Richard Godwin's Blog, page 3

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Louise Phillips

Louise Phillips is a critically acclaimed psychological crime novelist. Her debut, Red Ribbons, was nominated for the Best Irish Crime Novel of the Year 2012 and her second, The Doll’s House, won the award a year later. Her third, Last Kiss, was shortlisted and now she has a new one out, The Game Changer. Louise met me at The Slaughterhouse, where we talked about her new release and threats to the family in her fictions.

Tell us about your latest novel.

The Game Changer, like my previous novels, is a psychological thriller. It features criminal psychologist, Dr Kate Pearson, who works with the Irish police force profiling criminals.

The story opens with a vicious killing in New York and a suspected suicide in Dublin. Although Kate is on leave from work, spending more time with her young son, Charlie, she is soon dragged into the mix.

A personal connection quickly becomes apparent, as Kate discovers she went missing as a child, but her mind has blocked out the memory. Soon, she gets an anonymous note under her door with the words ‘I remember you Kate..’

The story has a multi-layered plot with family secrets and the sins of the father having repercussions long after death.

The character of the Game Changer stalks Kate, wishing to seek revenge. A dangerous individual with a narcissistic personality, the Game Changer is also luring vulnerable individuals into a cult under the guise of a self-help group, and there are deadly consequences for everyone involved, including Kate.

How central are threats to the family to your fictions?

I guess it’s no accident that the main protagonist in my novels is a mother with a young son, nor is it surprising that I write about family a lot, good ones and dysfunctional ones. I’ve experienced both.

I think, our past deeply influences who we become, and the same goes for characters in a story. The opening quote of The Game Changer is one from Chesterson – ‘When we step into a family, by the act of being born, we step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws….’

Consciously or otherwise, somehow my novels are filled with fear, both to the family, and from the family. The family unit, is the first structure of life we come to know. It can be happy and safe, or dangerous and scary. The fallout from both means that those who least expect it, can be hit the hardest.

For me, family is enormously important, including my protection of it. In hindsight, I’ve come to realize that through writing I have tried to face my own worst fears. In Red Ribbons, the first novel, it was young girls at risk, in The Doll’s House, the close relationships of the protagonist, held the most danger, and in Last Kiss the story looked at the fallout of early childhood, posing the big question, how much of who we are is down to nature or nurture? Finally, in The Game Changer, inner family dangers had the potential to fuel external ones.

So to get back to your original question, threats to the family are a big part of my fiction, partly because there is so much to lose, including the people you love most in the world.

How important is the antagonist in your writing and would you say he or she is as important as the protagonist?

Very important. I’ve no interest in characters populating the fictional world unless they have earned their place there. When it comes to antagonists, they are a fundamental part of the high stakes in a crime novel. I want readers to know them. I equally want them to know what they are capable of, and hopefully see the humanity in them. This is not to support what they do, but their actions/desires must be plausible. If they are, they will appear human, and not some hidden monster unlike them. Being fully formed, you hopefully create real fear, basically, because we see ourselves in them. When it comes to ‘bad guys’, finding the ‘who’ is often part of the mystery, but for me, this shouldn’t be done by having a one-dimensional character. They have to be fully formed and visible.

The antagonist versus the protagonist is a tricky one. I try not to purposely make one more powerful than the other, except perhaps that goodness and hope will very often win out over bad, especially in the fictional world .It’s partly why so many people enjoy crime fiction. There is a justice within it that isn’t always found in the real world. At times, I’ve walked a delicate line when it comes to my protagonists and antagonists, where the understanding of the ‘why’ behind a person’s action has the potential to tilt the balance in one or the other’s favour. Overall though, I like to keep it real. People, and therefore characters, are grey, not black and white, but I guess we all root for the good guy in the end, even me!

What else is on the cards for you this year?

I’ve recently been longlisted for a CWA Dagger in the Library Award, which is great, but whatever happens, I’m happy to be on the longlist. I’ll continue to teach Crime Fiction Writing at the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin, and I’m sure I’ll squeeze some holiday and family time in too. Hopefully, one way or another, there will be plenty of creativity!

Thank you Louise for a great interview.

Links:

‘The Game Changer’ can be found at

Amazon UK in paperback and Kindle formats

and Amazon US in paperback and Kindle

For ePUB, there’s eBook Mall, Kobo or click on Hachette UK’s Buy link here to see other options for eBook, iBook, and paperback versions.

Find Louise Phillips on her website, blog, Twitter @LouiseMPhillips and Facebook

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Bobby Nash

Bobby Nash is an award-winning author who writes a little bit of everything including novels, comic books, short prose, graphic novels, screenplays, media tie-ins. Between writing deadlines, Bobby is an occasional actor and extra in movies and television. The re-release of his first new novel has been published. Bobby met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about the publishing landscape today and genre fiction.

How do you see the publishing landscape today in its need for formula when there is so much more out there?



There are so many published genres, including mash-ups of genres readily available now from all corners of the world. If there’s a niche, then there is probably a book or book series out there to fill it. As great as it is that so many stories are available in paper, electronic, and audio, it also makes it harder for the readers to find exactly what they’re looking for in a sea of books. It is more imperative than ever, I think, for authors to know how to market their work lest they get lost on that sea of books. The change in how entertainment, not just books, but also movies, music, TV, news, etc. reaches the end user has changed and we, as the ones making that content, that entertainment, have to learn new ways to let readers know our work is out there and ready for them.

There was a time when a publisher could say, “westerns don’t sell” so that meant that if you were an author of westerns, your options were severely limited. That is not so much the case these days. Today, western authors can bypass those who say that those types of novels won’t sell and sell them directly to the audience that is looking for them. While that audience might be too small for a large publisher, it’s not too small for an independent author. It’s a brave new, sometimes scary, world.

Tell us about Evil Ways.

[image error]Evil Ways was actually my first published novel, released back in 2005. I was a published writer in comic books and newspaper/magazines, but Evil Ways was my big leap into novel-length prose. I love a good thriller so I decided to try my hand at one. The idea for Evil Ways started not as a novel, but as a movie. A filmmaker friend of mine wanted to move from filming shorts to a movie. I pitched an idea about someone stalking and killing a group of friends in town for a reunion and the authorities trying to catch him. My friend passed on the idea, but I tweaked it and added and deleted elements until it became Evil Ways.

Evil Ways follows FBI Agent Harold Palmer. After a close call on the job, he takes a much deserved break to reconnect with his younger brother, something that has been long overdue. Franklin Palmer is a newspaperman, who lives in a small North Georgia town called Sommersville where he bought the local newspaper and is trying to keep his head above water. The murder of a young woman is the big story when Harold comes to town and he, Franklin, and the local sheriff, Tom Myers, find themselves on the trail of a killer out for revenge on a group of locals who have returned home for their 10th high school reunion. What strange secret do they have that makes them the target of the killer stalking them?

To celebrate the 10th anniversary last year, a new cover was designed for the anniversary edition, which was released. A sequel, called Evil Intent, is scheduled to premiere later this year. Evil Intent will see Harold Palmer back in action with the FBI just a few short months after the end of Evil Ways.

Do you think too much crime fiction sanitises crime?

Possibly. I think we’ve all gotten used to reading (or watching in TV and movies) fights, gunshots, and things like that. As crime writers, we have to bring something new to the crimes so that the reader doesn’t feel that they’ve seen all this before. I don’t want to desensitize my audience from the brutality of crime, and I’ve killed a lot of characters in my books, but I also try not to sensationalize it either. Wherever I can, I like to leave some of the details of the brutality of the crimes in my novels to the reader’s imagination. I’ve found that makes it much more graphic than anything I could have written. I don’t want my readers, or myself, to start to think of certain crimes as “safe” or “boring”.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

2016 looks to be a busy one. In April, Moonstone Books is releasing the Sherlock Holmes/Domino Lady trade paperback collection that includes the 2 issues comic series by Nancy Holder and me. It also includes Nancy’s prose story from the Domino Lady “Sex As A Weapon” anthology where Holmes and Domino Lady and a new prose adventure featuring the duo by me. In May, also from Moonstone, is the first issue of the new Domino Lady: Threesome team-up comic book series. Domino Lady joins forces with 2 heroes in each issue to thwart the bad guys. Issues 1 and 2 are co-written by Nancy Holder and me. I take over as solo writer with issue #3. 2016 is the 10th anniversary of Lance Star: Sky Ranger and we’ll see 2 reprint collections and a new full-length novel written by me out this year. The Evil Intent novel, which we talked about earlier, will be out this year. The Ruby Files vol. 2 is a collection of pulpy p.i. stories coming soon. Strong Will is a graphic novel co-written and created by Michael Gordon and myself with art by Wendell Cavalcanti and Rob Jones that will be out later this year as well. There are several other things as well, but I don’t exact release dates yet. That’s just a few of the books coming out. I still have a lot of writing to finish up as well. The best place to keep up with all of my upcoming projects is at www.bobbynash.com.

