Twenty Questions With Frank Be Blase

A brief bio of Frank De Blase doesn’t do him justice. For now, let just say he likes the twist in the plot and the twist of the knife. He takes delight in chaos, entropy, and the wrong turns his characters make. His stories are pure pulp noir told in a language that is alliterated, obliterated, and visceral. He’s madly in love with the femme fatale.

De Blase writes as a music critic every week for Rochester City Newspaper, contributes frequently to Crimespree Magazine, writes a monthly column for Skin & Ink Magazine, and photographs pin-up models for several men’s magazines. He likes to sing the blues.

He lives is Rochester, New York with his wife, Deborah and two cats, Rocco and Dixie. His new book is A Cougar’s Kiss, which we’re discussing today.

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about A Cougar’s Kiss.

Frank De Blase:  Frankie Valentine, the lead character in A Cougar’s Kiss has appeared in several short stories and my debut novel Pine Box for a Pin-Up and I thought it might be smart to give some background as to Frankie’s first exposure to photography, girls, and photographing girls. A Cougar’s Kiss stars Valentine as a horny teenager and as an adult who still may be a horny teenager at heart.

OBAAT: Readers love to ask where authors get their ideas and most authors reply with something along the lines of “we’re tripping over them. The trick is to find the idea that works best for me.” What made this idea worth developing, and how much development from the original germ was required?

FD: I guess I just write what I like to read. Without relying too much on formula, I tend to have the twist, the detour, the surprise already established before I begin. I also love to write dialogue and often rely on the story idea as merely a framework to hang it from. I’m not necessarily tripping over ideas, but when it’s a good one, it won’t leave me alone.

OBAAT: How long did it take to write A Cougar’s Kiss, start to finish?

FD: A year, give or take a few.

OBAAT: Where did Frankie Valentine come from? In what ways is he like, and unlike, you?

FD: I get this question all the time. Yes, the character is based loosely upon me. I’ve worked as a photographer for several men’s magazines over the years --- Swank, Leg World, Leg Show, Ultra , Retro Lovely --- and I’m a bit of a wise ass. But Valentine is darker than I care to be and he doesn’t shy away from violence. I also use Valentine’s sidekick, Mickey Miller, to vent the darker urges and borderline behavior that even Frankie doesn’t truck with. They’re like the proverbial angel of virtue and devil of temptation on my shoulder; however in this case they’re both devils vying for my attention.

OBAAT: In what time and place is A Cougar’s Kiss set and why was this time and place chosen?

FD:  My stories are almost exclusively written between V-J Day and JFK DOA Day for two reasons: first of all I love the culture, the social optimism, the flexing of sexual taboos in post-war America, it serves as a swell backdrop and undercurrent for duplicitous dealings and sinister scenes. Secondly, back then, you just needed to be a good liar. The advent of DNA technology disarms lies. And phones no longer go unanswered with everyone having a cell phone in their mitts. A Cougar’s Kiss is set in Rochester, New York because it is where I live and it’s an interesting place, it’s not too big and it’s not too small. It’s serves as sort of a character as well. I find it easier to blend in reality and real places in my fiction, it gives an added plausibility.

OBAAT: How did A Cougar’s Kiss come to be published?

FD: Down & Out Books published my first two books. Editor Eric Campbell is a righteous cat. I owe it all to my friend and mentor Charles Benoit who introduced me to Noircon’s Lou Boxer in Philadelphia who in turn introduced me to Campbell who signed me up after two phone calls.

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

FD: I primarily read hard-boiled fiction. Besides the obvious classics, some of my favorite writers are Richard S. Prather, Walter Mosley, Lawrence Block, Christa Faust, and James Ellroy.

OBAAT: What made you decide to be an author?

FD: Somebody said I could make more money in writing than girlie photography and music. Seriously though, I’ve always been fascinated with wordplay and parlance and syntax. Words are my monkey bars. I love building characters simply out of the way they talk.

OBAAT: How do you think your life experiences have prepared you for writing crime fiction?

FD: Well, I’ve never been arrested or shot but I’ve had some dark urges. I’ve definitely been done wrong a time or two.

OBAAT: What do you like best about being a writer?

FD: The endless possibilities, the creative freedom, the groupies.

OBAAT: Who are your greatest influences? (Not necessarily writers. Filmmakers, other artists, whoever you think has had a major impact on your writing.)

FD: Film maker Russ Meyer and guitarist Link Wray. Though couched in social commentary, Russ Meyer’s name is synonymous with the Double D cup and the often violent, sexified sexpots that routinely spill out of it. He frequently filmed and photographed these top-heavy, cantilevered cuties from low angles to accentuate their dominance and celebrate — and accentuate — the gonzo, jaw-dropping busty-ness of it all. There are obvious literal references to Meyer when I describe the desired female victim, villain, or vixen. And like Meyer, I try to balance objectification and worship as both are desirable and dangerous, perfect for setting up the male character who can’t tell the difference. Link’s primal rhythms echo a femme fatale’s strut: swivelin,’ swingin,’ sexy and capable of causing a riot. His guitar is the sound of the getaway car, the five o’clock shadow on a killer’s face, it’s bullets ricocheting down the alley.

