When I worked for my college newspaper years and years ago, I had the idea of tagging along when a friend’s band went on tour. I’d ride in the van, help them load in and out and generally see what it’s like to be a touring musician. As the date of the tour approached, my friend worked to convince me that this wasn’t a good idea. I don’t recall his specific argument, but it amounted to “you’ll be bored out of your mind.”

He was probably right; his argument was strong enough that I decided not to go. But now I have Dean Wareham’s memoir, Black Postcards in hand, and it makes me wish I’d gone. Sure, you don’t populate a book with the boring parts, so his account of his years with Galaxie 500 and Luna is a bit skewed in favor of the exciting bits, but it still captures the romance of the road, and makes me wish I’d been a bit more adventurous in my youth.

For fans of what evolved from college rock to alternative to indie to whatever it’s called today, the book is a mother lode of information and backstage gossip. Wareham is most focused on his own bands, of course, but the two groups came into contact with a wide swath of the indie-rock world, and Wareham doesn’t hold back when sharing his thoughts – good and bad – about his peers.

For those of us who were fans of his bands, the book serves as the dream liner notes to a career. Why did Galaxie 500 split? Why was this song on this album? Why did this member quit? It’s all here, and in surprisingly crisp detail. Wareham is a smart guy who obviously has thought about his vocation to a high degree, and his thoughts are amusing, illuminating and somewhat sobering in spots.

The hook for the book – as evidenced by the subtitle, “A Rock ’n’ Roll Romance” – is the fact that Wareham fell in love with his bass player, left his wife and toddler son, broke up his band and embarked on a new personal and professional relationship. It’s a sad story that could probably be applied to hundreds of touring musicians with only an altered detail or two, but one with a hopeful ending in the form of a creative rebirth with Dean & Britta. It gives what could have been a standard rock memoir and/or tour diary a bit of emotional heft. This isn’t exactly “Behind the Music,” but it does make the story more worthy of publication by a big house than it might have otherwise.

Wareham took the time to answer a few questions about the book, his bands and the future.

TIRBD: Do you find it strange that a major reason Luna broke up was the inability to ever move to the next level careerwise, yet a major publisher is willing to sink money into publishing and promoting a book that is at least partially about that lack of commercial success?

DW: The publishing world is new to me, but I have to think they know what they are doing. As for the record business, on one level you could argue that Luna suffered from a lack of commercial success, because we never had a multi-platinum hit album, and that is what all major labels are looking for. But if you broke down the numbers from our years at Elektra, you would find that even as the band sank slowly into a pit of "debt,” we were selling hundreds of thousands of compact discs, and with licensing money on top of that the Warner Music Group did just fine with Luna. But the expectations are so different in the music business than in book publishing. 100,000 books would make your book a bestseller, but 100,000 copies of our second CD was considered promising, but not exactly a success.

Given the level of detail in some of your tour recollections, I assume you kept a pretty detailed tour journal. What was the motivation for that, and if at any time that motivation involved a project like this, did that have an affect on what you chose to record?

I kept a detailed journal in my late teens and early twenties, from my years at Harvard through the time in Galaxie 500. I'm not sure why I was did that (because I was lonely?), but I was sure glad to find those diaries in a box when I started writing the book. Then there was a period of five years, covering the first three Luna albums, where I didn't keep a regular journal -- all I had was tour itineraries and the music, and my own recollections. So I skipped through those years pretty quickly (to the chagrin of certain fans who have complained that I don't talk enough about the making of the second Luna album, or what it was like to meet Tom Verlaine). With the advent of the Internet revolution we launched a Luna website, fuzzywuzzy.com, and I started posting tour diaries on the site - I was writing again. But the official tour diaries were sanitized - there were incidents that were not fit for public consumption, indeed, things that I wouldn't even mention in my own private journal.

I kept waiting for the moment when you put down the drugs and talked about getting clean and sober and healthy (just like seemingly every other performer with a tale like this to tell), but it never came. Any thoughts about that, or better yet, second thoughts about that thread being simply one of many that make up the fabric of the story rather than a sort of through-line cautionary tale?

Maybe it appears from the book that I was ingesting vast quantities of drugs, because those nights made for some funny stories. Sure, I might have done a line or two of cocaine if someone offered it to me after a show (a fan perhaps, or someone from the record company, or management), and I certainly had a few drinks every night while on tour, but we didn't not travel around the country with a bus full of liquor and drugs, nor did we take drugs while we were in the studio -- we were there to make music, not to party.

So I don't feel like I have to apologize for having a good time once in a while (though certainly I saw other people very close to me whose lives were derailed by drug use). For the cautionary drug stories, I recommend the recent rock memoirs by Slash, Nikki Sixx, and Eric Clapton -- former junkies all. I was a mere dabbler.

There seems to be no love lost between you and dozens of your peers. I lost count of the number of people who are dismissed with a cutting remark, from bandmates to tourmates to casual acquaintances. It's one thing to feel this way, it's another to express those feelings so publicly and permanently. Any trepidation about that? Any backlash?

With respect to my peers, perhaps I was opinionated, but it's just music we're talking about -- and I don't have to pretend that I liked Lenny Kravitz or Bono. I don't imagine they would care too much what I think anyway. I was more concerned about my ex-bandmates. But being in a rock and roll band is about conflict. You push and shove, and argue about small things and large ones - that is an essential part of the experience. I made an effort be as fair and objective as I could, but I wanted to go into the conflict in some detail, to bring out the humor and the drama, not just gloss over it while citing the standard "musical and personal differences." At any rate, if I made cutting remarks, I made them about myself also.

Looking back on your career like this, do you see any points at which you wonder about the path not taken and where you might be otherwise? If so, where did these occur and what do you imagine might have been the ultimate destination of those alternate paths?

I could spend days trying to answer this question. I guess I could have taken a job working in the trading department at Chase Manhattan Bank in 1986, and my life might have turned out very differently indeed. But I didn't.

Spending this much time analyzing your own songwriting, recording and performing, will you approach future endeavors in all three arenas any differently?

Since I'm not in a rock band anymore, and I am no longer signed to a seven-record deal, I can take my time making records. I am no longer on an annual cycle of writing songs, making a new record, touring to support it, and then starting all over again. And with the changes in technology, I do more of the recording at home, on my own time. Songwriting does not get any easier, but with the two Dean & Britta albums I've chosen to record half original material and half covers, and it is easier to write six new songs than twelve, so I think I may stick with this formula - which is what everyone did before the Beatles started writing all their own material.

It isn't clear from your recounting of your earliest days as a musician whether you always wanted to be a professional musician or if it just became what you did because other people responded to it. What that your career goal coming out of high school or college, or did you have other plans? Was there ever a real long-term fall-back position?

I thought about going to grad school after graduating college, studying anthropology - but when I read Tristes Tropiques by Claude Levi-Strauss, and he talked about bees crawling up his nose while he slept by the banks of the Amazon, I changed my mind. I didn't dare to think that I could be a professional musician - this notion would have seemed absurd in America in 1986 (though perhaps not so ridiculous in England). And anyway, I could barely play the guitar at that point, how could I be a professional musician? But then you learn (and perhaps this is the lesson of punk rock) that you don't have to be amazing players to cook up something beautiful. Still, I think in Galaxie 500 we were surprised every step of the way: surprised that we recorded a seven-inch single that sounded so perfect, and an album that we were really proud of, surprised when the record was played on college radio, amazed that Slash Records and Rough Trade wanted to sign the band.

Do you have a favorite rock 'n' roll and/or tour memoir other than your own?

I really liked Dee Dee Ramone's memoir, Lobotomy, and Dylan's Chronicles. And White Bicycles by folk producer Joe Boyd. But my favorite book about a rock star is Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo, which is of course a work of fiction.

Labels: books, Monday Interview, music

When I put out the call to Merge Records that I'd like to interview someone from Big Dipper, I did what I usually do: put together some questions, e-mailed them off, and waited for someone to respond. I heard back from guitarist and singer Gary Waleik, and figured I was done. Then I heard from the other guitarist and singer, Bill Goffrier... and then drummer Jeff Oliphant, and finally from bassist Steve Michener. All were eager to talk about the band and its new, 3CD 50-song set, Supercluster.

