Author Interview

Many thanks to Justin Bienvenue for the following interview. There's a formatting problem with his site so I'm making my answers available here until it is corrected. You can see more author interviews and the rest of the material on Justin's site here: http://jbienvenue.webs.com/interviews...
Interview with Clayton Lindemuth

1. How long did it take your to write your novel “Cold Quiet Country”?

I wrote the draft of Cold Quiet Country in 3 months. I've always been employed outside of writing, so creating 90,000 words of text in three months meant grabbing every possible moment. I'd take manuscript to the bathroom. I'd take a pen and paper on long runs or mountain bike rides. After completing the draft, I completed twelve full edits. The first nine got the manuscript in good enough shape to submit to agents, and then I ended up doing three more after being signed by the greatest agent in the industry, Cameron McClure. The good news for me was that my publisher though the text was pretty tight, and left it mostly as written. 

2. What do you find more useful, the reviews or the negative comments?

They both mean about the same thing to me. If I have an opportunity to take something constructive from the comment, I'll do so. If it's clear the person making the comment isn't adding value, I move on. Reviews can be positive or negative and either can be constructive or not. Case by case. I do, however, have a special appreciation for honest reviews that are negative, intended to advise certain readers they won't enjoy my work. Cold Quiet Country is in some regards brutal, and I don't want folks who are healing from wounds similar to those experienced by some of the characters in the book to be hurt from reading it. It is a protest novel, not a healing novel, and folks with fresh injuries should steer clear unless they're yearning to see sexual predators meet severe brutality.

3. What would you say is one of your strengths and weaknesses about your writing?

Strength: I tend to write lean and with a strong voice.
Weakness: My female characters are usually third person because I can't get into their heads. All of my first person females are tomboys.

4. What were some of your thoughts while writing the novel?

Rage. There's history behind Cold Quiet Country. Many of the women who have been most important in my life have been sexually abused. I learned about this shortly before writing the story, hence the violence directed at pedophiles, and the overarching moral clarity.

5. How would you describe your book to convince someone who isn’t into the type of genre to read it?

Cold Quiet Country defies genres. There's nothing formulaic about it. There are suspense and thriller devices, and a small supernatural element. The subject matter and plotting lend themselves to horror... Above all it is literary in style, language, character arc, etc. It's a story unlike any I've ever seen. No one will finish Cold Quiet Country and say, "I've seen that before." 

6.What elements of horror stand out most in your novel?

I don't shrink from allowing readers to see real pain, and I don't protect my favorite characters. Readers need to understand that the author has the guts to destroy the characters he loves, and my readers will have no doubt. I can't think of anything more horrific than the abuse suffered by some of the women in my family, and I let readers see some of it in Cold Quiet Country. The reason: it's the only way I can be sure to force the moral point: sex predators are murderers, whether their victims survive or not. This is a case of real life being all the horror the book needs.

7. If you could compare your writing to another author who would it be and why?

I wouldn't compare myself to anyone, but I'm happy to say I learned a lot from Greg Iles, Michael Connelly, Cormac MacCarthy, and a few others I won't mention by name because they showed me things I wanted to avoid. Stylistically, I don't know anyone who writes like I do, probably because I write in a literary style that is edited to bare bones leanness. Publishers Weekly compared me favorably to Tom Franklin and Donald Ray Pollock, but I haven't read either of them and couldn't offer an opinion. From their reputations, I consider it a great honor. I should mention that after I started writing seriously, I all but stopped reading seriously. I bet they did too.

8.Is there any significance behind the setting of the book in a small town of Wyoming or the 1970's?

Wyoming because it's beautiful and can be foreboding and desolate. 1970's because it's easier to imaging the ugliness in the novel taking place in a different time.

9. What do you believe is a key ingredient in writing a horror/suspense novel?

Readers need to know the author has guts. Readers want white knuckles, and they only get them when the author is able understand them better than they understand them selves. There's a difference between using cheap devices to manipulate your reader, and intuitively knowing your reader's views and prejudices, and pricking him at just the right moment to keep him engaged, guessing, and worrying. Every page has to compel the reader forward, and it doesn't result from a writer spewing what's in him. It comes from a writer understanding what the reader brings to the table, and guiding him through a series of more and more urgent misunderstandings. Our language is a glorious thing, every word containing a dozen meanings and a hundred subtones. Writers need to know how to use them.

10. Would you say there’s a little bit of you in each of your characters in the book?

No, I wouldn't. I have evil people in Cold Quiet Country, and I don't believe I have to be evil to understand it and write compellingly about it. I've seen it close up, and that's enough.

Thanks Clayton. To read up and find out more about author Clayton Lindemuth and his book "Cold Quiet Country" check out his website@  http://www.claytonlindemuth.com