Dancing With Myself: LJ SELLERS interviews LJ SELLERS

"More love for DIRTY OLD TOWN

Just can't help myself. I want more people to buy Nigel Bird's Dirty Old Town and read it and love it and tell others about it. I was surprised by every story. These are short, punchy, thoughtful, hard as a punch, but sometimes they dig in and squeeze. It's dirty stuff, done beautifully.Nigel is also responsible for the too-cool "Dancing With Myself" interview series at his blog, Sea Minor.”

Anthony Neil Smith (Yellow Medicine, Psychosomatic, Hogdoggin')

WOW.

Least I could do was to give one of his books a space (eyes right)>>>.

Truth be told, comments like that can never be taken away and give me such a lift I find it impossible to explain.

Our guest today has had a hell of a lot of good feedback and that might help to explain the way she's flying high in the Amazon Kindle charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Readers and writers, ATTENTION.

Q: What motivates a novelist to participate in a blog like this? Being both the interviewer and subject?

A: Control and ego! It’s an opportunity to say exactly what we want about ourselves and our work. Who could pass that up?

Q: There are hundreds of crime stories out there, why should anyone make time to read yours?

A: I believe my stories are a good balance of what readers want. They combine realistic crimes with complex plots. I do enough character development to engage readers but without sidetracking the story. I write about provocative social issues as an intrinsic component of the plot, so the story has meaning. But I do it in subtle ways that leave readers thinking. Most important, I keep the pace moving. Besides, Mystery Scene magazine says you should be reading my work.

Q: You write a series about a homicide detective, is there a formula to your plots?

A: Not at all. Each of my Detective Jackson stories is unique. The crimes are all different, and each story has its own structure with different POV characters. In the first book, The Sex Club, I had two main protagonists, a Planned Parenthood nurse and Detective Jackson. In Secrets to Die For, I opened the story from the victim’s POV, then told most of the rest from Jackson’s perspective, with a reporter having a small part. In Thrilled to Death, women go missing and the body doesn’t appear until halfway through. In my last release, Passions of the Dead, the story opens with a mass murder, and I tell a parallel subplot through the eyes of the victims.

Q: Which book was most challenging to write and why?

A: The Sex Club was especially challenging, because the timing of events had to be perfect to pull off the ending, which readers are still talking about. Some even e-mailed me to say they read the ending over and over. But the book I’m working on now, affectionately called “Jackson 5,” is proving to be even more difficult. In this story, I have two separate investigations going and they both involve crimes of the past. It’s very challenging to craft an investigation with no crime scenes, no bodies, and no autopsies. But I’m halfway there, and I believe I’ll pull it off.

Q: Enough about your books. It’s time for some personal questions. What do you do for fun when you’re not writing or promoting?

A: I love cycling and I bike year round. And anything that gets my adrenaline going is fun for me, so I’ve been parasailing, gone up in hot air balloon, and jumped out of an airplane. For affordable everyday fun, I shoot pool with my husband and go bowling with my brothers.

Q: Until recently, what was your day job?

A: I’ve worked as a journalist/editor for magazines and educational publishers for most of my career. I spent seven years on a pharmaceutical magazine and know more about drugs than I should. I finally ended up with a part-time newspaper job writing features, which was perfect. Then they laid me off as a cost-cutting measure. I used my down time wisely, and now I’m a full-time novelist.

Q: What are some of the strangest jobs you worked as young person and how did they affect your life and your writing?

A: In high school, I worked in the meat department at a local grocery store. Boy was that a stinker! It made me realize I needed to go to college, even though we had no money. In college, I had a job as a vacuum cleaner sales person. That ended when my boss kissed and groped me. That experience made me realize that perverts are everywhere, which is why they come up in my books. I also pulled green chain for six months. I lost 20 pounds and realized I could do almost anything a man could do, but I was smarter than that, so why should I?

Q: If you’re such a tough woman, why do you write about a male homicide detective?

A: When I wrote The Sex Club, I wasn’t sure it would be a series, but I was sure that I needed two main characters: a Planned Parenthood nurse and a homicide detective. The nurse had to be a woman, so I made the detective a male for balance. The detective had to be the one to carry the series forward, so I ended up with a male protagonist. Fortunately, it’s also realistic for him to be male. There are no female detectives in Eugene’s violent crimes division. But a female sergeant runs the unit, so my character’s boss is woman.

Q: What is the most challenging aspect of writing a series?

A: Character arc. If your characters change too much, your readers will be disappointed and lose interest. If they don’t change at all, reviewers and readers will ding you for that too. So Jackson’s changes are subtle, and they are also organic to the plots. His circumstances—such as his relationship with Kera, his ex-wife’s involvement with his daughter, and his home arrangement—are changing slowly too. I may move him forward in one novel, then move him back in the next. But that’s how it is. Jackson’s life is complicated and stressful, like most of ours.

Q: What other amazing things have you done besides write novels?

A: After I graduated from college, I rode my bike to the Grand Canyon (from Eugene Oregon), including crossing Donner Pass. It was a three-day 10,000-foot climb. When we reached the top, a blizzard was happening and ten feet of snow had already piled up at the side of the road. We spent two days in Truckee waiting for the snow to stop. Then we rode down the mountain into Reno, with snow, ice, and gravel on the road. It was the most terrifying 45 minutes of my life.

To get to find out a little more about LJ or to take a look at her book, follow the links below.

http://ljsellers.com

http://www.amazon.com/Club-Detective-Jackson-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0014E6PTG/ref=pd_ts_kinc_3?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text

Dancing With Myself: DONNA MOORE interviews DONNA MOORE

I was hoping to meet Donna Moore last night when I went along to see Tony Black's launch of his new release 'Truth Lies Bleeding'.

I was late and got a front row seat. This was good because I was able to get a great view of the event, but not so because I couldn't see who was behind me.

Soon as I turned round afterwards, I was disappointed not to see a huge ball of brightness (for that's how I imagine her to be).

Luckily, there were lots of other good folk there to compensate.

When I went to say hi to Tony, he pulled something from his pocket and told me it was from Donna.

You can imagine the anticipation.

It turned out to be a chocolate frog.

I thought about framing it. How it might look on my wall.

Instead, because I hadn't had any tea, I decided to eat the frog and frame the wrapper. How sweet it tasted.

Anyway, that's quite enough of me.

Here's Donna:

Left Brain: You're not going to make me look like a numpty are you?

Right Brain: I think you're quite capable of doing that yourself..
Besides, isn't it me who's supposed to be asking the questions?

Left Brain: Oh, right, OK. Let's swap places.

Right Brain: OK. Now. Is it right that...

Left Brain: Wait. I need tea and cake.

Right Brain:

Left Brain: Okey doke. Away you go.

Right Brain: So, is it right that...

Left Brain: Wait. You're not going to ask me anything difficult are you?

Right Brain: Like what?

