Mr Hardcase, Charles Ardai chats with The Tainted Archive

Hard Case Crime are still going strong in 2020 and so enjoy this classic interview from 2009

 

INTERVIEW REPOST...ORIGINALLY POST 2009

hard case crime - creator interview.

Charles Ardai and business partner Max Phillips, were dismayed at the lack of slim pacey paperbacks in the shops - the kinds of book they picked up on the second hand stalls and both shared a deep love for, the pulps from writers like Mickey Spillane and Richard Stark. And so they decided to start up their own publishing imprint which would print original works written in the style of the pulps and classic long out of print titles.

Given the modern day market, where huge building brick like tomes are in vogue and slim, cheap, paperbacks are yesterday's product this must have seemed a risky, maybe even insane, business idea.

"Risky commercially, perhaps -- but commercial success was never our main concern. I mean, of course we wanted the line to succeed and prosper. Who wouldn't? But first we wanted it to be good, and to be good at what we wanted it to be good at. We didn't start by asking the question "How can we make some money publishing books?" and come up with the answer "Publishing old-fashioned crime novels might work"; we started by asking the question "Wouldn't it be great if someone started publishing old-fashioned crime novels again?" And you know what? If we'd published a handful and it had turned out that there was no market for them, we'd have stopped and been satisfied with the handful we'd done, content to have done something we cared about and done it well. Not every business venture has to succeed -- indeed, only a very small percentage ever do. But what happened instead was that the first handful of books did very well. They didn't sell at (or anywhere near) best-seller levels, but they sold well enough; and in terms of critical esteem and attention, they soared. People loved them. Newspapers and magazines raved about them. Every single original novel we published in our first year was nominated for either the Shamus Award, the Edgar Award, or both -- and we won one of each. So...we published another handful. And those did well, too, although not quite as well in terms of sales, the novelty having worn off a little. At which point we were lucky enough to get to publish a new novel by Stephen King, his first since announcing what he'd described as his retirement from writing fiction. And that one did sell at best-seller levels -- we put out more than one million copies. Nothing we've done since has been comparable in terms of commercial success, but the line has survived and we're very proud of it. Did we know when we started that it would still be around five years later? That we'd wind up publishing not a handful of books but fifty, sixty, more? No. What we knew was that we'd be publishing books we loved, and we hoped at least some other people might like them too. That was enough."

The passion seemed to pay off and far from the originally hopes for half a dozen titles the imprint recently published their 50th title - Fifty to One written by Ardai himself and something of a departure for the imprint - it's still hardboiled crime but a comedy also with each chapter named after an hard case title and in sequence too, with the story cleverly invented around these titles.

Not an easy task but then Charles Ardai was up to it having already published hardboiled fiction under his pen-name, Richard Aleas. And far from mere vanity projects these books, published by Hard Case Crime, have gained massive critical and fan approval. The detective John Blake, named after the romantic poet, is the kind of noble everyman character Chandler would have approved of.

Hard Case crime continues to be a success but if the company folded tomorrow, not that this is likely given the current crop of excellent titles, then the name Hard Case Crime is secured in the history of pulp fiction. It'll be mentioned alongside such pulp pushers as Gold Medal and popular library.

"I like to think that we have reminded people about certain types of storytelling, and ways of presenting books visually, that had largely been forgotten. Book covers had become so boring -- large type, minimal illustration, nothing like the gorgeous, sexy painted covers of the early days of paperbacks. And books had become so thick -- 350 pages, 400 pages, 500. Where were the lean stories of the 1950s, the ones that hooked you on page one with a dead body or a man on the run or a naked woman getting out of the shower (or all three) and then hauled you bodily through the rest of the plot in five- or six-page chunks, ending finally with a breathless, heart-stopping finale on page 176 or 192 (or, sometimes, 144 or 128)? Where were the covers that made you respond with almost Pavlovian intensity, with a quickening of your pulse and a stirring in your groin? Sure, some of them were ridiculous -- some were even offensive -- but tell the truth: could you stop yourself from peeking at them? Could you walk away if you had coins enough in your pocket to buy them? These were books. These were vehicles for popular entertainment every bit as compelling and exciting as today the latest hot videogame or TV show or movie is. They sold more than a hundred thousand copies per book, not sometimes, not once in a while, but every single time -- every time, every one, over and over again, month in and month out, for two decades. This was the stuff the masses consumed for pleasure. That's why the format grew to be known as the 'mass-market' paperback. This was how ordinary Joes got their first exposure to literature -- to Shakespeare and Mary Shelley, to Poe, to Orwell, to Pearl Buck and James Hilton and William Faulkner. And it was how they got their weekly diet of mayhem and titillation, of action and suspense, of sexy repartee and comic mischance. They had radio, they had film, eventually they had television, but through it all they also read books, and the reason they read books -- one of the reasons -- was that the books were readable, intensely, irresistibly so.

I like to think maybe more people remember this tradition and appreciate just how rich a tradition it was because of our efforts to revive it. I like to think we haven't only been preaching to the choir -- that we've led at least some people who'd otherwise never have tried a book like this to give one a shot. And I hope we've done something to prevent some awfully good writers -- not geniuses but journeymen of exceptional skill and passion, with so much to offer readers -- from being utterly forgotten."


Mission accomplished then - but given the current financial situation how healthy does he see the book trade remaining over the coming months?


"Not very. When the chief executive of Barnes & Noble announces in advance of the Christmas season that the season will be "horrible," the worst in his entire career as a bookseller; when major publishers conduct layoffs and freeze acquisitions, however briefly; when bookstores go out of business left and right...you know you're in serious trouble. Make no mistake: The book business is in serious trouble. It's never been much of a business in economic terms -- if you wanted to make good money, you'd be better off trading stocks or selling widgets or laying bricks. So when there's a downturn in the publishing business it's not a turn from ludicrously profitable to slightly less so; it's a turn from lousy to can't survive. I wouldn't be surprised to see some publishers go under and others consolidate. No guarantee that we'll still be around a year or two from now. But you can't worry about that. You just have to keep plugging along, putting out the best books you can, as long as you can."

