Amanda Kyle Williams interviewed by Len Wanner

Interviews 2 Responses »
Jan 082012

If God exists, what will be your first words at the pearly gates?

Can I have my dog back? Her name was Maude. She was an old, cranky pain in the ass. But I really loved her a lot.

How would you describe yourself in a sentence?

Bright and sunshiny.

How would your best friend describe you in a sentence?

Edgy and possibly bipolar. I actually asked her this question on a walk this morning in preparation for my interview with you. That was her answer, which proves you really cannot trust anyone.

Crime fiction is at its best when…

… you’re turning pages. It doesn’t matter if it’s been labeled as ‘literary’ or if the reviewers hated it. It doesn’t matter if the trades and bloggers sang its praises from the rooftops. What matters is that readers cannot wait to get back to it. They’re racing through it and not wanting it to end all at once, sneaking it out of their desks at work, reading a couple of chapters on the train. That’s when crime fiction is at its best, in my opinion. Mysteries, thrillers, cozies – whatever is under that crime fiction umbrella, it just needs to engage the reader. That’s a simple thing, right? Not. At the risk of sounding like a whiny, spoiled writer with soft hands and a rather large rear, writing is hard. Poor me. I get to make things up and write them down for a living.

The worst literary vice is…

… No idea. Plus, I’m so not qualified to answer that.

The highest literary order a writer can aspire to is…

I think it’s fluid, depending on the writer. And the genre. For me, the goal is to entertain. Sure, I hope I say something brilliant. I hope there’s some nugget in there somewhere. But my job, what I aspire to do, is to provide the kind of escape and the kind of thrill you’re looking for when you plunk down hard earned money for a book. Hopefully, while I’m designing all these extraordinary circumstances fiction writers put their heroes through, I’ve somehow also created something human and accessible, gotten the nerves popping, and pulled out a laugh here and there. It’s all about the reader’s pleasure. In that regard, I’m in a service industry. And yes, there are laughs in this series. And yes, you can do that in thrillers. And I fully intend to keep doing it.

What’s your favourite word?

I love words that remind me of food. I read the little blurbs under pictures of gorgeous food because they use words like sumptuous, delicious, luscious, delectable, decadent… Everything stops when my monthly Bon Appétit Magazine arrives. Total food porn.

Which single word would you remove from the parlance of our time?

The F-word. But only so I could get through an entire conversation without accidently dropping that bomb.

Which single profession would you remove from the business world?

Breeder. As long as there is profit in animals, animals will be abused, devalued, misused. Spay and neuter, people. Rescue, adopt, and foster homeless animals. Good lord. Don’t get me started. You’ll see all my crazy come out.

Which single person would you remove from the planet?

If the question was how many asses should get kicked on the planet, I’d make you a long list. But I really can’t think of anyone I’d be comfortable wishing off the planet. I know there are some terribly vile humans out there. I’m just not authorized to make decisions about who gets to be here. And, to be honest, I’m a little superstitious about those kinds of things. Plus, this would come back to bite me eventually.

Which fictional character is going to be shot, come the literary revolution?

I sincerely hope it’s Hannibal Lecter. Not because he wasn’t fully drawn. He was. But because he is utterly evil. And because he’s unrepairable. He deserves a bullet. I’ll do it myself, and then enjoy some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Which fictional character would you most like to meet in real life?

It changes, depending on what I’m reading. I’ve just started to read Sue Grafton. I know, I know. I’m only a decade and about twenty-five books behind, but I wanted to find out what all the fuss is about. So anyway, I really like Kinsey Millhone. I think she’d be fun to hang out with.

Your five favourite party guests are…

… my best friends. I endeavor to avoid formal settings and parties with too many big shots. My idea of a good time is some great food and great friends sitting around table laughing. If there’s also vodka, hey, that’s a bonus.

Which book by another author do you wish you had written?

I want to spout off something here that makes me look thoughtful and terribly well read, but really I wish I’d written any book that had readers lining up and book clubs placing orders, screenwriters salivating, publishers cranking out fresh contracts, and agents sending chocolates. I happen to admire authors who’ve managed to be a commercial success, especially the ones that haven’t sacrificed quality.

Who or what has taught you most about writing?

My editors, without question. From the small press editor I had back in 1990, Katherine Forrest, to the fabulous freelance editor that helped me get my book in shape for Random House, Benee Knauer, to my current editor at Bantam, Kate Miciak. Incredibly talented, brilliant, and generous people. I’m still learning. I guess I will always be learning the craft. Every note from my editor, every insight, every rewrite she pushes me through, it all makes me better.

What do you like best about your writing?

It’s instinctive. It wasn’t born in a classroom.

What is your creative blind spot?

I have trouble seeing the good in my writing at times. I pick it apart. I’m a perfectionist. It doesn’t serve a writer well. I can spend six hours on two paragraphs. Makes it tough to crank out volume.

What’s it like to be in print again after several years?

Off the charts exciting. The dream realized. I hardly believe it sometimes. It’s what I moved toward and wanted and dreamed of for twenty-five years. It’s fantastic.

What gave you the confidence to try your hand at a mainstream novel?

I’m not sure it was confidence in my writing necessarily. Perhaps it was confidence in the dream and in the process. I just kept pushing toward it, kept working, kept polishing, until I felt my first mainstream manuscript was ready for an agent’s critical eye. You just do the best work you can and then you throw it out there and see what happens. Believing that whatever input comes back makes you a better writer, that it moves you closer to the goal of one day becoming a great writer, takes the fear out of the submission process because you’re prepared to use the criticism for your own betterment, rather than fold up because of it. And frankly, if you’re not willing to listen to the pros about what’s wrong with a manuscript, to rework and rethink and accept that wise counsel, you’re not willing to grow.

What part of the research made the biggest difference to the book?

I took a course in criminal profiling that was very well done. It taught me a lot about what a criminal investigative analyst does and gave me a good foundation to build on with Keye Street, who is a former behavioral analyst for the FBI. I also learned something about homicide investigation. I wanted to have a sense of how a homicide unit might approach a case and how they might work with a consultant. I also had a lot of jobs over the years. One of them was with a courier firm that had a small private investigating branch. I was a court appointed process server. I became very familiar with the city, with the courthouses, and with what it’s like to get a subpoena in the hands of someone who doesn’t want one. This job informed my writing in so many unexpected ways. My character was fired from the FBI and she used her skills to open a small detective agency. So when I have her out serving subpoenas and scouring the city, I’ve been there. It gave me a lot of confidence to write those scenes.

What have you learned about self-promotion since The Stranger You Seek came out?

Social media. Wow. What a great tool for connecting with readers and booksellers. I mean really connecting, not just promoting. And listening and answering comments and being available. These people are the foundation of your career, your partners. You want them to become involved in your career, to cheer you on. That means being a real human and actually giving a shit about their dreams and ideas and getting to know them. It’s fantastic. On a personal level, I’ve made so many friends. Professionally, connecting with readers, having booksellers hand-sell your book because they know you and trust you and feel that you’re accessible and that you appreciate them too has been really amazing. Writers who don’t have a name in the mainstream need some kind of buzz. Facebook and twitter connections are great to help get that buzz going. My website has been a great tool too. I built a page for book clubs and posted a letter to them offering to come to their discussions or call in. That has turned out to be so much fun.  Readers are smart and funny and thoughtful. I also loaded my website with cool stuff, creepy book trailers, a Meet Keye Street character bio, my personal bio, some dark animation from a scene in the book, a link to order autographed books. I tried to make www.amandakylewilliams.com fun. My personal email address is on the website. I answer every letter. I value every one of them. The feedback has been fantastic and 99% positive. There was one guy who described in great detail all the ways he disliked my book. But seriously, he did it with such flair and so much passion and hatred, I found myself giggling through it.

What would you have done differently if you’d known this prior to publication?

To be honest, Len, I don’t even know. I’m such a newbie, I don’t know yet where I’ve screwed up. I probably have.  I’ll probably look back one day when I get a clue and have some ah-ha moment. But right now it’s all sunshine and rainbows. Feels good. It’s been a wonderful experience.

What’s the best one-liner you’ve ever read or written?

For true one-liners, I still love the old wisecracking, hardboiled types. Dashiell Hammett’s Nick Charles. Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. These guys invented snark. “How do you like your brandy?” someone asks Philip Marlowe. “In a glass,” he answers. Love that stuff.

Sum up your latest book in no more than 20 words, including its title:

The Stranger You Seek: journey into the mind of a profiler, struggling to get into the mind of a killer.

What scene or theme did it start with?

I had known for quite a long time that I wanted to write crime fiction. I’d started the ball rolling as far as research. I knew I wanted to write a former profiler with addiction issues. That was all I knew. No character. No story ideas. This went on for a couple of years. Lots of stops and starts. Nothing felt real, the characters, the story. I’d trash everything and start over. Then one November night I’d taken a drive up to the North Georgia Mountains to visit my brother and his family. He had adopted my niece Anna when she was an infant from China. She was four or five this November visit and she looked up at me with those glittering dark eyes and hair, just a gorgeous Asian child, and opened her mouth and sounded like Scarlett O’Hara. I was just so knocked over by how deeply southern she was. On the way home I started thinking about what it would be like to grow up looking different than the neighbors in the American South. I started to envision my Chinese character for the first time, raised by white southern parents, a sense of humor, some demons. I pulled over on the side of the highway, just me and my little dog Bella, and I wrote this line. “I have the distinction of looking like what they still call a damn foreigner in most parts of Georgia and sounding like a hick everywhere else in the world.” And as soon as I wrote that line and heard Keye’s voice, I knew it was right. I knew her voice was strong enough to be my narrator and strong enough to carry a series, which is dedicated to Anna, my beautiful niece.