That, in an of itself, is unique. When bands break up, it seems rare to find all of the original members happy about the past, friendly with one another and enthusiastic about responding to interview questions. Then again, it should be no surprise. Big Dipper -- or, "the Dippah" or "Big Diaper," as the members referred to themselves at various points during our exchanges -- was a fun band, and its members seemed very much to be having the most fun of all. They continue to do so, expressing affection and appreciation for each other and generally carrying on the way longtime friends do. Heck, they even take time to coin terms like "obleeky."

Big Dipper was an indie rock supergroup before there was such a thing. Waleik and Michener came from the Volcano Suns (and Michener also from Dumptruck), while Goffrier had been in the Embarrassment. Given that family tree, the resulting fruit was somewhat predictable: A skewed pop sensibility delivered with fuzzy guitars and an insistent beat. They debuted in 1986 with the six-song EP, Boo-Boo (which included the fantastically frenetic single, "Faith Healer,") followed quickly by the debut LP, Heavens. That one is considered their best by most, and is certainly their most consistent. Standouts like "All Going Out Together" and "She's Fetching (mp3)" are certainly classics, but the rest of the songs here are more than worthy in their presence.

Craps, which came in 1988, is where I came in. I still remember picking it up on cassette at the local record shop on the recommendation of a friend behind the counter who knew I'd love it. I did, and took the chance to see the oft-touring group the couple of times they came through town in support.

Slam followed. At the time, the major label bow seemed overblown and a bit weak. In hindsight, while there is some filler that sounds rushed, there are a lot of good songs here that probably suffer from the slick production. Though it was the first of an improbable eight-album contract, the poor reception doomed the band. Waleik and Goffrier soldiered on after Michener and Oliphant split, but a single ("Approach of a Human Being" b/w "The Beast") was the final whimper.

Fast forward nearly 20 years, and the band is back with Supercluster. The fine folks at Merge saw fit to offer all of the band's non-major label music at a bargain price, and anyone who likes strong hooks, clever wordplay and aural fun would be foolish not to make the investment.

For an much more detailed Big Dipper history, check out Joe Harvard's excellent write up at his Boston Rock Storybook web site.

What follows is part of the responses to my initial questions to the band. The rest will be spread over the rest of what I have proclaimed Big Dipper Week, as I look at the band's discography -- and it's possible future -- in more detail on Tuesday through Friday.

When was the last time you listened to this music? Were there any surprises in looking back at these songs?

BG: I really don’t know when I had last listened to some of our songs. I was surprised I knew the words, and when I don’t, Jeff covers for me.

GW: I’ve been listening to this music quite a bit since we recorded it. I don’t think there were any surprises for me… they’ve been a part of me for a long time.

SM: I listened to it fairly often when I would take drives. It always brought back a lot of memories and that helped keep me awake. I loved listening to the stuff that became the third disc, Very Large Array. Gary sent it to me as they recorded that stuff and I loved it. I'm glad I'll finally be able to play on a few of those songs.

JO: I listen do the Dipper songs all the time. They are such great songs, they never get old for me. I hear different things when I listen to the songs, and I still turn people on to the Dipper every chance I get. I was lucky to have been part of a group of song writers that I feel could go toe to toe with anybody. (There are) all kinds of surprises. I had no idea what they were writing about. The liner notes helped out a lot with their weird song writing minds.

Had the reception to Slam been better, would Big Dipper still be around, and if so, what would it sound like today?

BG: If anyone would have wanted to put out our stuff, we would have kept going with it. Today, just by coincidence, we would be sacking our backing orchestra, and singers, and revisiting our raw early sound.

GW: It’s impossible to answer either of those questions. Who knows? And, besides, we are still around, and we sound like… well, like Big Dipper!

SM: I don't think we would still be around but we may have lasted a little longer. We were all growing up and moving on. I needed a life that was a little more stable. I admire bands like Yo La Tengo who stuck around, evolved and still sound like the core sensibility is there.

JO: If Big Dipper had made it big, and continued to make music we would all be in rehab! If we put out a record today the songs would just as great as they were back in the 80’s! Great song writers still write great songs. Although my songs would be the hits on the CD.

What have the members been doing since the band split, and what was it like getting back together to rehearse and play a few shows?

BG: It has been a hoot to play with the guys again. We tend to get pretty silly, so it is like drinking from the fountain of youth.

GW: It’s been a lot of fun getting together to play music at first. We’re starting to sound pretty sharp, and we’re having a lot of fun playing some old songs, some slight variations on same, and we’re even trying some brand new ones. It’s a very happy time.

SM: When I left the band I moved to San Francisco. Played with Barbara Manning and the SF Seals for a few months and recorded with them. Played with Richard Buckner and the Doubters for a few months and recorded a little with them. Left those bands and went back to school to get my RN degree. Got married, had two boys while living in Bay area. Got sick of Bay area and moved to Walla Walla, Wash., where my wife and I went back to school to learn how to make wine. We opened Trio Vintners in April of 2006 and now we make wine as a part time job. I'm still a nurse. My boys are 10 and 8 and they love to play music. One sings and plays guitar and the other plays drums in a band called Fireboltz.

JO: I have been a dad, husband and working in the finance business. I would not change a thing; life is great, and I just love to go with the flow, and spend time with my wife and kids. It was great getting back together with the guys. Some things never change we have a great time together, and the songs sound better than ever! We are going to rock when we play the shows in April. Those who miss the show will wish they never did!

Do you hear a Big Dipper influence or your particular sound in anything out there today?

BG: I don’t notice it. But then, I listen to folk, show tunes and vocal jazz.

GW: I’m not sure. Some people say that we influenced bands like Weezer, Fountains of Wayne, Guster and the like, but probably they have been influenced by some of the bands we liked also. So it’s kinda hard to trace that. If you can quantify that other bands are deliberately trying to a) have the lead singer sing slightly sharp, b) have the backup vocalist sing slightly flat harmonies in a lower range, c) have their bass player strum a very midrangy thunderbroom, d) have their drummer play impeccable power pop patterns even as his sunny smile captivates all the females within a two mile radius and e) write lyrics that are geeky and oblique (obleeky?), then yes, I’d say that those bands are trying to mimic Big Dipper.

SM: Sure, I think the nerdy stuff that is hip now owes something if not to big dipper than to our peers. When I first heard and saw Weezer, I was pretty sure they had heard of us.

JO: I hear bits and pieces of bands that might have or still listen to Big Dipper, although we had a very unique sound. I don’t think there is a band that sounds just like the Dipper.

I love the fact that we had our own sound, and didn’t sound like ever other band at the time. I remember that everybody wanted to sound like R.E.M., we must have played with 500 bands that tried to sound like another band that was popular at the time. I don’t think that works very well, and it’s not interesting to listen to.

A lot of college rock from your era is being reissued now. Why do you think people now are primed to hear this music again?

BG: I can only hope that people will want to hear it again. Better still is if a new audience finds it entertaining.

GW: Nostalgia, maybe. Possibly the natural 20 year cycle that seems to dominate in pop culture. Or probably because the music was really good, people deserve to hear it again, and the bands deserve to be heard again.

SM: A lot of people who hear Supercluster are telling me it sounds fresh and new now. I think a lot of stuff is very heavy and emo and intense now and this is fun, bouncy, intelligent pop with loud and noisy guitars. It stands out. Perhaps we were a little ahead of our time as were dozens of bands that were around at the time. Radio, press, consumers didn't have the chance to hear most of our stuff. If we were around today with the Internet i think we would at least had the chance to reach the large audience we thought we deserved. They may have hated us but at least we would have know.

JO: It was a time were some of the great song writing bands were not being noticed. Such as Camper Van, the Connells, Glove Fist etc. Twenty years later the media is finally realizing how great the bands were back at that time. I hope they get their just due and sell millions of CD, and have even more downloads.

Labels: Big Dipper Week, Monday Interview, music

When American Music Club resurfaced a few years back, it seemed too good to be true. On first blush, in fact, it was. I caught the band in Chicago when it first reformed, and it was a ragged affair at best. Then came Love Songs for Patriots, a stirring return to form that showed the group could stand toe-to-toe with its peers -- and its back catalog -- without fear.