Hard Case Crime then has succeeded where others have failed so what advise would Charles give to prospective hardboiled scribblers out there?

"

Well, write a good book. That's number one, and you'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't) how many people fail to follow that simple piece of advice. Of course, it's not their fault -- writing a good book isn't easy and most people just can't do it. Desire is not the same thing as talent, enthusiasm isn't always matched by ability, and there are more people in the world who can put pen to paper than there are writers. So my second piece of advice to writers is the old Socratic saw, Know Thyself. I get submissions from people who think they've written THE MALTESE FALCON, if not the Bible, and it's just obviously unpublishable, to such an extreme extent that no objective reader could possibly reach a different conclusion. Know thyself. Look at what you're writing, compare it to the books you enjoy reading, and ask whether it's comparable. If you can't tell, ask a friend to do this comparison, one who's willing to be honest with you. And if the answer is no, if your writing isn't at a comparable level of quality, don't submit it to a publisher. Sit down and write something else, something better. And until your work is at that level, keep working at your craft. You don't open a French restaurant if the best meal you can cook is some inedible caricature of coq au vin; don't bring the equivalent in novel terms to a publisher.

What if you have written a good book? Well, the next hurdle if to figure out whether it's the particular sort of good book we publish. Does your book have ghosts in it? Vampires? The undead? Well, we don't publish supernatural or fantasy novels, so we'd be the wrong publisher to send it to. Sometimes it's subtler: We don't publish a lot of comedies, especially not broad ones or ones that spoof the genre. We very rarely publish political novels. We tend to go for something more classically hardboiled or noir rather than the more modern sort of Hollywood-inflected 'thriller' about clever-monickered serial killers playing cat-and-mouse games with the police. How can you find out what sort of book we publish? It's simple: Read our books. If you don't want to pony up the seven or eight bucks apiece it would cost to buy them, you can find sample chapters from all of them for free on our Web site, www.hardcasecrime.com. Read what we publish, learn what we like -- and then submit a book to us if yours is similar. And good. It's got to be good.

And even then, don't be surprised -- or discouraged -- if we say no. We get more than 1,000 submissions per year and can only buy 4 or 5 original novels. That means we have to say no to more than 99% of the books we see, including some that are very good. Even if yours is good, the odds are less than 1 in 10 that we'll buy it. But that doesn't mean some other publisher won't, and they might even pay you more for it than we could. (Almost anyone can pay more than we can.)"

The Hard Case Crime series never fails to delight - it wopuld be nice if some other publishers would come along and do a similar thing for other pulp genres - westerns, horror etc. Does Charles ever see Hard Case doing this?

"

Well, we are branching out into pulp adventure fiction next year: In May we'll publish HUNT AT THE WELL OF ETERNITY, the first in a series of novels about a two-fisted modern-day adventurer named Gabriel Hunt, and additional volumes will follow every few months after that. The books will be published under Gabriel Hunt's name, but will actually be written by some old Hard Case Crime hands (me, David J. Schow, Christa Faust) as well as some friends of the family (James Reasoner, Nick Kaufmann, Raymond Benson). The books are intended to harken back to the style of H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs and Sax Rohmer, or Doc Savage and The Avenger, or Indiana Jones. They're a ton of fun to write and edit, and again, it's a type of book you just don't see being published anymore -- inexplicably so, when you consider just how popular the genre is at the movies.

Will we ever experiment with other genres? It's hard to say. There are only so many hours in the day, and Hard Case Crime has zero full-time employees -- it's just me, working on it part-time, and a handful of freelancers working as hard as they possibly can. But who knows? If we find another genre we have a real passion for, we might give it a try.

Richard's own writing is very much in the hardboiled school - I wonder who his influences were in the first place as relating to his own output? I meantion that I very much enjoyed his debut novel, Little Girl Lost.

"

Thanks -- I'm glad you liked it. When I reread it, of course, I spot all the flaws: I should have done this, I should have done that. But it was a first novel. It had all of a first novel's flaws, but also, I hope, a first novel's virtues. I am very pleased it was so well received and that readers continue to discover and enjoy it. (The sequel, SONGS OF INNOCENCE, is a better book, but also darker; I could imagine some readers enjoying the first one more.)

Influences? Lawrence Block, definitely: I've read every book the man wrote and I treasure them; he writes about pain and corruption, and about New York City, in ways that really stay with you, and I've tried to emulate that. Also Ross Macdonald, who was the master of the 'little girl lost' story, where the detective goes digging to find out the sad history behind some young woman's tragic end. One reviewer compared my book to Fredric Brown's Ed and Am Hunter novels, and I admit I do love the first of those, THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT. I suppose there's a little of Chandler in there -- no one can write about a weary, disillusioned private eye walking the mean streets without Chandler's shade rearing up. Those are some influences. But there's also some Thomas Hardy in there, a bit of Bernard Malamud, a bit of Paul Auster. Having read a lot of authors, I'm bound to have been influenced by a lot."

So what have Hard Case got lined up for 2009?

"We just put out a long-lost novel by Lawrence Block -- KILLING CASTRO -- which has never before appeared under his real name, and in fact hasn't appeared in any form for nearly half a century. Even die-hard fans of Block didn't know about this novel, so it's a real find. Next month will be an even bigger one: a never-before-published crime novel called THE DEAD MAN'S BROTHER by the acclaimed science fiction writer Roger Zelazny, who wrote it in 1971 but never published it; after his death, it was found by his son, who is a fan of our books, and he brought it to our attention. It's an excellent, excellent book, a real buried treasure.