Left Brain: Well...anything to do with maths. Or physics. Or
sculpture. Or classical music. No jazz either. Or chemistry. Or
anything mechanical. No cars, definitely no cars. Or cricket. Flags of
the world I would be a bit dodgy on - unless it was flags of Europe.
Well, flags of Britain. Actually, I might struggle a bit with Wales.
OK, flags are out. Cooking. Let's not do cooking.

Right Brain: Maybe it would be easier to tell me what you WOULD like
to talk about.

Left Brain: Shoes. Shoes are good. Books. Music...well, except
classical and jazz, of course. Punk's good. You can ask me about punk.
Film questions are OK - as long as it's not science fiction or
straight romance. I'd prefer questions on film noir or screwball
comedy. See, there's a lot of things, so stop rolling your eye at me.

Right Brain: Oh, shut up. Nigel will cut us off if you're not careful
and all you've done is babble about flags. Ready now? OK, first
question. Is it true that you once had an unfortunate accident caused
by a duck?

Left Brain: Oh, I can see this is going to be one of THOSE interviews.
Yes. I was in the local park, striding briskly around the edge of the
pond, with The Ramones on my ipod and I was musing over what was going
to happen next in the book I was working on and I had this idea for a
scene in a fetish club. However, it would necessitate some research,
since I've never been to a fetish club, and I was pondering over which
of my friends would be most likely to come with me (the answer I
regretfully came to was 'none'. I realised how desperate I was, having
gone through the list of friends and family, when I was left with my
mother as the only option. That was definitely not going to work - PVC
is something used to cover the stools at the breakfast bar and a
nipple clamp is something my dad might use in the mystery that is the
car engine).

Anyway the whole issue demanded my full concentration . Suddenly I
caught a movement at my left hand side and my leg was suddenly jabbed
just above the ankle. The first thought that came into my head was
that I'd been mistaken for a Russian dissident and stabbed with a
poisoned umbrella. The second was "I need to get away from the pointy
thing." I half jumped, half fell in the opposite direction from my
attacker, forgetting in my panic that "in the opposite direction from
my attacker" translated as 'into the pond'.

With a splash that reverberated around the park I ended up sitting on
the slimy bottom (not mine, the pond's) in two feet of stagnant water.
Water that was not only full of weeds, irn bru cans, chip papers and
heaven only knows what else (it's a PARK - goodness only knows what
happens there after dark), but which swans and ducks had relieved
themselves in. These swans and ducks were now all paddling towards me
- no doubt eyeing me as an unfeasibly large and savoury piece of bread
that someone had tossed in for their breakfast. On the path at the
side of the pond, one small but particularly belligerent looking duck
was giving me the evil eye, as though to say "Come on punk, make my
day."

Right Brain: I wish I'd never asked.

Left Brain: Me too.

Right Brain: So you "supposedly" write humourous crime fiction. What
do you like to read?

Left Brain: I'm not sure I like the implication of that. I can see you
doing that annoying finger thing when you said 'supposedly'. However,
I will be the bigger woman--

Right Brain: Well, that'll be easy, at least, tubby.

Left Brain: I will be the bigger woman and answer your question. I
like really dark crime fiction, and I like really warped and funny
crime fiction. If I can get both in the same book then so much the
better. Some of my favourite authors and books are Daniel Woodrell,
Joe Lansdale, Allan Guthrie, Ken Bruen, Eddie Muller, Reed Farrel
Coleman, Christa Faust, Barbara Seranella, Ray Banks, Scott Phillips,
Bill Fitzhugh, Steve Mosby, Victor Gischler, Tony Black, Chris Ewan,
Russel McLean, Charles Willeford, Donald Westlake, Charlie Williams,
Anthony Neil Smith, Arnaldur Indridason, Mark Haskell Smith, Helen
Fitzgerald, Christopher Moore, Christopher Brookmyre, Megan Abbott,
Karen Campbell, Douglas Lindsay, Donald Ray Pollock's KNOCKEMSTIFF, John Welter's NIGHT OF THE AVENGING BLOWFISH. John Burns' Max Chard
series.

Right Brain: Do you think you could ever answer a question with a one
word answer?

Left Brain: Unlikely. Very unlikely.

Right Brain: What about non-fiction?

Left Brain: My favourite non-fiction books of recent times have been
Anna Funder's STASILAND which is various stories about ordinary people
who lived in East Berlin under the STASI regime, and Robert M
Sapolsky's A PRIMATE'S MEMOIR about a young student who goes to Kenya on a research project to study baboons. Both funny and sad.

Right Brain: How are you at DIY?

Left Brain: Aren't YOU supposed to be the side of the brain that is
good at doing practical things. Do you want me to tell the
embarrassing story of how you couldn't assemble the
'easy-to-assemble-so-easy-even-a-three-toed-sloth-could-do-it'
bathroom cabinets when the plumber was there fitting a new bathroom?

Right Brain. I think you'll find that making stuff is within YOUR
purview on the left. And it WAS easy to assemble.

Left Brain: Easy to assemble? How, may I ask, is "insert screw C into
slot Q and force large plastic thingy L into tiny miniscule hole W. If
you can actually FIND wee plastic thingy L in the box that is. Use
third hand to twist twisty thing M and swear loudly using sweary word
F" easy? I called Edinburgh Zoo but the three-toed sloth was out on a
job building an MFI chest of drawers.

After about half an hour, the results of my labours were:
Inserted - 10 screws
Removed - 8 screws
Turned Side Piece N correct way up
Turned Side Piece M correct way up
Reinserted - 8 screws
Removed and Reinserted - 2 screws
Blisters - 2
Swear words used - 943

I told the plumber - let's call him John, for that is, indeed, his
name - about my blisters and showed him the screwdriver.

"That's a crap screwdriver - where did you get it?"

"Out of a Christmas Cracker."

He just raised his eyebrows.

So, several hours of blood sweat and tears later, one bathroom cabinet
is complete. I proudly dragged John from under the bath to show him my
handiwork.

"Look, a small cabinet - isn't it lovely? Aren't I clever?"

"I've removed the bath, sink, toilet, taken off all the tiles, removed
the old floor, put down plywood ready for the tiles, plumbed in the
new bath and shower attachment."

"Yes, yes... whatever...look at my cabinet."

I wish you hadn't asked about DIY.

Right Brain: So I suppose the question about you falling into a tray
of primrose paint is out then?

Left Brain: Move ON.

Right Brain: Your blog focuses on Scottish crime fiction writers. Why is that?

Left Brain: Because Scottish crime fiction is really strong and
vibrant. There are so many authors who either live in Scotland, or set
their books in Scotland. I think it's the mix of Scotland's history,
gothic sensibility, dark sense of humour that makes it such a fertile
place for I currently have 98 listed. They write noir, PI, cosies,
police procedurals, forensic experts, serial killers, psychological
thrillers, books set in the past, present and future. There are so
many that deserve to be better known.

Right Brain: So, does living in Glasgow help your writing?