What happened next?

Funny you should ask. I pulled back onto the highway and my transmission practically fell out. My car was toast. I had no cell phone. This was about six years ago and I’d been resisting the cell phone thing. I walked to a gas station with my tiny dog and called for a truck to tow me home. Well, I was still many miles and an hour and a half from home. They told me I could ride with the driver. Something about this guy gave me the creeps. I knew if I got in that tow truck, me and my little dog would end up in bits in his freezer. It was quite chilling and perhaps only the second time in my life I’d had a feeling like this about someone. That event ended up setting a very dark tone for The Stranger You Seek. I’m grateful for this creepy-ass driver now. You really never know what the universe will hand you. My car falling apart turned out to be a gift.

What was the greatest challenge in writing The Stranger You Seek?

Being still. Just being physically still for hours at a time. Some days I feel I have to tie myself to the chair.

What helped you brave the inside of a murderous mind?

I’ve always had an interest in this. I’m really curious about the fantasies and demons and appetites that drive a killer. When I was taking that criminal profiling course, I could not wait for another assignment or to talk about a real case. The rest of the class were law enforcement professionals and I was the clueless gung-ho writer. Ok, so I’m a little obsessed with murder. That’s normal, right?

What was the greatest moment in writing the book?

Without a doubt, typing ‘The End’ was the highlight. Of course, I’d get the book back many more times for revisions and line and copy edits, but finishing the first draft and feeling in my gut it had real potential… nothing like it.

What are the greatest problems in writing today?

This isn’t going to be popular among my author friends who self publish, but that’s one of the problems in my mind – too many self-published, unedited authors. Sure there’s some real talent out there that maybe didn’t get picked up by a press and should have, but generally I think people need good editors. They need to be pushed to come up higher. They need to go through the laborious process of getting a book out in the mainstream. I think half the people on my street have some kind of self-published crap available on Amazon. It feels like the easy way out to me. How are you going to get better if there’s no one there to raise the bar?

What are the greatest opportunities in writing today?

Oh God. I don’t know. I’m so insulated as far as knowing anything at all about the industry. But on a personal level, for me anyway, the greatest opportunity in continuing to write is just getting better at it. That’s my dream and I think it’s the dream for most writers. Just to get really, really good at your craft.

What makes you keep reading or writing a book?

Well the approach is totally different. I have no patience with reading books. Reading is hard for me. I’m dyslexic. I have comprehension issues. So if I’m working hard to read and something, plot, character, some insight, beautiful language, something doesn’t grab me pretty early on, I’m out of there. Writing a book is completely different. You have to have infinite patience with the work in order to tweak and revise as many times as books need tweaking and revising.

What are you writing these days?

I’m currently in the final pages of book 2 in the Keye Street series, Stranger In The Room. I expect to turn it in this week and start book 3, Don’t Talk To Strangers.

What’s the most amusing situation you’ve found yourself in because of your writing?

I showed up at a local crematory and asked for a tour. This was research for the 2nd Keye Street novel. They were much nicer before my line of questioning led them to believe I was writing about a crooked crematory operator. And when I was trying to develop my website and find a designer that could do what I wanted to do, I called this hotshot New York City company I knew had designed this beautiful, creepy, elaborate site for a very popular crime writer. I mean her website is stunning. Animation for each book. They told me she’d paid fifty-thousand dollars for her site design. I dropped the F-bomb as in “You are fucking kidding me!” And they hung up on me.

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started writing?

Sometimes you just need to relax and let it fly out. Many years ago a friend said to me after I handed her something to read: “This doesn’t feel real. Why can’t you just write like you talk? Now that’s something I’d like to read.” At the time I thought it was about the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. I mean, clearly she had no real understanding of the writing process. She didn’t. She had an understanding of the reading process. I came to realize how simple yet brilliant this was. And how difficult it is to get out of the way of yourself and allow your writing come to life.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ONE BOOK EVERYBODY SHOULD READ: The Stranger You Seek

Posted by Len Wanner at 10:53 am Tagged with: ,

Amanda Kyle Williams’ The Stranger You Seek reviewed by Phoebe Ladenburg

Reviews 2 Responses »
Dec 302011

Amanda Kyle Williams’ The Stranger You Seek is by no means your typical literary apprenticeship. Williams writes with a confidence and complexity that appears well-versed and matured. The heroine, Keye Street, is perfectly flawed: she is feisty and, no-shit, she has self-esteem related addictions, but over and above it all she is Good. Having been dismissed from the FBI several years previously due to alcohol abuse, Street gets called up by A.P.D. lieutenant Aaron Rauser who turns out to be just as flawed and equally admirable, with a healthy dose of sex-appeal thrown in for good measure.

The case? To find the creepily named Wishbone killer whose horrific and gory killings are partnered with taunting messages to the police and the media, making this savage killer a PR nightmare to boot. This is the kind of thriller that lets you think you are smart, before sharply changing direction to reveal something you never suspected.

My only criticism would be that Williams denies the reader the chance to identify the killer for oneself; character remains detached from plot, and few, if any, clues are given as to the true identity. That said, I am prepared to admit this may be due to my own stupidity and I therefore challenge you to be a better crime solver than I am. However, the ‘checking off’ of the list of suspects is clever enough to overshadow this.

The Stranger You Seek is not for the faint hearted. It took me a while to start to write this review as I was reluctant to return to sickening images in a hurry. It deals with the sickest kind of murderous mind: the purely selfish, disarmingly normal, grotesquely sexual, and chillingly remorseless – the kind of mind that smiles through nightmares.

Williams has written a great novel, a novel that touches the raw, core fears readers may have briefly explored in their childhood and then locked away safely, until now.

Posted by Len Wanner at 10:20 am Tagged with: , ,

Andrea Maria Schenkel’s The Murder Farm reviewed by Claire Hayes

Reviews No Responses »
Dec 142011

Andrea Maria Schenkel’s novel The Murder Farm won the German Crime Prize in 2008. When her novel Ice Cold won the prize in 2009, Schenkel became the first writer to win the prize twice in two years. Anthea Bell’s translation of The Murder Farm shows why.

The novel opens with an unnamed narrator reminiscing about a blissful summer spent with relatives in a rural village at the end of WWII, a village to which the narrator decides to return in order to investigate an unsolved, brutal murder. The details of this crime are only revealed to the reader much later in the novel, and there really isn’t much more to be said about the plot of this intriguing novel. The beauty of the book is in the tripartite narrative, for Schenkel uses three distinct styles within the book: There is the testimony of the locals, presumably collected by the unnamed narrator, then there is a third person narrative which generally elaborates on the sketchy information provided by the locals, and finally there are prayers which either precede or conclude the third person narrative.

The three styles are merged together expertly to create an extremely unsettling and truly impressive narrative. The testimonies of the locals range from gossipy to vague and dismissive, and this gradually builds up a picture of the murdered family, a family of recluses, a family that is generally disliked or at the very least distrusted, a family with more than a few shocking skeletons in their respective closets. Seeing as the different voices of these villagers are rendered impeccably, they produce an overall picture of small village rivalries and alliances in which testimonials are juxtaposed with the eerily sparse language of the omniscient third person narrator. All along the desperate, italicised prayers destabilise the narrative further.

The overall effect is one of deepened insight into the minds and actions of the murdered family on the night of their murder, and this effect is heightened by slow and tense revelations of various details. There are no police investigations, no surly detectives, and no newspaper men. In fact, there is very little action at all, yet Schenkel manages to sustain the suspense to the very end of the novel.

The only problem I have with The Murder Farm is the fact that the unnamed narrator of the opening chapter never reappears. The testimonies, obviously collected by this character, are given without comment or reflection. To me this is an unnecessary plot device. However, the writing is so compelling and affecting that I forgot about this initial narrator until quite some time after I turned the last page. Insignificant irritants aside, this is a fascinating and beautifully written book.

Posted by Len Wanner at 3:03 pm Tagged with: , ,

Anthony Neil Smith interviewed by Len Wanner

Interviews 5 Responses »
Dec 112011

How are you, Mr Smith?

I’ve had a sort of crap week, but I’m at the end of the semester, ready to give one more exam, and then sit back for a few weeks of Holiday cheer, reading bestsellers, and writing feverishly.

How would you describe yourself in a sentence?

Melancholy, like Poe, but with a better furnace.

How would your best friend describe you in a sentence?

I asked him. He said: “I think you can take Neil at face value and trust he’s going to do what he says … as a writer: brave.”

Crime fiction is at its best when…

It’s unpredictable and makes you care far more about these characters than you expected to.

The worst literary vice is…

Ah, well, I’m tempted to go with John Gardner’s concept of “frigidity”, but I think it’s the writer thinking that what he or she is writing is actually “important”.

The highest literary order is…

Telling a good story that not even we, the writers, know the full impact of.

What’s your favourite word?

Goddamn. It was the one I was always told was the worst possible curse word. Pretty much blasphemy. But if that’s true, why was my dad saying it all the goddamned time, right? It’s two perfect, nasty syllables.

Which single word would you remove from the parlance of our time?

“Like”, when used in place of “said”.

