Every writer who writes in first person and/or in fractured English (ahem) has felt Chandler's frustration, but none have expressed it as perfectly as he did in a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly.
"By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have."
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Formspringed
To celebrate the Sandman Slim paperback on April 27th, I've opened a Formspring account. Ask me anything.
Question me here
Question me here
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Clandestine Angel
Fierce, a Bay Area model, and I did a guerilla photoshoot at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco a few years ago. I had no idea it was Easter weekend (You tend to lose track of holidays when you're a freelancer.). The church and the grounds were packed, but no one bothered us. Happy Zombie Jesus day or Eostur-monath, if you happen to be an Ostrogoth.
photo copyright Richard Kadrey 2010
photo copyright Richard Kadrey 2010
What do you know and when do you know it?
When I finish a 1st draft, it's always just as much
of a mess as it's always been. I still make the same
mistakes every time.--MICHAEL CHABON
People always ask me about how much of my books I know in advance and do I outline them? The answer is yes, but only as much as I need to.
No matter how many books I write or how excited I am to start a book, I'm always a little insecure at the beginning of a new one. I don’t have any faith in a book until I’ve finished 50 pages and the book still doesn’t breathe until I have 100. Don’t get the idea that I’m winging the first bit. I’m not. It’s that a book is a lot like an oil painting. First there’s a sketch and then a layer of paint goes on. And another and another. At a certain point, the canvas looks like it smeared and scratched with 50 pounds multicolored baboon shit. But if you push past the shit storm, a picture starts to emerge. A few more layers and you have a painting. It might not be a great or even a good painting, but it’s there and now that it exists you can refine it, tweak it or scrape down the layers and build the thing back up again knowing what you did wrong. Every writer I know hits a point in a novel (sometimes even in a long story) where it looks and feels like a complete disaster. The difference between a real writer and a bullshit artist is that the real writer keeps going, keep hacking at it, kicking, cursing and beating it with an axe handle until the wall of the story cracks open and he or she can get inside.
I go through this with books even when they have long nicely-formatted outlines. The map isn’t the territory and damned outline isn’t the damned book, which is the problem. And even if I have a detailed outline, it’s not going to have a lot of the details that I like writing and readers enjoy reading.
None of my outlines really describe the book I’m going to write. This is deliberate. I need constraints when I write, but not so many that I can’t let the details run a little wild. As long as I know the basic shape of the story, the sort of territory it has to travel and kind of, sort of know where it’s going to end, I can do what the hell I want in the spaces between the story beats I know I need to hit. It’s a like a long Charlie Parker improv in the middle of a famous old song, say, I Got Rhythm. Everyone in the band knows the tune, the chord progression and the resolution, so as long as Parker stays pretty close to those boundaries, he can play, scream, have a nervous breakdown, OD or give birth to a pterodactyl as long as he does it in the key of E.
My books are a lot like that. They have plot and plenty of story, but there’s a lot of improv and discovery along the way, which means they also tend to have a kind of garage band messiness, but I’ve always been a fan of the raw and the clumsy. It’s like what Iggy Pop said about The Stooges’ music, “It’s dumb, but it’s smart dumb.”
Really, I’d rather not stumble bum my way through books, but it seems to be my modus operandi. The most interesting stuff happens when I crack my head on a wall that shouldn’t be there or fall off a staircase that no one ever finished. That’s when I discover the weird connections between characters, the plot and themes that I didn’t even know I was playing with, all the high weirdness of the story that my unconscious has been hiding from me until that moment. These discoveries aren’t always convenient. Sometimes they mean that I have to go back to the beginning and change an incident, move a plot point back 50 pages or reshape the end of the book. But for me, those instant crack-to-the-head revelations are always the most important parts of the writing process. No matter how much I plot and plan a book, I can still be dead wrong about how to make it work. On the other hand, my head crack revelations are almost always right. I had one just the other day.