Left Brain: It's a brilliant place for odd things to happen. I once
stood at a bus stop deep in thought, only to discover I was trampling
all over evidence from a crime scene- a saw. Public transport is a
fertile, if weird, ground for inspiration. And taxis are always an
adventure. I think whenever I ring a taxi firm the call goes out "Taxi
for Donna - send the nutter."

I had one taxi driver who told me that he was a trained killer and
could kill three people at once with his bare hands. Well thank you,
that's just the sort of credentials I want from a taxi driver. And
then he told me that his old boss annoyed him so much that he (the
taxi driver) threw his (the old boss') leg up on the roof of the
office. Luckily for everyone involved (including my nerves) it was
artificial (the leg, not the roof).

And then there was the taxi driver who cut up a guy on a motorbike.
The biker got off his bike and rapped on the driver's window. Despite
the panicked thought waves I was sending to the driver "Don't put the
window down, just get the hell out of here", he put the handbrake on
and pulled the window down. The motorbike rider leaned over and said
"What the fuck do you think you're doing you fucking bampot?" The two
thoughts running round my head were "Oh my God, we're going to be
killed in a road rage attack" and "nice use of the word 'bampot'. An
increasingly heated argument ensued with lots of macho posturing and
finger pointing and burst blood vessels. Eventually the taxi driver
got out of the car and...I kid you not...gave the man on the motorbike
a Glasgow kiss. Just to clarify here - he headbutted the man on the
motorbike - who, being a law abiding citizen, was wearing a nice,
strong, hard crash helmet. I looked on, my ghast completely flabbered.
I think the man on the motorbike felt exactly the same way, as he just
looked at the taxi driver, bemused. I was just about to roll down my
window and say to the taxi driver "Oy mate, he was quite right, you
ARE a fucking bampot", when he got back into the cab and we carried on
home.

Right Brain: I noticed some bad language in that last answer. Is it
true that our Mum won't read your books?

Left Brain: Quite true. She got as far as half way down the first page
of OLD DOGS before giving up with a "Can't you write a NICE book,
dear?" She even ripped the book out of the hands of someone else,
warning him not to read it. She also thinks that every female over
sixty I write about is based on her. And God forbid I should ever
write a sex scene.

Right Brain: Do you think that means she doesn't love us?

Left Brain: Don't worry, I'm sure she does. Besides, sometimes I think
she's less against swearing than she makes out. Do you remember that
time they went away for their wedding anniversary and we rang up to
say hello and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Happy Anniversary Dad! Are you having a lovely time? How is the
hotel? What's the weather like? Is the food nice? What have you been
doing? What have you seen?

Dad: Hello love, I'll pass you over to your mother.

Me: Hello Mum, happy Anniversary!

Mum: Eee, I've just sat in some shit, but your dad says it's chocolate.

Me (confused): How did he know? Did he lick it?

Right Brain: So she DOES love us, after all, then?

Left Brain: Yes, dear. Here, have some cake.

Right Brain: Wait! Before we finish I have to ask a final question -
are you working on anything at the moment?

Left Brain: Yes. A book set in a seedy Scottish seaside town, a
screenplay set in a retirement community, and the rest of this cake.



http://bigbeatfrombadsville.blogspot.com/

and for the brilliant Old Dogs US:

http://www.amazon.com/Old-Dogs-Donna-Moore/dp/1935415247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297374705&sr=8-1

UK:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Old-Dogs-Donna-Moore/dp/1844549224/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297374781&sr=8-1

Dancing With Myself_ MARCUS SEDGWICK interviews MARCUS SEDGWICK

Busy, busy times just now. Good times, mind.

Spinetingler are running a cracking series of interviews just now dealing with E-publishing from a writer's perspective. It's featured Lee Goldberg, Alla Guthrie, Dave Zeltserman, Chuck Wendig, Chris Holm and Tom Piccirilli so far. I'll be joining the list in the next day or so and, boy, do I feel blessed to be in that company.

Allan Guthrie also has an interview over at You Would Say That Wouldn’t You where he teases us with what's around the corner without adding the who.

I'm indebted to Heath Lowrance for his review of DIRTY OLD TOWN, as I am to Anthony Neil Smith and Donald Ray Pollock. Many thanks.

There's a nice story by Christopher Rhatigan over at Thrillers Killers and Chillers if you have time and Beat To A Pulp's weekly punch will floor you as Richard Godwin climbs through the ropes. The story is Mercy Seat, a title that's also the name of one of my favourite Nick Cave songs. Way to go you two.

And now to today's dance.

It's a real honour to honour the Himalayan legend, Marcus Sedgwick.

Here he is:

1 - So, how does it feel to have won the Nobel Prize for literature? Again?

Are you sure about that..? Oh, wait a minute. This is one of those ask yourself the questions you'd really liked to be asked as an author thingies, isn't it? I haven't actually won, have I?

2 - That's right. Sorry. But this interview technique does have its compensations. Like, no one is going to ask where you get your ideas from, for a start. So are you happy to continue?

Yes. But that counts as one of the questions right?

3 - I suppose it does. I'll be more careful. So what is the question
you would most like to be asked?

Hang on a minute, if I tell you that, this will all just be getting mind-bendingly self-referential. I mean, you're already me, and you're supposed to know the answer to that question, aren't you?

4 - You're right. Again. Dammit. This is harder than I thought. I suppose the thing is that you're so used to hearing the same questions as a writer that it's hard to think of anything else. So why don't I frame it another way. What's going on in your head, right now?

I'm feeling confused. But I do have a sudden urge to talk about music.

5 - Why's that?

You should stop wasting questions, really you should. Well, it's because I love music, and I always have it playing when I write. I find it helps to have something that creates thesame mood your trying to put into whatever you're writing. That's important. After all,the reason anyone embarks on any creative endeavour, and the reason anyone gets anything out of experiencing that creation, is because of the exchange of emotion. That's what it's all about. And personally, I think music is a more directly powerful mechanism for doing this than any other art form.

6 - Really? You don't think writing can do it too?

Of course I do. I didn't say that. Please pay attention - I just said music can do it more directly. Books require a reader to do some more work, put some more effort in, but that in itself can be useful. Books and music are very different ways of conveying emotion, and the fact that the reader often builds much of a book from their own imagination is a fascinating thought and one that you can work with as a writer.

7 - So, if you could choose, would you rather have been a musician, or a composer, than a writer?

Probably, yes, but let me add right now that I am very lucky to have realised that I do have some creative outlet, and been able to do something about it too.

8 - I once heard it said that you used to herd goats on the lower slopes of the Himalayas, is that true?

No.

9 - I read it on the internet. It seems hard to believe it was wrong.
Don't you use the internet a lot?

Yes, I certainly do. And I think it can be a wonderfully useful thing, it saves me lots of time as a writer, and the random walks you can take often lead to stumbling on new ideas. That being said, I think it's important to remember the world outside your shed, to meet people, to go for long walks, long drives, listen to live music, herd goats...

10 - I thought you didn't do that?