Which single profession would you remove from the business world?

Professional baseball player

Which single person would you remove from the planet?

Oh, wow, that’s loaded. Let’s say, if I could live on a spaceship like The Enterprise or that weird bubble in The Fountain, then myself so I could soar through space and see planets and shit. I know that’s not the spirit of the question, but fuck it.

Which fictional character is going to be shot, come the literary revolution?

Obviously Jack Reacher, but he’ll be prepared for it and will keep charging, boring millions of more readers.

What’s the best one-liner you’ve ever read or written?

Well, Victor Gischler and I both had a hand in Emerson Lasalle’s assertion that “Technology is ruining science-fiction.” Or maybe it was all Victor. But I like that. Otherwise, it’s probably “Says you.”

Your five favourite party guests are…

Seeing a “u” in “favorite” always looks weird. Also, not a big fan of parties.

Which book by another author do you wish you’d written?

Lush Life by Richard Price

Sum up your latest book in no more than 20 words, including its title:

All The Young Warriors. Minnesota. Somalia. Terrorists. Pirates. Heartbreaking. Thrilling. Cheap. Ebook. Eight words left. Okay, not any more.

What scene or theme did it start with?

I saw a story about some young Somali-American men in the Twin Cities who “disappeared”, only to turn up in Somalia fighting for the terrorist group there who is decimating the whole country. Since the prairie town where I live is three hours from the Cities and also a place where many Somali families are settling, I wondered about the impact of that on a small town, but more importantly on the people left in the wake.

What happened next?

I thought up a scene where two small town cops stopped these two Somali men because they weren’t driving so well in a blizzard. One is a pretty ordinary middle-aged Midwestern man, and his partner is a pregnant woman. Then the driver ends up shooting both of them and getting away. I think that chapter set the whole chain of dominoes falling down in a powerful way. At least I hope so.

What made you take the story abroad?

It was a suggestion from Allan Guthrie, who really thought I could pull it off even though I wouldn’t be able to actually travel to Somalia. So I spoke to a couple of Somalian students here, and then I did a lot of research. But I also had to be inventive. I’m not trying to recreate the “real” Somalia as much as I am inventing one for the world of the novel. The same way I have to reinvent the small town in Minnesota and the Twin Cities. To me, these settings are going to be more “hyper” than they would be in reality. Kind of how Tony Scott saturates scenes in his movies with too much exposure, color, motion, and scratchiness. It’s seeing the world through a particular lens.

What was the greatest challenge in writing that novel?

Other than writing about Somalia having never been there, I think the emotional content. I wanted to shed as much authorial intrusion as possible. I wanted it to feel very raw. I wanted less of my usual attitude and swagger.

What was the greatest moment in writing it?

There was a moment near the end when all of the Somali “warriors”, led by the character Jibriil, break out into song, but it’s not a song you’d expect. I wasn’t allowed to use the lyrics, unfortunately, but I still thought the title alone would bring it up in nearly every reader’s mind. That scene felt kind of like a Werner Herzog or David Lynch scene, and it helped set up the finale very well.

What reader response did you hope for when you wrote All The Young Warriors?

I honestly hoped for a “You’ve GOT to read this!” response and crazy sales and awards and a big movie deal.

What reader response do you hope for now?

Oh, I’m still holding on to that. At least in my daydreams.

What are the greatest problems in writing today?

In *writing* (because I won’t get started in “publishing”), I’d say the same as ever: too many writers, too many books not being able to find the right readers. Also, unnecessarily long novels. We need really good editors.

What are the greatest opportunities in writing today?

I would say it would be new digital publishers trying a new model and helping get writers noticed on a bigger stage. They can do it cheaper than print publishers.

What are the problems of self-promotion?

The same people who have no problems accepting pitches and ads from huge corporations (including some people who sympathize with the Occupy Movement) get really upset when an individual self-published author (or even small press author) tries to convince people to buy their books. Some of those authors are bad at it, I agree, but the outrage on Twitter is way off-scale. It’s taken very personally, and that’s disappointing.

What is the most surprising situation you’ve found yourself in because of your writing?

I was invited to Italy when Yellow Medicine was translated and published there. I was surprised by the outpouring of support and the enthusiasm of the people there. I was also surprised to be asked to sing something on camera in an interview while overlooking the River Po.

What have you learned from teaching creative writing?

I’ve learned so, so, much about that transition we make from “wannabe writer” to “writer”. At some point in all of the students, that lightbulb goes on over their heads and the work begins to really sing. I wonder when it happened for me. At some point during grad school, and then again during the writing of Hogdoggin’, or I don’t know…but it’s nice to see that “crossing over” moment on the page. I’ve learned that creative writing can absolutely be taught as a craft, and can help beginners see their own work differently, usually by reading and commenting on classmates’ works. Helps to develop a thick skin, too. Many students avoid me after the first workshop is done because I’m pretty direct with my critique, because I want them to know what they’re up against out there. An editor won’t tell them in as much detail as I will. So they get frustrated and a bit mad. Then, by the time they are ready to graduate, they’ve come around and are glad they took those classes with me. And I’m really proud of the work they’re handing in for the final portfolios.

What advice do you start your courses with?

“Write about what you’re interested in”. Enough of that silly “write what you know” stuff. Write what you want to know is more like it. Research. Learn. Writing about it gives you an excuse to do it…within reason.

What advice do you end your courses with?

Don’t stop trying to learn more about how to do this. Ever.

What is your creative blind spot?

It seems that no matter how hard I try, the “big cop thriller” that I wish was in my head just never comes out right on the page. It’s always too dark, with unsympathetic characters, or is a bit too over-the-top, or has too much explicit sex and violence and bad language in it. As much as I would love to write a book that would appeal to fans of Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane and James Lee Burke, it’s always as if I sabotage myself in order to keep from being bored.

What do you like about your writing?

The voice and the risks.

What is your writing about?

In a lot of the books, there’s always a character (or two or three) trying to start over. Change who they are and go somewhere else and just start over. While in the long run, I hope that changes, it always seems to incorporate itself into the novels these days. Maybe it’s because after grad school, that’s exactly what I had to do–a couple of times! I moved over a thousand miles from home, where I knew no one, and had to start again. Then three years later, I had to move again (new job) to another state, another new set of people, another landscape. So, until the next obsession comes along… (I just rewatched the movie Velvet Goldmine the other night, and it’s got the same theme or recreation and starting over. Good music, too).

What is your ambition as a writer?

I would love to one day have a great crime series going that sells well enough so that the publisher keeps wanting a new one from me. Would love to do a couple of novels a year–one in the series and one that’s not. Sort of a Simenon thing. But as long as I can stay with publishers who are willing to help me build an audience and keep asking for the next novel, I’d be thrilled.

What made you decide to publish All The Young Warriors as an e-book?

Several things: 1) a very close (heartbreaking) call with a traditional publisher, 2) another weirdly close call (or maybe not) with another traditional publisher, 3) the idea of having to send out another round of submissions to more traditional publishers–smaller indie places this time–after thinking this was a pretty big book, and by “big” I mean “lots of people will like it”. And that round of submissions would take longer than the first, and it would be another year or so before it would get published even if one of those places did buy it, and I wanted people to read it now. 4) About the same time I asked my agent, Allan Guthrie, that maybe we should try some digital publishers, he mentions he’s trying to start one, and he’d like All The Young Warriors as one of the launch books. So…

What made you move to Blasted Heath?

…with Allan becoming my publisher instead of my agent, and this Kyle Smudge guy with his wealth of social media, *and* the success I’d had on my own with e-books all year, *aaaaaand* hearing about the line-up that included Ray Banks and Douglas Lindsay, I knew I’d found a really good home for the digital version. I love the indie press/indie record company vibe, and I love being a part of a strong brand, so this was looking like a lot of fun. It’s new, it’s untested, kind of like when I joined up with awesome indie publisher Two Dollar Radio for my second novel. Ground floor, baby. Had to climb those walls without stairs or an elevator. Same here.

What makes a good title, and how important is it for the success of an e-book?

In my own reading, I hope the titles give me a sense of the book without telling me what to think about it. Don’t point me the right way. Just intrigue me, please. Allan is a lot of help with titles. I think I’ve had some good ones (Yellow Medicine and Hogdoggin’, Psychosomatic) but sometimes I hit the wall.

Just a side rant: one thing that shows big publishers don’t “get it” is when they make the name of the author HUGE on the cover, and the title is less than half the size. And there’s hardly any cover art. Come on. You can do better. It’s almost like “Generic Book by Big Author! You liked his last one? You’ll like this one the same!” That sort of branding isn’t the same as when a great publisher nails a strong look for a line or an author. Old Penguins or Vintage Crime or Melville House. Or, like with Blasted Heath, all of the covers are done by J.T. Lindroos, so you have a sharp and consistent feel across all of them. Excellent.

So, titles? Yeah, good ones help.

What will be your first words at the pearly gates?

Wow, how about that? Real pearls. So do I get to stay?

What do you wish you’d known when you started writing?

That publishers would change so much so quickly just from the time I graduated high school to the time I published my first novel (about 14 years). They used to build a writer’s audience book by book. Now they want the big score first time out without doing a whole lot of promotion. But wait, that’s… that’s typical author whining.