A move from San Francisco to Los Angeles last year led to another chance in the band, as bassist Danny Pearson and drummer Tim Mooney opted to stay in the Bay area. They were replaced by bassist Sean Hoffman and drummer Steve Didelot. Oddly, adding young'uns to the mix actually seemed to mellow the overall sound, as the resulting AMC longplayer, The Golden Age, is a return of sorts to the more delicate sound the band explored on its third and fourth albums, California and United Kingdom.

It's a gorgeous record that finds Mark Eitzel singing as bittersweetly as ever, though he has reined in the overt political vitriol that seemed to fuel much of Love Songs. With that dialing down lyrically came a tamping down musically. Vudi's guitar trills and swirls where on Love Songs it slashed and sliced. There is still plenty of edge here -- this is still a collection of Eitzel songs, after all -- but it sneaks up on you, the proverbial spoonful of sugar helping it go down.

After a decade away during which Eitzel took a meandering tour of a solo career that found him exploring electronica, dour, stripped down mope-folk and lush pop, American Music Club is back, and stronger for his dalliances. Eitzel took time to answer a few questions about AMC's resurrection, his solo career and the band's new members.

In the mean time, you can download the band's great 1991 LP Everclear here, and the new tracks "All My Love" and "All the Lost Souls Welcome You to San Francisco" as well.

TIRBD: Lyrically, the album seems more personal than political, looking in rather than out, for the most part. Is that accurate, and if so, was that a conscious decision, or just the way the songs evolved?

ME: This is true – my anger at U.S. politics is best left to midnight rants in bars.
It is just the way the songs evolved, actually. I mean, we all know that the future of this country is shit – so I wrote these songs with that perspective and understanding – even if I'm wrong – I think it’s the right way to address these times...

The album also is much quieter than Love Songs for Patriots, hearkening back to California or United Kingdom.

That was intentional – to write and record simple songs that are easy to play and sing.

Are there parallels to that time in the way the band and its music feel these days?

It’s just that I don't want to be hit over the head with anyone’s trip – that’s all – and I don’t want to hit anyone over the head with my trip. I sound like a hippy.

Is the more mellow feel attributable to anything specific in your songwriting or Vudi's playing?

Not really. These songs don’t feel that mellow to me actually – and that’s not how we play 'em live.

You have new players on board for this one. How did that affect the sound of the album?

They are great tasteful musicians who can play anything, and remember what they play – and they play very simply. There is a lot less talk about what to play.

Did you approach the writing for this album (and for LSFP) differently than you have your solo material? Does knowing who will play on a recording affect your songwriting process?

Yeah, these guys – and especially Vudi – are great filters for the music. I play them a song and it doesn't wither on the vine. It makes me write the songs better. The songwriting process though has nothing to do with anyone but myself; I am not bright enough to consider all the parameters of who would play what when I write...

For an interview around the time of The Ugly American, you told me you had no reservations about messing with your old songs because fans expect it. "I've messed with them so much already. When I listen to music, I like it when they do things differently. I'm not a precious person about my own work." Is that still true?

Yeah, but I was talking about using arrangements that are different from the record – a lot of people get put off by this – but sometimes you gotta do it to keep them feeling fresh.

Should it be a surprise, then, that this album sounds so very much of a piece with AMC's back catalog?

No, because it was recorded like the old records – we rehearsed the material and then recorded what we rehearsed... and believe it or not, but I like those old records and have many of the same ideas I had then about arranging music.

Save for the Candy Ass disc, you seem to have curtailed your official solo output since AMC reformed. Do you see yourself needing that outlet now that AMC is a functioning band again?

Well, all the songs I write are solo until AMC records them – I have been working on a musical in London called “Marine Parade” and that has taken a surprising amount of time in the last two years...

With that in mind, would the songs on LSFP or TGA be appreciably different if you had recorded them for a solo record rather than with the band for an AMC disc, and if so, how?

I think that the songs on LSFP would have been a LOT different – but TGA was kind of the record I wanted to make.

Can AMC absorb some of the interests you indulged on your solo albums, like electronica?

No. AMC is a guitar band and I don’t think any of the other players has any interest in doing anything else...

Has AMC made its quintessential disc yet, and if so, which is it?

I have no idea!

Labels: Monday Interview, music

There are many blogs and web sites out there that cover crime fiction much better than this one, and for the past couple of years they have been raving about the work of Ray Banks. Problem is, Banks is from the UK, and up until this spring, his work has largely been unavailable to those of us in the U.S. who don't have the means to buy a lot of expensive import books.

Lucky for us, Harcourt has come to the rescue, picking up Banks and adding him to a growing and impressive list of crime fiction writers from that neck of the woods, including Allan Guthrie and Declan Burke. Who's to say what will happen to these lads now that their editor, Stacia Decker, has been laid off in a downsizing move, but for now, we have books like Banks' bracing Saturday's Child.

The book is Banks' first featuring PI Callum Innes, an ex-con entangled with crime boss Morris Tiernan. It's his second book after the stand-alone The Big Blind, and the first of three with Innes. After breezing through this, I'm not sure I can wait for the next two (with a third on the way), and may need to pony up for the imports after all.

As for this book, it follows Innes as he gets sucked into a dangerous game thanks to a request from Tiernan. It seems like an easily met request on first blush: track down a dealer at one of Tiernan's illegal clubs who fled with some cash. But complications quickly escalate, and Innes finds himself ill-suited for the task. I'll admit that Banks' style, particularly the chapters based on Tiernan's misfit wannabe thug son, Mo, are a bit of a challenge. But a couple of chapters under my belt were all the acclimatization I needed and the rest was a race to the finish that kept me wired for days.

TIRBD: You wrote a lot of Cal Innes short stories that were published in web magazines and elsewhere. Was this an important part of developing that character and giving yourself a back story to play with?

RB: The short stories were a quick way of writing for publication, and most of the places I subbed to actually edited the stories, so that was useful. It just so happened that the first paid and edited story I did was an Innes one. And in the beginning, he wasn't a PI at all -- just some random ex-con helping out a friend -- but he evolved into a PI because I needed to hang the series on a recurring character. As a result, I had to dig up a back story which sorta kinda made it into the books.

Are there things in those stories that you have since jettisoned because they don't work with the direction you want to take him, or have you remained pretty faithful (I ask this having only had the chance to read Saturday's Child)?

I tried with the third book (No More Heroes) to bring all that stuff in, tie it all off, give the events some kind of chronology with the shorts in mind. In the end, it just didn't take. I would say that the Cal Innes of the shorts isn't the same as the Cal Innes of the books, though. In the books, the character's significantly darker, and certainly less competent.

Those short stories are all titled after (almost all great) songs. Do you chose those after the fact, or do you write based on an image or idea suggested by a song and/or its title?

The short answer: I'm terrible at titles and song titles have a way of catching the eye. Plus, there are some song titles ("Walking After Midnight" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart") that are just gagging to have PI stories written about them.

As a U.S. reader of many UK authors, I'm constantly frustrated by not being able to immediately pop into the bookstore to get a new book from a favorite author. Do these differing publication schedules have any affect on your writing, or is it something that manifests itself mostly as a promotional hitch?

There's no real hitch when it comes to writing -- I mean, I have a tendency to write regardless of contracts or schedules -- but it can be a little confusing when it comes to promotion. For instance, I'm doing the rounds for the first and the third in the series right now, while writing the fourth. Which is fine, as long as nobody asks me about specific plot points.

But I feel your pain, John. It's hell trying to find books by authors who aren't mainstream, or who're published by smaller presses, which is why I spend far too much money online.

Are your U.S. and UK audiences different in the way they receive your books? In the way they interact with you?

In the UK, I've attracted the non-readers and the hardcore crime buffs, which is cool. Otherwise, though, not a peep. Understandable, considering the Innes books are something of an anomaly in the UK crime scene, which is dominated by the police procedural. The US audience, on the other hand, has been vocally supportive since my debut (which happened to be in the U.S.). This could be because my influences are primarily American and they recognize that, or it could just be that I'm playing to a larger crowd, so the niche is naturally larger than it is here in the UK.

There seem to be several young crime fiction writers who have bonded together as friends and colleagues for their mutual entertainment and benefit. What is the advantage of being a part of this group?

