Dancing With Myself: JOHN MCFETRIDGE interviews JOHN MCFETRIDGE

A warm welcome to John McFetridge today, someone you're likely to have come across in one of his incarnations.

In case you've never been there, the excellent team over at Do Some Damage plough a rich variety of furrows and offer more than enough food to feed the thoughts of the planet.

Here he is, interviewing himself.

John, you have three novels out now that have some of the same characters in them, but not the same main character, don’t all publishers want either series or standalones, what’s with the in between?

Yes, I didn’t set out to write a series, I really only set out to write one book, I had no plans or expectations beyond that. When ECW Press agreed to publish the book (Dirty Sweet) they asked me if I could write another one and, of course, I said yes. Then when I set out to do that I used some of the minor characters again. And then I did that again for the next book and so on.
Looking back on it now I can claim that I’m creating a whole world with novels and short stories and even flash fictions that have some of the same characters and reference common events, but the truth is I’m really just flying by the seat of my pants with very little plan.

Your novels have a lot of crimes in them, but not much solving of the crimes. Some critics have complained that the cops just stand around and watch.

Hey, I write what I see.

Seriously, I do try to present the world as I see it and to show what the police are up against. There are lots of books and movies with rogue cops breaking all the rules to catch the bad guys, but in my experience most cops actually follow the rules. This means it can take a lot longer to catch bad guys (especially the organized crime bad guys that show up in my books) and it can be complicated, with “conspiracy to traffic in narcotics” charges that require a whole lot of collected evidence rather than ‘caught red handed,’ but that’s usually the way it is. Police work is dogged, detail-oriented work these days and the deck is stacked against them.

It’s a challenge for fiction but no one said this was going to be easy.

So, not a lot of, “Justice Served,” and “order restored” and the other things people usually say crime fiction is about?

A little. And over time (and a few novels) we’ll see most of the bad guys either caught or killed by other bad guys but as in the real world they’ll be quickly replaced.

Last year you worked on a TV show, The Bridge, how was that?

It certainly made me more understanding of the shows on TV and appreciative of the amount of work it takes to get any show made. I liked the collaboration between a lot of writers, which is necessary when you have to get thirteen scripts written in a few weeks. And I liked the collaboration between departments on the production. Our writer’s room was just down the hall from the art department and even though the show had a smaller budget than most American shows, those guys made us feel like we could write anything and they’d find a way to make it look right.

But the show only lasted for two weeks on CBS. Looking back I’m not that surprised. It started out as a very political story, The West Wing of cop shows as the exedc producer was a former head of the police union in Toronto, so it was going to be about all the internal things that get in the way of police officers doing their job. That can be very difficult material to dramatize, though, and as more and more scripts were written and more and more notes came in we were steered towards making it more of a “body of the week” murder mystery which it really wasn’t set up to be.

All 13 episodes did air in Canada and other countries (France, Germany, South Africa and Australia that I know of and I’m told many others as well).

Last year you had stories in two e-book anthologies; Discount Noir and Terminal Damage. Will you be writing more flash fiction and short stories?

Yes. I really like how quickly a flash fiction can go from idea, to story to available online. It’s also a great way to try out new characters and situations, to see which ones might be worth developing further.

I think the key to e-books isn’t so much the low price (though that’s good) or the ability to self-publish it’s the opening up of the distribution network to small presses which can allow for more niche books to be published.

Something like Discount Noir was a great experience – over 40 writers taking different aproaches to a universal setting (the bog box store). The same with Terminal Damage as all of us at the Do Some Damage blog contributed stories that had the commoen element of the airport.

There likely would never be a big enough market for these kinds of books to make it worthwhile for someone to co-ordinate the contributions from so many people (a huge job as it was) and for a publisher to print up a few hundred (or maybe a thousand) copies and ship them to bookstores and then pay to have the ones that didn’t sell shipped back and pulped, but as e-books they work so I hope to see many more.

I think when it comes to the changes that e-books will bring to the publishing business we’re really only seeing the tip of the iceberg so far. This is a pretty exciting time to be a writer and a reader.

http://dosomedamage.blogspot.com/

Dancing With Myself: SIMON LOGAN interviews SIMON LOGAN

How often do you pick up a book and take an instant shine to it? Feel that you're reading something the likes of which you've not come across before? Decide that the author is a gem and that you're going to check out everything else he's done or will do in the fullness of time?

