Twenty Questions With Dan O’Shea

Daniel O’Shea is a Chicago-area writer. His first thriller, Penance, was published by Exhibit A in April; its successor, Greed is due in February 2014. Drawing on Chicago’s settings and history, the novels explore the city’s history of corruption, but with a national, even international flavor. Old School, a collection of short fiction, was published by Snubnose Press. (Editor’s Note: I know of no better writer of flash fiction.)

His Exhibit A bio states, “Dan would be a handsome gent if he could just stop breaking his nose.” His sartorial splendor more than makes up for it.

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about Greed.

Daniel O’Shea: Greed is my second Chicago novel. (Although the good folks at Exhibit A call it my second John Lynch novel, ‘cause I guess a series is supposed to center around a character. But, like Penance – my debut – it’s really a pretty ensemble cast, so I think about them as my Chicago novels.) It starts with a guy named Nick Hardin – former Marine, former French Foreign Legion – who’s been knocking around Africa for a couple decades, has fallen on some hard times and is looking for an exit strategy. So he steals some diamonds from some bad guys and heads home to Chicago to sell them to the one guy he knows with the contacts to move a mess of undocumented rocks.

Things get complicated. The night Hardin hits town, his contact is murdered. The bad guys, some Al Qaeda types, want their diamonds back and put their #1 trigger jockey on Hardin’s tale. A narcissistic movie star who has a real beef with Hardin sees him in town, calls up a mob contact and puts a hit on him. And then there’s this Mexican drug lord. See, the reason Hardin left the Marines for the Foreign Legion in the first place was he’d killed a punk in a street beef, and the Mexican drug lord happens to be the punk’s older brother. Turns out he holds a grudge. So when Hardin turns up back in town, the drug lord joins the party.

Which leads to bodies. Lots of bodies.

John Lynch and the Chicago cops start trying to sort out the bodies and end up with a hairball of conflicting clues that don’t make any sense. Meanwhile, a guy named Munroe, who’s a free-radical intelligence fixer for the powers that be in DC, hears that Al Qaeda has lost better than $100 million in diamonds – which they usually put on the move when they have an operation to finance. He starts wondering what Al Qaeda might be up to that requires that kind of financing, and whether it has anything to do with a former US Army biological weapons expert who had some very scary ideas and who just turned up dead.

Hilarity ensues.

OBAAT: Where did you get this idea, and what made it worth developing for you? (Notice I didn’t ask “Where do you get your ideas?” I was careful to ask where you got this idea.)

DO: Most of it I just made up as I went along. When I write a book, I just need a place to start. Hardin was what I started with this time. I’d read an article about this ex-military type who’s second career was as a fixer for TV news crews. They want to get into the hell-hole of the week and get some film in the can without their reporter getting his throat cut and without having to buy their equipment back from the local warlord for ten bucks on the dollar. So they hire him.

I’d also read an article about the evolution of the blood diamond trade in West Africa. Seems ethnic Lebanese have played a huge role in the West African diamond trade since forever. Seems that, with the Liberian civil war over, bad guys looking to move black market stones needed a new market. Seems that, since diamonds are small, valuable, and portable, Al Qaeda found diamonds to be a handy way to move money. So they used Lebanese contacts to muscle in on the blood diamond business.

That’s what I started with. A character and a situation I found interesting. Just went with it from there.

OBAAT: How long did it take to write Greed, start to finish?

DO: I wrote the first draft over a couple of months a few years ago. The problem being that it was written as the second in a series and I hadn’t sold Penance yet. Came close once, though. A pretty big New York house almost bit, but they had some specific objections. Being new and stupid, I figured hell, I’ll just re-write Penance, we’ll sell it to the big New York house and live happily ever after. The re-write changed the story quite a bit as it turned out. And, of course, the big New York house passed anyway. Problem being I wrote Greed as the follow up to the re-written version of Penance. Exhibit A bought the original version. So I had to reverse engineer the draft to work with that. That took, roughly, forever.

OBAAT: What’s the back story on the main character or characters?