Thank you Bobby for an informative interview.

Links:

Evil Ways can be had on Amazon US and UK

See all Bobby’s works on his website, on his Amazon author pages US and UK and Ben Books

Connect with Bobby on Facebook, Twitter @bobbynash, and Google+. See his website for more places.

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Jane Haseldine

Jane Haseldine is a journalist, former crime reporter, columnist, newspaper editor, magazine writer, and deputy director of communications for a governor. Jane’s debut suspense novel, THE LAST TIME SHE SAW HIM, will be published by Kensington Publishing as a hardcover book in June 2016. The second book in the series, DUPLICITY, will be published by Kensington in April 2017. Jane met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about her forthcoming release and threat to the family as a theme in thriller fiction.

Tell us about The Last Time She Saw Him.

The Last Time She Saw Him is the first in a new series from Kensington Publishing about a Detroit crime reporter, Julia Gooden, whose young son is kidnapped on the thirtieth anniversary of her brother’s abduction, a case that has never been solved. Convinced that the crimes are related, Julia tries to piece together childhood memories from her final day with her brother, who promised he would always protect her, and decipher whether sudden reminders of him are clues that will lead her to her son’s abductor, or merely coincidence. Julia knows she has hours at best to find her son alive, but the deeper she digs, the more personal and terrifying the battle becomes, and an undying promise may be her only hope of saving herself and her son.

To what extent do you think a threat to the family is a good theme for a thriller?

Great question! I think a threat to a person’s family is a strong emotional plotline for a thriller novel. It’s a terrifying idea that someone could hurt the people you love the most, and it’s relatable in that I think for almost any person, it’s their greatest fear. When I was coming up with the plot for The Last Time She Saw Him, I thought a lot about what scares me the most, and that was anything bad happening to my children. But then I started to think, what if a person had already endured a similar tragedy? How would they cope? Would they be able to eventually heal and lead a normal life, or would they be broken, living life on autopilot, or screwed up for good? The main character in the book, Julia, is powerless as a seven-year-old child when her brother is abducted, but when her son goes missing, I thought a lot about whether she would break down completely, or be balls-out fearless, ready to risk anything, including her own life, to get her little boy back. In this case, Julia is broken from her past loss, but she’s fearless when it comes to finding her son. So I think a threat to one’s family brings out our greatest fears, and hopefully, our greatest bravery. It’s a primal instinct that again, I think is universally relatable.

Tell us how your career as a journalist has influenced your writing.

In my case, you write what you know. My main character is a journalist and crime reporter, so it is familiar territory to me. Being a newspaper reporter and a journalist has been a big help in writing books as far as getting in the habit of writing on a daily basis. When you’re a reporter, there’s no such thing as writer’s block or you’ll be out of a job. Also, you are incredibly lucky to encounter a wide-ranging cast of real characters with their own unique stories that help spark the imagination. Having covered the crime beat, I tried to infuse in my main character, Julia, how important it is for her to hustle to get the story, but in the same vein, to also be compassionate. When I was writing an article and trying to get a comment from the parents of a dead child, I never forgot that I had a job to do, but I also tried not to become a viper and lose my humanity in the pursuit of getting a story. Hopefully, that made me a better reporter and helped people trust me. So my career as a journalist has been a huge influence and colored my perspective as an author.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

Writing wise, it’s going to be busy! The Last Time She Saw Him comes out as a print and audio book in June, and the second book in the series, Duplicity, comes out in April 2017. I also just got the exciting news this week from my literary agent that we got a contract with Kensington for two more books in the Julia Gooden series, which is fantastic, but I am going to be buried in front of my computer for the next four months, as I need to turn the third book in this summer. Pray for me! Just kidding (I think!). It’s a good problem to have though. I’ve known a few authors who have been incredibly lucky (not to mention incredibly talented), who’ve faced little rejection and landed book deals right away, but for me, it definitely wasn’t something that happened overnight. There was plenty of rejection (translation: lots) when I was first trying to get a literary agent, and then there were the early publisher rejections when we initially went out on submission with the novel (not to mention dealing with my own insecurities that the book was never going to sell). So when we did land a book deal, I was probably never so appreciative of anything in my entire life. I have such respect for anyone who is trying to write a book or who has written one and is trying to get it out there in the world, because it can be incredibly hard. So here’s to success for all of us writers in the coming year and beyond!

Thank you Jane for a great interview.

Links:

The Last Time She Saw Him will be released by Kensington Books in June 2016. Pre-order at Amazon US and UK, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBound, and Hudson Booksellers.

You can find Jane Haseldine at janehaseldine.com, Twitter, Goodreads, and Facebook.

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Burl Barer

Burl Barer is an Edgar Award winning author, and two time Anthony Award nominee, literary historian and radio host. He is best known for his writings about the character Simon Templar. His latest novel is A Taste For Murder. Burl met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about his new release, The Saint and his cultural significance.

Tell us your latest news.

The latest news from Burl Barer that a man of my age “should,” by societal norms, be fully retired. I have absolutely no intention of retiring any more than I intend to by shy and retiring. In fact, I am busier now than I have been since the 1980’s.

In the world of literature, I have new books completed and about to be released, and books almost completed and gearing up for release. I have a TV special March 12th on I.D. (C and I in other countries) A TASTE FOR MURDER, and a book by the same name coming out March 8th.

Frank Girardot Jr., my co-author on A TASTE FOR MURDER are collaborating on a new book about a multi million dollar scam attempted on the department of homeland security, plus an alleged software grab by that same department and the alleged railroading of 6 Denver software executives, five of whom, much to their misfortune, were born “Black” — and all six were affiliated with the same “Black Church” — a Christian subculture where certain ethical indiscretions are accounted as near-divine opportunities.

There is also a brand new full length Saint novel on the cusp of completion — THE SIGN OF THE SAINT — the second of three novels I’m committed to providing to the Estate of Leslie Charteris.

It has also been my honor to contribute commentary for an episode in the latest season of DEADLY SINS, hosted by my friend Darren Kavinoky.

As if that were not enough, I host the award-winning Internet radio program, TRUE CRIME UNCENSORED, heard every Saturday 2pm PT/5pm ET/10pm London time on outlawradiousa.com with show biz legend Howard Lapides, produced by Magic Matt Alan who hosts 70’s on 7 on Serius XM.

Wait…there’s more! Leonard Lee Buschel, the famed founder of the Reel Recovery Film Festivals and former drug smuggler, has his vastly amusing and occasionally shocking yet always inspirational autobiography in the works, “as told to Burl Barer.” I am also on the Advisory Board of “Writers in Treatment” with Robert Downey, Sr.

I’m sure there is more, but as I am 68 years old, my memory is not what it used to be.

How does your fiction reinterpret The Saint and what do you see as his cultural significance?

The Saint’s cultural significance is not only cross-cultural but transcends socio-political considerations, and he is the only “action hero” whose appeal is evenly divided between men and women. There are core elements to the character that keep him from being archaic, and as the old saying goes, “You can’t have archaic and need it, too” — a remark originally made by columnist Harb Caine in reference to cable cars.

The appeal of the Saint is fairly simple: he is an outlaw — he does whatever he damn well pleases, yet he is altruistic, hence he has sympathetic identification. He is not subject to laws (except gravity of course). His motives, however, are moral and for the benefit of the person who has no recourse – he is the champion of those who have no champion…he believes in justice above the law, and if Richard Godwin has been taken advantage of by someone unscrupulous, you can count on the Saint to outwit and out-con the bad guy on your behalf. In fact, there is one Saint story entitled “The Uncritical Publisher” in which the Saint goes after a “vanity” self-publishing house.