If you're like me, not that often.

I wish it were a more frequent occurance for I love the way it makes me feel - the excitement, the stimulation, the tingles as the desire to work out how it's done overcome by the desire to read the story.

Katja From The Punk Band is such a book. I was recommended it by someone whose opinion I trust without any doubt and, just as my memory started to fade, I came across it again as one of Spinetingler's top ten from last year. Here's what Brian Lindenmuth said:

"Only two words accompanied the recommendation for this book, “fucking brilliant”, and they are dead on right. A brilliantly constructed crime story that takes place in a uniquely fantastical, horrific and grimy setting. Some have called it horror (because of the publisher) and others have called it SF/F (because of the secondary world feel to it); while I can see where these labels come from they are misapplied — it is a crime story through and through. It isn’t on your radar screen but it should be. If you like darker crime fiction it will blow your mind."

He's right. It's a brilliant read.

Set on an island in a world which I could imagine but not recognise, Katja becomes involved in a remarkable series of events. It involves drugs users, pushers and makers, a vial of something special, a probation officer, a lot of dark, dingy places and a gun. Katja wants off the island, yet it is as difficult as Alcatraz to escape.

By itself the ingredients may not seem entirely unique.

What I think is very special is the immediacy of the story. Told in the present tense from a number of different perspectives we loop from one tale to another until a full picture is scratched into the skin.

I also love the lack of back story - nothing here to weight things down, slow things up or merely irritate, just snippets of info that tell a life within a word or a phrase.

The sentences are stripped of any excess yet are packed with splendour at the same time. Imagine biting into a sweet that looks plain and simple only to have the flavour fully explode onto your tongue as soon as you put it into your mouth. Now imagine this book.

The characters take us where they need to be and act and react in the way they have to at the time.

I'm delighted to have him here today. A man of words and stories. Simon Logan, ladies and gentlemen.

Why write?

Two main reasons – one, compulsion and two, anger. I often feel that I need to write more than I want to write. I have ideas and they metastasize into something that can only go so far in my head – the only way to exorcise them is to write them out of me. As for the anger, a lot of what I see others doing and see getting published and adored pisses me off because it’s shit. Bland, repetitive rubbish annoys the hell out of me and I think that anger is a good thing.

So what makes you angry outside of crappy books?

Stupidity. Ignorance I can handle because it’s inevitable that people are going to be ignorant of thoughts and ideas that they have never come across before but stupidity is people having the information there, or having access to the information at least, and choosing to ignore it wilfully. Laziness too – physical and mental. I suppose actually that stupidity could be classed as mental laziness.

So never mind who your favourite writers are – which writers have you actually learned some sort of valuable writing lesson from?

Chuck Palahnuik and Kurt Vonnegut both showed me how a more relaxed, conversational style is just as acceptable as the more traditional formal approach. The important thing is that you communicate the ideas you want to, it doesn’t matter if you break grammatical rules to do so. Will Christopher Baer’s style of little chunks often no more than a paragraph or even just one single sentence is another example of that. And although I think he’s a pretty lousy writer I always remember Dean Koontz’s advice to use metaphors which explicitly evoke the sort of feeling you are trying to elicit in a scene. So in a horror you’d compare some drops of fluid to blood-stained saliva but in a romance you’d say it was like morning dew. That’s stuck with me.

Don’t you think it is odd to be asking yourself questions?

No. But it is odd to be answering them.

Why do you have such a hard time comparing yourself to other writers?

I don’t know - it’s certainly not because I think I’m anything special, just that I’ve never really come across too many writers who are writing what I want to write. I usually find myself reaching for other forms of art for comparisons. Katja From The Punk Band was The Sex Pistols meets Jackie Brown. Guerra is Cory Doctorow meets Banksy by way of Rage Against The Machine’s Guerrilla Radio. The one I’m working on just now, lovejunky, is basically a result of several years of listening to Deftones lyrics.

You’re an atheist – so what’s your problem with faith and religion?

No problem, as such, I just think that faith is a crutch or scaffold in that it is only useful as long as we need it but should be discarded as soon as it can be otherwise it becomes an obstruction. You need a system like science, like reason, which says that we shouldn’t put all ideas on equal grounding otherwise there would be no differentiation between a civil rights activist fighting to end apartheid and a paranoid psychotic who thinks that secret alien overlords are leaving messages for him in the arrangement of street-vomit. I have no problem with people thinking whatever they want but we should realise that if we are going to advance as a species then we need to weed out the crap and the way to do that is to question everything. Yes, science can be as dogmatic as faith but the difference is that dogma is inherent in faith, it’s a requirement, whereas science itself is not dogmatic, it’s more that the people who try to follow it can be that way.