DO: Sort of gave you Hardin’s story above. John Lynch is a second generation Chicago cop, pretty well connected guy, knows lots of people, knows how the city works, doesn’t approve of a lot of it. Munroe’s a guy that started out as a CIA asset back during Viet Nam and has been unofficially coloring outside the lines since the Church Committee decided the CIA needed to actually play by the roles back in the mid-1970s.

OBAAT: In what time and place is Greed set? How important is the setting to the book as a whole?

DO: Present day, mostly in the Chicago area. Chicago plays its role, but is not quite as important to this novel as it was in Penance. I’ve already got an idea working for my third Chicago novel that will be much more influenced by the city and its history.

OBAAT: How did Greed come to be published?

DO: Greed is book #2 in the two-book deal that crime über agent Stacia Decker squeezed out of Exhibit A.

OBAAT: What kinds of stories do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors, in or out of that area?

DO: I read all sorts of stuff, fiction and non-fiction. In the crime genre, on the big-name side, I love James Lee Burke and John Sandford. Also love John Le Carre. But every time I turn around I find somebody new that’s great. Just read Sean Chercover’s Trinity Game and I’ll be wanting more of him. Just read Duane Swierczynski’s Fun And Games and I’ll be wanting more from him. Same with Reed Farrell Coleman and Gun Church. Ask me that any given week and I’d probably throw out some different names.

Outside crime, always have loved Graham Greene, Saul Bellow, Updike, lots of the usual suspects.

OBAAT: Who are your greatest influences?

DO: I’ve never known how to answer that. Everything goes in the hopper and out comes the sausage. Not sure there’s a way to explain it beyond that.

OBAAT: Do you outline or fly by the seat of you pants? Do you even wear pants when you write?

DO: I wish I could work from an outline. It would save a lot of time. But it doesn’t work for me. In fact, any time I’ve tried to plan anything more than a chapter or two in advance, it seems like my characters actively rebel. So I just make it up as I go.

OBAAT: Give us an idea of your process. Do you edit as you go? Throw anything into a first draft knowing the hard work is in the revisions? Something in between?

DO: I try to clean things up as I go. Don’t usually need to do a ton of copy editing after the fact, but, because I’m winging it, whole story lines get tossed out or baked in occasionally. If something like that happens, I tend to go back and get things to line up again before I move forward. Obviously, because of the way Greed evolved, there was a ton of revision work.

OBAAT: If you could give a novice writer a single piece of advice, what would it be?

DO: Write. Just sit down and write. I fucked around for years and didn’t. Really wish I could go back two or three decades and kick myself in the ass for all the wasted time.

OBAAT: Favorite activity when you’re not reading or writing.

DO: *sits here scratching head* Ummm… Jesus, I need a life.

OBAAT: Which do you take to bed at night, the money earned or the good review?

DO: I’ll have to take the reviews at this point. I have more reviews from writing than money. And I don’t have that many reviews.

OBAAT: Would you stop writing if someone paid you enough money so you’d never have to work again, on the condition you could also never write again?

DO: Supposed to say never, right? That I’d die a tortured soul? That my neglected muse would claw its way out of my chest like that alien creature if I didn’t bleed onto the page? In reality? I’d like to think I’d say no, but it might depend on the number.

OBAAT: If you were just starting out, which would you prefer: 1. Form your own indie publishing house and put your work out in paper and e-book yourself? 2. Go with a small or medium traditional house that offers very little or no advance, a royalty that is only a fraction of what you'd get on your own, and also makes no promise of any type of publicity push, keeping in mind that you also will lose the publishing rights for a period, sometimes indefinitely? 3. Go with a Big Six or legacy publisher that offers a larger advance, legitimate review possibilities, entrance to industry literary awards, and exposure on the shelves of brick and mortar stores. Pick one and say why.

DO: This is the kind of stuff I don’t think about. I know myself well enough to know I’d never get around to all the crap I’d have to handle to self-publish effectively, so that’s out. I have a great agent who does think about this stuff, and does so knowledgeably. I’ll do the writing, Stacia can decide what to do with it.

OBAAT: Beer, mixed drinks, or hard liquor?

DO: Yes.

OBAAT: Baseball or football?

DO: Yes.