I’m about to start writing Sandman Slim 3, aka The Book That Refuses To Be Titled, and while making notes about a manhunt that occurs early in book three, I realized that the search went back to ideas in book one that seemed like throwaways at the time. Now, they came back to me with a meaning I didn’t realize when I first wrote them. It’s a good example of your unconscious working with you. A friendly and well-trained unconscious can present you with clever ideas that you didn’t even know you had. Ideas probably a lot cleverer than the conscious part of your brain. And you better write them down fast. When you unconscious starts talking it usually doesn’t last long, so you better grab as much of it as you can while you can. William Burroughs talked about this feeling as the book opening up in front of him, as if it had already been written in some meta-brain and that his job was to transcribe it as quickly and accurately as possible. I suppose writers are lucky that not everyone gets to peek at the big meta-book hidden under the counter or we’d all be back dusting bookstore shelves, driving forklifts or tarring roofs (I’ve done those last two. Driving forklifts can be fun, but trust me, you never want to tar roofs. Be a stripper, set yourself up as a fake psychic or stick up liquor stores if you have to, but never tar roofs.).
For me writing is a weird combination of disciplined forethought and playing Smoke On The Water on an untuned guitar with the original WalMart strings and pickups that buzz like short-circuiting vacuum cleaners. I’m not an artist. James Joyce and Flannery O’Connor were artists. I do card tricks. Really long card tricks with violence, magic and a lot of bad words. It beats tarring roofs any day.
of a mess as it's always been. I still make the same
mistakes every time.--MICHAEL CHABON
People always ask me about how much of my books I know in advance and do I outline them? The answer is yes, but only as much as I need to.
No matter how many books I write or how excited I am to start a book, I'm always a little insecure at the beginning of a new one. I don’t have any faith in a book until I’ve finished 50 pages and the book still doesn’t breathe until I have 100. Don’t get the idea that I’m winging the first bit. I’m not. It’s that a book is a lot like an oil painting. First there’s a sketch and then a layer of paint goes on. And another and another. At a certain point, the canvas looks like it smeared and scratched with 50 pounds multicolored baboon shit. But if you push past the shit storm, a picture starts to emerge. A few more layers and you have a painting. It might not be a great or even a good painting, but it’s there and now that it exists you can refine it, tweak it or scrape down the layers and build the thing back up again knowing what you did wrong. Every writer I know hits a point in a novel (sometimes even in a long story) where it looks and feels like a complete disaster. The difference between a real writer and a bullshit artist is that the real writer keeps going, keep hacking at it, kicking, cursing and beating it with an axe handle until the wall of the story cracks open and he or she can get inside.
I go through this with books even when they have long nicely-formatted outlines. The map isn’t the territory and damned outline isn’t the damned book, which is the problem. And even if I have a detailed outline, it’s not going to have a lot of the details that I like writing and readers enjoy reading.
None of my outlines really describe the book I’m going to write. This is deliberate. I need constraints when I write, but not so many that I can’t let the details run a little wild. As long as I know the basic shape of the story, the sort of territory it has to travel and kind of, sort of know where it’s going to end, I can do what the hell I want in the spaces between the story beats I know I need to hit. It’s a like a long Charlie Parker improv in the middle of a famous old song, say, I Got Rhythm. Everyone in the band knows the tune, the chord progression and the resolution, so as long as Parker stays pretty close to those boundaries, he can play, scream, have a nervous breakdown, OD or give birth to a pterodactyl as long as he does it in the key of E.
My books are a lot like that. They have plot and plenty of story, but there’s a lot of improv and discovery along the way, which means they also tend to have a kind of garage band messiness, but I’ve always been a fan of the raw and the clumsy. It’s like what Iggy Pop said about The Stooges’ music, “It’s dumb, but it’s smart dumb.”
Really, I’d rather not stumble bum my way through books, but it seems to be my modus operandi. The most interesting stuff happens when I crack my head on a wall that shouldn’t be there or fall off a staircase that no one ever finished. That’s when I discover the weird connections between characters, the plot and themes that I didn’t even know I was playing with, all the high weirdness of the story that my unconscious has been hiding from me until that moment. These discoveries aren’t always convenient. Sometimes they mean that I have to go back to the beginning and change an incident, move a plot point back 50 pages or reshape the end of the book. But for me, those instant crack-to-the-head revelations are always the most important parts of the writing process. No matter how much I plot and plan a book, I can still be dead wrong about how to make it work. On the other hand, my head crack revelations are almost always right. I had one just the other day.