Why do you plan your books in so much detail before writing them? Why not just start writing and see where it takes you?

I need to know pretty precisely where a story is going to go before I start it otherwise I worry I may never finish it. I have to have an ending, even though it may be vague, and I have to have a beginning. The middle is just the joins between the two so that is more open to change. I tend to cook the idea for a year or so until it’s absolutely screaming to be written before even thinking about writing it. I collect ideas for characters, lines of dialogue, scenes I’d like to have etc. for as long as possible. It’s also a fact of not having that much time to write so I tend to spend many hours in a dreamland thinking about them so that by the time I sit down I can crank out 2-3,000 words on the one night I write a week.

Why don’t you stop being such a lazy fuck and do more research for your books?

I know I should. I sometimes wonder if the reason I write stories which are set in places and times which can’t be pinned down is that it means I can just get on with writing the story rather than having to spend time researching specific relevant subjects. Maybe my constant need for input from any source (TV, movies, books, articles, music) means that I’ve got a steady flow of research that all just sits in there and eventually comes out somehow, some way.

Which part of the writing process is your favourite – the planning and thinking, the actual writing, or the having written?

I think I love and despise them all in equal measure. The initial planning and thinking stage is the most free as you are just drawing ideas in like smack into your veins, playing around with them in whatever manner you want and you don’t have to think too much about how something is going work or even if it will work at all. The actual writing stage I often think is the hardest and least enjoyable part until I’m actually in the flow of it. By the time I come to write a scene I’ve already done all the thinking for what will happen so I’m free to concentrate on the minutiae of each sentence, each piece of dialogue and that process has a very masochistic appeal for me. Then once it’s all done it’s a great feeling of achievement - for about five minutes. After that all I can think about is the next project. In fact I think my main motivation for writing any one story is so that I can get rid of it and start on the next one.

And lastly you’ve been getting some decent reviews and buzz regarding your work lately – so do you still not think you’re anything special?

Afraid not.

http://www.coldandalone.com/

Dancing With Myself: SANDRA SEAMANS interviews SANDRA SEAMANS

It's not often that I find time to watch a movie in a oner these days, so it's great when the film is a gem.

Last night I watched a wonderful story called 'Shifty'. It tells of the 24 hours in the life of an Islamic crack dealer when an old friend turns up on the scene, his brother discovers the drugs in his house, a user loses the plot, he's mistakenly chased by the police, his connection tries to stitch him up, his estranged parents are expecting him for dinner and he's supposed to be going to a party. Non-stop movement and tension, brimming with realism and beautifully acted. Recommended.

Around Christmas time, Paul D Brazill put up his top 5 short stories list for 2010 over at Death By Killing . Sandra Seamans was among them.

She's also part of the tremendous Discount Noir anthology that I've been pluggin here on Mondays for a little while.

Here she is to dance us a little solo over in the kitchen.

So what are you doing here? You know you can’t dance.

Hah! A lot you know. I learned how to “Shuffle off to Buffalo” when I was six.

And how did that work out for you?

Not so well now that I think about it. I tripped over my own feet and planted my face in the basement floor.

Yeah - So if you can’t dance what the hell can you do?

I can write a mean short story.

A short story? No one writes short stories and actually admits to it. Hell, if you believe all those people out there buying and selling books nobody even reads shorts. A real writer writes novels.

Now that’s a bald-faced lie. I read short stories. Heck, everyone I know reads them. Enjoys them even. And we aren’t afraid to admit that we write them either!

Must be a pretty small group of people that you know.

Are you kidding me? The whole Internet is alive with people reading and writing short stories.

The whole Internet? C’mon, aren’t you stretching it just a bit?

Well…maybe not the whole ‘net - but there are great communities of writers in every genre out there. There’s a massive amount of talent publishing short stories out there in the ether.

Prove it!

Okay, first off, you’ve got all kinds of zines out there, like Spinetingler, Beat to a Pulp, A Twist of Noir, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And some of the stories in those zines are getting picked up for “best of the year” anthologies and getting nominated for all kinds of cool awards. And the writers? Some of them are getting tapped by agents and even getting some really great book deals.