OBAAT: Do you outline or fly by the seat of you pants?

FD: Honestly it’s a precarious cocktail of the two. When I write an outline, it’s generally vague, covering the major plot points. When I dive right in it allows for more spontaneity and if I’m not careful, confusion.

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?

FD: I generally try to get the semblance of a first draft banged out. Then I begin the polishing, re-tooling, and tweaking. That’s where the real writing begins, s’far as I’m concerned.

OBAAT: Endings are hard and can make or break a book. Americans as a whole tend to like happy endings, and those are the books that tend to sell best. What do you look for in an ending?

FD: I generally don’t like happy endings. I do like endings that hint at more to come. And just because it may leave you laughing, that doesn’t necessarily make it “happy.”

OBAAT: Who is your intended audience?

FD: I suppose dark-humored, hard boiled, film noir fans like me are an obvious demographic, but I’d like to go beyond preaching to the perverted and win over new fans for my stuff and the genre as a whole.

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

FD: Write every day. Enjoy the ride. Don’t try too hard.

OBAAT: Generally speaking the components of a novel are story/plot, character, setting, narrative, and tone. How would you rank these in order of their importance in your own writing, and can you add a few sentences to tell us more about how you approach each and why you rank them as you do?

FD: Narrative ---- the most important component. If you can’t tell a story in a compelling way --- your own way --- the rest are meaningless. The narrative is the writer’s voice. I make it a point to keep it conversational. I write like I talk.

Character ---- the characters share and help propel the narrative. There’s room for quirks and humor here. This is where I call upon people and incidents in my real life for added color.

 

Story/plot ---- what the narrative conveys. If you’ve got no story then you’ve got nothing.

Setting ---- affects how characters work with, within, and around it as silent component to the narrative. Here I try to personify and give life to the inanimate, for example “The sky cried as cars roared angrily by.”

Tone ---- the sum of all the parts if utilized correctly. And yet you can’t control tone. Every book has tone --- good or bad. This is where the magic and sweat and creativity all align.

OBAAT: If you could have written any book of the past hundred years, what would it be, and what is it about that book you admire most?

FD: Mickey Spillane’s I, The Jury… it’s what lit my spark, some 40 odd years ago.

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

FD: Spending time with my wife, photographing musicians and scantily clad women, eating barb-b-que.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

FD: A yet to be titled follow up to A Cougar’s Kiss, another collection of short stories, a graphic novel of some of the aforementioned short stories, and an album of my beat-inspired poetry performed with the jazz combo Busted Valentines. It’s anyone’s guess in what order this will all get done…

Piqued your interest? Learn more about Frank here:

Website: http://www.frankdeblase.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frank.deblase
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Frank-De-Blase/e/B00IZ19M32/
Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5322884.Frank_De_Blase

Twenty Questions With Angel Luis Colon

Angel Luis Colón is the author of No Happy Endings, The Fury of Blacky Jaguar, and the upcoming short story anthology, Meat City on Fire (And Other Assorted Debacles). He’s an editor for Shotgun Honey, has been nominated for the Derringer Award, and has published stories in multiple web and print pubs such as Thuglit, Literary Orphans, All Due Respect, RT Book Reviews, and The LA Review of Books. He’s currently repped by Foundry Literary + Media.

Keep up with him on Twitter via @GoshDarnMyLife

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about No Happy Endings.

Angel Luis Colon: It’s a story about idiot criminals, terrible families, and secret

underground sperm farms funded by shady money and run by a Portuguese psychopath.

Heartwarming stuff, really.

OBAAT: Readers love to ask where authors get their ideas and most authors reply with something along the lines of “we’re tripping over them. The trick is to find the idea that works best for me.” What made this idea worth developing, and how much development from the original germ was required?

ALC: The whole tripping over ideas thing is true for me. I tend to have to fight back the temptation of new ideas whenever I’m working on a project. Starting is easy, finishing is the hardest bit.

This one took me some time to really nail down. I’d start it up and then abandon it to work on a short or another project. What mattered was that I did keep coming back to it – so at the end of the day, while NHE started as a bit of a joke concept in robbing a sperm bank with messy (har har) results, there was something inside the character relationships and the themes that kept my attention long enough to really flesh them out.

OBAAT: How long did it take to write No Happy Endings, start to finish?

ALC: Maybe over a year. With the breaks and a complete rewrite at one point, there were a lot of delays.

OBAAT: Where did Fantine Park come from? In what ways is she like, and unlike, you?