I wish I’d known it was all going to be okay even if I didn’t get on with the Big Six and become a bestselling crime writer from the first novel. Because yeah, I love my life and my job and the fact that I get to write novels. But I tell you, I lost a lot of time worrying about it.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ONE BOOK EVERYBODY SHOULD READ: All The Young Warriors

Posted by Len Wanner at 10:08 am Tagged with: ,

Nick Quantrill interviewed by Len Wanner

Interviews 1 Response »
Dec 042011

Why crime fiction?

Because it does everything I want. As a writer, it means I can a detailed look at the city I live in and tackle the subjects I think are relevant and interesting, and maybe make some sense of what I see. As a reader, I primarily want to be entertained, but crime fiction often helps me engage with a subject or a place I’d not thought about previously. It works on different levels.

What are your thoughts on the UK crime fiction scene? Is there a sense of a writing school?

I think UK crime fiction is pretty vibrant at the moment, but I don’t really sense an over-riding writing school, as such. Maybe that’s something which is more relevant to the marketing people to help actually sell books. If I was to consider myself part of a scene, I’d probably look online, where short story websites and social networks are nurturing new writers. Again, I’d hesitate to call it a writing school, as it covers a wealth of different approaches to the genre, but the new technologies are starting to bring about fresh opportunities for crime fiction writers. Small presses are springing up and the relative ease of eBook publishing is being exploited by established names, who for whatever reason, might be looking for an outlet for their work. The more writers involved, the better.

Did you have any writers in mind when you set out to write your debut, Broken Dreams?

I’m a big crime fiction reader, so I try to take what I consider to be the best of certain writers and create something of my own with it. I always try and figure out what I like or don’t like about book as I read and take the lessons from it. Whilst I was writing Broken Dreams I was very aware of the way Ian Rankin evokes a sense of place in his Rebus novels, the pace Lee Child injects into his Reacher novels and the intelligence and maturity of Michael Connelly’s Bosch novels. Obviously, if I could get remotely close to any of that in my lifetime, I’d be delighted, but it feels like I can at least begin to understand how these writers set the bar so high. And that’s a start.

Are your dreams about the writing life still intact?

Very much so. 2010 has been a real eye-opener in terms of the demands made on writers. It’s incredible how much effort goes into everything, but I’ve had a taste now and I want to build on the platform which has been created. I always want to do more and step things up. I’m certainly not naive about the future, though. Like many, I still need a day job to pay the bills, so I just try and do the best I can with whatever time I have. If anything, it probably helps me appreciate the good things all the more and motivates me to work harder.

What aspects of crime and crime prevention are you interested in?

I studied ‘Social Policy and Criminology’ in the past and that was probably the starting point. That gave me the theoretical grounding that taught me there’s always more than one side to a story. Living in an isolated small city, I tend to think of security in a fairly narrow way. As I’ve moved away from my twenties and the feeling the world can’t touch me, I’ve probably become more concerned at low-level and personal crime.

Have you ever been worried that descriptions of social realities might put readers off?

Not at all. I think a writer has to first write for themselves and the consequences of social realities are something that interest me. We all make choices. As an example, Broken Dreams is partially concerned with the lack of economic options once the default option of working in the fishing industry disappeared from everyday life in Hull. That’s just a reality. What comes next for the people left behind? I don’t come to any conclusions and it’s certainly not politically motivated. The trick is to make it interesting enough to take the reader with you on the journey.

How do you see the role of the artist in the 21st century?

The 21st century is an absolute overload of information, spin, advertising and rules. The artists I admire, in many different mediums, throw a little light on these things and maybe offer a few clues as to how to interpret them. Artists can only offer their version of the truth. It’s up to us what we do with it, or whether we agree or not. Maybe an artist’s role is to entertain, but they can do so much more, too.

What do you wish to accomplish as a writer of fiction?

The ultimate aim is to leave behind a body of work which goes some way to detailing the life of a largely forgotten Northern city in the early part of the 21st century. First and foremost, I want to be able to look back at it with a sense of pride and feel like I’ve given it a go. Balancing that wish with getting through everyday life means I could always use more writing time, but anything above and beyond that would be great.

Do you have a writing routine, perhaps even a case file for each character?

Nothing quite so fancy, I’m afraid. I am a planner, but at the beginning I only tend to have sketches of characters. I don’t like to get bogged down at the start. I just need to know the basics, so I tend to use Microsoft Excel for my notes. Weird? Probably, but I just find it easy to work with and add to as I go along. Even as I start book three, my lead character, Joe Geraghty, is partly a mystery to me. I know things about him and his back-story, but there’s gaps to fill in, and I as write more, I learn more. I like to keep things open-ended in that respect.

How do you feel about writing a series?

There are two main factors for me to weigh up in that respect. The first is whether I still feel Geraghty is someone I want to write about. As I start book three, it feels like there’s plenty of life in him, but each book is looking like it’ll be a two year cycle of writing, so I need to get that decision right. The other factor is whether people want to read about him, or whether I need to change my focus. Time will tell on that.

I admire the way George Pelecanos and Michael Connelly tackle things. Pelecanos continues to write about Washington DC, but regularly updates this by writing from a different perspective. Connelly freshens things up by relegating Bosch to the background for a novel and promoting another character. There’s ways and means, so it feels like I’ve got lots of options going forward.

Can you describe your journey to publication?

In the final analysis, it was probably much like any other writer. I sent the first three chapters and synopsis to Caffeine Nights before being invited to send the rest. Prior to that, I tried to harness the Internet the best I could. I posted short stories on my website and MySpace, and although there were some right stinkers in there, for better or worse, nothing was hidden away. I think that process started to build me a readership, but equally important, I had a history to show Caffeine Nights. They could see I was serious and had been working at things for a few years beforehand.

Are you now where you always wanted to be?

My only aim has been to have a publishing contract, so in that respect, I am where I want to be. However, I’m nowhere near done and I doubt I ever will be. If you’re not striving to improve, what’s the point? Next year will see my second novel. The Late Greats, published and I make my debut appearance in the Mammoth Book of Best British Crime. But I want more and I want to improve.

What advice can you give budding writers? What’s the best advice you’ve been given?

Don’t hide your work away. I think I really benefitted from building a presence online. It’s sometimes frustrating and you need patience, but the foundations have to be put in place. Other than that, read widely and write regularly. I’ve never been one for deliberately seeking out advice, rightly or wrongly I try to trust my own instincts, but Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing have more than a ring of truth to me.

Whose writing has most influenced your own?

Of the big guns, Ian Rankin, George Pelecanos and Michael Connelly are must reads. I also took a huge amount from reading John Steinbeck in my twenties, and more contemporary stuff from Roddy Doyle and Irvine Welsh. Anything with a bit of heart, basically. True influence has come from closer to home. The playwrights and musicians of Hull who I’ve come to know over the years spur me on, precisely because they don’t seem any different to me. If they can do it, I hope I can.

Whose crime fiction can you especially recommend?

It feels like preaching to the converted on such a website, but aside from the ones above, Ray Banks writes fantastic, gritty stuff and for me, Graham Hurley’s DI Faraday series is the best police procedural we have in the UK. More recently, I’ve discovered the work of RJ Ellory, which I think has got real substance. Going a little deeper, on the Internet, Byker Books are doing great things, and like most, I hugely enjoy Paul Brazill’s short stories. Top tip for a newcomer is Ian Ayris. He’s building a following with his short stories, but I think whenever and however his first novel appears, people will be talking about him. My publisher, Caffeine Nights, is building an impressive stable of crime writers – I’m particularly looking forward to husband and wife team, Bob and Carol Bridgestock’s debut in 2011. Bob worked as a Senior Investigating Officer for the police for a number of years, so that should be special.

What do you wish you’d known when you started writing?

I’ve been thinking on this, and I don’t think there is anything I wish I’d had prior knowledge of. It’s been a lot of fun learning as I go along. I write because I love to, so it doesn’t feel like hard work. I knew my publisher had plans in place, so I made a start on The Late Greats as soon as I finished Broken Dreams in an attempt to stay ahead of the game. You can’t really prepare for first time you go live on radio, or stand up in front of an audience to read, but that’s the fun of it. It’s a great ride!

CLICK HERE FOR THE ONE BOOK EVERYBODY SHOULD READ: Broken Dreams

Posted by Len Wanner at 9:47 am Tagged with: ,

Reed Farrel Coleman interviewed by Len Wanner

Interviews No Responses »
Nov 272011

Is the critical world doing society a disservice by setting crime fiction apart from undefined literature and well beneath it in terms of merit?

As it happens I have rather strong opinions on the subject, and as the former Exec Vice President of Mystery Writers of America, a lecturer at Hofstra University in creative writing, I teach courses on writing mystery fiction; a stretch, I know – and someone who began as a poet, I feel well qualified to contend that there is a lot of crime fiction that is equal to or better than so-called literary fiction. I would suggest that Daniel Woodrell, Philip Kerr, Laura Lippman, George Pelecanos, Megan Abbott et al are as skilled with the English language as anyone you might summon up from the literary field and that their books deal with as many of the big questions as any literary author. There are segments of the crime fiction world that are, of course, exploitative and silly, but is this not true of literary fiction?

Why do you write, for whom do you write, and what makes your writing worth reading?

I write because it’s an affliction. I write because I’m compelled to write. It’s a motor that steers the driver. I am not one of those authors who consider the end game before they begin. I write for me and hope other people like it and find value in it. I’m not judging people who do it differently, but I couldn’t do it any other way. As to why people read my work, such as they do, I am always suspect of answering this. I think what crime writing offers, as opposed to most other genres, are niches. Some people read only PI novels, some only procedurals, some cozies, some hardboiled, some only noir. Then there are those that read for plot, others for characters, some even for setting.