So, you’re right back to the novel thing again, aren’t you?

Yeah, well, that’s what a lot of writers dream about, what they’re working toward when they write short stories. You can’t fault a writer for dreaming big.

So getting your shorts published isn’t good enough?

It is for me - I dream about getting a collection of my short stories published someday. I’ve even got a title in mind, “Ladies Night”.

Are you holding your breath while you’re waiting for that to happen?

Nobody can hold their breath that long. Besides it gives me plenty of time to take a few dancing lessons. Maybe ballroom this time. Then again, maybe not. Heels and ball gowns, you know. I’d probably manage to plant my face in the floor again.

http://sandraseamans.blogspot.com/

Dancing With Myself: HANNAH DENNISON interviews HANNAH DENNISON

The other day, I had cause to go looking for a line in Megan Abbott's 'Die A Little'. The passage was so sumptuous that I had to read the whole book, thought maybe I'd learn something, pick up a few tips. The only tips I came out with were a) write brilliantly and b) read more Megan Abbott. And so it goes.

Other news is that I have my Kindle. I already have enough material to keep me busy all year, but that's not going to stop me looking. I transfered the things I had on my computer, Chris Holmes' awesome '8 pounds', 'Terminal Damage', 'Discount Noir' et al, then went straight to 'Katja From The Punk Band' at Amazon. I reckon that Katja's about the hottest book on the planet right now and I can't wait to get to it later today. The great news is that the author Simon Logan has done an interview for Sea Minor and will be Dancing With Himself in the middle of February; watch this space.

The opening lines?

'So she walks in, trying to look cool, trying to look like nothing has happened, like nothing has gone wrong, but it's difficult because she still feels the ghost of the revolver's handle pressed against her palm and the scent of gunpowder in her nostrils.'

You know what to do.

Today, our guest is British mystery author, Hannah Dennison.

Hannah, how long have you lived in Los Angeles?

I will have been here for 18 years this coming May. A terrifying fact given that I was only planning on staying for two.

You grew up in the English countryside, what made you want to move to the City of Angels?

After a decade, working as a flight attendant, I hung up my wings and decided it was time to follow the real dream I’d had since I was a child. Writing.

Is it true that Steven Spielberg had something to do with it?

I worked on private jets and spent some time with him on location for INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE. During one our conversations, I let it slip that I really wanted to be a writer but it all seemed hopeless. He urged me to follow my passion and take a leap of faith.

That’s a very big leap! What did your husband think?

I didn’t have a husband at the time (although I do now). I was a single mother and dragged my poor 10-year old daughter and 2 cats along for the ride. I believe that if you really want something badly enough, miracles can happen. Now I look back, I must have been mad!

How did you get your green card?

First of all, I didn’t know I had to have one! I was that naive. When I found out, it was too late. I was already on my way. I hired an immigration attorney to help me and to cut a long story short I managed to get sponsored by New Line Cinema (now part of Warner Bros). However, I did have to prove I had a specific skill to earn that green card.

What was it?

Pitman Shorthand! Does anyone remember it? Before I was a flight attendant, I worked as a newspaper reporter for the Tiverton Gazette. Part of our training was learning to write shorthand—a kind of speedwriting. I can still write 120 words-per-minute with those lovely squiggles.

Aren’t the Vicky Hill Mysteries about a newspaper reporter?

Yes! Isn’t that ironic? I wrote the obituary column for the newspaper. It really was a dead end job. Who would have thought that all thirty years later it would become the basis for my murder series?

You worked in film for many years before switching to long form narrative.

Yes, I learned the craft of storytelling and read literally hundreds of scripts. I did “coverage” for many studios, independent producers and international film companies. I then enrolled in the UCLA Writers Program to study fiction writing. Actually, I’ll be teaching my first writing workshop for UCLA this semester.

By some standards you were published quickly – 4 books out in 3 years?

Maybe … but the saying “overnight success takes 15 years” holds true here. I moved to Los Angeles in 1993 and my first book was published in 2008.

What advice would you given aspiring writers?

Finish that first draft.

Your fourth book, Thieves! came out this month. Where can people find more information about Vicky Hill’s adventures?

Stop by my website, http://www.hannahdennison.com/ . You can also “friend” me on Facebook. My character Vicky Hill has her own Facebook page too. Thank you for talking to me today!