My first Saint novel as the continuator of Charteris’ original series is entitled Capture the Saint because when Audrey Charteris read the manuscript she said ‘You have captured the Saint perfectly. Leslie would be thrilled.” Not everyone was as enthusiastic, or course. Even longtime fans of the Saint may forget that Charteris’ Saint stories were great fun because they were, in good measure, satire — satire of the genre in general, and self-satire in the specific. The Saint breaks the fourth wall, references the fact that there are Saint books, and in The Saint Vs Scotland Yard, he objects to the bad guy’s plan to kill him by pointing out that this is only the first story in the book, and you can’t bump off the hero when there are three more stories to go!

Saint stories overturn the genre’s conventions, upend expectations, and often mock the standard fare of adventure fiction. The surprise reveal in SAINT’S GETAWAY is blatantly far-fetched, and so absurd that were it in any book other than a Saint book, readers would bounce the book off the nearest wall — but it IS a Saint book. The absurdity is part of its undeniable charm.

In the story “The Sporting Chance,” the damsel in distress is not merely in danger of “a fate worse than death” — non-consensual sex with the villain — but is destined to service the entire crew of a submarine!

The Saint’s escape in one famed short story — hanging by his hands, his wrists bound with rope — is laughably impossible…but because it is a Saint story, that’s perfectly fine with us.

Charteris combined enough thrills, action, and derring-do with social and genre satire, plus a style intentionally over-written to the point where Charteris once remarked that his over-the-top style was what readers wanted from him — that they were paying for “fins on the Cadillac,” and were his prose stripped of all the chrome and fins, he would be left with his “skinny fundaments exposed.”

Simon and Schuster passed on publishing Capture the Saint because it was “too literary” and they believed that today’s readers were “not sufficiently sophisticated” to appreciate it. They did publish THE SAINT: A NOVEL, my adaptation of the screenplay of the motion picture starring Val Kilmer. For that novel, I answered in the affirmative when they asked me if i could “dumb in down.”

My long overdue second novel, THE SIGN OF THE SAINT, utilizes a style somewhere between the two previous. It also attempts (and we shall see how successful) of combining two different Saint “modes.”

(1) the style and structure of Saint novellas from the 1930’s, and (b) the big action climactic set pieces one finds in Saint full-length novels.

There is also a “kitchen sink” approach to Sign of the Saint — while the writing style is more lean than that of Capture the Saint, I have included in the story virtually every secondary character from the old stories…even putting Scotland Yard’s Inspector Teal together with New York’s John Henry Fernack. Does it work? Well, Saint fans will be the judge.

Tell us about your career in radio.

When I was a little boy, I used to walk around talking into a pencil, pretending it was a microphone. I also was fascinated with ventriloquism and had a dummy. I soon learned that radio was a more effective way of throwing my voice, and began my career in broadcasting at the age of fifteen in Walla Walla, Washington where I was paid $1.25 per hour — minimum wage. In truth, that was more money per hour than the current minimum wage in terms of buying power. By age 18 I was making $4.50 per hour on Soul Radio KYAC in Seattle…and then….

I was on the #1 rock radio station in Seattle by age 19, and became somewhat of a radio legend. Today, you’re doing great if you have a 4 share of the audience. I had a 19 share. I owned that town at night! I watered my legend at KJR, KOL AM-FM, KYYX and KZOK – all in Seattle, Washington. Together with a fellow broadcaster, I formed an advertising company specializing in entertainment advertising producing national campaigns for touring acts such as Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Moody Blues (they gave me a gold record for Knights in White Satin) and many others. I also created radio campaigns for such films as Harold and Maude, Mahler, and Orson Welles’ F FOR FAKE. Then, in the early 1980’s, I formed a cable advertising interconnect which I later sold. Having garnered success in radio and TV — both financially and professionally, I decided to replicate my success in print (books). My first book, THE SAINT: A Complete History won the Edgar Award. Winning the Edgar on my first book was rather like hitting the jackpot on your first pull at a slot machine. I was now addicted to writing books and have continued writing them despite not having hit that jackpot again.

Seven years ago, I was invited to do a radio show produced by Magic Matt Alan on OutlawRadioUSA.com. True Crime Uncensored, co-hosted by show biz legend Howard Lapides, airs every Saturday, 10pm London time, and has such erudite and exotic guests as Richard Godwin, Tony Thompson, Steve Miller, and other top authors, plus we have such guest co-hosts as famed actor/author/director Ian Ogilvy (Return of the Saint).

What else is on the cards for you this year?

What else is in the cards? Lord only knows! A movie version of MAN OVERBOARD: The Counterfeit Resurrection of Phil Champagne is (again) being seriously discussed…the director is Matt “Son of Cinema” Berkowitz who directed the brilliant WILD IN BLUE — a movie sure to win Richard Godwin’s heart.

I’m currently writing the treatment for Gregg Schoenfeld’s BABY WEREWOLF cartoon pilot, finishing up Sign of the Saint, and I must finish the sequel to HEADLOCK…..and Frank C. Girardot Jr and I have more true crime books on our agenda…and uh….maybe I’ll find some decent Molly for a change….(yeah, right).

I just want to have fun, and when I’m having fun writing it is similar to laughing — the most fun you can have other than sex and you don’t have to clean up afterwards.

Thank you Burl for an informative interview.

Links:

Pre-order A Taste For Murder

at Amazon US and UK

See all Burl Barer books on Burl’s website  and his author pages on Amazon US and UK

Find Burl Barer on Facebook and Twitter as @BurlBarer

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Castle Freeman

Castle Freeman is the award winning author of the novel Go With Me. It is soon to be released as a major motion picture starring Anthony Hopkins and Julia Stiles. His latest novel has recently been published. Castle met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about his new release and the importance of location in his writing.

Tell us about your new novel.

My new novel is THE DEVIL IN THE VALLEY. It’s a retelling of the story of Faust, set not in medieval Germany but in a small rural community in the New England hinterlands in the present day. Readers of Faust’s most familiar English version, Christopher Marlowe’s “The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus” (1604) know that in fact the play is not tragical at all, but is played mainly for humor. My story is in the same spirit. A flawed hero makes a bargain with the devil (a special, slick, corporate kind of devil) in which he gets supernatural powers—powers which he uses not to explore the infinite but more modestly, to benefit the ordinary people of his home. Nevertheless, at the end of the story, the hero, like Faust, must keep his contract and surrender his soul. Whether he succumbs to damnation or beats the devil, and with what assistance, the reader will learn.

What is the importance of location to you?

It would be hard to overstate the importance of location to me, in writing and in living, both. I have lived my whole adult life in the state of Vermont, that is, in the distant, largely forested countryside of northern New England. The area has a very distinctive history, geography, and culture and a very particular kind of rural character or identity in the US. I’m not sure what or where in the UK corresponds: possibly Scotland or Wales.

In most of the writing I have done, especially the fiction writing, I have been concerned to explore and understand this region and its people, not so much by straight description or documentary but more by suggestion and implication. The idea has been to give the reader a vivid and memorable idea of what it’s like to live and work here, without descending to literary calendar art. So my business has been more with attitudes, customs, prejudices, affections, and humor, and less with landscape and scenery—though I hope there is a sense of those in my writings about my home, as well.

Who are your literary influences?

I claim literary descent from the Great American Low-Highbrow line of Twain and Faulkner, as it takes a bend to the right (or is it to the left?) and flanks the Noir of more recent generations via Raymond Chandler and especially George V. Higgins. This line is in contrast to the Great American High-Highbrow tradition of Hawthorne, Poe, Henry James, and the post-avant garde Difficult crowd of metafictionists and others. They have never been my favorites, though I do like a bit of complication, and, especially, a bit of humor.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

I have just finished a new new novel, a kind of sequel or companion piece to my novel ALL THAT I HAVE, published there by Duckworth in 2010. Provisional title: OLD NUMBER FIVE (c.f., the Fifth Commandment: Honor thy father and thy mother, etc.). My agent will soon begin the process of seeking a publisher. Beyond that, I have a short story coming out this year in a literary magazine published in Alaska, and I will be working on other stories, possibly connected with it. I try to stay busy. As my mother used to say, it keeps me off the streets and out of the poolrooms.

Thank you Castle for a great interview.

Photo by Jane Lindholm

Links:

Booklist (USA) describes The Devil in the Valley as “Full of laconic dialogue and waggish asides on contemporary culture” and “a thoroughly enjoyable read from the ever-inventive Freeman.”