ALC: Fantine came a little from my desire to read a female character with more baggage than perks. Like most characters I write, I always ask if they feel real enough to have a drink with – Fantine was my attempt to create someone we normally don’t think of having a drink with.

I don’t see a lot of me in Fan beyond the mouth. She’s got an issue with admitting when she’s out of her wheelhouse which I’ve suffered from a little too.

OBAAT: In what time and place is No Happy Endings set and why was this time and place chosen?

ALC: No Happy Endings opens in 2007 to give readers a taste of our villain’s world and to show us Fantine during one of her greatest failures.

Then we jump ahead to 2012 where the action takes place – specifically October of 2012, right before a certain Superstorm slammed into the Northeast.

OBAAT: How did No Happy Endings come to be published?

ALC: I took a chance and pitched it to Down & Out books via email. The response was pretty positive, so we took off from there. My favorite bit was pretty much handshaking the deal in a hallway at Bouchercon 2015 on the way to a panel.

It was painless, which is a rarity in this business.

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

ALC: I’m a weird reader. Fluff loses my attention easily so I tend to gravitate towards stories that don’t overly rely on standard tropes to fill in gaps (i.e. procedurals that fill the word count with scenes and interactions we’ve seen a million times before presented the same way over and over). I’m a fan of writers who really test our loyalties to convention – who can take something we’re comfortable with and completely upend that comfort.

Favorite authors include Ted Lewis, Douglas Adams, Clive Barker, Donald Westlake, and S.E Hinton but I can add to that list for days.

OBAAT: What made you decide to be an author?

ALC: I have no memory of learning to read. Words have always been a part of my life and I was a quiet kid in a house with nobody to play with most times. I think it’s easy to start running wild with your imagination and sooner or later it spills out onto a page either in pencil or crayon. I couldn’t draw worth a shit but I sure as hell could describe what I wanted you to see – so the choice was pretty much made.

OBAAT: How do you think your life experiences have prepared you for writing crime fiction?

ALC: I grew up in the Bronx and while that doesn’t make me any expert (I was pretty much a good kid with good grades) I was also exposed to a lot of interesting people from all walks of life. The common thread among them was working class status and a constant need to hustle for their well-being or the well-being of their families; from cops to mobster wannabes.

It was funny. Crime fiction was not my first choice in the genre I wanted to write but realizing where and how I grew up, it’s amazing I could think of anything else.

OBAAT: What do you like best about being a writer?

ALC: It used to be the sense of calm it gave me. Now I really love that there are people willing to give my rantings a shot. That never gets old.

OBAAT: Who are your greatest influences? (Not necessarily writers. Filmmakers, other artists, whoever you think has had a major impact on your writing.)

ALC: Martin Scorcese is a massive influence on how I visualize most anything I write in my own head. I think you can take any of his films and pluck scenes of all kinds that help your writing. Comic books sort of serve the same purpose too. I’ve been a comic book nerd my whole damn life and visual storytelling has been a huge influence on how I write action or frame a scene (descriptions, item placement, and body movement during conversation). I think sometimes we can neglect those things when we’re only focused on story.

OBAAT: Do you outline or fly by the seat of you pants?

ALC: I write very rough outlines. More like mission statements. Then I ignore that and fly by the seat of my pants. I normally know where I want to go but I have no idea how we’re getting there.

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?

ALC: I used to edit as I wrote but that drained me. Now I keep my head down and write the damn thing. The revisions will fix it and I’m a complete basket case of an editor. Not a damn thing I write goes through less than four revisions – even my flash fiction.

OBAAT: Endings are hard and can make or break a book. Americans as a whole tend to like happy endings, and those are the books that tend to sell best. What do you look for in an ending?

ALC: Endings should be organic. If that means the ending is happy and ties everything up in a bow, sure, so long as that feels like where we’ve been headed. If the ending is dark and challenging, that can work too. What matters is you meet the expectations you set from the start. The most disappointing endings for me are the ones that fizzle out, leave dangling plots for no reason (I don’t care if it’s a series, if you call it out more than once, give us something) or goes against the grain just to go against the grain. Readers don’t always need a twist.

OBAAT: Who is your intended audience?

ALC: Whoever’s willing to part with their time and money. I write what I would like to read. If anyone wants to join in, I’m thrilled to welcome them.

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

ALC: None of this will ever get easier. Accept that you’ve chosen to be a professional reject and an amateur success on your best days and keep writing.

OBAAT: Generally speaking the components of a novel are story/plot, character, setting, narrative, and tone. How would you rank these in order of their importance in your own writing, and can you add a few sentences to tell us more about how you approach each and why you rank them as you do?

ALC: Character rules. I learned early on in life that we will never invest care or time in a story that doesn’t have characters we can relate to or learn to love/hate. Without defined characters, everything else will fall apart.

After that, it’s story/plot, narrative, setting, tone. I feel like each informs the former but character is the glue that holds it all together.

