Richard Godwin's Blog, page 23

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Jayde Scott

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[image error]Jayde Scott is a widely published fiction and non-fiction author who is enjoying success in the YA genre. Her novel 'A Job From Hell' is a paranormal story that is highly readable and elegantly and tensely written.  As an author she creates strong characters and delivers a narrative that manages to unsettle. Her latest novel 'Beelzebub Girl' is out now and it is the second book in the paranormal series 'Ancient Legends'.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about E books and fantasy.

Young Adult literature is enjoying widespread commercial success. Why do you think this is and what drew you to writing it?

I attribute YA literature's current appeal and commercial success partly to Twilight. Obviously, Stephenie Meyer wasn't the first author to write a teen book with crossover appeal and market it well, but she was the first one to write a teen book that catered to a broad audience by turning adult elements, such as a broader context than just school and teenage love, into an easy read. Adult fiction has become too targeting in the sense that there are too many similarities and cliches in books across one genre because genre boundaries aren't crossed. In Young Adult literature, authors and readers find more room for experimentation. Genres are often combined, and that makes both reading and writing YA more fun. Before A JOB FROM HELL, I actually never figured I was a YA writer at heart. It only occurred to me after an editor made me aware that the manuscript didn't belong in her adult urban fantasy slush pile. Her elaborate email made sense to me and everything clicked into place. So, writing YA literature wasn't really a conscious decision.

What were you writing before then?

As a teen, I used to write poetry and song lyrics in the hope of becoming a poet one day. Needless to say, one's career prospects as a poet aren't very promising, so I moved on to fantasy. I was inspired by Norse and Greek mythology and kept starting new projects based on ideas and characters in my head, but never really finished anything because I didn't take writing seriously. People kept telling me to focus on obtaining a degree first and get a proper job, so I ended up putting off writing fiction for a few years, and only started again at twenty-four when I joined critiquecircle.com. It took me about a year to complete my first novel, a paranormal thriller, which is gathering virtual dust now. I guess every writer needs that first bad book to help them learn the craft, establish their style and their preferred genre, and realise a thick skin is a must-have in the publishing industry. In the last few years, I've been going back and forth between women's fiction and fantasy, and have just started pitching my first completed women's fiction novel, The Divorce Club, to potential publishers.

What do you think are the advantages to the author of the e book as opposed to the traditional paperback and do you think there is a future for the printed book?

The advantages are endless. For one, starting costs such as printing and distribution are almost non-existent. Considering that many authors decide to self-publish just to see their name in print, not having to pay hundreds or thousands, like it used to be the case a few years ago, is fantastic. Another advantage is that everyone can publish their book since e publishing completely eliminates the need for an agent or publisher, meaning readers get greater variety, a chance to try new talent and more choice. With many indie books flooding the market, readers also experience a drop in prices. Nowadays, one can get a bestseller for just $0.99. Isn't that unheard of? The probably biggest advantage is being able to maintain titles on sale for as long as one wants because there is absolutely no paper printing or physical storage involved. And designing one's own cover art and book trailer is a bonus too. Being my own boss in the design process is probably my favourite part of e publishing.

Whether there's a future for print books is questionable. I think in the next ten years there will still be a demand, but it will gradually decline. Everyone's so open to new technologies nowadays that it's only a matter of time until eBooks take over. As an environmentalist, I'm all for saving trees and keeping our world green, and hope many people will embrace this development.

Do you think it is possible to write a made for film novel and if so what ingredients do you think it has to have?

Yes, it's definitely possible. Obviously, the techniques of movie making aren't the same as novel writing, but I dare say most writers pen a novel in the aim that it might be turned into a movie one day since film adaptations are all the rage right now. So they pay attention to the types of details and scenes that build the core of a good script. A first example that comes to mind is Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice. That book has 'made for film novel' written all over it due to its originality, creativity and general appeal, but also its clear plotline that is easy to follow.

The right ingredients depend on genre, subject and target audience, but I guess drama, a conflict that is new and different and can keep the audience's attention, and a love interest are the three key elements that can be found in any novel to film adaptation. Another ingredient would be a plot that is not too complex and layered with too many subplots or characters so it can be oversimplified without losing its appeal.

I wouldn't go as far to say that all books could make a great movie. But I do believe that contemporary literature has a stronger focus on clear plot elements and a faster pace than a century ago, meaning that many new novels would make an excellent movie if pitched to the right target audience.

Who are your literary influences?

I've always been a huge Tolkien fan and consider The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy to be the most spectacular works of fiction in history. It's not the content or messages as much as the writing style and Tolkien's ability to convey a sense of reality through his fantastic description. Tolkien's not everyone's cup of tea, but to me he was a literary genius and one of the most talented writers of our time. I used to study Tolkien's long passages of description and wish I could put my thoughts into words like he did. Whenever I write a difficult scene, I tend to grab one of his books to flick through, and I find it helps me focus every time.

Another influence is Anne Rice. I just love everything about the way she writes, the way she can send shivers down my spine. Thanks to her, vampires will always be beautiful and terrible at the same time, dangerous beings who seek companions to share their century old knowledge and understanding of the world, beings who will see their transformation as a curse rather than as a blessing to elude mortality. This notion together with a tendency toward description and bringing in a darker side of beauty is something that I very much see in my own writing.

Would you describe yourself as a romantic and what do you think distinguishes good romantic literature from the cliched?

Well, it depends on one's definition of romantic. I don't dream of a white wedding and of a knight in shining armour. However, like every woman out there, I do like the odd romantic gesture, like a flower bouquet and gifts, to make me feel special. Who wouldn't like a bit of attention? But I wouldn't call myself overly romantic with a fairy-tale attitude toward relationships and a prospective partner, which I think I convey in my writing. My heroines are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. Finding love along the way with a down-to-earth guy who loves and respects them is just a bonus and usually builds the backdrop to a story, which focuses on the heroine's personal journey and other elements.

I like to read all kinds of romance from Jane Austen to Sandra Brown and Nora Roberts. I draw the line at Barbara Cartland. Not that she was any less talented than other romance writers out there. In fact, I think that lady had an amazing imagination, but I prefer romance intertwined with a bit of mystery so that the romance part is not overly pronounced.

I'm not going to slag off clichéd romance novels because for many women they fulfil a certain role and purpose in life. Besides, I believe all romantic literature uses some cliché, such as the evil ex, a big misunderstanding between the main protagonist and her love interest which ultimately leads to drama and a series of disastrous events, and probably the most common, the naïve heroine. The romance market, be it paranormal, young adult etc., is extremely crowded, and we've probably read it all before, meaning clichés are hard to avoid since romantic literature is all about love and relationships, but it's how the protagonists get there that makes a reader root for them. So, what distinguishes good romantic literature from the clichéd is not avoiding clichés altogether but coming up with new perspectives and twists to give the book a refreshing angle and voice.

Rosemary Jackson in 'Fantasy The Literature Of Subversion' writes 'The fantasy of vampirism is generated at the moment of maximum social repression: on the eve of marriage (a similar balance is established in Frankenstein, when the monster murders Elizabeth on the wedding night). It introduces all that is kept in the dark…'. What do you think that good horror literature brings to light in terms of what is repressed during the day?

I see the role of horror literature partly as an enlightening one because it focuses on making readers aware of topics such as death and, indirectly, growing old, which are seen as taboo and are often not discussed in our society. Particularly death is a topic we tend to push to the back of our minds because it emphasizes the fact that physical existence has a shelf life. Since mortality plays a huge part in any horror novel, the fantasy of vampirism tries to provide a solution to the fear of growing old and ceasing to exist.

Of course, anything that is dark in nature is mysterious and fascinating, appealing to us depending on our personality traits such as openness for experience. I see horror literature as a means of sensation seeking, hence a way of tension-creation to help us escape the mundanity of everyday life, particularly when we repress our need to be different and settle down for what we have.

One could argue that horror literature also mirrors repressed emotions and forbidden desires, but without the necessary empirical evidence, this theory remains philosophical.

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

I do agree with one of the greatest writers of all times and his observations on emotional investment as a writer. Even though it's not scientifically proven or backed up by personality research, there has to be some truth to it. We authors can detach ourselves for the sake of our writing, be it when we observe events, or when it comes to the actual writing process and creating characters and situations. I believe writers' detachment is particularly prevalent in authors who write about difficult topics that require strong emotional investment such as crime fiction and drama where one can get very close to a character and then might end up causing them quite a bit of pain, which may trigger an inner conflict. Without some sort of defense mechanism, authors would probably suffer psychological damage when getting too close to a character or situation. When I started writing I used to be obsessed with some of my fictional characters, and still tend to dream about them when I'm really into a scene and story, but it's getting better. So, some authors coping better than others might be due to individual differences, or a form of learned attitude. Either way, it certainly exists.

How much do you think the average reader likes to be frightened and why?

Well, it depends on the genre. Readers of horror literature and thrillers will probably be more keen on frightening elements than those of chick-lit. I'm someone who's easily scared, so I'll say a bit of a scare makes for an interesting, memorable read but anything that induces nightmares is too much. Of course, what some might find scary, others won't. But, as said, it all depends on the genre and individual differences in taste.

Amber keeps hanging on to her cheating ex throughout the book and doesn't want to give Aidan a chance. Why?

That's actually a hint at the dynamics of abusive relationships. It's something a great number of people will go through in their lives, and can take the form of physical, emotional or verbal abuse. In psychology, it's well known that victims often find it hard to disentangle themselves emotionally because their self-esteem and confidence have been shattered and now they're emotionally dependent on their abuser and don't know how to break free from that vicious circle. I really wanted to incorporate that psychological angle into my writing and give Amber a bit of emotional baggage to struggle with because it's such a common phenomenon, and one that is socially misunderstood and regarded as inconsequential.

The ex Cameron's the abuser and cheater. He's insecure, hence the need to boast and prove his worth by ridiculing Amber, and so he projects that insecurity on his relationship with Amber, making her doubt her self-worth. Throughout the book, there are several hints at Amber's non-existent confidence, but Aidan's commitment and loving attitude help her heal. People like Amber are emotionally scarred and find it very hard to trust. They also criticize themselves and feel inferior to others.

I hope this angle of the story will help young people, who suffer some sort of abuse, recognise patterns and habits in their own relationships in order to find the strength to break free.

Thank you Jayde for giving an insightful and fluent interview.

Links:

Jayde Scott's website is here.

You can buy 'A Job From Hell' here and 'Beelzebub Girl' here.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Hank Schwaeble

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Hank Schwaeble is a thriller writer and practicing attorney in Houston, Texas.

His debut novel, DAMNABLE (Berkley/Jove 2009), won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. The sequel, DIABOLICAL is scheduled for a July 2011 release.

Prior to his first novel, he was also the recipient of a previous Bram Stoker Award and a World Fantasy Award nomination.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about law and Melville.

How has your experience as a practising attorney influenced your writing?

Law school teaches you to read carefully, and to be precise with your wording. It also forces you to identify and explore issues from a variety of angles. Even more importantly, just like fiction, the law deals with conflicts, and practicing law gives you a ringside seat–sometimes even a better view than that–to all forms of it. Sometimes the conflicts are direct, as in cases of litigation, sometimes they're less overt, like in a business transaction. And one way or another, the resolution of those conflicts comes down to how persuasive a story a given lawyer can tell, and how well that lawyer can write. Many people probably don't realize that most lawyers spend a large percentage of their time writing, nor do they understand how much care and consideration lawyers have to put into each writing, even when it's something as simple as a letter. In light of all that, I can't think of many professions that could do a better job of honing an aspiring writer's skills.

When it comes to my writing in particular, my experience as a lawyer has certainly had a pervasive influence. It's simultaneously refined and expanded my understanding of both government and business, and exposed me to a range of career fields and lifestyles, and the various challenges people face when dealing with them. That, coupled with my military experience, accounts for a lot of what I'd like to think of as my ability to create an authentic framework for the events in my novels.

Do you think that the best detectives have strong criminal shadows?

One of the things I find so intriguing about noir and hard-boiled detective stories is the way the memorable ones explore the Janusian qualities of the characters. Good fiction relies on tension to keep the reader gripped, and few types of conflicts create more tension than those that involve internal struggles. When a protagonist has a criminal shadow, as you put it, you not only infuse him or her with a dark aspect, but you also create opportunities for redemption, as well as pre-existing obstacles that have to be surmounted in that character's quest to achieve his or her goals.

I've always found it interesting that the psychological profile of the average police officer is not all that dissimilar to that of the average criminal. They are, in many ways, like two sides of the same coin, and I think readers instinctively suspect as much, just as we all understand that few, if any, people out there are entirely good or entirely bad. When you take a detective–be it a police officer, private investigator, or a person simply trying to solve a mystery–and you force them to face up to this duality, this contradiction, you present readers with one of the primal conflicts we all face–the struggle between different aspects of ourselves: the person we are trying to be or want to be versus the person we fear we may revert to.

Tell us about 'Diabolical'.

Diabolical is my second novel, the sequel to Damnable. It picks up almost a year after Damnable lets off, following Jake Hatcher as he's attempting to start a life in California, on the opposite side of the country from what he endured in Manhattan. He's approached by a retired General and asked to help track down and stop a Hellion, a soul that's escaped damnation. The General believes the Hellion has crossed over as part of a plan to open a pathway to Hell, and he also believes the Hellion is Jake's brother. Because there are aspects that make the request an offer he can't refuse, Hatcher is drawn back into the underground world of Carnates, demonic creatures, and freaky sociopaths.

For those unfamiliar with Damnable, Hatcher is a character trailed by one of those long shadows we were just talking about. He's a former special forces interrogator, an expert in coercive interrogation techniques, who was disgraced and imprisoned as a political sacrifice after doing what he thought he had to–and exactly what what was expected of him. He's a man who always believed in his heart he was going to Hell for the things he's done, if there was such a place, and who seemed to get confirmation of it after stopping the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy that would have ended the reign of Heaven.

To what extent does religion inform your writing?

