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

The Cover Story: Crime Fiction Now and Then and Now Again

Let's talk crime novel covers. My, how they've changed over the years. Don't believe me? Let's go back to the (almost) beginning (we'll skip over Sherlock Holmes who-dun-its for this article). The that, we need to visit the pulp mags. 

The Pulp Era

The covers of the classic pulp era stand alone as works of "cheap," "vulgar," and "violent" art -- just to mention some of the adjectives thrown at them. But works of art they remain. They knew how to attract a reader with scenes of danger and drama (and more than a little sexual titillation, of course). 

In fact, because of the patriarchal views (some might say misogynistic) of the time, it was hard to find covers that didn't have some helpless woman in various states of either torture or undress. However, even when they didn't have such covers, the images were always high points of action (maybe or maybe not related to one of the stories between the covers) or danger or violence. 

Suspense was the key question when you saw one of these covers. Will the hero save the day? Will the beautiful dame get shishkabobbed? 

These covers screamed and begged you to drop a few cents and find out. And they did it very, very well. 

The Contemporary Summer Bestseller 

Things have changed between then and now. Book covers, even thriller and crime novel covers, are more about mood and tone than telling a story it seems. That's not a judgment, just an acknowledgment. On the plus side, we're no longer inundated with helpless women and burly men saving the day or gore-adjacent covers or some of the darker pulp mags, but I'm not sure the covers to many contemporary mysteries are doing the job they're supposed to (at least supposed to in my opinion). 

As I look at the covers below, I'm not sure I can tell you what the story is actually about. Or, honestly, I don't think I would recognize the book as a mystery/crime book if it weren't shelved in that section of the bookstore. 

Modern covers, while great examples of color, texture, and typographic art, don't feel as immediate to me. I don't get a sense of why I need to open the book oftentimes. I don't feel pressured to ask the questions that make me want to see what happens. 

A quick glance below says these books could just as easily be literary bestsellers or romantic dramas as they could be any other genre of fiction. (On a related but different note, not even the titles convince me they're thrillers, but that's an article for another day.)

 

Original Novels and the Hard-Boiled Pastiches

Let's step back a few decades now, shall we? Inspired by the pulp mags, novels of the '30s and '40s through the '60s and '70s tried to recapture the awesome of the pulp aesthetic without the awful of the pulp aesthetic. Violence was back. Sex was back. And danger was once again front and center. 

Now, the violence and sex tended to be far more subdued, maybe even subtle, as it the semi-open door (still locked) or the look of fear for The Glass Key, but it was there. And it while it also conveyed mood, it didn't shy away from actually teasing the story. There was no way you didn't know what kind of novel you were buying based on the covers on the paperback racks (or most of the hardcovers over earlier years). 

The genre grew up and became procedurals in addition to private eyes. Big thrillers replaced small-scale-one-man-against-the-bad-guys of Key Largo. And the covers grew with them, distancing themselves from the "thing of the past" ideals and values of yesteryear (as you move into the '70s particularly), but the hints were there to see what you were getting into. There was no confusing even the semi-vagueness of these spinner rack covers with a copy of a literary classic or a contemporary lit hit. 

Hard Case Crime 

Hands down, my favorite publisher nowadays is the retro-pulp, hard-boiled, noirish, crime story, private dick publisher Hard Case Crime. The stories are often reminiscent of early crime novels but updated for the present or written with modern sensibilities (sometimes not). And their cover game is top-notch. They do the best job I've seen of capturing the story sensibilities of the early pulp-inspired novels of the '30s and '40s and even tease it a bit with the voyeurism of the original pulp covers before Werthem's Seduction of the Innocent shut down the fun machine. 

To be fair, a lot of these covers do play up the big strong man trope and you see a lot of sexy women on the covers, but they are rarely women in peril. More often than not, they're holding either the gun or all the cards. 

But the thing that really draws me to Hard Case Crime is how I can usually tell exactly what I need to know about the book before I buy it. I can see it in a catalog or on a shell, and bam, I know the kind of story I'm about to spend good money on. To me, that's the main job of a cover. 

And That Leaves Us...

