Author Interview: Josh Cook
Hey friends!
Today I interview Josh Cook, a fellow Massachusetts writer and the author of a very cool book, indeed: An Exaggerated Murder. I had the pleasure of meeting Josh through a mutual friend and have been promising to get his interview up for oh, say, a month now...so I sincerely apologize for the delay, Josh! You've been quite patient, and very classy!
The InterviewTell us something about yourself—anything you want! Just give us a few details about you, the author, that allow us to relate to you better:
I live in Somerville, MA, and I work nearby as a bookseller and marketing director for Porter Square Books, in Cambridge. I’ve been there for almost eleven years. I grew up in Lewiston, ME and have wanted to be a writer since I was about sixteen. I was writing before then, but, for some reason, the idea coalesced into a real identity then. Some other character traits of note; I consider myself politically active, though I haven’t done much more than write about politics on my blog and contribute to campaigns I believe in; my partner and I get a farm share every year so the term “salad days” doesn’t have a particularly positive connation for me; and I’m a bit of a jock having played sports all through college.
Tell us a little about the book(s). What genre is it/are they? What’s it about?
I like to think of An Exaggerated Murder as a skewed detective novel. It starts out with the blood on the carpet and the hardboiled Sherlockian detective with the femme fatale love interest and the gritty, experienced veteran partner, but as the story progresses, as we learn more about the characters and the case, it drifts away from the traditional detective story.
The basic plot is that a reclusive billionaire name Joyce, vanishes, and whoever is behind the disappearance obfuscates and complicates all the evidence, while arranging things so that our hero, Trike Augustine, is the only person with a real opportunity to solve the case. He has two partners; Lola, a radical artist knitter who fills the femme fatale role, and Max, the former FBI agent who’s been around the block a few times. It ends up being something even a detective as inhumanly brilliant as Trike, has never seen. At times we look into Trike’s brain, we follow Lola on her research, we even see a case cracked by Trike’s bete noir on the police force. And I hope it’s funny because I did write some jokes.
Why this story? What was the inspiration behind it? What compelled you to want to share this story with others?
I started this so long ago that I really don’t remember its exact genesis, but I think it grew out of the primordial soup of the literature that was important to me at the time, Ulysses, Edgar Allen Poe, classic pulp fiction, and I as read more, as I followed the story, as I grew as a reader and a writer, I picked up more resources like The Maltese Falcon and The Daughter of Time. Of course, all of that also mixed with my other ideas, ambitions, hopes, dreams, and general goals as a writer, my desire to say something interesting about life, and, somehow, the story I ended up with, was this weird, quirky post-modern detective novel.
What challenges did you/do you face while writing it? How did you overcome those challenges?
I’m a firm believer that there’s no reason to temper your ambition at the start of a project. Whatever you think the greatest example of whatever it is you’re writing, should be your target. But at some point in the writing process, you have to confront, or discover, what you’ve actually written and figure out how to make it the best whatever it is it can be. I had a lot of themes and ideas in mind that I wanted to explore in this story, and I used a number of different structures over the writing process to try and get at those themes and ideas. I even had a draft that was structured like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.
So, probably the biggest challenge I had was getting themes and ideas at the right volume for the story I had, to find that muscles that actually fit over the skeleton I’d created, and a lot of those problems were solved through the editing process with Melville House. Having someone who understood the story and was an advocate for it and a supporter of it, but who also could bring fresh eyes, really helped me adjust those different levels and find the right structure and, hopefully, make this book the best whatever it is it could be.
Who was your favorite character to write, and why?
This is a hard one, because the three main characters are so different, with such different voices and I love them all. They allowed me to explore different ideas and prose styles. Lola gave me the chance to think and write about art. She’s also a very visual thinker and sees the world very different from how I see it so writing her forced me to stretch my imagination in an interesting way. Max let me pay homage to those classic pulp stories. Through him I could imagine myself writing for Black Mask. But, if I had to choose, I guess it would be Trike. His almost inhuman brilliance and his definitive inability to give a fuck meant he could say and think just about anything. That kind of openness presents its own composition challenges, but on the whole, it was a ton of fun to just let myself go and see what I could come up with for him.
