Richard Godwin's Blog, page 6

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Jack Ketchum

Jack Ketchum is a novelist who has arguably redefined Horror. His latest novel is I’m Not Sam, and he is currently working on a new novel. It is unlike anything he has done before. Jack met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about latent censorship and social engineering.

Tell us about your new book.

I can’t tell you a damn thing about the subject matter of my new book, because I’m doing it with Lucky McKee, as I did THE WOMAN and I’M NOT SAM and we’re both pledged to secrecy. That’s how I prefer to work anyway. You don’t show off the baby until you’re sure it has only one head. What I can say is that it’s unlike anything either of us have ever done before — with nods here and there to past stuff, sure, but basically we’re treading ground that’s new to us, which is great fun. We’re going to hit you up emotionally with this one, keep you guessing, and scare you with…the possibilities.

To what extent do your fictions challenge the censorship behind commercial literary representations of sex and do you think the limits set by publishing constitute a form of social engineering?

I run into censorship very rarely these days. I find it interesting that not very long ago — ten years? twenty? — everybody was worried about where to draw the line(s) on sex. Now almost nobody does from what I can see. And we’re living in a society which is otherwise far more repressed than the 60s or 70s or even 90s. I doubt there would have been a MASTERS OF SEX ten years ago to throw our present-day repressions back in our faces, because we didn’t need it then, because today looks a whole lot like the 1950s with all its attendant bullshit. We apparently need reminding that we haven’t come very far at all. That’s where art steps in. My rules for my own serious work in this regard are simple. (I say serious because I also write sillysex now and then.) Keep it up close and personal. And as best you can, remember how sex feels like in all its permutations, both physical and emotional — and not how you’d have liked it to have been.

Do you think we live in an age of conformity and that people are frightened of being alienated from the right crowd?

Since the Depression and World War II, conformity has held a very strong lure for Americans. There’s safety of all kinds to be had in numbers, and in instantly recognizable niches, in the comfy and familiar. There’s nothing really wrong with that unless you add a large dose of fear. Which we’re getting daily thanks to all the talking heads and their sponsors in the media. When is the last time you switched on the news and somebody wasn’t trying to scare you? Is your money safe? Are your kids safe? Is your very life safe? Well gee, we hope so, say the media, but maybe not, and just in case lets argue this till we’re blue in the face and talking loudly over one another in what sounds very much like fear. I call these the Anxiety Professionals. But don’t worry, here’s a very cute baby with a really cute puppy and a SUPER cute kitten to e-mail to all your friends. You stupid fuck you. Till next time. Thanks for watching.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

Lucky McKee and I are working on an as-yet-untitled book-slash-film and we’re well on our way into it. Having just as much fun as we did on the first two, so if you liked those you may very well like this one. Meantime there’s a book of essays in the works called WHAT THEY WROTE. Me on other people’ writing. That should be available shortly.

Thanks Jack for a perceptive interview.

Jack Ketchum photo © Steve Thornton

Links:

Find everything Jack Ketchum at his website: all his novels, novels adapted to film, awards, social media links, the whole nine.

Pick up a copy of I’m Not Sam at Amazon US and UK

And The Woman at Amazon US and UK

All editions and covers for I’m Not Sam are here and for The Woman are here.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With A.J. Colucci

A.J. Colucci is the critically acclaimed author of science thrillers. She spent 15 years as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor and writer for corporate America. She has a new novel out, Seeders. A.J. met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about her new release and the use of enclosures to explore lawlessness.

Tell us about Seeders.

The story is a terrifying journey into the amazing world of plants. The book opens with George Brookes, a brilliant but reclusive plant biologist living on a remote Canadian island. After his mysterious death, the heirs to his estate arrive on the island, including his daughter, her teenage children and Jules Beecher, a friend and pioneer in plant neurobiology. As Jules begins investigating the laboratory and scientific papers left by George, he comes to realize that his mentor may have achieved a monumental scientific breakthrough: communication between plants and humans. Within days, the island begins to have strange and violent effects on the group, especially Jules who becomes obsessed with George’s journal, a strange fungus growing on every plant and tree, and horrible secrets that lay buried in the woods.

A lot of the book is based on plant neurobiology, a growing field of study. Recent discoveries show that plants use all five senses, make decisions, learn and remember. They communicate constantly with insects, fungi and each other. They also can defend themselves against predators, including humans, and sometimes in deadly ways. It’s amazing, just the other day a study came out from the University of Missouri which reveals that plants can hear themselves being eaten alive. All of these facts about plants sparked the idea for the book and set the grounds for the story.

Islands are useful enclosures for the literary exploration of unknown predatory threats, since they isolate characters and exist lawlessly, a case in point being HG Wells’s The Island Of Doctor Moreau, where a scientist is experimenting with mutations. How does the island work dramatically and thematically in your novel?

That’s a good question. In Seeders, the island is a vital part of the story because, as you said, it prevents the characters from escaping their dire situation and creates a sense of chaos. But even worse, the island itself is a kind of monster trying to destroy them. The trees, the fungi are everywhere and there is no safe place to hide.

The island also represents the world of nature turning on mankind. I’ve seen it compared to Island of Dr. Moreau and that’s quite a compliment. I do agree with H.G. Well’s messages on humanity and interfering with nature. I hope that comes across in my book.

Do you believe in James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and to what extent do you think humanity is mutating?

I’m no expert on Gaia theory, but I do think the earth is a self-regulating system where living and non-living organisms influence each other, and to some extent keep everything in balance. I think humanity is mutating constantly, but not quickly. I’m intrigued by all kinds of theories that pertain to evolution. I studied quite a few of them while writing Seeders, including those of Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist who has published controversial papers on plant and animal behavior, telepathy and consciousness. His theory of Morphic Fields proposes that memory is inherent in nature and that much of evolution is a result of habits. It explains things like why an ant looks like an ant instead of a banana and how our bodies are able to simply form into human shapes. He believes that cells remember over time how to organize themselves. It’s a theory that makes fascinating reading.

What do you make of the conflict between Darwinism and Theocracy in the US?

I believe everyone has a right to their opinion, but it’s frightening to see the religious right in this country wielding so much power in politics, especially where education is concerned. Evolution is taught in school because scientific facts support it. I’m sure if scientists find solid proof of creationism, it will be added to the curriculum.

Who are your literary influences?

I grew up reading a lot of Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes stories and classics by Orwell, Vonnegut, and Wells. The author who got me into science thrillers was Michael Crichton, but I later discovered Douglas Preston, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Maberry, Scott Sigler and James Rollins. I think Carl Sagan very much influenced my story ideas. My books have a touch of horror, and part of that comes from a good dose of Stephen King.

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

Personally, I like the feel of a book in my hands, but I do read eBooks too. Anything that gets more people reading is fine with me. My biggest concern is that authors will continue to be paid unfairly for eBooks. Right now, there’s a lot of debate about how much a book is worth, especially if there’s no printing involved. I’d like to see authors having more say in their future, more control over their work.

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

It’s true that in order to describe all the horrors in life in dramatic detail, a writer must have a bit of an icy heart. When I’m working on a passage that’s truly gory, I’m usually in the ‘zone,’ where I put myself right in the scene so that it feels very real, but at the same time there’s no sense of revulsion. I’m guessing writers have an ‘off’ switch in their brains, but that’s a good thing, because it allows authors to be instruments of change, exposing the most heinous aspects of society and human nature such as slavery, war, rape, murder. They can make readers understand injustice by becoming emotionally invested. For that I say, thank goodness for writers and their icy hearts.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m trying out a new genre, a crime thriller. I have to say it’s liberating to rely more on my imagination and less on research because with science thrillers you really have to get every detail right. Today I went a little crazy and went nearly an entire chapter without having to look something up. That feels pretty great.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

I’m doing some local writer discussions and I try to stay active with ITW, which is a wonderful organization for thriller writers. This year I’m a judge for their Thriller Award’s short story category. Most of my time I’ll spend with my family, catching up on my reading and, of course, lots of writing.

What is the best writing advice you ever heard?

Years ago, a friend gave me a tip on learning to write like the pros. He said, takeout a pad and paper and copy the first page of your favorite book. I thought that sounded kind of nuts, but I gave it a try. I hand-wrote the first couple paragraphs from books by Stephen King, David Baldacci and Dennis Lehane. What a surprise! You can learn so much about description, dialogue and technique from that simple exercise, writing like the greats rather than just reading them.

Thank you A.J. for a perceptive and informative interview.

Links:

Get a copy of ‘Seeders’ at Amazon US and UK, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and IndieBound

Read more about A.J. Colucci and her books at her website

Find A.J. on Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Eryk Pruitt

Eryk Pruitt is a screen writer and film maker. His first novel is called Dirtbags. Set in a recession hit Southern town, its central character dreams of becoming a serial killer and is asked to carry out a hit. Eryk met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about justice and the frontier.

Tell us about Dirtbags.

DIRTBAGS tells the story of Calvin Cantrell, a guy with a dim future, living in the dying Southern mill town of Lake Castor. When local sleazy restaurateur Tom London approaches Calvin to murder his ex-wife, Calvin sees an opportunity to kick start a career as a murderer-for-hire. Along the way, we find out more about London, as well as Rhonda Cantrell, the poor thing married to Calvin.

Calvin is a man with a lot of hate inside him, but he hopes it’s something he can use to make a little bit of money and improve his station in life. He’s watched plenty others make their mark, and standing in the shadow of the mill that shuttered and moved jobs to China or wherever, he knows he’s got to act soon. How he goes about it is funny, gruesome, clever and shocking.

I packed it chock full of twists and turns and hopefully a couple surprises. This story is my love letter to classic crime stories, as well as to the American South, which I love. I have called it a “chicken-fried episode of Dateline NBC,” one I reckon will have to do until we get our own CSI franchise down here…

My chief influences behind the writing of this novel are Jim Thompson, Daniel Woodrell, Clay Reynolds, William Gay, and Flannery O’Connor. I read everything I could get my fingers on and made sure to write down what bubbled forth. This is my first novel, although I have written several scripts for production and over thirty short stories for publication.

I am also including the description I used in queries:

The blame for a county-wide murder spree lies at the feet of three people broken by a dying mill town: Calvin, a killer; London, a cook; and Rhonda, the woman who loves them both. Neither they, nor the reader, see the storm brewing until it’s too late in this Southern Gothic noir that adds a transgressive, chicken-fried twist to a story ripped straight from the pages of a true crime novel or an episode of Dateline NBC.