After that we have Donald Westlake's Edgar-nominated first novel, appearing for the first time ever under the title he originally meant for it to have: THE CUTIE. Then a novel called HOUSE DICK, about skullduggery in a Washington, D.C. hotel, penned by convicted Watergate mastermind E. Howard Hunt. The following month is Peter Blauner's outstanding and underappreciated Atlantic City mob/boxing novel, CASINO MOON, featuring a truly stunning cover by a painter who is himself a former Golden Gloves boxer, Ricky Mujica. Next comes Jason Starr's FAKE I.D., which has never been published in America (there were some European editions).

Then we have PASSPORT TO PERIL, a tale of post-WWII intrigue by Robert B. Parker -- but not the Robert B. Parker who writes the Spenser books. This Robert B. Parker died in 1955 after a career as a war correspondent and (clandestinely) as an agent for the OSS, and here he's writing about an American on the run from Germans and Russians in postwar Budapest.

August brings us back to our roots, with a revival of the work of the old-time pulp writer Peter Rabe -- his memorable first novel, STOP THIS MAN!, about a loser who steals a radioactive bar of gold and then has to deal with the consequences. September is a brand new novel by Russell Atwood, who won praise for his first novel, EAST OF A, ten years ago. It's taken him this wrong to write the second adventure of his detective, LOSERS LIVE LONGER, but it was worth the wait. Our October title will be a never-before-published crime novel called HONEY IN HIS MOUTH by Lester Dent, the creator of pulp hero Doc Savage. November will be the latest installment in Max Allan Collins' very popular 'Quarry' series about a ruthless hitman, QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE. (It's a sequel to THE LAST QUARRY and THE FIRST QUARRY.) And December will feature two books: a new novel set in the world of burlesque and striptease by an author who is himself the head of a celebrated modern burlesque troupe (and featuring two gorgeous members of the troupe modeling for the cover), plus a very special reprint of what I think is one of the greatest hardboiled crime novels of all time...but is rarely, if ever, recognized as such. We're not giving the surprise away yet, but I think people will get a real kick out of it when they see it."

No amount of prodding will loosen Richard's lips but the thought is enticing. After all, now that Hard Case has fifty plus titles under it's belt he must know the business. For instance, I ask him, if the reprints sell more than the original stuff.

"Our bestselling author is Stephen King, hands down; that shouldn't surprise anyone. After King, our bestsellers include folks like Lawrence Block and Ed McBain and Donald Westlake -- again, this shouldn't surprise anyone. But it's not necessarily the case that reprints are more popular for us than originals. It's true that our books by Block and Westlake are reprints -- but I have no doubt that if one of those men wrote an original for us it would sell just as well, if not better. And of course the King book was an original. And some of our other originals have done well -- Mickey Spillane's DEAD STREET, for instance. The issue is not so much whether a book is an original or a reprint, it's how well known the author is. Or more precisely how much interest the public has in a given book, which is highly correlated with how well known the author is, but once in a while a less-well-known author commands the public's attention and his or her book does very nicely for us. This happened with my own second novel, SONGS OF INNOCENCE, for instance, after the Washington Post called it "an instant classic" and NPR aired a half-hour interview with me about it. My name is not well known -- certainly my pseudonym isn't. But the book did well because lots of people heard about it and were made curious enough to buy it. Absent that sort of publicity surge, though, the pre-existing interest people have in the work of their favorite authors is the best predictor of good sales. Reprints by authors from the pulp days whom no one remembers will do less well than new novels by popular writers like Max Allan Collins or Ken Bruen and Jason Starr."

So there we have it HARD CASE CRIME
Publishing the book the way they used to.
No shit - told with the velocity of a spinning bullet.

Did you hear the one about the actor, the comedian and the novelist? Mark Billingham Interview

Billingham dressed to kill Pic by Donna-Lisa Healy.

Did you hear the one about the actor, the comedian and the novelist?

Well, they're all the same man! Boom Boom!!

Not much of a punchline granted, not even a punchline, but it's the best I could come up with after weeks of footie fatigue; the World Cup being in full swing. And although it might be inane it is fitting to precede our interview with bestselling crime/thriller writer Mark Billingham. 

Billingham, born in Solihull, grew up in Birmingham and spent most of his formative years there. After leaving university, with a degree in drama, he remained in Birmingham and helped set up Bread and Circuses, a socialist theatre company, and after several years of touring shows he left for the bright lights of London to pursue a career as a jobbing actor. It was now the 1980's and Billingham saw himself taking small parts in shows like Dempsey and Makepeace, The Bill and Juliet Bravo. His best known role was as Gary, the dim witted guard employed by the Sheriff of Nottingham in the successful children's series, Maid Marion and her Merry Men.

Billingham though soon grew tired of acting, feeling that the  secret for success was largely based on how an actor looked rather than talent  -' I seemed to be offered bad guy roles such as a soccer hooligan, drug addict, a nasty copper, a racist copper or a bent copper' - and he instead opted to concentrate on stand up comedy. Staring out with 5 - 10 minute unpaid open mic sessions, he soon moved onto 30 minute paid slots, and from there he found himself headlining gigs at the prestigious Comedy Store. 

' Back then it was fairly easy to get into,' Billingham says of his stand up comedy career.  'You'd go to a couple of clubs and do what are called 'Try-outs' which are unpaid spots. You got five minutes, and if you did well that progressed into 10 minutes, and then 20 to 30 minute paid slots. But now it is really big business, and there are big chains of Comedy Clubs. I feel sorry for young comics of 18 or 19 today, as it is so tough now. It's a lot tougher now than it used to be.'

Despite his success as a stand up comedian though, Billingham's first love was writing, something he had been doing since an early age and although his first attempt at a novel, the Birmingham set Mechanic (as yet unpublished), which was a comic crime thriller that he abandoned before completion, the writing bug had bitten.  He loved reading crime novels and so he decided to concentrate on a straight forward crime novel. This would become Sleepyhead - the 2001 novel that all but make him an instant

bestseller. 