Do you engage in any other hobbies, specialties or activities that have enhanced your writing?
I’m not sure reading really counts as a hobby for me. At this point, it’s more of a lifestyle, but it is definitely the other activity that has most enhanced my writing. You can’t know what’s possible if you don’t explore and reading is how you explore the possibility in writing. I also like to take long walks, especially if I’m having trouble figuring out something in whatever I’m working on. I’m also lucky that a lot of my friends, and my partner especially, are pretty literary, so I get to have intelligent and in-depth conversations about books, literature, politics and whatever else is going on in the world. I also wish I could travel more, even though I don’t usually get a lot of writing done when I travel.
You can only write what’s in your brain and if you’re brain isn’t interesting you’re writing won’t be. I don’t believe you have to live a wild and adventurous life to write wild and adventurous work, but I do believe you have to do something to develop the primordial soup of your imagination. For me, that something is reading, walking, talking, and traveling.
What is the single most important piece of advice you’ve ever received as an author?
I know this idea is starting to come under fire, but I’m a firm believer in the mantra “write every day.” When you write every day it becomes a routine, it becomes a ritual, the act of writing becomes a part of you, you build up a kind of muscle memory that helps kick start you on days when you feel ragged from life and keeps you going that extra mile after you feel like you’ve run out of steam on a productive day. I don’t think that “real writers write every day,” because there are as many ways to be a writer as there are writers, but it was a central idea in my development.
What message do you have for aspiring authors?
Do it for you. You have to do it for you. There are so many barriers, so many obstacles, so much rejection (so much rejection), that the act of writing has to be inherently rewarding for you. Otherwise, all the other effort that goes into being an author; researching lit mags, sending out submissions, writing cover letters, querying agents, waiting for responses that can take months and months to arrive won’t be worth it, whether you publish or not. I guess another way to say this is, be a writer first and an author second.
Josh’s eye-catching question: Your main character stands before three doors: a round door, a square door and an octagonal door. Each door is the same height, made from the same material and is the same distance away from him. Which door does he/she choose? Why that shape?
Max would walk through the square door, because it’s the closest of the choices to a regular door and doors are for walking through. He’ll deal with what’s on the other side when he gets there. This would be more fraught for Lola because she is very aware of how society imposes its conventions on individuals and of how easily you can get into spirals of logic through trying to guess what someone else wants you to not do. In the end, since the octagonal door looks more interesting, she would take it, because as a visual artist and very much a visual thinker, interesting looking things are important to her.
It gets weird with Trike, but, well, he’s a weird guy. He might just randomly choose a door, because, as he might say, “It’s just a fucking door.” But it’s equally as likely that he will try to deduce from the shape of the door what lies behind it. What would benefit from being behind an octagonal door? Or, worse yet, what would someone want Trike to think would benefit from being behind an octagonal door? From the information Trike would be provided it should be impossible for him to make a deduction, but attempting the impossible can be fun, even if, after several hours of intense intellectual examination, he picks at random because, “It’s just a fucking door.”
Book "Blurbs:"
“A comedic mystery, filled with the sorts of digressions and lunacy that will entertain readers wondering what an episode of Benedict Cumberbatch's 'Sherlock' series might be like if it were written by Quentin Tarantino."
—The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
“One of the most high-minded detective stories in years... Meticulously planned and content-rich, this sophisticated, variegated study...ranks with the best upmarket mysteries by Iain Pears and Umberto Eco."
— Bookslut
“A beautifully written postmodern novel of deduction that merrily, wittily blows up its genre’s conventions while at the same time re-energizing possibilities for the 21st-century detective story."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Purchase Links:Signed from Porter Square Books: http://www.portersquarebooks.com/signed-exaggerated-murderIndieBound: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781612194271Melville House: http://www.mhpbooks.com/books/an-exaggerated-murder/ Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/An-Exaggerated-...
Learn more about Josh Cook and An Exaggerated Murder here:
http://inorderofimportance.blogspot.com/
Find Josh on Twitter here:
@InOrderofImport
Thanks, Josh, for providing us with this interview. And, as always, thanks to my readers and commenters for giving me someone to write to. Stay Classy, Blog-o-Sphere!