Calvin Cantrell searches for meaning in life and believes he stumbled across it when approached by Tom London to murder his meddling ex-wife. However, Calvin discovers things about both himself and Corrina London during his trip to Dallas to do the deed – things that have horrible repercussions to himself and the small town from which he hails. Meanwhile, Tom London feels the noose tighten as both the local Sheriff and his current wife begin putting together puzzle pieces after Corrina’s horrific murder. And could Rhonda Cantrell’s disastrous luck with men do more damage to the community than her serial killer husband or philandering lover?

Every so often, literature offers us a glimpse of where humanity succeeds.

This is not that story.

How central is the idea of justice to the novel?

Justice is important in DIRTBAGS, both in the serving it and the not having it delivered. I think sometimes there is a more powerful story given when proper justice is not meted and doled.

For instance, I grew up watching old westerns on TV with my dad, shows like The Lone Ranger and Rifleman. In each of those shows, the good guy wins and the criminal gets caught. If someone does wrong, they are taught a lesson. Fast forward to now and my reality says something starkly different. The good guy does not always win. The villain is not always a bad guy. The smug and self-centered are often rewarded. It’s frustrating and terrifying and often makes me want to throw a shitty book or DVD against the wall, but that’s a feeling and one I hope I am effectively able to communicate with my stories.

I also believe that justice is subjective. In regards to DIRTBAGS, one of the main characters is a young man named Phillip Krandall, who joins Calvin Cantrell on his murder-for-hire scheme. Phillip is a failed school shooter, a man who never went through with his plans on a warm Spring day back in high school. He was bullied and sullen and weird, and if you were to ask Phillip about justice, he’d say it was never served because all those mean and vicious people were allowed to grow up and get married and have children while getting fat, never once thinking of him and what effect they had on him. Had he gone through with it, we would be talking about a different sort of justice. But he didn’t, and that misappropriation of justice fuels Phillip’s actions during the first third of the book.

Another character, Judge Grimm Menkin, has a more grounded view of justice. He is “eye for an eye” and all that. When he sniffs out wrongdoing on his re-election campaign, he cuts it out, plain and simple. It’s all black and white for Judge Menkin, with very little grey. Justice served… but the man who was fired doesn’t think so, and he must now seek his own justice.

Also, I don’t feel justice is “central” to the novel, because the characters who spark the action are not the types to stick with any one thing. Their motivations are more fluid and pliable. Just as Phillip Krandall aborted his day of vengeance at the literal last minute, so go several other plans in the book. More so than justice, I would say the central theme of the novel is “loyalty,” or more appropriately, “disloyalty,” as evidenced in my epigraph. Had Krandall stayed loyal to his true vision, things would have turned out different. Had any one character stayed loyal, it would have been a vastly different year for the citizens of Lake Castor. But disloyalty moves them and sometimes, for that, there is no justice.

How do you see the social dialogue between law and religion operating in the US today?

I see folks using religion to enforce the laws they want. Not even the laws, really, but to justify their own bad behavior. I hope I am able to tap into that effectively with DIRTBAGS, as more than one character can quote the Bible.

I am for gay marriage, and I think if we removed antiquated religious values from the equation, it would be perfectly legal for two people in love to celebrate a union. I am pro-choice, for the legalization of marijuana, and think it should be a felony to beat your spouse. I also prefer to trust men of science when it comes to climate control initiatives. However, most opponents of these views retreat behind a Bible or scripture or religious beliefs when it comes to addressing these issues.

I grew up in a Catholic household and attended Catholic school, so I was ingrained with the belief that, no matter how horrible my sin, I could start all over after confessing it to the priest on Saturday. Imagine that! All the impure thoughts and fights and curse words and crimes, and after a series of prayers in a pew — fingers dancing over rosary beads — and tabula rasa! I am free to receive sacrament and run forth to sin again. When I see a man (like Tom London in DIRTBAGS) hide behind religion or family in order to hurt another person, it justifies my views of religion.

I think a lot of people will stop at nothing to get what they want, and if they can find a Bible verse or a congregation or hell, even a religion that will back them and help them get it, then they will do it. But over here in the US, I’d say the Jesus freaks are damning our people and our planet straight to hell, one prayer at a time, and the sooner we set fire to all the Bibles and Torahs and Korans, the sooner we can start living a civilized and peaceable life.

Because the current kind of social order isn’t order at all.

What do you make of the gun culture in the US?

That’s a tough one. I am more exposed to the anti-gun culture than the gun culture, ever since I moved to the East Coast. I grew up in Texas, so I’ve never known anything but guns. My grandfather taught me to shoot by killing wolves on his cattle farm, then we’d take the wolf carcass and hang it on the fence as warning to other predators. First thing I ever killed was a crane poaching bass from his pond, and I immediately felt horrible about it. I still see it today: a pristine white bird with a solitary kiss of blood on its slender, limp neck.

I do not think criminalizing guns will curb violence. If you want to do somebody harm, you’ll figure out a way to do it. Americans (and mankind) are inventive. I think most of the mass murders and school shootings happen because people are crazy, not solely because they are armed. If you want to do something about people shooting up schools or movie theaters or post offices, a better tactic would be to do something about the American pharmaceutical companies or mental health reforms or even disciplining kids better. I’m dead serious about that last part; my tendencies went a bit dark when I was younger, but my dad spanked the weird out of me pretty quick. I find several correlations between the rapid rise of mass shootings by young people and the decline of corporal punishment. Tie in the rise of medications and you have a winner.

But America has always had guns. To be honest, I’m thankful for it. I look back at every favorite movie and every favorite book of mine and deconstruct the plot and action and find the story is impossible without a gun. Imagine Reservoir Dogs without a gun. It sounds entirely cold and selfish, but as a crime writer and reader, guns are an important element in my life. Besides, when it comes time to rob a bank, what are we going to use — a knife?

Do you think the frontier is still a key part of the American psyche?

This is a great question. The answer is “yes.” Like I said, I grew up on old TV Westerns which were chock full of frontier. And just as much as “Manifest Destiny” ruled our forefathers, it still works out here. While there may be fewer physical frontiers, there still exists the search for them. I’m not talking about the clichéd “final frontier” in outer space, although that’s extensively mined for material, but everyday frontiers. Which is why the internet is so popular, in my opinion. It’s a whole new world we can explore and create new options, until folks figure out how to regulate it and make money and soon it’s a norm of society just like anything else.

Even in publishing there are new frontiers. Most the old ways have gone out the window, but that’s only opened the door for new rules. Self-publishing, eBooks, etc etc etc. It’s an interesting time to live in because old mainstays are constantly being taken down in favor of new ones.

I also think this explains the big rise in apocalyptic fiction lately. When I was younger, I loved zombie films and stories, but as I grew up, I realized it wasn’t the undead that drew me to those kinds of stories, but rather the post-apocalyptic nature. The downfall of society and what emerges after. When the world as we know it is forced to begin again and new hierarchies are created… I think audiences respond to that in a big way because the “frontier” is so ingrained in our psyche that we constantly wish to recreate the need for one, physical or otherwise.

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

It’s not my favorite thing in the world, but like a Baz Luhrmann movie, “if it gets people to read…” I mean, I doubt my book would have been read by a fraction of the amount of the people who read it were it not for the Kindle. Now people swallow eBooks whole with their fingers and palms and maybe those same people wouldn’t have sneezed at a book otherwise. That being said, my first demand from the publishers of DIRTBAGS was there be a presence in print. I don’t believe it is a real book until it has pages that can be turned. I may be old fashioned (as discussed in earlier questions) but I constantly recall the scene in The Twilight Zone when Burgess Meredith’s character, who loves to read, is put in a post-apocalyptic situation where he has all the time in the world to read… then breaks his glasses. Horrifying. I’ve already exposed my predilection for post-apocalyptic scenarios (bring it on!) and one of the first things to go will be our electronic devices. They are not built to last. They are a machine, an Etch-A-Sketch with a limited lifespan. I have three towering bookshelves in my office, cram-packed with some of the greatest books ever and am already preparing for a fourth (don’t tell my wife). That’s how I feel about it, short answer.

Longer answer, is that it’s a revolution. Not one I’m excited about, but a revolution all the same. There are downsides, besides those mentioned, like it has cheapened the product that I make. You have folks that won’t spend more than ninety-nine cents on an eBook and who can blame them? It’s ones and zeros. My book is sold at $2.99 in electronic formats, which damns me to another year of a day job. But I hear from people who ask who I think I am, pricing it so high. Seriously. But this is the price we pay for the revolution.

The upside is a widening of the playing field. No longer is New York City the arbiter or gatekeeper of what makes its way into the literary community. The eBook field creates all these side doors and loopholes and secret passageways to get our stuff out there and work on getting noticed. It allows smaller publishers to exist and once they get their toehold, they can move up or down a ladder or two and help get more of my stuff out there. I’ve been inundated with great books by indie publishers lately and this is all thanks to the ebook revolution, the first domino.

Myself, though, I won’t read an eBook. I spend too much time looking at a screen and consider a book to be a break from work. I don’t like publishing online exclusively and can’t stand contributor e-copies. I like turning pages. I’m old school, I guess, but I know where my bread is buttered.

Do you think we live in an age of surveillance?

Absolutely. I can remember doing bad things when I was a kid and it was like the Wild West, man. You could toilet paper the school or maybe shoplift some candy bars and get away with it. These days… They installed one of those red light cameras up the street. That’s juking the game. The entire half of cops and robbers is getting away with it. You can’t even steal third base these days without folks huddling around a monitor to see if you were got away with it or not.

It’s mortifying, especially as a guy who loves to read and write crime. Remember Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple or any number of fictional detectives who, after a systematic deduction of motives, alibis, and clues, could determine the guilty party and expose them all before a jury of their peers? No more, man. That house is wired for sound. There are eyes in the walls. How anticlimactic would it be now for the detective to show up on the scene and all he has to do is rewind the tape to catch the killer? No, we’ve been gypped.

I watch the news at noon every day and it’s not footage shot by cameramen anymore. Just today, I watched a replay of TMZ’s released footage of Ray Rice’s assault on his wife in the elevator, security footage of a man known to be the last person to see a missing girl alive and is now the lead suspect, and video clips of a road rage incident gone wild. Used to, I would fantasize about getting away with the perfect crime and, even if you were to outsmart the DNA, you’d still have to wait for a massive power outage before you could do anything without fear of being caught. Now you can’t even flip off another driver without running the risk of being uploaded onto YouTube and shamed.