OBAAT: What question have you always wanted an interviewer to ask, but they never do?

DO: I got nothing.

OBAAT: What’s the answer?

DO: Something verbose and pretentious.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

DO: Well, there’s this Bartholomew Daniels guy that I’m pretty close to. He also got a two-book deal with Exhibit A for this weird idea about turning William Shakespeare into an unwilling Elizabethan private dick. The first of those, Rotten At the Heart, hits the shelves in March. I’m kind busy helping him with the second one.

After that, as I said, I’ve got a start on Chicago novel #3, but I’m also itching to dive into a very different, much smaller, more intimate story that would be more in line with some of my short fiction.

As you see, ain’t no flies on Dan. Thanks a million for taking time out during the holidays to sit for Twenty Questions.

Old School

I’m on record as not being a fan of neo-noir stories in general. Too often the depravity of the setting is the reason for the story. The author revels in it, finds humor in it, likes rolling around in it, and, in so doing, forgets there needs to be at least one character for readers to care about, even if we don’t like him. I don’t read much of it anymore, though I’m still a fan of modern stories written with traditional noir sensibilities. Ray Banks comes to mind. There are others.

Like Dan O’Shea.

O’Shea’s current anthology, Old School, has several stories I’d read before. That doesn’t mean I skipped over them. His balance of darkness, humor, and dark humor blends with characters who might well be real people to create stories that straddle the traditional noir/neo-noir border with confidence.

I first became aware of his writing through Patti Abbott’s flash fiction challenges, and his flash pieces are first rate. The longer stories also bear close scrutiny. The dialog rests well on the ear, there is exactly as much description as is needed, and  the situations, while dire, never show the reverse (perverse?) deus ex machina used by too many purveyors of neo-noir to make things worse than they could reasonably be expected ever to become. Every O’Shea situation leaves you thinking, “I can see that happening,” which makes what does happen even more powerful or unsettling.

Old School is three bucks on Amazon. A little pricier than Worst Enemies at $2.99—he’s clearly aiming at the carriage trade-- but it’s quality stuff, well worth the time of anyone who likes a good story, well told..

Nature vs. Nurture in Writing

Dan O’Shea has another thought-provoking post on his blog today, referring to posts by John Hornor and Chuck Wendig about how much of writing is talent alone, and how much of it can be taught. (There’s a lot more to their comments than that; go check them out. I’ll wait.)

I commented on the other blogs, but it occurred to me that my two comments tied well into a single blog post and, since I haven’t posted anything for about a week, I might as well get off my ass and do it.

Stephen King has my favorite take on how much one’s writing can be improved in his excellent book, On Writing. (Recommended for all writers, regardless of style or genre.) I don’t have the book handy, so I’ll paraphrase (while plagiarizing my comment on Dan’s blog):

There are four levels of writer: Incompetent, Competent, Good, and Great.

An Incompetent writer is, well, incompetent. Not much you can do with him.

A Competent writer can, with work and guidance, become a good writer.

A Good writer can, with sloth and dissipation, become a Competent writer. He cannot, however, become a Great writer, only a better writer.

Great writers are born. They can, however, piss that greatness away and become Good, or merely Competent. We all know people who have done this.

Greatness is that unteachable spark called talent, or a gift, or God’s Lips to our ear. Everything else can be learned. Incompetence is like anti-talent: no matter how hard you try, you’re just not wired that way. You’re never going to get it.

I suspect it’s not just writing. Every field is like this. I used to be a musician, and it’s certainly true there.

Can anything truly be taught? The best teacher I ever had says no one can teach you anything. Everything is learned through a combination of trial and error and rote. The teacher—if he’s good—is a guide. He uses his experience to suggest paths most likely to lead to success, and cautions against dead ends. He encourages, but not unrealistically.

So I’d say yes, writing can be learned, though it cannot be taught any more than anything else can. Which is still plenty.

Sanctuary

Dan O'Shea has a flash fiction challenge over at his blog, Going Ballistic. My contribution is below; hop on over to Dan's blog for links to the rest.

SANCTUARY

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

"How long has it been since your last confession?"