A cavaet: There's always an exception for every rule, and for every cover I've shown here, there a several that make an equal and opposite statement to prove me wrong. You can find vague, artsy '60s paperback covers or even pulpy cover versions of classic literature. You can find gripping, story-driven contemporary covers for thrillers that don't hide the genre in colorful photographic dreamscapes. But for this article, I'm addressing the generality, so don't feel the need to play the "what about" card. I'm not taking the bait. 

Let me reiterate, these are just my opinions about covers for mystery thrillers. Your mileage may vary. You may prefer pretty covers that tease the eye like an impressionist painting or a soft-palette photo of a beautiful tree. If that works for you, fine. You do you, boo. 

Personally, I'd like to see crime fiction return to the style of the paperback racks before the sort of homogenous look took over publishing. I like the covers that tell the story to sell the story. Now, that doesn't mean I want to see a return to the ideals and patronizing and patriarchal values of the '30s and the '40s those old covers may have reflected, just that storytelling style. 

But, as they say, if wishes were horses... 

[Link] An interview with Donald Westlake (aka Richard Stark)

Note: Here's an oldie but a goodie,
as the saying goes.
==========================

by Paul Kane

Donald Westlake has also been associated with the cinema. “The Hunter,” one of the Parker novels written under the name of Richard Stark, has been made into a film four times. His screenplay for Stephen Frears’ 1990 film “The Grifters,” still the best screen adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel, was nominated for an Oscar.

I interviewed Donald Westlake in December 2006, following the publication of his latest Parker novel, “Ask the Parrot.” Here is how it turned out.

Paul Kane: Do you see yourself as a crime writer or simply a writer, period?

Donald Westlake: I began by writing everything, genre, slices of life, whatever. Over the course of time, it was mostly mystery stories (followed by sci-fi and humor) that got accepted, and you tend to go where you’re liked. Through the sixties, I said I was a writer disguised as a mystery writer, but then I looked at my back trail and said, okay, I’m a mystery writer.

I began by writing everything, genre, slices of life, whatever. Over the course of time, it was mostly mystery stories (followed by sci-fi and humor) that got accepted, and you tend to go where you’re liked. Through the sixties, I said I was a writer disguised as a mystery writer, but then I looked at my back trail and said, okay, I’m a mystery writer.

PK: What can you do in crime fiction that you can’t do in a straight literary novel? What possibilities does the genre offer you?

DW: I don’t think the distinction between genre and literary fiction is useful. We’re all working with the same two things, story and language, and if you fail with either of those it doesn’t matter what label you put on it.

Read the full article: http://www.compulsivereader.com/2006/12/30/an-interview-with-donald-westlake-aka-richard-stark/

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#25) -- Watch & Read

You've said that you most enjoy writing pulp adventures.

Do you also enjoy it the most for reading and/or watching it?

-- John Morgan Neal

That's a great question, John. And the answer is... sometimes. How's that for vague?

Actually, I do love reading noir pulps, but I'm not as big a fan of a lot of the "super hero" pulp stuff from years past. It may disqualify me from writing pulps, but I've actually never read a single novel or story featuring Doc Savage or The Black Bat. What I really enjoy reading, however, is the stuff that is pulpish in nature, the stuff that is first cousin to the pulps themselves. What do I mean by that? The adventure stories of H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, for example. And I'm an addict for about 90 percent of the Hard Case Crime line of books.

But I'm also a huge fan of classic American literature, and I'll trip over a stack of otherwise good books to read Hemingway, Fitzgerald, O'Connor, Hurston, and Carver.

As for my viewing habits, it's no secret that I probably watch more horror films than just about anyone on the planet. Yet, I don't write nearly that much horror. (Although I do write it from time to time.) I do enjoy the noir films too, but I'm just a sucker for a good (or a bad) horror movie.

BUY THIS BOOK! -- Choke Hold by Christa Faust

 
Buy this book!

I'm recommending this one without having read it yet, based purely on the sheer awesomeness of the previous volume by the uber-talented Ms. Faust. If you haven't read Money Shot, click over to Amazon and buy that one now. Money Shot was easily my favorite book of the year when I read it in early 2009. I've been waiting forever for this follow-up adventure featuring Angel Dare. Needless to say, it's already on my Christmas list.