There are. We're like the Famous Five. Or Secret Seven. Or one of those other Enid Blyton groups, except bloody and vulgar. It's worked as a kind of support network so far, but it's not like we're around each other's houses or anything. Actually, no, they might be -- I'm among the least sociable of my peers, so I don't do it myself. The chief advantage for me is that, as a fan, I get to know about (and sometimes read) my favourite authors' new books way in advance. Which is secretly why I signed up for this caper in the first place.

You write about some pretty hard characters going through some pretty rough things, and I'm sure some of your readers conflate author with character. Convince them they're wrong.

Ah, but which character? God help them if they conflate me with Mo. In fact, any reader expecting an amalgamation of both narrators in Saturday's Child is going to get a horrible shock if they ever meet me. There is a tendency to view hardboiled authors as looking and acting like Marv, when they're usually more like Frank Miller -- a slightly doughy, scruffy-looking geek who's mostly polite in mixed company, but can resort to foul language if cornered. Actually, in that respect, I'm a little like Mo. But I hasten to add that's the only thing we have in common.

Labels: crime fiction, Monday Interview

I'm always on the lookout for new writers to add to the stack, so when I read Sarah Weinman's rave review of Christopher Goffard's novel, Snitch Jacket, I added it to my "to-be read" list. When I learned he was a fellow journalist, albeit one who had finished his novel and seen it published, I moved him to the top of that list.

I wasn't disappointed. Snitch Jacket is one of the most entertaining books I've read in a long while. By means of an endorsement, let me say that I plowed through it in the weeks after we brought our newborn son home from the hospital, forcing myself to stay awake long enough to find out what happened next. It wasn't much of a chore, as the bleary-eyed mornings were worth it.

Goffard is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, though, as he alludes to below, he has worked several places over the course of his career. While at the Tampa Tribune, his work made him a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. Not all great newspaper writers can shift to long-form fiction, but Goffard proves himself adept at both. Snitch Jacket is full of writing from someone able to harness a keen eye for detail and recount that color in crisp, lively prose. As Sarah pointed out in her review, the book is "is a wonder of sentences that sing." I wish I had had a pen and paper at my side while reading the book, because there are so many lines that just knocked me out. Consider that a teaser: Read this book and prepare to be impressed.

I wasn't the only one impressed with Goffard's debut: It was nominated for an Edgar Award for best first novel by an American Author. He's up against fellow friend of TIRBD, Craig McDonald, whose Head Games was another outstanding, ambitious novel.

Oh, and the story? Well, I don't want to suggest that it is superficial, because it is a clever yarn, but it really is best seen as a vehicle for Goffard's characters. At the heart of the book are Benny Bunt, a smallish ex-meth addict snitch who uses his underwhelming nature to help him blend in and learn about the nefarious doings of his acquaintances at the Greasy Tuesday, a bar frequented by some of life's lower beings. He becomes fast friends with Gus "Mad Dog" Miller, a Vietnam vet with multiple tattoos and even more stories of his exploits. These two colorful characters put me in mind of Ratso Rizzo and Joe Buck from "Midnight Cowboy," though it's an imperfect analogy at best. There are crimes, a mystery of sorts and plenty of action, but don't come to this expecting a typical whodunit. The book is a rich character study that will leave you laughing, marveling and waiting impatiently for Goffard's next feat of prose.

TIRBD: Benny and Gus are very visceral characters. Did they emerge fully formed for you, or were they the accretion of traits, tics and details as you wrote?

CG: They morphed many times over the course of multiple drafts, and I was deep into one of the many rewrites before I even began to understand the nature of their relationship. The germ for Gus -- the would-be hit man who lives in the closet of a bar -- was a career criminal I met in jail in Santa Ana in the late 1990s, as a cop reporter. His glasses were missing a nose-guard on one side, which made them sag, and I gave the detail to my character. Years later, I met a charismatic homeless man under a bridge in Tampa who was holding forth to a bunch of other homeless guys, and I made a sketch of him -- right down to the way his sweat discolored his baseball cap -- and studied it as I wrote. And for the St. Petersburg Times I did some investigative stories on a VA shrink who, it turned out, was inventing these grisly stories about his experiences in Vietnam, and I gave my character that habit, too. So Gus Miller grew out of all these sources and probably a hundred more than I can't remember. Same for Benny Bunt: a piece here, a piece there, until finally he coalesced into a full and contradiction-riddled person. The crucial thing was getting his name right. It had to be something small and kind of sleazy.

This is being talked about as a crime novel, but the actual crime comes late and almost seems incidental to what is really a character study (and I mean that as a compliment). How did the finished product compare to your initial intentions in that regard?

I always thought of the plot as a vehicle to explore these characters and the world they inhabit and the moral stakes involved, and I thought, "The story will get started when it gets started." Which means a lot of the rewriting involved switching around whole sections to get it moving faster.

Speaking of genre, the book has been nominated for an Edgar Award. What are your thoughts about that accolade? Are you comfortable in the genre, and do you see yourself continuing in this vein?

Well, the genre has its masterpieces, like Night and the City and The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and Chesterton's Father Brown stories -- to name just the first that come to mind -- and crime is central to the work of writers as lofty as Dostoevsky and Mailer, so the vein is infinitely rich. Of course, with the best of them, crime's just the launch-point for an exploration of larger questions. Look at The Wire, my current obsession: it's a work of unparalleled social documentation in the guise of a cop show. Because I've been a cop and courts reporter for years, crime is what I happen to know, so it's what I use. But I've been working on a novel about high school and the intensity of the friendships that form there and the pathologies that attend them, and so far no one has picked up a pair of brass knuckles.

As a fellow fan of “The Wire,” I'm heartened by the fact that, even if it is only moderately successful commercially, that success does indicate that there is a pretty wide audience for sophisticated storytelling about people very different from the viewers and with few happy endings. As someone who writes similar stories, are you similarly heartened that there is a larger audience for what you do?

I wish I believed there's a large audience for what I do, but I'm just not sure. I never wrote the book with best-seller expectations. If you're at your desk thinking, "What will people like? What will they snap up by the truckload?" you're doomed. So I'm just proud that I wrote the book that I wanted to write, despite a lot of people telling me to rehaul it this way or that way to make it more commercial. "Your characters aren't likable enough," and "The setting is too seedy," and "The prose is too dense" and blah blah blah. This was the wisdom of the American agents. If it hadn't sold, it would have gone into a drawer, and I would have written another one.

Do you feel your prose benefits from the attention to detail a news reporter must possess? How does that work when you're making things up, and is that a nice alternative to your day job where you must report the facts, no matter how much they might muck up the story?

There's an added pressure when you're writing fiction, because when you're making it up, your choices are infinite. Only your talent limits you. So if it doesn't work, if it flops, your meager imagination is what's to blame. Whereas when you're writing a news story, you're confined to the facts at hand, and they supply a comforting buffer against humiliation.

You made some interesting decisions here when one considers your profession. In particular, you decided to fictionalize the Burning Man festival, and you have a rather amusing take on true crime writing. What drove those decisions?

I felt like I could do a lot more with the festival if I fictionalized it, and the true-crime parody was just an attempt to poke fun at the over-the-top silliness of the genre.

You write for one of the largest newspapers in the country; at the same time, your novel was published by a small press. Do these experiences with size inform one another, or shed light on how the other half lives, professionally speaking?

Snitch Jacket -- most of which I wrote while working for smaller papers, actually -- was a hard book to sell. I couldn't even get a U.S. agent, because they didn't think readers would line up for the story of a dishwasher at a Mexican restaurant who makes pocket money by snitching on his friends. It was just too dark for the smart money. Then I got a good agent in the U.K., where it sold immediately and got positive reviews, and that led to The Rookery Press in New York picking it up. So the Edgar nomination is a nice validation for a book that no one wanted to take a chance on for a long time.

Labels: crime fiction, Monday Interview

I first came across Six Organs of Admittance thanks to a flyer posted on a light post near where I work. Seeing the name as I walked by, I decided it must be some screwy local band. Who else comes up with a name like that? Surely not anyone who ever makes it out of their hometown. This was several years ago, back when Ben Chasny was putting out Six Organs discs on tiny Holy Mountain Records.