It’s been a pleasure.

hannahdennison@daviselen.com
http://www.hannahdennison.com/

Dancing With Myself: ANONYMOUS-9 interviews ANONYMOUS-9

Today, my big news is that I received the interview for this series for one Lawrence Block. I hope I'm not offending anyone else by saying that it absolutely made my day and that I can't wait to put it up there at the end of February. Of course I've read it and know what you've got coming. I feel like Santa came to me a couple of weeks late.

Anyway, to today.

She's anonymous times 9 so I don't know who she is, but I think she's lovely and talented. Here we go.

What are you doing these days?

I’m finishing my novel, Hard Bite. Research is grueling and expensive. I have to take days off work to go out in the field and research police work—not an easy task in Los Angeles, to get police to trust you enough to talk. Add on top of that, every screenwriter in this berg is trying to interview cops, and a lot of times they’re trying to make cops look dirty. So I’m swimming against a tide of mistrust and scarcity. But right now, I’m deep inside the plotting and I think it’s a good, twisty, turny story. The short story won Spinetingler’s 2008 Best Short Story on the Web, so I think it’ll get looked at when it’s done.

What’s different about it?

First, the main character is a serial killer that readers actually identify with. He’s a paraplegic with a helper monkey who is arguably making Los Angeles a better place by hunting down and killing hit-and-run drivers who killed innocent victims. LA has an enormous hit-and-run problem, and I have a friend who was nearly killed, very seriously injured, by a hit-and-runner. So it’s easy to identify with the serial killer, although his vigilante tactics go seriously awry in the book. The villain is a woman, a boss in the Mexican Mafia, whose son was taken out by the serial killer. This is the son she shielded from the trafficking business, the one she sent to college. She had dreams for him to become a priest. I did interviews and research around the psychology of women in gang culture and how they rationalize the life. I wanted to get in her head, in her shoes. We all draw lines in our heads. Hers really got to me.

Why aren’t you writing more short stories?

I have to make a living, at the same time as I write the novel, and something has to give. I love writing short stories, and I love being part of the living on-line community, so I hope people won’t forget about me. I have a short coming up in Crimefactory’s anthology called “2,894,000 Pounds of Pressure.” I took time off from Hard Bite to write that. It’s not a whodunit, or a howdunit, it’s a “is he going to do it?” I laid out all the options of how this character, a guy who works for a gas company, could kill someone, and then took all the suspense away from everything but will he do it.

Who is the best friend of on-line short story writers?

All the people who put their time in publishing and reviewing on-line writer’s work. Brian Lindemuth has been my greatest champion, enthusiastically reviewing my work and I believe, working like a “fairy godfather” behind the scenes to support writers. David Cranmer of Beat to a Pulp was very helpful getting me off the dime and he actually wrote a few, dynamic scenes for the novel. Of course, David also published Hard Bite. It was the second story that went up on the website, I think. Matthew Funk wrote a review of “The Master Bedroom” and he “got” what I was trying to do with the story so accurately that it brought tears to my eyes. Friends like Glenn Gray and Frank Bill and Alan Griffiths have been cheerleaders. Every writer needs friends who cheer you on when you’re lagging and kick your ass when you’re laying down. Those guys do that.

What kind of a writer do you consider yourself?

I’m a crime/horror crossover with some pretensions to literary. Some stories weigh a little heavier on the crime side, some heavier on the horror side. I’m always surprised at the end of a story to find out I’ve written one or the other. Mort Castle, the horror editor, just called M-N-S, “a literary South Park.” My story wasn’t his taste, but I couldn’t have taken it as higher praise. Literary? Holy shit! Moi? And I’ve always loved the satire of South Park.

Why write?

Can’t stop myself. Don’t do anything else as well.

What are you most grateful for?

On-line publishing renewed my life as a writer. I was coasting, writing everything for everybody else but myself. On-line embraced me from the beginning with such enthusiasm, that it breathed the energy and hope in me to write fiction again. Recently, Kristen Weber, a former developmental editor with Penguin in New York, had complimentary things to say about “Hard Bite,” the short story. I’m grateful for her encouragement. I’m also knocked out by the kind words more established writers have for me. Nick Mamatas left a comment on a blog calling me one of his favorite crime writers. James Reasoner said that if I actually wrote “Hard Bite” into a novel it would be different than anything else that’s out there. Those encouragements are like gold. You can’t possibly buy them. They give me the strength to keep going.