Does it make us better people? Being forced to behave? I guess that’s a question for another day.

Yes, they’re watching us. The only mystery is who “they” are.

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

I dig it, although I’d bet I have more than a splinter. I discovered early on that I have an unusual method of processing tragedy. I suppose my earliest recollection was the Challenger explosion. I was home sick from school when that happened and I couldn’t put it together in my head. Astronauts weren’t supposed to die and yet I’d seen it on TV with my own two eyes. Then my dad comes home with a joke (“What does NASA stand for? Need Another Seven Astronauts”) and I lost my mind laughing. For the next week I did all I could to collect Challenger jokes and eventually was sent home from school for retelling them.

I don’t use laughter to process tragedy anymore, but I am still breath-taken by the reaction. When I was on the fourth rewrite of DIRTBAGS, I felt something was missing, something felt hollow. I tried to communicate a small town’s fear of this impending dread at their doorstep, the murderous Calvin Cantrell out there, somewhere in the woods stalking them and it felt like a ghost story. I’d long given up being afraid of ghost stories, so I felt no connection. I kept writing words on the screen and then magic happened. This last day of rewrites was the day Boston went on lockdown in search of Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon Bomber. Man, I was glued to the TV set, running back and forth from wall-to-wall coverage and my computer screen. I rewrote with a frenzy because imagine that happening in my small fictional town of Lake Castor. Suddenly, the search for Calvin was alive and that fear and unknowing and uncertainty could fill my pages and give my story scope. I felt horrible for all the people touched by that tragedy, but like I said, I ain’t afraid of ghost stories. Not when there’s all that tragedy out there for us to cower from.

There are images I will never be able to unsee. ATF agents climbing into the windows of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, and crawling back out shot to hell. People jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center. The resolute calm in a man I’d just watched have two fingers chewed off by an injured dog. I am shocked by these things, sure. But I think if I’m fortunate enough to establish a connection between what a reader experienced and what I have written, then I think I have done a good job.

My goal with DIRTBAGS was to offer a flip side of the coin. We’ve all been horrified at true crime stories, especially those on DATELINE NBC or 20/20. You know, murder-for-hire, or serial killers or school shooters or predatory strip club owners and asshole restaurateurs and the like. I wanted to take all of those stories and bring them down to our level. Bring them down to the level of folks we see every day. Make people see the extra stuff behind these tabloid types. These days, when you watch the retrospectives of 9/11, they cut away before the people jump from the buildings. They cut away before the journalist is beheaded. They won’t show us the final moments before the shooting instructor is cut down by his own UZI. I remember, when those people jumped, I didn’t look away. I think, in the end, our readers will thank us for not looking away. And yes, that takes more than a splinter.

Either that, or we’re all sociopaths.

What are you working on right now?

I’ve got a couple things. I wrote and directed two short films over the summer that are both in the editing phase. The first one, “Liyana, On Command” is 11 minutes long and we are finalizing the sound and it should be entered in the first of its film festivals. This is my 5th film to see produced, although my first to direct. The second is “The HooDoo of Sweet Mama Rosa” and it’s about 25 minutes long and we’re just beginning the editing process. It’s scary, and perhaps convinced me that my strengths remain in writing and not so much in the other.

My second novel HASHTAG will be released by 280 Steps in the Spring of 2015, and I am awaiting edits from them.

My current WIP, which I am working on between these questions (and for the next month) has the working title THE JACK OFF. It’s the first rewrite, so it’s rolling kind of slow. It’s a story of identity and drugs as an industry. It makes me laugh out loud in places, which is either a good or bad sign.

THE JACK OFF takes approximately 90% of my brain power. I think it will resonate with people who appreciated DIRTBAGS.

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

1. Take notes. I can’t tell you how many good ideas have gone down the drain because I didn’t figure out how to keep a piece of paper in my back pocket until a couple years ago. TAKE NOTES.

2. All adults are full of shit. If I could go back, I’d award myself with the revelation that my parents, teachers, priests, cops, ALL ADULTS were full of shit and just out for themselves and until I would meet the woman I eventually married (my wife Lana), we are all alone in this thing and nothing they say can be taken at face value. Especially now that I am an adult, I see how easy it is to be full of shit and how necessary it sometimes seems. But as a young man, I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Thank you Eryk for a perceptive and informative interview.

Links:

‘Dirtbags’ is available at Amazon US and UK and these fine booksellers:

The Regulator – Durham, NC

The Purple Crow – Hillsborough, NC

The Blue Phoenix – Alpena, MI

Atomic Books – Baltimore, MD

Carmichael’s Bookstore – Louisville, KY

Visit Eryk Pruitt’s website and Amazon author page for info on and buy links for all his works.

Follow Eryk on Twitter

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Les Edgerton

Les Edgerton is a highly versatile author who moves between genres. While known for his gritty and real crime writing, he often challenges contemporary prejudice in his novels. His novels The Bitch and The Rapist are two great examples of this. Les met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about fiction and ideology.

Tell us about the progress The Rapist is making.

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Get a copy of “The Rapist”
at Amazon US and UK

If by progress, you mean sales, it’s holding its own, Richard. Which means—as it does to most writers—not nearly enough!

What has been extremely gratifying to me are the reviews it’s been garnering from the people I respect the most—fellow writers. Their response has been absolutely wonderful and I’m basking in it. These are the smartest people in the world about literature and almost universally The Rapist has received raves.

However, it isn’t in bookstores and that’s not the fault of my publisher. It’s the fault of the system. My agent is working very hard to correct that. He’s actively seeking a legacy publisher for it and has the blessing of my publisher at New Pulp Press—Jon Bassoff—in this quest. As much as indie publishers have done for writers—and it’s an awful lot—they’re still hamstrung at gaining mass distribution and getting actual books into bookstores. Hopefully, that will change at some point, but currently not much headway is taking place. Also, getting a book distributed by Ingram’s and/or Baker & Taylor, is the only avenue to getting reviews done by well-respected reviewers, such as the NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, et al. And it’s only by getting those kinds of publications to provide reviews or coverage that filmmakers ever find out about the book. And—face it—that’s the Holy Grail of most of us as writers. Indie books, by and large, aren’t even open to most industry awards, although this seems to be changing a bit. (Not enough, nor fast enough…) To see our books make bona fide bestseller’s lists (not those sub-sub-sub-sub-set of some obscure Amazon rankings) and to get noticed by Hollywood is what will transform the indie side of publishing and so far, mass distribution is the missing (and crucial) element.

So, in answer to your question, it’s making good progress in sales and exposure within the limitations of the indie publishing universe, but not the kind of progress other books make which are put out by legacy publishers. If an indie can somehow figure out how to get their books in the Ingram pipeline and therefore on the shelves of B&N, that’s a publisher who’s going to rise up and become a major player in literature.

My fervent hope is that publishers such as NPP, Down&Out Books, Blasted Heath and those kinds of magnificent publishers can someday figure out a way to get major distributors and chain bookstores on board. Look at the lists of just these three (and at least a dozen more) and Random House doesn’t even come close to the overall literary quality of the books these folks are putting out. But, if they’re not seen, it doesn’t matter. And that’s the shame of today’s publishing. They’re restricted to the Intergnat. Not enough, alas.

If I were an indie publisher, I think I’d be looking to band with other indies and trying to make a case to Ingram’s and also to the major chains such as B&N to get their books on the bookshelves and get covered by the major media. As it is, most don’t have the financial resources to do it alone, but I have to think that if say five of the best-heeled indies got together and presented a case for Ingram’s and B&N to take their product and put it on the shelves and store it in the warehouses, a major breakthrough could be made. What keeps that from happening now is that no one house has the resources to physically publish enough copies of the books to make it worthwhile for Ingram’s or B&N to distribute or stock them on their shelves. I think someday a visionary will come up with a plan to organize a consortium that would take a book like The Rapist, print 10,000 copies and then they’d be able to sit at the poker table with Random House and those folks and get books out to the buying public. That’s the major difference—the legacy boys have the bucks to print a significant number of books, send them to Ingram’s and made available quickly to bookstores as needed with the flick of a computer button. If I was younger I’d try to do just that, but that’s a job that’s going to require enormous energy to get the right parties together and talking.

Just think about how much better a novel such as Neil Smith’s All The Young Warriors, Richard Godwin’s Mr. Glamour, or my own, The Rapist, would do if it was on the shelves at B&N? Hell, we might even rival those Fifty Shades of Crap books that are on those same shelves. So much book-buying is done on impulse when a customer browsing the shelves happens on a copy of a book, picks it up, thumbs through a few pages… and then takes it to the sales counter and the person standing behind them in line spies it, asks about it and then buys his own copy? Our books don’t have that chance… We can’t even finance our own book tours since B&N and other chains won’t order our books unless they’re in the distributor pipeline. I think the key to mass market success lies in the major distributors.

There are small publishers who’ve done just this. Algonquin Books, Gray Wolf—there are several. The deal is, they published enough copies that Ingram’s could financially take a chance on them as could B&N. Their editorial acumen was good enough that the major reviewers would also look at their books. I really think if a few of the really top indie publishers banded together and started out with a few of their best titles, this strategy could work for them as well.

But, then, maybe I’m just naïve… wouldn’t be the first time…

How does it compare to The Bitch?

Two entirely different kinds of books, so probably not fair to compare them. The Bitch is a noirish thriller, while The Rapist is a more existential, literary novel. For some reason, I seem to have gotten labeled as a “noir” writer, but in actuality, I’ve only written a few novels that fall into that category. I’m not complaining! Just a bit puzzled. I do think what they each have in common is that both explore and plumb the dark parts of the human psyche.

As far as sales, The Bitch has a more commercial appeal. Although both titles are examples of how to irritate the PC folks, The Rapist seems to scare away more potential buyers because of its title. I kind of figured that would be the case for both, but my contrarian nature basically said “Fuck it” to both sentiments. If there’s anything I abhor more than PCism, I haven’t encountered it yet. Especially when it rears its ignorant head among so-called “intellectuals” and “academics.” More and more, I find a more anal group doesn’t exist. Freedom of speech and freedom of thought don’t seem to exist with these folks in any great degree. I used to teach at various universities and haven’t yet experienced a more restrictive atmosphere in any other milieu. In fact there’s a decided and vocal bias against thought that goes against the prevailing political mood and if you don’t subscribe to the ruling thought if you want to keep a job, you either learn to simply keep silent or else say fuck it. I took the latter tack and that’s why I won’t teach in a university these days. They’re very rigid and very close-minded. And, in my view, very ignorant.