While there certainly are some religious underpinnings to the mythos of my Jake Hatcher novels, involving demons and demonic elements as they do, they don't necessarily have a spiritual or theological message. The idea of damnation, of eternal punishment, is a powerful one, and while it definitely has a religious basis, it's primal in our society, appearing throughout works of literature, movies and television on a recurring basis. Hatcher is a skeptic, not an atheist per se, but not what anyone would consider a person of faith, either, and he has to reconcile his worldly skepticism with the creatures and events he's faced with, and the possibility that there really is a Heaven and there is an actual Hell, and what that implies.

What I'm really trying to explore is the human condition; specifically, what motivates certain people to do certain things. The question that I was tossing out there with Damnable was, what does it mean to be damned? Surveys show that most people have at least a vague expectation that there may be a just reward waiting after this life, and concerns over what happens to our "immortal soul" have occupied mankind's thoughts for millennia. Given that, what formed my idea for Hatcher more than anything was the question of whether someone who considers himself damned for the things he's done–damned in every sense of the word–would be willing to risk everything, at least, everything he has left to lose, to make sure others don't share that fate, even if there may not be any reward in it for him. What makes a good person do bad things? What makes a "bad" person do good things? These are powerful questions with extensive—if not existential—relevance in our society.

Of course, first and foremost, these books are intended to be thrillers, supernatural suspense with a real-world edge that delivers horror and action. The themes presented are subordinate, I hope, to the characters and the story. More than anything I really just want to entertain my readers and to give them exciting, intriguing–and perhaps thought-provoking–stories.

Who are your literary influences?

First and foremost I'd have to say Edgar Allan Poe. He was my first introduction to horror literature, and the writer I remember more than most that made me want to read, and then want to write. Herman Melville had a big impact on me for the powerful themes he tackled in not just Moby Dick, but lesser known works like Billy Budd. No author with even the slightest connection to horror from my generation could not include Stephen King on a list of influences, and I can vividly remember greedily devouring Night Shift as a kid, and thoroughly enjoying Salem's Lot when I was just starting high school. Clive Barker also made a huge impression on me with his Books of Blood. Flannery O'Connor did, too, with her brilliant short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Ayn Rand deserves a mention, as does Donald Hamilton with his Matt Helm novels.

It's funny, but as I get further into my writing career I've started to notice some authors that I hadn't realized influenced me actually had. Orwell, for example, and Hammett.  I've recalled The Maltese Falcon more often than I ever expected to when I first read it, and reminders of 1984 and its warnings seem subtly to bombard us every day. I also find myself remembering lines and scenes from Dickens I never anticipated I would. I should also mention that I've grown to appreciate Richard Matheson many years after I had initially thought of his work as enjoyable pulp. Yet at the same time, numerous others I thought significant when I read them seem to have faded and diminished in my regard over time. The great ones really do stick with you, I suppose. Even if you don't expect them to.

Do you think Melville's portrait of Claggart in 'Billy Budd' is one of evil?

Yes, in some respects. But I think he was more meant to represent a mundane, almost banal source of injustice. He embodies everything we loathe; pettiness, jealousy, deviousness, vindictiveness, abuse of power. These are characteristics we have to deal with routinely in people, and they often cause us endless headaches and sometimes outrageous unfairness, and it's common for us to shake our heads in befuddlement at how some people can be the way they are. Consistent with that, there's no backstory given regarding Claggart. He's just "there," depicted almost as a force of nature that it would be pointless to try to understand or reason with. We're never told why he hates Billy Budd or what possessed him to falsely accuse the man, simply that he did. But what Melville was showing was that what makes people like this tick is not the real question we have to deal with. Claggart, after all, is rather easily and summarily dispatched by Billy Budd, so it's not that such a man is untouchable or invulnerable. Instead, it's the collateral effects and aftermath of "evil" like this rearing its head that Melville is concerned with. Actions have consequences, even if morally justifiable, and what you have in a situation like the one presented by Billy Budd is a story about a conflict between two differing sides of good, rather than a battle between good and evil. On the one hand you have Billy Budd, who represents innocence of heart and, you might say, the individual soul, and on the other you have Captain Vere, who represents order and the rules of a civilized society and who is concerned with the larger picture. There's no right answer, no easy choice. Billy Budd didn't deserve any of what he got, but if allowing him to escape punishment creates an atmosphere of mutiny on the high seas, certain to lead to many more deaths and unrest, where do you come down if, rather than having the luxury of reading about it on a sofa or in bed, you're actually in a position of authority and responsible for what may result? I think we all instinctively side with Billy Budd and would say let the chips fall where they may, but even Billy Budd understands Vere is only doing his job and, more importantly, his duty. Both men die with each other's name on their lips, and Billy Budd's execution obviously haunts Vere for the rest of his life. I think what Melville is saying is, good versus evil is not the conflict that shapes who we are, it's where we side when the fight is one version of good pitted against another, competing version of it that reveals our true nature, and that it's an eternal question with no objective answer. It's the stuff that makes us human, this ongoing process of revelation and introspection we undertake through things like literature.

To what extent do you think crime and horror fiction overlap?

I think they navigate a lot of the same terrain. They both tend to highlight the darker side of human nature, and they both frequently expose a cause-and-effect relationship between doing something bad and having bad things happen. I've always seen the two as being closely linked. Kindred spirits, if you would.

Commercial fiction–and I don't think of that term as a pejorative–relies on tension to infuse it with a page-turning quality, a compulsive vibe. Both crime fiction and horror fiction implicitly promise readers even higher levels of tension than normal just by presenting themselves as being one or the other (as opposed to, say, a cozy mystery), and that can be difficult to sustain. So they also share a lot of the same challenges.

I think the key is that with either, a good story focuses on the characters' reactions to the events as they unfold. In the end, it's not a story about a casino being robbed or a demon being raised, it's about the people involved. It's the human element that we identify with, whether or not we're reading about an over-the-hill crew of losers trying to pull off a bank swindle, or a band of overmatched teenagers trying to slay a monster.

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

There's definitely some truth to that. You have to be merciless to your characters. One problem that many aspiring writers have is that they bleed the tension out of their stories by avoiding scenes of emotional conflict. I don't mean scenes where the good guy fights the bad guy, I'm talking about scenes where their protagonist who can't afford to lose her job has to face her boss after missing the entire morning because of her involvement in something she swore she wouldn't divulge, or having the main character have to make a gut-wrenching choice between saving one person or another. It's only natural as a human being for things like that to make you uncomfortable when you care about your characters. But that's exactly what fiction is, placing characters that you (and, just as importantly, the reader) care about in awful situations, so you can follow their reactions and experience how it affects them. It's what makes readers want to turn the page and read into the wee hours of the morning. But it can also be difficult for a writer who hasn't mastered the art of ruthless detachment.

Being a writer means you have to create fascinating characters that you care deeply about, and then do absolutely horrific things to them. It's the nature of the beast.

How much do you think the average reader likes to be frightened and why?

It's going to vary depending on the individual, but overall I'd say people generally like to be frightened a good deal, just like they like to be thrilled. Modern life is all about the avoidance of risk, and advanced societies are set up to minimize danger as much as possible. Yet our minds and nervous systems are wired in a primal, almost atavistic, ways to deal with threatening situations. What fiction and movies and television allow us to do is to indulge this aspect of our nature in safe way, to give us the life-affirming feel of our nerves being charged and our adrenaline surging, without actually being in peril. Books provide opportunities for deep and intimate immersion into worlds of vicarious excitement without the reader having to endure even the slightest inconvenience. It's a welcome respite from the stresses of everyday life, which are more psychological and emotional–not to mention far less easily conquered–than those our ancestors faced back when forests sheltered fierce, predatory creatures in the dark just a few dozen yards away, when the oceans concealed kraken and who knew what else, and when simple things like travelling from one place to another could be a death-defying adventure that presented myriad types of threats.

While I think most people truly enjoy a good, safe scare, what I find interesting is how many of those same people have a completely inaccurate sense of what horror fiction is. For some reason, most likely because of an association they make with cheap horror movies that started getting churned out for teen audiences in the 80s, many people think horror is all blood and guts. But that's really splatter, not horror, and its something that crosses genres. True horror tries to inspire a feeling of dread and fear, for sure, but it really isn't all that different from other genres in the sense that its the characters and the tension that make a given novel feel alive in your hands. Even people who say they don't like scary books or movies still tend to like thrillers, which deliver the same type of excitement. They just don't employ haunting imagery or creepy, ofttimes disturbing scenarios when they do.

What three authors do you think have influenced modern horror literature the most?

I would say Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Matheson, and Stephen King. Although it's true that some would give the credit to others, Poe arguably wrote both the first modern horror story as well as the first modern detective story, each remarkable achievements in their own right (and, I would note, the first modern detective story that Poe gave us was also a horror story). What's absolutely amazing to me is how fresh some of his work reads to this day. "The Casque of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" are both studies in tension and pacing that are just as powerful now as they were in the 1840s. It's hard to believe they were written over a century and a half ago. Richard Matheson built on Poe's legacy and shaped the modern horror novel as we know it, bringing a lean, professional prose-style and a Hemingway-like exploration of issues. What struck me when I read I Am Legend was how obviously ahead of its time it was, and how profound the ending (that gave the title its meaning) was. King single-handedly brought horror into the mainstream and changed the face of it forever with his re-imagining and modernizing of classic tropes and his invention of countless new ones. What's incredible about him is how he's topped the best-seller list in every way imaginable. He's done it with numerous stand-alone novels (like Carrie and Salem's Lot among dozens of others) as well as with a series (The Dark Tower), he's done it with supernatural premises and with completely real-world, psychological horror. He's done it under a pseudonym in addition to under his real name. He's been successful at it in all the ways one can conceive of, and that's not something just anyone could have done.

Thank you Hank for giving a perceptive and engaging interview.

Find everything Hank Schwaeble at his website here.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With D.E. Johnson

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D.E. Johnson writes tense tight thrillers.

His acclaimed novel 'The Detroit Electric scheme' has been called "essential for historical fans" by Library Journal.  Booklist  chose it as one of the Top Ten First Crime Novels of the year, with a starred review. They said "Every bit as powerful a Patricia Highsmith's Ripley series, this gem as a debut showcases an author to watch very closely".

He was interviewed by Jay Leno.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about odometers and madness.

To what extent do speed and odometers play a part in your latest novel 'Motor City Shakedown'?

Odometers play a pretty important role in my first book, The Detroit Electric Scheme. The backdrop for the story is the electric car industry in 1910 Detroit. The electric car companies were dealing with the same objections they are today, including that the vehicles wouldn't go far enough on a charge of batteries, so they all tried to set world records in mileage to demonstrate that their cars would take you everywhere you needed to go. Detroit Electric set a new record of 211.3 miles in September 1910, which was eclipsed by Baker Electric later that year when they got a staggering 244 miles on a single charge. (Both used the new Edison nickel-steel battery to achieve those numbers.) 244 miles on a single charge – in 1910. What are the electrics getting today?

Speed comes in primarily with Edsel Ford, who is a teenage friend of Will Anderson, the protagonist of both The Detroit Electric Scheme and Motor City Shakedown. Will is the fictional son of the real owner of Detroit Electric, William C. Anderson. Edsel was a speed freak who built a special version of the Model T Torpedo, in which he would scream around Detroit, obliterating the speed limit (which, admittedly, wasn't hard to do, since it was ten miles per hour). At this time, a car that would go over 30 was of interest, and Edsel drove his Torpedo at 50+ mph, which was almost unheard of at the time. In Motor City Shakedown, Will buys the car from Edsel, who at this time in real life was working with the men at the Ford factory on a Speedster that would go much faster. Will spends a fair amount of time trying to get control of the Torpedo, which was quite different from the electrics he normally would have driven.

Who are your literary influences?

Ooh.  There are hundreds I could list, but I don't like writing lists any more than I like reading them, so I'll pick four contemporary authors as my biggest influences–two who write historical fiction and two who write mystery/crime, and then I'll throw a songwriter in the mix as well.

On the historical side, E.L. Doctorow is brilliant at making times and places come alive. There are many great examples, but World's Fair sticks out to me. The other is William Kennedy, who wrote the phenomenal Albany trilogy, which included Ironweed, which might be my favorite book of all time. Both of these guys are amazing writers who have pitch-perfect command of the language and toss off amazing sentence after amazing sentence.

On the crime side, nobody does it better than Elmore Leonard. Dialogue that snaps back and forth in voices that ring absolutely true, smart and smart-ass characters you root for even knowing they're scumbags, and a different book every time, rather than settling into a formula, like so many authors do after they achieve financial success. The other is Dennis Lehane, who writes the mystery genre better than anybody. Mystery is so much sleight of hand–providing all the clues the reader needs to solve the puzzle, but doing so while directing their eye somewhere else. You can read 300 pages of a Lehane novel, and then in one-page the entire book is reframed, and your understanding of everything you read has changed. (Sort of like the film The Usual Suspects, a brilliant piece of film making.)

The man who I think is the best American storyteller, however, is Tom Waits. His skill with metaphor is incredible, and with a hundred words he tells complex stories that range from hilarious to heart-wrenching, with all the nuance of a well-written novel. The guy is amazing. It doesn't hurt that I love his music too.

I aim for the sense of place that Doctorow and Kennedy provide with the snappy dialogue of Leonard, the mind-bending plot twists of Lehane, and the heart of Waits. It's a big reach, and I know I have a long way to go, but I've got a lot of books in me, and I intend for each to be better than the last.

Do you think absolute powerlessness is as corrupting as absolute power and how do they relate to the motivations in crime fiction?

Hmm, that's a tough one. I'd have to argue that, particularly thinking about literature, that we don't see many characters who are absolutely powerless. They wouldn't have any function except as victims, and it's boring to read about conflicts that are foregone conclusions. Protagonists often feel they're powerless but end up discovering that they really have some level of control over their situation and then turn the tables.

It's a cliche – but a useful one – to have a protagonist in crime fiction who appears to be powerless until we discover that she was trained by the Mossad in an earlier life that she has tried to put behind her (or something equally as unlikely), or just the normal, everyday guy on his way to the office who's somehow thrown into a world of violence and intrigue. We have to believe the antagonist is the one with the power, but ultimately the protagonist ends up being the one with more, generally only because of superior guts and determination.

As a general point, I'd guess that absolute powerlessness most likely creates either a feeling of desperation or of freedom. Both could be corrupting, and both are great motivators that can lead to a wide variety of actions, things that could ultimately be either positive or negative.