I don't, I was just giving an example of what you MIGHT do. Really, you know, you haven't been a very good interviewer. You know, maybe I might just go back to being interviewed by other people instead. Their questions are at least coherent. And you know, the reason you get asked the same questions all the time is because they are very
important questions. It's important to remember that, and treat even the most frequent question, such as "where do you get your ideas from?", with the respect it deserves - thereason it keeps on being asked, is because it is a very mysterious thing.

http://www.marcussedgwick.com/Marcus_Sedgwick/Home.html

Dancing With Myself: JOHN KENYON interviews JOHN KENYON

At the weekend I was flattened by some kind of bug. I checked out the sales of Dirty Old Town and that was like lying under a steam-roller (thought about it, too).

A day in bed that wiped out Sunday and here I am on my lunch-break wondering how to change my mind-set.

One thing is to remember how great others can be and how much the opinions of people I respect hugely matters.

Take this at Donald Ray Pollock's blog regarding my collection.

'I guarantee it will be the best 99 cents you ever spent in your life!'
http://donaldraypollock.blogspot.com/

And Anthony Neil Smith said something amazing too (but I'm not allowed to view it here throught the work system, so I can't get it quite right). 'An amazing find', is the way I recall it.
I'll put it up in the next post. His blog's over at http://anthonyneilsmith.typepad.com/

So it's true, money can't buy you love. I think, though, that writing might get you some, thank goodness.

Another thing to look forward to today is John Kenyon's dance. Read it carefully. He's proposing something neat. Let him know if you think it's a good idea by posting here.

Take it away John.



Q: So, late last year you declared on your blog that you're a crime writer. Why now, and according to what measure?

A: It was a realization that was a long time coming. I've written fiction for years, but always toiled under the misapprehension that I needed the validation of publication in some university-edited journal to qualify myself as a writer. Misguided, right? And this from a journalist who has published hundreds of thousands more words than any recent class of the Iowa Writers' Workshop combined. Even then, nearly every story I wrote contained crime and noir elements; no surprise given how big a chunk of my reading such writing comprises.

When I finally took a crack at writing some honest-to-badness crime fiction, it was because I was reading an increasing number of stories on online fiction sites and figured I could do as well or better. The fact that I've been lucky enough to see publication with Beat to a Pulp, Thuglit, Crime Factory and others, means I've got the "as well as" part down. I'm still working on "better."

Q: Did you have any writing-related resolutions this year?

A: In a way. I quit resolving to finish a novel, confident that it'll get finished when it needs to be, not necessarily when I want it to be. Instead, I resolved two things:
1) I was ecstatic in 2009 and 2010 to be published in places like those mentioned above. I resolve that in 2011, my work will be so good that venues that publish my work will be as excited to see a submission from me as I am in getting word that they’ll publish it.



2) I resolve to get back to eating right and exercising, but not because of my health. I'm doing so because I want to look great in the author photo on my book jacket.



3) I resolve to attend Bouchercon this year because it’s practically in my backyard (if backyard can be defined as “the Midwest”) and because I really want to meet the dozens of great people I’ve “e-met” via blogs like this one, Twitter, etc.

Q: Are you like every other online fiction writer, slogging away on stories while neglecting an in-progress novel?

A: In progress, yes. Ignoring, no. I was really knocked out by a
blog post by Kieran Shea earlier this year where he said he was done blogging because it was taking away from the writing he really wanted to do, which was to finish a novel. I completely understand and admire that stance. Eyes on the prize and all that. But I'm not there yet. For me, all of the stories, the flash fiction prompts, the blog posts, they are like my spring training. Any time I think those things aren't helping, I just go back and read a story I wrote a couple of years ago. Everyone sees flaws in their older work, but I choose a half-full point of view and see a benchmark from which I measure my progress. I'm better now, no question. So while, yes, I do have four or five novels in progress (including one that I'm steaming through more energetically and successfully than any that came before), I'm still blogging, still writing stories, still putting words together as often as possible in my quest to get good enough to make it really matter.

Q: Series or stand-alone?

A: Mine? Actually, the book I’m working on now creates a community in which, I realize, all of the other books are set. So, it’s not a series, but things are inter-related. It’s like a “novel in stories” except it’s more a “series in novels.”

As for others I love series, but I also like it when authors write stand-alones. I’m particular about reading series from the beginning. When faced with a daunting back catalog of 12-15 books from an author I’ve been turned on to, I like the ability to read a stand-alone to get a feel for their writing. That’s why I’m reading Laura Lippman, for example, where before the sheer number of Tess Monaghan books intimidated me, I was able to read (and love) What the Dead Know and realized I needed to be reading her. Now, I’m working my way through the Monaghan books.

Q: I’ve heard you’re thinking about starting a new crime fiction-related magazine. Is this true?

A: What do they call that in politics? Floating a trial balloon? OK, I’ll bite. Yes, I’m considering it. There are a handful of great publications out there, and each is doing a fantastic job of fulfilling its mission. Needle is the best place for straight-up fiction, Crimespree almost feels like the newsletter to an exclusive but welcoming club and Mystery Scene is a slick compendium of mainstream news. Still and all, I think there is room for something that offers a little of that and more. The closest analogue I can think of is Crime Factory, with its blend of fiction and non-fiction, and to be honest, it is the consistently high quality of that publication that keeps my idea on the shelf, for now. I’m an editor by trade, and have put together four or five titles from scratch, so I know it would be something fairly easy to conceive and very labor-intensive to pull off. Stay tuned. Maybe it’ll be ready in time for Bouchercon.

Q: What will tip the scales and make you commit to this?

A: A sense that people want something like this and are willing to support it by contributing stories and long-form non-fiction, and just as important, willing to buy copies and spread the word. That and finding out a way to do it economically and with the greatest reach. I know UK readers pay a steep price for POD stuff from the U.S., for example, and I’d like to find a way around that.

Q: What has been the biggest surprise to you this year related to crime fiction?

A: I probably shouldn’t limit this response to crime fiction, but I would say the ascent of ebooks. In the space of 2010, I went from feeling that I’d never want a Kindle because I love printed books too much to coveting one because my computer’s hard drive is now clogged with many ebooks that I want to read in a more convenient format. Most of those are crime fiction, and I think that’s because people writing and publishing in the genre get it more than most. They understand that it’s a low-cost way to get your work out there, and that selling 1,000 books at 99 cents is more cost efficient than paying $5,000 to print up a thousand books and trying your luck at self-publishing. And as a reader, I can sample much more from a wider variety of writers than I could if limited to what my budget can support at $25 a pop for a hardback.

Q: Your blog, Things I’d Rather Be Doing, is intermittently a great place to go to read about crime fiction (I miss the Monday Interviews), but you also write about literary fiction, music and pop culture. What gives?