Fast forward a few years to 2005, when Chasny debuted on Drag City. The reviews were more prominent, the marketing more, well, existent. I wondered how a local band could have signed to Drag City without generating much heat in town. That's when I finally decided to look into things and discovered that Six Organs wasn't a local band, and that by dismissing them as such years before, I had missed a chance to stay abreast with what would become a favorite act.

I tracked down School of the Flower, that first Drag City disc, intrigued by reviews that mentioned John Fahey and other so-called American Primitive guitarists. What I found was something more than that, something that, while it is certainly related to Fahey's work, is different, more expansive with its Eastern tones, drones and singing. I quickly filled in much of the rest of the band's back catalog, then kept up contemporaneously as The Sun Awakens and Shelter from the Ash were released.

When I saw flyers around town with the name Six Organs of Admittance this time, I knew to mark the date on my calendar. I wasn't disappointed despite the several-year's build up of anticipation. Chasny started the show solo, performing new and old tracks on his acoustic guitar, his hushed vocals washing overtop. He then was joined by Magik Markers guitarist Elisa Ambrogio, whose quiet demeanor cloaks a fiery player. Chasny moved to electric guitar, but still played fairly quietly. In contrast, Ambrogio, when she finally did play, unleashed a pained squall from her guitar, her body contorted as if in the kind of anguish that yields such pained cries. Later, the duo were joined by Ian Wadley, the drummer who had backed excellent opener Mick Turner, and things took on an even more free-form feel. It was a short set, but one that captivated.

Chasny spoke with me by phone before coming to town, touching on the evolution of his sound, his preferred recording techniques and his distaste for categorical labels.

You have an evolving sound and presentation with Six Organs. You’re using studios more and, according to your label, you demoed these new songs when in the past you haven’t.

Eight years ago, those records would have been the actually record. Since I’ve been recording in a studio, there’s a lot more think time between the cassette tape and the studio, which was good. It’s good to not have to worry about the improvisational factor. The last two records were pretty heavy on that. I had sketches, would go into the studio… and rely on everybody to just play their part. I’ll always do that, but I wanted to see what it was like (with demos). That was experimental for me.

Does this record sound different as a result?

I think it sounds the same. To me it’s all coming from the same place. It’s not really… I wrote the songs. It’s all coming from the same center. The older records have an immediacy to them that would have been lost. It’s hard to say… all four-track stuff, all demo stuff has that. For me it’s really exciting to record in a studio because there’s a lot of amps.

Singing and other instruments: Are these popping up because you’re more confident about their use as time goes by, or are they simply what you need to put across this music at this time? You’re also using standard tuning here?

It’s pretty organic… I feel like I’m working my way back to my original music that I made when I was a kid, when I was 20, that was noisier… slowly working its way back.

I’m not getting away from an original acoustic sound, I’m getting back to the noisier stuff. Maybe I’m trying to counteract the natural process of aging.

Studios have a lot of tracks. Since I work with layers and textures, four tracks is a bit limiting.

This is the first time I’ve used (standard tuning) in Six Organs. I just wanted to do something experimental… using more standard techniques. See, can I do something interesting with it?

With most songs, the music provides a bed for the lyrics, which really drive what the song is about. With yours, the vocals seem very much like another instrument. How does that configuration, and instrumental music in general, allow you to get across what a song is about?

It’s definitely more about the music. I’ve ever really been concerned with telling crystal-clear narrative in the first place. I’m no Dylan. I’m not trying to do that. The experience of the record, from beginning to end. That’s what I’m after. I’ve been listening to a lot of Japanese music. I can’t understand what it’s about. It sounds heavy or like it’s about blackness and the cosmos. I’ll look at a translation of the lyrics and find that’s what it’s about.

Your live shows are very different from your records: Do you ever try to capture that on your records? Worry about alienating fans?

It mostly has to do with the space I’m in. If I go in and it’s a very loud bar, I won’t be able to get across the Octavio Paz stuff. Someone like Richard Youngs. His are actually different, no set list. Mine are not really like that. I just change the dynamics. I play the same songs, but if it’s a really quiet gallery, I will feel like an asshole if I hook up my two Fender twins and blow 200 watts.

What has it been like playing with Elisa Ambrogio from Magik Markers?

It’s great. It gets lonely playing by yourself on stage. She’s the only person that has been allowed to play guitar solos in Six Organs. People are always scared. They don’t want to mess it up. The only person her playing reminds me of is Keiji Haino or Rudolph Grey.

There seems to be a resurgence of instrumental acoustic music by young guitarists. Why is that, and how do you fit into that? What do you think of the term ‘New Weird America’?

It’s weird because I was doing all this stuff before people heard that name and it caught on. It’s really underground American music. Back in ’89 you could call it indie rock, but now that is pop music. I call it American Underground music.

I have been playing guitar for a while. There’s huge diversity between those guys. Steffan Basho-Jungans, his playing is very bizarre. James Blackshaw is a traditionalist.

You work with a lot of different artists that give you a chance to do a lot of different things. Do you bring something back to 6Organs from all of those that you can identify?

It’s more in attitude. With Comets (on Fire), whenever I go out with those guys, it’s about friendship. I don’t bring back anything from that band than a headache and a beer gut. Will (Oldham), he taught me that it’s important not to kill yourself when your on tour. Take time out for yourself.

What does the future hold for you?

I’ve been obsessed with Moondog lately…

Labels: Monday Interview, music

For better or worse, when a book starts with a bang like this: "When the man pointed a gun at him, Jason Palmer was cooling down after his daily five and picturing the first beer of the day..." you don't expect a deep read that makes you think about geopolitics and socio-economics.

Better, of course, because, well, who wants to think when you pick up a juicy thriller, right? Worse, because too often writers and readers approach crime and mystery fiction as an entertainment rather than something that might enlighten or even educate.

Marcus Sakey has quickly established himself as a writer willing to entertain and enlighten at the same time. There are plenty of writers out there who can create a masterful plot peopled by two-dimensional characters who fill roles. Sakey isn't one of them. Sure, his tales are gripping, but these are fully realized 3-D people here, and the situations they encounter do more than raise the hairs on the back of your neck. If you're paying attention, they raise your consciousness, too.

Sakey debuted with the taut thriller The Blade Itself, which addressed socioeconomic disparity and the failures of the penal system to reform. It is the story of Danny, a southside Chicago hood who runs with Evan, a gun-happy thug. A botched burglary at a pawn shop sends the two in separate directions: Danny cleans up and goes straight while Evan heads to prison. Of course, nothing good lasts forever, and Danny has a hard time fitting a newly released Evan back into his life.

The author makes good on the promise of that attention-grabbing debut with At the City's Edge. Again set in Chicago, this time Sakey writes about Jason Palmer, an Iraq War vet who returns to find his city feeling very much like the firefights he left behind thanks to gang violence in his burned-out neighborhood. Very early in the story, Palmer's brother, Michael, is murdered, leaving Palmer to care for his eight-year-old nephew while trying to unravel the confusing circumstances that led to his brother's death.

Along the way, Sakey touches on the trouble vets are finding as they try to return to normal life, the problems caused by gentrification and the challenges faced by those trying to do something about gang violence. He tackles a lot, but there are no cardboard cutouts standing in for people; everyone here is fully drawn and it makes for a poignant tale.

Sakey was among the promising class that was dubbed "The Killer Year," a tool used to promote a handful of crime fiction writers that debuted last year. From what I've read of these authors, Sakey is a clear standout. Like his fellow classmate and Chicagoan, Sean Chercover, he seems destined for a long career. With his eye on more than simply telling a tale, he may be the Killer Year's George Pelecanos, standing side by side with its Michael Connelly, Chercover, whose PI series has the feel of a nascent Harry Bosch.

Sakey took the time to participate in his second Monday Interview to discuss the new book. Read the first here.

TIRBD: I know you did a lot of research for this book, as you did for The Blade Itself. Do you have specific things you're seeking when you do research, or do you immerse yourself until you feel confident about the subject matter?

MS: A little bit of both. Generally, I need answers to some specific questions – how much does a kid selling crack make (less than you'd think), how does the Gang Intelligence Unit work, etc. – but I'm also there for the stuff I don't expect. And the best, truest moments always come as a surprise.