To what extent do you think madness informs the history of crimes?

First of all, I think "madness" is a difficult term to define as it relates to the real world. I believe sanity and insanity are the ends of a continuum, and most of us fall somewhere between those extremes.

Who is completely honest with themselves? Who really understands why they do what they do? Who acts rationally all the time?

I do believe, however, that almost all crime is the result of a "sane" mind. People rationalize the means to gain what they want, be it the death of a rival or the ownership of a necklace. A person begins down a path and becomes locked into the realization of the end result, regardless of what they have to do to gain it. It's the "slippery slope" in which the first step may be small and easily rationalized, but having done that, it becomes easier to perform the next and more heinous act, and so on.

Of course, there are the lunatics whose criminal activities are the result of a disconnect with reality, but even sociopaths seem to act rationally and logically, just from a different point of reference.

It seems to me that people want what they want, and many, if not most, will do what they need to in order to get it–so long as they believe they won't be caught.

Do you think the e book is changing the world of publishing?

Thanks for lobbing one at me. These questions are making my brain hurt. There's no question that e-books are changing the publishing world. I recently read that something like 317,000 books were traditionally published in the U.S. in 2010 and more than 2.7 million were published in other ways. A large percentage of them were available only as e-books.

There are a few established authors who are selling new works only through Amazon and taking the 70% royalty rather than the 10-20% that most publishers offer. They can sell their books at a lower price and still make significantly more money per book. The difficulty is that it's tough to be noticed in that world unless you're established. E-books are still less than 10% of the market, but that will rise quickly while compressing pricing, which will make more literature available to more people.

To me, this is just like the music world, in which albums were the way we bought music for decades. There were incremental changes, such as the cassette tape and then the CD allowing us to take our music with us, but the ipod changed everything. Music became primarily a private experience and downloads became the preferred method of purchasing. There are still those who prefer vinyl for the sound quality (and the coolness factor), but the market has moved on.

However, the music companies still have the dominant part of the market, as will book publishers. In my opinion, even in an e-book world, publishers still bring a lot to the table. The editorial help I've received would have been difficult to duplicate at any price, and they act as a filter that indicates to readers that the books they've vetted are of good quality (though everyone has their own opinion on that). While publishers aren't spending the money on marketing their authors like they used to, they still dramatically improve all their authors' visibility.

I'm a holdout – because I love books so damn much – but one of these days I'll pick up an e-reader and join the 21st century.

Do you think crime fiction is about resolving crime or raising fear?

Back to the tough ones, I see. For me, it's not really about either. My interest in crime fiction comes from the idea of exploring human nature. Why do people do what they do? Good crime fiction raises the questions, "Would I do that?" and "What am I willing to do to get what I want?"

We all are drawn to the "dark side," whether we let it rise to the surface or not. We don't have enough excitement in our own lives so we want to live in the head of someone who is dancing on the edge. We wonder what would happen if we chucked our 9-5 lives and did something crazy.

I think crime fiction also appeals to those who want people to pay for their sins. Most crime novels end with the good guys victorious and the bad guys punished. That doesn't really appeal to me personally, because life is a lot more complicated than that. If the protagonist doesn't pay dearly for the victory it seems false to me. I like those complicated endings, where the good guy ultimately wins, but also loses something he values greatly.

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 would agree with that. Most of the time we are hurt in same way we let it go, which is generally a good thing, since there would be a lot more of us in prison otherwise. We then proceed to think about it for decades, with an "I shoulda…" kind of thought, usually ending with, depending on your inclinations, "… told him off," "… kicked his ass," or "… killed the mother-f***er."

We let it go on the outside, but it just keeps eating away at us. Hence the appeal of reading about what we wish we ourselves had done. "Justice" is an absolute term that has subjective interpretations, so justice in my eyes may be very different from justice in the eyes of my enemy. (But, of course, I'm right – and so must the character be if we are going to root for her.)

I think reading about revenge gives us a little of the retribution we wished we had taken, whether legally or illegally, and there is great appeal to a morally-just character stepping outside the law when it has failed her.

What do you think are the greatest crime novels and why?

I'll start by saying I feel completely unqualified to answer this question. I'd like to have some unexpected answer to impress the literati, but I read almost entirely contemporary fiction and don't have much background in the "classics." With that in mind, I'll give a couple of my favorites:

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane – I marvel at Lehane's ability to create a complex and detailed world in books that are great character studies as well as fascinating mysteries. He is also one of, if not the best, at hitting me from left field with a revelation that reframes the entire book. Mystic River is a great look at working-class Boston and the relationships that build and are destroyed between people who inhabit the same few blocks their entire lives.

Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard – I could choose a dozen of Leonard's books, but this is the funniest of the bunch, and in some ways the smartest. Chili Palmer is a phenomenal protagonist, a bad guy we love who takes no shit from anybody and always lands on his feet. Great satirical look at the movie business and the characters who populate that world. I'd also put Get Shorty up there with any crime book when it comes to smart dialogue. The book reads like a breeze and sticks with you afterward.

So, no Dostoevski or Nabakov that would make me seem well read, just books I like.

Do you think Westerns and crime fiction are related?

Thematically, there are a lot of similarities between westerns and crime fiction, and I suppose you could argue that westerns, for the most part, are crime fiction anyway, just set in a particular location. Some of the great crime writers, including Elmore Leonard and Loren Estleman, have written a pile of westerns, some of which blur the distinction between the two genres.

In both cases, we have morality plays–good vs. evil, generally with major temptation for the protagonist to just give up or chuck it all and side with the antagonist. Crime fiction traditionally has been grittier, although genre fiction in general has been moving in that direction for some time, so soon the only difference might be setting.

You have been praised for your detailed descriptions of Detroit in 1910 and obviously did a lot of research. What was the most surprising fact you discovered?

That only about 10% of the 465,000 people who lived in Detroit in 1910 had even been born in the State of Michigan. It's incredible to think of: 400,000+ of the 465,000 city residents were born somewhere far away. There had been wave after wave of immigration–the Irish, Germans, and other northern Europeans early on, followed by southern and eastern Europeans in the early part of the 20th Century. In 1910, Italians, Greeks, and Russian Jews were the predominant immigrants pouring into the area looking for jobs.

I think about New York in these terms–the big ethnic enclaves filled with people who never had to learn English because their whole lives revolved around their countrymen. I never realized that Detroit was the same. This is before the "Great Migration," when workers from the southern states, particularly African-Americans, moved to the North for jobs as well as more equitable treatment.

As a side note, the recent census puts the population of Detroit at 713,000 (the lowest number of any census since 1910). That's after hitting a peak of almost 2 million in the mid-fifties. So there are give or take 1.25 million fewer people living within the city limits than there were sixty years ago. No wonder it can feel like a ghost town. Unfortunately, there's a new "Great Migration occurring, with Detroit residents migrating to other parts of the U.S, particularly the South. It's been sad to watch a great city become a blight. Maybe someday…

Thank you Dan for a brilliant and informative interview.

Find all things D.E. Johnson at his website, dejohnsonauthor.com here.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Angel Zapata

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If you like horror fiction you'll know Angel Zapata. His stories have a tongue in cheek feel to them sometimes that undermines the reassurances a reader seeks. He is adept at subverting what it is the reader thinks he is taking away. He allows the things that breed on horror to seep through the cracks. He is also a fantastic poet and he has a collection of short stories called 'The Man Of Shadows'.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about William Blake and the irrational.

How much do you think crime and horror fiction overlap?

I can't remember the exact quote, but to loosely paraphrase, author Douglas Winter said, "Horror is not a genre or a kind of fiction, it's an emotion." So using that statement as a definition, there is no overlap because there is no parallel. It's possible to have crime fiction with or without elements of horror. For example, suppose your character is a shoplifter. Yes, it's a crime, but unless he's shoplifting babies, there's really nothing horrific about the act itself. Thus, "horror" can only be a reaction, and not a world unto itself. That's why it's impossible to spin a tale of horror without utilizing a complimentary genre such as crime, mystery, suspense, sci-fi or fantasy.

Of course I say all this and on my recent fiction collection it specifically denotes it as a "horror short story collection" as if that's sufficient enough to describe it. Go figure. It's like William Blake said, "This world is a fiction, made up of contradiction."

Who are your literary influences?

Hands-down, William Blake is the most influential writer in my life. I know the majority of his work is poetry and engravings, and that he was considered everything from mystic to lunatic, but he had the ability to transform simplistic strings of words into tangible sunlight and breath. I think this type of skill is what makes literary "literary." It's the difference between "reading" words versus "feeling" words. In my opinion, in order to create literary fiction you can't just be a writer. You have to be an alchemist of language.

Regarding works of horror, H.P. Lovecraft rules my heart. He could describe a white wall and make me either weep or gasp in awe.

Do you think if he was alive today William Blake would create a new form of illuminated e book and would he add anything to 'The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell'?

An illuminated eBook sounds positively magical. Blake would most certainly purchase a Kindle as the name fits his inclination for igniting emotion, and then he'd probably hand-paint each of the sleep-mode images as they formed. It would be amazing to see how prolific Blake would become in the digital age. I think a man who painstakingly wrote and painted his own individually engraved plate transfers would be delighted by the absolute magnitude of self-published books today. Here's a man who believed that "those who restrain desire, do it because theirs is weak enough to be restrained." No longer must writers find themselves fettered by publication inhibitions or lack of means. Now writers can thrive in a utopian unity of opposites, a divine order where writer becomes publisher, publisher returns to the pen, and somewhere in between the two converge. More than anything Blake restlessly awaited a world "without contraries," because he knew it would offer "no progression."

At the end of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake writes about sharing the bible only with devils and giving the world a hell bible whether they want it or not. Watch the evening news. His caveat remains regrettably relevant. From what I know of the man, Blake would never deviate from his own cause, so he wouldn't add or delete anything from his work.

How do you interpret Blake's comment 'Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire' and how do you reconcile it with his comment 'Opposition is true friendship'?

Blake was a beautiful thinker, wasn't he? 'Desire' for Blake was always the prompt for exposing the spiritual, imaginative self which most of us repress or fear to reveal, and without desire there would be no foundation for reason. Thus, a life without 'desire' would equate with death. And death of one's own imagination far outweighed physical death, regardless of perceived innocence.

Now 'opposition' was one of the strongest forces of energy Blake vehemently advocated. It wasn't so much conflict, but moreso identifying similarities and contraries, negatives and positives, dualities in every aspect of life; be it religious, political, etc. His greatest works alone prove this: Songs of Innocence and Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. He questioned everything. It's all about pulling down the veil of pretense and exposing truth, regardless if beautiful or ugly, because he wanted to take what was conventional or intolerable and turn it inside-out, eliminating the need for such distinctions.

These two concepts flow like intercepting rivers. Or to put it another way, 'opposition' seeks balance while 'desire' is the weight on the scales.

Wordsworth defined poetry as 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings' arising from 'emotion recollected in tranquillity'. Blake wrote in his Marginalia on Wordsworth 'Imagination has nothing to do with Memory'. What do you make of his observation?

For most of us, using one's Imagination is basically the real-world creation of something invented in the mind; a physical manifestation based on an intellectual prompt. So for Blake, Imagination without action could be likened to an unfulfilled desire. Wordsworth was usually passive with his creativity, like in his poem Daffodils, 'For oft, when on my couch I lie' or The Solitary Reaper 'I listened motionless and still.' Imagination was a matter of life and death for Blake; it was passionate, violent, constantly pushing forward: 'He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence' or "Imagination is the real world.' It would seem Wordsworth's poetry was based primarily on self-discovery. Blake's poetry shouted, "This is who I am!" vs. "Who am I?"

That type of clarity is what I strive for in my own work.

So who are you?

I define myself as a man standing between two property lines. On one side, I'm a husband, father, and blue-collar worker. On the other side, I'm a writer. I struggle to find balance. Although I've come a long way in the craft, I'm still not always comfortable calling myself a writer because with the confession comes inquiry. And with that curious stranger's probing comes departure from my safe, solitary cocoon. That's the honest truth. In fact, outside my small community of bloggers, very few people know I write. My immediate family knows I write, but my wife and eldest son are the only ones who actually read any of it.

I know many writers will probably shun me for the sacrilege, but it's possible I'll someday surrender the pen and explore some other expression of art. There are plenty of ways to tell stories without words. I have a multitude of desires, and as Blake said, I don't want to be guilty of not acting on them. But until then, these fingers remain slave to my beautiful muse.

I'm always pushing myself to be better and explore new styles and genres. As of late, I've shied away from horror short stories. I have poems I want to share and a slowly gestating novel. I'm also having fun editing 5×5 Fiction.

What do you make of Michel Foucault's observation in 'The Archaeology Of Knowledge' that: '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 it 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?'

Is everything I write or you've written connected in some underlying way? Definitely. Fiction or non-fiction, there are always elements of truth that the writer has either observed or experienced. We create and/or document history.

Awhile back I read an article that said it's conceivable our genes, the very DNA in our bodies, contain the memories of our ancestors; everything they saw and did is locked away inside of us. If it can be proven, it would totally give new meaning to the notion that there are 'no new ideas' only adaptations of previously existed life. And as writers, if we can learn how to consciously tap into that well of information; think about the knowledge we could pass on to the reader.

Tell us about your book.

My book, 'The Man of Shadows' is a collection of twenty-five short stories of horror and is published by Panic Press. It was written over the course of approximately three years. My goal was to breathe new life into zombies and vampires while simultaneously introducing readers to new dark folklores and fresh perspectives on demonic activity. There's blood and guts for the hardcore horror fan as well as controlled chaos for those who prefer their horror a bit more suggestive or cerebral. The first story, 'The Mouth of Babes' is one of my own personal favorites. It's about a guy who runs an online web service featuring real death images. A friend who works at the morgue has a particularly strange body to show him. It's a woman with a tattoo of a vicious-looking mouth on her abdomen. And somehow, the mouth is still alive on the dead woman's skin. Believe me, you're in for a fun ride, especially if you enjoy the company of junkies, winos, prostitutes, devils, witches, and cannibals.

Do you think that you can't get rid of your demons without getting rid of your angels and how is this idea involved in your writing?