Best,
R
Today I interview Josh Cook, a fellow Massachusetts writer and the author of a very cool book, indeed: An Exaggerated Murder. I had the pleasure of meeting Josh through a mutual friend and have been promising to get his interview up for oh, say, a month now...so I sincerely apologize for the delay, Josh! You've been quite patient, and very classy!
The InterviewTell us something about yourself—anything you want! Just give us a few details about you, the author, that allow us to relate to you better:
I live in Somerville, MA, and I work nearby as a bookseller and marketing director for Porter Square Books, in Cambridge. I’ve been there for almost eleven years. I grew up in Lewiston, ME and have wanted to be a writer since I was about sixteen. I was writing before then, but, for some reason, the idea coalesced into a real identity then. Some other character traits of note; I consider myself politically active, though I haven’t done much more than write about politics on my blog and contribute to campaigns I believe in; my partner and I get a farm share every year so the term “salad days” doesn’t have a particularly positive connation for me; and I’m a bit of a jock having played sports all through college.
Tell us a little about the book(s). What genre is it/are they? What’s it about?
I like to think of An Exaggerated Murder as a skewed detective novel. It starts out with the blood on the carpet and the hardboiled Sherlockian detective with the femme fatale love interest and the gritty, experienced veteran partner, but as the story progresses, as we learn more about the characters and the case, it drifts away from the traditional detective story.
The basic plot is that a reclusive billionaire name Joyce, vanishes, and whoever is behind the disappearance obfuscates and complicates all the evidence, while arranging things so that our hero, Trike Augustine, is the only person with a real opportunity to solve the case. He has two partners; Lola, a radical artist knitter who fills the femme fatale role, and Max, the former FBI agent who’s been around the block a few times. It ends up being something even a detective as inhumanly brilliant as Trike, has never seen. At times we look into Trike’s brain, we follow Lola on her research, we even see a case cracked by Trike’s bete noir on the police force. And I hope it’s funny because I did write some jokes.
Why this story? What was the inspiration behind it? What compelled you to want to share this story with others?
I started this so long ago that I really don’t remember its exact genesis, but I think it grew out of the primordial soup of the literature that was important to me at the time, Ulysses, Edgar Allen Poe, classic pulp fiction, and I as read more, as I followed the story, as I grew as a reader and a writer, I picked up more resources like The Maltese Falcon and The Daughter of Time. Of course, all of that also mixed with my other ideas, ambitions, hopes, dreams, and general goals as a writer, my desire to say something interesting about life, and, somehow, the story I ended up with, was this weird, quirky post-modern detective novel.
What challenges did you/do you face while writing it? How did you overcome those challenges?
I’m a firm believer that there’s no reason to temper your ambition at the start of a project. Whatever you think the greatest example of whatever it is you’re writing, should be your target. But at some point in the writing process, you have to confront, or discover, what you’ve actually written and figure out how to make it the best whatever it is it can be. I had a lot of themes and ideas in mind that I wanted to explore in this story, and I used a number of different structures over the writing process to try and get at those themes and ideas. I even had a draft that was structured like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.
So, probably the biggest challenge I had was getting themes and ideas at the right volume for the story I had, to find that muscles that actually fit over the skeleton I’d created, and a lot of those problems were solved through the editing process with Melville House. Having someone who understood the story and was an advocate for it and a supporter of it, but who also could bring fresh eyes, really helped me adjust those different levels and find the right structure and, hopefully, make this book the best whatever it is it could be.
Who was your favorite character to write, and why?
This is a hard one, because the three main characters are so different, with such different voices and I love them all. They allowed me to explore different ideas and prose styles. Lola gave me the chance to think and write about art. She’s also a very visual thinker and sees the world very different from how I see it so writing her forced me to stretch my imagination in an interesting way. Max let me pay homage to those classic pulp stories. Through him I could imagine myself writing for Black Mask. But, if I had to choose, I guess it would be Trike. His almost inhuman brilliance and his definitive inability to give a fuck meant he could say and think just about anything. That kind of openness presents its own composition challenges, but on the whole, it was a ton of fun to just let myself go and see what I could come up with for him.