Pause. "Long time. Twenty years, anyway."

"And now you've done something so bad you feel you have to come in?"

Another pause. "No, it's not that. There's something I'm going to do. Nothing bad. I just want to, you know, clear my conscience."

"What do you want to confess?"

An even longer pause. "I've done a lot of bad things. I never hurt anyone that didn't deserve it. I kinda fell into things and, well, I mean, times were tough and I was doing what I had to do. Pretty soon you're working for people you shouldn't be spending time with, and—look, I ain't proud of any of this, but I was making a living. A good living."

Late at night, the settling of a beam ricocheted through the empty church.

"That's pretty vague for a confession. If you're done, that is."

"This is hard to talk about."

"It's supposed to be. Contrition is the first step toward absolution."

Silence. The clearing of a throat. "You're saying I have to be sorry for what I did?"

"Going to confession doesn't hand you a Get Out of Hell Free card. Your sins can't be forgiven unless you repent."

"I wish I never did any of that stuff. Does that count?"

"Any of what stuff?"

"Jesus Christ, Father, do I have to spell it out for you?"

"Watch your mouth, and yes, you do."

A deep breath let out through the nose. Shifting feet. "I don't know where to start."

"Let's start with why you're here tonight."

"What do you think I came here for? I came to confess."

"Why tonight, of all nights? You said you haven't been to confession for at least twenty years. What's special about tonight?"

"I'm in trouble. In case things go wrong I want to be in a—what do you call it?—a state of grace."

"Are you in danger?"

"Yeah."

"Because of the things you came to confess?"

"Yes. No. It's complicated."

"You said before you were going to do something, but it wasn't bad. Is that why you came now?"

"In a way. Yeah, I guess." He blew his nose. "I said before I worked for people I shouldn't a spent time with. There's this guy, Mike Mannarino. People call him The Hook. Anyway, I started doing little things for him and he liked me. At least I thought he liked me. Worked for the guy twenty years, then I find out he sent me to do a job might be a set up, you know, to be sure everything was jake before he really committed to it. Like I was contrary in a mineshaft, or something.

"So he was right, and the job was screwed up and I got pinched. He either forgot or didn't care I had some things over my head, I couldn't take a fall. The cops bring me in, keep me there almost a week, I can't make bail. Talk to me every day, twice a day, and I stand up the whole time. I wouldn't tell them if they asked me who the quarterback for the Steelers was. They offered me deals. New life. All charges dropped. Uh-uh. I'm looking at five years and I don't say a word."

"Loyalty is admirable, even when it's misplaced."

"Loyalty, huh? Let me tell you about loyalty. This Mannarino, he bailed me out this afternoon."

"Didn't you want him to?"

"Yeah, a week ago. Today, maybe two hours after I'm out, I'm leaving Big Boy and someone takes a run at me. Like the word's out I talked, or something."

"You said you didn't."

"I didn't. That don't appear to be the word that got out."

"It could just be a misunderstanding."

"Guns don't misunderstand, Father. What I think happened is, Joe Rienstra let slip what happened that night I got picked up. He got a case hanging over him, too, and I was what they call collateral damage. Joe got to Mike first, with me in jail, and told him I talked, that's why bail was so low. Which it wasn't, or I woulda bonded myself out."

"I don't understand how any of this brought you here tonight."

"Because I ain't safe anyplace else, Father. I want to get good with God, then tomorrow I'm going to make the deal. Fuck Mike Mannarino, and fuck Joey Rienstra. I never did anything but stand up and this is what I get. I want my soul clean in case they get to me before I can get protection."

"I understand. I think your willingness to make things right with the police counts as contrition. Say a Hail Mary for me, and I'll pray for you."

"Just one Hail Mary? Thanks, Father. That seems pretty light."

"It's all you got time for, you rat bastard." Two shots from a .22 sounded like not much more than a couple of hard hand claps in the hollowness of the church.

Stretch Dolewicz eased himself out of the booth. Not squeamish, but sitting in a confessional for forty-five minutes with a dead priest who thought he was a hero not his idea of a good time. And now The Hook would want him to take care of Rienstra.

Fucking job.