It can be found instore and online at all good book stores. Here are a few online quick-links: Amazon US and UK; Barnes & Noble; Book Depository; Kobo; Indigo; Alibris US and UK; and IndieBound.

Castle is the author of six other novels, including All That I Have  and Go With Me, which inspired a film that recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival starring and produced by Anthony Hopkins…Read more here and on IMDb.

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Judy Penz Sheluk

Judy Penz Sheluk is the author of The Hanged Man’s Noose. Her short crime fiction appears in World Enough and Crime (Carrick Publishing), The Whole She-Bang 2 (Toronto Sisters in Crime) and Flash and Bang (Untreed Reads). In her less mysterious pursuits, Judy works as a freelance writer, specializing in art, antiques and the residential housing industry; her articles have appeared regularly in dozens of U.S. and Canadian consumer and trade publications. Judy met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about her novel and literary influences.

Tell us about your novel.

The Hanged Man’s Noose is an amateur sleuth mystery with an edge. By that I mean that it has the usual small town setting, amateur sleuth as a protagonist, and there is no overt violence, sex, or bad language. But unlike a traditional cozy, there are no cats, crafts, or cookie recipes. Here’s a brief synopsis:

Small-town secrets and subterfuge lead to murder in a tale of high-stakes real estate wrangling gone amok.

Journalist Emily Garland lands a plum assignment as the editor of a niche magazine based in Lount’s Landing, a small town named after a colorful Canadian traitor. As she interviews the local business owners for the magazine, Emily quickly learns that many people are unhappy with real estate mogul Garrett Stonehaven’s plans to convert an old schoolhouse into a mega-box store. At the top of that list is Arabella Carpenter, the outspoken owner of the Glass Dolphin antiques shop, who will do just about anything to preserve the integrity of the town’s historic Main Street.

But Arabella is not alone in her opposition. Before long, a vocal dissenter at a town hall meeting about the proposed project dies. A few days later, another body is discovered, and although both deaths are ruled accidental, Emily’s journalistic suspicions are aroused.

Putting her reporting skills to the ultimate test, Emily teams up with Arabella to discover the truth behind Stonehaven’s latest scheme— before the murderer strikes again.

Who are your literary influences?

Early book influences include:

Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables), the story of Emily Star of

New Moon, PEI, who grows up dreaming of becoming a writer (and does). I received that

book as a Christmas gift and it’s one of only three books I have read more than once, and

that remains on my bookshelf after many moves.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I read it when I was about 10, at a time before 24/7

news and our desensitization to violence through TV, film, video games etc. I can

remember thinking, WOW, so that’s how you describe a scene so people can “see” it

when they are reading. It’s also one of the three books I have read more than once and

I’ve watched the movie, Capote, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, about a dozen times.

And of course, Nancy Drew (later graduating to Agatha Christie, John D. MacDonald, Ed

McBain and Ngaio Marsh).

Present day:

There are plenty of authors I read and admire, but my top two are:

John Sandford. I’m a huge fan of his Prey series (and to a lesser extent, his Virgil Flowers

series). No one does pacing through dialogue the way Sandford does it.

I’ve been reading Sue Grafton from the first time I read G is for Gumshoe. I backtracked

to A, and have made my way through the series. Kinsey Millhone might not age much,

but Grafton’s plots and storytelling continue to improve with every book.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m currently working on the sequel to The Hanged Man’s Noose. In Noose, Emily

Garland, a freelance journalist, is the protagonist. In the sequel, Glass Dolphin antiques shop owner Arabella Carpenter will take the wheel, and Emily will be her sidekick. My plan is to have a different protagonist for each book in the Glass Dolphin Mystery series, but one book at a time.

I’m also working on a couple of short stories, with hopes of submitting them to a couple

of anthology callouts, but I’m a very slow short story writer, so I may not make the

deadlines. But I enjoy the challenge!

What else is on the cards for you this year?

I recently completed Skeletons in the Attic, the first in my Marketville Mystery series. I’m

hoping to get a publishing contract for that in 2016. I liked the idea of having two

separate series, and they are quite different. The Hanged Man’s Noose is told in the third

person with POV shifts. Skeletons is told in the first person, with a different cast of

characters, although Arabella Carpenter, the antiques shop owner in Noose, makes a brief

appearance.

I’ll be attending Malice Domestic at the end of April. It’s a mystery readers/writers

conference held in Bethesda, Maryland. I’ve never been to Malice, or to Washington, so

I’m really looking forward to it.

Beyond that, I’m really hoping to improve my golf game. Last summer I came close to

breaking 100. That’s the goal for this year! Life can’t be all about writing, can it?

Thank you Judy for an informative interview.

Links:

Buy Links:

The Hanged Man’s Noose is available in trade paperback and eBook at all the usual suspects, including Amazon US and UK, Barnes & Noble Nook and paperback, Kobo, Chapters.Indigo, GooglePlay and iTunes, and directly from the publisher, Barking Rain Press.

Find Judy at http://www.judypenzsheluk.com, where she blogs about the writing life and interviews other authors.

You can also find Judy at:

Amazon Author: amazon.com/author/judypenzsheluk

Facebook: www.facebook.com/JudyPenzSheluk

Twitter: @JudyPenzSheluk

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8602696.Judy_Penz_Sheluk

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/judypenzsheluk

Triberr: http://triberr.com/JudyPenzSheluk

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Melissa Groeling

Melissa Groeling grew up in New Jersey and now resides in the City of Brotherly Love. Only after she graduated from Bloomsburg University did she start to take her writing seriously. She’s a diehard New York Giants fan, loves chocolate and stalks cupcakes. Traffic Jam is her first young adult novel. Lights Out is her first dip into adult fiction. Melissa met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about her new release and the role of redemption in her writing.

Tell us about your novel.

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Lights Out is a dark and gritty tale that follows Paul Holten, an anti-hero if there ever was one. Except he doesn’t know he’s an anti-hero. He’s just trying to survive and he’s barely able to do that between a tyrannical boss hell-bent on keeping Paul under his thumb, a heavy case of night tremors and the demons lurking inside his head. With every breath, Paul wonders if dying would be easier. Until he meets Ethan, who conjures for the first time, the possibility of redemption. But with so much darkness and violence following him, can Paul even hope to achieve it?

How important are redemption and justice to your writing?

Oh, absolutely, especially redemption. I think that’s because of a subconscious need to correct things that are wrong–at least in my head. I know that sometimes makes any story seem unrealistic–you know, stories that tie up neatly in a bow–and we know that real life is hardly like that. But that’s why it’s called fiction!

Who are your literary influences?

Dean Koontz, Dean Koontz and did I mention Dean Koontz? I was constantly getting lost in his books when I was younger. He blended the right amounts of horror and humor, especially his earlier books. To this day, I still remember “Phantoms” as the one that kept me up at night. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve branched out more–Dan Simmons, Karin Slaughter, Stephen King (of course), Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (their Pendergast series is so awesome). Anything that’s creepy and well-written is right up my alley!

What else is on the cards for you this year.

Well, I’m working on my next story called Choke Point. It’s a creepy story set for the new adult genre. I’ll be attending ThrillerFest this year and hope to pitch it while I’m there. I entered the Neoverse Short Story Writing Competition with a short story I wrote called, A Light in the Window and also took part in the “Women of Horror” anthology that should be available online in mid-March. Pretty excited about it!

Thank you Melissa for a great interview.

Links:

Get a copy of Lights Out at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and All Romance eBooks

Read more about Lights Out and find more buy links at Goodreads

Find Melissa Groeling on her blog, Facebook, and Twitter @stringbean10

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Matt Hilton

Matt Hilton quit his career as a police officer to pursue his love of writing tight, cinematic American-style thrillers. He is the author of the high-octane Joe Hunter thriller series. He has a new novel out featuring Tess Grey. Matt met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about his new release and the publishing landscape.

Tell us your latest news.