Given this variety, does crime fiction deserve more critical attention?

Of course I’m a self-interested party here, but yes, I do believe the genre deserves more critical attention – critical being the key word. As in all genres, there’s great mystery fiction and there’s crap. The issue with our genre is that because it’s so popular, you have a lot of crap to wade through to get to the good and great. Frankly, critics and reviewers are simply overwhelmed. I won’t mention his name, but I had a friend who did book reviews for a major American newspaper. He got so many books to review, it was silly. His own publisher sent him his own book to review. I mean, how absurd is that? But beyond the reviewers and the critics, I think mystery fiction is too often ignored and dismissed by the intelligentsia. It’s ridiculous that Daniel Woodrell or Ken Bruen aren’t taught at college level. To dismiss any art simply on the basis of form is foolish.

When form becomes formula, does it also become a liability to the genre’s reputation?

This is always a difficult question to answer. Look, cozies are comfort food, but there’s nothing wrong with meatloaf and chicken soup. Some cooks make better meatloaf and chicken soup than others. Why should I reject cozies? I may not write them or enjoy them, but I don’t object to them. I also find it unfair that mystery writers are asked to make this choice. Does anyone say to George Clooney, do farces and comedies ruin movies? Does anyone think less of Citizen Kane or The Godfather because another moviemaker made Citizen Ruth or Dear God? I think it’s a false choice. In fact, I think formula can work for a skillful writer. I go back to my previous answer. To dismiss any art simply on the basis of form is foolish. Good writing is good writing.

Does good writing have an agenda – does yours?

Personally, I am interested in the fate of humankind, but my writing is about what interests me at a particular moment. I worry about writing with an agenda, regardless of how well-intentioned that agenda. This is not to say I do not use social commentary – it’s one of the things I’m known for – or that I don’t philosophize. As long as a writer never forgets that his or her first job is entertainment and to stay within the confines of the story being told, he or she can do anything. This relates to your question about formula. A skilful writer can use the form to say all manner of things while sticking to the formula.

On the topic of social commentary, what are the complexities that account for crime, and what are the considerations that animate your antagonists?

I’m afraid I know too much about crime to attach any sort of significance to it beyond the act. Crime is usually done out of weakness, lack of impulse control, strong emotion, or fear. Remove drugs, alcohol, and guns from the equation and you’d see a remarkable drop in crime. As to what goes into creating my antagonist, I want him or her to be entertaining. I’m just not one of those people who see writing the bad guy as a surrogate for things inside me. I went to therapy for that and I take out my aggression on the basketball court.

What do you make of heroes?

I reject the notion of heroes. Just as I believe all humans are capable, given the right motivation and set of circumstances, of the most heinous acts, so too do I believe that all humans are capable of the most heroic acts. I believe in heroic acts, not in heroes.

Given the ongoing abuse of civil rights and due process, is crime fiction reflecting a contemporary suspiciousness of systematic policing?

This is the great motivator behind PI, detective fiction. In many, many cases, it is a single citizen who feels he or she has been ill-served by the system – that justice has been denied them of their loved ones, hence they turn to the PI for justice. This is why I think there will be a resurgence in PI fiction. The PI is the one against the many; the citizen against the state.

Is good crime fiction about the big questions, or what do you make of its confrontation with mystery?

I teach a course at Hofstra University in writing crime fiction, and one of the first things I say is that all fiction is mystery fiction. Let’s start with Hamlet and Macbeth, for instance. Isn’t Moby-Dick a revenge novel? How did Gatsby earn his fortune? Even on a very fundamental level, all fiction asks the big questions: Who am I? How did I get here? Where am I going? What does it mean? These are the big mysteries. But what crime fiction does is supply an accessible route to the big questions. You don’t have to have read Kant or Sartre to read crime fiction, but you can certainly point to mystery fiction that has been informed by them. Mine, for instance.

Is the reinforcement of core values an accident or its appeal?

Making sense of the senseless is the writer’s mission. One of them, anyway. I think people read crime fiction to be entertained. If the by product of that happens to be a reinforcement of core values, great. But if you read someone like my friend Jason Starr or even some of Ken Bruen’s stuff, where’s the reinforcement of core values? In fact, what I love about noir is that it rejects core values… well, other than survival at all costs.

Where does that leave us?

You want the facts, read non-fiction. You want the truth, read fiction.

What does that make your long-term relationship with your characters?

Problematical. At times they are like my children away at college. I love them, but they’re not present. However, when I’m writing about them, it’s like they’re back home and very present. For instance, I rarely think of Moe Prager unless I’m writing a Moe book. When I’m writing a Moe book, he is constantly with me, even in my sleep.

If you had to start all over tomorrow, what would be your last thought before going to bed tonight?

I hope I’m better in the morning.

In that hope, thank you for your candid answers.

Len, it was my pleasure. Too often we’re asked the same silly questions and it is always fun and stimulating to discuss the genre on a deeper level than: “Where do you get your ideas from?”

CLICK HERE FOR THE ONE BOOK EVERYBODY SHOULD READ: Walking the Perfect Square

Posted by Len Wanner at 10:30 am Tagged with: ,

James Sallis interviewed by Len Wanner

Interviews 6 Responses »
Nov 202011

Is your writing about the healing quality of story-telling in the tradition of the shaman trickster tale and the Joycean search for identity?

I tell my students that whenever they are asked a really smart question they must smile at the interviewer and respond with a resounding Yes, perhaps complimenting the interviewer on catching that. So: Yes. But what else do we have to shore against the ruins? Art, religion, philosophy, novels – aren’t they all stories of a kind?

If Lew Griffin remains true to the genre’s promise of chaos returned to order, and if he does so out of superior veracity to himself and the memory of those he has lost, are you suggesting that just because we have stopped believing in something we were once promised, it doesn’t mean the promise was a lie?

The promises are mostly those we make to ourselves, aren’t they? And that may be largely what the six novels – with their insistence upon literature and the various manners in which we cobble together our lives from magpied fragments – are ‘about’.

Do you really believe that our lives are an effort to wring order from chaos – or that art is?  As artists, we’re compulsive pattern makers, nothing more. And we’re the same in our lives, forever adopting, discarding, and revising patterns – beliefs, ceremonies, communities – that make things seem more cohesive, less messy. Knowing these are lies, we choose to believe them. Or perhaps it’s just that I read Camus at too early an age.

Why does your Griffin Cycle revolve around the power of memory?

“Memory, more poet than reporter.” I can’t remember now who I stole that from, but I’m certain the originator would be pleased with me for putting the notion to good use – through six (albeit shortish) novels.

We are here in the present, but we do not live in it; we are forever moving towards, and forever moving away; or, as Gertrude Stein put it, our participation in the present is always diluted by anticipation (the future) and memory (the past). As writer and as musician I am most interested in borderlands – where the world, its objects and its certainties, blur. That borderland where existence, memory and anticipation co-exist is one of those places.

What differences do you see between American and European literature, today?

American literature, it seems to me, is all about struggles between the individual and society. (Distinctly different from European novels dealing with man or woman finding his/her place in society?) I’ve spoken and written at length on this: We’ve a frontier mentality we can’t shed, yet have no frontier to accommodate it, only cities, inner cities, shopping malls, highways, and suburbs.

If humanity is constituted in our inconsistency, contradictions, and conflicting desires, are Plot and Theme the enemies of Character?

Enemies? Probably not, but they’re not on the same team when it comes to trying to evoke as fully as possible a life and the world in which that life takes place. What I call the forty-page syndrome, where you’re reading along, really getting into a novel, then the plot kicks in hard and all the coolest stuff – the textures, the messiness, the digressions – starts falling away. One doesn’t have to champion the plotless and wandering in order to decry the privileging of “story” (patterns imposed from without) over substance (eliciting patterns from within the narrative and characters themselves).

By recycling story patterns you show that memory is often loyal to models we accept simply because they have gained the validity of repeated experience. You also show that it ought to be questioned when Lew reminds the reader that his best efforts at reconstructing events should not be accepted as reliable evidence. Should we find pleasure in these cycles, as we do in Baroque and Blues music, where we find pleasure in the pattern of repetition with variation?

Wow. I mean, Yes.

Pattern-making, as I suggest above, is what it’s all about – the snake’s eyes. A musician plays a phrase off the 9th chord, then echoes it, contrasts it, turns it inside out; one dancer moves to the right, the other balances with a move to the left. Anticipation, surprise. The patterns seem necessary, to hold things – along with our apprehension and comprehension of them – together. But the patterns are temporizing, mutable. Once they become fixed in life, vitality is gone; and in art, creativity. A friend, who plays with African musicians, was told by them to “Put some confusion in it!” Absolutely.

Why do you write crime fiction?

Crime writing, as I write it, is the nearest I can come to gathering up the world I see around me in all its complexity, contradiction, beauty, terror, grace, and violence.

Does your work draw its power from the confrontation with mystery, miracle, and authority?

Don’t our lives draw their power from precisely that?

Do you mind explaining the literary effect of your writing by explaining the metaphor ‘grass, an assassin of polish’?