Vicki Lambros Gund, who wrote the review you have here, presented it to two scholarly review publications and it was turned down. The reason? The way Vicki presented it to me, they’re run by a group of “feminists” who rejected it out of hand because of the title and what they supposed it was about. As you know, it’s not much about rape nor are there numbers of rape scenes, but simply a look inside a person’s soul who was accused of rape. One might think that a group of people who are against something like the heinous crime of rape might want to investigate something that reveals the inner workings of such a criminal, but like most people who belong to groups and live their lives by bumper stickers, that would require the process of intellectual thought and that’s a lot of work, I presume… Throwing a bumper sticker on their Prius and locking arms and singing Kumbayah takes a lot less effort…

Am I bitter or pissed? Well… yeah. Not because of my little book so much as I am in the general landscape of literature, especially in the U.S. I’ve found a much more open audience in Europe. Seems there are still large numbers of people there who actually enjoy seeing and considering other points of view. Not so much over here… at least among the ruling class… If you think I’m simply being paranoid, take a look at most of the major literary awards. Most are given to folks who toe the party line. Kind of a circle jerk…

Sorry. This is the reason I write. I hate. A lot. And hard. I especially hate small-minded people who’ve made up their minds to become part of the herd and have sold their souls for the congress of other small minds.

It’s why I will always come running any time you want to do an interview, Richard. You have one of the few remaining bastions of free thought and free exchange of ideas in literature that I’m aware of.

While political correctness is driven by ideology, history evinces evidence of the lack of Art under dictatorships. Given that, do you think that pc is the enemy of Art?

I think a truer statement has never been made! The destruction of freedom of speech (which is the direct manifestation of freedom of thought), is the biggest enemy of art that has ever existed, and this is exactly what PCism accomplishes—restricting freedom of speech. What makes it even more insidious is that many who find themselves reacting to a political correct culture, not only practice it themselves but exert pressure on others as well. At least in an overtly repressive society where freedom of expression is regulated by the state, there exists a healthy underground of dissent. In a society that has largely given itself over to a pc culture, Pogo’s dictum becomes the pulse of the society—“We have met the enemy and it is us.”

As it pertains to literature, truth is central to the quality. There simply isn’t any way to achieve truth when PCism is introduced into the formula. The basic unit of writing is the word. If we begin to use words that are in existence solely because they spare someone’s feelings—real or imagined—we’ve veered from that truth. Instead of the beauty that truth brings, we’ve created fool’s gold. We’ve seen the result of PCism in the version of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. PCism has reduced one of the great works of literature into a pathetic kind of Hardy Boys crap.

PCism isn’t something new. It’s just the newest form of censorship we’ve had to deal with. Like many grandiose ideas, there is a noble intent at the center of this outlook, but also like many other popular notions, it has been perverted until it is the antithesis of what it originated as. Being PC nowadays amounts to out and out censorship in my opinion. For every writer like Bukowski, William Vollmann, and David Sedaris who breaks through and becomes a cult hero, there are hundreds of writers who are being stifled, vilified, and destroyed, simply because they do not preach the party’s message nor do they conform to the parameters set up by the PC folks who seem to be in charge. Too often they are stifling themselves by trying to placate society. What used to be considered simply bad taste nowadays takes on a more sinister connotation and that is dangerous if we value freedom of thought and value the time-honored tradition of the debate of ideas which is the only viable method for advancing knowledge and understanding. And, which constitutes true art.

Plato himself spoke about political correctness in The Republic, when he said:“Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only.” How about that.

Author Gordon Weaver told me in an interview years ago that, “If our special interest, as writers and/or editors, is the precise use of language toward the end of a viable perception of and effect on reality, we may argue there is some virtue implicit in any utterance (written or oral) that confronts the consensus of any gathering.” He gives an example. “There is a cost that will be paid by all concerned if one tells a Polack joke in the presence of Poles, but I contend the cost is greater if one stifles or sanitizes the anecdote.” Gordon has something here, I think. Weaver also told me that academicians are perhaps the newest bullies on the censorship block and perhaps the most dangerous of all. He stated that, “There is a greater danger, it seems to me, when the censors come from the ranks of the presumably ‘enlightened’. It is not surprising that a number of college and university communities nurture factions who wish to control free speech; it is unsettling when more sophisticated citizens (faculty) add their clout to movements desiring to police our utterance in the interests of what minority or another deems politically incorrect.”

Simply as it pertains to literature itself, PCism influences every aspect of writing and publishing.

If PCism wasn’t such an insidious threat to free speech, most of it would be laughable. Just this week, reports have surfaced that the word “illegal” as applied to illegal aliens shouldn’t be used in government reports. That’s just plain moronic. A person who comes across our border who isn’t a citizen and doesn’t have permission from the government to enter has just broken a law. Therefore, he or she is only one thing. Illegal. And, not an illegal “immigrant.” They’re not immigrating—they’re entering the country illegally. They’re an illegal alien. Nothing but. The sad thing is that there are people who will accept this kind of language seriously. They don’t want to hurt the feelings of people who’ve broken the law? Okay…

We’ve got government agencies targeting individuals and groups for their thoughts and speech. The IRS is currently under Congressional investigation for just that. This is something every single American should be incensed at but are they? Nope. As long as they continue to get their “free” crap from the government, they’re happy. (Reality alert: It ain’t “free.” It’s paid for with our taxes and our freedoms.) Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that “whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” These words remain true today. What’s truly scary is that the mainstream press is fully complicit in preventing free speech.

What scares me the most is that universities should be the bastion of free thought but the state of the matter is that free debate of ideas is rapidly disappearing from the college campus. As more and more writers come out of university settings and are being influenced by teachers with a decided political bent, the writing they produce becomes more and more insipid. These same writers take over the litmags and editor positions at publishing houses and impose their political beliefs on those who submit, publishing only those that can pass the PC test in the content of their creative material. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.” Well, it’s in great danger of doing just that. It’s about halfway up the anus.

Alisa Smith, co-editor of The Marlet, the student newspaper at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, says, “Universities are trying to shut down thought, rather than newspapers. All the articles that you see are about how PC’s have sort of gotten a grip on society and how people can’t say what they want anymore. I guess it’s like a left-wing phenomenon.”

Virtually every publisher in the country, from the smallest litmag to the largest publishing conglomerate, is terrified of antagonizing any reader whatsoever, unless the person offended is not part of a highly-organized, highly-vocal political group. It seems everybody in America has now organized, has a group with a slogan, a newsletter, a home page on the Internet, and a secret handshake. The battle is being waged over who gets ultimate control of the presses. And it doesn’t matter who wins. We all lose. What we lose is freedom of expression. And once that happens, we are done as a free society. I go to Gordon Weaver once again, who said it as best as it can be said. “Censorship from without is bad for the language, bad for those who speak or write it; self-imposed censorship, whatever the motive is worse. If you won’t say what you think, you run the risk of losing the powers of both speech and thought. I suspect we’ll be safe just as long as we refuse to accept censorship for anyone.”

I’d like to leave you with one of my favorite quotes. In the preface to the infamous Story of O, Jean Paulhan wrote, “Dangerous books are those that restore us to our natural state of danger.”

Yes, they do.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

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Pre-order a copy of “The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping” at Amazon US and UK

Several things. The launching of my latest novel, a black comedy crime caper titled THE GENUINE, IMITATION, PLASTIC KIDNAPPING from Down & Out Books in October. This one was a true labor of love. It began life as a short story in The South Carolina Review, then expanded into a novel as well as a screenplay. The screenplay is still being shopped and placed as a finalist in both the Writer’s Guild and Best of Austin screenplay competitions. I liked the characters so much I’m writing a sequel and I’ve never done that. In fact, I see several sequels in the future provided I live long enough to write them.

It’s the story of Pete Halliday, a degenerate gambler who was busted out of baseball for… gambling. It picks up ten years later in New Orleans where Pete retired to after hanging up his glove and who has a smarmy sidekick named Tommy LeClerc, a part-Indian, full idiot, who keeps inveigling him into hair-brained schemes. Both are heavily into debt to the Italian Mafia to the point of the duo getting rendered room temperature, and Tommy comes up with the bright idea of kidnapping the head of the Cajun Mafia (there are a lot of Mafias in the Big Sleazy), but with a twist. Instead of doing the old-fashioned and boring method of kidnapping, our two heroes plan to amputate Charles Deneuve’s hand and hold that unit for ransom. General mayhem ensues, including a scene where Pete’s new girlfriend, full-time waitress and part-time hooker, Cat, helps him escape the Italian Mafia’s enforcer, Sam “The Bam” Capelleti who just entered the black bar they’re in, by pretending to have Tourettes and screaming racial epithets for a diversion so he can slip out the back door while they’re cutting her throat. Or so Pete assumes, but it turns out Cat is slicker than he thought.

Tommy’s initial scheme is to kidnap the manager of a Kenner supermarket and gain cash by holding the guy’s wife hostage while he retrieves the money from the store safe. But… there’s even a prior to this one as they decide they can’t go into this guy’s neighborhood unless they’re dressed in suits, which neither own. To finance their wardrobe, Tommy lays out a plan where they’ll rob tourists on a streetcar, which goes south when they discover the passengers are better armed than they are and they escape in a hail of bullets. They get a loan and buy the suits and show up at the supermarket guy’s house, only to find out there’s no great love lost between the manager and his bride, and that, too, goes quickly south. It becomes quickly evident why the Indians lost the war… (This is not a PC Indian, btw—Tommy doesn’t believe in any frickin’ Great Spirits and he’s a polluter par excellence…)

Lots of twists and chases through the French Quarters, the Jazz Fest, and other environs and in the end, Pete and Tommy get the loot and then Tommy double-crosses Pete. Deneuve’s hand is returned to its owner, but alas, finds it can’t be reattached as his meathook has suffered severe freezer burn from when the pair hid it in Tommy’s girlfriend Wanda’s freezer under the veal cutlets and didn’t realize one needs to burp a Baggie before freezing.

In the end, Pete gets revenge on Tommy in a particularly ingenious way and he and Cat escape to hide out in the open in Lost Wages by getting plastic surgery to make them look like famous lookalikes, which Vegas is chockfull of. Only problem is, just before their operations by a reputable plastic surgery, Cat spies an ad by a surgeon who offers a cut-rate on such procedures by not having all the frills such as a high-priced office space (he works out of his split-level), nor other unnecessary items such as a licensed nurse, high-priced anesthetics, etc., and they end up looking like celebrities, albeit not the ones they envisioned. Instead of Elvis, Pete ends up looking like Liberace with yellower teeth and Cat? Well, Cat goes around these days not as the Cher she asked for, but more along the lines of Bette Midler with black hair and a Jimmy Durante shnozz. She’s not a happy camper…

This was just a pure-d fun novel to write.