After publishing ten books – and a bunch of short stories – in my Joe Hunter thriller series, I felt it was high time to stretch my wings with some new ideas, and write something featuring brand new characters. I’m pleased to announce that the first in a new series has just been published by Severn House Publishers, called Blood Tracks. Readers of my action thrillers will be happy to note I haven’t strayed too far from the path, but I’ve also added more of a mystery or suspense element to these new novels to appease readers of regular crime fiction too. The books feature Tess Grey, a medically discharged Sheriff’s deputy, who accepts the job of tracking down a witness on behalf of her local DA’s office. Being from Portland, Maine, in the USA, with a trip to the bayous of Louisiana on the cards, Tess hires the services of renegade ex-con Nicolas “Po” Villere as her guide. They are an odd pairing who should not work together, but the old adage that opposites attract is true in their case. While they search for Crawford Wynne, they too are being hunted, and the two must work together to defeat a determined and sadistic killer. I’m chuffed to see that the reviews Blood Tracks is receiving are good ones (wipes sweat off brow), and on the strength of the first book have been commissioned to write the second in the series for release in November 2016. Fans of Joe Hunter need not fear, Joe Hunter 11 – No Safe Place – is already in the bag and I’ll have news on its publication soon.

How has the publishing landscape changed since you were first published?

My first book was published in May 2009, and since then I’ve watched the face of publishing change quite dramatically. Just as my debut was hitting the shelves, the financial crash had

just more or less happened and there was a lot of panic and insecurity going on in the publishing industry with smaller publishers disappearing or being snatched up by the large houses. Editors and others working in the industry were making a dash for new more secure positions so there was a period where there was a lack of continuity in publishing for a while. I think my launch (at the time Hodder’s biggest thriller launch off 2009) kind of fizzled instead of getting any major notice. The problem at the time was that the bookshops were all in a panic, with lots closing down and even a chain like Borders disappearing practically overnight. People/authors thought the advent of Amazon would replace sales lost in bricks and mortars stores, but for mid-list authors and those from small independents it wasn’t the case. Ebook sales have never met the early loss of sales of paperbacks for most authors making inroads into the bookshops at that time (some of course have been massively successful via ebook sales, but they’re few and far between by comparison). Also, most of the supermarket chains stopped stocking paperbacks and only took hardbacks from the massive white-collar sellers and celebrities, so it really damaged mid-listers’ sales. Because the opportunities for selling large numbers of paperbacks have disappeared for most authors now, the shape of publishing has definitely changed to match, where the large publishers now throw all their marketing budgets at the sure fire bestsellers and the fad books that come along. Large advances are pretty much a thing of the past (though not totally unknown), and interestingly a lot of new authors signed up these days by the big publishing houses have usually already shown a proven record of sales via Ebooks etc. There have of course been leaps in publishing opportunities for authors who weren’t fortune enough to snag a publishing deal, self-publishing Ebooks and audio books being great examples, and I think it has helped in the rise we are seeing now in some of the independent publishers who are turning out excellent books, and also offering quality material from authors who might not have been given a chance via the traditional route. As an author I see myself as being a hybrid of traditional and indie publishing, so have reaped the benefits of both (but also suffered the failings of both at the same time), so don’t claim that one route is better than the other. Personally my traditionally published books have been my best-sellers and my self-pubbed stuff has failed to find a large audience, so I could argue that the traditional publishing model has been best for me, but that’s all a matter of personal opinion, because the traditional publishers have also shut down my creativity and won’t touch anything I’ve offered them outside of my usual thriller output: to do so I’ve had to take my new series to a different publisher. I understand why, and am not bitter, but at the same time I’m thankful that the self-publishing opportunity is there to get my wilder stuff out there (I also write horror, supernatural and sci-fi novels my usual publisher won’t entertain). So, yeah, in a nutshell, the industry has been good and bad to me in ways, but it is also ever changing and I don’t know what’s around the corner. Who knows, this time next year I might be praising one method over another in direct contrast to what I’d do now. I only hope that I’m still published, and will be happy however the books are making it into the hands of readers.

What do you think the future holds for publishing?

I’m largely speculating here: I think there’s a move afoot from the major publishers to reclaim sales on actual physical books. Whether or not I’m right, I’ve noticed that the prices of Ebooks published by the major publishers and even some of the indie publishing houses have suddenly jumped up in price, and I’ve a feeling this is to make readers think they are better off buying the hard copy rather than a digital download for much the same price. With my latest Joe Hunter novel the hardback was on sale for only a couple of pounds more than the Ebook was, and the Ebook was almost twice the price of the soon to be published paperback – subliminally I guess this might urge some readers to put off buying either the hardback and Ebook and wait for the paperback publication instead. I’m not sure what the thinking is behind this pricing model my publisher has followed (I’ve asked and only got an unclear “let’s wait and see”-type answer) and to be honest haven’t seen an uplift in hardback sales, only a decrease in Ebook sales to date. Hopefully when the paperback does hit the stands it snaps up all those lost sales, but that’s yet to be seen. It’s not only my Ebooks that have been priced highly, I’ve noticed the same to be true for many of the big names, so can only guess it is some kind of combined strategy to take back some of the market dominated by Amazon. As far as the bigger picture is concerned, I see the big publishers/big names continuing to dominate the charts, and getting their books in front of readers, while the mid-listers continue to struggle to get any notice. Saying that, there are a few good independent publishers on their way up, so we are seeing more choice and diversity. Ebooks, I reckon, will continue to sell, but I think the boom times are largely over and those authors making a healthy living off Ebooks might see their income shrink in the coming years. New technology will always appear, and I’m wondering if the next big thing will be audio-visual, or even interactive books, read/played via apps, maybe even with some kind of CG visual tie-ins – I don’t know, maybe I’m looking too far into the future but I can’t imagine it being too far off (just remember you heard it here first – all patents pending), especially for children’s and YA books and for certain genres. As far as physical books are concerned, they’ll still be there, and will be for a long time to come, but whether or not they are the readers’ first go to choice for entertainment remains to be seen.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

For 2016 I hope to see the publication of two books, the first being the eleventh in my Joe Hunter thriller series currently published by Hodder and Stoughton. It’s called “No Safe Place” and this time sees Joe Hunter accepting a job to protect a small boy whose mother was the victim of a house invasion – the trouble is that the boy’s father is objectionable to the idea and doesn’t make Hunter’s job easy, particularly when the father realises Hunter considers him a suspect in his wife’s murder. Previous Hunter novels have been full of slam-bang action, and although there’s still plenty of action in this one, it is with a different and more domestic emphasis. I’m hoping Hunter fans will love what they’ve come to expect from my books, and new readers will be pleasantly surprised and go on to pick up the back list. Also next November (2016) will see publication of Blood Tracks 2 (working title only), with the return of Tess Grey, Nicolas “Po” Villere and the larger than life Pinky Leclerc as they try to locate and save an abducted woman while being caught between three bad guys all with the intention of reaching the girl first for their own reasons. The book is written, and I’m now thinking of penning a couple of standalone short stories or novellas featuring Hunter, Tess and Po, and maybe even another action hero character of mine called Dirk Ramm to fill the void between books. I’m also working on a collaborative effort at the moment, details of which it’s far too early to share, and whether the project gets off the ground or not is still in the lap of the gods. Plus, knowing me, my urge to write something creepy or disturbing will probably rear its ugly head, so don’t be surprised if you see another horror or supernatural tale from me turning up.

Matt thank you for an informative interview.

Links:

Blood Tracks (Tess Grey 1) at Amazon UK and US

The Devil’s Anvil (Joe Hunter 10) at Amazon UK and US

Matt Hilton’s Amazon author page

Find Matt on his website, Facebook, and Twitter @MHiltonauthor

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Paul D. Brazill

Paul Brazill writes gritty hardboiled fiction that mixes laconic with astute cultural observation. Always entertaining, you can count on a great read. He has a new one out, and he describes it as seaside Noir. Paul met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about Kill Me Quick and exile in his writing.

Tell us about Kill Me Quick.

Kill Me Quick! is a darkly comic seaside noir. It’s the story of a slightly successful musician who – after things turn sour – returns from self-imposed exile ‘down south’ to his home town in the north east of England. It’s a lethal cocktail of Get Carter, Charlie Bubbles and Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? It’s published by the great Number 13 Press.

How important is exile to your writing?

Well, I only started writing after I’d been abroad for a while so I’m sure it’s very important. It gives a view askew. James Joyce only wrote The Dubliners after he’d left Dublin. I only said that so I could compare myself to Joyce, of course … And not Yootha Joyce …

How important is local culture and location to your writing?