OBAAT: If you could have written any book of the past hundred years, what would it be, and what is it about that book you admire most?

ALC: Thomas Hardy’s Return of The Native. It was his sixth book and it was published in the late 19^th century over a year in a magazine. That book gave no fucks for any of the conventions of its era. You can cite that book as the very beginnings of a turn in literature but rarely anyone outside of a classroom knows that.

That’s the kind of book I’d love to write.

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

ALC: Hanging out with my wife and kids – being the nerdy dad.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

ALC: I’ve been wrapping up a few things I owe folks but I still have to hammer out a short script and another short for an anthology (my first horror antho) I was invited to contribute to. I’m wrapping up a novel I’m hoping to pitch to a few pubs soon and then work starts on the third Blacky Jaguar novella (the second one, Blacky Jaguar Against The Cool Clux Cult!!! Should drop next year).

Twenty Questions With Richard Godwin

Richard Godwin is the critically acclaimed author of Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour, One Lost Summer, Noir City, Meaningful Conversations, Confessions Of A Hit Man, Paranoia And The Destiny Programme, Wrong Crowd, Savage Highway, Ersatz World, The Pure And The Hated, Disembodied, Buffalo And Sour Mash and Locked In Cages. His stories have been published in numerous paying magazines and over 34 anthologies, among them an anthology of his stories, Piquant: Tales Of The Mustard Man, and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Mystery, alongside Lee Child. He was born in London and lectured in English and American literature at the University of London. He also teaches creative writing at University and workshops. You can find out more about him at his website www.richardgodwin.net , where you can read a full list of his works, and where you can also read his Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse, his highly popular and unusual interviews with other authors.   

I first encountered Richard at the 2014 Noircon where his talk on the elements and different types of noir was a highlight of the conference. My thoughts at the time:  Richard Godwin sees two lines in each noir tale. The first is where the situation tempts the protagonist to cross the line of legality. The second is where he fails, often because the powers that be will not allow him to succeed. Godwin feels strongly about noir tales where the protagonist is forced into the situation, as opposed to being drawn in by his own lust or greed. A key element of all noir is moral compromise, regardless of the motivation. 

That said, it’s a treat to have Richard here to play Twenty Questions and talk about his newest book, Buffalo and Sour Mash.                                                                                                                                                              

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about Buffalo And Sour Mash.

Richard Godwin: Buffalo And Sour Mash is about one man’s dream of bringing the rodeo to Surrey UK. No greater disparity of cultural inheritance could exist. It is a slice of the prairie, the Virgin Land of Fennimore Cooper and Jack London, that runs like a tortured leitmotif through the paradigm of the American Dream and the American psyche. It is also a love story and Noir novel and a horror novel, and a piece of hardboiled crime fiction. Hybrid genres. Murphy Stubbs is arguably the most psychotic deranged character I have ever written. And he is in love with Rhonda. Except there is an argument that Murphy is incapable of love. Or is he, well find out for yourselves. Murphy will stop at nothing to succeed in his goals. And only Rhonda holds the key to Murphy’s violent past in Oklahoma all those years ago when the novel begins.

OBAAT: Readers love to ask where authors get their ideas and most authors reply with something along the lines of “we’re tripping over them. The trick is to find the idea that works best for me.” What made this idea worth developing, and how much development from the original germ was required?

RG: That is an instinctive process for which there is no answer. Truth is you either have ideas or you don’t.

OBAAT: How long did it take to write Buffalo And Sour Mash, start to finish?

RG: Two months first draft. Eight to edit it.

OBAAT: Where did Murphy Stubbs come from? In what ways is he like, and unlike, you?

RG: The subconscious. He is not like me at all, writers make things up, they narrate, they tell the story that needs to be told at that particular time, they utilise subconscious energies.

OBAAT: How did Buffalo And Sour Mash come to be published?

RG: I sent it out to Down And Out Books because I knew they would get it. And of course they did. Eric Campbell is doing the kind of thing for contemporary crime fiction that the older better, than today, largely speaking, publishers did for the likes of Chandler and Hammett. He has sweated blood over this and he ought to be thanked, I do. And there is a sequel on its way in which the lead from Wrong Crowd, Down And Out Books, Claude, meets Murphy as does Maxine meet Rhonda.

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

RG: I read a lot, but to name a few out of many, James Lee Burke—his new one is great—Henry Miller, Shane Stevens, Cormac McCarthy.

OBAAT: What made you decide to be an author?

RG: I knew it when I was seventeen. My grandfather was an author, he was widely published. I wanted to write because I wanted to explore the human condition, the only prerequisite for an author. And I still am.

OBAAT: How do you think your life experiences have prepared you for writing crime fiction?

