7.06.2009
Monday Interview: Craig McDonald
Any time I think about Craig McDonald, two things come to mind. First, if you think you know a lot about crime fiction, at best you're in second place. McDonald is a like a walking encyclopedia of the genre. Second, knowing all of that information doesn't guarantee that one's own efforts at writing crime fiction would succeed, but McDonald's two novels prove it certainly doesn't hurt.I first came to McDonald's work through the book Art in the Blood. The book gathers 20 long interviews McDonald conducted with crime fiction writers like Ken Bruen, George Pelecanos, Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin and Dennis Lehane. It was a fantastic book that revealed new information about these oft-interviewed subjects. McDonald was able to get them to open up because his preparation was so thorough. He reads everything a subject has written -- usually more than once -- and prepares fastidiously to take the conversation in new directions.
His crime fiction debut, Head Games, followed. It was a treat, a historical fiction that never let the research get in the way of the ripping yarn McDonald unfolded. It was the beginning of a series featuring pulp fiction writer Hector Lassiter. Another interview book was to follow, but the success of that Edgar-nominated novel forced the non-fiction title to the backburner so the Lassiter follow-up, Toros & Torsos, could be issued.
That brings us to the present, when that second interview collection, Rogue Males is now on shelves. It again gathers interviews with crime fiction writers (and two musician-authors: Tom Russell and Kinky Friedman), offering rich profiles of Bruen, James Sallis, Daniel Woodrell, Lee Child and more. The most interesting section is one featuring extended narratives with Sallis and Bruen drawn from a long weekend spent with each (and later, together) in Arizona. McDonald veers from the Q&A format used for the rest of the book here, and the result allows him to inject more of himself into the proceedings.
It's another illuminating collection that whets the appetite for more. Though McDonald says he has plenty of content for future volumes, however, he says it's unlikely. The Lassiter series is his main focus these days. Here's hoping he finds the time (and a willing publisher) to balance the two. These collections are indispensable for crime fiction fans.
What follows is McDonald's third Monday Interview (the others are here and here). He's the first to hit that mark, and I can't think of a more fitting subject to do so.
TIRBD: You're back for round two in terms of interview books. Did you learn anything from the first that you applied to the second?CM: The interview tactics stayed the same. For me, the crucial difference between Art in the Blood and Rogue Males is my role in the two books. As Ken Bruen sharply seized on in his foreword to Art, my private goal in that book was to disappear, so to speak — to not become a distracting presence. In Rogue Males, I was trying for what Hemingway termed remate. In Rogue Males, I aimed to portray myself and my journey toward fiction writing through something like “ricochet.”
You're also now a twice-published novelist. Did the process of publishing and being interviewed yourself affect your own interview process or the way you put this book together?
Head Games and Rogue Males were sold as a package deal back in ’06, I think. With the exception of the Elmore Leonard interview, Rogue Males was wrapped before I even finished Head Games. But the awards attention for my first novel made it necessary to put out my second novel ahead of Rogue Males.
Frankly, Rogue Males was actually an outgrowth of the fact that I’d recklessly signed away all my foreign rights to Art in the Blood in my pre-agented days. Suddenly, my agent was getting inquiries about Art for foreign publication, but we couldn’t take advantage of those opportunities. So I put together Rogue Males, drawing largely upon a huge reservoir of interviews with writers who struck me as being of a “type.” At this point, I could easily do a third — perhaps even a fourth — interview collection if there was an opportunity to do so, but my gut instinct is these will be the only two I’ll have out there. I have a version on my hard-drive of a female version of Rogue Males, but so far, nobody’s knocking down my door to acquire that book.
You went back to talk with some authors already covered in the first book. Did you try any new methods to get them to reveal more? Did the passage of time affect the way you viewed them as artists? Did anyone contradict themselves?
There were no contradictions that I can recall. I think in the first interview I conducted with James Ellroy I reached a kind of connection with him that carried us through the subsequent two interviews contained in Rogue Males. I’ve interviewed Lee Child several times and he’s very candid. The author I think I’ve interviewed the most is Michael Connelly. At this point, I could probably do a smallish book just collecting those interviews. I think Michael has spoken on the record with me at least five times, maybe six. A lot of the material from those discussions is still not out there.