It certainly is with Kill Me Quick! A lot of it is based on places and people from the town where I grew up and its surrounding areas, though it is a tad exaggerated.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

Publication updates: Cold London Blues will be published by Caffeine Nights Publishing on 14 July 2016. It’s a sort of follow up to Guns Of Brixton. The Last Laugh, and Other Shots Of Noir will be published by All Due Respect on 1 May 2016, It’s a collection of what I think are my best noir-ish short stories. There may be another book out next year, too, if I get my act together. A few flash fiction pieces should appear online, too. I always like to get back to writing flash.

Paul thank you for a great interview.

Get Kill Me Quick! from Amazon.co.uk , Amazon.com or any other Amazon.

Paul D. Brazill is the author of Guns Of Brixton, Cold London Blues, and Kill Me Quick! He was born in England and lives in Poland. He is an International Thriller Writers Inc member whose writing has been translated into Italian, German and Slovene. He has had writing published in various magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Books of Best British Crime. He has edited a few anthologies, including the best-selling True Brit Grit – with Luca Veste. His blog is here.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Stephen Bett

Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet with 17 books. His poetry is disciplined, musical, witty and culturally honed. He ranges from minimalism to jazz. If you pick up a Bett book you can be assured of first class quality. He is a poet who always delivers. His earlier work is known for its sassy, edgy, hip… caustic wit―indeed, for the askance look of the serious satirist… skewering what he calls the ‘vapid monoculture’ of our times. His more recent books have been called an incredible accomplishment for their authentic minimalist subtlety. Many are tightly sequenced book-length ‘serial’ poems, which allow for a rich echoing of cadence and image, building a wonderfully subtle, nuanced music.

Bett follows in the avant tradition of Don Allen’s New American Poets. Hence the mandate for Simon Fraser University’s “Contemporary Literature Collection” to purchase and archive his “personal papers” for scholarly use.

Tell us about your range of poetry.

My range of interest, after 50 years of reading (& writing) poetry, & 30-plus years of teaching, is reasonably broad―modernism & the postmodern (U.S, UK, & here in Canada). But my influences are narrow: Black Mtn, San Fran Renaissance, & NY School (1st & 2nd generations, & now beyond). Of course I’m also very narrow niche in that I’m a Canadian mentored by these A-muricanos (via the TIS group). That goes back to my ‘counter-culture’ youth―child of the ’60s, blah, blah. I thrive on avant edginess (“Make it new”!) & am bored silly by mainstream bland poetry; in my country there still prevails the hopelessly dull “narrative” poem about great-granddaddy’s homesteading on the prairie, for god sake. (Although there are young envelope-pushers happily breaking through nowadays in Canada, as in the U.S.) But I don’t go for the “language school” poets (although I read them still―to stay in touch). Emperors without clothes (see Tom Clark’s courageous essays on that!). So I’m narrow niche no matter how you hold the map―right-way up, upside down, sideways. Dizzy Canadian, I guess.

How do you think the publishing landscape has changed for a poet?

That’s an easy one, for sure. When I published my first poem in Rolling Stone magazine at age 24 (1972) I thought I ‘had it made’. In truth, it turned out I was half a generation late though. In Canada, at least, in the late ’60s, Prime Minister Trudeau’s “LIP” grants for writers allowed for that generation (my teachers) to start up magazines & presses galore, & publish themselves &, pretty incestuously, their writer friends (check the Mastheads on that!). Well, ok, that’s the luck of the birth draw; I get it. Far better them than no-one. I found I was publishing in a lot of U.S. journals, so that was great. Generally, though… always hard for poets since the ’90s. The League of Canadian Poets’ stats (they’re a union of sorts, & a good organisation), even then in those ‘better’ ’90s days, showed that something like only 2% of ‘seriously writing’ poets actually got books published, & of those who did publish, only 1.5% ever got “reviewed.” (A Peter Ackroyd novel of that time mentions 500 books of poetry a year collecting dust on British library shelves!) Point is, I was doing fairly well, nonetheless, getting multiple reviews of my books; but my last book has had no reviews at all. Zilch. (Rae Armantrout won a Pulitzer a couple of years ago & only had two reviews. Woeful fact. And a supremely wonderful poet!) Poetry, of course, doesn’t sell―that’s the publishers’ mantra, & very true, of course. Those who do maintain a commitment to poetry publishing rely on gov’t grants &/or on subsidizing their small poetry lists from their cookbook sales! (I’m only barely exaggerating.) So it’s always been hard for poets of my generation. So many poets have quit altogether―at least in trying to publish (maybe they still write a soppy poem or two in their bathtubs). I’ve been relatively successful, perhaps mostly because I’ve always been doggedly willing to knock my head against walls. But, even so, I could wallpaper my house walls with 45 years’ of “rejection letters.” I could probably wallpaper yours too. And yours, & yours over there, down the road. A whole street of houses! My parents didn’t teach me the word “quit.” Plus, I’ve always believed in myself (politely, I hope, but steadfastly), & am the eternal optimistic ‘glass is half full’ guy. I’ve been lucky, & I’ve never for a moment stopped working. Thanks mum & dad, cheers!

Who are your literary influences?

I broadly answered that in the first question―the three U.S. avant “schools.” More specifically: Ed Dorn (mid-to-late Dorn), Robert Creeley, Anselm Hollo, Tom Clark (in about that order). Harold Bloom’s notion The Anxiety of Influence (which I reference in a small few poems written throughout my career) is, I think, inescapable for any writer―up to a point. But, for me at least, at a certain point my own “voice” imposed itself despite these “influences,” or maybe in consort with them, & falling back in on my essential self. I think my own “voice” (better to say, my “personality” & individual concerns) really got stuck in (as they phrase it in my beloved world of football, or soccer) with my 4th book, Nota Bene Poems: A journey. That’s when I also started writing “serial” poems―a book-length poem divided into individual sections, which allows me the joy―the little hair-chilling frisson of pleasure―to echo image, cadence, etc., back & forth in a long form. A pleasure I found, early on, fully operating in Pound’s Cantos. “Serial” poem―the term, I think, first proposed by Jack Spicer, another “influence.” I am familiar with the poetry wars over the term “voice”; I simply take “voice” to refer to one’s own unique (proprioceptive perhaps, to bring that in, too) individual “personality, which surely includes body language (hence my love, likewise, for “cool jazz,” especially Nordic jazz, as another body ‘shaping’ influence). Relatedly― to voice & personality―I was saying to a poet friend just a couple of days ago that so many (not all!) of Frank O’Hara’s imitators sound somewhat wooden to me. O’Hara’s notion “Personism,” as practised by him, is filled with his unique insouciance, his lively, chatty, personality-filled “voice”―it’s gossipy, for sure, but that’s not the key point of his “I do this… I do that” style of poetry writing. The point is not just gossip, but daily, quotidian, ‘life’ itself! And deliciously insouciantly stated. (I love sassy, too!) O’Hara was a very early influence, as well, in some ways. Ok, I’m rambling. I do that. (And I think, & write, parenthetically. Perhaps annoyingly so at times, but certainly my own “voice,” my own body language!) Last point, I also feel, as a by-the-way, that Rae Armantrout is currently the most important poet around. Subtly complex, & complexly subtle. Bravo! (I lied―one more, kind of related point: my all-time favourite poem―Creeley’s “I Know a Man.” I always took a couple of one hour classes when ‘teaching’ that short, pithy poem in the classroom. So much going on there! Technically―primarily―& also socio-philosophically.) So, my influences are largely “minimalist” poets, in one shape, style, or another.

Do you think a different publishing approach is necessary for a poet today?