I’m about to start writing Sandman Slim 3, aka The Book That Refuses To Be Titled, and while making notes about a manhunt that occurs early in book three, I realized that the search went back to ideas in book one that seemed like throwaways at the time. Now, they came back to me with a meaning I didn’t realize when I first wrote them. It’s a good example of your unconscious working with you. A friendly and well-trained unconscious can present you with clever ideas that you didn’t even know you had. Ideas probably a lot cleverer than the conscious part of your brain. And you better write them down fast. When you unconscious starts talking it usually doesn’t last long, so you better grab as much of it as you can while you can. William Burroughs talked about this feeling as the book opening up in front of him, as if it had already been written in some meta-brain and that his job was to transcribe it as quickly and accurately as possible. I suppose writers are lucky that not everyone gets to peek at the big meta-book hidden under the counter or we’d all be back dusting bookstore shelves, driving forklifts or tarring roofs (I’ve done those last two. Driving forklifts can be fun, but trust me, you never want to tar roofs. Be a stripper, set yourself up as a fake psychic or stick up liquor stores if you have to, but never tar roofs.).
For me writing is a weird combination of disciplined forethought and playing Smoke On The Water on an untuned guitar with the original WalMart strings and pickups that buzz like short-circuiting vacuum cleaners. I’m not an artist. James Joyce and Flannery O’Connor were artists. I do card tricks. Really long card tricks with violence, magic and a lot of bad words. It beats tarring roofs any day.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Why Write?
Because you want to make people feel like this.
"And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs - that song, endlessly reincarnated - born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 - same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness."
-- Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather
"And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs - that song, endlessly reincarnated - born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 - same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness."
-- Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
My stories (and a couple of books) free online
A lot of my stories and some of my novels are available online for free. Here are some links.
Browse Inside Sandman Slim
A long excerpt from my current novel Eos. Book Two, Kill The Dead, will be out in October.
Sandman Slim excerpt
Feedbooks.com
Some of my novels and stories in Stanza format.
Stanza Format Books & Stories
InfiniteMatrix
Fifty flash fictions on this very cool online magazine
Scroll down to my name
Flurb
My stories in Rudy Rucker’s online fiction zine.
The Arcades of Allah
Singing The Dead to Sleep
Trembling Blue Stars
Metrophage
The wntire novel in plain text format
Plain text Metrophage
Butcher Bird
The full text of Butcher Bird and other excellent NightShade books.
NightShade Downloads
Browse Inside Sandman Slim
A long excerpt from my current novel Eos. Book Two, Kill The Dead, will be out in October.
Sandman Slim excerpt
Feedbooks.com
Some of my novels and stories in Stanza format.
Stanza Format Books & Stories
InfiniteMatrix
Fifty flash fictions on this very cool online magazine
Scroll down to my name
Flurb
My stories in Rudy Rucker’s online fiction zine.
The Arcades of Allah
Singing The Dead to Sleep
Trembling Blue Stars
Metrophage
The wntire novel in plain text format
Plain text Metrophage
Butcher Bird
The full text of Butcher Bird and other excellent NightShade books.
NightShade Downloads
What Scares Me
Oh, and spiders, most cooked vegetables and Nancy Grace.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Photography and the Spoon from Hell
When I’m writing books I take pictures. When I’m between books I take a LOT of pictures. I like photography and have played with it on and since I could point a camera. When I was ten, I used to set up weird still lifes from toys and junk around the house—Buddhas, plastic skulls, palm trees, barbed wire, broken glass, etc.—and shoot them with my cheap piece of shit Kodak Instamatic. When I became more serious about taking pictures I bought my first digital Nikon. Later, after trying some friends’ cameras, I ditched Nikons and started shooting with different Canon models. A year or so ago, I switched back to Nikons because they’re better for low light photography.
I use digital and film cameras, depending on the subject and the feel I want. Mostly I shoot deserted spaces and people, often naked people. It’s fun and doesn’t hurt my fingers as much as smoking crack. I’ve had some gallery shows. I’ve shot for Suicide Girls, Blue Blood and a pile of long-dead erotica (okay, porn) sites. I’ve also written about Photoshop manipulation and infrared photography for Make magazine. Six of my smuttier photos will be featured in the Mammoth Book of New Erotic Photography coming out in September. I’ve even done headshots for other writers and often let them keep their clothes on. I’m not the most versatile photographer on the planet, but I’m pretty good at what I do.