It’s stolen (like all my thoughts) from someone else, in this case Lawrence Durrell, a poem titled “Style.” Seeking a metaphor, he rummages through various grand notions: wind rolling in the trees and so on, finally settling for “grass, an assassin of polish.” You pick up an insignificant blade, toss it back down – and only then discover that it has cut you, “the thread of blood from the unfelt stroke.”

Subtlety.  Subterfuge.  The unexpected.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ONE BOOK EVERYBODY SHOULD READ: Eye of the Cricket

Posted by Len Wanner at 9:56 am Tagged with: ,

William Meikle interviewed by Len Wanner

Interviews 2 Responses »
Nov 132011

How would you describe yourself in a sentence?

A Scotsman, a husband, a writer, a drinker and a bad guitar player.

How would your best friend describe you in a sentence?

A drunk.

Crime fiction is at its best when…

It is dark and dangerous.

The worst literary vice is…

Using big words to try to look clever.

The highest literary order a writer can aspire to is…

Having a reader like his work.

What’s your favourite word?

Discombobulate.

Which single word would you remove from the parlance of our time?

Awesome.

Which single profession would you remove from the business world?

Salesman.

Which single person would you remove from the planet?

No one. Why shouldn’t they suffer like the rest of us?

Which fictional character is going to be shot, come the literary revolution?

Bella from Twilight.

Which fictional character would you most like to meet in real life?

Doctor Henry Jeckyll

What’s the best one-liner you’ve ever read or written?

“She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.” – The Little Sister

An American, an Englishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar…

You’d think one of them might have spotted it.

Your five favourite party guests are…

Raymond Chandler, Albert Einstein, Patricia Highsmith, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bessie Smith.

Which book by another author do you wish you had written?

The Maltese Falcon

Sum up your latest book in no more than 10 words, including its title:

Sherlock Holmes: Revenant. An old foe returns from the dead.

What scene or theme did it start with?

An unconscious Lord in the Houses of Parliament starts mouthing the motto of an old Scots family.

What was the greatest challenge in writing it?

Getting the Holmes voice right while adding an element of the supernatural.

What was the greatest moment in writing it?

When the McGuffin, a small Scotsman in disguise, revealed himself to me. A genuine ‘A-Ha’ moment.

What are the greatest problems in writing today?

Reaching a fractured audience. Books are so much less a part of life than they were even thirty years ago.

What are the greatest opportunities in writing today?

Reaching a fractured audience. There are many more venues for writers to explore than when I started out. I have work in print, ebook, audio, film, comic strip, and I’m sure when the time comes that it gets beamed straight into people’s brains then I’ll be there to.

What’s the most amusing situation you’ve found yourself in because of your writing?

I did a convention signing where, backstage, I went to the toilet and was sandwiched in the urinals between Batman and Darth Vader.

If God exists, what will be your first words upon opening the pearly gates?

Where’s the bar?

Have the recent trend of police procedurals and noir novels affected your writing?

Only to the extent that everything is grist to the mill. I do read widely, both in the crime and horror genres, but my crime fiction in particular keeps returning to older, pulpier, bases. My series character, Glasgow PI Derek Adams, is a Bogart and Chandler fan, and it is the movies and Americana of the ‘40s that I find a lot of my inspiration for him, rather than in the modern procedural. Paradoxically, forensics and noir have affected my horror fiction more than my crime fiction, helped along by my background in Biological Science.

You said of your novel The Valley that it was your tribute to Conan Doyle. Where you referring to its 19th century setting or the theme of its adventure narrative?

The origins of The Valley are pretty simple to trace. In Fortean circles there have been attempts to find a picture that many claim to have seen, yet no-one has been able to find. This fabled photograph is said to show a group of Civil-War era men standing in a row wearing big grins. Spread-eagled on the ground in front of them is the body of a huge bird, a being that could only come from pre-history. In some accounts this bird is a giant eagle, in others it is even stranger, a leathery, paper thin Pterosaur. Whatever the case, that image was the thing in my mind, and I had a “What if…” moment, wondering what would happen if cowboys came across a Lost World. From that single thought, the initial concept of The Valley was born.

There’s a long tradition of Lost World tales, both in movies and fiction. Over the years I’ve devoured as many as I can find, from Conan Doyle through Haggard, from Tarzan in Pellucidar to Doug McLure in The Land that Time Forgot. Many of these tales involve dinosaurs, but I wanted something different. For a while I didn’t know exactly what “creatures” I needed, but that all changed as soon as the setting clicked. Back in 2005 I had the good fortune to holiday in the Rockies. It was while scanning through photographs of that trip that the thought of the high mountain valley came to me, and when Neil Jackson told me about Montana and the Big Hole Valley, I knew I’d found my spot. And the pictures of the ice and snow from my trip also gave me the era from which I would draw my creatures – the last Ice Age. I now knew that my protagonists would be heading into a Lost Valley where relic animals lived, and that these creatures would be hairy and large. I had an image of a herd of mammoths by a partially-frozen lake, and that was the image that drove me on in the early concepts.

But, to wind back to the question, yes, Doyle is the granddaddy of the genre, and his works were among the first things I remember reading. If The Valley is a tribute to anyone, it is to him.

Is this suspense harder to maintain than when it has human for, when a detective investigates psychological motivation as a means of creating order from chaos?

I believe the opposite is true. A monster is often just that – monstrous, unknown and unknowable. Maintaining a distance from what people understand as real life is the hard bit, but no harder than trying to make readers understand a criminal or murderer whose thought patterns are far away from their own. As I said, a dark unknown is sometimes easier, as everyone has their own fears and phobias that they can project onto an unseen, impersonal presence.

Ever since the opening scene of The Big Sleep, Marlowe and his disciples have been seen as latter day knights in shining armour. How did you go from that tribute to the Watchers trilogy?

It’s all about the struggle of the dark against the light. The time and place, and the way it plays out are in some ways secondary to that. And when you’re dealing with archetypes, there’s only so many to go around, and it’s not surprising that the same concepts of death and betrayal, love and loss, turn up wherever, and whenever, the story is placed.

Plus, there are antecedents – occult detectives who may seem to use the trappings of crime solvers, but get involved in the supernatural. William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel – the book that led to the movie Angel Heart – is a fine example, an expert blending of gumshoe and deviltry that is one of my favourite books. Likewise, in the movies, we have cops facing a demon in Denzel Washington’s Fallen that plays like a police procedural taken to a very dark place.

And even further back, in the ‘gentleman detective’ era, we have seekers of truth in occult cases in John Silence and Carnacki. Even Holmes himself came close to supernatural conclusions at times.

I’ve recently explored this for myself, in The Midnight Eye Files stories, in a series of Carnacki stories, and I even got a chance to have Holmes fight a Necromancer in Edinburgh in an anthology appearance in Gaslight Grotesque. It seems there is quite a market for this kind of merging of crime and supernatural, and I intend to write a lot more of it.

Do you feel at home in Scottish literature?

Stevenson in particular is a big influence. He is a master of plotting, and of putting innocents into situations far out of their usual comfort zones while still maintaining a grounding in their previous, calmer, reality. His way with a loveable rogue in Treasure Island and Kidnapped in particular is also a big influence. Other Scottish writers who have influenced me include John Buchan, Iain Banks and, more in my youth than now, Alistair MacLean and Nigel Tranter. From them I learned how to use the scope of both the Scottish landscape and its history while still keeping the characters alive.

How important is Scottish folklore and mythology to you as a writer?

Most of my work, long and short form, has been set in Scotland, and a lot of it uses the history and folklore. There’s just something about the misty landscapes and old buildings that speaks straight to my soul. Bloody Celts… we get all sentimental at the least wee thing.

But I think it’s the people that influence me most. Everybody in Scotland’s got stories to tell, and once you get them going, you can’t stop them. I love chatting to people, usually in pubs, and finding out the weird shit they’ve experienced. My Glasgow PI, Derek Adams is mainly based on a bloke I met years ago in a bar in Partick, and quite a few of the characters that turn up and talk too much in my books can be found in real life in bars in Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews.

I grew up on the West Coast of Scotland in an environment where the supernatural was almost commonplace. My grannie certainly had a touch of ‘the sight’, always knowing when someone in the family was in trouble. There are numerous stories told of family members meeting other, long dead, family in their dreams, and I myself have had more than a few encounters with dead family, plus meetings with what I can only class as residents of faerie. I have had several precognitive dreams, one of which saved me from a potentially fatal car crash.

I have a deep love of old places, in particular menhirs and stone circles, and I’ve spent quite a lot of time travelling the UK and Europe just to visit archaeological remains. I also love what is widely known as ‘weird shit’. I’ve spent far too much time surfing and reading Fortean, paranormal and cryptozoological websites. The cryptozoological stuff especially fascinates me, and provides a direct stimulus for a lot of my fiction.

So, there’s that, and the fact that I grew up with the sixties explosion of popular culture embracing the supernatural and the weird. Hammer horror movies got me young, and led me back to the Universal originals. My early reading somehow all tended to gravitate in similar directions, with DC comics leading me into pulp and to finding Tarzan. Tarzan is the second novel I remember reading. The first was Treasure Island, so I was already well on the way to the land of adventure even then. I quickly read everything of Burroughs I could find. Then I devoured Wells, Verne and Haggard. I moved on to Conan Doyle before I was twelve, and Professor Challenger’s adventures in spiritualism led me, almost directly, to Dennis Wheatley, Algernon Blackwood, and then on to Lovecraft. Then Stephen King came along.