There's a story I use in this book about a group of thieves who were holding up nail salons, and it's pretty much accurate. When the cops I was riding with told me, they had me laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. You can't invent that stuff.

Was the idea of comparing some of Chicago's worst neighborhoods to the devastation in Iraq clear from the beginning? Was there a process by which you made yourself comfortable telling the story from these two perspectives that were foreign to you?

I knew that I wanted to write a book that was political without being partisan, and I wanted to explore the idea that Jason is returning from one war and stepping into another that looks very similar. But the subtleties came through the process. I just kind of go in with a general idea and my antenna up.

Thing is, I don't really have Big Ideas. I have a collection of small ones that I rub up against each other until they start to snarl into a larger whole.

As with The Blade Itself, you deal with a lot of socio-economic issues here, and you're not shying away from what could be seen as political stances. Can the novel be a useful tool for pointing out societal ills and effecting change?

Absolutely. And the opportunity to point things out, to have a pulpit from which to say, "Hey, look – this is fucked up, and we should notice it," that's one of the reasons I love being a novelist.

That said, my first purpose is to entertain, to tell a good story that hopefully keeps people up late. Everything else comes second. Who wants to read a polemic?

A lot of crime novelists are finding opportunities in films, online, television and other avenues for storytelling. Beyond Ben Affleck optioning The Blade Itself, have you explored any of these, and what are your thoughts about each as a means of telling a story when compared to a novel?

My focus in on writing novels. I'm sure that I could learn how to write a screenplay, but like any art form, it has a thousand subtleties that only come with time and experience. In my opinion, too many people think the difference is just page format. And since I feel like there are still a thousand more things I need to learn about writing novels, I'm sticking to this arena for now.

However, it is a really exciting feeling to have my work optioned by people I trust, people who are as passionate about their work as I am about mine. And despite the fact that the written word is my first and deepest love, I get giddy at the thought of my work becoming a movie. I think it has something to do with the three-dimensionality of it, and with the fact that watching a movie of your work is perhaps the only way you can experience it as an audience member, rather than a creator. That's pretty cool.

You write in the afterword about your decision to create the fictional neighborhood of Crenwood. Couldn't one argue that the people living in the real neighborhood you modeled Crenwood after know full well the situation they're living in and might appreciate the fact that someone noticed?

Yep. I went back and forth and back and forth, and I'm still not sure I made the right decision. But in the end my feeling was that because no matter how much research I did, no matter how many reports I read or cops I rode with, I would always essentially be a tourist. And it felt disrespectful not to acknowledge that fact.

However, anyone who knows Chicago even a little bit won't have trouble pinpointing the neighborhoods I'm talking about.

You mentioned on your web site that you're finished with your third novel, and I see that it's another standalone. Do you feel comfortable with the one-a-year pace that most successful crime novelists must keep, particularly given the fact that you don't have a series character to fall back on?

Thus far I do. But there's certainly a terror that accompanies it. The thing is, a year is the right amount of time for me to write a book, assuming things go right. But I certainly worry that I might spend six months on a book that doesn't work.

Prayer is a big part of the process.

Labels: crime fiction, Monday Interview

It's an understatement to say the stories of Elizabeth Crane are interesting. The Chicago writer has filled three short-story collections to date with tales that seem spun from the idea notebooks of dozens of writers. "What if a person took the back off their TV and found people living there?" one idea might read. "What if a woman who turned into a zombie was conflicted over the fact that she subsisted on human flesh?" might read another.

Hearing that such situations populate the stories in her new book, You Must Be This Happy to Enter, might turn off some, and with good reason. The world has more than enough "too-clever-by-half" stories to last until the end of time, with more produced daily. But these are not those. Crane's stories also have that other important ingredient: People you care about. Betty the zombie may seem like one of those too-clever characters until you actually read "Betty the Zombie," and then you see how Crane has skillfully grafted the woes of a flesh-eating zombie onto a real, three-dimensional character, and used that odd juxtaposition as a muscular vehicle to propel her fiction.

Crane debuted in 2003 with When the Messenger is Hot, then offered the linked story collection/novel in stories/insert new classification here All This Heavenly Glory, which offered episodes in the life of Charlotte Ann Byers. With You Must Be This Happy to Enter, Crane has moved from major publisher Little, Brown, to indie upstart Akashic (in a partnership, in this case, with Punk Planet Books). It's a move that might be seen on the surface as a step back careerwise, but as the pleasantly aggressive publicity push she's been getting would suggest, her reasons for making the leap are sound and already bearing out.

She took the time to answer a few questions about switching publishers, the way promotion has changed since her debut and the genesis and evolution of her stories.

TIRBD: You're with Akashic Books now after two books with a larger publisher. Was this a conscious decision to go with a smaller house? What can Akashic do that someone else maybe could not?

EC: It was of course, a very considered decision. Without going into long stories, I had been disappointed in the way a few things went with my second book (yet I always want to add the disclaimer that I adore my previous editor Reagan Arthur and always will), and at the same time, the people at Punk Planet/Akashic actually sought me out before they even knew I had anything in the works. I had known about the huge success they'd had with Joe Meno, who had nothing but good things to say about them and who had also been ultimately disappointed with larger publishing houses. Basically, what a smaller press potentially has to offer, which has completely been bearing itself out in terms of what I know Akashic has been doing to promote the book, is to give me a focused attention that you're just not guaranteed at a large house unless you're already a superstar.

It seems as if most short story writers place all of the stories in a collection with magazines and journals before collecting them in a book, but you always have a healthy dose that were not. What is behind that difference, and do you ever worry about the stories that weren't given that extra seal of approval?

Hm, I didn't worry about it until now! I'm not convinced that's universally true, anyway, and in my case, it's not anything that's super thought out; in fact, unlike when I was starting out, I don't submit stories too extensively these days. In fact, mostly I only send them to publications that request stories from me. So actually, I would have no problem publishing a book of stories where none of them had been previously published. We all want approval, but it's my own confidence that is what allows me to put them out into the world anywhere, whether in a collection or a journal.

In reading the bios in each of your three books, you went from being someone who "lives in Chicago," to someone who lives in Chicago, teaches at Northwestern and has won awards, to, with this new book, someone who does all that but now does so "with her husband, Ben." Just from this bit of information, it's clear your life has changed from book to book. Is that reflected in your writing in a way that is noticeable to you, and more to the point, in a way that you think could be noticed by close readers?

I think the changes in my life reflect in my writing, sure, just as surely as they would if circumstances had gotten worse instead of better. I have had a great deal of joy and sorrow in the last 10 years, and one of the things that really interests me in life is the way those things are not at all mutually exclusive. I'm pretty sure that folks will notice that many of these stories are way more out there than ever. I don't know that that has anything to do with anything, though.

Though your first book came out just five years ago, what we're able to glean about authors now, thanks to the Internet, is considerably different from what we could then. We're no longer limited to the brief bio in the back of the book. You blog and have a web presence. What affect does that have on you as a writer, if at all? Does having a greater public profile -- with the potential of greater interaction with your audience – affect you?

Ah, I don't think I have a super huge blog readership, and I've had less and less time to keep it up. I'm also much more guarded about what I put on there, personally speaking, being very aware of the nature of the Internet. I will say that it is fantastic to be able to be easily contacted by readers, whether it's via my blog, web site, MySpace, Facebook or Goodreads. But you know, even the most well-known writers, I suspect, walk down the street, as I do, unrecognized. So in more respects than not, my simple life (style) is not very different than it ever was.

Your stories read at times like experiments: "What would happen if..." situations brought to life. Do they start that way? At the same time, they end in surprising ways, not necessarily reaching the place the reader might expect. I found that exhilarating as a reader, but I wonder as a writer if it's difficult to rein yourself in, to not take things to what might seem their logical conclusion.

Yes, actually sometimes they do start that way! I'm glad to hear that they end in surprising ways; it's usually a surprise to me. I generally start with just a notion of what a story might be, or who a character is, and then see what happens. But as you say, yes, if I start with a zombie, I think, what if she was a remorseful zombie? Which is how she ended up on a reality show. (Because isn't that the next logical step?)