Why do I like taking pictures? It’s simple. Images are the cure for words. Words are the cure for images.
I like writing and I like shooting, but at a certain point each of those things drives me out of my fucking mind and makes me want to stab, stab, stab you with the sharpened soup spoon I won from John Wayne Gacy in a blood-soaked Ranch dressing wrestling match in the crawl space under his house. That’s right. I was one of the few who got away and I have the quicklime burns to prove it. But that’s another story for another day. What I really wanted to say was that taking pictures and writing books are a kind of yin and yang thing for me, a way to keep myself balanced in this topsy turvy world. And you want me to be balanced. These pills aren’t going to last forever and when they wear off you don’t want me on your roof, hacking through the shingles and insulation with dead John’s chicken noodle shovel. This spoon is sharp enough to crack through a human skull. I’m not saying I’ve tried it, but I am saying that when UPS brings me a package, they goddam well wait for me until I get home. No notes on my door saying they tried to deliver and will try again tomorrow. No. When I get a package it’s hand delivered by a living, breathing, trembling human being in soiled pants, who leaves a urine-stained trail from the truck to my door and back again. Sure, it’s a messy way to get packages, but the smell of fear keeps the neighborhood dogs away. I don’t photograph dogs, so what good are they other than to feed to the bad UPS drivers tied up in the Arkham Asylum Naked Time Out pit in my basement until they learn their lesson?
So, to sum up, I like taking pictures because they balance out the words in my life. Someday I hope to win a Pulitzer Prize for my writing or my photos. The voices in my head tell me I will. So does the demon soup spoon and you don’t want to disappoint the spoon.
I use digital and film cameras, depending on the subject and the feel I want. Mostly I shoot deserted spaces and people, often naked people. It’s fun and doesn’t hurt my fingers as much as smoking crack. I’ve had some gallery shows. I’ve shot for Suicide Girls, Blue Blood and a pile of long-dead erotica (okay, porn) sites. I’ve also written about Photoshop manipulation and infrared photography for Make magazine. Six of my smuttier photos will be featured in the Mammoth Book of New Erotic Photography coming out in September. I’ve even done headshots for other writers and often let them keep their clothes on. I’m not the most versatile photographer on the planet, but I’m pretty good at what I do.
Why do I like taking pictures? It’s simple. Images are the cure for words. Words are the cure for images.
I like writing and I like shooting, but at a certain point each of those things drives me out of my fucking mind and makes me want to stab, stab, stab you with the sharpened soup spoon I won from John Wayne Gacy in a blood-soaked Ranch dressing wrestling match in the crawl space under his house. That’s right. I was one of the few who got away and I have the quicklime burns to prove it. But that’s another story for another day. What I really wanted to say was that taking pictures and writing books are a kind of yin and yang thing for me, a way to keep myself balanced in this topsy turvy world. And you want me to be balanced. These pills aren’t going to last forever and when they wear off you don’t want me on your roof, hacking through the shingles and insulation with dead John’s chicken noodle shovel. This spoon is sharp enough to crack through a human skull. I’m not saying I’ve tried it, but I am saying that when UPS brings me a package, they goddam well wait for me until I get home. No notes on my door saying they tried to deliver and will try again tomorrow. No. When I get a package it’s hand delivered by a living, breathing, trembling human being in soiled pants, who leaves a urine-stained trail from the truck to my door and back again. Sure, it’s a messy way to get packages, but the smell of fear keeps the neighborhood dogs away. I don’t photograph dogs, so what good are they other than to feed to the bad UPS drivers tied up in the Arkham Asylum Naked Time Out pit in my basement until they learn their lesson?
So, to sum up, I like taking pictures because they balance out the words in my life. Someday I hope to win a Pulitzer Prize for my writing or my photos. The voices in my head tell me I will. So does the demon soup spoon and you don’t want to disappoint the spoon.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Six Word Stories
I read Wired’s “six word SF story” article tonight, went nuts and decided to try some of my own.
Drunk assistant. Time machine. Oops! Dinosaurs.
Machines awaken. Take over. Same bullshit.
“Just wine,” said the unconvincing vampire.
Aliens bury dinosaur bones. Giggle. Leave.
Clones revolt. Easily found. No nipples.
Lunar ice chills first settlers’ beers.
Rover disappears. Suddenly Martians have hotrods.