There’s a separate but related thread of a deep love of detective novels running parallel to this, as Conan Doyle also gave me Holmes, then I moved on to Christie, Chandler, Hammett, Ross MacDonald and Ed McBain, reading everything by them I could find.

Mix all that lot together, add a dash of ZULU, a hefty slug of heroic fantasy from Howard, Leiber and Moorcock, a sprinkle of fast moving Scottish thrillers from John Buchan and Alistair MacLean, and a final pinch of piratical swashbuckling. Leave to marinate for fifty years and what do you get?

A psyche with a deep love of the weird in its most basic forms and the urge to beat the shit out of monsters.

Where does your work find its widest audience?

I’d love to be better known in Scotland, but the sad truth is that the big markets are in the States, and that’s where I find most of my readers. My readership is generally in the fantasy and horror fields, not really known as a big draw in Scotland. That said, I’ve sold several short crime stories to The Weekly News which is still widely read. My Grannies would have been proud of me.

Do your historical settings allow you to explore another side of Scotland, past and present?

Over the years I’ve written many stories set in my native country, in particular in the Watchers series where I got a chance to examine the Jacobite Rebellion in a new way – by having Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the whole highland army, as vampires. It let me look at how the people south of Hadrian’s Wall viewed the “demons” from the North, and how they would react to an invasion.

That series was written ten years ago now, and ever since I’ve been itching to write some more historical fantasy set in Scotland. Going back to earlier times allows you to say things about Scottish culture without knocking people over the head with a ‘message’.

I’ve toyed with several ideas, but it was only last year that things started to firm up. It took the death of two of my favourite writers to give me a kick. David Gemmell’s muscular swordplay and Robert Holdstock’s grip on mythic archetypes and the importance of history mixed in my head and gave me a sword-for-hire in 16th Century Scotland.

The late 1590s were a time of turmoil. Scotland was on the verge of many changes that would shape its future, from religious reformation, to the union of the crowns with England. But in many ways the country was still rooted in its medieval past, and fear of witches and demons was still a large part of everyday life. Seton confronts demons, both internal and external, as he wanders on the fringes of history.

Robert Howard has covered similar ground with Solomon Kane, but I wanted Augustus Seton to be more of a pragmatist, a man set on his path through having succumbed to his baser desires, and now forced to pay the penalty. Seton’s antecedents are characters from my teenage reading: the aforementioned Kane, Moorcock’s Elric and Corum, and, possibly the main one, Gemmell’s Jon Shannow, The Jerusalem Man, forever seeking personal redemption.

I also wanted Seton to be a seeker after truth, continually trying to find ways to explain the supernatural events that shaped him. This will lead him down many Fortean alleys, confronting demons and witches, but also getting involved in other manifestations of the weird, from the Grey Man of Ben MacDui, to the Kilbirnie Wyrm and even encounters with the Grim Reaper himself. Which brings me to more of Seton’s antecedents – occult detectives, like Carnacki and John Silence, through to Karl Kolchak. Like these others, Seton, as he gets more experienced in the ways of the Dark Side, finds that the weird seems to seek him out for personal attention. This gives me a chance to mix history with fantasy, playing with the wide variety of tales in Scottish Folklore, and making up some of my own.

What is your ambition in blending these facets of Scottish storytelling?

My ambition here is to attempt to blend fact and fancy such that the reader can’t be sure if they are dealing with myth or history, folklore or things plucked from my mind. And yet again, there are antecedents from which I’ve drawn. Scotland has produced several writers willing to weave the country’s history and magic into their stories, from Stevenson’s Kidnapped, Walter Scott’s romantic fancies, and John Buchan’s taut thrillers. Stevenson in particular manages to provide fast paced entertainment that also educates even as you’re carried along by the sheer page-turning brilliance of his plotting and the solidity and truth of his characterisations. That’s what I’m striving for with Seton.

He’s still a character in development. The four stories in the first collection – coming soon – are his first adventures in what I hope will become a long and wild career of monster smiting, demon slaying and general mayhem with a bit of history thrown in.

What is it that attracts you most to genre fiction?

It’s pulp fiction that interests me, and I find that it crosses many genres almost seamlessly. I rarely think about ‘genre’ anyway. I write what I want to write and leave marketing labels to the publishers. That said, there is a freedom in writing about the supernatural where, instead of having a man come in with a gun to get the scene moving, you can have any manner of things going on as long as you can explain them away to the reader’s satisfaction. The verisimilitude matters though – the reader has to believe – and that can be difficult to pull off.

Can you tell me about the criticism your writing has received?

There’s a fair degree of snobbery in this business, where writers who are not deemed ‘literary’ are looked down on. I have a great quote on my web page from one such writer who thinks of himself as highbrow. It sums up exactly what I’m talking about.

“William Meikle is… the author of the most clichéd, derivative drivel imaginable… the critical acclaim he receives from his peers is virtually non-existent.”

It’s the last bit that I find interesting. I don’t write in order to get critical acclaim from my peers, and when I’ve encountered writers that do, like the poster of that comment, they are mostly pretentious, boring wankers who frequent message boards where they can massage each others’ egos.

Then there’s the fact that pulp has always had a bad name. I think you have to have grown up with pulp to ‘get’ it. A lot of writers have been told that pulp equals bad plotting and that you have to have deep psychological insight in your work for it to be valid. They’ve also been told that pulp equals bad writing, and they believe it. Whereas I remember the joy I got from early Moorcock, from Mickey Spillane and further back, A.E. Merritt and H. Rider Haggard. I’d love to have a chance to write a Tarzan, John Carter, Allan Quartermain, Mike Hammer or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it. Too many people have never known the sheer pleasure of a fast moving, action based story – not in print anyway. I blame movies for some of this, and good old fashioned elitism and snobbery for the rest.

The good news is, I have publishers who do ‘get’ it. Black Death Books let me indulge my occult PI leanings, and I’ve now found an outlet for my creature features.

How big are these canvasses you intend to paint on?

In the past I have preferred small canvasses, keeping things tight and focusing on character. But over the past year I’ve tried to branch out more. I have an Alien Invasion novel in the works, and a couple of Hollywood-blockbuster style creature features. But I will always return to Derek Adams, walking the streets of a slightly stylised Glasgow that only exists in my mind, and thirty years ago when I stomped the same streets.

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started writing?

That I should write what I want to write, not what I think the market wants. I spent too much time trying to force square stories into round holes.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ONE BOOK EVERYBODY SHOULD READ: The Midnight Eye Files: The Sirens

Posted by Len Wanner at 11:05 am Tagged with: ,

Roger J Ellory interviewed by Len Wanner

Interviews 3 Responses »
Nov 062011

What are your thoughts on the current state of crime fiction?

It has always been my contention that non-fiction possesses, as its primary purpose, the conveyance of information, whereas the primary purpose of fiction is to evoke an emotion. Crime fiction has, for a long time, been recognised as the most widely read type of ‘genre fiction’, and thus one has to ask why. Are we reading it in order to subject ourselves to emotional and mental effects that we otherwise would never experience? I believe we are, at least to some degree.

Another thought I have had on this subject relates to our expectations in the field of the law versus justice. It seems to me that post-World War Two there was a waning belief in the efficacy and honesty of the legal system. It seems that people started to appreciate the fact that the law served to seek its own ends; that the law was there for the lawyers, not for the society. Justice became expensive, slow, ineffective, and people wanted the ‘Sam Spades’ and ‘Philip Marlowes’ as these characters represented justice outside the law – swift, honest, effective, decisive, and ‘the good always vanquished the bad’.

The only question I have yet to really resolve in my own mind is the seeming insatiable appetite that a great deal of readers seem to have for excessively violent and gruesome crime fiction. The vast majority of readers of such material, perhaps surprisingly, are women. This is a question that has raised its head at many library events and talks I have done, and has often been answered by suggesting the vicarious appreciation factor, that readers often desire to be ‘scared’ in such a way as no direct harm or threat of harm is brought into play.

Personally, I feel this is perhaps too simplistic a view.

Why do you write?

I have to write. It’s really that simple. It is a vocation, a purpose, a raison d’être for me. I don’t know that this is the case for all authors, but certainly those that have battled and persisted against all opposition to get published would fall into that category. I am driven to write, in all honesty. For me, there is a dynamic in the writing itself that is addictive to me.

I have been told that there are fundamentally two types of writers: those who find it a chore, a burden, an onerous task, and they are overwhelmingly relieved when they have actually put something on paper – and such an attitude begs the question why they write at all – and the second category who love the process of writing itself, and would continue to write regardless of whether or not they were published. I’m in the second category, and I find it cathartic and purposeful.

Of what cultural importance is storytelling to you?

I think storytelling is as old as language and no less important. The myths and sagas of old were an effort to keep the past alive, and thus inform the future. I think writers write because they have to, and if writing wasn’t an option they would do some other creative thing. At a Lit. Fest in Dubai we were interested to learn that many, many authors were also cooks, musicians, painters, sculptors etc. I think there is a creative urge – I certainly have it as a photographer, a musician, a painter, and I even studied ballet for eight years! – and I believe that writing is one route for expression, but not the only one.

Why do you read?

I am not sure really. I read for emotional engagement, and thus I read across all genres.

Why do you read crime fiction?

Vicarious danger, excitement, emotional engagement, having to solve a puzzle, a hope that – by reading about the psychology of crime, and thus the psychology of the darker side of Man – one will better understand the psyche of Man altogether.