Sleepyhead is a serial killer thriller with a truly ingenious twist, since if a victim dies the killer considers this a failure. He's not trying to kill his victims but rather to induce a permanent catatonic state through the skillful manipulation of nerves and pressure points - it's called Locked In Syndrome or pseudocoma, a condition in which a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles except for vertical eye movements and blinking.

The thriller introduced us to hard living, country music loving, Detective Inspector Tom Thorne and readers instantly took to this new cop on the fictional crime landscape. Despite his rather dodgy musical taste, the reading public loved him and this past month saw the publication of The Killing Habit, the fifteenth book in the Tom Thone series.

TAINTED ARCHIVE: So after so many books featuring the same group of characters, I wonder if the author found it difficult to maintain reader interest. Is it actually easier now that the readers are so familiar with Thorne's universe or is it harder to keep them interested?

MARK BILLINGHAM: I suppose it's a little of both. The tricky part is writing a book in the series which honours those readers who have followed the Thorne novels since the start, while not alienating those who may not have read any of them. It's a tough balance to get right. There SHOULD be pressure, because unless you're always trying to write a better book than you did last time, you really should not be bothering. You certainly cannot take reader familiarity for granted...


TA: A particular strength in the Thorne series are the secondary characters - Tanner, Hendricks, Helen etc. In some way there's something of a soap opera vibe to series fiction in the way that the private lives of character that make up the fictional universe come and go. How to do you keep track of everything that is going on with such a large cast of recurring characters? Is there a series bible for instance?

MB: No, there's no such thing as a bible when it comes to my fictional world. It was a choice I made early on, specifically for Thorne, that I would not lay everything out or know everything about him and the same goes for Phil, Helen and the rest. This can cause problems of course, the most obvious one being that I forget stuff. But I think it's the right way to go in the long run, because it means that the characters can stay unpredictable. If they're surprising me then they have more chance of surprising the reader.

TA: to step away from Thorne for a moment - from time to time you write standalone thrillers. Are these a chance to rest from Thorne's world? Do they enable you to tackle subjects that may not work in a Thorne thriller? 

MB: That's absolutely right and it's a lesson I learned from writers like Michael Connelly. I think it's the best way - possibly the ONLY way - to keep a series from getting stale. You need to step away once in a while and do something else. That way, in theory at least, you can return to your series a year later fired up and ready to get back into it. While it's sometimes scary - and you ask yourself why you didn't just play safe and write another series novel - it's enormously liberating to leave your comfort zone. The standalones are among the favourites of all my novels and I'll certainly be doing some more. As you say, sometimes it's a story that simply has no room for a miserable north London copper... 



 TA: You are all over social media - often giving live Facebook broadcasts whilst wearing some pretty loud shirts, hosting the excellent Podcast A Stab in the Dark. How important is social media to the modern writer?

   
MB: Social media has, of course, become tremendously important, both to writers and publishers. On the down side, it can be a way for some publishers to do marketing and "publicity" on the cheap, but from a writer's point of view it's a fairly easy way to keep in touch with readers and fellow writers. To let people know what you're up to. Increasingly in recent years, writers have needed to sell themselves as much as their books, so a presence on social media has become pretty much compulsory. For those of us who are not averse to showing off, it's great, but it can also be an enormous time-suck, so I look at it as a treat that I need to earn. I get a chapter done, I can treat myself to 10 minutes on Twitter or whatever. the podcast was great fun and I hope we'll be recording some more very soon.




A STAB IN THE DARK PODCAST: I would urge fans of crime thrillers to check out the podcast - it can perhaps boast the finest line of big name guests of any podcast. Sofia Helfin, Mark Gattis, Michael Connelly, Belinda Bauer and Patricia Cornwell are just a few of the luminaries who have appeared recently. Find details HERE



TA: Given your knowledge of the genre, let's touch on other writers. Who do you particularly like? Are there any authors who you read as each book come out?


MB: There are SO many great writers out there at the moment. In terms of those writers whose early copies I scrounge from publishers it's all the usual suspects. Mick Herron is definitely one of those. His books are like crack! Same goes for Belinda Bauer, Martyn Waites, John Connolly, George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Michael Connelly, Steve Cavanagh, Susie Steiner, loads more that I've forgotten and, of course, all my band-mates from the Fun Lovin' Crime Writers. I'm only in that band so I can hang out with them.

THE FUN LOVING CRIME WRITERS:  The band, genre fiction's answer to John, Paul, George and Ringo are Mark Billingham, Val McDermid, Chris Brookmyre,  Stuart Neville, Luca Veste and Doug Johnstone, and they regularly appear at festivals and - in their own words: murder songs for fun. 

 This month they will be appearing at the Harrogate Crime Festival and later this year they will be appearing at Bloody Scotland, the highland's own international crime writing festival.


 


 
TA: Along the same lines - what are your influences?
  

MB: There are so many influences. When I was a student I read all the classic US authors - Hammett, Chandler, McDonald, and then later those writers who were shaking things up in their wake - Burke, Ellroy. Before I'd written a word I'd read pretty much everything by the likes of Connelly, Pelecanos, McDermid, Rankin and Harvey, and I still do. It tickles me constantly that all those writers are now my friends. I think I was as influenced by TV and film as much as by anything I read.


TA: The crime/thriller genre in itself is in rude health with some great stuff out there. And it is so fluid - I recently listened with great interest in you chat with John Connolly in which he stated that setting does not define a crime novel. He used a hypothetical crime story set in the old west as his example and I think I agree with him. Another case in point is Brookmyre's Places in the Darkness being taken for SF. I guess what I'm trying to ask is are there genre boundaries that can't be crossed without a work transforming into an entirely different genre? Are there firm and hard rules to the crime genre? Your thoughts on this please.

MB: I really enjoyed that chat with John, who is another writer whose stuff I will try and read as early as possible. I agree that the genre is in great shape and I really don't believe it has boundaries. There are certain conventions and I think you'd be foolish to ignore all of them, but there really isn't anywhere you can't go. That said, if you're writing a crime novel that features wizards and dragons, then even though it might still BE a crime novel, it's also fantasy. Maybe mash-ups are the way forward.