A: I miss the Monday Interviews, too, and plan to bring it back. Life gets in the way, you know? As for your actual question, I write about things that interest me. It’s like that first question: One thing that helped me to realize I was really a crime fiction guy was to see the preponderance of crime fiction content on the blog. But while that’s an interest, perhaps my main interest, it is just one of many. So, while I’ll take the time to write about great new crime fiction, interview authors and hold contests like the recent Crime Fiction Fairy Tale challenge (congrats again, Nigel!), I’ll also write about favorite bands, great albums movies, television and other things that trip my trigger. Posting may be sporadic as I plug away on that novel, but grab the RSS feed and check in every once in a while - something entertaining is just around the corner.


Sea Minor says that there's no need for that healthy diet. The dust jacket photo will look just great.

Dancing With Myself: JIM WINTER interviews JIM WINTER

It's true that I've put together a collection of stories for you to enjoy.

There are 9 stories in total, which means they're less than 10 pence or 15 cents per story.

Some of them you may well have seen and enjoyed - 'Beat On The Brat' from 'Beat To A Pulp'; 'Silver Street' from 'Dark Valentine'; 'Sisterhood' and 'Drinking Wine' from 'A Twist Of Noir'; 'One Hundred And Ten Per Cent' from 'Title Fights' and 'Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)' from the Broad From Badsville's Ramones themed run.

Also included is one you're less likely to have read, but is one of my finest. I was published in the UK by The Reader Magazine alongside Seamus Heaney and Vanessa Hemingway (honest).

There are also two new stories, 'Dirty Old Town' and 'Three Little Birds'. I think they're pretty good.

The title of the collection is 'Dirty Old Town' and it's a bargain at 71p or $1.13.

You can buy it in the UK from:

http://tinyurl.com/6g8t5zm

or in the US from:

http://tinyurl.com/5rb338f

and you can get a hint of the cover by looking at the carousel at the bottom of the page.

And here today we have a man who has the feel of spring about him, evergreen Jim Winter. He's got things to say about e-books too.

You made some noise late last year about quitting. Were you serious? Or just having an artistic snit fit?

It was frustration, though I'd been pondering leaving for a long time. Basically, academics, employment problems, and putting together a family meant something had to give. Since I hadn't made any money at writing, I decided to chuck it. It didn't help that a particularly complex novel didn't turn out the way I wanted it, nor was it something my then agent wanted to represent.

What made you change your mind?

A couple of things. I reconnected with a buddy from my sci-fi fandom days, and some of those ideas I'd put aside for later use started demanding my attention. I'd also just published a short I was particularly proud of in Crime Factory.

That would be "We Be Cool." What was the genesis of that?

The so-called "magnum opus" was a Wire-like story called Holland Bay that featured a drug kingpin named Rufus King. In Holland Bay, he's on the verge of going legitimate and getting ready to ditch his lieutenant, Ralph, who was originally his boss. "We Be Cool" was story from when Rufus was starting out and how he helped make Ralph – and by extension, himself – the city's sole drug source. However, at the end of the story, Rufus thinks he's going to die that afternoon.

It sounds a lot like Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool." Was that intentional?

It took its cues from "We Real Cool," but I had to be careful I didn't just glom the entire poem and build a story around that.

So what will Holland Bay's fate be?

That's a good question. There's an e-press a friend of mine is involved with, and it's getting some solid backing. In fact, I've been invited to contribute to its first anthology. I think if they manage to get it off the ground and get some traction, I may present a later version of Holland Bay.

You've been rather excited about ebooks, but you're not quite the cheerleader for self-publishing on Kindle. Why not?

Well, first of all, one cannot dismiss JA Konrath's arguments for self-publishing out of hand. Joe's finally achieved his personal nirvana: Writing for a living without having to travel to hundreds of bookstores in an effort to hand-pimp his work.

But there are hundreds of writers who don't want to do the work it takes to build their reputations and brands. (Let's not kid ourselves, this is a business, even if you don't make much at it.) So you get a lot of poorly edited, poorly written, poorly formatted ebooks for sale at 99 cents a pop. It's the return of the print-on-demand author mill, only without the middle man taking all your money.

So you don't think it's a boon to authors?

I think it can be, but too many new writers or frustrated writers don't want to do the work just to make their novels and short stories worth reading. You might lure someone in with a dollar price tag, but if it looks like you couldn't even be bothered to use spell check or you're too lazy to cut your story down to size and smooth it out, that reader you lured in is not going to read Book 2.

Will you self publish?

Yes, as a matter of fact. Northcoast Shakedown was edited, and it might have landed in New York if I'd just waited two more weeks instead of signing with the original publisher. Since I get a lot of questions about it, I have no qualms about rereleasing it as is.

And Road Rules?

Road Rules is already out in the wild. So, yeah, I'll be releasing that to Kindle and Smashwords.

Anything original?

That would be a business decision. If I sell enough copies of Northcoast Shakedown and Road Rules to pay for it, I'll have Northcoast's sequel, Second Hand Goods, professionally edited. If the combination of the three sell well enough, I'll rewrite the final Nick Kepler novel and have that professionally edited.

And beyond that?

We'll see. We're coming out of a bad recession, so it's hard to gauge what the landscape will look like when the recovery gains traction. Will print books rebound? Will ebooks wipe them out completely?

You don't think it's like music or movies.

Hardly. Movies have always required a power source to view, especially now that the technology is so advanced. Same with recorded music. Electronic files are the perfect medium for them because you can watch or listen anywhere, assuming someone didn't get stupid about the DRM.

But books, even before the printing press, have always been a written medium. Ebooks are an ideal format to deliver book content, but again, they require a power source and can be subject to DRM. The difference between paper and electronic books are fairly even in their pros and cons.

What about Nick Kepler? Will we see him again?

Maybe. It depends on what happens with Northcoast Shakedown. If people aren't going to read it, there's not really a point in performing for an audience that isn't there.

You've also mentioned science fiction.

I have. However, those will be written by my Richard Bachman to Jim Winter's Stephen King. As to how I approach the first SF or fantasy novel I try to publish, I don't know yet. I do know if it's even moderately successful, I won't be able to keep the connection between "Richard" and Jim quiet for very long. Promises to be fun.

Dancing With Myself: ALEC CIZAK aesthetically analyses ALEC CIZAK

I don't want to take up too much time here, because today's interview is rather fine.

I'm going to direct you to Paul D Brazill to see what the news is. I'll be updating when time allows.

http://pdbrazill.blogspot.com/2011/02/out-now-dirty-old-town-by-nigel-bird.html

Thanks to Paul for taking the time.

And now, with All Due Respect, here's Alec.


Q: Let’s not wallow in bullshit. This is you asking you questions about you. It’s not an interview so much as a kind of aesthetic psychoanalysis. At a writer’s conference last summer, one of your co-writers interviewed you and referred to you as a ‘free spirit.’ I know, for a fact, that didn’t sit well with you. Regardless, you carry on, even as you approach the age of forty, as though you were some kind of rebel. How has that worked out for you?