Religion is a common topic through these stories, something that a lot of other writers tend to shy away from. Was there something in particular you were trying to get at with regard to religion? Do you have any worries about losing readers who might not want to read about it one way or the other?

Oh, I'll try not to go on for too long on this because it's so interesting to me. I tend to think of “god” as being the theme more than religion, but yes, I think that there are a few things that interest me about the subject. One is that I think there's such a negative association with religion, among many people I know anyway, and yet, I think that it can be a misconception to think that completely defines a person. You hear “Christian” and if you're not a Christian yourself, chances are you think “right-wing.” But in fact, I don't think anyone is just one thing, and knowing some very politically liberal Christians, I think it's unfortunate that that is the general idea of that religion. And that's just one religion. Also, it's a subject that interests me on a personal level. I seem to have a history now of constant tweaking, if you will, of what seems reasonable to me on the subject of god, and I don't expect that will change anytime soon.

As for losing readers, I don't concern myself with that too much at all, whatever the subject – that's out of my hands. I just write what interests me and hope it'll interest someone else too.

Labels: books, Monday Interview

I didn't mean to have a Max Allan Collins month over the last few weeks, it just turned out that way. First came the posthumous Mickey Spillane novel, Dead Street, finished by Collins. Then came Collins' A Killing in Comics, an interesting mesh of vintage crime novel and a comic strip, and finally Collins' own Hard Case Crime novel, Deadly Beloved, the novel debut of his long-time comic creation. All three popped to the top of my reading stack in succession, and I was reminded again just how creative and prolific this author just down the road (that road being Highway 6 that connects Iowa City and Muscatine with much of the rest of the middle of the country) can be.

These three books, all of which came out in 2007, would constitute a banner year for any other writer. For Collins, it's just part of a fairly typical 365-day period. As he details below, he also published a pseudonymous novel, Black Hats, and oversaw a DVD project. That adds to an already impressive bibliography and filmography for Collins. Just listing his various series and projects can be a task. There's the hitman Quarry, the professional thief Nolan, Mallory the mystery writer, Nate Heller, the PI who solves historic crimes, a real-life Eliot Ness, the Perdition novels and graphic novels, the Ms. Tree comic series, his writing for the "Dick Tracy" comic strip and his numerous TV tie-ins and movie novelizations.

From the sound of things, he doesn't plan to let up soon. There is a sequel to A Killing in Comics in the works, he's finishing at least two other Spillane books for publication and he just started writing tie-in novels for the TV show "Criminal Minds" (after a long time doing the same thing for "CSI"). He took time, however, to answer a few questions about his various projects and what he has in store.

TIRBD: For a guy who has tried a number of different things over your career, 2007 will go down as a groundbreaking year: Your first novel featuring comic character Ms. Tree, finishing a Mickey Spillane novel and writing a hybrid of sorts in the book A Killing in Comics. Does a year like this tell you anything about avenues you have left to explore or give you more license to try new things?

MAC: It was a busy writing year as well, perhaps the busiest of my career. I probably should be slowing down, but as I get older, the reality that the time ahead is finite becomes all too apparent. So a lot of what I've been doing reflects me getting around to doing things that I've intended to do for a long time – the Ms. Tree novel, for example. Black Hats, the Wyatt Earp novel (written as Patrick Culhane), is a notion I've been nurturing for 10 or 12 years. My new DVD, “Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life,” is the culmination of all of my years of Ness interest as well as my desire to keep honing my filmmaking craft. I'm at a stage where about half of the effort is designed to make a living – the movie and TV tie-in work – and the rest is artistic ambition and working to get done all of the things I'd like to do.

It looks like I may get to do Nathan Heller again, and I will very likely write the final two books, to make sure the series has a sense of having been finished. If they are successful, I'll fill in with earlier stories, but I have always intended to do Marilyn and Kennedy as Heller's last cases.

What was it like to finish another writer's work? Despite the fact that you had his notes and conversed with him about the novel, you were still putting words in Spillane's mouth.

I've now finished the first of at least three Mike Hammer novels, working from a partial manuscript and notes – The Goliath Bone, for Otto Penzler at Harcourt. I'm tempted to say, "It was easy." Very early in my career I picked up “Dick Tracy” for Chester Gould, so I've been done this road before. Each of the Mickey projects is going to be different, because the manuscripts are in varying shapes. Dead Street, the Hard Case novel, consisted of eight fairly finished chapters and some notes, although nothing on how the mystery resolved. But in revising and shaping the first eight chapters, and going over the notes again and again, I became immersed enough in the voice that it really flowed quite naturally when I wrote the final three chapters.

Goliath Bone presented different challenges. I had nine chapters but they weren't as finished as the eight of Dead Street. But I also had a three chapter false start on the story that Mickey had done a few years before, on Goliath, and I was able to use material from there as well. And Mickey had written the climax of Goliath, which became the first half of the last chapter. More carpentry on that one, but I can honestly say I never had a better time than collaborating with Mickey (and that's what it is) on a Mike Hammer novel.

Comics are an increasingly accepted method of storytelling, yet you've moved in somewhat of an opposite direction by taking Ms. Tree out of comics and into a prose work, and you've written novels based on the Perdition project. Do you feel like your swimming against the current to an extent?

I am open to doing comics or graphic novels again, and I'm in talks all the time about doing more. Post-Perdition, I did a second Perdition graphic novel (On The Road To Perdition) and four or five CSI graphic novels. But I also had many conversations with mainstream publishers about doing graphic novels that always foundered when the editors discovered how expensive the artwork would be to produce. And I've always been a bit of a fringe guy for DC and Marvel, since I rarely do superhero, although I've done quite a bit of Batman – another post-Perdition comics project was the Batman graphic novel, Child Of Dreams, where I wrote essentially a new story to a Japanese artist's drawings.

I've been frustrated that I haven't been able to get a major publisher to bring the huge body of Ms. Tree work out in graphic novel form -- it's reprint material, but material little-seen by a mainstream audience, and Terry Beatty and I did it from 1981 ’til 1993, so there's a ton of it. Many small publishers have been after us, but I'm holding out for better presentation. The Ms. Tree novel, Deadly Beloved, flowed out of a screenplay I did for Oxygen network. They're apparently doing the film, but I've been much rewritten, so I'm delighted that the novel exists to represent my vision. The same was true of The Last Quarry, also originally a screenplay which has become a good little movie called “The Last Lullaby,” but I was somewhat rewritten there, as well, and I like having the novel exist to show what I truly intended.

Pulp novels are also coming into vogue thanks in part to the Hard Case Crime imprint. You've certainly taken advantage of that, with three books of your own and the Spillane book. Is the reception of your books different thanks to that Hard Case logo on the cover than it would be otherwise? Is there more to the resurgence than someone simply being smart enough to recreate the formula of action-filled stories inside alluring covers with a low price?

I love Hard Case Crime and Charles Ardai is a terrific editor, even though he and I squabble like an old married couple. I can tell you why I do books for Charles – he lets me do novels I couldn't do elsewhere, like Quarry and Ms. Tree; he pretty much says, "Write whatever you want, we're happy to get a book from you." So that's hard for me to resist. And the packaging, the covers – I've told the story that I agreed to do The Last Quarry chiefly because Bob McGinnis agreed to paint the cover. Plus, it gets my work out in front of the younger readers into noir who might not take time to read my work otherwise; some of these people have only a vague idea about who I am, possibly based on the CSI stuff and maybe Perdition, and few know the Nate Heller novels and Quarry and so on.

But there's a downside: some of the chain stores lump all the Hard Case books together, like Harlequin romances. You do not find The Last Quarry and Deadly Beloved shelved with my other books at most Borders, for example. And the Hard Case books all tend to get ordered in the same small quantity, two or three copies – even Dead Street, which got zero display in the big chains despite an “A” rating from Entertainment Weekly, who also made the novel No. 3 on their “Must List” a few weeks later. That's a problem. It's a cultish niche, and as Donald Westlake said, "A cult writer is two readers short of making a living."

In 2002, you explained your various pursuits to me this way: "I'm a pop-culture junkie. I love comics, so I have to do comics. I love mystery novels, so I have to write them. I love movies, so I have to make movies." Are there other things you love – I’m thinking of music, but know there must be others – that you simply don't have time to indulge, and how would you do so given unlimited time?