Other things on my plate include an appearance at the Fayetteville, NC public library and then a trip to Bouchercon, both in November.

Richard, I just want to thank you for another great interview! No one out there asks the level of questions that you do. None of those: Where do you get your ideas? What time of day do you write? Twitter of FB? kinds of boring-ass snooze alert questions. It’s such a pleasure and rare treat to be asked intelligent questions! Thank you.

Thank you Les for a perceptive and informative interview.

Links:

Get a copy of The Rapist in Kindle and paperback format at Amazon US and UK

Les’ books pages on Amazon US and UK

His blog is here.

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Mav Skye

Mav Skye writes slipstream subversive fiction. Supergirls is the story of two women corrupted by a lifestyle whose propaganda they feed on, a dystopian narrative of sexual predation hiding inside broken ideals. The protagonists are driven by the desire for wealth and their own conditioning by the fictional heroisms of TV and the myth of the superhero. Mav met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about her novella and the Great American Dream.

Tell us about Supergirls.

Supergirls is the story about two sisters raised in the under shoe of society. They reach for the great American promise, so focused on the stars, so desperate to escape their poverty, they run right off the cliff into that midnight void between dreams and reality. This void is where monsters lay waiting for dreamers, gnashing their teeth like starved piranhas. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is what our founding fathers wished for us, they died for it. As American children we are taught that we deserve all three simply by existing, but really the American promise is more multiple choice, you might achieve one. Heaven help the woman or man who tries to achieve all three.

How do you view the Great American Dream?

My personal views are rather old fashioned and reflected in older sister Jenn’s character. Jenn dreams of a green countryside where the air is fresh and a thousand gems twinkle in the night sky. A cabin sits on a hill, a lazy curl of smoke sauntering out of the chimney. Flowerpots line every porch step. Two rocking chairs sit on the porch, where they’ll rock and watch the stars rise and fall every night. It is the ultimate safe haven vision of tranquility—the opposite of their current life where thugs are regularly knocking down the door of their tiny studio stealing (younger sister) May’s meds and their rent money. They prostitute and work at gas stations to get by.

Americans have been taught that if you work really hard and believe in yourself, your dreams will come true. Jenn and May take this belief a tad too far. Okay, maybe waaaayyyyyy too far.

How does the theme of corruption feature in your writing?

Okay, so my story doesn’t deal so much with political corruption, but of moral corruption.

Jenn and May are born into the sewer of society, their dear little hearts were corrupted long before this tale begins. Their moral compass is skewed, except when it comes to one another. They both are willing to sacrifice anything and everything for the other’s happiness. Problem is, the only tools in their survival tactics toolbox are the seven deadly sins. They are desperate to escape their situation, but the only way out is down, down, down…

It’s easy to justify one “bad” deed if the good you hope to accomplish outweighs the evil. But… that didn’t work out for Walter White did it? Still, we love the mighty Heisenburg and his outrageous behavior, because it’s all for the sake of his family.

Same thing with Jenn and May. They jump into the abyss putting their souls and sanity on the line, for the sake of their love and their dreams.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

There’s a wicked little horror romance I’m hoping to release in the fall called, Wanted: Single Rose. Beta male, Sir Sun, catches the eye of charismatic fox, Velva Jones. It’s a real find when a beautiful stranger sees you for who you truly are and decides to help you blossom into the person you were born to be. Unless, of course, the person you were born to be is a ruthless kills-for-thrills psychopath.

I’ve also written a sequel to SUPERGIRLS called, Night without Stars. I can’t give away too much, but I will say this– the darkness we discover in the first book goes even deeper in the second. I disturbed myself quite a bit writing this. I hope to release it in early 2015.

And I have three previously written novels waiting to be edited and polished– Devil’s Eye, Xscents, and The Dread. So lots of writing and editing, which means lots of fun.I hope my readers have just as good of time reading as I do writing.

Thank you Mav for a perceptive and informative interview.

Links:

Supergirls can be had at Amazon US and UK

Find Mav Skye at her website and on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Chad Eagleton

Chad Eagleton is a crime writer and editor. He recently published a 1950s themed anthology, Hoods, Hot Rods, and Hellcats. He is also writing a biography of the crime author Shane Stevens. Stevens is in my opinion a highly underrated and widely unknown author, whose works demonstrate a fluency and realism that make them stand out. By Reason Of Insanity, a gruelling study of madness and criminality, is Stevens’s most famous work, while Dead City is a classic piece of gritty crime fiction, and they’re arguably Noir, equally unorthodox, and convey a real sense of the criminal underworld. Stevens’s versatility coupled with his secrecy as an author has made him the subject of various inaccurate speculations over the years, and there is hardly any information about him. Chad Eagleton is the only writer I know of who is conducting a meticulous work of research into the author, and he was able to give answers I had been unable to find anywhere else in my search for Stevens. Chad met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about Stevens’s place in crime fiction and the theme of identity in his works.

Much crime fiction presents a sanitised portrait of crime, the fictions of Shane Stevens do not. What is it that fascinates you about his writing and how do you think he sits in the ongoing legacy that is called crime fiction?

A rare photograph of Shane Stevens
Provided by Chad Eagleton

I believe it’s our duty as human beings to confront our world directly and honestly. That duty is double if you are an artist. Hell, it’s not only a duty, it’s a purpose. And from his work, it’s one that Shane Stevens understands implicitly.

In his review of Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice for The Progressive, he writes, “For those of us who believe that the writer must grapple with the moral issues of his day, that he must view himself in the context of events and not just from his own personal needs, these are dangerous times. The urge to be a full-time revolutionary in a country so desperately ill is overwhelming.”

Crime fiction is supposed to be social fiction—I think even more so than “literary fiction”—confronting the issues we currently face as human beings in our society. The problem is that, ultimately, we’re scared and lazy monkeys. It’s much more comforting for us to reduce criminal actions to the purely aberrant: the criminal becomes mutant, his behavior occurring for the same reasons that a baby might be born with six fingers or webbed toes. These actions are then countered through: the might of pure logic/reason; the law-breaking force which exists only to reaffirm the status quo; or because the mutation (the criminal) is faulty, it simply “fails to thrive”. Too often as well, the crime itself becomes the only important thing without any acknowledgment of motivation and circumstance. The heist, the murder for hire, and the million dollar drug-deal are played simply for thrills and to showcase the writer’s ingenuity or capacity to craft empty brutality.

That’s not Stevens’s work. You said it yourself, “Much crime fiction presents a sanitized portrait of crime, the fictions of Shane Stevens do not.” Shane unabashedly confronts his world. Whether that world is the rundown streets of Harlem or the cobblestone streets of Paris, it doesn’t matter. Whether we’re dealing with crooked developers along the Jersey Shore or crooked politicians in Europe’s houses of parliament, it doesn’t matter. Armed with the truth, Stevens confronts.

For that alone, I think he deserves a much bigger place in the legacy that is called crime fiction. Regrettably, I think Shane’s still something of a footnote though—the guy Stephen King talks about in his afterword to The Dark Half. While part of that is probably just luck, I think a good portion of it has to do with us being scared and lazy monkeys. I mean Thomas Harris usually gets credit for creating the serial killer subgenre, but By Reason of Insanity predates Red Dragon by two full years. Harris gets the credit because Lecter is a comic book supervillain without the cape—an ultimately comforting trope. Stevens, on the other hand, gave us Thomas Bishop, a very real and very human monster born from man’s inhumanity to man.

It wasn’t just on the matter of serial killers that Shane Stevens was a seminal writer. By Reason Of Insanity contains one of the earliest examples of identity theft used by a killer. The novel also explores social conditioning and nature. How integral do you think the theme of identity is to the way Stevens portrays criminality?

Identity is essential to Stevens and not just to his portrayal of criminality. I mean, I don’t think you can discuss him or his work without talking about identity. In his writing, the struggle is always about identity, it’s the source for conflicts internal and external. It doesn’t matter which of his novels you’re talking about. It’s always the individual in action against the identity imposed upon them, the identity they’ve taken for themselves (usually to survive), and/or the identity of the other characters. Take The Anvil Chorus, for example. It’s the only book Stevens wrote under his own name in which the sole main character is not a criminal. Now, the novel begins as a police procedural and a murder mystery before you realize it’s actually an international political thriller, but the real conflict comes solely from identity. The main character is a Parisian police inspector investigating the murder of a Nazi war criminal. But the inspector is also a Jew, from Alsace, whose parents died in the Holocaust, and he’s also a distant relative of Alfred Dreyfus on the outs politically after arresting a military office who committed brutal crimes in Algiers. And, in fact, the final twist, the big reveal explaining the web of international deceit, rests solely on the issue of identity.

The drama of identity fuels Stevens’s work for two very big reasons. The first is purely personal. Identity is an issue for Shane. I mean, he’s probably the most secretive man in all of crime fiction. Even accounting for differences in time period, today the average person generates a ridiculous amount of info that’s readily available for anyone looking, Shane was a man who obviously valued his privacy. In his Contemporary Authors’ entry he wrote, “I never give interviews, stay in shadow, travel by night. I don’t associate with writers, don’t do book reviews, don’t play politics or give advice. I try not to hurt anyone. I go where I want and write what I want.” But Stevens was also a man keenly aware of identity as it related to race. His having written three extraordinary novels set in Harlem: Go Down Dead, Way Uptown In Another World, and Rat Pack, lead a lot of people to assume Stevens was a black man. He’s not, he’s white and never claimed otherwise. However, this didn’t stop Shane from catching hell—the pages of Black World from the 1970s are full of Stevens bashing—in spite of the praise given to him by African-American writers like Chester Himes who called Rat Pack, “Truly a classic of the lower depths.” What’s really interesting about this issue of race and identity is that, in spite of all the furor over whether or not a white man can or even should write about the black experience, there was little discussion of Stevens’s own background. Shane was white but he grew up in Harlem. In an interview with Damon Suave, Harry Crews recalled their time together at Bread Loaf. “Yeah,” Crews said of Stevens, “He was raised in Harlem. And he’s white, but—he’s white, but in every possible sense, he’s black.”