END

http://www.myspace.com/ano9

Dancing With Myself: STEPHEN JONES interviews STEPHEN JONES

Christmas has 12 days, or so they say. Dark Valentine are running a short series of 12 stories, starting with A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE and finishing in three days time with TWELVE DRUMMERS DRUMMING (I think, unless it's twelve Lords-A-Leaping). I'm late in on things as I've been away, but the two I've read so far by Paul Brazill and Cormac Brown have been well worth the effort.

To delcare my vested interest, I put together the story for Eleven Pipers Piping, which should go up tomorrow.

And to today's interview, here's Spephen Jones.


If I were to sift through all your interviews and podcasts and whatever, I could probably rig together a somewhat cogent ‘top 10’ kind of list of yours—your favorite books, movies, songs, all that. The ones that matter, and keep on mattering. However—and I know this because I’ve done some interviews myself—aren’t you always walking away after that last period’s been dropped, after it would be awkward to call up whoever just interviewed you, aren’t you always just then thinking of that one title that, as far as you’re concerned, doesn’t just characterize you, but summarizes you? A clutch of titles that you feel you’ve betrayed by not mentioning them, and only wish you could finally maybe say somewhere?

Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. Rosanne Cash’s “Seven Year Ache.” That Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty.

Thought that was just a Meatloaf title. Anyway, next: Say you’re seventeen, living in Colorado Springs, going to this high school on the Air Force Academy, where you’re a “Cadet,” as unlikely as that seems. Granted, most days will probably be like this: get to school in some bad-idea kind of way, get caught lobbing ice onto the superintendent’s head, fall down in English class, forget to come back for lunch for a couple of periods—all the usual stuff that you can really say just with “seventeen.” Only thing that’s maybe not included in that word is the amount of hackysack you and your friend Paul play. “Paul,” I mean. And the amount of brownie mix and saltines you eat after school. That’s the regular routine. But routines are only ever finally interesting when they’re deviated from, wouldn’t you say? Now, getting to the question here: Was your and Paul’s routine ever broken, say, by a real live true actual monkey wondering out of the trees of the Air Force Academy one day?

Yep.

Check. And now another, but from further back, if you can. Apparently, when you were, I don’t know, I’m thinking it must have been eleven, or twelve, some impressionable age like that, there was this little store by the trailer park, call it “Pecan Grove” if you want, and, whenever your mom was going to town and you were along for the ride, you’d get to stop there, drop a quarter or so, come out with a comic book. One day you came out with Secret Wars #3, wasn’t it? The one where the Hulk’s holding up a whole mountain? Could have been #4, I guess. Anyway, seeing that, you were of course hooked, were asking to ride along to town each time, and—correct me if I’m wrong—but didn’t there come a time in this cycle of wishful identification where you could often be found outside during a lightning storm, holding up various metal rods? Not because you wanted to die, nothing dramaticlike that, but because you wanted an origin story. You knew that all fantastic accidents had the potential to make you into a superhero, right? If, like, say, Longshot, your intentions were pure. If you were promising to use your powers for good.

You have to squint to hold a rod straight up in the rain.

Great, thanks. Okay . . . like everybody, I’m sure that you’re squirreling away Sky Malls around your place, with all the stuff circled that you’re going to buy someday when you’re super-rich—all the stuff that’s so, so perfect, stuff you couldn’t even have dreamed of if given a notebook and ten years. And, like the superhero stuff, I’m sure you’ve even made secret deals that, if that cash ship comes in, you’ll not be one of those rich people who buys BMWs and all that, at least not while there’s people starving on the streets. We all think we’re good like that, of course. Until we’re standing on the BMW lot, anyway. But, baby steps , right? Let’s take it small, at first. Say Spielberg and Lucas get in an ego-driven, very public bidding war over rights to one of your books, and it’s selling better than Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer’s lovechild’s memoir as-told-to Oprah anyway, meaning your Chunky Soup days are over, if you want to them be. Every meal, now, you can eat just any-anywhere you want. What three places would you hit the most, you think?

Red Lobster, Panda Express, and Jimmy John’s.