Do you engage in any other hobbies, specialties or activities that have enhanced your writing?
I’m not sure reading really counts as a hobby for me. At this point, it’s more of a lifestyle, but it is definitely the other activity that has most enhanced my writing. You can’t know what’s possible if you don’t explore and reading is how you explore the possibility in writing. I also like to take long walks, especially if I’m having trouble figuring out something in whatever I’m working on. I’m also lucky that a lot of my friends, and my partner especially, are pretty literary, so I get to have intelligent and in-depth conversations about books, literature, politics and whatever else is going on in the world. I also wish I could travel more, even though I don’t usually get a lot of writing done when I travel.
You can only write what’s in your brain and if you’re brain isn’t interesting you’re writing won’t be. I don’t believe you have to live a wild and adventurous life to write wild and adventurous work, but I do believe you have to do something to develop the primordial soup of your imagination. For me, that something is reading, walking, talking, and traveling.
What is the single most important piece of advice you’ve ever received as an author?
I know this idea is starting to come under fire, but I’m a firm believer in the mantra “write every day.” When you write every day it becomes a routine, it becomes a ritual, the act of writing becomes a part of you, you build up a kind of muscle memory that helps kick start you on days when you feel ragged from life and keeps you going that extra mile after you feel like you’ve run out of steam on a productive day. I don’t think that “real writers write every day,” because there are as many ways to be a writer as there are writers, but it was a central idea in my development.
What message do you have for aspiring authors?
Do it for you. You have to do it for you. There are so many barriers, so many obstacles, so much rejection (so much rejection), that the act of writing has to be inherently rewarding for you. Otherwise, all the other effort that goes into being an author; researching lit mags, sending out submissions, writing cover letters, querying agents, waiting for responses that can take months and months to arrive won’t be worth it, whether you publish or not. I guess another way to say this is, be a writer first and an author second.
Josh’s eye-catching question: Your main character stands before three doors: a round door, a square door and an octagonal door. Each door is the same height, made from the same material and is the same distance away from him. Which door does he/she choose? Why that shape?
Max would walk through the square door, because it’s the closest of the choices to a regular door and doors are for walking through. He’ll deal with what’s on the other side when he gets there. This would be more fraught for Lola because she is very aware of how society imposes its conventions on individuals and of how easily you can get into spirals of logic through trying to guess what someone else wants you to not do. In the end, since the octagonal door looks more interesting, she would take it, because as a visual artist and very much a visual thinker, interesting looking things are important to her.
It gets weird with Trike, but, well, he’s a weird guy. He might just randomly choose a door, because, as he might say, “It’s just a fucking door.” But it’s equally as likely that he will try to deduce from the shape of the door what lies behind it. What would benefit from being behind an octagonal door? Or, worse yet, what would someone want Trike to think would benefit from being behind an octagonal door? From the information Trike would be provided it should be impossible for him to make a deduction, but attempting the impossible can be fun, even if, after several hours of intense intellectual examination, he picks at random because, “It’s just a fucking door.”
Book "Blurbs:"
“A comedic mystery, filled with the sorts of digressions and lunacy that will entertain readers wondering what an episode of Benedict Cumberbatch's 'Sherlock' series might be like if it were written by Quentin Tarantino."
—The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
“One of the most high-minded detective stories in years... Meticulously planned and content-rich, this sophisticated, variegated study...ranks with the best upmarket mysteries by Iain Pears and Umberto Eco."
— Bookslut
“A beautifully written postmodern novel of deduction that merrily, wittily blows up its genre’s conventions while at the same time re-energizing possibilities for the 21st-century detective story."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Purchase Links:Signed from Porter Square Books: http://www.portersquarebooks.com/signed-exaggerated-murderIndieBound: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781612194271Melville House: http://www.mhpbooks.com/books/an-exaggerated-murder/ Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/An-Exaggerated-...
Learn more about Josh Cook and An Exaggerated Murder here:
http://inorderofimportance.blogspot.com/
Find Josh on Twitter here:
@InOrderofImport
Thanks, Josh, for providing us with this interview. And, as always, thanks to my readers and commenters for giving me someone to write to. Stay Classy, Blog-o-Sphere!
Best,
R
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