Interesting question. The idea that angels and demons are raging war all around us has always fascinated me. Most of my writing is plagued with devils and angels masquerading as men, so it goes without saying, the constant struggle for that good vs. evil balance is foremost on my mind. When I first started writing, I suffered a constant hesitation of thought. I was fearful of my own dark ideas. Call it residual damage from years of Catholicism, a brief stint at apostasy, Pentecostal brainwashing, and frustrations with the occult. It wasn't until I surrendered to both of these inner voices, demon and angel, that I was able to truly create without restraint.

I don't know, maybe this is too spiritual an answer, but I agree with the statement. You can't have one without the other, nor can you have unequal sides. Equilibrium of thought is paramount to successful writing.

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

Hmmm, I'll apply the 'we' here to mean 'writers.' When you ask fiction writers why they write, most will answer, 'Because I must.' Must what? Write… create. Create what? People, cultures, and worlds. In a word: civilizations. This impulse, addiction, overwhelming drive to write must, at times, seem 'irrational' to those around us. But somewhere in our brains there's a need to create order, succumb to chaos, to breathe life into every shade of ink. Are we ruled by it? I think anything we allow ourselves to be ruled by can become a type of irrationality. Just look at how many illogical decisions have been made in the name of love or religion. I don't know how many of us are ruled by irrationality, but as for me, I'll stay slave to the pen.

Thank you Angel for giving a profound and unforgettable interview.

Angel Zapata is author of the horror short story collection, The Man of Shadows, available in paperback or eBook through Panic Press, Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. He also edits 5×5 Fiction: 25-word stories told in 5 sentences of 5 words each. Visit A Rage of Angel and 5×5 Fiction.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Allan Guthrie

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Allan Guthrie is an award-winning Scottish crime writer.

His debut novel, TWO-WAY SPLIT, was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger award and went on to win the Theakstons Crime Novel Of The Year in 2007.

He is the author of four other novels: KISS HER GOODBYE (nominated for an Edgar), HARD MAN, SAVAGE NIGHT and SLAMMER and three novellas: KILL CLOCK , KILLING MUM and BYE BYE BABY.

When he's not writing, he's a literary agent with Jenny Brown Associates. He also runs Criminal-E, a blog on ebook crime fiction.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about psychosis and vegetables.

Do you think that the pathology of extreme psychosis such as evinced by a paranoid schizophrenic is more disturbing than the psychology of a gangster in terms of crime fiction or is there no divide?

What we're talking about is abnormal behaviour, and whether or not it comes about through mental illness or personal choice. At least that's what I hope we're talking about. I don't think there's an easy answer. If you're talking about a gangster like Tony Soprano, then he's certainly a disturbing guy.  But then so are Jim Thompson's first person narrators. Not much to choose between them, I don't think.  Of course gangsters can be paranoid schizophrenics too. Wasn't Ronnie Kray a sufferer?

Tell us about your literary influences.

I think different influences show up in different books. I'll try to pinpoint them.

http://www.amazon.com/Bye-Baby-ebook/dp/B003Y5H8FI/

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With L.J. Sellers

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L.J. Sellers is an award-winning journalist who is now a full time novelist with seven books on the market. She writes gritty controversial novels and is the author of the Detective Jackson mystery suspense series.

Her novels have been highly praised by Mystery Scene and Spinetingler Magazines, and all five are on Amazon Kindle's bestselling police procedural list.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about theocracy and revenge.

Why do you think your novel 'The Sex Club' was deemed to be controversial and do you think the reasons reflect on the publishing industry and gender bias?

I wrote The Sex Club during a more conservative administration, and in fact, I wrote the story partially in response to the U.S. government's decision to spend taxpayer money on abstinence-only sex education. So right off the top, the subject of sex education and access to birth control is controversial, regardless of how the plot developed or how I approached the issue. My first objective, though, was to tell a great story, so I believe my treatment of the subject was subtle and sensitive, although few conservative readers would disagree.

Adding fuel to the fire, the sex club participants and victims are young teenagers, thirteen and fourteen years old. You can imagine how editors and marketers at the major publishers reacted to that element. "I loved the story and read it one sitting, but the victims are so young. The marketing department will never approve it." Some readers find the ages disturbing as well, and I don't blame them. Although I didn't include any sex scenes on the page, some of the conversations were graphic and difficult for me to write. Yet most readers realize the story is realistic and based on actual news events.

The fact that these issues are controversial at all is rooted in the American culture and the dominance of religion, which tends to suppress sexual freedom. As for the publishing industry and gender bias, you've made me think. Are male authors allowed more leeway in writing about sex, at least in crime fiction? Maybe. Women can write about sex as long romance is involved, but this story is definitely not romantic, so that may have worked against me. More important, I think the gender bias comes into play with my characters. I focus on the girls in the group because they become the murder victims, and I think it's difficult for many adults to conceptualize teenage girls as sexual beings. If the young characters/victims had been male instead, publishing houses may not have characterized the book as "controversial" and "hard to sell."

Fortunately, readers are open-minded as long as the story is compelling. The Sex Club is selling very well as an e-book and has ranked at #3 or #4 on Kindle's police procedural list for the last five months.

Do you think America is bordering on a theocracy and which political powers are steering it towards a religiously influenced patriarchal fear of female sexuality and the need to control it?

Thanks for throwing me a softball question this time, so I can just breeze through it. Yes, during conservative presidencies or even when conservatives come into power as governors, the US federal and state governments are definitely influenced by religious convictions, and they produce legislation that suppresses sexuality (and reproductive choices) for anyone who is not a married male, and that includes woman, gays, and transgendered people of a kinds. The repression of sexuality, like the repression of certain ideas or ethnic groups, is rooted in fear—fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of losing control.

Socially conservative politics are a power grab, based on the need to keep people in their places. When women are given socially acceptable choices—to marry or not, to reproduce or not—they often chose "not." When women choose not to become wives and mothers, it disrupts the conservative family ideal that places men at the head of households. Thus religious conservatives get excited/upset when socially prominent single women like Natalie Portman chose to have a baby without being married. But the important issue, and one I dealt with in my novel, is the conservative agenda to cut funds for teaching sex education to teenagers and to eliminate funding to groups like Planned Parenthood, which provides contraception to young people. The result, as we saw in the U.S., is a rise in teen pregnancies after decades of decline. The irony is that the end result of their polices is more single moms and higher rates of abortion, the very things they oppose. They forget to factor in the human impulsive to engage in sex.

I hope I'm not making this novel sound too political. It's really a police procedural with a realistic investigation into the death of a young teenage girl. The subplot is a secondary investigation by a Planned Parenthood nurse to track down the members of the sex club and give them information about safe sex practices. Their stories overlap and eventually come together in an explosive ending.

Tell us about your involvement in stand up comedy.

Years ago I decided to write a script based on my novel The Baby Thief. I had so much fun doing it, I wrote four more scripts, three of which were comedies (and two of which almost sold.) During that phase, I took a comedy writing class to sharpen the humor in my stories. The first thing we had to do was write about the most painful experiences in our lives, because that's the source from which you draw the best personal comedy. So, much of my humor is about growing up in an overweight, alcoholic, dysfunctional family, and I also squeezed some material from my job at the time as an editor of a pharmaceutical magazine.

Over the course of the class, we each wrote a stand-up routine and in the end, performed for a real audience. Public speaking terrifies me and I was horribly nervous. Fortunately, the theater was a few blocks from where I worked, so I went over on my lunch breaks for a few days before the performance and practiced walking out on the stage and saying my opening lines. It was a huge help.

My performance went well, and the audience's reaction to my material was terrific. The instructor, who runs a comedy workshop, invited me to perform with the workshop whenever I could. So I've done a few performances over the years, including a small bit in the talent show at Bouchercon 2009. I keep hoping to get into a space where I have time to write more stand-up material, and someday, I hope to write a humorous crime novel.

Do you think crime fiction needs revenge as one of its themes?

Interesting question. The futuristic thriller I'm writing now deals with this issue in a subtle way. What crime fiction does for readers is to let us vicariously experience not only the triumph of good over evil, but many other forms of justice as well. The real-life events around us can be cruel, unjust, and mysterious. I believe it's important for our collective mental health to experience justice, order, and revelation through fiction. So yes, revenge is a necessary theme in crime fiction because it's such a basic human emotion that we all yearn for at times, yet one that social norms prevent us from acting on.

Crime fiction also brings us to terms with the duality within ourselves. We have a capacity for great goodness, yet we are all deeply flawed people, capable of deceit, jealousy, schadenfreude, addiction, selfishness, and the desire for revenge. When crime protagonists show such flaws, we not only relate to them, we also forgive ourselves for the same transgressions. When antagonists behave in those ways, we can vicariously act out our darker fantasies.

Under what circumstances do you think you would be capable of killing someone?

You do like to mix it up! My ex-husband comes to mind of course, and I say that only half jokingly. He not only threatened to kill me many times, but almost succeeded. At times, I thought the only way I would escape/survive was to kill him first. That was long ago, and fortunately, I found another way out. But I empathize with women who kill their abusive husbands, and as a juror, I would never convict them of a crime.

It seems obvious to say I could kill in self-defense, but I could also kill someone to protect my family members. In our sister city of Springfield, we had a case of a father who walked into a fast food restaurant and shot a man who had repeatedly threatened his daughter. The district attorney did not even bring charges against him. Many in the community were outraged, considering it an act of murder, but I had mixed feelings. I certainly sympathized with the father's fear and motive, even though I may not have chosen that public course of action.

Do you think the best detectives have strong criminal shadows?

That may be a bit of myth perpetuated by the crime fiction community to keep the genre edgy. Some authors use the concept to create dark protagonists who walk a fine line between good and evil and sometimes cross over to catch the clever antagonist. In real life, most criminals are not particularly smart, and it doesn't take much effort to out think them. In fiction, readers like stories that are complex, with characters who engage in a high-stakes competition. So authors give them clever con men and highly intelligent serial killers.

Yet, I believe the best detectives, both real and fictional, are those who have great imaginations and the ability to visualize many scenarios. Good detectives also have a mental flexibility that allows them to adapt to new evidence and continuously rethink their hypotheses. But admittedly, the detective in my series doesn't fit the stereotypical mythology. Instead, he's a good guy with no criminal tendencies, so I'm inclined to believe he's as effective as protagonists with strong criminal shadows…but I could be wrong. Reading and novel writing are subjective experiences, and we all bring our own perspectives to the story.

Who are your literary influences?

Both my parents read Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series, and as young teenager, I devoured them too. The New York brownstone with its orchid garden and live-in cook, the private detectives—it was all fascinating and foreign to a young girl in rural Oregon, and my love of crime fiction (and detectives!) began in that series.

In my rural setting, I read everything I could get my hands on, including Phyllis Whitney and short stories by O Henry. In college, I read and enjoyed Ayn Rand, Margaret Atwood, Herman Hess, and Stephen King. But the authors I came to love most were John MacDonald, Ross McDonald, Elmore Leonard, and Lawrence Sanders, who introduced me to police procedurals and is my favorite writer of all time.

My love of police procedurals deepened through Michael Connelly, John Sandford, and Leslie Glass (Detective April Woo). I'm glad to mention Glass' series, because I've obviously read mostly male crime fiction authors. In analyzing why, the one thing that comes to mind is that male authors, in general, write less emotion on the page, and the authors I've mentioned don't focus exclusively on serial killers.

Of course, I've also read and enjoyed hundreds of novels that weren't crime related, but those authors and stories didn't influence me the way crime fiction did.

Do you think our primary fear is the fear of death and how does that inform your fiction?

The fear of death not only permeates crime fiction, it also seems to be the source of humans' obsession with religion and afterlife. The fear of dying is actually several distinct apprehensions. The first is our dread of the passing itself. For most people, dying is painful, both physically and emotionally. Car accidents, murders, cancer, heart attack. These are what claim us. Very few people have the luxury of dying peacefully at home of old age. So we fear the inevitable, painful event. But we also fear what comes next, because it's unknown. Thus we have religion, which creates an afterlife to explain what happens after we die. We also fear the grief we'll experience if a loved ones dies.

How does this relate to crime fiction? As a writer, I confront my fears by working through them in stories. When my kids were young, Jeffrey Dahmer was in the news and he represented my greatest fear: that a sexual predator would kill one of my children. So I wrote a serial killer novel—which will remain unpublished—that allowed me to work through that fear and vicariously experience triumph and justice over that form of evil, which is not always the case in real life. I believe many readers confront all these fears, particularly the apprehension of being murdered, by reading novels that focus on crime. Crime fiction allows us to vicariously make sense of the heinous events around us, to restore order, and to prevail over those who wish to harm us.

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

To create vivid engaging stories, writers must be able to get inside the minds of their characters and see the world from their perspectives for pages at a time. This requires a certain ability to detach from oneself. In addition, compelling stories usually highlight provocative, emotional, or disturbing subjects. To spend months writing about such issues in an intimate or multifaceted way requires the writer to step back emotionally from the subject and process it objectively. Thus, you might conclude that writers are capable of shutting down a little piece of their heart at times, for the sake of a great story.

In The Sex Club, a 14-year-old girl engages in a sexual relationship with a 40-something male. What are your views on the age of consent?

This is a touchy subject with a lot of gray area, and I have mixed feelings about it. One of the reasons I wrote the novel was my concern for the increased level of sexual activity in young teenagers. In general though, I don't believe we should incarcerate people for consensual sex. But when does consensual sex cross the line and become predatory? For example, if two 14-year-olds have sex, no one would consider throwing either of them in jail. But if a 15-year-old female has consensual sex with her 18-year-old boyfriend, most US state laws say the male should be sentenced to prison. This seems barbaric.

What about the case of the 14-year-old girl and the 40-year-old man? Should he go to jail, even if she seduced him? Most people would say yes. They would argue that a female that young is not capable of making a rational, mature decision to engage in sexual activity. Is this attitude fair to mature, young girls who have real sexual needs? And is prison really the best socially corrective response for a man who—foolishly and selfishly—chooses to succumb to the advances of a minor? When you throw in the fact that some states allow girls to get married at fifteen (to a man of any age), the whole issue becomes rather contradictory.

I don't have all the answers, but I believe every case should be judged on its own circumstances, and some state laws need to be tossed out. The American culture also needs to question its long-held belief that teenagers are not capable of making rational decisions about consensual sex.