Shoeless Joe

Dan O'Shea has a flash fiction challenge going on at his blog, Going Ballistic. Check out the links for the premise and other stories. Mine is below.

SHOELESS JOE

Only in America do you take off your shoes. I was in Mexico last year, standing in line for a flight, and the guy comes running up to me, practically laughing. “Señor, por favor, there is no need to remove sus zapatas. That is only in America.” Made me feel like the only Protestant at Mass, standing or sitting when I wasn’t supposed to. Parents smacked small children for laughing at the ignorant gringo.

So this time I was getting on a plane in Miami and I do have to take off my shoes. I bent over to take them off and the woman in front of me was wearing an ankle bracelet. Those things are sexy, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because only women with nice ankles ever wear them, which I wish some of those who wear belly shirts would think of once in a while. My eye moved up to her calf, which was time well spent. She had knee dimples, which I also think are sexy as hell. By the time I took a peek at her thighs she had her shoes off and caught me. I looked away, though she didn’t seem to mind. A gentleman’s gotta show some class.

I hit the bar until they called for boarding. Southwest flight, no reserved seats, everyone lined up like we’re catching helicopters out of Saigon, and there she was, in my group. Shorts exactly long enough to hide her cheeks and one of those things I think they call a camisole that covered her belly but never touched it, not the way her rack held it out. No sign of a bra. No sign she needed one, either.

I showed my pass and took a seat on the aisle so I could stretch my legs and she stops at my row and asks do I mind if she sits in the seat next to me. Please do, I say. I offered to move into the aisle but she said there’s room and slid in facing me so the nipples poking through that silky top were close enough for a taste if I was so inclined. Which I’m not, this being a public place and me a gentleman like I am. But, still.

She said flying made her nervous and she talked when she was nervous and would I mind some conversation to keep her mind off it? Conversation was fine with me, but it wasn’t likely to keep my mind off of what I was nervous about, which was whether she’d notice the front of my pants getting as tight as the back of her shorts. She patted my hand and said I was a nice guy, which I am, as you may have noticed by now.

We talked the whole flight. About the friend she’d been visiting and her job, which was, believe it or not, hospitality. She had a couple of drinks and made a few comments that would have lent themselves to inappropriate rejoinders from a man less simpatico to women than me. Told me again what a nice guy I was and wrapped her hand around mine when things got bumpy. By that time my tray table was down and I was happy to let her hold my hand anywhere she wanted.

She stood well inside what might be classically defined as my personal space while we waited for our luggage. Hers came first and I picked it up for her, of course. She stayed until mine arrived, which I thought was real nice. Said how she couldn’t remember enjoying a flight so much.

She didn’t know where to get a cab and, since it was getting late, I asked where she needed to go. As luck would have it, her place was no more than forty miles from mine, so it was no inconvenience to give her a lift. She said she didn’t want to put me out and I said it was my pleasure, and she hooked the nail of her pinkie finger in the corner of her mouth and smiled at me and said okay, she’d make it up to me. She had one quick stop to make, but it was on the way.

We got to her stop and I waited in the car. She came out at a jog, slammed the door behind her and screamed about getting the fuck out of here now! There was a stop sign at the corner I figured I’d roll through even though it was a residential area, her being in a hurry. She reached her left foot over when I slowed down and stomped on the gas and asked did I hear those sirens or not?

She went quiet and damned if I didn’t hear sirens. Getting closer, too. We were moving pretty good—sixty-five or seventy in a twenty-five mile zone—me getting antsy because I’m a good driver and all but I’m no Jimmy Johnson. She’s the one looks like Danica Patrick, maybe she should drive. I don’t remember what happened next. One second I’m driving, then the air bag is in my lap, I’m staring at a tree through a broken windshield, the inside of my car smells like a shotgun went off, and the chick is gone. There were a lot of cops, though. One reached under the passenger seat and held up what looked like a brick wrapped in cellophane. Hard to make out what they were saying; “Miranda” and “asshole” stood out.

Now I’m bunking with this guy named Junior who says he can tell I’m cherry and he’ll take care of me, but it’s gonna cost. All because I had to take off my fucking shoes.