I've done a lot with music, actually – I still play a few times a year with my band, although since the death of my longtime partner in musical crime, Paul Thomas, a few years ago, some of the steam has gone out of it. I write songs for my movies when necessary, since I'm cheap help. I do have an unrealistic ambition to write a musical, words, music, book, the whole thing. That's something I may never get around to.

I also regret, a little, that I left acting behind. I was a lead in plays and musicals in high school, and part of me wishes I could do one more leading role in a good regional production. That probably won't happen.

With movies in particular, you've taken a much more independent stance than in your other pursuits. Rather than write for those who make them, you've decided to make them yourself. Is technology to credit for that – you'd put out your own books if able – or is there a deeper reason for wanting to have more control over film projects than your other work?

The indie route was mostly a necessity – I felt time was running out to make a mark in movies and started doing my own. I have sold things to other filmmakers – William Lustig made “The Expert,” Jeffrey Goodman has directed “The Last Lullaby,” and I've allowed all sorts of stuff to be optioned, lately Ms. Tree and Johnny Dynamite. Some things I write are too big for me to make, or frankly too hard, even if I had the resources – Black Hats, which DJ Caruso may do, for example, or the upcoming World War II novel, Red Sky In Morning (for Morrow as Patrick Culhane).

On the other hand, I've written a screenplay version of Road To Purgatory and we're working hard to get it mounted here in the Midwest. I love filmmaking. I love the collaborative nature of it, after so many years by myself. That may have something to do why I've started collaborating on fiction with two other writers, my wife Barb and Matt Clemens. The two places where I'm happiest are on a film set (if I'm directing) and in the editing suite.

Labels: crime fiction, Monday Interview

Jim Shepard popped onto my radar in 2004 when I received simultaneous review copies of his short story collection, Love and Hydrogen, and his novel, Project X, while working as a reviewer at a daily newspaper. I hadn’t heard of Shepard, but the books sounded interesting, so I took them home and added them to the stack.

A year later, I went to hear Shepard read in Iowa City when he was on campus as a finalist for the director’s position at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He read from Project X, a novel about a young man drawn into a Columbine-type incident, and it was hilarious, terrifying and heartbreaking. I went home, pulled the book out of the stack and read it. I followed with Love and Hydrogen, and have counted myself a fan ever since.

His new story collection, Like You’d Understand, Anyway, is another gem. Some fan I am; I had to learn about it by reading a small blurb/review in a magazine two months after its publication. Such is the fate of writers with Shepard’s talent. It is admittedly daunting to pick up a book of stories that tell stories about excursions through Tibet and Australia, follow the first female Russian cosmonaut and tell of the conflicted nature of France’s Revolution-era executioner. Feel-good lit this ain’t. But it’s a bravura performance that finds Shepard fully inhabiting each of these protagonists in his prose, and easily one of the best books of the year.

I was disappointed when Shepard didn’t land the position at Iowa, if for no other reason than that I was looking forward to hearing him read more often. But, as he mentions below, not getting the job meant there was one less demand on his time, time that ought to be spent writing more stories like these.

TIRBD: Your career seemed to get a kick-start in 2004 with the simultaneous publication of the story collection Love and Hydrogen and the novel Project X, your first books in at least six years. Was it a conscious move on your part to re-enter publishing after a break, a publisher's marketing ploy or perhaps a combination?

JS: Very little that happens to me represents a conscious move on my part. It was mostly a publisher's marketing ploy -- or a better way to put it might be a publisher's despairing attempt to find something that worked, when it came to trying to sell my work. I'd finished Love and Hydrogen earlier than that, but Knopf had conceived of the idea of publishing it together with a novel, and trying to make the publication more of an event in that way. Their plan worked to some extent, I guess.

Is it at all safe to say that thanks to the presence of publications like McSweeney's and the success of writers like George Saunders that there is a sensibility on the rise that is more accepting of your work than you've enjoyed in the past?

I'm not sure. I know that my work does seem to be considered too weird -- too boyish, too childish, too something -- for some markets, so I'm glad for magazines like Tin House and McSweeney's that offer readers -- and writers -- an alternative that's more out of the mainstream. They also seem less bound up with literary celebrity than some magazines. Or maybe they just conceive of celebrity in a different way, given their demographic.

Your short stories seem almost like challenges to yourself, with you inhabiting the heads of a staggeringly disparate cast of characters. The acknowledgment pages of your collections, meanwhile, look like the citation section from a thick academic book. Do you do research on topics that interest you and then decide to write stories based on that information, or do you conceive of the story and then do research to help with the writing?

I think they are challenges to myself -- that's a nice way of putting it -- nearly always in terms of stretching the capacities of my empathetic imagination. A story narrated by John Ashcroft began with my fulminating about yet another one of his inconceivably bad decisions as attorney general, for example, and then asking myself, ‘How does he do something like that, and live with himself?’ And then asking myself the question more seriously, and deciding that I would read all about him and try to find out. As for research, I read on subjects that interest me, first. Sometimes that sets off something that begins to feel like a story -- almost always because of some mysterious or elusive emotional resonance that I begin to register (as opposed to because I feel like the elements in front of me would make a good story.) Once I've begun to feel that what I've been reading might generate a story, my reading changes, and I begin to do more focused research.

How difficult is it to weave in the parts you have to create from thin air with the details you've learned from your research? Do you ever find yourself having to pull back from injecting unnecessary details simply because you went to the trouble to learn them?

Making stuff up is always the fun part. And it's hard, sometimes, to let go of researched details that are amazing, but part of the revision process involves going over and over the narrative with a ruthlessness towards anything that's thematically redundant or that seems to be retarding the narrative drive.

To that end, have you ever done so much research for a work of fiction that you considered pursuing the story in non-fiction form instead?

Every so often I've considered that. But a non-fiction piece like that, coming from me, would be a kind of an odd thing. I usually don't have enough of a thesis to shape something like that as an essay. Maybe my interest in the material is more visceral, and emotional.

Three of the stories in Like You'd Understand, Anyway – “Proto-Scorpions of the Silurian,” “Trample the Dead, Hurdle the Weak” and “Courtesy for Beginners” -- seem different because they're not based around historical figures or events. Did you give any thought to how they would fit with the rest?

No. I was actually happy that they helped vary the collection somewhat. And they're still all about weird people in extremis.

You were a finalist for the director's post at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a position eventually given to Lan Samantha Chang instead. What might such a high-profile teaching position have done for your career, good or bad, and how much did that weigh on your decision to pursue it in the first place?

I pursued the position, once I was invited to do so, because I thought if I was ever going to consider leaving my current job, I should at least consider Iowa. It's a chance to be a part of a program that's central to modern American literature. As for the issue of a raised profile, well, that seemed like both a good and a bad thing. And certainly the responsibilities involved in running a program were daunting, to say the least. I feel like I have little enough time to write as it is. And it's one thing to lose writing time to teaching; it's another to lose it to administrating.

Labels: books, Monday Interview

If there's a better single than "Revival" by Soulsavers that's been released this year, I've yet to hear it. I'm a sucker for anything Mark Lanegan touches, so perhaps I'm biased. But the former Screaming Trees frontman, who surely is the most collaborative man in alt-rock (if not all of popular music outside the guest star-friendly world of hip hop), has certainly found some kindred spirits in the form of Soulsavers.

Perhaps the best thing about the song is that, while among the best issued this year, it sounds like it could have been released any time in the past 75. Soulsaver honcho Rich Machin has crafted a backing track that sounds like an aural antique, and Lanegan's cigarette-scarred vocals fit perfectly, the whole thing given a true spiritual feel by the rich gospel harmonies that underpin his lines.

Machin and his partner, Ian Glover, have issued just one previous album, and have helmed other production and remix jobs. But this is the first time I've knowingly heard their work. It makes me want to search out everything else, and more to the point, eagerly anticipate what comes next. For they've created an album that is cohesive, dark, dense, slightly claustrophobic and, above all else, compelling. Lanegan sings on 8 of the 11 tracks, with the others being complementary instumentals. The originals, like "Revival," are uniformly solid, an