We become the devices we love.
My uploaded baby gives phosphor kisses.
Sun fails. Earth freezes. Penguins win.
Nano machines dismantle civilization for laughs.
Deep inside fractals, things watch us.
Drunk assistant. Time machine. Oops! Dinosaurs.
Machines awaken. Take over. Same bullshit.
“Just wine,” said the unconvincing vampire.
Aliens bury dinosaur bones. Giggle. Leave.
Clones revolt. Easily found. No nipples.
Lunar ice chills first settlers’ beers.
Rover disappears. Suddenly Martians have hotrods.
We become the devices we love.
My uploaded baby gives phosphor kisses.
Sun fails. Earth freezes. Penguins win.
Nano machines dismantle civilization for laughs.
Deep inside fractals, things watch us.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Book Krieg!
The deadly BSCreview book tournament has started. Books go up against other books mono e mono, Ali vs Fraiser-style. The first book I'm up against is Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker. I'm sure Sanderson is a nice guy and Warbreaker is a fine book, but they must both be crushed like a taco salad left on a fat guy's Barcalounger. Please log on and vote for Sandman Slim early and often or I'll haunt your children's (or alternately, your pets') dreams.
The BSCreview link:
http://bit.ly/bmtLeB
The BSCreview link:
http://bit.ly/bmtLeB
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Lying For A Living
Writing fantasy is still strange thing for me
Even though my last three books have been pure fantasy, it’s still a strange form for me. I grew up reading science fiction and thought that was all I was ever going to write. But I hit a wall with SF and felt like I needed to make a massive change. I could never quite break out of the glum school of SF, which felt fine for cyberpunk but it was also a trap. I didn’t want to keep writing the same book over and over and it felt like I might end up doing that if I continued to write SF. When you suddenly reach the end of a road you thought would go on forever, sometimes there’s nothing left to do but put a gun to your head, pull the trigger and see what’s on the other side.
For me it was fantasy. I suppose I could’ve moved to mysteries or thrillers, but I couldn’t walk away from the more absurd parts of my imagination. In my world there always monsters in the shadows and killers under the bed. Things watch us that we can only glimpse outof the corners of our eyes.
I didn’t know much about urban fantasy when I start writing it, so I came to it pretty innocently Imagine my surprise when I got there and discovered that it was pretty crowded terrain. This wasn’t a bad thing. It’s exactly how it was for me with cyberpunk. By the time I walked into the bar, it was smoky as hell, the jukebox was shaking the windows and the crowd was spilling out the back door and dealing vasopressin in the alley.
Walking into what’s already a well-formed literary scene can be intimidating walking, but it can also give you courage. If enough interesting people got there ahead of you it means you were on the right track the whole time. After that, the trick is finding your own voice and figuring out what you have anything to contribute to that book scene. I'm still working on that one, but Sandman Slim and, to a lesser extent, Butcher Bird seem to have found a following.
I like writing fantasy on another level, too. It’s a big fuck you to everyone who lied to us and taught us that having an imagination was just for kids. That being too imaginative as an adult was irresponsible, dangerous and, above all (for guys) unmanly. This is, of course, the stupidest idea since phlogiston. Our brains aren’t what separates us from animals. There are a lot of big-brained mammals wandering the planet. What separates us from the animals is that we can make shit up. I lie for a living and I’m proud of it and any stiff upper lip grownup who can’t appreciate that can pucker up and kiss my ass. And Stephen King’s. In George Lucas’. And Spielberg’s. And JK Rowling’s. And Tolkien’s. And Gaiman’s. And on and on. Every one of these writers and filmmakers move an assload product and it ain’t just to kids. You see, regular people haven’t lost their imaginations, they’re just afraid to use the word. Cool. I can live with that. Forget the urban fantasy thing. Call me Dark Noir or Mystery Plus. Hell, call me the Partridge Family goes Texas Chainsaw Massacre for all I care. All that's important is that everybody keeps cranking out the strange stuff. All that's important is to keep making shit up.
Even though my last three books have been pure fantasy, it’s still a strange form for me. I grew up reading science fiction and thought that was all I was ever going to write. But I hit a wall with SF and felt like I needed to make a massive change. I could never quite break out of the glum school of SF, which felt fine for cyberpunk but it was also a trap. I didn’t want to keep writing the same book over and over and it felt like I might end up doing that if I continued to write SF. When you suddenly reach the end of a road you thought would go on forever, sometimes there’s nothing left to do but put a gun to your head, pull the trigger and see what’s on the other side.