Oh my god, please let me avoid a rant (haha)! Necessary,yes. (We’re sort of back to question 2.) The ‘what’ & ‘how’ are, I think, unanswerable. Existing alternatives (self-publishing & e-books) are not the answers. There’s already enough crap poetry swirling (incestuously, again) in the existing publishing pipeline than to suggest further flooding a dwindling market with yet more non-juried “vanity press” swill. And stats I’ve seen quite recently suggest e-books plateaued a couple of years ago & are (thank god, say book lovers) now losing ground to real books. There is always a lot of (white?) noise about poetry’s health―it’s dying; or, it’s coming back. I think it’s pretty much the former, sad to say. True, new people are always entering poetry world (new journals appear, for a brief fling); but larger numbers of ‘established’ poets seem to have given up altogether (I say this, a reader myself of roughly 50 books of poetry each year for the last 40 years, having watched so many interesting poets cease publishing after a few books). What I can say with fact-checkable certainty is that poetry publishers are going belly up (easily one quarter of them in Canada in the last ten years), leaving the survivors struggling just to put out significantly fewer books each publishing season as poetry labours down in the tank. And, making things worse, many presses & journals further hamper an already fraught situation by unrealistically insisting on “no multiple submissions” per writer (i.e, don’t you dare send a manuscript to several publishers at the same time). This simply amounts to, first, given the inevitable “rejection letters” for each writer when hundreds submit for the tiny handful of available spaces, &, second, given that a publisher’s “reject letter/email” can take anywhere from six months to two years (or often, rudely, never!) to arrive, this picture emerges: given these two handicaps from the get-go, a writer couldn’t normally expect to publish more than three or four books in his/her lifetime: long waits for an answer, & usually many rejection letters before, finally (maybe!), an “acceptance letter”―thus 5-10 wasted years to “find” a publisher for each book. And speaking of rejection letters, the majority are simply ‘form letters’ saying, “sorry, we’re so full we can’t even read your submission”―&, you guessed it, even that rejection “answer” can take many months to arrive! I refuse to play these games, & simultaneously wish to publish widely, & beyond a single press’s “stable” of authors, so I ignore these absurdly outdated “submission guidelines” (‘submit’ indeed!). These are the frustrating realities since the ’70s, so no wonder so many poets drop off the map. One further, minor example of my own: I signed a contract for my 17th book in 2009. Its publication was delayed, spring & fall seasons, year by year by year, for six full years, twelve seasons of delay. It just came out last week, in 2015. The cause? Global hedge-fund, etc., crises, & further inevitable loss of funding streams. Not the publisher’s fault at all. Truly lovely, wonderful people, fighting on for the arts! This is the reality of poetry publishing since the LIP (& NEA) “grant generation” of the 1960s. The only new publishing models I know of are the occasional “artists’ collectives” springing up (self-definingly “incest 2”?) & the few “innovative” publishers who are printing their books when & as demand dictates. What’s needed is a political commitment to the arts (more air-time for poetry!), & for culture in general. Yet, most politicians appear to think “culture” is something found only in yogurt. The back door, these last few years, has of course been flushed wide open to “slam poetry.” Hardly a serious option, is it. Self-indulgent puffery & bilge. More yogurt, please. And a ‘cheesy’ flavour at that. I applaud your question; but I haven’t a clue what the answer might be. We’re all on our own here in poetry world (at least those of us―a nod to my dear writer friends―who refuse to kiss up to incest city’s clubby-time). Thank god we write because we’re driven to write. Fish swim, birds fly; true poets just keep on writing. Damn the torpedoes, & the drones. And don’t step in the shit.

What do you make of the e-book revolution?

I’m no expert, for sure, but I’ll stick for now with my comment above―stats I’ve seen only a year or two ago indicate e-books have started losing ground they had initially gained. (My source is the quarterly BC BookWorld, the ‘bible’ of the publishing industry in western Canada.) I’ve also noted (not explored) some claims about eye-strain, wonky brain waves―blue light & all that?―being a potential issue. I myself ‘need’ to hold, touch, breathe the pages of a real book (I have about 6,000 of the buggers sitting on my own shelves; & their spines also apply a nice range of colours to the walls). Still, I will happily admit that if e-books get more people reading that’s an obvious plus that can outweigh my book “snobbery.”

One important distinction, I think, is that while e-books may well improve sales of genre fiction (I have no idea, factually, but hope so), & maybe some types of non-fiction, when you’re looking at poetry books you really have to understand the numbers: “poetry doesn’t sell,” & in fact the standard print run for a book of poetry is a mere 500 copies; anything beyond that―& this is surely as ridiculously hilarious as it is rare!―is considered a “best seller”! (I’ve seen remainder bookstores house more poetry books than regular bookstores―they’re lined up in bins for a dollar each.) In my own case, I have one book (2013) that’s available in e-book as well as in print form. Not one solitary frickin’ sale (according to my royalties, anyway), & that particular book, in print format, has possibly sold more copies than any of my other books. And my books have never gone to a second printing―I don’t believe more than one percent of North American poets sell over 500 copies (I could surely name them on ten fingers, starting with John Ashbery). I suspect literary fiction is in the same category (I may well be wrong, of course) in that there’s little financial point in going to e-book form without a mass readership.

But, as I say, I’d applaud anything that gets more people reading. I live in a part of North America (B.C.) where more people, per capita, read than anywhere else. And that stat has held up for, literally, decades now, if you believe major media that report on such surveys. All in all, I suppose, despite my ‘conservationist’ (haha) viewpoint, fighting “for” print books will ultimately become a matter of fighting “against” an inevitable future. Doesn’t the future always win? Look what’s happening all around us to “character” buildings & heritage sites. Not that I’m anti-future: it always looks more liberal than any past, & I’m sure as hell not a conspiracy theorist. So, bring it on, baby. 100 thousand books on one device, like my A-muricano poet friend Michael Rothenberg’s fabulously growing movement, “100 Thousand Poets for Change”: http://100tpc.org/

Graham Greene wrote, “There is a splinter of ice in the heart of the writer.” What do you make of his observation?

Yes, I think I understand what Greene means, haunted by his difficult catholic morality (I really enjoy his “Entertainments,” by the way). But I think this is also very much a novelist’s sentiment; they deal with “characters,” they take close observation of the outer world, a necessarily chilly, canny-eyed viewpoint. I’m utterly useless at external observation, as a poet (I’d never have made a novelist). I look, think, listen within, from the inside. So, for me, the analogy is not a splinter of ice, but more a heated knife in the heart. Literally, I’ve “written my way out of” heartache (always a woman) a good six times. Six books, written late into the night, drinking heavy reds, listening to my full stock of Keith Jarrett solo concerts, &, occasionally, to Sigur Ros―these are my ‘props’ for, fundamentally, writing my way out of emotional turmoil. With each ‘cut’ (of the knife, of the heart, of the track) I believe (& have been told) I’m still “growing” as a human being. (Maybe that’s terribly over-rated?) In probably my most emotionally roiling period I actually wrote five full-length books in ten months―fuelled by my ‘props’. The stuff was flooding out of me, sometimes up to three or four, or more, poems a night, & needing only one or two quick drafts afterwards; that’s how raw, honed, & clean they were spilling out. (I guess I’d by then got technique well embedded in me―as a young poet I’d re-draft a poem thirty times, a single poem finished in a month.) I was writing these five books (& a few earlier ones too) in a torrent. What’s that expression critics have used with Coleridge? Making pearls out of swine? The ‘act of writing as self-therapy’―although for me personally, that kind of language is largely New Agey bull-shit. I certainly don’t (consciously, at least) write ‘self-therapeutically’; in fact, I also write―very deliberatively―attack poems, aggro-satire poems, about our present day vapid monoculture, & “occasional poems” too. Maybe some sort of discredited Freudian would see my output of pain/growth balanced out by attack/satire as two sides of a coin? Dunno. As Joyce once said “I’m too Jung to be Freuded.” Me too, still. Anyway, I “like, totally, get it,” as we say nowadays (arrrg), with novelist Graham Greene’s ice in the heart of a writer. A novelist needs a sharp, cold eye. I write from the heart―or better, from the gut―where it’s always heated & burning, not cold. William Carlos Williams―to further this point―was an “instinctual,” as opposed to an intellectual writer. I’ve always ‘felt’ myself absolutely in that vein (no pun on the sliver of ice, or the knife). Writing from the gut. And, yes, I’ve always been a fan of G.G., & a voracious reader of novels. But I don’t know “how” to write like a novelist―I don’t “observe” outer details at all well. Hence my sometimes messy private life―screwing up, & then trying to write my way through. Thank god when a poet finally gets technique down, & can just spill & flow, organically, from there! In a rush. A rush, in every sense. And of course, emphasize the organic―the proprioceptive romantic, the Dionysian―never the classicist.

Do you think killing & fucking are related?

Related only by misogyny, in all its many-splendored forms, from ethnic cleansing to rap music (‘whip yo bitch with da pistol, mah man’). This aggro-connection clearly runs deep in many cultures around the world, & is obviously the result of a powerful “fear” of women.