TA: Let's get onto your own writing - your work habits?   

MB: I don't really have work habits. I write a book every year, so there are obviously certain things I have to do, but it's not a 9-5 job. If I'm on the road promoting a book that's just come out, I won't be writing the current one. I can't do both things at the same time. I need my office, my desk, my things. When I AM working, it's usually done at night. I TRY to write during the day but I'm easily distracted, so it works best when emails aren't arriving and Twitter has gone quiet. On top of that, I think it suits the kind of stuff I'm writing if I can look out of the window and see only darkness. 

TA: And back to Thorne - what are the chances of him returning to TV?


MB: The notion of bringing Thorne back to TV surfaces every six months or so and there has been plenty of interest, but nothing's going to be happening very soon. Mind you, in television nothing EVER happens very soon. Rush Of Blood is still in development and I'm working on something original for TV, but 99% of all my energy and attention is focused on the books. Oh, and the band of fellow crime-writers I sing and play guitar with. 


 THORNE TV SERIES: The series debuted on Sky 1 in October 2010 with David Morrisey in the title role. Despite considerable success the series has yet to return.



TA: Finally, will be ever see the return of Nicklin? If Thorne is Holmes then he is his Moriarty, and the character is a huge hit with readers. So will our favorite psycho come back?


MB: Ha! I get asked this a lot. Nothing is certain, but the book that will come out in 2020 will be my twentieth novel and will mean 20 years of Thorne. If I WAS going to bring Nicklin back - for one last appearance - that would probably be the time. But I won't do it unless I have an idea that really works...



FIND MARK BILLINGHAM HERE
FUN LOVING CRIME WRITERS HERE

   

Interview: Granny Smith

There's now a little more than a week until the publication of Granny Smith and the Deadly Frogs - the eBook edition will contain a splattering of bonus material and one of these bonus items is a Q&A with myself, which I have posted below for readers of the Archive.

I like the idea of bonus material and think there are great possibilities for such material to add an extra dimension to the novel itself. And of course to give the reader more value for money.

And so here, to get you all ready for Granny Smith, is a small selection of the Q&A from Granny Smith and the Deadly Frogs.

Q&A With Author G. M. Dobbs

Q- So what next for Granny Smith?

A-    Well, of course we have Gerald’s wedding to look forward to which will be detailed in a short Granny Smith story that will be published later this year. The next full-length novel will be called Murder Plot and concerns murder and intrigue at the allotments society.

Q-Where did the idea for Granny Smith come from?

A- The back of my brain, likely. I’ve a fondness for classic crime fiction and also the old Ealing comedy movies. I think that the Ealing movies and Agatha Christie, particularly her Miss Marple series are the two biggest influences on the Granny Smith series, but there are other influences that all meld together to form the unique universe of the novels, the Granniverse of you like. I love Tom Sharpe for instance and although my writing maybe more PG Tips than PG Wodehouse I do hope there’s a lot of good humour in the books. I’m aiming for the sky with Granny Smith, but if I only reach the shithouse roof then at least I've tried.

Q – The books usually concern a murder and the subsequent investigation. Does humour have a place amongst such dark themes?

A- The novels would fall loosely into the cozy crime category, so yes there is a murder but this takes place off page and there is very little gore or graphic detail. And of course the characters are all so much larger than life that we know we’re not dealing with a real world murder and all the ramifications resulting from such. There’s fun than blood. It’s all fantasy as is our detective the very wonderful Granny Smith. Miss Marple on steroids, indeed.

Q- Which character from the Granny Smith books would you most compare yourself to?

A-    Gerald, obviously! But no I think there’s a bit of myself in all the characters. I love the way Granny sees political correctness for what it truly is and I hope I share this trait. Also Gerald’s flamboyance, Arthur’s lust for solitude and Twice’s self importance are swirling around in my DNA.

Q- Granny aged ten years from the original draft of the first novel. Why was this?

A-    It’s true when I first wrote Granny Smith she was in her early Sixties, but I always wanted her to be older. I always thought her early Seventies was the correct age for the character but I was worried that it would be too much of a stretch to imagine all the things she does and so I created her as an extremely fit woman in her Sixties – which is not old by modern standards. Of course I soon realised that this was a mistake and that she had to be an older woman – and so I republished the first novel and made her 72 years old. That’s the beauty of electronic publishing in that it is so easy to go back and revise a book that’s already been published. I guess I’ll age Granny into her Eighties over maybe ten books.

Q- So you see the series going on for at least ten books?

A-    And more. Granny’s a fun character to play with and I love the way the world looks through her eyes. I’ve become a fan of series characters in cozy crime and especially enjoy the works of Simon Brett, M. C. Beaton and Lesley Cookman and if these guys can continue to come up with ideas for their characters then I’m sure I can too.

Q- You have had some success writing westerns as Jack Martin so isn’t cozy crime a big switch?

A-    Not really. My westerns contain a lot of humour so I don’t think they are that far removed from the Granny Smith series. And I see no reason why a writer is expected to stick to one genre. That doesn’t happen in other fields where creators are free to switch genres whenever the fancy or need takes them. Stephen Spielberg doesn’t only make one kind of movie and The Beatles switched genres from track to track. I write the story that takes over my imagination at any given time and the genre is a secondary issue.

Q- So would you write Erotica?

A-    Good God, no. I find it difficult to type one-handed.

Q- Where can people find out more about your writing?

A-    That’s a convenient question – thank you. Well you can follow me on Twitter @jackmartinwest and I keep a Facebook page under the name Gary Martin Dobbs and then there’s my very active blog, The Tainted Archive which you can find at http://tainted-archive.blogspot.co.uk/ .

Q- Finally where you get your ideas?

A-    Well I do a lot of people watching – well one woman really but the police have told me I’ve got to stop. Where do ideas come from? Anywhere and everywhere – from other books, movies, events in newspapers. Sometimes I will be walking down the street and an idea will pop into my head and sometimes I dream story-lines as I sleep.