This brings us to reason number two. Stevens recognizes identity as a trap and he wants to save us from it. I mean, identity is just a product, right? It’s not real. It’s our attempt to answer the questions of who am I and what does that mean. We construct our own identity and impose identity on others by combining things like race, gender, sexual orientation, political leanings, economic status, and even morals, then attaching behaviors and judgments to each. Human beings are tribal animals desperate to feel like we belong. We want to think “identity” is helpful but it’s not. On the large scale, identity and its attachments are usually how we justify horrible things. Take the Criminal Tribes Act, the Jim Crow laws of the Southern States, and even the policing policies following 9/11. That’s all bullshit we’ve attached to identity. Then too, on the individual level, identity is often our source of anxiety, frustration, and conflict, especially when that identity is imposed.

Way Uptown In Another World is the perfect example, and not just because I think it’s his masterwork. The novel is essentially without a plot, but that’s because it’s the study of identity through a single man’s life. Marcus Garvey Black and family flee the South to escape lynching and Jim Crowe only to end up in Harlem. Being black in the North is supposed to be better than being black in the South. But it’s not. It’s just different, with its own set of problems, and that’s the set-up Stevens uses to explore identity. Everywhere Marcus turns in the novel, he’s trapped by all these conflicting identities that bring him no relief from his suffering, that offer him no solace and no connection, “Soon the sun will shoot itself full of holes and lay down dead in the west, while Zulu night comes to suck out my eyeballs, leaving me only the soft slurp of black blood to tell me I’m alive. I stand up, trying to see myself in the windowpane but there’s no reflection. I’m invisible. I’ve got shape and mass but I don’t cast a reflection. People see me but they don’t really see me.” But over the course of the novel, Marcus comes to realize, “if everybody’s the same and you ain’t better’n nobody, how can you feel like a man? That’s the game everybody plays, but without them all you got is love and beauty everywhere.”

Given the friction that exists between Stevens’s ability to unmask characters and his own secretiveness, to what extent do you think he challenges both social and literary assumptions as a writer?

Challenging assumptions is Stevens’s whole milieu. It’s understandable (assumptions are part and parcel with “identity”) and even admirable. I mean, just in terms of writing: who doesn’t wish you could 100% write what you wanted to write, and, especially now, who wouldn’t want their work to speak for itself without having to do interviews, blog posts, and Twitter updates. The problem though is that I think that’s a big reason why he struggled so long to find success, why his work isn’t better known today, and why trying to construct a biographical portrait is so difficult.

I mean, let’s start with his work. Today, really, besides the fact that he never liked to talk about himself, Stevens would be hard to “brand.” As a book reviewer, he didn’t review only crime novels and popular mega-sellers. You know, there’s not a review out there by Stevens of Jaws, instead he reviewed novels like D. Keith Mano’s Horn. Examining his unproduced screenplay work, it’s not surprising that he did a pass on adapting Sol Yurick’s The Warriors before Walter Hill, but the screenplay for a film version of The Me Nobody Knows? Not so much. Sure, the subject matter is appropriate enough but it’s a musical and, if you’ve read Stevens, his name isn’t the first that comes to mind for that kind of work. Also, as far as I’ve been able to tell, he only wrote two short stories. “The Final Adventure” was his only appearance in Ellery Queen, and it’s a Sherlock Holmes story that was savaged by The Baker Street Irregulars for being “vulgar.” “Way Uptown In Another World,” confusingly enough, ended up as a chapter in his first novel, Go Down Dead. The articles and essays he wrote were the same. For every “A Day Like Any Other Day in Junk City” Stevens wrote something like the fluff piece he did for PEN about the East Village. Then you have the novels themselves. His first two are both set in Harlem, but really different kinds of books. While written in thick street slang, Go Down Dead is a fairly straightforward gang story reminiscent of Warren Miller’s The Cool World. Way Uptown In Another World is much easier read, but, unlike GDD, it’s a plot-less sprawl. Dead City, his third book, is about the Jersey Mob. Coming a year after The Godfather movie, if you picked up Dead City thinking you were going to get the Puzo/Coppola vibe, you were wrong—there’s no glitz. His fourth, honestly more of a novella, is a brutal tale about a single night of violence. Then we finally come to his big money book, By Reason of Insanity. It’s a serial killer story that predates the term itself. You’d think he’d follow that up with something similar or maybe even make reporter Adam Kenton a series character. He doesn’t. Instead he writes The Anvil Chorus, a sort of anti-police procedural set in Europe, before going on to quickly write two PI novels under a pseudonym.

Then you have Stevens the man. Even the most basic facts challenge your assumptions. Looking at him from the present, the most obvious challenge is simply: who is Shane Stevens? I mean, I don’t think there’s a writer working now who you couldn’t Google search and easily compile a quick list of personal details. Not true for Shane. He’s a mystery. I can see how on one hand, that’s good for letting your work speak for itself, but it also leads to you overshadowing your work. I mean, the biggest mystery Shane Stevens ever created is Shane Stevens. Once you begin digging, it doesn’t get any easier. Everything you find challenges assumptions and asks more questions, most of which you’re not going to answer. Shane grew up in Harlem but he’s white. Shane writes about the black experience in an honest way when he could easily have been Ernest Tidyman giving us John Shaft—probably made more money too. Shane obviously wanted to be a writer–you don’t struggle through poverty and violence while trying to write your novel if that’s not something you want to do deep down in your soul, but he never made a secret of disliking the whole literary crowd and the book scene. Yet, for all his intense dislike of their bullshit and the bullshit around “being a writer,” he was still a member of organizations like PEN and WGA who regularly attended, taught, and spoke at writers’ conferences.

As you write the biography, what sense do you get, behind the secrecy, of what makes Shane Stevens tick as a man and a writer?

I think what makes Shane Stevens tick as a man and as a writer are the same things. I mean, I’ve been trying to construct a biographical portrait of him for a long time now. And the funny thing is, in spite of everything I’ve learned and still have to learn, his statement that his work speaks for itself really does go a long way in answering your question. Despite all the adjectives that get thrown around to describe his novels, to me, I think Shane Stevens’ work is about love and hope, even if the book is bleak as fuck (there’s a reason Rat Pack got described as “The American Clockwork Orange”). No matter what he writes, whether it’s that chapter of Way Uptown In Another World riffing on Fred Hampton Jr.’s “Power Anywhere There’s People” speech, his essay in Black Review#1 about the political turmoil of his time, or even his New York Times review of H. Rap Brown’s Die Nigger Die!, Stevens’s writing always serves as an active and informed confrontation against a world that DOES NOT have to be as shitty as it often is.

You know, after the release of Go Down Dead, in response to some critics who questioned his heavy use of Harlem street slang, Shane Stevens wrote and published “An Open Letter To The Reader.” Addressing the critics, Shane writes, “The novel is written in the language of the people who live it. So that the reader may become a participant and not just a spectator. It is a language of pain, or despair and neglect—yes, and hope as well. A language that is vital because it is being lived each day.” Shane concludes his letter, mentioning that a lot of people who read his book ask him if it’s really that bad up in Harlem. His response is to tell them that actually it’s much worse. It’s that sense of confrontation and engagement with the world that’s always appealed to me about his writing.

Here’s where I make one of those statements that keep me for earning a lot of friends: I often get the sense that there are a lot of crime writers who don’t really care for people very much or have much interest in their wellbeing or the world in general. Though, to be fair, I think that tends to be a part of the American mindset too. It’s sad to live in a country where so many people constantly and proudly say they don’t care. Too many writers try too hard to not write or talk about things that might lose them readers. That’s no way to be, man. Not just as a writer but as a human being. Are you really that lazy mentally, emotionally, and spiritually? And by choice? Because all your apathy means is that you’re part of the problem. Mostly, though, it just stuns me. Art serves two purposes. It’s how we try to cheat death, and it’s how we shake things up. I mean, informed, active, and engaged confrontation with your world is how you write fucking books that Stephen King calls, “three of the finest novels ever written about the dark side of the American Dream.”

Do you think, conversely, that popular crime fiction places a buffer zone between reader and characters, and equally do you think that people only awake from the dream when it becomes a nightmare, as Blake dramatised in his writing?

Depends on what you mean by buffer zone. A great deal of crime fiction is written in the first person. Hell, is there a genre that uses that point of view more? Maybe YA or possibly Romance, but still. So, in that sense no. If you mean, do we soften the character or protect the reader from the character, then, I would say, in a way, yes. Popular crime fiction is really one big buffer zone that reinforces the status quo. It’s how we want to believe the world functions—I’d argue even the gutter stuff reinforces the status quo. And too, I mean, in the broadest sense crime fiction is in love with our self-deceptive notions of “justice” and “vengeance”. If justice were actually served in the real world as often as it is in crime fiction, we would live in a different world. And, good grief, revenge? Are you kidding? Revenge doesn’t reset any cosmic scale. It can’t because revenge is all about us. It’s about our myopic, emotional reaction to something that’s been done to us. It’s our lashing out at pain and the realization that we are groundless and ultimately insecure. I think that’s why we have such strong reactions to any work that strips all that way. I suspect that’s part of the reason Stevens’s books never sold better than they did. It’s why hardly anyone has heard of Thomas Bishop but you could stop a random stranger on the street and they can quote Hannibal Lecter.

As far as the second half of your question? Yes. I’d even venture to say that a lot of crime fiction is the struggle to go back to sleep after the nightmare begins.

Tell us about your anthology Hoods, Hot Rods, and Hellcats.

Hoods, Hot Rods, and Hellcats is a collection of crime fiction set in the American 1950s. As you can guess by the title, this ain’t the 1950s portrayed on Leave It To Beaver. This is the 1950s of the rebel and the outsider, the men who came home from World War II or Korea and weren’t content to fall in the good-consumer lockstep, so they took to the highways with dangerous women, listening to the devil’s music and driving straight on into trouble. I’m proud to say the anthology opens with an introduction from another personal hero of mine, the late Mick Farren who was a journalist, author, and singer associated with the UK underground and counterculture; and features brand new fiction from me, Eric Beetner, Matthew Funk, Christopher Grant, David James Keaton, Nik Korpon, Heath Lowrance, and Thomas Pluck.

What influences do you think the publishing industry has brought to bear, both politically and artistically, on crime fiction?