So far as changing attitudes go, with the Rogue Males repeats, the authors are there because I think well of them and respect their work. I can’t think of any particular author I’d duck based on past experience. That said, there are several authors I’ve passed on interviewing, mostly based on their reputation for showing themselves. Life’s too short. And in most cases, their work doesn’t speak to me, anyway. And before you ask, sorry, but they’ll remain nameless, and deservedly.
Your backgrounding is so thorough that I wonder if you have time to read anything other than these authors. You mention reading some of their books several times, and seem to read every word they've ever written before doing these interviews. How is it possible to fit it all in?Back in the interviewing days, I could do a ton more reading than I can now. The bulk of my reading now is tied to my own work. I’m mostly writing historical fiction, so that requires a certain investment of reading time directed toward what I write. For various reasons, this year marks the first time in several years I’m reading deeply and widely again in genre. Candidly, I’m finding it a pretty headshaking experience. It would be great to find a new writer who would grab me as Woodrell, Sallis, Bruen, Ellroy or Megan Abbott did, but so far...
I particularly enjoyed the narrative presentation of the Bruen/Sallis section. What led you to take that tack after using the Q&A format up to that point? And while you clearly appreciate the work of the other authors in the book, I know you have a special fondness for these two. What was it like on a personal level to spend time with them?
I think my own reaction to those two comes through pretty strongly and accurately in Rogue Males. Arizona marked the first time I’d actually met Ken, face-to-face. He was frank and funny and although he was exhausted by his book tour at that point when we met up in the desert, he was wonderful and wry. James Sallis I’d been reading and re-reading for some time. James is truly a delight to spend time with and he’s an excellent interview subject and a natural and powerful teacher. I’d learned a lot from him, on the page and in person.
I originally set the Ken and Jim interviews in Q&A format, then decided that format didn’t serve the material well. So I recast it in prose form. I was deep into writing Head Games at the same time, and the voices and terrain and even some of the subtext of those two pieces of writing blended and infiltrated one another. If I ever should find myself interviewing another author, I think I’ll probably go the narrative route.
Where do things stand with the announced graphic novel of Head Games? Any film interest in the books thus far?
Head Games, the graphic novel, is still in the pipeline. It’s with First Second, and now that I’ve moved the Hector Lassiter series to Minotaur Books, Hector is now pretty much contained in the Flat Iron Building in all his various English-language forms.
So far as film interest in Head Games, I’m adapting it to script format now. There was intense and pretty heady Hollywood interest in the novel when the publishing deal was first announced. But as is so often the case with this stuff, it never quite came together. There’s nearly always someone nibbling, but getting a bite…
From the way things sound on your web site, the third book in the series already is in the can and the fourth is under way if not already written. Do you have the entire series mapped out?
Actually, the entire series is finished. By the time Head Games was announced as an Edgar Award finalist, I was writing the last pages of what I then considered the seventh and last novel in the series.
Of course the “finished” books undergo an editing process, but I’ve had the extremely rare opportunity to live with the series for some time and to tweak and polish and tie together the various installments into what I hope functions as a fully-integrated series on a level other crime series can never aspire to attain. Essentially, it’s one big book. I also added an eighth entry that I completed a few weeks ago. That pretty much closes out that enterprise. Now it’s a matter of reader support justifying the publication of the remaining four novels.
If I recall correctly, you also have a few other unpublished novels sitting around. Is it time to bust out a pseudonym?
Funny you should say... I’ve had some inquiries. Unlike some other recent crime novelists who’ve gone down that road, if I did it, I wouldn’t hide in plain sight. In other words, if I should ever do it, I’ll go out there under a cloak of anonymity as the fellas like Cornell Woolrich and others did in the old days. It wouldn’t be a winking, “Craig McDonald writing as” kind of gambit.
But for the moment, my focus is squarely on novel number three, Print the Legend, that Minotaur will publish early next year. I literally just finished going over page proofs and we have the cover, which is very striking. In a few days, we begin edits for number four, Gnashville, Mon Amour, which will likely appear next fall.
Labels: crime fiction, Monday Interview
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