For me it was fantasy. I suppose I could’ve moved to mysteries or thrillers, but I couldn’t walk away from the more absurd parts of my imagination. In my world there always monsters in the shadows and killers under the bed. Things watch us that we can only glimpse outof the corners of our eyes.
I didn’t know much about urban fantasy when I start writing it, so I came to it pretty innocently Imagine my surprise when I got there and discovered that it was pretty crowded terrain. This wasn’t a bad thing. It’s exactly how it was for me with cyberpunk. By the time I walked into the bar, it was smoky as hell, the jukebox was shaking the windows and the crowd was spilling out the back door and dealing vasopressin in the alley.
Walking into what’s already a well-formed literary scene can be intimidating walking, but it can also give you courage. If enough interesting people got there ahead of you it means you were on the right track the whole time. After that, the trick is finding your own voice and figuring out what you have anything to contribute to that book scene. I'm still working on that one, but Sandman Slim and, to a lesser extent, Butcher Bird seem to have found a following.
I like writing fantasy on another level, too. It’s a big fuck you to everyone who lied to us and taught us that having an imagination was just for kids. That being too imaginative as an adult was irresponsible, dangerous and, above all (for guys) unmanly. This is, of course, the stupidest idea since phlogiston. Our brains aren’t what separates us from animals. There are a lot of big-brained mammals wandering the planet. What separates us from the animals is that we can make shit up. I lie for a living and I’m proud of it and any stiff upper lip grownup who can’t appreciate that can pucker up and kiss my ass. And Stephen King’s. In George Lucas’. And Spielberg’s. And JK Rowling’s. And Tolkien’s. And Gaiman’s. And on and on. Every one of these writers and filmmakers move an assload product and it ain’t just to kids. You see, regular people haven’t lost their imaginations, they’re just afraid to use the word. Cool. I can live with that. Forget the urban fantasy thing. Call me Dark Noir or Mystery Plus. Hell, call me the Partridge Family goes Texas Chainsaw Massacre for all I care. All that's important is that everybody keeps cranking out the strange stuff. All that's important is to keep making shit up.
A Little About Sandman Slim
A book can come from anything. Sandman Slim came from a sentence in an old notebook, "A hitman from Hell." That's it. He wasn't named Stark back then and he wasn't alive. He was just another damned soul, but one who found a way out of the Abyss. When that felt like something we'd seen too many times before, I decided to torture Stark by sending him to Hell alive, keeping him alive and sending him home alive, but ratfuck crazy. Everything else came out of that basic premise. Before writing the book, I ended up with a fat spiral bound book and piles of Post Its describing Stark's world and the people in it. It's what TV and movie people call a Bible. I’ll post a picture of the notebook when I get a chance.
I knew the opening of Sandman Slim long before I wrote it. The first time I tried to write it, it didn’t work. The words, Stark and the story just lay there on the page like dead fish in a meat market window. Those first few experimental openings were all third person and past tense. Even though I generally don't trust first person, I tried it and the story started to work. But it was still limp and boneless. Purely out of frustration, I rewrote the opening in present tense. Suddenly, the gears started spinning and everything worked. What was missing from those first tries was Stark's voice. I realized that the books weren't novels so much as shaggy dog stories, all narrated in real time by Stark himself.
In the movie version of this story, we'd cut to me pounding out the novel in record time with Eye of the Tiger blasting in the background. In fact, the book was hard to write and the second Sandman Slim book, Kill The Dead, was even harder. Each book was a new experiment and that made each one difficult in a whole new way. Fortunately, I have a terrific editor, Diana Gill, who made great suggestions and kept me sane through both books, and I expect that she'll have to do the same when I start the third book soon.
One thing that's made the books difficult but, I hope, interesting, is that each one is a different form. Sandman Slim is deliberately an old school American crime novel, the kind that you could see in paperbacks from the Fifties through the Seventies. I always think of Sandman Slim as my Jim Thompson/Richard Stark novel (Yes, Stark is named after Donald Westlake's most famous pen name.). Sandman Slim isn't a mystery, no matter how many times people compare it to Raymond Chandler. How do I know? Because Kill The Dead is a mystery novel. There's murder, clues and a search for a killer. The whole hot buffet lunch of old detective novels, but with angels, evisceration, the devil, porn and zombies. Basically, everything that makes LA fun.