A: As most probably know, the more you resist the tides of society, the farther you will be pushed to the margins. In our capitalist society, the easiest way to shut up anybody who complains too much is to keep him or her poor. There was a time in this country when truly radical ideas and creations accidentally caught on with the masses and the creators were able to live comfortably. Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, for instance. Catcher in the Rye, as clichéd as it seems now, is another example of a book that should not have become popular with the masses (I realize some might think this isn’t true, but think again. Art can be great without being radical and that is, by and large, what the masses go for). Some of the most radical books ever written are now considered ‘classics,’ which I find interesting. Luckily for the status quo, nobody ever teaches a book like 1984 the way it was meant to be taught. There is something in the American character, traditionally, that yearns to see the status quo kicked in the ass. It was part of the national character from the very beginning when pesky writers questioned the treatment of the native tribes. It was part of the abolitionist movement. It fueled the labor movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The status quo put up with it as long as it remained a fancy of fiction. The moment real social movements are inspired by writers or other artists, watch out! They do crazy things like kill themselves with shotgun blasts to the backs of their heads.
A funny thing happened on the way to the present, though, and that funny thing was (and is) called “postmodernism.” In its endless drive to be cute and clever beyond comprehension, postmodernism, I believe, just about shut the door on truly creative and radical artists in the United States. Postmodernism has become a part of the status quo, co-opted to diffuse any revolutionary thought that might otherwise spring from it. The results of this phenomenon can be seen in a recent commercial in which a “punk” band is screaming out a generic punk song and the singer begins singing lyrics about how much he loves his bank. His producer tells him to stop it. Unfortunately, the demystification of radical art has already taken place before the producer character, with the commercial’s tongue firmly in its cheek, reminds the television viewing audience that Iggy Pop never gave a damn about his or anyone else’s bank. While we’re on the subject of Iggy Pop, his contribution to the great human resistance to oppression and imperialism was all but nullified the moment Nike ran ads using “Search and Destroy” as background music. That’s what happens to “rebels” now—they get the rug pulled from under them. As far as new, radical voices are concerned, they simply aren’t allowed to be heard by a significant, mass audience. The publishing industry might embrace a handful of writers, usually women and “minorities,” who complain just enough to make their work seem radical. But of course, if it were radical, you wouldn’t know about it (that’s not to say that there aren’t women or “minority” writers who are truly radical, they just have a hell of a time getting published). I’m suspicious of anything I see on television or in the movies that huddles under that absurd term, “edgy.” If it were truly “edgy,” it wouldn’t be on television today. It wouldn’t be playing at your local megaplex movie theater. The government and the media, just like us, are slaves to corporations who will tolerate absolutely nothing that might stir a real, evolutionary step towards human freedom and dignity. And that, my friend, is the role any rebel has always played and continues to play, even if it means getting published without getting paid and living in a one-room shithole of an apartment with rodents running around your feet while you write. So, to finally answer your question, how has being a “rebel” worked out for me? Exactly the way society intended. I’m poor and I’ll never shoot the shit with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show.

Q: I’m wondering if you could refrain from being so goddamn pretentious. You are basically a genre writer. What in the world is so radical about that?

A: If we examine literature and even other elements of culture and pop culture, I think we’ll find that the most radical ideas are flown in under the radar, usually disguised in a genre. A most obvious example of this would be Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. In his famous interview with Mike Wallace he states that he is dressing thought-provoking subject matter up in science fiction and fantasy clothes. Those genres, as well as horror, are notorious for delivering radical ideas without being obvious (the better examples, that is). Crime fiction is capable of doing the same thing. When I say ‘crime fiction,’ I am not talking about detectives solving murders (though no one will deny Raymond Chandler’s books and stories were soaked in anti-social angst). I’m talking about scumbags like myself robbing and hurting people. More importantly, I’m talking about scumbags in positions of power who abuse their power. Lodged within those brutal acts are reasons that good writers quietly ask the reader to ponder long after the story is finished.
The writer I owe the most to in my thinking on this is Jim Thompson. Thompson was accused (rightfully so, oh by the way,) of being a ‘red’ back in the days when such people were demonized and sought for persecution by the government and elements in the publishing and broadcasting industries. We know Thompson was radical because Stanley Kubrick wouldn’t have worked with him otherwise. Because Thompson was dismissed by the mainstream media as a ‘lowly’ pulp fiction writer, his paperbacks sat on shelves in stores all over the country without ever really gaining the attention they deserved, both by those who would embrace Thompson’s brutally honest, cynical view of America, and those who despised his addiction to finding truth through fiction. The most important thing crime fiction does is shine a light on all the things the Norman Rockwell-arm of American society tries so desperately to hide. Poverty is the main issue. We live in a country that has three distinct classes (though we are getting dangerously close to having just two classes) and crime fiction makes this apparent. In the process, if it’s done properly, the reader will be forced to question certain economic fantasies the media insists on perpetuating (mostly because the media, at this point, only serves advertisers, not the other way around). So you ask how can genre fiction be radical? The real question is, how can genre fiction not be radical?

Q: I’m wondering if you can predict the weather with you snout hoisted so high in the sky? Some of your stories might tackle these issues, but for the most part they just seem to be celebrations of bad behavior. Let’s pretend, however, that you are as socially conscious as you seem to think, which comes first, the message or the story?

A: Of course the story comes first. If you write with the intent to pass on your opinion about some social or political issue, you are going to fail. Especially today. Postmodernism has made such overt gestures the joke that they are. There are some younger writers today who feel no shame wallowing in sentimentality, but I’m willing to bet they will all grow out of it. The magical thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that meaning reveals itself through revision. The more you revise a story, the more the story will tell you what is being said. At some point, you can tweak things so that the overall effect of the story veers in the direction it’s telling you it wants to go. I am constantly amazed at how different a story looks after six or seven revisions compared to what it looked like in my head when I first sat down to write it. An example would be a story I am still obsessively revising. It started as a regular crime story about a crooked preacher and turned into a (mostly) subtle delineation of recent American history, spotlighting the horrific turning back of the clock, socially, that occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Now, that sounds heavy and, to use your (my) word, pretentious, but that’s what the story became and, save the very last line, I don’t think I ever beat the reader over the head with any particular message. The basic effect it should have on the reader is maybe making him or her taking a step back and examining some of modern American society’s basic, collective hypocrisies. My goal is always to entertain first, because that is the purpose of storytelling.

Q: Don’t hold that ego back, buddy, please. Could you explain how you go about making sure you entertain your readers?