Do you have a particular reader in mind as you write?

I write for myself, and for my friends. I do not have a ‘perfect reader’ per se, but I do write for readers in general. The impulse is to tell as good a story as possible. The intent is to evoke as strong an emotion in a reader as possible. I think the real power of a novel is not to entertain, but to evoke an emotion, and when I am writing I am always working towards creating the greatest emotional effect possible.

So what do you make of the relationship crime fiction has with our current culture of fear?

I think the current culture of fear is a manufactured state, and a betrayal of people and society. I believe it has been generated by the politicians, the media, the psychiatric industry, the medical profession and the Police authorities. I think people are beginning to see through the facade, and they are getting very fed up of it. I hope that’s the case. I don’t watch soap operas, but every week my wife buys a magazine that details what’s on television – which I also watch very, very little of – and every soap story advertised on the front of this magazine deals with rape, murder, arson, kidnapping, affairs, betrayals, adultery, divorce and death. This is not life. This is sensationalism at its worst. This is what TV executives and programme producers think we wish to be entertained by. I think it’s outrageous.

Now you’ve got me ranting! I cannot really comment on the relationship between the culture of fear and crime writing, because I read very little contemporary crime fiction, and almost none written by British authors as I find it very much-of-a-muchness.

Since real crime has inspired imitation in crime fiction, has crime fiction had an impact on real crime?

Both crime fiction – books – and crime fiction – TV and film – are spectacularly unrealistic in representing the reality of crime, so much so that the percentage of successful convictions in the UK has dropped dramatically over the past few years, and even the Police and the legal system are now referring to this as the ‘CSI Factor’.

This is simply the fact that people are ‘expecting’ DNA and probative evidence in order to convict a criminal, and in the absence of that they do not convict. In all honesty, 15% of rapes result in DNA being obtained, and of those fifteen percent of cases about one percent of that fifteen result in a conviction from DNA. Crime fiction and life are not the same, never have been, and never will be.

What’s the appeal of crime fiction’s renegade protagonist?

I think we want to believe that there are people out there who ‘know what to do’ and can do it, and sometimes take steps to ensure that justice is carried out despite the law. Perhaps they are models that we aspire to, but I think that it’s more a case of considering it from an idealist perspective. I think the society portrayed in fiction is the society we would like – within reason – but I think, even as we read, we are aware that this is not the case.

We like to be reminded that justice is possible, that the law is not always there simply to serve the lawyers, and that there are certain core principles relating to ethics, morals, decisions, integrity, honesty etc that we feel as inherent axioms, and society is continually demonstrating that those axioms are invalid, outmoded etc. I don’t believe they are, and I believe that we want to be shown that they are still valid because we fundamentally want them to be. We like to be right. We want to be honest. We want to be sociable and ethical and constructive. The criminal element makes up about 2.5% of the population, and we – as a social people – don’t agree with crime.

My opinion is that crime fiction, and certainly the prevalence of the central character – acting outside the constraints of the law, the individual who can take responsibility for some situation, some injustice, and then see that justice is done - started after WWII. I believe that people, seeing that law was beginning to serve the lawyers, that the Police were corrupt, that the courts provided slow, expensive ‘justice’ that was no justice at all, were intrigued by the possibility that there might be a character representing a degree of integrity and rightness in his/her dealings with violations of the law. I think that people read crime fiction – perhaps – to be reminded of the fact that justice can still be seen to be done, and that there are individuals in life who can overcome the criminal system in place in this society and set things right.

Has writing about the criminal system changed the way you look at criminals?

I think that a person becomes a criminal at the point they lose their self-respect. It is that simple. Restore an individual’s self-respect and he starts to respect others. If you don’t respect others they become ‘targets’ and ‘victims’.

Do you see the popularity of crime fiction as indicative of a wish to understand this better?

I think, very simply, that it goes back to the fundamental desire – on all our parts – to understand as much as we can about people, about other human beings. I think that people have long-since appreciated that the more one understands about life, the better one will succeed and survive. I think you will find that people who read, i.e. those who have the lifelong love affairs with books, as we do, are also inquisitive people in general. They want to know more. They want to find out more. They possibly have higher-than-average IQs. I think it comes from a desire to understand life better.

Does this “desire to understand life better” make you write from your own experience?

We’re talking situational dynamics here – the familial, social, educational, environmental factors that direct an individual towards crime, or in fact any action in their lives. I worked for many, many years with recovering drug addicts and also in the field of criminal rehabilitation. I have found conclusively that the incidence of crime and drug use relates precisely and incontrovertibly to education levels. The higher the level of literacy – the lower the instances of crime and drug use.

In spite of such concerns, does the crime writer still sit at the table of literature like a transvestite cousin at a family gathering – does fashion humour him while studiously ignoring his fabulous hat?

A friend of mine, another crime writer, said that crime writers were ‘the smokers of the literary world’. Literary writers sit indoors and watch the smokers smoking outside, thinking ‘dirty, horrible people… but they do look like they’re having fun…’ which amused me greatly. So, the answer to your question is yes, I would think so.

What are your five favourite crime novels?

I have to include In Cold Blood by Capote, though not fiction, it was written in the style of a work of fiction, and – as far as I’m concerned – is one of the finest books ever written, fiction, non-fiction or otherwise. The fact that Capote never did publish another word, just as Lee never published after To Kill A Mockingbird leads me to believe that there are some authors who write a book that defines them, perhaps says everything they needed to say, and thus the necessity to publish again and again becomes redundant.

My second choice has to be Conan Doyle. There are four novels and fifty-six short stories, most often published as a Complete Sherlock Holmes volume. I believe that Conan Doyle revolutionised crime writing much the way that Christie did. It was – essentially – a new genre that was created, and I think his plots are utterly masterful.

Thirdly, Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, and – once again – perhaps not classified as a ‘crime novel’, it is nevertheless a story about a criminal and the attempts by his daughter to find him when the Police come looking. Sparse, stunning prose. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

Fourth, because I have to include a McCarthy, it will have to be No Country for Old Men as this perhaps falls into the crime category most easily. Again, stunning prose. I always try to read those books that make me work harder as a writer. I like to read books that challenge me, and McCarthy does that.

Lastly, To Kill A Mockingbird, the best ‘legal thriller’ ever written, and – once more – a challenge when it comes to classification as a crime novel, but I think the thing we are learning more and more these days is that genres really are being relaxed, and parameters are falling away, and people are enjoying books simply because they are great stories.

If your writing career were to start all over tomorrow, what would be your last thought before going to sleep tonight?

My first thought: I hope it doesn’t take another fifteen years and twenty-two novels to get published! What else would I think? I think I would grit my teeth, clench my fists, and psych myself up for a battle. It’s a tough business, but once you’ve been in that battle there’s nothing else that could replace it. Or I’d just decide to be an alcoholic blues guitarist and to hell with the books!

CLICK HERE FOR THE ONE BOOK EVERYBODY SHOULD READ: The Anniversary Man

Posted by Len Wanner at 12:32 pm Tagged with: ,

Leonard Fritz’s ‘In Nine Kinds of Pain’ reviewed by Charlie Stella

Reviews No Responses »
Nov 012011

In Nine Kinds of Pain, Leonard Fritz offers a Detroit back story too many of us have come to ignore; how and what and why an impoverished city is permitted to rot as if walled in from the rest of our world. He uses characters on both sides of the law to portray the hell of trying to survive hell; an alcoholic priest on the edge, in love with a prostitute the way Jesus loved Mary Magdalene; a suicidal cop in love with his wife the way a cuckold can’t get enough abuse; the prostitute seeking shelter from a killer in the arms of the church (wherein that priest falls in love – or is it much needed lust?). There’s the city itself, the cloud of doom hovering over each and all the characters in the city of Detroit as told by an omniscient voice of wisdom providing both warning and grace to the understandably (or not) naive.

Beware, for instance, the Devil’s Night. Fritz offers more than the advertised thriller in this economic gem. Social issues abound; from drugs to poverty to marital discord, suicide, loss of faith, faith in loss … you name it, this book swoops in and out of the issues of our day. I was two hundred pages into a best-selling novel I’m reading for my MFA class when the ARC for the Fritz book was close at hand. I started reading and didn’t stop. I’ll go back to the funny best-seller later, I decided. In Nine Kinds of Pain was way too gripping and more my kind of a read to have to wait another four hundred pages of very well crafted humour.

Fritz strategically places graphic cartoon-like strips in this work. As one who never read (or is ever likely to read) a graphic novel, they surprised me. I thought them brilliant. Last year’s Pulitzer Prize winning fiction (A Visit from the Goon Squad) also used graphics (including a Power Point presentation). I suspect A Visit from the Goon Squad didn’t work for me because of the bands/music references I just wasn’t aware of. In any event, I took three tries at the prize winner and never finished reading it. No knock on the book; it just wasn’t for me. Reading In Nine Kinds of Pain, I was quickly absorbed, and the third time I’ll read this one, it’ll be because I reread most books I find to be extra special.

Lenny Fritz, a modern day Hubert Selby Jr./Jack Kerouac, has written a gem. It isn’t Elmore Leonard’s Detroit. It’s darker, it’s colder, it isn’t guised in clever dialogue that makes us smile; this dialogue is the real and gritty deal. In a word, it’s better. Hats off to New Pulp Press for this discovery and this gift to us all.

Posted by Len Wanner at 9:28 am Tagged with: , ,
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