RG: I have travelled widely and visited about 72 countries. I have been to 24 of the states in the US, I saw a lot of crime in the war in the former Jugoslavia, as I am  a quarter Serbian, quarter Croatian, quarter Irish, and quarter English. I have also tried to understand motivation and not to bring some idle middle class head set to my opinions. I want to know why crime occurs and I can understand that this attitude that we have that there is a them and us is a piece of rhetoric. It works purely to indoctrinate the masses with prejudice than can be utilised for political purposes. Most people have committed crime. We like to moralise. My Noir fictions are about men and women who are morally compromised, like most people. They are lured across a line into committing a crime. That is where it occurs. Blurring the moral line into crime in the eyes of society and challenging that society, that is the source of a good narrative.

OBAAT: What do you like best about being a writer?

RG:  There is no glass ceiling.

OBAAT: Who are your greatest influences? (Not necessarily writers. Filmmakers, other artists, whoever you think has had a major impact on your writing.)

RG: Influences are hard to determine, but and this is by no means compete list. Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Jonson, Dickens.

OBAAT: Do you outline or fly by the seat of you pants?

RG: Both depending on the novel.

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?

RG: I always write out the first draft or you lose the flow. Then I edit and that may be repeated numerous times.

OBAAT: Endings are hard and can make or break a book. Americans as a whole tend to like happy endings, and those are the books that tend to sell best. What do you look for in an ending?

RG: Realism and faith to the novel. Happy endings are irrelevant to reality. Dickens was forced to rewrite the original ending of Great Expectations. Unfortunately we live in unreal times.

OBAAT: Who is your intended audience?

RG:  Everyone and anyone who likes to read a novel

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

RG:  Write every day and read as much as you have time for reading, analyse what the writer is doing and how does he achieves his effects, observe people and keep going.

OBAAT: Generally speaking the components of a novel are story/plot, character, setting, narrative, and tone. How would you rank these in order of their importance in your own writing, and can you add a few sentences to tell us more about how you approach each and why you rank them as you do?

RG: Character first and foremost. If you can hear them talk you have the story. Plot is irrelevant to many novels except straight genre formula. Setting is most important. Narrative is essential and tone also.

OBAAT: If you could have written any book of the past hundred years, what would it be, and what is it about that book you admire most?

RG: Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. The literary classic that cocks a snoot as an aside at the establishment, because it is hybrid, it is genre and it is crime it is a love story and Greene is one of the rare writers who writes and explores in depth good and bad characters equally well with the most polished beautiful prose.

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

RG: Travel, going to the gym, music, socialising.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

RG: The sequel to Noir City, my commissioned Erotica Noir novel about Paris Tongue, the nomadic Gigolo. The sequel will be out next year, Black Jackal Books, and here is a snippet about Noir City, which is available here and here 

Dangerous, blonde Gigolo, Paris Tongue uses his looks and insight into female sexuality to seduce women in the Secret Hour. This is the time when he takes them out of their lives and resurrects their sexual identity, like an erotic priest. He turns fantasy into reality and ushers in new ecstasies to their lives. Yet sees himself as a night visitor or ghost. The women are haunted by him, their lives forever changed by their encounters. Set in numerous European cities, this lyrical and deeply erotic novel captures the flavour of each city, each hotel, apartment, house, as exotic settings for Paris Tongue’s sexual adventures. But when he seduces the wife of a Mafia boss he finds himself hunted across Europe.

Twenty Questions With Andrew Nette

Andrew Nette is a writer I’m predisposed to like because he takes the craft seriously. (You can’t take any craft more seriously than to work on a PhD in whatever it is, as he is in Australian pulp fiction, so kudos to Andrew.)

Andrew is co-editor of Beat Girls, Love Tribes and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 – 1980, forthcoming from Verse Chorus Press. His short fiction has appeared in a number of print and on-line publications, including Crime Scenes, an anthology of Australian crime fiction published by Spineless Wonders, Beat to a Pulp Hardboiled 3, Shotgun Honey Presents: Both Barrels, Blood and Tacos, The One That Got Away, Phnom Penh Noir and Crime Factory Hard Labour.

His first novel, Ghost Money, a crime story set in Cambodia in the mid-nineties, was published in 2012. His second novel, Gunshine State was released by 280 Steps a couple of weeks ago, and is why we’re here today.

His online home is www.pulpcurry.com or you can follow him on Twitter @Pulpcurry

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about Gunshine State.

Andrew Nette: Gunshine State is an Australian take on the classic ‘heist gone wrong’ story, set in Surfers Paradise, Queensland, Thailand, and Melbourne.

Here’s the pitch: Gary Chance is a former Australian army driver, ex-bouncer and thief. His latest job takes place in Surfers Paradise, working as part gang run by an aging stand over man, Dennis Curry, who runs off-site, non-casino poker games, and wants to rob one of his best customers, a high roller called Frederick 'Freddie' Gao. The job seems straightforward but Curry's crew is anything but. Chance knows he can't trust anyone, but nothing prepares him for what unfolds when Curry's plan goes wrong.