I’ve developed my own little theory over the years (college teaching career, & keeping up my personal gym memberships). ‘The boys’ have been demonstrably falling behind in school for decades now, &, relatedly, I’ve had to quit gender-segregated gyms (no social restraints on young male behaviour), so sick of listening to 30-something guys’ anger & resentment, ragging on about their female peers―“I fucked twelve bitches over the weekend, bro” (I actually heard that―substitute ‘fucking’ for ‘killing’, right?). Young men clearly see women getting ahead of them (grade school, med school, law school―you name it) & the “dude bros” out there seem frustrated, voiceless, emasculated, & seriously pissed off. This won’t end well, will it.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’ve not too long ago finished a couple of manuscripts that come out of my modes of the last decade: both “serial” (book-length, linked poems) & “minimalist.” Excerpts in my very recently released “new & selected poems,” The Gross & Fine Geography. (A best hits, or, for the humongously disinterested non-poetry world, I like to call a selected poems a “best twits”―if you’re incapable of self-deprecation, as some poets always are, your head is sitting where the sun don’t shine.) What I’m working on (pushing around, mostly) is the completion of a third manuscript (excerpts also in the “selected”), titled UN/WIRED. This is moving back to old ground for me―largely, social satire. I’ve divided the book into four sections (Pre-Wired; Soft-Wired; Hard-Wired; Un-Wired), moving from poems of humour to ‘soft’ social satire, to ‘hard-edged’ satire, to poems of love/relationship/angst (these last three notions are all of a oneness, right?). Where does my sense of satire come from? My ear. That’s my one developed organ, absolutely pre-requisite for poets. I’ve always been a mimic―music, voices, tone, accents, underlying or unstated ‘intent’. This is the only “sense” I have natural capacity for. I hear things pretty acutely, & have to restrain the mimic’s tendency to go over the top. You can get away with heavy satire when your targets are generic (advertising, politics, boorish &/or moronic temperaments); when the satire gets personal (sarcastic) you’re simply venting & being a graceless, egotistical dick. It’s a fine line I’ve ‘somewhat’ learned to avoid crossing. It’s perfectly ok to be wickedly vicious about the “behavior,” not the “person,” as they say. This manuscript probably skates near that line, but no-one’s named, just the “stuff” they do. And I’m also thinking of the ‘next book after’―a book of “glossa” poems, suggested by my main publisher; he says that’ll really throw people off my scent! I hope to start with lines from Paul Blackburn, a fabulous poet who’s been too easily forgotten.

What advice would you give to yourself as a younger man?

The flippant part of me says ‘don’t go there’; it’s lifelong head-bashing being a publishing poet, & brain cells hit peak replacement at age 21 (that same part of me says don’t be a college English instructor either, marking 750 essays a semester). The more steady state side of myself, however, says do it all exactly the same way (& invent the internet too because it helps with marketing poetry): spend your life immersed in poetry & poetics, & write simply because that’s what you do. Also, younger self, kiss a whole lot of literary ass, attend mind-numbingly tedious “readings” every week, apply for all available arts’ grants, unabashedly promote yourself―that’s what ‘successful’ poets do. Please, I’m joking (more or less)! Do not kiss up to anyone; “write” rather than “market.” Choose journals & publishers very carefully (avoid cosy coteries & incestuous cliques; stay independent)―maintain your “poetics” at all times. Don’t waste your time (or soul) connecting with mainstream bland, dull, boring “outlets.” If the internet had existed when I started publishing in journals (early ’70s) I would have saved eight of my nine lives (hah!), plus money (postage stamps & reams of paper) & a lot of grunt work. On the other hand, I could have said (I suppose) screw literature, & “the counter-culture” too, grow better soccer skills instead of “hippie” hair & put yourself in the frame for a try-out with my beloved Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Then hit “click” for the selfie.

As a young poet, my first manuscript was accepted by C. W. (Bill) Truesdale (bless that lovely man) at New Rivers Press, in Minnesota. The book was pretty well through final editing when trickle-down Ronnie (remember “voodoo economics”?) got elected & chopped the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA, the folks who bring you PBS). As a Canadian author, I wasn’t eligible for the local state funding New Rivers was reduced to. That book came out four years later in Canada (1983), but by then the arts grants bubbles in Canada & the U.S. had about gone completely bust. We baby-boomer writers, the generation that had narrowly missed out on grants (see the LIP, above)―& on tenured jobs, too, since the birth bubble had burst as well, meaning colleges & universities weren’t hiring for a 15-year period; damn our booming, blooming luck, & our kids’ eco-boom luck too. (I’ve never been good with timing!) And every publication since then, for me, has been down to blind good luck. Queue another selfie.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

I’ve been editing, in some cases, & proofing, in others, several books for friends over the past few, & next few, months. A couple of novellas & several books of poetry. And a very fine poet has asked me to co-edit, with him, a book of poems on jazz. One book in particular will interest the general reader. A friend of mine was the then 19-year-old photographer who, with the help of a radio station connection, talked his way into the famous John & Yoko “Bed-In” in Montreal in 1969, & became the “official” photographer of the Bed-In. It’s his very own iconic photos that have appeared in every major magazine & newspaper around the world over the past four & a half decades―& he still holds all copyright. My friend, Roy, is writing the “story” behind each photo & putting these wonderful pieces of high-octane cultural gossip together with the photos (some of them he’s never released): I’m editing his text & have convinced him to title his book John Lennon Records Give Peace a Chance (see my Facebook page for more info). The never-before-told story behind that pretty damned famous song came about when Al Capp (the infamous right-wing cartoonist) was invited into the hotel suite by a documentary film maker who wanted a bit of “controversy” to enliven the documentary. That, the filmers indeed got, as Capp walked in (Roy is shooting his entry) & addressed Lennon & Yoko Ono as “dirty hippie” & “your Vietnamese [sic] whore.” Lennon, needless to say, was righteously pissed off, & during the ensuing conversation said “hey, all we’re doing is trying to give peace a chance,” &, after Capp had left the room, picked up his guitar (Roy still shooting everything in sight) & started in composing the lyrics & melody. And we have all assumed the song arose out of a moment of love & peace, when in fact it was created out of a moment of frustration & anger provoked by this right-wing asshole cartoonist!

These editing projects, & the re-working of my manuscript Un/Wired, will pretty well take me up to the end of the year. These, & of course all the other, mindless ‘busy work’ of lit-lite hustling (I’ve just finished contacting over 400 potential reviewers about my recent book―maybe hear back from one or two?). And reading―lots of reading all the time: poetry, novels, &, one of my chief reading hobbies (this’ll freakin’ blow you away!)… reading ultra-progressive theology, a fascination of mine for years, having been raised with smokin’ thuribles of high church Anglican guilt (“Anglo-Catholic,” to be precise, like that fast-fading “monarchist” Eliot!), & associated ailments. Yes, ultra-left theological scholarship: some challenging figures in this network of theologians are calling for a complete razing of “the church” (pretty wicked, huh?), & most are arguing that Xtianity went off the rails around 200 AD, & then irreparably when Constantine’s Nicaean Council (325 AD) whipped the bishops in line, cherry-picked ‘acceptable’ biblical text, & codified church (read, “Catholic”) dogma to keep the prols forever in their place. In other words, the entire church is all heavily in the shit, far as I can tell, & the ultras are for replacing the whole nasty, insidious, tribalistic, genocidal, racist, sexist, homophobic construct within a largely secular liberal, & more “accurately” historical, frame. Returning to uber-liberal biblical origins, in fact. Just as a quick taster: biblical events are largely symbolic (including virgin births & miracles); much is badly translated; some theologians actually call Xtian fundamentalism a form of true “evil”; & “original sin” is simply not biblical (consider what that does to salvation-needy mind-tripping)―it stems from Augustine’s sexual guilt hang-ups & also his misreading of biblical Greek. All that scholarship I find considerably cleansing, &, ultimately, re-directing & re-affirming. And all forms of proselytising are (as we surely already thought) cheesy, tacky brainwashing, & not part of the original agenda… so, end of sermon, & on with whichever revolution turns your crank, or revolves your personal revolution, I guess. Onwards, as the poet said.

Stephen, thank you for a great interview.

Links:

A sampling of Stephen Betts’ works:

From Ekstasis

NOTA BENE POEMS

From Blaze Vox

TRACK THIS: A BOOK OF RELATIONSHIP

THOSE GODAWFUL STREETS OF MAN

From Thistledown Press

SOUND OFF

Read more about SOUND OFF

Find other works here.

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Stephen’s  website

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