Thank you L.J. for giving a frank and illuminating interview.

L.J. Sellers is an award-winning journalist and the author of the bestselling Detective Jackson mystery/suspense series. The Sex Club, Secrets to Die For, and Thrilled to Death have been highly praised by Mystery Scene and Spinetingler magazines. Her fourth Jackson story, Passions of the Dead, has just been released. L.J. also has two standalone thrillers, The Baby Thief and The Suicide Effect. When not plotting murders, she enjoys performing standup comedy, cycling, social networking, and attending mystery conferences. She's also been known to jump out of airplanes.

Find all things L.J. Sellers here:

Her website and blog

The Crime Fiction Collective blog

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Julie Lewthwaite

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Julie Lewthwaite writes hard first rate Noir.

She writes with a narrative immediacy that takes you straight to the story and lets it unfold with realism and menace.  Her use of physical detail heightens the sense that the reader is about to see something nasty. Her characters are real and her stories tightly structured.

Her collection of stories 'Gone Bad' is out and they read beautifully.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about double lives and political crises.

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Do you believe in ghosts?

Intellectually, no. They're right up there with magic powers, supreme beings and fairies at the bottom of the garden.

And yet, and yet ….

I love ghost stories. I can remember when I was a kid getting home from the library with an armful of books and sitting at the hearth in the dying light of a winter afternoon, firelight casting crazy shadows on the walls, reading about headless horsemen and grey ladies, chain-dragging ghouls and shroud-clad wraiths. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I had some scary experiences back then. Sudden chills that made my hair stand on end. Feelings of dread, verging on sheer terror. I heard odd noises, found cold spots.

What might be more surprising is that the house had been exorcised, although I didn't find this out until much later. By tradition the curate of the parish came to tea regularly with my Nana. (It had originally been Nana and Granda's house and my dad and his brothers and sisters had grown up there.) Anyway, one particular curate, after he'd visited a number of times, asked for permission to conduct an exorcism as he felt very uncomfortable in the house. And apparently he did, although bearing in mind the experiences I had growing up, I would suggest it wasn't terribly successful. Not just me, either. My dad's eldest brother wouldn't go upstairs on his own even as an adult. Something on the quarter landing at the turn of the stairs greatly disturbed him. When I was eleven or twelve, I saw my grandfather in the house. Bearing in mind he died when I was a week old, it was an unexpected encounter.

So, in fairness, I think my answer has to be, 'No, but ….'

If you were given an unlimited sum of money to commit a crime what would it be and how would it differ from the crimes you write about?

I was tempted at first to just offer David Cameron and Nick Clegg each an obscene amount of money to kill the other. I reckon there's no doubt they'd take the offer – they've pretty much proved beyond all doubt that they can be bought – and since they'd very likely sub-contract the dirty work, odds are they'd both be done away quite cleanly by professionals. How would it differ from the crimes I write about? No innocent people would be hurt.

However, having given the matter some considerable thought, I have a better plan. Since money is no object, I shall arrange to have built a secret underground base in the style of a Bond villain. I can't decide whether it should be offshore, in a mountain or whatever, but I'm not going to worry about that just now. I might get a cat. I could afford a cat with all that money. Perhaps a black one, or maybe a little ginger fella. (I have a weakness for ginger toms.) I'd also have an army of geeky, techie geniuses at my disposal. Loads of them. Smart as can be. Their job – for which they would be amply rewarded – would be to target the bank accounts of the world's over-privileged rich, right-wing sympathisers and to empty them. Then we'd move on to bully boys and supremacists and strip them of their wealth, too. Then the religious – especially the likes of TV evangelists who con money out of the gullible. There'd be more people to take money from – we've only picked up royal loot, for example, by default so far – but you get the gist.

As to what I would do with all that wealth, that vast, obscene lake of tainted cash, well … some catnip toys for Ginge. Wages for me and the geniuses. And what was left could go to the people who need it. Let's get people out of poverty. Let's feed the hungry and treat the sick. And we can have schools and hospitals and libraries … and that's just for starters. I'm sure there's loads more we could do.

This differs from the stuff I write about in that – as far as I can see – it's victimless crime. But reading this over, I wonder if I'm really cut out to be a villain.

Do you think that the tension between an individual's fantasies and reality is a source of crime and drama?

We all experience the world differently in accordance with our own hopes and fears, likes and dislikes, the things we have learned. One person's dream is another person's nightmare. My reality might not be your reality. I think crime and drama happen when the differences between those realities are exposed.

For example, in one of my stories a lonely man hires an escort for the night. When they get up the next morning, in his mind she is now his girlfriend and they will have a future together. In her mind, she has finished work and wants to get home to get on with her life. When she makes it abundantly clear that they don't share the same reality, he reacts badly and we have crime and drama.

Scope also exists in the disparity between what we have and what we would like to have, and the steps we might take to bridge that gap. For example, if a group of people who each covet the latest electronic gadget see someone else in possession of one, they are likely to react in different ways. One might feel worthless because he can't afford one, another might feel motivated to get a better paid job so he can buy himself one soon, and yet another might decide he wants one now, punch the guy in the head and take his from him. If the object of desire is human, a wife, a boyfriend, perhaps a baby, then that ratchets up the stakes somewhat. And of course when reality takes over from fantasy, things really get messed up.

Let's say, having spent three years worshiping her from afar and fantasizing about the idyllic life they might have together, Tommy finally gets up the courage to ask Lisa out. Things go well, they quickly move in together, he has his dream girl, his dream life. He's ecstatically happy, right? Well, maybe. What if he finds out that she leaves her toenail clippings on the bedroom floor, can't cook, doesn't hang her towel up after she showers and spends all evening on Facebook chatting with her mates and ignoring him; is he still ecstatic?

Or to put it another way, in answer to your question, definitely!

Tell us about 'Gone Bad'.

Gone Bad is a collection of stories that were written over a period of about five years. The earliest are 'It Could Be You' and 'Let's Dance'. They were also my first published stories, appearing as they did in the now-defunct Bullet magazine back in 2006. The most recent story is 'Local Hero' which was sitting half-written on my hard drive and was completed for the collection.

The stories explore common themes: alienation, dysfunction, the desire for instant gratification and an inability to see the consequences of actions taken. This is short fiction with a noir edge, gritty, sweary, northern and nasty, featuring flawed, foul-mouthed, misguided characters. Some people say it's funny. Clearly those puppies are sick.

All but 'Local Hero' have been previously published, some online on sites that no longer exist, others in print, where stories often seem to last no longer than a couple of months. Having just recently woken up to the idea of e-books, I thought pulling them together into a collection would be not only a good idea, but also a great way to dip my toe in the water. It was a pretty steep learning curve, but very rewarding and I'm pleased with the results.

Reviews so far have been positive, for which I'm very grateful, although no doubt it's just a matter of time before my first one star review appears somewhere!

Do you think people can live a double life without being detected?

For a time, sure. Let me tell you about Harry* …

Some years ago Joel (my now ex) and I met a couple in the bar we drank in. We got chatting and over time we became friends. Candy, the girlie, worked in an office and Harry was a colour sergeant in the marines, on secondment to the TA in some sort of training capacity.

Gerry who ran the pub we all drank in did a lot of charity fundraising. Harry sorted us out with a day on an assault course – a bunch of folk got sponsors and a decent amount of money was made. Quite a lot of the youngsters from the TA were on hand to help and some of them had got sponsors, too. We had a cracking day.

We went along to a Remembrance Day service one time, Harry in his uniform looking smart as paint and taking an active role in what went on, the kids he was training making their parents and him proud.

One time Gerry told me that Harry had been in the pub on the day before his birthday and had been invited to stay after hours. Harry had mentioned more than once that his birthday was no longer a time for celebration, since the date fell so near to a battle in the Falklands war when he lost a lot of comrades. Gerry told me he had been deeply moved when he and Harry had been talking and drinking to see the big man's eyes fill up at the memory of what had happened. Despite all the great stories he told that had people roaring with laughter, that was a time he wouldn't normally talk about in any detail and Gerry felt privileged to have been taken into Harry's confidence.

Harry and Candy had a little boy. Joel and I were Godparents (despite being essentially godless ourselves). Harry, his superior officer, and a couple of other friends were there at the Christening and afterwards at the do, all in uniform, all chatting quite openly about life in the military.

Then one day I got a phone call at work. It was Candy and she wanted to know if she and the kid could come and stay for a few days. She sounded upset. Well, when they got there that evening, I sorted them out with dinner and when the nipper went to bed, the wine came out and we got talking. Candy seemed uncharacteristically quiet, but she had stuff she needed to say and sure enough, a couple of glasses of vino and it all started to come out.

Turned out Harry had never been in the army. Not ever. He was in the TA, but that was a far as it had ever gone. He certainly wasn't on secondment in a training role from the marines. When he went to work every day, it was to a fairly menial job in an office. Candy had often complained that Harry didn't earn much and that his mess bills put a hell of a dent in his salary. Joel knew roughly what someone at his rank should be making and it wasn't peanuts, so we'd always just put that down to Candy having unrealistic expectations.

Turned out that the folk at the Christening were all TA, too, although they were all happy to talk it up as if they were regular army. Seems they'd picked up their uniforms and a bunch of medals, braid and tin second hand.

So, here was a man – Harry – who had misled all his friends for years about who he was and what he did. He also managed to completely take in the woman he lived with, had a child with and was planning to marry. Had he not had an affair, resulting in some phone calls that made Candy suspicious and prompted her in turn to go through his things, he'd have got away with it a sight longer.

His success was partly down to the fact that we had no reason to doubt him, especially since his missus believed him, too, and supported him in everything he said, and partly down to the fact that he completely lived the fantasy, he absolutely believed his lies himself. At the time Joel worked as a civilian at Catterick army camp and dealt with military personnel on a daily basis. He was pretty well versed in custom and protocol and in the ideal spot to check anything out that had a false ring to it. Harry regaled us with stories about his time in active service and never put a foot wrong. But sooner or later, it all had to come crashing down.

Didn't it?

*The names have been changed in this, but every other detail is the unembellished truth. If anything, I've left a load of stuff out of this account. The last I heard – admittedly a long time ago now – Harry was still telling army tales to anyone who would listen, including his son.

To what extent do you think the need for guilt is the motivating factor in crime?

Guilt is an intensely personal thing and I think some of us are predisposed to suffer it to an unnecessary degree. We're born with 'original guilt', if you like. There are those who get a kick out of inducing it in others – my mother was a black belt in guilt-tripping (guilt-tripping me, anyway) and others seem to get a kick out of feeling guilty. (Did someone say 'religion'?)

A few years back, I was involved in a car accident, after which I spent hours, days, feeling sick with guilt and worry, trying to work out what I had done wrong to cause it. What happened was a guy in a truck ran into the back of my car. He said he hadn't seen me. Then it turned out he had lied about his name and insurance cover and the matter only got sorted out because the vehicle he was driving was rented and the company took it upon itself to accept responsibility.

Meantime, people said I should put in an insurance claim for injuries suffered. Whiplash, they reckoned, was a nice little earner. The thing was, while I ached from head to toe from the impact, I wasn't actually injured. I was advised to claim anyway and to pretend. At least two of the people giving me this advice had themselves lied about injuries to gain compensation. As far as they were concerned, it was all part of the game, something that was expected both by insurers and drivers involved in accidents.

I didn't claim. I felt it was dishonest, fraudulent. I would have felt guilty all over again. I was considered to be a bloody idiot for passing up the chance of a payout.

The people who had made fraudulent claims didn't consider themselves to be criminals. They thought they were smart, savvy. They honestly didn't believe they had done anything wrong.

Some years back I did some work with inmates at HMP Durham. I never asked why anyone was in there and they were under no obligation to say, although once we got to know each other a little, they often chose to tell me. I remember having a conversation with a guy who was in because he had run his small business illegally. He hadn't kept records, declared income, paid tax … in fact, he reckoned tax payers were mugs. I asked what he was going to do when he got out. He told me he planned to start up in business again. I said that he surely would do things properly next time, to avoid going back to prison. Wasn't it worth paying tax to be able to live as he pleased, go for a pint with his mates, eat dinner with the family? No, apparently it wasn't. He planned to do exactly the same thing again.

A psychologist at the prison told me that one thing most of the inmates had in common was that they couldn't foresee the consequences of their actions. They put their own gratification above all else and – even when they did things a ten year old could see would end in tears – were surprised when it all went wrong.

So to answer your question, yes, maybe some do, if guilt fulfils some sort of need. But most don't. Quite simply, they don't feel any guilt whatsoever, because they don't believe they have done anything wrong.

Do you think England is in political crisis and if so when did it start?

I doubt there's been a time in modern history when at least a proportion of the populace did not consider the country to be in political crisis. A lot of it has to do with whether your preferred party is in power or not. I did a happy dance when Labour won the election in 1997, whereas a then-colleague threw up his hands in horror, retired and moved to Spain.

Having said that, I think we're all aware that times are pretty tough at the moment. I don't know anyone who is having an easy time financially. Then again, I don't know anyone who is especially wealthy. Bearing in mind we are being governed by people who enjoy what, by most people's standards, amounts to considerable personal wealth (I'm thinking here of Cameron, Clegg and Osborne) one has to wonder what they feel they have in common with the people they represent. I shouldn't think any of them has ever had to make a choice between paying the rent or buying food. As for dodging the milkman (not my finest hour) and trying to hide from the coalman (not an ex-colleague's finest hour, especially since he tapped on the window and waved as she was mid-crawl from behind the settee to the living room door) I feel confident in saying those people are strangers to such pastimes.

I do think that decisions are being made now that will have a long-lasting detrimental effect on the country. Okay, so the coalition government have done a u-turn on some of their worst decisions as a direct result of the public outcry they provoked, but there are others that are still going through. Libraries are closing. Charities are losing funding and shutting up shop. Tuition fees are rising. I shouldn't think that any of these things will make the slightest difference to Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and their families, though. They will impact most strongly upon those people in society least able to speak up and defend themselves.