A: I personally think it’s all in the writing. So many ‘big time’ established writers put out what I call ‘glacial prose.’ I’m sure they have a lot to say but I can’t get to the core of their ideas because their prose moves so slowly and, frankly, is stuffed with extraneous information that detracts from what they are trying to do. I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes so I won’t name particular writers (they all live in nice houses and drive nice cars and don’t have to have a nine-to-five because they make tons of money off of their best-selling novels and who the hell am I to shit on that?) I will say this—Last year I read Stephen King’s book On Writing. His advice to kill the adverbs in my writing was worth the price of admission. He was absolutely correct (whoops) and I think that’s just one little way my writing has improved since the time I read the book. But King also claims that one should examine the size of a paragraph in order to determine whether or not there are any good ideas in a piece of fiction. In other words, according to Stephen King, Raymond Carver must stink because his paragraphs rarely have more than two or three short sentences. Obviously, that’s absurd. Carver packed more information in one tiny sentence than most writers can get into an entire book. What would Hemingway say about King’s assessment of short paragraphs? He’d probably pick a fight with him. And make no mistake, I write today because when I was twelve I wanted to be the next Stephen King. I just happen to disagree that you need a whole lot of words to say a whole lot. Let us not forget the Nietzschian hierarchy of writers—The novelist is an embarrassment to the short story writer, who is an embarrassment to the poet. I’m not bashing novels, I just think the best writer requires the fewest amount of words. That kind of prose, I believe, makes for an easier, and thus, entertaining read.

Q: From the guy who doesn’t know how to answer a question in thirty seconds or less… Can we assume that your suspicion of the novel explains the lack of novels you have written, or can we just be honest and call it laziness?

A: It’s a mix. I’m sort of like Travis Bickle, only it’s not loneliness that “has followed me my whole life,” it’s laziness. I was a lazy little prick as a kid. I was a lazy student when I was younger. I was definitely a lazy writer. The adults all patted me on the head and said, “Oh, how talented he is,” and I got the idea that I didn’t have to do the work other writers did and do—Reading and writing all the time. I preferred reading comic books when I was a kid. I would pick up a Poe story or a Stephen King book here and there. For the most part, though, I hated reading until my late 20s when I was finally graduated from college and was able to choose what I read on my own. It was like an explosion. Now I can’t go a day without reading something. The same with my writing. When I was in high school I may have produced a whopping half a dozen stories throughout the entire four years. I was busy doing other things, of course, but I should have been writing every day and I wasn’t. Frankly, I admire people who write one novel after another. I get one chapter into a book I’ve planned out and get bored. It just seems to me that I’m adding 50,000 unnecessary words to a 2000 word short story. Maybe the ideas aren’t strong enough, I don’t know. Other times I think the problem is that I’m not yet forty-years-old, so what the hell could I have to write about? That’s all bullshit, though. If I were to be extremely honest here, we would see that my life, in spite of all the bitching and complaining I do, has been pretty interesting.

Q: Sweet Mary and Jesus, now you’re patting yourself on the back for having a haphazard, disorganized life? Let’s go ahead and be “extremely honest,” shall we? You spent eight years living out the life of the self-destructive artist. Then you sobered up. How does one life compare to the other? Is there anything beneficial to the self-destructive path?

A: There are two terrible, often deadly myths about being an artist. I’ve experienced them both. The first is the idea that you have to drink or do massive amounts of drugs to get to someplace where you can be truly creative. That’s nonsense. My years as an unsober gentleman produced some bizarre writing. I won’t deny that I loved getting wasted and sitting down at the old IBM computer and banging out hallucinogenic nonsense on whatever prehistoric word processor I was using. The sad truth is that I just wasn’t as productive as I could have been. In those days I was writing screenplays and I averaged one per year. Now, screenwriting is tailor-made for lazy writers. It’s just plain easy. There’s no reason anyone should take a year to write one script unless they are writing something that requires gobs of research. I wasn’t writing those kinds of scripts. The moment I was sober, my productivity tripled. By the early 2000s, I would say I wrote ten times as much as I did when I was all hazed-up. There’s the argument that quantity doesn’t matter if there is no quality, but I think without the practice of writing as much as possible, there never will be quality. For anyone reading this who might be dealing with issues of sobriety or its opposite, let me just pass this along—I never judge anyone caught in that life because, obviously, that would make me a hypocrite. I sobered up, cold turkey, shortly after I turned twenty-five. I had been wasted every single day for eight years and my brain let me know that it was going to shut down and exile my consciousness to la-la land for good if I didn’t stop. To paraphrase Iggy Pop, I had simply had enough. Immediately I had a sort of quarter-life crisis, thinking, for the first time since childhood, about my mortality. I housesat for an old couple and I told my concerns to the husband, who was 73 at the time. He thought it was pretty silly for a 25-year-old to be worried about death. He had fought in World War II and been a teacher for several decades afterwards. When he was in his fifties he started running marathons and was still running when he was 73. I’ll never forget what he said—He told me that he had lived a dozen different lifetimes and would live a few more before he passed on. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I get it now. In just under fifteen years of sobriety, I’ve gone from being a delivery truck driver who briefly played minor-league football to a movie director to a teacher right back to a college student. Sometimes it seems as if the years fly by, but the truth is, those have been long, adventurous years. I can’t say I would have gathered the experiences I have without being sober.
The second odious trap young artists can fall into is thinking that poverty and suffering are necessary to be a great artist. Absolute bullshit. After I sobered up, I lived in poverty (technically I’m still poor, but being in graduate school, I can hide from that particular reality). The lowest I got was living in what they call a ‘bachelor’s’ apartment in Koreatown, Los Angeles (one room, no kitchen). It was in a rundown art-deco number on Serrano Avenue. The walls were infested with rats and mice. The landlords didn’t care because the majority of the residents were illegal immigrants who couldn’t speak English and had no desire to rock the boat. I couldn’t afford a mattress so I slept on the floor. At night I would see these little critters roaming the floor looking for scraps of whatever shitty food I could afford. Aside from helping me understand exactly what it means to be poor, I can’t imagine that it was necessary for me to experience that in order to be a good writer. The poverty myth is perpetuated, as Charles Bukowski suggested, by the powers that be so that creative voices get lost in the ghettos of America and go unheard by the status quo. There is no dignity in suffering, only suffering.

Q: I’d like to thank you, at this point, for your brevity. You’ve mentioned Stephen King a couple of times. Your horror output has not, however, been overwhelming. As previously mentioned, your stories are mostly about bad behavior. Have you given up on the horror genre?

A: Certainly not. First of all, crime fiction and horror are not as separated as they might seem. Let’s not forget that the best EC comics were the horror and crime titles and often the stories in Crime SuspenStories could have fit right in with that old vault or crypt. The stories I usually write are not very different from the majority of the stories one might catch on an old episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, save the disclaimer at the end that those engaging in bad behavior were properly punished. Horror was my first love and will always hold a special place in my imagination. I love to be scared and if I can pass that on to other people, I will. The problem is that I think very little horror fiction is actually scary. It could just be that as an adult, things don’t scare me the way they did when I was a kid. I remember watching Frankenstein Create Woman when I was about eight-years-old and having vivid nightmares afterwards. I also remember reading a short story by Stephen King called The Boogeyman in the car on a family road trip and being creeped out right there in broad daylight. My dad used to read Poe stories to my brothers and me before putting us to sleep at night. What wonderful nightmares I had in those days! It’s difficult to find an idea today that will have that same effect. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time with a story that isn’t going to crawl into their brain and lay a nest of fear, so I just don’t tackle the genre very often. It sounds generic at this point to say so, but I also think that the state of the world is so absurd that it’s difficult to compete with anything you might see on the news. I saw Ray Bradbury speak at Butler University many years ago and he warned the audience to avoid local news broadcasts because, according to him, ‘they’ll go around the world to find a dead body.’ How can a writer compete with idiots out in the desert blowing themselves up to bang celestial virgins? How can a writer compete with some local idiot who shoots his entire family and then himself because his wife and kids wouldn’t shut up while he was trying to watch the Super Bowl? Most of the horror I read these days is just somebody attempting to shock me. That’s fine. Shocking is good, especially if there’s a purpose. But shocking me is not the same as scaring me.