Q- Tell the truth: you made these questions up yourself didn’t you?

 

A-Yep

           

 Granny Smith and the Deadly Frogs will be published 31st March 2013

Granny Smith Investigates is available now.

A Purrfect storm - Kitty Glitter Interview

There was a time when writers who self published were scoffed at - vanity publishing it was called and the implication was that if a writer was worth the paper needed to print his/her book then one of the traditional publishers would foot the bill. It seemed that only those who were unable to get their work published would turn to vanity, or self publishing.

However that was then and this is now.

The rise of eBooks and particularly the Kindle and Amazon's KDP program have made it cheaper and easier than ever for writers to take over publishing and get their work to an appreciative audience. At first self published eBooks were looked down upon,  often still are, but there have been too many big successes coming from the self publishing field for traditional publishers to ignore self publishing. Titles like The Hunger Games, Fifty Shades of Grey and current sensation, Wool, came from the self publishing field. And it is to self publishing that the traditional publishers are now looking for the next bestseller.

All the elements are now in place - eBooks have gone mainstream, writers can easily publish using companies such as Amazon, Smashwords and Barnes and Noble. In fact the conditions are now right for the emergence of new writers who with luck could soon become household names -and from this perfect storm - or rather a purrfect storm of creativity comes Kitty Glitter, a writer who is challenging the norm and building up a loyal and appreciative audience.

With titles like Michael Jackson: The Sequel,  Wesley Crusher: Teenage Fuck Machine and Zombie 69, author Kitty Glitter's bizarre books are starting to get noticed. Often hitting the higher sections of the Amazon bestseller charts the books are zany, corny and often quite hilarious.

Kitty often uses elements of popular culture to fuel her plots, and I wondered if Kitty herself was a geek, a nerd?

"I follow pop culture to some degree.  I definitely keep up on artists I love, like Katy Perry and Ke$ha.  I am an active member of Ke$ha's fan club and hope to be able to follow her on tour someday if I ever have the financial means to do that.  I guess I could be described as geeky, as I am fairly skinny and wear big glasses, I'd definitely come across as a geek on some purely superficial level.  Like some character in "Revenge of the Nerds".  I would refer to myself as a Katycat definitely as I am probably her biggest fan.  I would probably kill myself if she died.  

Besides that I am a huge fan of The Donnas and I actually have a tattoo of their logo on my arm.  I think they are really underrated, probably the best girl rock band ever."

Given that Kitty is such a student of pop culture I wondered what TV shows, movies and books get Kitty purring.

"I have several favorite books.  My favorite author is Patricia Highsmith and This Sweet Sickness is my favorite novel ever by far.  I've read it several times.    I also really love Flannery O'Connor.  I love Christa Faust and I am currently taking a class from her on Litreactor and also reading her novel "Snakes On A Plane".  If you want to read a really good story you should definitely check out her book "Butch Fatale".

My favorite recent movie is "Stoker", and besides that I would say my favorite movie all time is "Mysterious Skin" or maybe "The Doom Generation".  "The Doom Generation" is a huge influence on everything I have written so far.

My favorite TV shows are probably "Mama's Family" and "Smallville", my son was actually named after the main character on Smallville.   For recent television I'd have to say "Breaking Bad", I think it's perfect noir.  I also really love "Eagleheart" with Chris Elliot, I think that show is just brilliant.  Chris Elliot is a cool guy also.  I worked at the Letterman show for a while and would often see him in the elevator.  He'd always make a point to say hi and ask how I was doing."

Some of the events in Kitty's books can be unsettling - Is there any place the Kitty's pen fears to go?

"I would never write anything that attacked the Catholic church or presented them in a bad light.  Not so much because it's offensive but because it's such a cliche to have the pervy priest or corrupt Pope.  I would hope to avoid easy targets in general.    I would also not write anything anti-American.   I am pretty patriotic and find that sort of thing annoying.  I hate people like Lars Van Trier and all his films that are pretentious critiques of American culture.   But I would not really avoid writing about anything if I felt it fit the story I had in mind.  I only ever want to write about emotionally disturbed people, never about anyone normal or stable.  My protagonists will always be deranged !"

And the audience seems to enjoy Kitty's books. I wonder if the author sees an audience in mind before setting out to write her books.

"I have no set audience in mind.  I always liked writing fiction and tended to use anthropomorphic animals.  My favorite show growing up was "Alvin & The Chipmunks" and I would tend to read a lot into the show and project my own adult themes on it.  Like assuming that the Chipettes would have sex with the Chipmunks offscreen.  There was one episode where they adopt a kitten and it ends up getting killed by a car.  It was very tragic.  Almost like a roman noir, except they end up getting a puppy to replace the kitten.

Later on when I was into Patricia Highsmith I was just trying to write like her and I was used to writing about animals so my goal was to do Patricia Highsmith stories with talking animals, which she actually did herself in "The Animal Lover's Guide To Beastly Murders".   Although her animals didn't talk out loud, they though like humans.  One was about a snobby roach lamenting the decline of the shabby hotel he lived in.  Another was about a horse getting revenge for the death of a kitten he loved.  So the only audience I ever wrote for was myself I guess.

The Wesley Crusher story was just written as a joke one time while on break at work and my friends found it funny.  Then when I found out how easy it was to publish on Kindle I posted it up as a joke, I never expected anyone to buy it.  I assumed it would be removed right away.  I was never actually a fan of Star Trek: TNG and only knew about the characters second-hand from being around nerds.  I was a fan of the original series though.  Besides Wesley Crusher, the majority of the characters in my story were my own invention.  Like Meow Solo, the feline space pilot."

Given the subjects of the books I wondered how heavily Kitty uses social media such as Facebook and Twitter to find readers.