OBAAT: Readers love to ask where authors get their ideas and most authors reply with something along the lines of “we’re tripping over them. The trick is to find the idea that works best for me.” What made this idea worth developing, and how much development from the original germ was required?

AN: There were a couple of key motivations behind Gunshine State. First, I love heist stories but very few of them have appeared in local crime fiction. I wanted to try my hand at writing what I hope is a quintessentially Australian take on the heist genre.

Second, there was a period in my life several years ago when, for various family reasons, I was spending a lot of time in Surfers Paradise. Surfers is a strange beast. It was basically a small settlement hacked out of mangrove swamps in the Forties and by the Sixties had become Australia’s foremost beach holiday destination, modeled on similar places in Florida. The local authorities now promote the place as a family friendly destination but it has a very colourful history, full of deeply suspect characters and goings on. Linked to this it is a very transient place. Nearly everyone who lives there comes from somewhere else. Although there is much less of it now, Surfers also still exudes a strange faux Miami atmosphere that influenced a lot of its construction in the Fifties and Sixties.

It’s the perfect place to kick off a heist story.

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

AN: All up about a year, although the idea had been percolating in my mind for a while.

OBAAT: Where did Gary Chance come from? In what ways is he like, and unlike, you?

AN: I am not sure there is any of me in him, but there are certainly aspects of people I have met. He is also strongly influenced by some of my favourite crime fiction criminal characters, particular Garry Disher’s Wyatt, Wallace Stroby’s Crissa Stone and Richard Stark’s (Donald Westlake) Parker.

OBAAT: In what time and place is Gunshine State set and why was this time and place chosen?

AN: It is set now. My first novel, Ghost Money, was an historical crime novel set in Cambodia in the 1970s and 90s. For my second book, I wanted to do something more contemporary.

OBAAT: How did Gunshine State come to be published?

AN: I’d heard very good things about 280 Steps. So, after getting knocked back by a few mainstream Australian publishers ‘because the story was a bit too dark’, I thought I would send it their way. They got back to me fairly quickly and said yes, which is great.

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

AN: I try and read pretty broadly in terms of contemporary crime fiction. I have a preference for noir and hardboiled, especially if the material is written well and tries to being something innovative to the genre or put a new spin on a standard trope. In addition to the authors I mentioned above, think Donald Ray Pollock, Megan Abbott, David Peace, Elizabeth Hand, Cathi Unsworth and West Australian writer, David Whish Wilson, and you’ll get an idea the type of stuff I like.

OBAAT: What made you decide to be an author?

AN: I am not sure when I decided I wanted to be ‘an author’. I do remember when I decided I wanted to write a novel. I was in Cambodia in 1996 as a wire service journalist. I’d first visited the country in 1992 and it had fascinated me from the moment I first arrived. The people, the contrast between the anything goes, Wild West atmosphere of Phnom Penh and the hardscrabble but incredibly beautiful countryside. History oozed from the cracks in the French colonial architecture and protruded from the rich red earth, sometimes quite literally in the case of the mass graves that litter the countryside. Things happened every day – terrible events and acts of heart breaking generosity you couldn’t make up if you tried. I always thought Cambodia would be a good setting for a crime story but was too caught up in the day to day reporting of events and trying to make a living as a freelance journalist to put much of a dent in the book. That didn’t come until nearly a decade later, when one day I sat down and started reading through some old notes. In early 2008, my partner and I quit our jobs and moved to Cambodia for a year with our then two year old. I freelanced as a journalist, did fixing work for foreign TV crews and finished the first draft of what would be become my first novel, Ghost Money.

OBAAT: How do you think your life experiences have prepared you for writing crime fiction?

AN: I work with words. It’s what I have done to earn a living nearly all my adult all my adult life. I think it’s all I can do. Writing crime fiction is just one part of that, albeit a major one.

OBAAT: What do you like best about being a writer?

AN: The feeling of exhilaration you get when someone likes your material enough to publish you. Getting jazzed by seeing my name out there, whether it is on the cover of a book or an article. That feeling never gets old.

OBAAT: Who are your greatest influences?

AN: I am a huge fan of Don Westlake. Every book of his is a master class in plot, character and structure. I, like practically crime writer I know, owe a huge debt to James Ellroy. I get the impression he’s fallen out of favour a touch due to his last couple of books not being so well received as his earlier material, but his influence on crime writers, myself included, cannot be overstated. He blew a giant hole in the middle of what people thought crime fiction could be.

OBAAT: Do you outline or fly by the seat of you pants?

AN: I’d say I fall somewhere in the middle. I plan but not obsessively so.

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?

AN: Again, somewhere in the middle. I try not to revise as I write too much on a first draft, but I find it unavoidable.

OBAAT: Endings are hard and can make or break a book. Americans as a whole tend to like happy endings, and those are the books that tend to sell best. What do you look for in an ending?

