An Interview With Chris Bauer, Author of I Heard You Paint Cowboys

 I became aware of Chris Bauer’s work at a Noir at the Bar event at the Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity conference several years ago. His flash piece never fail to capture the audience and he doesn’t confine himself to a particular niche or genre.

Besides being an outstanding writer, Chris is a hell of a nice guy, as evidenced by the fact he’s from Philadelphia and I still interviewed him for the blog.

His new book is I Heard You Paint Cowboys.

One Bite at a Time: Hard to believe this is your first time on the blog, long as we’ve known each other and as much as I enjoy your work. Let’s start with the obvious question that may be on readers’ minds: where did you get the title I Heard You Paint Cowboys?

Chris Bauer: It’s a compromise, with a significant story behind it. It’s a thriller that began the submission process with the title America is a Gun, which is the title of a poem by UK poet Brian Bilston who, at the time, wasn’t as popular as he is now. (He’s outstanding; a very visual, observational, warm poet; people should check him out. He’s been dubbed the Poet Laureate of the internet, although he might have come up with that title himself. Readers can’t believe much of what he says, but in reality they should believe all of it.) I felt the America, etc. title captured the dilemma the U.S. faces with its proliferation of guns, plus it is a majorly “in your face,” “poke the bear” kind of title, and I like poking the bear. I contacted Mr. Bilston to see if he might give me permission to include his poem in the novel. He shocked me by a) responding to me, and b) saying yes. Fast forward: my agent at the time said nope, no way, the America, etc. title is too in your face, plus she wouldn’t shop the book because the topic’s too controversial. Boo-hiss; I’m no longer her client. Then came some interest from Independent Publisher Number One, folks who have published a number of my books. They eventually also said nope, you’ll piss off half your potential readers, plus we’d rather not publish it, it’s a tad too controversial, etc. Along came Independent Publisher Number Two who said we’d love to publish it but not with that title, again, too in your face, so what else you got? The first title that popped into my head—true fact—was I Heard you Paint Cowboys. It came from having recently seen Scorsese’s megahit movie “The Irishman,” based on Charles Brandt’s NYT bestselling true crime account book titled I Heard You Paint Houses, about organized crime hitman Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran from Philly, someone who claimed he offed Jimmy Hoffa. Secondly, the paint-art aspect works (art theft is a major plotline), the cowboys aspect works (a 1916 painting by N. C. Wyeth, “Wild Bill Hickok at Cards,” is heavily featured), the Philly connection works, and it’s not a stretch that the organized crime aspect works as well, when trying to categorize the real-life relationship the gun lobby has with gun manufacturers. Even though the title changed, the “America is a Gun” poem is still in there. So I’d love it if some of Mr. Bilston’s 316,000 Facebook “friends” would check out the novel, do you hear me, Brian Bilston FB community?

OBAAT: Counsel Fungo isn’t just an unusual name; she’s an unusual character. Tell us a little about her and why she is the way she is.

CB: I introduced Counsel Fungo in Binge Killer, released 2019, a rather violent novel where she chases a terminally ill killer to a small town in upstate Pennsylvania. Fungo is her married name; she kept it after her divorce. (I like the sound of it: “fun-go,” a type of baseball bat, and I love baseball. A different enough surname that maybe readers won’t forget it.) Trivia/easter egg stuff coming, so pay attention. She has an older brother named Judge Drury, the protagonist of the novel Jane’s Baby, a political thriller of mine. Backstory is their U.S. senator father wanted them both to become lawyers and follow in his footsteps, so he named his first born Judge, his sister Counsel. Other quirks: They both have Tourette syndrome, they both entered law enforcement, both became bounty hunters, and both have working dog partners. One day they will work together. The author hasn’t found the right case for them to work on yet.

OBAAT: What inspired you to write I Heard You Paint Cowboys?