Fair enough. Panda Express’s honey-walnut shrimp is maybe the current zenith of civilization, at least in small amounts. Switching gears, though: basketball. You don’t watch it as much as you used to now that you’re cable’s turned off—you’d pick Psych over a playoff game anyday, though—but, in high school, basketball was your main source of nutrition, and through a lot of college as well, and on up until about a couple of years ago. So, even if you’re the kind of highlight-reel, fairweather fan who likes pro more than college, are into individual heroics more than team play . . . or, no, specifically because of that, yeah. Because of that, this is your question: Michael or Kobe? I mean, as far as skill-set goes, Kobe’s pretty hands-down got Michael there, but, for all his talent and ability and hours in the gym, it was never finally about skill with Michael, was it? No, Kobe, he plays because he loves the game, right? Because he lives in the game—he is the game. Michael, though—correct me if I’m wrong here—his first love, it was never actually the game. Michael’s first love, it was destroying his opponent. It was leaving his opponent broken and shattered out there, whatever the cost. He could have been a boxer, an astronaut, whatever, it just so happened he played ball. And, all the skill in the world, all the talent—it’s Clubber Lang and Rocky, right? It’s Hulk, under that mountain, refusing to let it crush him?

I should have said “Your Latest Trick ” earlier, up there. Dire Straits. And Bob Seger’s “Main Street” too. Maybe Springsteen on “The Promise.” Johnny Van Zant with “Brickyard Road.”

Hunh. Let’s take this back to bookland, then. You cite all kinds of influences for your work, for your life. Waylon, Philip K. Dick, Pynchon, King—Waylon and Pynchon born the same year, yeah? just like Ulysses coming the same year we found King Tut (I’m making fun of you here)—and various dads and stepdads and uncles and, okay, sure, Wes Craven too, though I think you really mean just Scream. Taking all of that into account, though, if you could be any artist . . . no, any novelist—we’re in bookland, remember?—if you could be any writer writing today, who would that be? And, before you answer, understand that this isn’t the same as asking whose checks you’d like to be cashing. I mean, if it’s just money, then King’s the obvious choice, and you’re always saying It’s your favorite book ever, and you even like the books of his everybody else doesn’t, and not just to be contrary or to try to curry favor from above, but because he’s good. I’m not disallowing King, though, but understand that, if you select him here, then you’ve got all his responsibility too. So, just a one-word question this time: Who?

CJ Box.

His Joe Pickett series, yes, yes. Thomas Magnum as a game warden—no? Okay, okay, already, sorry: Elvis Cole among the elk hunters. Cool, whatever. Talking about animalsand how easy they are to kill in fiction, though: your last interview. I mean, man, it wasn’t just completely PITA-friendly where pets were involved. It does put me in mind of another question, though: What’s the saddest thing?

Wal-Mart quit selling my favorite three-pack of shirts about four years ago. I’m down to two of them, and one’s stained, the other torn.

You’ve said that your first novel, The Fast Red Road, it’s not about people at all, but about a truck you were, and are, in love with. But, I mean—it’s a 69, right? Two-tone, red-on-white, that peculiar, pearly white Ford used to spray. And of course one of your brothers, he builds show trucks for a living, is currently building up one of your old trucks. So, okay, you know trucks. However. Haven’t you, in another faq, said that, in actuality, it’s 79 Fords that forever have your heart, not 69s? Was dropping back a decade just your way of trying to keep yourself from slathering too much detail onto Clive’s truck? And please don’t reduce this down to that 79 Owen Wilson drove in The Minus Man—he was a killer there, okay? the truck was the exact shade of grey Church was in Pet Semetery—and it can’t be about that yellow 79 in Smoke Signals, forever driving away, and you know that that cherry Ford in Raising Arizona, the one with the polyester tires and those sweet, sweet stock hubcaps, you know it wasn’t even a 78, much less a 79, and don’t get nostalgic here either, talk about the string of 79s you’ve had, and don’t talk about all the 79s that got away either, that you still regret, and let’s not talk about the 79 you’re going to build if that Lucas/Spielberg thing ever happens, and don’t even try to sneak in that sweet silver and blue 79 in your Not For Nothing , that’s all the way in 2014, already. Just—just answer one question, regarding all this truck stuff that shouldn’t even matter for books: Why 1979 F-150s?

Uncle Jesse drove one. And I meant to have said “Horses” earlier.

