or even closer than that.  We even think we might understand the reasons some people choose to kill.

So Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with an exotic Amazonian blowpipe doesn't cut it for me any more.  I know, that's an extreme and dated example, but hundreds of books are published every year in which murder is just an excuse for wisecracks or amateur sleuths armed with the exact piece of stamp-collecting arcana that's required to solve the crime.  And I think that dishonors murder victims.  I think it trivializes a great sin.

To finish, I'm not saying all good books need to wallow in gore.  To pick just one series, Donna Leon's amazingly resonant Guido Brunetti books pretty much keep the murders offstage, but she uses the crimes to focus on the human heart and the unending question of how to live honorably in a world in which honor is a debased currency.  There are lots and lots of books that keep the spatter off the reader's face but still look at serious questions of good and evil, revenge and forgiveness, the sliding scale of contemporary morality.  I love these books, just as I love some of their harder-edged cousins.

But you can keep Colonel Mustard in a day or two.

Thanks for all this, Richard. It's been a lot of fun, and it's made me think about things I almost never focus on.

Thank you Tim for giving an informative and great interview.

Timothy Hallinan books and ebooks can be bought here.

Find out more about Tim and his books at his website.