CB: A combination of things. I wrote a horrifically gruesome short story titled “Kitchen Sink” in 2013, where a marginalized character (born female, identifies as male) is caught up in a gruesome crime where its multiple victims’ funeral arrangements were handled by a restaurant’s garbage disposer. A few of my short stories, published and unpublished, have become fodder for longer pieces. Second, I was intrigued by a piece I read on the early-nineteenth-century theft of the Mona Lisa and the search for it while it was missing. Third, I wanted to address the proliferation of civilian-owned assault-style weapons in the U.S. As a fugitive recovery agent, protagonist Counsel Fungo is not against the Second Amendment; she just wants no more assault-style long guns to enter the civilian population, and she’d rather much of that existing semi-automatic population be destroyed. Fourth, there are suggestions in the novel that direct law-abiding gunowners away from the current Number One gun-lobby gunowners association, not be named here, toward more benevolent gunowner groups that might be willing to tell their legislators to change the way people can obtain guns: better background checks, address the gun show loopholes, and are anti-assault-style weapons. And one suggestion I’d really like to see take hold: have these organizations acknowledge prospective victims of mass shootings and gun violence not simply with “thoughts and prayers,” but by having a portion of their membership dues specifically earmarked for their families. The newer, nicer, fictional, gunowner group the novel showcases does all these things.

OBAAT: You have enough novels under your belt now to have a pretty good idea of what process works for you. Describe that to our readers.

CB: I like writing thrillers, crime-type novels, and I’ve written horror and paranormal. I call myself a plantser, a “pantser-planner” combo. First there’s the germ of the idea, maybe a wrong that needs to be made right (gun lobby interference), or an oddity impacting common understanding of a controversial circumstance (Roe v Wade, highlighted in Jane’s Baby: the real-life Jane Roe did have the baby she wanted to abort, something that many people hadn’t realized), or the little known world of crime scene cleaning (the Blessid Trauma Crime Scene Cleaners series: who cleans up the scene after the cops leave?). Then comes creating the characters. I like making them quirky, with unique things about them to make them interesting (at least to me). Counsel Fungo has Tourette’s. “Wump” Hozer, my beloved Catholic church custodian in Scars on the Face of God, is an ex-con who earned his nickname from the sound a crowbar makes when it hits a person’s head. Max Fend, the creation of USA Today bestselling author Andrew Watts and a protagonist in the Maximum Risk thriller series, is a benevolent billionaire “playboy” who does piece work for U.S. security agencies in exotic locales.

Second, I outline the entire story chapter by chapter, working toward a climax that I think a reader would enjoy, creating conflict, a subplot or two, and twists. I’ll do the general plot and take a multiple-twisty way to get what I hope will be a satisfying, raucous conclusion. Then I sit down and write the damn thing, shooting for anywhere from 70K-90K words, or roughly 275 to 300+ pages. I’ve written novels in as little as 4.5 months and as long as six years (my first).

OBAAT: Who, or what, do you consider to be your primary influences? Could be a writer, book, movie, TV show, director. Whatever you feel has made you the writer you are today.

CB: When asked, I always highlight one novelist first: Steve Shilstone, who penned a wonderful baseball book titled Chance, published 2000. He now writes fantasy and poetry, but the voice of his unnamed narrator in Chance entertained me immensely, and it helped me find my own. Chance contains outstanding odd characters, great dialogue, and it all plays off the crazy, unique personalities that populated organized baseball in the twentieth century. There’s also Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem, which provided great conflict in the organized crime environment by way of an extremely quirky Tourette’s-afflicted character named Lionel Essrog. Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum bounty-hunter character inspired me to write a novel about a female fugitive recovery agent; Counsel Fungo now has two books about her. Carl Hiaasen does it for me, too; excellent nutjob characters, plenty of humor. Go Carl.

OBAAT: The classic final question: What are you working on now?

CB: Working on what could be a highly controversial series that crisscrosses political satire with various genres. One feature done, more in the hopper. I’m also invested in producing a post-WWII thriller that follows a 1940s Philly police detective through his Navy enlistment, his assignment to the Pacific theater, his survival in a Japanese POW camp, then his post-war Office of Naval Intelligence work in nuclear-ravaged, Allies-occupied Japan, where he needs to solve a few violent crimes perpetrated by Allied troops. Fun.

Thanks for having me on, Dana. A pleasure reading your blog, and a pleasure being on it. Readers can find me at chrisbauerauthor.net and on Facebook (cgbauer), Instagram (cntbauer1), Twitter/X (cgbauer), Bluesky (realchrisbauer), and a tiny presence on tiktok (chrisbauerauthor101).