Charles Ardai: "Being Read. It's Just That Simple."

Folks, I'm so excited to share this interview with you. Charles Ardai is kind of a dream interview for me. You have to understand how much I love Hard Case Crime. Easily my favorite publisher of my favorite kind of fiction. And not only a fantastic publisher, but Charles is also a fantastically gifted author. Seriously, if you've read the blog for any length of time at all, you know how much I love short stories, and his newest collection DEATH COMES TOO LATE is an amazing book of short crime fiction. Really, go buy it now. You'll thank me.

Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

I split my time between writing my own books (most recently, comic books) and publishing other people’s in the pulp-revival line I created 20 years ago, Hard Case Crime.

Anyone interested in my writing can check out the various volumes of my GUN HONEY and HEAT SEEKER comics – the newest series, HEAT SEEKER: COMBUSTION is in comic book stores as we speak, and the four prior storylines can be found in collected graphic novel form from your favorite bookseller – or if they prefer only words on the page, no pictures, they might enjoy the short story collection I published back in February, DEATH COMES TOO LATE.

As for Hard Case Crime, we just published Max Allan Collins’ newest novel about the hitman known as Quarry, QUARRY’S RETURN, and in January we will be bringing out a new edition of Donald E. Westlake’s wonderful novel THE ACTOR to coincide with the release of a new feature film based on the book.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

I’ve always had a particular love for so-called “noir” crime fiction – the sort of dark, bleak stories about desperate people fighting against impossible odds that you might see in an old black-and-white film noir. My comics have a bit more derring-do – they’re in the spirit of a James Bond or MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie – but my short stories and novels tend to be as noir as you can get.

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer? 

I had no other marketable skills! My brother is an engineer, and as a kid he could make spending money by walking into neighborhood beauty salons and offering to repair their broken hair dryers for five bucks. I couldn’t fix a hair dryer if my life depended on it. So I sat down and thought about what I could do that someone might pay me for, and the only answer I came up with was that I could write pretty well. I pitched a bunch of magazines on letting me write for them, and a few videogame magazines agreed to give me a shot. That’s how I began – writing videogame reviews for $50 apiece at age 13.

What inspires you to write? 

I want to be hardboiled about it and say “a paycheck” – but that’s not really true anymore. These days, I write either because I have an idea for a story that I really love and can’t resist sharing it with readers I think will love it too or because someone asks me to and I’m really bad at saying no.

What of your works has meant the most to you?

The two novels I wrote under the pen name “Richard Aleas,” LITTLE GIRL LOST and SONGS OF INNOCENCE, are by far the best things I’ve written (the first was a finalist for the Edgar and Shamus Awards; the second won the Shamus). They’re the story of a young private eye in modern-day New York who means well and wants to help the people he cares about, but in spite of his best intentions, things go terribly wrong.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?

That’s hard to say, not because none of my early work could be improved but because it all could! If I allowed myself to go back and fiddle with things I’ve already done, I’d never get anything new written. So I try always to look forward, not back.

That said, when I was assembling the stories for DEATH COMES TOO LATE, I had the chance to repair a bunch of truly stupid mistakes I made in a story called “Masks” that’s set in Brazil. Unfortunately, when I originally wrote the story, I didn’t realize that people in Brazil speak Portuguese, not Spanish, and that it’s hot in Februrary, not August – and improbably, my editor didn’t catch these errors. So in that one case I allowed myself to go back in and correct things.

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

My favorite living crime writer is (and for many years has been) Lawrence Block, author of the phenomenal Matthew Scudder series of detective novels, about an alcoholic ex-cop, and many wonderful standalone titles as well. Any of your readers who don’t already know his work should go look him up immediately. He’s had a huge influence on my writing. Other writers who’ve influenced me include Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene, Paul Auster, Kurt Vonnegut, Bernard Malamud, John Irving, Stephen King… are so many.

Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?

Writing is certainly something you can get better at through practice and observation, which suggests that even if there are no hard and fast rules for how to do it, it’s susceptible to analysis. But in spite of that I think it’s more of an art. Either you have the ear of a poet or you don’t. You can do all the finger exercises in the world and it won’t turn you into a brilliant pianist if you’ve got the soul of a mediocre one – and all the science in the world won’t make a so-so writer into a great one.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? 

Working to a deadline isn’t fun. I mean, in some ways it is – it’s gratifying that someone likes your work enough to assign something to you and give you a deadline, and sometimes inspiration can be prodded to life when you simply have no choice. But I always regret it when I have to force something into existence when it’s not ready – better by far when it’s just bursting to come out of you and you just try to hold on, like riding a wild stallion.

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not? 

My wife is a fantastic writer (in both senses – she’s terrific and she writes fantasy), and she’s both an inspiration and a goad. When I see her sit down to work on her new book, it’s harder for me to be lazy! And of course various writer friends have involved me in projects of theirs over the years – anthologies they invite me to contribute a story to and so forth. I still find that writing is fundamentally a solitary pursuit – I really need to be alone in my own head to do it well. So no writing retreats with 5 other writers for me. But I do get inspiration from writer friends, and once in a while assignments.

What does literary success look like to you? 

Being read. It’s really that simple. If people are reading the words I’m committing to paper, that’s success. These inventions of my teeming brain, which normally would entertain no one but me, fly out into the world, and if they please or entertain or disturb or break the heart of a total stranger far away, I feel I’ve achieved something great – something practically miraculous, in fact. I like to think that even after I’m long gone, maybe some curious soul will pick up one of my books, and the echoes of my thoughts will still manage to reach them, like the light from a long-extinguished sun. It’s the closest our doomed species comes to immortality.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?  

HEAT SEEKER: COMBUSTION will finish up with Issue #4 in February, but after that you can look forward to HEAT SEEKER: EXPOSED starting in May – and then GUN HONEY DOUBLES DOWN toward the end of the year.

For more information, visit: www.hardcasecrime.com