 

"I think social media is useless.  I don't ever bother reading someone's work based on a social media interaction.  It's more based on the story they are writing.  I no longer keep a Facebook account, as that mainly led to weird, creepy guys hitting on me.  I keep Twitter but it's useless as far as promotion goes.  I only use that to keep track of Katy Perry.  Her tweets are always so charming and they make me happy.  

Writing interesting stuff is way more important than promotion or social media in general.  The more time you spend posting on Facebook and Twitter, the less time you spend writing or coming up with ideas.  I find social media is the same as praying, you're sending random words into outer space, hoping that some life form might hear them.  But for all you know, this life form does not exist.  And you are better off assuming they don't.  

In the end, the writing itself should be the reward.  You should have your own standards, and satisfy them.  That will bring you great pleasure.  I might write a scene about a fat kitty with chewed up Twinkies running out his mouth, and it will make me laugh or smile.   That's all you can ask for in life.  I don't care if anybody else finds it funny or buys that book.  I already reaped the reward when I laughed.  If only one other person laughs at that, it just multiplies that reward." 

And so to wrap up and ask Kitty  what  new readers can expect from one of her books?

"That they will read something really over the top and strange.  Like in my story "The Blob Unbound" it's about this blob monster who sacrifices himself to stop a cat from molesting these children.  Most of my protagonists are mentally ill to some degree.  This psychiatrist who read my story "American Psycho 3" said that I gave a perfect depiction of the thought processes of a psychotic person.  To expect easy reading for the most part, I try to write in a simplistic way and not go overboard on descriptions.  I think that my work is better than a lot of people give me credit for, and that it's definitely more entertaining and original than most of the self-published stuff you'll find on Kindle.  I would not suggest reading my longest work, "The Puerto Rican Chronicles of Narnia" as I wrote that for National Novel Writing Month and it's fairly incoherent.  But it does has some interesting passages and references to Michael Landon and "Highway To Heaven" and it's probably less boring to read than "Naked Lunch".

Find Kitty's blog HERE

 

 

 

David Whitehead eInterview

David Whitehead is what you'd call a seasoned pro -he's been writing for more than a quarter of a century and during that time he's published under many names including Ben Bridges, Glenn Lockwood, Matt Logan, Carter West and his own name. Most of his books have come out from the Robert Hale Ltd stable of western writers who work within the Black Horse Western imprint, but he has also seen publication with F A Thorpe and his own imprint, Bookend Books. He's written in as many different genres as he's used pen names - westerns, thrillers, mysteries, horror, romance.

Over recent years David has seen great success in making many of the titles from his extensive back catalog available for eReading devices, particularly Amazon's world beating Kindle device. And so The Archive, forever on the trail of a good story, sat down to talk to Dave about eBooks and how they are helping bring about a resurgence in genre fiction.

TA: You seem to have embraced digital publishing, but how did you initially feel about eBooks? Did they scare you a little?



DW: : Not really. I was more excited than scared, because here was a means of making one’s work available to a worldwide audience and frankly, at what I considered to be a very fair and attractive cover price. Then I started trying to learn the intricacies of formatting and at first I thought it might be a little beyond me! But I had a very good teacher, a Black Horse Western writer named Cody Wells, a.k.a. Malcolm Elliott-Davey of West World Designs  (THE MAN WHO IS CURRENTLY OVERSEEING THE RETURN OF GEORGE G. GILMAN'S EDGE TO EBOOK. TA) ,  and after he showed me what I had to do I was off and running. But I’m still learning, even now. That’s the thing about eBooks – you never stop learning.

TA:  were you tempted to revisit any of your books before publishing them digitally?

DW: Once a book is written to my satisfaction, I’ve never gone back to look at it again. But with the advent of electronic publishing, I had to re-read them to make sure I didn’t put out a product that I felt was less than it could and should have been. It was instructive for me, because hidden away between the lines, in references only I would ever pick up, were all kinds of memories ... of the times those scenes were written, where I was living or working at the time, what interests I had back then ... that was very entertaining for me.

TA: It seems that the conventional wisdom in publishing was the western was dead, but eBooks are proving this to be false. Do you see the western having any future in the digital world? Is it finding new readers or is it just as old codgers who are getting eReaders and keeping the genre alive?

 

DW: : Everywhere I go I always try to check out the local bookshops, used bookshops, charity shops. Whenever I ask if they have any westerns for sale I always get more or less the same reply. “If I could get my hands on them, I could sell them. But I just can’t get my hands on them.” This is one of the truly great things about e-publishing. Instead of relying on what publishers think we want to read, we can now actually go out there and find what we want to read. This was the feeling I got very early on, when it first became possible to self-publish in a manner that was not dismissed as mere ‘vanity’ publishing. Instead of discarding an idea because I didn’t think I stood any chance of selling it, I could now write the book, publish it and actually get it out to an audience. This was enormously liberating and I remember those early days with great affection, because all of a sudden the sky really was the limit. And I never self-published a book I lost money on.

I don’t believe for one minute that the western readership is made up of old codgers. That is the popular conception. I’ve had my share of “Oh, my Dad used to read those,” which, of course, has more recently turned into “Oh, my Grandad used to read those,” but the truth is that there are a lot of readers out there of all ages who like fast-paced action and adventure and, I believe, who pine for the morals and values of that period. I mean, why do we really enjoy reading westerns? Overwhelmingly, it’s to see the bad guy get his comeuppance and to see justice done. That is a very powerful, very important, very satisfying and very laudable message, and one that western readers in particular enjoy buying into.

TA: Was this why you and Mike Stotter formed Piccadilly Publishing?

 DW: It wasn’t the main reason, but it was certainly an important one. There is a great deal of nostalgia for those heady days of the 70s and 80s when every UK publisher had at least one western series to its name. They were exciting times for western readers like us, and when Mike suggested we do something about trying to recreate it, I didn’t even have to think about my response. We just went for it, and have some very exciting (but presently hush-hush) plans for the months and hopefully years ahead.