AN: If I had to answer this, I would say, a powerful image. With Gunshine State and my first novel, Ghost Money, I had a very clear picture of how I wanted the endings to go and, to some degree, a lot of the process of writing was trying to make things lead up to that in a way worked.

OBAAT: Who is your intended audience?

AN: Seriously, if you’re reading this, you’re my intended audience.

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

AN: Stop talking about writing. Just write.

OBAAT: Generally speaking the components of a novel are story/plot, character, setting, narrative, and tone. How would you rank these in order of their importance in your own writing, and can you add a few sentences to tell us more about how you approach each and why you rank them as you do?

AN: I don’t know if I can prioritise them. I can only say which components are harder/easier for me, because everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. Character is the toughest for me, something I really need to work at right. Gunshine State is told from the perspectives of four characters, two men and two women. It was a real challenge for me trying to shift between four points of view, male and female, and make the characters concerned compelling and realistic.

I believe narrative is just a matter of imagination combined with perseverance. Setting and tone come more easily to me. I think this is because I think about a book like watching a film, if that makes sense.

OBAAT: If you could have written any book of the past hundred years, what would it be, and what is it about that book you admire most?

AN: Probably George Orwell’s 1984 because Big Brother IS watching you.

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

AN: Getting through the huge backlog of films on my TBW list, which is even bigger than my TBR pile, if that is possible.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

AN: I’ve just started a PhD on the history of Australian pulp fiction, so that’s keeping me pretty busy. In addition to this, I am doing research for a monograph I have been contracted to write on the classic 1975 dystopian film, Rollerball and the films influenced by it. Oh, yes, and there is a second Gary Chance book in the works. I pretty much have the plot nailed, I just need to find the time to start writing it.

Twenty Questions With John Shepphird

John Shepphird won the 2013 Shamus Award for Best PI Short Story for “Ghost Negligence.” A writer/director of TV movies, John also serves as the Creative Director of On-Air Promotions for TVG, America’s horse racing network. Noir master James M. Cain inspired John’s three “Shill” novellas, a terse, tense, and twist-filled trilogy with a cast of characters immersed in the art of deception, depravity, and murder. The trilogy’s final volume, Beware the Shill, launched August 1 from Down & Out Books. (To celebrate, Book One, The Shill, is currently free for Kindle.) The trailer for Beware the Shill is also available for viewing.

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about Beware the Shill.

John Shepphird: The title refers to my character Jane Innes that transforms from a pawn to a rook. In The Shill (book #1) she's naïve, sacrificed, but we like her. But Jane won't be wronged. She's talented and determined. In Beware the Shill (book #3) she relies on smarts and skill to take down the deadly deceivers that ruined her life. It's about rooting for an underdog.                

OBAAT: Readers love to ask where authors get their ideas and most authors reply with something along the lines of “we’re tripping over them. The trick is to find the idea that works best for me.” What made this idea worth developing, and how much development from the original germ was required?

JS: I was drawn to writing a caper and what sparked me was the idea of a girl from the other side of the tracks that uses her skills as an actress to deceive an elite mark. She knows better, but she fell in love with a persuasive con man, and since love it blind…. That was the seed, and it grew from there. The Shill is the caper, Kill the Shill a detective story, and Beware the Shill a thriller.         

OBAAT: How long did it take to write Beware the Shill, start to finish?

JS:  I’d estimate seven months not including other projects that distracted me. I struggled with Beware the Shill more than the others because I had to wrap up my characters and it all had to make sense. I wanted to bring it back to where it had started, California, but not necessarily Los Angeles because I’d already explored that in book #1.

Then I came across a story of California Gold Rush history that lit the pilot light--the shipwreck of the steamship Yankee Blade. This was an incredible tragedy fueled by greed and cowardice. Weaving in elements of that story into contemporary time gave me everything I needed--the setting, motivation, and the basic structure. Once I had that figured out I blazed forward. I’d already touched on Caribbean pirate history in book #2, Kill the Shill, so a dash of historical was not completely foreign. It made sense.                         

OBAAT: Where did Jane Innes come from? Is she based on people you know? Does she have parts of you in her? (Note to readers: Not that way. Get your minds out of the gutter.)

JS: I work in television and Jane is a hybrid of actresses I’ve known over the years that tie their self-worth into their career. Making it becomes all or nothing and this ultimately this makes them miserable and yet another casualty on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Jane is talented and capable, but also flawed. She hangs on her acting coaches every word hoping for just a little bit of praise. Ultimately she just wants love in her life and dreams a successful career will get her there, but her perspective is skewed. Although I was a writer/director as opposed to an actor in my 20s and 30s I was guilty of that too. In retrospect I wish I would have written more and barked up less trees.              

OBAAT: In what time and place is Beware the Shill set and why was this time and place chosen?