The third Sandman Slim book, currently titled I Have No Goddam Idea What To Call This One, will be more of a traditional fantasy quest. It will take place in this world and at least one other. I don't want to say much about it because Kill The Dead isn’t even out and because the story needs to get water boarded a couple of more times before it cooperates. That's right, the Jack Bauer school of editing. If your story refuses to keep moving, you just attach a car battery to its jewel pouch and order some KFC. By the time your extra crispy wings arrive, the story will be crying and puking Pulitzer Prizes all over your office floor. Trust me. That's how JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books and I heard that they've done pretty well.
I knew the opening of Sandman Slim long before I wrote it. The first time I tried to write it, it didn’t work. The words, Stark and the story just lay there on the page like dead fish in a meat market window. Those first few experimental openings were all third person and past tense. Even though I generally don't trust first person, I tried it and the story started to work. But it was still limp and boneless. Purely out of frustration, I rewrote the opening in present tense. Suddenly, the gears started spinning and everything worked. What was missing from those first tries was Stark's voice. I realized that the books weren't novels so much as shaggy dog stories, all narrated in real time by Stark himself.
In the movie version of this story, we'd cut to me pounding out the novel in record time with Eye of the Tiger blasting in the background. In fact, the book was hard to write and the second Sandman Slim book, Kill The Dead, was even harder. Each book was a new experiment and that made each one difficult in a whole new way. Fortunately, I have a terrific editor, Diana Gill, who made great suggestions and kept me sane through both books, and I expect that she'll have to do the same when I start the third book soon.
One thing that's made the books difficult but, I hope, interesting, is that each one is a different form. Sandman Slim is deliberately an old school American crime novel, the kind that you could see in paperbacks from the Fifties through the Seventies. I always think of Sandman Slim as my Jim Thompson/Richard Stark novel (Yes, Stark is named after Donald Westlake's most famous pen name.). Sandman Slim isn't a mystery, no matter how many times people compare it to Raymond Chandler. How do I know? Because Kill The Dead is a mystery novel. There's murder, clues and a search for a killer. The whole hot buffet lunch of old detective novels, but with angels, evisceration, the devil, porn and zombies. Basically, everything that makes LA fun.
The third Sandman Slim book, currently titled I Have No Goddam Idea What To Call This One, will be more of a traditional fantasy quest. It will take place in this world and at least one other. I don't want to say much about it because Kill The Dead isn’t even out and because the story needs to get water boarded a couple of more times before it cooperates. That's right, the Jack Bauer school of editing. If your story refuses to keep moving, you just attach a car battery to its jewel pouch and order some KFC. By the time your extra crispy wings arrive, the story will be crying and puking Pulitzer Prizes all over your office floor. Trust me. That's how JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books and I heard that they've done pretty well.
Monday, March 15, 2010
AN IMPROVISED AND HIGHLY RANDOM INTRODUCTION
I’m a writer. I’m a photographer. I want to be better at both.
I wear glasses. I’m 5’ 11” and gained weight while writing my last two books. I’m planning on doing something about that.
I was born in New York. I still think that it’s the greatest city in the world. I’ve also lived in Houston, LA, Oakland and San Francisco.
I don’t own any regular shoes, just sneakers and boots. Sometimes I forget that I have all these tattoos and am startled when I see my reflection while stepping out of the shower.
My neck and left hand are twitchy from an old motorcycle accident. My left knee is screwed up from kenpo.
My knuckles are tattooed but it’s with white ink, so you’ll never notice.
Some of my blood is Arab. Some is Persian. Most of it is bootlegging white trash.
I’ve seen rats carpeting the streets of Kathmandu, a sloth shitting from a branch over my head in Costa Rica and a goat walking a tightrope in a little town south of Bangkok. A guy stuck a cobra in my face in Marrakech. I gave him $5 to take it away. Money well spent.
I believe in god and the devil and I don’t believe in anything.
I hope I get to fly in space before I die, but I doubt I will.
I like cats better than dogs. I don’t understand why people have spiders or snakes as pets. I think it might be like living with an alien, which could be interesting but is probably tedious.