You meant to have said a lot of stuff, yeah. Anyway, almost done here. But, everybody has one song that’s a tearjerker for them, that gets them crying on the inside, anyway, even if they’re so cool on the outside. For me, say, I don’t know, it’s the only Smashing Pumpkins song I can even pretend to know, but that—and please don’t make too much of the year here, there’s no synchronicity, it doesn’t matter that Pynchon and Waylon were born the same year either, coincidence does exist—but that “1979.” I don’t even understand all the words, I don’t guess. There’s something about it, though, “1979.” I was seven like you then, can’t even remember for sure where I was living at the time. I used to have a picture from around there, proof that I was a kid, but I lost it somewhere along the way. So I have to look for myself in songs, I guess. But we all do, right? In songs, in stories, in movies. And sometimes we find ourselves. On the best days, we find ourselves. Where do you find yourself?

Warrant, “Heaven.” Got a picture of your house, and you’re—


Standing by the door, yeah, yeah. But . . . No, you, you—


[answer]...


http://fc2.org/jones/ledfeather/ledfeather.htm

Dancing With Myself: JOHN WEAGLY interviews JOHN WEAGLY

More haste, less speed. I need to take some such advice.

I do have time to wish you all a very happy New Year,

to recommend a visit to find the latest Cash Laramie

and to introduce today's dancer, John Weagly, another contributer to the outstanding Discount Noir. Here goes.

JOHN: It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m a big fan of your work. You’re much better looking than I expected. Who does your hair?

JW: Is that your first question?

JOHN: I…um…uh…

JW: Because you only get ten! Is that one of them?

JOHN: I… No, I guess not.

JW: Okay. Then what’s your first question?

JOHN: Are you always this rude?

JW: Yes. What’s your second question?

JOHN: Last month you had a story published in the anthology DISCOUNT NOIR. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

JW: “Friday Night with the Tijuana Wolfman” was originally published on my blog for a flash fiction challenge that Patti Abbott put out. I’ve done a few of these challenges, they usually have a minimal word count and revolve around a specific theme. They’re always fun and… challenging.

JOHN: Your story features Billy Weston and Waylon… something…?

JW: Billy Weston and Waylon Preston! Have you even read the story?

JOHN: I plan to… Due to time constraints I wasn’t able…

JW: Moron! I created Billy and Waylon for the first flash fiction challenge I did. The challenge was, as usual, put out by Patti Abbott and I wrote a story called “Friday Night at Cluck and Jive.” These two guys went on to star in four more stories.

JOHN: They live in Currie Valley?

JW: They do. Many of my stories take place in Currie Valley. In 2003 I had a book of Currie Valley short stories published called THE UNDERTOW OF SMALL TOWN DREAMS. You can still find it here and there.

JOHN: Getting back to “Tijuana Wolfman,” I understand there’s some frustration involved in trying to find a movie. Any truth in that?

JW: There is. I hate it when I can’t find old movies at places that sell DVD’s. Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Borders, Barnes and Noble…They’re all fine if you want to buy a movie that came out this week, but if you’re looking for something that came out six months ago, you have to special order it. We’re supposed to support brick and mortar stores, but how can I do that when they won’t carry what I want? It drives me bonkers!

JOHN: That’s a shame.

JW: Don’t mock me!

JOHN: I wasn’t mocking…

JW: You were!

JOHN: I…I’m not going to let you pick a fight with me. I need to keep this professional. Do you wear pants when you write?

JW: Underpants.

JOHN: You had a lot going on in October, didn’t you?

JW: I did. I had another story, “Sparrows & Crows,” published in CRIMEFACTORY #5 and I had some ghost haikus performed at the Halifax Ghost Story Festival in England. I also had a story called “Morning Meeting” win the Necon E-Books Flash Fiction Contest.

JOHN: What do you have on the horizon?

JW: I have a short zombie story coming out in DAILY BITES OF FLESH 2011. My day is January 8 - Elvis’ birthday. I also have some poems coming out in TERROR AT MISKATONIC FALLS. And I have a workshop production of an evening of my short plays coming up at Raven Theatre in Chicago.

JOHN: Do you have any advice for young writers just starting out?

JW: Yes – keep that damn noise down! And write everyday.

JOHN: Looks like I have one question left. So, who does your hair?

JW: This place across the street from work. $6 haircuts. I could go to the place that has $5 haircuts, but I don’t want people to think I’m cheap. Are we done?

JOHN: Yes. Thank you. It’s been a plea…

JW: Get out of my apartment.

http://www.johnweagly.com/