authors f.a.q.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What made you want to be a writer?
There was no particular trigger that I recall. But I was reading from the time I could walk and talk — as a kid, I lived inside books, seriously. Every night I was under the covers with a flashlight. And all I ever intended to do was write, as far back as I can remember. - When did you start writing?
I was 10 or so. I wrote sci-fi and middle earth super hero comic books, at first. - Where do you get your ideas and/or inspiration from?
They pretty much seep to the surface, whether I want them to or not. - Describe your typical writing day.
There is no such thing as typical anymore. Life and work are too fucked up. But ideally, I go to the computer first thing in the morning, before I am fully awake, usually about 6 am. I work until early afternoon, when the fear and funk set in. Then start writing again around sunset and go 'til midnight or so. - How long does it take you to write a book?
Less than a year, for a first draft. Six to nine months. - Do you do a lot of rewriting?
Like I have an obsessive compulsive disorder. - Do you outline?
No. Every time I've tried to, it's been a complete failure. But I religiously re-imagine the timeline and internal landscape of whatever book I'm working on, every night as I'm falling asleep. - How much research do you do for each book?
Next to zero. I make almost everything up. Or to be more blunt, my narrator is about exactly as smart and knowledgeable about weapons, surgery, and police procedures as I am. At the same time, I tend to cycle through various obsessions, so you might say I am always researching something. There is always a pile of weird shit on my desk. - Who are your influences?
The ones that stand out most are as follows. Mark Twain. JD Salinger. Albert Camus. William Faulker. James Joyce. Shakespeare. Raymond Chandler. James M. Cain. William Gibson. Steve Erickson. Philip K. Dick. Martin Amis. Frank Miller. Jim Thompson. - You write both short stories and novels. Which form do you enjoy more?
I'm a sprinter by nature. Working with short stories, you can go from start to finish in 5000 words. So perfection is at least a possibility. Novels are just hard as hell to write. Even if you have a great idea, a killer first chapter, it's hard to sustain. You have to build a whole world in your head. And it's kind of inevitable that your world will have holes in it. - What would you say to young writers starting out?
Do yourself a favor and accept the fact that you don't know what you're doing. Be prepared to throw out hundreds, maybe thousands of pages, before you figure it out. And the fucked up thing is, with enough work, you will eventually learn to recognize what is shit and what is not, but the actual writing doesn't necessarily get easier. - I've written a novel and I need to get an agent. How do I go about that?
Search the internet, lurk in bookstores. There are guides available everywhere. Look for young hungry agents who are open to new writers. Submit a sample chapter, not a whole manuscript. Pray. - I have a manuscript, would you mind reading it and telling me if it's any good?
I wish, but no. I can't read manuscripts unless they come from someone I know. I don't have enough time to keep up with my own work. - What do you think about writing programs/workshops?
Necessary evil.
The Books
- What's going on, movie-wise, with your novels?
Kiss Me, Judas was optioned by Mythic Films and a sick young director named Ralph Hemeker. I co-wrote the script, so I've had a semblance of creative control, but it's pretty much Ralph's baby now. Or his nightmare. But it does look like it will happen. - What's this obsession with body parts? Kidneys, tongues, fingers...
Nothing conscious. Though I do think that people who love each other will always wound each other. And there's something deeply sexual about knives... And I can't think of anything more intense than having a limb violently removed. It hits at the most essential level... You spend your life looking for whatever is missing or lost — be it another person, God, a finger.. - Did you plan to have a Phineas Poe "series" from the start or did you find after you finished Judas that his story wasn't "done" yet?
When I was a kid, my father was hooked on the Travis McGee novels, by John D. MacDonald. And when I first started dreaming up Phineas, I saw him as a post-punk Travis, a nihilistic antihero. But pretty soon I decided that a trilogy was much more realistic for me than a series... Each book took so much out of me, I couldn't imagine cranking out a new Phineas book every year. Although I already kind of miss the fucker. So you never know. I could easily write another one. There is a lot of lost time between the three books, the year in Mexico, the years Phineas spent wandering around after Penny Dreadful... But the most likely thing is that I will write a Jude book, one that is all about her. - Hell's Half Acre is the third in the Phineas series, where is it chronologically?
Hell's Half takes place several years after the end of Penny Dreadful, so Phineas and Jude have been separated for a long while when they get back together — but Hell's Half does flash back a lot to things that happen between the first two books. - You have a number of short stories published, any plans for a short story collection?
Yeah. I have a pretty fat collection at this point, maybe 300 pages. I'd love to get them out there in 2005, but if there's a new novel cooking, I'll probably wait. - You've said you could rewrite Judas over and over. What would you change if you revised it?
I think that's true of any novel-they're not static realities in the writer's skull, so even if they're published, they are never done. But I would mainly do subtle stuff to Judas. I would make it a longer, deeper, juicier and better book. - Are any of your characters based on real people?
Of course. - Your work is so dark yet there is a great deal of humor in it. Is that a conscious decision to give your readers a respite every now and then?
Not really. There's a very thin line between dark and funny, violent and hilarious. It comes natural. - The world Phineas inhabits in Penny Dreadful is quite different from Judas, it has an otherworldly feel to it almost like science fiction. Were you worried at all that fans of the more noir Judas would be disappointed?
No. To my mind, the perfect imaginary world would incorporate elements of Bladerunner, The Crow, Reservoir Dogs, Fight Club, Neuromancer and Neverwhere — noir and goth and sci-fi have always appealed equally to me. I pretty much figured the same would hold true for Phineas fans. - What does the title Penny Dreadful mean?
You want the long answer, or the short one? .. a novel is an artificial reality, right. And years ago in England, trashy pulp novels were called penny dreadfuls, presumably because they cost a penny. And pulp is by definition a temporary construct — a pulp novel is a reality that falls apart. And the crux of Penny Dreadful is the multiple realities-the game of tongues, the world outside the game. All of the characters have these fantastical alter egos — plus, you have Phineas writing letters in his head to Jude, and reading Ulysses, and you have Dizzy Bloom, who believes she is a direct descendant of Leopold Bloom, a fictional character. - Do you have any short stories with the character Phineas Poe as a character?
An early chapter of Hell's Half Acre was excerpted as a short story called Blue Eyes at nerve.com, maybe three years ago. Otherwise, no. But he is my favorite narrator by far. - What other translations of your novels are there?
Judas has been translated into French, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish. - What are you working on now/next?
The Memphis short stories — new and old — the Jude novel, and something completely new, a fantasy noir called Godspeed, plus an original screenplay that's about half done. The four of them are all the time wrestling for control of my head.