I think that guys are basically idiots, so it's our job to at least try to amuse women.
I think that complexity/chaos theory is prettier than any poem.
I’d like to write more comics. I’d like to write an original movie and have the finished product not suck.
I once punched a horse that was trying to buck off my then girlfriend and her niece. The horse didn’t go down like the one in Blazing Saddles, but it didn’t try to buck off anyone else that day.
Yes, I’ve seen an autopsy.
I hate spiders, small spaces and asparagus.
I’ve learned that if someone asks if you want to ride in the ox cart to town, tell them no. You can walk faster than any damn ox cart.
I miss smoking.
I like guns. I like shooting them and owning them. I like my friends’ guns and am happy they have them. But I don’t want you to have guns because you might be an asshole. I’m a hypocrite.
I'm friends with a lot of my exes and I like it that way.
My brain was broken at a young age by seeing Duchamp and Dali paintings and hearing Ussachevsky’s electronic music. My mother and I didn’t always get along, but I thank her for exposing me to those things.
I think it should be legal to punch anyone wearing a watch that costs more than a used car.
I used to think that good music was the greatest thing in the world, but now I think it’s movies.
I believe that anesthetics and V8 engines are humanity’s greatest inventions.
Frankenstein is very scary. Dracula is pretty scary. The Wolf Man is a whiny little bitch who can kiss my ass.
I believe in the power of imagination. I’d rather tell a good story than the absolute truth. Save the truth for depositions.
Even if you don’t believe everything I’ve told you here, trust me, I did punch the horse.
I wear glasses. I’m 5’ 11” and gained weight while writing my last two books. I’m planning on doing something about that.
I was born in New York. I still think that it’s the greatest city in the world. I’ve also lived in Houston, LA, Oakland and San Francisco.
I don’t own any regular shoes, just sneakers and boots. Sometimes I forget that I have all these tattoos and am startled when I see my reflection while stepping out of the shower.
My neck and left hand are twitchy from an old motorcycle accident. My left knee is screwed up from kenpo.
My knuckles are tattooed but it’s with white ink, so you’ll never notice.
Some of my blood is Arab. Some is Persian. Most of it is bootlegging white trash.
I’ve seen rats carpeting the streets of Kathmandu, a sloth shitting from a branch over my head in Costa Rica and a goat walking a tightrope in a little town south of Bangkok. A guy stuck a cobra in my face in Marrakech. I gave him $5 to take it away. Money well spent.
I believe in god and the devil and I don’t believe in anything.
I hope I get to fly in space before I die, but I doubt I will.
I like cats better than dogs. I don’t understand why people have spiders or snakes as pets. I think it might be like living with an alien, which could be interesting but is probably tedious.
I think that guys are basically idiots, so it's our job to at least try to amuse women.
I think that complexity/chaos theory is prettier than any poem.
I’d like to write more comics. I’d like to write an original movie and have the finished product not suck.
I once punched a horse that was trying to buck off my then girlfriend and her niece. The horse didn’t go down like the one in Blazing Saddles, but it didn’t try to buck off anyone else that day.
Yes, I’ve seen an autopsy.
I hate spiders, small spaces and asparagus.
I’ve learned that if someone asks if you want to ride in the ox cart to town, tell them no. You can walk faster than any damn ox cart.
I miss smoking.
I like guns. I like shooting them and owning them. I like my friends’ guns and am happy they have them. But I don’t want you to have guns because you might be an asshole. I’m a hypocrite.
I'm friends with a lot of my exes and I like it that way.
My brain was broken at a young age by seeing Duchamp and Dali paintings and hearing Ussachevsky’s electronic music. My mother and I didn’t always get along, but I thank her for exposing me to those things.
I think it should be legal to punch anyone wearing a watch that costs more than a used car.
I used to think that good music was the greatest thing in the world, but now I think it’s movies.
I believe that anesthetics and V8 engines are humanity’s greatest inventions.
Frankenstein is very scary. Dracula is pretty scary. The Wolf Man is a whiny little bitch who can kiss my ass.
I believe in the power of imagination. I’d rather tell a good story than the absolute truth. Save the truth for depositions.
Even if you don’t believe everything I’ve told you here, trust me, I did punch the horse.
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