It’s funny, though. Every time we add a new book to the schedule, or see a new piece of cover art for the first time, I still get that same feeling of excitement I had all those years ago. I can only hope readers will feel the same way.  

TA: As eBooks become more and more common, it is bound to have an effect on the way we read, the way we write. Could we see serial fiction becoming popular again? Publishing times are almost instant with eBooks and there is a possibility for a writer to build a huge following and have readers waiting eagerly for the writer to press publish, perhaps delivering on a weekly schedule. What are your thoughts on this?

DW: We’re already seeing the emergence of serial fiction. There are some excellent examples out there, not the least of them JACKIE O’, by my friends Steve Hayes and Andrea Wilson, who write together under the name ‘Kelly Robbins’ and have deliberately conceived their ongoing series as episodes in a TV show. Same with the YESTERDAY’S GONE books by Sean Platt and David Wright. This is an exciting development that really encourages reader involvement, and that is all to the good. The people who proclaim proudly that, “I’ve never read a book in my life,” or “I’ve never read a book all the way through,” don’t know what they’re missing, and now is a fantastic time to find out.

There is, of course, a danger that the market will be very quickly become flooded. At the moment, any Tom, Dick or Harry can publish their own eBook ... and all-too-frequently do! Quality control is almost non-existent. It’s all down to just how much pride you personally (or the company you employ to put the thing together) put into presentation and proofing. So one thing that MUST happen soon is that we see only books that conform to a certain quality threshold, otherwise I’m afraid the no-doubt well-meaning but amateur few will spoil it for the more professional and committed many. Readers will switch off because the quality just isn’t there.

TA:- And by the same token will books become shorter?

DW: : Again, there are already a lot of titles that are little more than short stories or novellas. But it really doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it’s what you, the reader, wants to read. In an editorial capacity I was recently dealing with an enormous book, almost 700 pages long. It was a book that was very difficult to classify, and as such one that was really in search of a format. As a traditional book it might have been off-putting because of its length, or maybe difficult to market. But as an e-book ... ? For once, size didn’t matter! And neither did the subject. And interestingly, it went on to be a very, very respectable seller.

TA: There are many writers who are sitting on a backlist and are unsure of how to proceed to get their titles to the market. What was your own experience in republishing some of your older titles into electronic format?

DW: On a purely personal level, I have found going back over my earliest books to be a revelation. I believe that if you’re clever about it, you never stop learning. Consequently, when you look back over the stories you wrote almost thirty years ago, you’re bound to cringe at this scene or that turn of phrase. But I was very pleasantly surprised by how well my stories and style have held up. So far, I’ve only really taken one of my old books apart and revised it to any great extent prior to e-publishing. I’ll mention no names ... or titles, in this case. But overall they’ve held up well.

 

You can find out more about David at his website HERE

Piccadilly Publishing HERE 

RELATED: David Whitehead is a member, as am I, of the Black Horse Western forum and following the interview I decided to post a few open questions to members of the group. I'm sure you'll find their answers very revealing.

The questions were:

1 - Does the western have a future in eBooks?

2-In what ways can the genre evolve to take advantage of the full possibilities provided by the new medium?

3- How many of us here have bought any of the Black Horse eBooks from HALE?

4-How many of us own eReaders, Kindles etc? And how many are planning to get a device shortly?


Some of the answers I received were:

Yes. Big YES. Easier to find for those who want to buy a western. When was the last time you saw one in the average bricks & mortar shop? Also, there may be a crossover from the Mills & Boon ereader syndrome. M& B sales have rocketed (apparently) because other commuters now cannot see what is being read by their fellow travellers when there is no book jacket to give away the genre. Chris Scott Wilson

Definitely!  Mike Morgado

. I  think it definitely does. Most publishers are now embracing eBooks, albeit perhaps with some reluctance. In the USA some western writers like Bob Randisi are having their backlists issued in eBook format, others are doing their own and marketing them very successfully. Keith Souter

In what ways can the genre evolve to take advantage of the full possibilities provided by the new medium?Some authors will add bells and whistles, bits of video and photography links, etc., but in the end, the story is for the eyes and ears and should settle down to visual and audio books. The day may come when you download a book you automatically get an audio version, and the audio is always in sync with where you are reading in the ebook. So if you decide to listen in the car, for example, the audio version will look for your last read page, and start the narration from there. (Kindles do this. I read on my iPhone, then my computer says "you have read to 0000000 on your iPhone, do you want to start at that point?" Could be done with audio too, I think.) Charles Whipple

The western will always have a future, no matter what the format. Ray Foster.

  Every so often you hear of someone writing a story with 
hyperlinks and multi-media interactions, and I can't say I've noticed 
them being anything more than a brief fad for a few interested parties. 
So again I can't see westerns changing much. It's the subject not the medium 

that's important. Ebooks aren't just being taken up by the young and hip so 
they're just as likely to be used to read Latin poetry as modern tales 
about angst-filled, spotty teenage vampires written
using plenty of text speak. Leigh Alver

All genres, styles, authors old and new have a future in ebooks. I don't think westerns have more or less of a challenge than anything else. If there is a benefit for westerns, it'd be their usual shortness. Ian Parnham

I've had a Kindle for over a year, but judging from the people I talk to, many of the younger readers - under 30 - use their phones to read on. That could well be the future. I love books, but I love my Kindle too. I can take a whole library with me anywhere, alter the point size so it doesn't matter if I've forgotten my glasses. Us writers have too many books. It's a given. I only keep the ones I enjoyed or will use as reference, and I've still got too many. Far too many. The overflow is even in boxes in the loft on the off-chance I may have a bigger house one day. Then again, I might not. But I can't bear to part with them.   Chris Scott Wilson

I absolutely believe that westerns have a future in both ebook and
print. Ebooks, especially, offers the potential to get older and
out-of-print books back in the hands of readers. As the western section
continues to shrink in bookstores, ebooks will allow fans of the genre acess to books

they would have otherwise missed. Bobby Nash.