What influences hasn’t it brought to bear? We live in a capitalistic society. Crime fiction, like all art under capitalism, is simply another consumer commodity. That means the crime fiction writer is a cultural producer laboring under the strain of market forces. So the crime fiction writer is rewarded only when he produces according to the demands of the crime fiction market, demands which are shaped by the ruling class. While technology has to some extent allowed the writer to have more say over the means of production, the writer is still ultimately dependent on large corporations (yes, not only is Amazon a large corporation, but Lulu too–just Google Bob Young’s net worth) and must compete against large corporations, so the crime fiction writer ever remains at the mercy of the market. This leaves the crime fiction writer with no choice other than to compromise their work in some ways or be content selling 5 copies of their latest book out of the trunk of their car. Sure, you can technically write and publish whatever you want to, but that doesn’t mean anyone is going to read it. Worst still, the publishing industry is now controlled by 5 corporations. This gives those 5 corporations a larger sway over the market and means their chief concern is always going to be profit. The largest profit will be had by appealing to the most people. A book with the broadest possible appeal does not make for bold, innovation crime fiction that addresses societal ills.

In terms of politics? Are you kidding me? First of all, politics in the real world is a joke, at least in the United States. Here, the Left betrayed itself a long time ago while the Right let itself be eviscerated by a handful of religious fanatics. Meanwhile, both sides’ policies are shaped by moneyed corporate interests, leaving us with two different brands—Republican and Democrat—that are essential the same, they just come in different packaging. I mean, is there a dirtier word in crime fiction than “politics”? I don’t think so. I think that’s exactly why, in spite of it never being clearer that the US is locked in a vicious and brutal class struggle, the closest acknowledgment we get is Dennis Lehane’s very carefully phrased, “Noir is working-class tragedy.”

Considering the history of necessary infraction in literature, as it challenges prevailing authority structures, do you think it is possible to create a revolution within fiction today?

That’s a tough question. I think so. I mean, I hope so. Look, the problem is it comes down to two things. Well, baring a real revolution, which is the only way to bring a lasting change, it comes down to two things. And that’s technology and luck.

Technology is what gives the artist power over his labor when the corporations control the means of production. It’s what changed the music industry and it’s what will eventually radically alter publishing even more. It’s also the force that’s made real world revolutions possible. There never would have been an Arab Spring without technology and social media—exactly why more people should be concerned about net neutrality.

Luck is simply, well, luck. I mean, in terms of popular examples of crime fiction, the thing still on everyone’s lips is probably, what, Breaking Bad? That show didn’t get made because it was good or questioned anything about living in a country where you can’t even afford to die. No, Breaking Bad got made because AMC was a network trying to rebrand itself as something other than the chump cable channel you watched old movies on, so they took a chance on a show every other network had passed on, hoping beyond hope that people would tune in when they were tired of yet another CSI permutation.

But even then when something revolutionary does comes along, it’s only briefly. Under the current system it’s going to be quickly co-opted, repackaged, and sold. That’s a lesson the power structure learned a long time. You can see it time and time again, whether you’re talking about how they shut down 60s radicals or how they defanged punk rock. At the same time, you have the individual artist praying lightning can strike twice and delivers a pot of gold faster than a rainbow. I mean, after True Detective, I’d imagine the standard men avenging murdered girls story with amateur existential philosophizing and comic book quotes is finally overtaking stories of meth dealers in the crime fiction slush piles.

If we consider the component of social engineering involved in dictating taste and what is read, and the fact that a writer needs to explore and challenge, do you think the industry side of publishing has created a fundamental conflict for the writer, and that may be the source of Shane Stevens’s disillusionment with the industry?

I do think that’s a fundamental conflict for the writer. I mean, how do you successful explore and challenge in your work when the success of your work is mostly, I mean other than luck, shaped by market forces? But I don’t think that was the impetus for his disillusionment, if by disillusionment you mean his disappearance. Stevens was paid a lot of money for By Reason of Insanity, and the book sold very well; it’s still his only novel in print in the US. Even though he released Jersey Tomatoes under a pseudonym, between the book and the movie rights, he made a lot of money there too. Now, you have to remember this is all before the industry decided one poor selling book meant your writing career was dead. If Shane had wanted to, he could have continued to write books and with the success he found late in his career, I think he had a lot of freedom in his work.

I think what it really comes down to is a more personal disillusionment. First, I’ve heard from several people that Stevens always hated the bullshit, the ego, and the posturing. When you’re trying to make it, you learn to eat shit sandwiches even if they make you gag. When you’ve made it, you can stop eating shit sandwiches. But more than any of that, you have to remember going from Hell’s Kitchen to Harlem that Stevens started out really poor and stayed pretty damn poor for a long time. Coming from that kind of poverty, suddenly having money bestows its own particular type of freedom. It’s a different kind of freedom than someone coming from the middle class and getting money. I mean, you know, there’s a section in his New York Times article “The Rat Packs of New York” where Shane writes, “I look uptown, thinking of the years I lived in Harlem, white sheep in wolf’s clothing but lean and hungry. Just about a mile from here at 128th Street and Park Avenue. But from where I started a little while ago, at 86th and Fifth, my old block’s way uptown in another world.”

What really happened, I think, is Shane finally got the chance to leave his old block way uptown in another world and he took it.

How do you think Shane Stevens would have fared in the age of the E Book?

I don’t think he’d necessarily go full Konrath, but if Shane were coming up now I believe he’d take to ebooks. Despite having published only 8 novels, he switched agents three times and publishers twice as much. Since this was well before publishers started dropping you when you didn’t produce an instant mega-seller, I think that comes down to Shane. I suspect back then that was something a writer did when they were unsatisfied with the deal they were getting and how much say they had over their work. Coupled with the fact that he toiled on Go Down Dead for nearly 6 years before it was published, I think Shane would relish having that sort of say over his work and how it is delivered. Besides that, he understood how to hustle like no one else.

Thank you Chad for an informative and great interview.

Links:

Get a copy of ‘Hoods, Hot Rods, and Hellcats’ at Amazon US and UK in paperback or eBook formats

Find Chad at his website ‘Cathode Angel’ and on Twitter @chadeagleton

Shane Stephens author pages at Amazon US and UK

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

Paul Brazill writes some of the grittiest crime fiction. He has a new novel out, A Case Of Noir. It is an international novel, and is a case of Brazill at his hardboiled storytelling best, witty, descriptive, embedded with local culture, and tightly structured. Paul met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about his new release and living in Poland.

Tell us about A Case Of Noir.

In snow smothered Warsaw, Luke Case, a boozy English hack with a dark secret, starts a dangerous affair with a gangster’s wife. Case escapes Warsaw to the sweltering Spanish heat where he meets a colourful cast of characters, including a mysterious torch singer and a former East End villain with a criminal business proposition. In stormy Toulouse, he encounters a blast from the past that is positively seismic which forces him to return to England and confront his past. A Case Of Noir is a strong shot of international noir from Paul D. Brazill.

Would you say living in Poland has sharpened your sense of England when writing about it?

A different way of looking at it I’m sure. That’s part of the joy of being an EXILE. As Tom Waits said ‘subsequently bear in mind your transient position allows you a perspective that’s unique’.

How important are the different cities in A Case Of Noir?

Well, I did want to catch the atmosphere of each city. Warsaw is the one I know best, since I lived there for five years. So that was the easiest to write about. The main thing, though, was that Luke Case, the protagonist, is always the outsider, wherever he goes. Like a lot of us he’s one of the eternally discombobulated.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

Caffeine Nights Publishing will be rebooting my comic crime caper Guns Of Brixton in paperback as well as an eBook and there is the possibility of an audio book, The Italian translation of A Case Of Noir should be out this year.

I’ll have a story in Kate Laity’s Drag Noir Anthology and one in Ryan Bracha’s Mad Men anthology. I’ll also have a couple of yarns appearing online. And I should finish a couple of anthologies over the summer, including a follow up to Guns Of Brixton called Holidays In The Sun.

Thank you Paul for an informative and perceptive interview.

Links:

Get a copy of ‘A Case of Noir’ at these online stores:

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

Direct from the publisher – Atlantis Lite Editions

The Book Depository

Createspace

Find Paul D. Brazill on his website, Twitter, and Facebook

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Richard Parker

Richard Parker was a professional TV writer for twenty-two years before becoming a novelist. He was head writer and script editor of the BBC. He has a new novel out, Stalk Me. Richard met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about his new release and the age of surveillance.

Tell us about Stalk Me.

[image error]STALK ME is a stand alone mystery thriller about a woman who is involved in a severe car accident and roadside assault. She awakes to discover students recording the aftermath of the incident with their phones. She attacks them before lapsing into a coma.

Upon emerging from it she finds that the clips have been uploaded to the Internet and that she has become an unwilling online celebrity. Initially horrified by this she quickly realises that, with the driver of the other car vanished into thin air, she needs the clips to piece together exactly what happened. But someone is viciously murdering the owners of the clips and deleting them.

It’s an examination of 21st Century voyeurism, where clips of other people’s misfortune are used as currency without consideration for the individual it violates. The story illustrates the consequences for the victim as well as those with an alacrity to upload.

Do you think the perceived threat to the self has become heightened by the fact that we live in an age of surveillance?

I think this question now goes beyond the presence of CCTV. We’ve now become responsible for the surveillance of every facet of our lives through our willingness to post clips and images of ourselves on platforms like Facebook. The skill we have to master is how much to show and how much we should keep private. I don’t think we realise how much of ourselves we put out there. If someone wanted to piece together the layout of somebody’s existence then trawling through their myriad status updates would be an easy jigsaw to complete.

Your novels use, as a central dramatic aspect, the elusiveness of a perpetrator’s location and identity. For all the information gathering and data mining that informs the internet, to what extent do you think it has eroded certainties and subverted confidence, and how useful do you find this as an author?

I think the Internet has been very liberating for a lot of users. It gives them a barrier which allows them to interact differently to the way they would in real life. Online relationships are very different to direct, physical ones. People are more forthright with their opinions because they’re not directly facing the people they might be commenting on. The downside, of course, is that many individuals not only portray a slightly more polished, exciting version of themselves online but will hide behind avatars and false identities so they can go on the attack or behave in an unconstrained and negative way. It’s all rich territory for writers and readers, however, because I think we’re all guilty of it to differing degrees.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

I’m currently working on three projects – a screenplay for STALK ME, a brand new stand alone thriller and the follow up to SCARE ME. Am also promoting STALK ME so I hope to meet and interact with as many readers as possible. In the flesh and online…

Thank you Richard for a tight and perceptive interview.