I've been angry more often since the current government came to power than I can remember having been in quite some time. (Best not to get me started on the Big Society.) I fear to think how those people who voted for the Liberal Democrats must feel. If political crisis is measured in terms of what percentage of the population is angry at any one time, I think we have a serious problem. And whilst disaffection with the government existed before last May, it certainly got one hell of a boost following the last election.

Do you think crime fiction is traditionally conservative in its outlook and what ingredients would be necessary to write a socialist crime novel?

Focusing purely on UK fiction here, I think of it as being more class-based, but in broad terms that can perhaps be seen to translate into political differences. It certainly stretches the imagination to think that Jane Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey or Adam Dalgliesh were closet Communists. If we accept those characters as being typical of traditional mainstream crime fiction, then certainly the people feeling collars were toffs, although the people whose collars they felt could be toffs or scum, depending upon the storyline.

I think that as society has changed and class lines have been blurred, fiction has mirrored the transformation and so we have working class coppers and private eyes, who are even allowed on occasion to nick toffs. And of course there's a wealth of crime fiction in which the authorities have only bit parts – the action belongs to the working class and the underclass. (I'm thinking Ray Banks, Allan Guthrie here.)

That's the sort of crime fiction I find most exciting. I don't know that politics enters into it, other than perhaps incidentally. Of course, what this may mean is that there's an opening for someone to write something with a more overt political agenda. Any takers?

'Gone Bad' is a told in an intimate almost confessional narrative style at times and it is also hard as nails crime writing. When you write do you feel you are drawing on a masculine side of your psyche or is it merely the shadow of what it is perceived as the female psyche?

I was told some years ago that I write like a man. I'm not honestly sure what that means, but it was before I started writing crime fiction; in fact, it was on the strength of some poetry a friend read. I also apparently like 'boys' music' and I'd rather go to a gig than a shoe shop, rather buy a book than a handbag. Maybe when you get beyond the lippie and frocks, my psyche is a bit butch.

Story ideas can be sparked by pretty much anything, but the writing doesn't generally take off until I hear the voice in my head. That voice might be male, female, young or old, but it's generally a strong voice and it nags at me until I start writing things down for it. Usually bad things. Whatever form it takes, that voice has to come from me, albeit some part of me that I don't consciously acknowledge.

Taking into account the fact that women seem to have an appetite for writing and reading violent fiction, perhaps the whole 'write like a man' thing is a red herring. I believe that there is a rarely acknowledged darkness in the female psyche, perhaps the mirror of the more commonly recognised roles of carer and nurturer, wife and mother. It can be seen in folklore as the wicked stepmother, the witch in the gingerbread house, and although it seems generally to be considered a rare aberration, it's there and it's in all of us. Since women generally conceal that darkness in day to day living, it has to find other outlets and I suspect that may be what guides not only my hand when writing, but the hands of many other female writers, too.

How much research do you do for your stories and how important is it to you to get the details right?

I've been known to spend time checking out daft wee details, such as: 'Was it possible to buy a black Ferrari with an automatic gearbox in 19whatever?' I can't remember the year now, but the answer was 'yes', so my character was allowed to drive one. (He was off his face at the time, so having an automatic box made things easier for him.)

However, as much as I value authenticity, it should never be allowed to get in the way of the story. I've read books that should be subtitled 'How to …', where the author has included every last detail about working in a widget factory or whatever it is, and those books were boring. The detailed knowledge that comes from research or experience should support a story, not dominate it.

So while I do research whatever I'm writing and I aim to get things broadly correct, I try not to get too bogged down in it. The kind of research the majority of us is able to conduct on a subject is unlikely to answer every question or supply every detail anyway. If 100 people read a story that features a journalist and 98 enjoy it, that's a good story. If the two who didn't enjoy it are journalists and the reason they didn't is nothing to do with the plot, the characters or the writing style, but because 'In my experience, the editor wouldn't have done that', then that's just sad. That's someone taking a deliberate decision not to enjoy something. Mind you, I've seen people like that at comedy gigs, staring stony-faced at the stage, dying to have a miserable time so they can moan about it later. Maybe those 'experts' who read a novel in full expectation of being able to nitpick over wee details that the majority of people wouldn't even notice and which wouldn't affect their enjoyment of the story should go read something else. I certainly wouldn't read something I didn't expect to enjoy any more than I would knowingly pick up a novel mired in factual detail.

I'll give the last word on this one to Christopher Brookmyre: On the whole I am a great believer in the MSU Institute of Research, which stands for Making Shit Up. It's more a question of just sounding authoritative than actually knowing anything. (Link to full interview here: http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/extras/interviews/writers-block-interview-2003/ )

I think it's fair to say that attitude hasn't harmed his career in any way. And if it's good enough for Christopher Brookmyre ….

Richard's closing remarks.

Julie Lewthwaite links:

Another Day in the Word Factory blog

Gone Bad…Tales about bad people doing bad things… blog

'Gone Bad' kindle edition is available on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.  See also Smashwords for more formats.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Heywood Gould

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Heywood Gould is the author of 13 novels and 9 screenplays including 'Fort Apache the Bronx', 'Cocktail', 'Rolling Thunder', 'The Boys From Brazil' and 'Double Bang'.

His new book 'The Serial Killer's Daughter' was released May 1st and is about a fantasist who gets caught up in the underworld.

He is a highly accomplished author who is also a film director and screenwriter.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about detectives and killers.

To what extent do you think revenge is lawless justice?

Revenge is a prehistoric impulse.

Revenge on a large scale is war.

As the human population grew into ever larger groups something had to be done about the chaos of retribution.

Religion was invented.

"Vengeance is mine saith the Lord," meaning, let God get even for you.

"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," meaning if someone steals your ox don't throw his children into the campfire.

"Love thy enemy" and "turn the other cheek."

That never caught on.

Laws anointed the monarch as the official avenger.

Trials, prison, even execution.

Doesn't satisfy the impulse.

People who call themselves God-fearing and law-abiding take blood-thirsty vengeance when they can.

Culture celebrates the avengers, from Hamlet to Charles Bronson.

Revenge has a nice mathematical symmetry. You do it to me plus I do it back to you=justice.

But justice can mean many things.

Divine justice: Hitler killed forty million. God sees the truth but waits. Hitler was defeated.

Not good enough.

Legal justice: Two evil men invade a Connecticut home rape, strangle and burn a mother and her two daughters.

They are condemned to death.

Big deal. They'll be on Death Row for years pending appeals.

They won't suffer the terror and torture they inflicted on their victims.

There is no justice.

Tell us about 'The Serial Killer's Daughter'.

I'll let Peter Vogel the protagonist tell you.

This is so typical of me. I'm not a jock or a stud or a campus player. I'm an English major at a mega UC whose only interests are old movies and dead authors. I haven't had a fight since I was nine. I've never had sex with a really hot woman. In other words I'm an intellectual. I am secretly obsessed with Hannah, a whacko chick in my American Lit. class, fantasizing epic encounters, but barely daring to say "hello." Then one day she offers me a proposition: she'll have sex with me if I ghost write term papers for her. I accept and she complies. She sticks around just long enough to make me fall crazy in love then disappears. Six months later she's back like nothing happened. But then the weirdness starts. My apartment is invaded. Bodies are found in a dumpster. Thugs try to run me off the road. One night she confesses: she's the daughter of a notorious serial killer, doing life in a super max for eleven murders. Somebody is trying to kill her and I'm the only one who can protect her. But now they're stalking me, too. On the road, in hotels, everywhere. The cops don't believe us. They think we're renegade drug mules being hunted by the cartel. I get so freaked out I kill a dude who's been tailing us. Now the cops are after us, too. Our only chance is to figure out who's after us and get them first. And the only person who can help us is this insane, vindictive mass murderer– her dad. I'm running for my life, trying to figure who is trying to kill me before they succeed. But there's one plus: the sex is getting better all the time.

Do you think the film industry despises writers and if so why?

Writers are outliers in the film business. They don't fit socially. They don't know how to act in public. They're not photogenic and not particularly sexy. Not for nothing the old joke.

Question: What did the blonde actress do when she went to Hollywood?

Answer: She screwed the writer.

Yet a movie needs a script. Can't get a director, a cast, a studio, a budget without a script. Which means a writer. Which  used to mean a neurotic, unattractive, obstinate individual who refuses to give you the feel-good ending you need for big box office. Who haggles over obscure character traits. Who has a tantrum when someone changes a word and if he/she hasn't been fired by the time picture shoots has to be banished from the set because he/she is annoying the director and eating all the croissants.

Hollywood has finally solved the problem of the despicable writer by doing sequels and remakes which don't require an original story. And by allowing actors to make up their own dialogue, which leads to a harmonious set and a long winded movie.

There are exceptions, of course—King's Speech, Social Network and True Grit this year. They did pretty well, didn't they? But notice: two producers of King's Speech did not thank the writer when receiving their Oscar.

Do you think it is possible to write a made for film novel and if so what components does it need to have?

If you write a novel with an eye to making it a film you will leave out the elements that make a novel great—character, complexity, multiple points of view–and, paradoxically, draw the attention of film makers. A good novel can be put down and picked up again, a movie can't. A novel can go off the path of its narrative (a little bit) to tell a side story or feature subordinate characters; a movie has to speed like a bullet train toward its conclusion. The same audience that will read a novel full of side steps and digressions over a period of days or weeks without losing interest will get bored and downright hostile if a movie meanders.

The best way to get a movie made out of your novel is to establish yourself as a novelist. Pick up any well-written thriller and you can see the film possibilities. But only the books of the popular writers get picked up by Hollywood. A thriller is an expensive proposition so the studios are looking for the "marquee value" that the prominent writers provide.

There are exceptions, but the general rule is: Write a best seller and you'll get a movie deal.

Do you think the best detectives have strong criminal shadows?

Criminals can hold two different ideas in their minds at the same time.

1. I want to be caught.

2. I'm going to get away with this.

Detectives don't want to be caught.

Criminals are in rebellion against a social order that is denying them the wealth, fame and unlimited gratification they think they deserve.

Cops are fervent believers in that order, even though they know that it is corrupt, immoral and unfair.

A criminal has an idee fixe. Something inside of him/her finds a crime that fulfills some obscure need. He/she fetishizes this crime, doing it ritualistically the same way every time. Establishing a pattern that eventually leads to his/her apprehension. But not before he/she has destroyed innocent lives.

You can't know what Detectives have repressed because you never see it. On the surface they operate like reverse statisticians, compiling and ordering information until it leads them to the culprit. They have erased emotion because it doesn't help them do their jobs. Conventional morality is a given, although they like to bend the rules. They are occasionally repelled by the repellent creatures they deal with and will work long hours to make a case against them.

Criminals are romantic narcissists and only like to talk about themselves.

Cops are cynical opportunists, who have a dark view of humanity. But they tell great stories and are more fun to hang out with.

Who are your literary influences?

1. The Bible, which I read every day before I start writing for its engrossing narrative told in simple, vivid language.

2. Shakespeare to remind me that you don't have to be a Jew, a Moor, a woman, young, old, a king, a murderer, a cripple, a thankless child, a woman scorned etc. to understand and empathize. That the trappings may change, but people remain essentially the same and if you get them right your work can last for centuries

3.Georges Simenon to learn how to turn the environment of your story into an important character. Simenon makes the arena come alive, whether it be Paris, New York, Connecticut, Africa, small towns in Holland and Belgium. With repertorial economy he makes you feel the place.

4. S.J. Perelman to see how laugh out loud funny prose can be.

5. James Joyce because all modern literature is a commentary on Ulysses.

6. The 19th. Century novelists–Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Flaubert, etc. to steal from.

7. Hemingway's "The Old Man And the Sea" because it's the best portrayal of the ordeal every writer endures.

8. Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby stories to remind me of what happens when you're not welcome in Tinsel Town anymore.

Has any one event influenced your writing and if so why?

When I was fourteen I was fired for stealing money from a legal service where I worked as a messenger. I knew the culprit was the dispatcher, an eighteen year old zit picking degenerate horse player. He looked me right in the eye in front of the bosses and lied. I went home in tears. Everything I had been told by my mother and my teachers was wrong: the world was unfair and unjust. People could not be trusted. You could never know what someone was really thinking. The helpless indignation of outraged innocence has haunted me ever since.

Do you think the media are involved in the mainstream manipulation of what we perceive and if so to what extent does fiction differ from so called factual writing?

The media are totally politicized. You can't get a straight who what when where story anymore. Fiction is actually a better guide to the zeitgeist. It doesn't attempt to manipulate behind a guise of objectivity. Fiction is a lie that lets you see the truth, as Picasso said about art. Journalism these days is the lie pretending to be the truth.

Do you think women killers are motivated by different drives than men?

Some women kill abusive males. Some kill their children and themselves as the supreme gesture of spite. Some kill a pregnant woman for her child. Freud said women didn't feel guilt because they never had an Oedipal fixation on their mothers. But he had his own problems, wondering: "Women, what do they want?" And, by some accounts, stopping all sexual relations with his wife at the age of 37. Aside from a few gender-specific instances women seem to kill for the same reasons of greed, jealousy, hatred and fear as men.

We have seen many examples of authoritarianism since the Second World War which you in wrote about in your excellent screenplay 'The Boys From Brazil'. Wilhelm Reich wrote in 'The Mass Psychology Of Fascism'  'Always ready to accommodate himself to authority, the lower middle-class man develops a cleavage between his economic situation and his ideology.' Do you think he was right? And if so to what extent do you think that the deferral by the insecure of their authority to those they see as powerful and the sacrifice of or the submission to ideology is behind many of the problems we face today?

Wilhelm Reich was so right so often that they finally threw him in jail. (Anybody got a used orgone box they don't need.)

The "Tea Party" movement is a perfect illustration of Reich's thesis. Workers and small business people are clamoring to kiss the boots of the oppressor who is grinding them into the mud– the oligarchical Capitalist.  This is cognitive dissonance in its purest form. Every plank of the Tea Party platform is inimical to the economical interests of its drafters. People who cannot survive without Social Security and Medicare want to destroy them. They want to lower the taxes of billionaires while seeing theirs creep up in the form of fees, property assessments, new charges for government provided services, etc. They want to protect the corporations that are gutting their pensions, manipulating prices and wages and slowly driving the small entrepreneur out of business. They can't afford private sanitation, security and education, but have embarked on a Holy War against the public employees who provide them–many of whom count themselves Tea Party members. Talk about lemmings, about Kool-Aid, about running dogs, about millions jumping on the funeral pyre of their own class.