JS: The series is a contemporary noir set in Los Angeles, Sarasota Florida, and the Caribbean. Beware the Shill explores Pismo Beach, Morro Bay, and California’s coast in the proximity of Vandenberg Air Force Base.       

OBAAT: How did Beware the Shill come to be published?

JS: I was at Bouchercon in Albany and author Robert J. Randisi introduced me to Eric Campbell from Down & Out Books. This was before The Shill was finished as a novella and shortly thereafter it was picked up by an eBook publisher Stark Raving Press but they folded rather quickly. I reached out to Eric, hat in hand, and he graciously picked it up. I’m fortunate to be with Down & Out and honored to be among their stable of great authors.

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

JS: I’m a fan of vintage noir and continue to re-read James M. Cain. It’s his economy and fractured love stories that resonate with me most. I’ drawn to capers and can’t get enough of Lionel White and Donald E. Westlake. Contemporary authors I read are Steve Hamilton, Jason Starr, Wallace Stroby, and Megan Abbott.     

OBAAT: What made you decide to be an author?

JS: A love for suspenseful stories. I’m not necessarily a fan of fantasy and science fiction because, for me, the best stories are grounded in reality. I have to believe they could actually happen. There’s always been a lot of storytelling going on in my large Catholic family so maybe that has something to do with it.      

OBAAT: How do you think your life experiences have prepared you for writing crime fiction?

JS: The theme of most of my fiction is the art of deception so studying and performing magic was a big factor because it’s all about the twist. Working as a filmmaker in a variety of genres has also contributed.         

OBAAT: What do you like best about being a writer?

JS: I actually enjoy the process of writing, and re-writing, playing with ideas and seeing if you can make them work. It’s also great to hang around other writers, especially crime writers, and swap notes. We’re all, in one way or another, ne’er-do-wells that share a dark and often humorous sensibility. The community is extremely supportive.     

OBAAT: Who are your greatest influences? (Not necessarily writers. Filmmakers, other artists, whoever you think has had a major impact on your writing.)

JS: Cinema and 70s crime television has had a major impact--a spectrum from Jack Webb to Alfred Hitchcock. I’ve always been drawn to antiheroes. My first film as a co-writer and director was titled Teenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde.     

OBAAT: Do you outline or fly by the seat of you pants?

JS: Writing fiction I’ll often write the later part of a story first, the final culmination, and then go back and start at the beginning. By the time I get to that chapter it will need a major rewrite but this process helps me to know where I’m going. In screenplays outlines and synopses are vital to establish structure.  

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?

JS: I’ll write (compose) and then go back and rewrite the chapter or scene immediately. Then I’ll move on to the end and then rewrite it all again from the beginning. I’m amazed by authors that can compose from scratch with only minor rewrites, but that’s not me. It’s a process of rehash.  

OBAAT: Endings are hard and can make or break a book. Americans as a whole tend to like happy endings, and those are the books that tend to sell best. What do you look for in an ending?

JS: An ending doesn’t have to be happy but it does have to make sense. There are a lot of James Cagney movies without happy endings, but they make complete sense and there’s closure. It’s about the journey and the decisions a protagonist makes along the way should define that ending. Crime and mystery readers expect closure. I think it’s inherent.’         

OBAAT: Who is your intended audience?

JS: Readers that enjoy page-turning crime fiction, both male and female--same that read Gillian Flynn or Lee Child.     

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

JS: Carve out time every day to write. A little bit of progress over time adds up. Write what you enjoy. Study structure. Keep it lean and mean. 

OBAAT: Generally speaking the components of a novel are story/plot, character, setting, narrative, and tone. How would you rank these in order of their importance in your own writing, and can you add a few sentences to tell us more about how you approach each and why you rank them as you do?

JS: Escalation (story/plot) is important to me because my aesthetic is structure and not just in fiction and film but music too. If I played an instrument it would be the bass. Then character (the melody) which should drive the structure through his or her wants and needs. Tone and setting tie in third place.                  

OBAAT: If you could have written any book of the past hundred years, what would it be, and what is it about that book you admire most?

JS: Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame doesn’t count because that was written over a hundred years ago, so it’s either James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, or John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. These three novels were written in the 1930s, the Great Depression. All embrace working-class characters seeking to advance themselves.             

OBAAT: Coming from Western Pennsylvania, I have a fascination with the origins of names. “Shepphird” is an unusual spelling of a not uncommon name. What’s the family background there?

JS: My father, when he was alive, did a detailed search of our name. There are no “Shepphirds” in the UK but there are in North America. I’m convinced it was originally “Sheppherd” with an “e” but through bad penmanship somehow that “e” became an “I”.  But the mystery writer in me imagines the change was intentional. Maybe my relation purposefully tried to hide identity. More likely it was a combination of an old, leaky quill dotting the “e” and probably bad light.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

JS: A whodunit thriller set among the cast-and-crew of a low budget TV movie. It’s titled Bottom Feeders.