Links:

Click here to visit Richard Parker’s website

Get a copy of ‘Stalk Me’ at the following online stores:

Kindle (UK)

Kindle (US)

Kindle (Canada)

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

Amazon.ca

iTunes (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Mac)

Book Depository (Free worldwide Shipping)

Waterstones

WHSmith

BarnesandNoble.com

IndieBound.org

Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With K.A. Laity

K. A. Laity is an award-winning author whose work encompasses a wide range of styles. She’s also been involved in some fine recent alterative Noir anthologies with Fox Spirit. She has a new book out, White Rabbit. Kate met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about her new release and the anthology Drag Noir.

Tell us about White Rabbit and that Jefferson Airplane song.

I suppose it might have been in the back of my mind somewhere, but it wasn’t really at the front of my head at all. Alice was of course, but then Wonderland is always bouncing around in my head. Things collide up there in unpredictable ways. The first glimmer was writing down the phrase “luminiferous ether” while I was at a performance & talk in Hackney by Sarah Angliss of Spacedog. At the time I was more excited by getting the chance to play her theremin, but the phrase echoed in my brain and somehow caused a collision between memories of ‘Séance on a Wet Afternoon’ and ‘Blue Sunshine’ and led to a down-at-the-heel ex-detective who masqueraded as a psychic. I heard Draygo’s voice and the rest spun itself out of that.

How does it differ to your other works?

I’m not sure I have the distance to really see that aspect. I’ve noticed that as I’ve gotten more into crime writing I have written a lot more male protagonists. I always start from the character’s voice or voices, so it seems different in that regard. I’m usually knocking together more genres than is sensible, so it’s the same in that regard, though this is perhaps the first really supernatural noir I’ve done. Most of my noir stories are straight ahead mimetic fiction, though with drugs thrown in surreal and supernatural can be difficult to differentiate. I had a couple of stories inspired by the line about “mandrake anthrax” from The Fall song ‘Tempo House’ that will be in Graham Wynd’s Extricate/Throw the Bones collection. They take surreal twists that you can’t be sure are really happening because the main character has ingested ‘certain substances’ as they say.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

My Chastity Flame novels will be coming out in new print editions in August, when I’ve also got my zombie western novella High Plains Lazarus coming out as an ebook. I’m writing a fairy tale novel for Fox Spirit Books and the latest noir anthology I’ve edited, Drag Noir, will be out this summer and features luminaries like your own fine self. Did I already mention my alter ego’s two-fer of noir novellas? I’m so fortunate in my cover artists: it’s going to be hard to top the elegance of a White Rabbit and the pizazz of Extricate/Throw the Bones.

Tell us about the new anthology Drag Noir.

Drag Noir is the third in the series of Noir anthologies I’ve edited for Fox Spirit. It all started with me foolishly wondering aloud what a mashup of weird fiction with noir aesthetics might look like and Adele Wearing telling me she’d be interested in publishing it if I put it together. Weird Noir was followed by Noir Carnival, both with spectacular cover art by SL Johnson. Drag Noir was my flippant answer to what might be next, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Noir is so much about ambience and masks, people putting on a front, trying to pass notice. Drag seemed a natural connection. Honestly I had no idea what I would get for stories, but as with the first two I was surprised and delighted by the results.

Thank you Kate for a perceptive and concise interview.

Links:

Get a copy of ‘White Rabbit’ at Fox Spirit or Amazon US or UK

Find out more about ‘Extricate’ at Fox Spirit and get a copy at Amazon US or UK

Find K. A. Laity at her website, Facebook, and Twitter

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Diane Hester

Diane Hester is a professional violinist who played in the Rochester Philharmonic before she became a novelist. She performed in Carnegie Hall NY. Her debut thriller is Run To Me, set in Maine. Diane met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about her new release and sympathetic characters.

Tell us about Run To Me.

Run To Me is a chase thriller set in the wilds of northern Maine. Shyler O’Neil, a woman suffering post-traumatic-stress after the death of her son, retreats to an isolated cabin in the woods. There she encounters Zack, a homeless boy on the run from killers, and in fighting to protect him, comes to believe he’s the son she lost.

Publishers Weekly said of Run To Me, ‘The author makes good use of her rustic setting and clearly understands the value of sympathetic characters and the thrill of narrow escapes…’

What do you think makes a character sympathetic to a wide audience and do you think that is largely situational?

What makes a character sympathetic? I would answer that with a single word: desperation. To me that’s what makes not just a character but a story compelling.

To be sympathetic a character has to want something desperately. And there has to be some major obstacles stopping them getting it. The more desperate a character’s need and the bigger the obstacle standing in their way, the greater the drama. It’s not enough to simply put them in danger.

The most compelling needs of all are emotional. Our desire for love. Our need to protect those we care about. The wish to be forgiven our mistakes. These are universal human needs and a person fighting to achieve such goals is hard to look away from, especially when the odds are against them.

In Run To Me, orphan Zack desperately wants a mother’s love; Shyler desperately wants her son to return. Those desires mean as much, if not more, to those characters than their very lives. These are elements over and above the dangerous situation they find themselves in. Without those desires, the danger these characters face means little. Their desperate needs are what make us care.

However put a character with desperate needs in a desperate situation and you’ve got the best combination of all. Shyler and Zack might be sympathetic characters at the start of the story because each has suffered in the past. But the sympathy we feel for them won’t go far unless something happens to further challenge them.

A person’s character is revealed through their actions and without a conflict to drive them to act we can’t really know them. But block the path of a desperate person and everything changes. Then you see to what lengths that person is prepared to go to get what they so desperately need.

Do you think there is a division between female and male readership as to how they view desperate situations and how they judge whether a character’s desperation may be self-inflicted or not?

Certainly different story situations will appeal to different readers but I don’t believe that preference is entirely gender based. A story about a child in danger might have more resonance for both men and woman with children of their own. Then again that doesn’t mean other readers wouldn’t enjoy it as well. Even readers without children can imagine what it would be like to have someone they love put in danger and be faced with the prospect of saving them. We don’t have to have firsthand experience of another’s situation to be moved by their struggle.

As for a desperate situation being self-inflicted, I can’t see male and female readers having a different slant on this. I think people would react pretty much the same to a character wallowing in self-pity as opposed to one facing genuine dangers.

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

I think it’s tremendously exciting – the biggest change in publishing since the printing press! I don’t believe by any stretch that it will mean the end of print books. It’s simply another way to enjoy the stories we’ve always loved.

The ebook revolution has also provided a fabulous opportunity for self-published authors to get their work in front of readers and for readers to have access to books they wouldn’t otherwise see. The only downside is that not all indie authors take enough time to revise, edit and polish their work before publishing, and, sadly, this detracts from the efforts of those who seek do it right.

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

I suspect he’s referring to a writer’s ability to stand apart from any situation, even ones in which they themselves are involved, and observe what’s happening with a detached eye. The writer’s readiness to view all suffering, including their own, as fodder for their next book and their willingness to inflict that suffering on the characters of their stories. Which doesn’t make us sound like very nice people, but I believe we need that measure of detachment in order to tell the truth about what we see in life.

What are you working on at the moment?

Another thriller set in New England. Opening scene: A woman driving alone at night hits a man on a dark wooded road and before she can call 9-1-1 he jumps in her car and forces her to drive on at gunpoint.

That was the idea I started with and for a while that was all I had. But I’ve since developed it into a full-length plot involving the murder of the man’s brother and a secret from the heroine’s past. (Sadly, I’m not one of those spontaneous authors who can just sit down and write wherever the story takes them – I have to plot the story first, before I can write it.)

Tell us about your career as a musician.

I studied violin at the Eastman School of Music and, briefly, at Julliard. After graduating I played with the Rochester Philharmonic and later with the Adelaide Symphony and Chamber Orchestra in South Australia.

Being a professional musician is a great way to see the world and meet all sorts of fabulous artists. As a member of different orchestras I’ve toured all over the eastern U.S. and much of Australia. I’ve gotten to play in Carnegie Hall, the NY Metropolitan Opera House, the Sydney Opera House, and the Adelaide Festival Theatre and have accompanied musicians as diverse as Isaac Stern, Itzak Perlman, Chuck Mangioni and Australia’s Little River Band.

As for making the transition to writing… So many of the things I learned in music I have found applicable to writing. The discipline of daily practice for one. (When you’re used to practicing violin 5-7 hours a day, writing for the same amount of time seems natural.) The unshakable belief that no matter how little talent I might have for something at the start, I will always improve if I stick with it. The ability to bounce back after rejections. Plus the techniques I learned for governing stage fright were a tremendous help in controlling my nerves when pitching my novels to agents and editors.

Who are your literary influences?

Tess Gerritsen and Robert Parker who write about New England and Boston in particular. Stephen King whose skill with bringing characters to life is a true inspiration! And James Patterson, with whom I share a love of short chapters and an obsession for thoroughly outlining my stories before I write them.

What else is on the cards for you this year?

The highlight of my year will be attending the International Thriller Writers conference in New York in July. For the remainder of the summer and into September, I plan to do a series of author events throughout New England – the area where RUN TO ME is set. Details of all events will be posted on my website at: www.dianehester.com.

Do you always outline your novels first?

Yes, always. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried simply letting a story unfold without plotting it first. But after writing myself into countless dead ends, I’ve accepted that it just isn’t my process. To get where I’m going when writing a novel, I need a map.

For me, plotting a story and writing it are two very different functions and I seem to work best if I can keep them separate. When plotting, I’m constantly moving things around, asking questions; creating, changing and deleting scenes. But when all that’s done and I actually start to write the story, my goal is to remain fully immersed in the world of my characters. I can’t do that if I’m constantly stopping to think about plot.

In the plotting stage, I explore and develop my initial idea. I determine who my characters are, what motivates them, the obstacles they face, and decide how this will play out in the story – the all-important sequence of events.

What I end up with is a detailed scene-by-scene outline, a road map I know will get me from A to B. I know my story contains all the required elements of structure because I can see them in this mini overview. From this point on I don’t have to think about the plot any more. All I have to do is write it.

While this may sound as though I leave nothing to chance, that isn’t the case. I rarely get through my first outline without changing things. Once I actually start writing the story, new ideas always present themselves which requires me to redraft my outline. And that’s perfectly okay. The purpose of my outline isn’t to keep me rigidly bound to a pre-set plot but merely to give me a path to follow.

Thank you Diane for an informative and perceptive interview.

Links:

Buy links for ‘Run To Me’:

In the US: Amazon.com

In the U.K.: Amazon.co.uk

In Australia:

Angus and Robertson

Booktopia

Bookworld

amazon.com.au

Read a free sample of ‘Run To Me’

Find Diane Hester at her website, on Facebook, and at Goodreads