The wealthy liberal left is the most cynical class in history. It  lives with an unbridgeable gap between its ideology and its interests. George Soros and David Koch provide a false dialectic. The only real difference between them is their taste in ballet. Wealthy liberals claim to support ideologies of environmentalism, equality, diversity while secretly undermining them. In Obama they have found a better front man than Clinton. So good, in fact, that they will make sure he has no serious opposition.

Thank you Heywood for giving a real and insightful interview.

Heywood Gould links:

Official website

'The Serial Killer's Daughter' is available from the publisher, Nightbird Publishing, and Amazon.com.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With C.E. Lawrence

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CE Lawrence was born in Nurnberg, Germany to American parents. She says her early childhood experience left her with a taste for Goethe and sausages. Shortly after moving to New York she joined the legendary improvisational company First Amendment and toured Chicago City Limits before joining the New York cast. She has written award-winning plays and musicals which have been produced around the world.

She has eight published novels, six novellas and a dozen or so short stories and poems.

'Silent Victim' is her latest thriller and her novel 'Silent Kills' is due out later this year.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about German literature and surveillance.

What influence has German literature had on your writing?

I double majored in German at school so I read a lot of German authors and playwrights, some in English and some in German.  Though influences are hard to gauge, as they may be subtle, there's no doubt that Durrenmatt's amazing crime novel The Judge and His Hangman stayed with me.  I was so struck by his use of a detective who was dying of cancer – it was a striking, memorable book.  Maybe that was in the back of my mind when I gave my detective Lee Campbell the affliction of major clinical depression, also a debilitating disease. (Durrenmatt was Swiss, but he wrote in German, so he was part of our curriculum.)

In school I read the deeply romantic writers I think of as the German heroic poets – Goethe, Schiller, Heine.  I think that sense of romantic heroism and love of nature is part of my psyche, which may explain my attraction to some German writers (as well my weakness for sneaking into the music room late at night to play Schubert Lieder with my cousin.)

I just adore Thomas Mann, especially Buddenbrooks, which is one of the great novels of Western literature, surely.  And Vicki Baum's classic The Grand Hotel as well – another favorite.  I love the late 19th century, early 20th century decadence that both Mann and Baum manage to capture, as the grant Reich era of barons and princes declines and morphs into the horror of authoritarian facism.  Both Mann and Baum have a keen eye for the little man crushed under the heel of society's relentless pressures.

And I also love the prewar and postwar dry wit and irony of Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich Boll, and the murky mysticism of Herman Hesse.   Brecht's unforgiving socialism and sense of social justice, Boll's iron wit and unflinching observation of postwar excesses – these all feel essential and part of my inner template, if that's not too vague.  I even studied the German mystic Jacob Boehme, who made a rather deep impression on me.

So maybe it's that "staying power" as much as any one thing that creates the bond I feel with writers I've read.  I have this romantic notion that all the things we've read and seen and heard, and all the people we've met, become part of us somehow, so that by the end of our lives we're not just one individual, but a walking repository of ideas, feelings, stories, and souls.  I know it's rather far-fetched and mystical, but then, I too have German blood.

Durrenmatt in his play 'Die Panne', which means the breakdown, portrays a character called Traps being manipulated by a menacing game concerning guilt and culpability. He is forced to confront himself. Crime fiction contans much guilt thematically be it in legal terms or psychological ones. How effective do you think Durrenmatt's play is and to what extent do you think it relates to crime fiction?

Omg, I listened to the radio version of that play in college, in German!  It ROCKED.  I remember it so well, even now.  He creates this amazing feeling of menace – as he does in his most famous play, Der Besuch der alten Dame (usually translated as The Visit.)

In both plays, there's a trap and there's guilt on the part of the person or persons being trapped.  No one is entirely innocent, and no one's motives are pure.  I think there's great relevance for the crime writer, dealing as we do with the darker side of human nature.

And Durrenmatt was, after all, dealing with one of the greatest crimes humans had perpetrated against each other in all of our dark history: the Holocaust and the rise of the Nazi war machine.  It's ironic, because being Swiss, he was theoretically "neutral," but in his writing he's anything but.  The notion of guilt and the devil's bargain is a theme throughout his work – as it was for so many postwar writers in Europe.

I think the best crime writers delve into the darkness within us all, so that it's not only the criminals who are tarnished. In The Judge and His Hangman, for example, you could even see Commissar Bärlach's cancer as a metaphor for something "eating him from within."  If you read postwar German writers, you get the feeling of universal guilt, though some of them (Heinrich Boll, for example) lighten their prose with irony and wit.

Do you think Dostoyevsky wrote the first great whydunnit it in 'Crime And Punishment'?

Ah, Fyodor!  I love the Russians because they're so soulful. I think what Dostoevski did in Crime and Punishment is monumental.  How to express it?  I'll try.

Like all great works of art, Crime and Punishment works on many levels.  It is a portrayal of a tormented, unwell mind – Raskolnikov's seizures indicate he may indeed have a brain disorder of some kind.  And in many ways he's a prototype of a romantic Bohemian soul gone bad.  As a psychological portrayal of a man (as we would say today) "acting out" his aggression toward his own controlling, manipulative mother, it is unparalleled.  He kills the pawn broker (so he thinks) to rid society of her evil presence, but of course he is killing his own mother by proxy.

Wow!  Without knowing how conscious Dostoevski was of his own brilliant insights, I can only say that he manages to make the book a novel of ideas as well as intrigue.  Raskolnikov's confused notions of being a "superior being" later turn into remorse and guilt, and the sly detective Porfiry Petrovich plays mind games with the confused young man until he confesses.  He's somewhat reminscient of Hugo's brilliant Inspector Javert in Les Miserables, except that, unlike Jean Valjean, Raskolnikov really is a criminal.

The saintly Sonya reminds me of similar characters in Chekhov and Tolstoy – the quiet, self-sacrificing young girl who represent total goodness – and her influence also leads to the confession.  As a study of the inner workings of a very flawed but sympathetic criminal, Crime and Punishment is masterful.

Unfortunately, many criminals in real life do not experience the guilt and torment of a Raskolnikov – police files are full of cases of men and women who murdered their whole family and would have been perfectly happy to get away with it, if they could.  And I think most crime fiction these days is not as concerned with portrayal of the offender's inner life as it is in showing how he/she is captured.

But Crime and Punishment stands alone – as a portrayal of the less romantic aspects of the Bohemian life in mid-century Russia, it is fascinating, and as a crime novel, it is unparalleled.

My learned mother reminded me

The only thing you omit is the religious fervor, which, of course, is the essence of Sonya, and the salvation of Roskolnikov.  It is such an integral part of the Russian during this period that you must not ignore it, and it only adds to the brilliance of his novel.

Do you think as surveillance has become more prevalent in Western society crime has changed?

I think that all of the advances in forensics have led to more cunning, savvy criminals.  For example, take the serial killer at large in Long Island right now.  He has used disposable cell phones to call the families of his victims, stayed on the phone less than three minutes (making the calls harder to trace), and called from crowded locations such as Times Square, which also makes the calls hard to pinpoint.

So right there we have a present day example of someone who understands that no matter how sophisticated crime solving gets, there is always a chance you can stay one step ahead of the law.

Serial rapists often have victims bathe to get rid of DNA, wear latex gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, and employ other methods to avoid leaving DNA evidence – even going so far as wearing hair nets and paper booties, in one case I saw recently.

Unfortunately, the more organized the offender, the more likely it is they will employ these kinds of techniques to avoid capture.  But the flip side is that psychopaths suffer from arrogance, which often leads to their capture.  I just saw a story on 48 Hours about a highly decorated air force colonel who didn't bother to erase his tire tracks or boot impressions from his victim's property.  He didn't even throw out his boots, so they had a mountain of forensic evidence against him.  His fatal flaw in getting caught was his arrogance – he thought he was above suspicion, apparently.  Sadly, he was able to rape two women and rape and murder two others before the law caught up with him.

I think the X-files mantra is a good one for law enforcement to follow in cases like those: Trust No One.

Do you think paranoia is at the root of much mental illness and many crimes?

What I think is that the emotion of fear (of which paranoia is an extreme and pathological variation) is behind a lot of aggressive behavior, both among humans and other members of the animal kingdom.  The term can be taken as a diagnosis or a description, depending on the context.  Certain when combined with the condition of schizophrenia or other character disorders, it can be deadly for the sufferer and his/her victims.  In any context, it is fear run amok – and the result can well be a crime of some kind, or self-injury, in some cases.

However, it's worth noting that psychopaths and sociopaths experience less of a biological fear response than normal people.  Confronted with danger, they tend not to exhibit the symptoms of fear – elevated heart rate, rapid breathing, increased adrenaline.  Instead, they exhibit an eerie calm; they seem to have a biologically lower threshold for panic and fear than other people.   Criminal psychologists have theorized that this is one of the mechanisms that allows them to commit their crimes – and that it even may play a part in their behavior.  Unable to have "normal" responses to events, their craving for stimulation may lead them to indulge in acts that the rest of us would find unthinkable.

Strictly speaking, sociopaths suffer from mental illness – the most severe kind, actually – but legally they are rarely, if ever, insane.  Bernie Madoff, for example, a classic sociopath, knew exactly what he was doing every step of the way.  It's possible that he felt only truly alive when he was bilking other people out of millions – that his real kicks in life came from the potential of being discovered.  But, like most sociopaths, he also was extraordinarily arrogant, and felt he was smarter than everyone else.  In the end, he was wrong – but sadly, not before the damage was done.

Tell us about 'Silent Kills'.

Ah, good one.  I'm tempted to give you the jacket-blurb style summary of the book.  But I think it would be more fun to give a brief account of the genesis of it.  Last summer in my cabin in Woodstock my friend Tony Moore and I were listening to Pandora and Last FM online, and he found some Steampunk bands.  I really liked some of the music, and started doing research into what Steampunk was all about – the aesthetics, the costumes, the literary origins, etc.  It was all great fun – sort of Goth meets Jules Verne meets Terry Gilliam.  I really like the blend of science, adventure and Gothic horror.  And I started listening to bands like Abney Park and Clockwork Quartet.  I've always been attracted to Victoriana and elements of Gothic horror (my theatre production company is Gothic Productions.)  And some of my favorite writers are the guys I call the American Gothics – Hawthorne, Poe and Melville.  (I've actually written a musical adaptation of House of the Seven Gables.)

Then, when I was thinking about the next Lee Campbell thriller, it occurred to me that a Steampunk killer might be an interesting hook.  So I created a serial murderer who was into the more Gothic aspects of Steampunk.  Specifically, he drains the blood from his victims (you'll have to read the book to find out why.)  I gave him a backstory that makes this somewhat logical, and also tied him into the great horror writing or Poe, Hawthorne and Melville (I know Melville isn't thought of as a horror writer, but Bartleby? Come on! That's horror at its purest, imho.)

So I have scenes at Woodlawn Cemetary, in Steampunk clubs, and a chase scene in a graveyard in Troy, New York.  And my climactic scene is in a crematorium.  If that isn't the ultimate in Goth horror, I don't know what is!  But you'll have to read the book to find out who the killer is, and why he does what he does.

Do you think control of the body be it from the pathological perspective of an individual over their own body or the state over a citizen is allied to the motivations a killer has in seeking to control the body of the victim be it by murder or cannibalism?

Interesting question – certainly control in all its aspects is part of the psychological makeup of many (if not most) criminals.  Domination, power and control are the ugly triad of the serial killer.  My research into the subject shows that their obsession with control stems not so much from their political situation as from their childhood home environment.

I have yet to read of a serial offender, for example, who did not have some form of chronic abuse as a child which removed all sense of control from his life at the time.  The traditional interpretation is that these people can go on to inflict the helplessness they felt as a child on their victims.  Robert Ressler and others have done pioneering studies on the lives of these (mostly) men, and what drives them to kill over and over.  The enforced helplessness they felt as children then becomes part of their pathology, and they replay their childhood trauma, playing the part of their abusers, in a way, with their victims as stand-ins for themselves.

I say "in a way" because it's often not an exact match to the childhood experience.  What is a match, though, is the emotional experience of terror, helplessness and victimization.  With serial offenders it's just a more extreme version of the old saw that "the abused becomes the abuser."

With cannibalism, as in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, for example, it's even more complicated.  Dahmer readily admits he killed and consumed his victims because he didn't want them to abandon him. So he turned his fears of abandonment into a frightening metaphor – by consuming his victims, he "kept" them forever.  Creepy, but it makes grim sense in a literary way.

Do you think the same criteria can be applied to a different individual and they would not become a killer and if so why?

There's a real mystery at the bottom of why some people with terribly abusive childhoods become criminals and some don't.  Some studies indicate that as long as there's one person in the child's life who functions as a true caregiver, or who gives them unconditional love at some early stage, the child may turn out all right.  This person doesn't have to be a parent or relative; just so long as it's someone who loves and respects the child.

Some people feel genetics plays a role; my personal opinion is that it plays less of a role than nurture, and that the "bad seed" theory is just a myth.  Given the right environment, I believe any child can thrive.

What made you write crime fiction?

But the answer to this one is that when I first started writing mysteries, I had been a Conan Doyle fan since I was a teen.  So when editor Marvin Kaye asked me to write a story on commission for his Holmes anthology, The Game Is Afoot, I jumped at the chance.  Since it was only my second published story, I was delighted when Kirkus singled out my story "The Strange Case of the Tongue-Tied Tenor" as "a particular standout."  I guess that gave me the courage to think I could write mysteries.

So when Keith Kahla, the St. Martins editor of that anthology approached me and said he'd probably buy a Holmes novel if I wrote it, my only response was "Define 'probably.'"  When he said 70-80% likely, I wrote The Star of India (which has just been repurchased by Titan Press in England for world rights reprint.)

So that's how my career in crime started.  I also wanted to write something that would sell, and to my mind good writing is irrespective of genre.  Soon after I was signed on bu Berkley for an original mystery series, Who Killed Blance Dubois? and its sequels.