Q: I can see you’re getting tired of talking about yourself. Let’s talk about some of the work you’ve done over the years. I mean real work. You’ve had at least a dozen different jobs throughout your life. What’s the point of jumping from one job to another?

A: Everything is about writing. Everything I do is designed to show me something in the world I haven’t seen before, or, at least, give me a better understanding of it. In 1995 I started watching football again, something I had done as a kid, with my dad. As I became interested in frying my brain in the late 1980s, I lost interest in football. The Indianapolis Colts had a bizarre, almost miracle season in 1995 and I took notice. I began to think, gee, if the loser Colts can turn things around, maybe I can turn my own life around. So I was grateful to football for giving me something new to waste my spare time with. Eventually I wanted to write about football and realized I had no experience actually playing the game (organized, official), so I joined the Indianapolis Warriors, a local minor league team. I didn’t last the entire season because my employer at the time made me choose between earning a paycheck driving a box truck or earning nothing but dislocated fingers and broken bones and concussions with the Warriors. That’s just an example of why I drift from one interest to the next. Jobs are kind of the same way. It’s easy to get trapped, however, because of the paycheck. I taught ESL for about eight years in Los Angeles because it was a high-paying part-time job that allowed me to pursue my other interests. At one point I decided I wanted to teach in a public school (mostly for health benefits, which the owners of the ESL schools in L.A. are too stingy to provide). I taught for just over a semester at Crenshaw High School in South L.A. If you want to see why it’s so difficult to create fictional horrors, talk to my students at Crenshaw. It’s tough for anyone in the middle class to imagine what it’s like to constantly fear that a car is going to roll up and someone is going to demand you tell them what ‘set’ you ‘represent.’ Doesn’t matter if you’re a quiet, disciplined student working like crazy to make sure you get to college. One of my students was beaten with a baseball bat into a coma. That was painful, to see someone so young destroyed like that. It was part of a profound emotional weight that came with that job. I could barely stand it. Public school teachers, I believe, have the most difficult job in this country (and are paid about one-tenth of what they deserve to be paid). I quit after a semester and decided to experience the corporate world by working for Farmer’s Insurance. Oh my brothers and sisters, I have never met a more lifeless, humorless, soulless group of materialist swine than I did at Farmer’s. I actually got fired from that job, which was fine by me. I suppose my experience at Farmer’s reinforced my opinion of the middle and upper classes. I had lunch with a group of my “colleagues” once and they began discussing how many millions of dollars they intended to make. I asked them, “How much more than a million dollars could you possibly need?” From then on, I felt like the Kevin McCarthy character in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. That was one place I most certainly did not and never will fit in. That was one of a few jobs I’ve tried that involved sitting for hours in a cubicle. Every one made me suicidal.

Q: So putting you in a cubicle is all we need to do to get rid of you? Duly noted. I notice you seem to harbor a lot of anger and resentment towards the upper classes. Are you a lousy communist, or just jealous?

A: That reminds me of a history class I took back in the mid-90s. The professor was introducing the French Revolution. He said something like, ‘it was your basic case of the haves vs. the have-nots.’ Some little spoiled-rotten yuppie girl in the front of the room raised her hand and said, in all seriousness, “Don’t you mean the haves and the wanna-haves?” If I hadn’t been so wasted at the time I would have picked her up, in her desk, and tossed her right out of the window. It’s funny how some people will always say, just like parrots who repeat what they’re taught to say, that communism is a good idea “on paper.” The truth is, capitalism is a good idea, on paper. If everyone had an equal opportunity to compete in the market, capitalism would be just fine. It would be a natural reflection of evolution. That said, I don’t subscribe to communism because I think it has just as many material trappings as capitalism. I do think that capitalism has reached that point Marx said it would, where it would destroy itself. We have now, in America and most industrial nations, what I would call ‘capitalist anarchy.’ The filthy rich just keep getting richer and the rest of us are asked to pay more and more for the basic things we need to live while our wages go down and down and down and, in many cases, our jobs disappear altogether. That’s a serious problem and if the filthy rich want to keep their heads attached to their necks, they better figure out a way to distribute the wealth just wee bit more fairly. Wanting to see everyone get an equal chance to compete for the pie, I believe, doesn’t make you a communist. It makes you a rational human being. Until things change for the better, I will continue to attack the upper classes in my fiction and I don’t give one goddamn if it rubs some people the wrong way. If I may quote Bob Marley, “This is not a joke.”

Q: Last question. Thank God. Why write? Why not go into politics, or social work, somewhere where closet-idealists like yourself can collect a paycheck and fool yourself into thinking you’re making a difference?

A: That’s such a cynical question I’m apt to believe I came up with it myself! My supervisor at Markey’s Audio/Video, a guy named Joe L_____, once tried to give me what he thought was helpful advice. Joe was a good guy, so I’m not trying to bash him here. He said to me, “Earn your money first, then you can worry about writing.” That was in 1999 and I was already living in poverty. I wrote every night for two hours no matter how tired I was from lifting two-hundred pound televisions and sound systems all day. I had been writing for as long as I could remember, even if it hadn’t always been disciplined writing. I thanked Joe for his advice and then explained, in these exact words: “Writing comes before breathing.” The question, “why write?” makes no sense to me. If it’s in you, it’s in you. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. If I’m homeless, I prick my finger and write stories in blood on hamburger wrappers I find in a dumpster. I’m sure any artist in any field feels the same way. There are some people who view writing as a hobby or a craft. They decide when they’re thirty or forty that they want to write. That’s fine. Some of them actually discover they have the talent. Some of them manage to land huge book contracts and can show me their middle-fingers as they drive by in their fancy cars while I’m waiting for the bus. Anyone who can just ‘walk away’ from writing, I believe, is not, was not, and never will be a writer. It’s like a disease. It’s in your blood and it isn’t going anywhere until they dump you in the dirt.

http://www.nomoralcenter.blogspot.com/

http://www.all-due-respect.blogspot.com

Covers

Apparently, an old professor of Donald Ray Pollock's once told him that he couldn't go wrong with a dog on the cover; this might not be what she had in mind.

Me, I love it.

Can't wait to get more grit into my veins.

Coming soon(ish) to a bookstore near you.