Then I got very interested in criminal psychology and forensics, and after a couple of years to study, started writing thrillers under the C.E. Lawrence pen name.  I took a class in criminal psychology at John Jay College from Dr. Lewis Schlesinger, a great teacher and profiler, and I continue to collect all kinds of books on crime and crime solving.  I've even made friends with a wonderful former FBI profiler, Gregg McCrary, who is a terrific person as well as a highly respected expert in his field.  He took time out to advise me on my first thriller, Silent Screams.

Though I admire crime writers, my real heroes are the men and women who catch the bad guys.  As I told Gregg, I only write about what they actually go out and do every day.

What are you working on right now?

I'm currently writing the fourth thriller in my Lee Campbell series, Silent Slaughter. The serial killer he's chasing this time is a nasty piece of work, a man so embittered and scarred by life (literally and metaphorically) that he has become a dark, twisted creature.  Up until now I've given my killers a touch of sympathy, but Jack is the worst kind of lust killer – a sexual sadist.  And he's smart – he's a math professor at an Ivy League school.  I'm a bit rattled about it, actually, because these guys are very scary in real life, and I'm apprehensive about spending much time in his head.  But I'm looking forward to creating an interesting puzzle in the solution of the crimes; as a mathematician, Jack will be dropping clues in the form of mathematical codes that Lee and his team will have to figure out.  I hope to make it an intriguing puzzle as well as a dark journey.

Thank you Carole for an insightful and memorable interview.

Find everything C.E. Lawrence here.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Erin Cole

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Erin Cole is a widely published writer of horror and mystery fiction.

In 2009 she was shortlisted in the Tom Howard/John H. Reid SS Contest and won honourable mention in the Williamette Writers Kay Snow Contest.

What Erin does particularly well is layer a narrative with a professional knowledge of mental states that subvert reality and threaten our sense of what we know. In her novel 'Grave Echoes' Kate Waters suffers from narcoleptic hallucinations.

She is currently working on her second novel in the Kate Waters Mysteries and a short horror anthology collection due fall of 2011.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about fugue states and the Corn God.

Charles Brockden Brown wrote American Gothic in the eighteenth century. In 'Edgar Huntley' the character Clithero commits murders while sleepwalking. It shares some interesting territory with your novel 'Grave Echoes', in which Kate Waters has narcoleptic hallucinations. As an author and a psychologist do you think the uncharted parts of the human psyche contain the material for horror and that fugue states exist?

Absolutely, on both.  My studies in psychology (note I am not a licensed psychologist) favored neuropsychological behavior and perception.  I think when you begin to understand how the brain processes information, you uncover the true mechanisms of motivation, whether it be fear or hunger, as well as the psychological underpinnings of horror.

H.P. Lovecraft said, "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown," which he had right, but why?  The homo sapien brain has this incredible ability to "consciously" dig up memories and to "invent." These two abilities working simultaneously together can create ideas and fears so grotesquely far from what one should really be afraid of.  Our ability to imagine makes fear of the unknown the worst fear.

Furthermore, in the process of recollection, the mind surfaces millions of years of evolutionary emotional responses, and these come into play every time we consciously recollect or strive to comprehend a frightening encounter.  When our hearts quicken in the shadows, are we not really enacting on innate reactions, which developed from near-death attacks by saber tooth tigers?  Joseph LeDoux's Synaptic Self and The Emotional Brain are fantastic books on this subject that even the layperson would comprehend and enjoy.

Fugue states are real; however, most of them are either drug or trauma related, or are precursors to brain disorders and diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease.

Do you think that some people create the thing they fear the most?

I do think some people create what they fear the most, some sort of demented self-fulfilling prophecy, and maybe that's not such a bad thing—overcoming and facing fear can be a powerful tool to growth and success.  But, I also think many of us might not have a clue as to what it is we fear the most, and that upon discovering it, is when our worst nightmare unfurls.

Who are your main literary influences?

Some of my favorite authors as of lately are John Hart, Neil Gaiman, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Joe Hill, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Nevada Barr, Paulo Coelho, Michael Crichton, Caleb Carr, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and earlier influences included Anne Rice, Kathleen and Michael Gear, Jean M. Auel, Max Ehrlich, George Orwell, Harper Lee, Robert James Waller, Shel Silverstein, and Carolyn Keene.

In Haiti Zombification is achieved by the use of herbs. Do you believe much fear and the political use of fear can be allayed by the understanding of brain chemistry?

Haitian Zombification is the belief that through a drug called tetradotoxin (TTX), people can steal the soul of a perfectly, healthy, and independent thinking person.  TTX is a toxin that is 500 times stronger than cyanide and is found in the ovaries of puffer fish.  When ingested, the nervous system shuts down, though brain activity is fairly normal, yet the person is still living. This has resulted in some being buried alive, hence the resurrection of the individual as a zombie.

How does this fit in with politics?  Think Heaven's Gate and the Manson family, or dare I bring up certain government and religious sects?  Zombification (people, usually those in high power, who steal another's free-thinking behavior) has existed since the beginning of civilization because fear is the ultimate tool in motivation and transformation.  Individuals that use fear to persuade and control other people know this well: If you are starving, cold, and are being chased by a bear, you will not search for food or clothing at that particular moment; you will try to escape the bear. Fear always takes first priority.

Once the emotion center of the brain is triggered, it is increasingly difficult for higher processing areas to function, and much of our survival depends on this arrangement—if we had to think of how to respond to immediate danger, we likely would not survive.  But drugs and "induced-fear" can certainly have a similar effect in impairing frontal lobe processing, causing individuals to become callous and nasty (as was studied in the famous Milgram Experiment in 1963 on obedience to authority figures, or the looting and rapes during Katrina, and all the other atrocities inflicted during war).  Although these zombies don't climb out of graves, without adequate frontal lobe processing at some point, they will eventually be climbing into them.

Papa Doc used Voodoo and the TonTon Macoute to coerce his citizens in precisely the manner you describe. The family has been seen by social commentators as the basic building block of the body politic. Given your comments in the last answer and considering the family as the reception point of political and religious influence to what extent do you think that marriage is a form of mind control, and how far have we moved from its patriarchal roots?

You know, I've always suspected that my husband was up to something.  I think it really depends on who you ask or where you live.  I believe everything has a cyclic nature-that is the order of the universe: create and destroy, create and destroy.  Marriage, and the culture that embraces it, are also cyclic.  What is considered the "norm" in America is not the norm in India, Peru, or Indonesia.  Each society is at a different stage in the cyclic nature of marriage and everything else, what it means to be married, the drive behind it (power, union, love), and how it evolves through generations.  I think many cultures have steered away from its patriarchal roots (Hello 1970′s in America!!) and at the same time, others are headed back into it.

My grandmother would never get away with half the things I tell my husband today.  Imagine rule of thumb, derived from common law that a man was never to beat his wife with anything thicker than his thumb.  But who wears the pants now?  Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, Erin Cole?  Nope.  I believe in give and take.  Marriage is a form of control—it is a bonding, a continuous dedication and promise to another person, not one that can't be broken, but if instilled and nurtured with the right mindset by both persons, it can be freeing too.

What do you think has happened to the Corn God?

He's in my backyard, waiting to fillet me.

In Aztec, Peru, 1020, we know priests performed sacrificial rites for the worship of gods and goddesses—one of them was for the Corn God, Xipe Totec (pronounced zhē pā tō ték), the God of vegetation and renewal.  At the Spring Equinox, a special Aztec priest would fillet a human, literally peeling the entire skin off in one piece, which they then wore for days to celebrate life, rather than death, for the sake of crop.  The skin resembled the cornhusk, the priest the seed of life beneath the husk, like kernels.

Fast-forward a thousand years to Carl Jung.  His archetypes are modern day gods and goddesses derived from ancient cultures.  I do believe in this idea of archetypical thinking, that deities represent specific powers and wonders that people can tap into.  The collective unconscious is the current societal pattern, energy, and movement of which we are all a part of, in varying degrees, and it is through tradition that the Corn God still lives.  However, instead of peeling off the skin from an unfortunate victim, civilizations practice the celebration of life and renewal by other, more civilized means.  Wiccans bring offerings (mostly organics) to the Gods and Goddesses at Sabbats and hold symbolic rites, Burning Man is a festival in the Black Rock Desert, in which people spend a year crafting something, maybe from wood, a painting, etc. that they burn at the festival.  It is a sacrifice of effort, a devotion to spirituality, and a regeneration of growth in letting go, or letting things die off, as is the natural order.  I think every culture and religion practices the same symbolic ideas as the Aztec Corn God rites, though substantially different in details.  The Corn God is in all of us.  Or should be.

We have seen many examples of authoritarianism since the Second World War'. Wilhelm Reich wrote in 'The Mass Psychology Of Fascism'  'Always ready to accommodate himself to authority, the lower middle-class man develops a cleavage between his economic situation and his ideology.' Do you think he was right? And if so to what extent do you think that the deferral by the insecure of their authority to those they see as powerful and the sacrifice of or the submission to ideology is behind many of the problems we face today?

There is no doubt that money is power and power is corrupt.  I do think that Wilhelm Reich was right in his statement regarding the dissonance in the middle-class, especially then, and even true today.  The path to success and happiness (or survival 1930 Germany) often encroaches on our ideals—in order to achieve it requires sacrifice, always; but, are we able to discern when those sacrifices tear at the seems of our dogma?  When you throw in violence and sexual tension, it is only that much harder to defect or resist.  The studies from the Milgrim experiment were shocking, and for a good reason.  Most of us are animals.  I say the rest must be aliens.

A world free of authoritarianism?  Could it ever really exist?  What would we have to do to get there, as a whole, and then wouldn't that just bring about another form of fascism?  See what I mean by cyclic.  Really, we're just rats on the wheel.

Do you believe that DNA will discover there is such a thing as innate evil or do you think that belongs to religion?

I don't believe that nature is evil.  Animals kill each other for food, territory, and protection of young or procreation.  It is not evil to want to survive; in fact, it is unnatural to not want to survive.  I believe evil is strictly a perspective on "cause."  We must explain our universe and the things that we fear or that pain us, and those are often perceived as "evil" or "bad" in doing so.  W.H. Auden, "Herman Melville," once said, "Evil is unspectacular and always human.  And shares our bed and eats at our own table."  Since religions give order and safety to thoughts and emotions, evil and good, right and wrong are definitely pillars of its structure.  Labeling actions, things, and people give us a sense of control, though incorrect they may be.

Still, the term evil is quite powerful when trying to understand genocide, war, or violent shootings across the world.  People who kill, seemingly senselessly (aka = evil), I believe are actually exhibiting animalistic behaviors—the fear that something or someone is trying to take over their freedom, their means to survival, protection of kindred, etcetera.  No matter how removed those underlying fears seem to be in that given situation, those innate, wild emotions are there, and they become the motivation for heinous acts of violence.  Because our species has evolved significantly in comparison to other animals on the plant, I think it's assumed that we should have control over our actions / emotions.  Unfortunately, not everyone's brain is equal.

I do love the idea of "evil," especially being a writer.  It has a place in almost every story.  With roots in a number of emotions, evil is moving; it is the heartbeat in fear, and many times truth.  Evil is its own entity…within the mind.  It instills a bit of paranoia, uneasiness, and vigor—a feeling of aliveness.  On occasion, it brings out the good in others!

Denis Saurat in 'Death And The Dreamer' writes 'God takes his pleasure in creatures that suffer and sin and are ignorant of him'. If this is not different to what Gloucester says in 'King Lear'  'As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport', what does this reveal about the psychology of religious need and the dependency on an ideal?

What is blind faith?

Religion should put flowers in your potholes, but there are some religions—and cults—who don't hand out the seeds, unless one sacrifices, and the greater the sacrifice, the more honorable he or she becomes, right?  Cain and Abel—need I say more?  It is this type of "sacrificial" thinking, this belief that one must impress the Gods (for they are jealous and merciless!) that I believe connects with the quotes of Denis Saurat and Gloucester.  And the more one sins, the greater their sacrifice must be.  That should be pleasing to any God.

Psychology thrives in religion—why people have faith, what they use it for, how they use it, and why it is still the utmost, on-going issue (if you can call war an issue) of every civilization since its creation.  For this reason alone, it cannot be ignored.  Huston Smith's book, Why Religion Matters, combines traditional and progressive views about the human spirit, and why religion is important.  He states, "…the modern world seems set on preventing us from getting in touch with it by covering it with an unending phantasmagoria of entertainments, obsessions, addictions, and distractions of every sort.  But the longing is there…"

I'm not sure how much I can agree with the modern world interfering with religion (sometimes it feels like the other way around), but I do think that for some, religion is vital to their spirit, and if it does make one a better person, it is a good thing.  Too often though, religion becomes a dependency, a blindfold—a sidewalk strewn with the wings of flies.

What brought you into writing?

Mystery and horror have always been my greatest interests, whether it was movies or books, and so it was inevitable that my writing would also steer that direction.  I have been inspired by several books along the way, Salem's Lot, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, 1984, The Relic, Women Who Run with the Wolves, and Black Water, to name a few, but I enjoy reading cross genre, and think it is important for every writer to extend beyond their usual tastes.  I feel it brings more balance to one's craft and helps them hone in on voice and style.

I see that most writers have an early experience with writing, whether it is short stories, poems, or lyrics.  I have always taken a liking to writing, and so when life opened the door for me to do so, on a more serious level, I became immersed in it.  Once I put fingers to keyboard, hours would fly by.  I knew then that writing was going to be more than just a hobby—it's a vital passion now.  Writing has connected me to something deeper in myself and others, and in turn, provides a creative and rewarding outlet.  I believe that if you are meant to write, you will, no matter what path in life you take.

Thank you Erin for a profound and great interview.

Bio

Erin Cole writes mystery, horror, paranormal, and speculative fiction.  She has been published in various print anthologies and online magazines, and is the author of Grave Echoes.  She is currently working on her second novel, Wicked Tempest, and her first horror collection due fall of 2011.

Links

Author Website: www.erincolewrites.com

Blog: www.erincolelive.blogspot.com

Grave Echoes :

(AuthorHouse) http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000380877

(Ebook) http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000408137

(Kindle) http://www.amazon.com/Grave-Echoes-ebook/dp/B0040JHU4G/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304358433&sr=1-6