Summer's Favorite Reads

 Savages, Don Winslow. The more I read of Winslow, the more I like him. This is a more complicated story than The Dawn Patrol or California Fire & Lifer, but he handles the increased number of moving parts just as well, keeping the reader on the edge of the seat while never allowing the pace to become too hyper. The dry humor helps. Highly recommended, though the movie is eminently missable, even though Winslow has a partial screenwriting credit.

In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead, James Lee Burke. Not Burke’s best but maybe my favorite. I don’t usually go in for books with supernatural elements, especially crime novels, but Burke’s touch is so deft I fell right into it. It doesn’t hurt that this book focuses on New Iberia and the surrounding swamps, which is where Burke always does his best work. Unlike Savages the movie In the Electric Mist is one you ought to find. It’s outstanding, though under-released in this country.

The County Line, Steve Weddle. It’s been quite a while since Weddle’s acclaimed collection of stories Country Hardball came out; The County Line is worth the wait, though let’s hope he doesn’t make a habit of such long intervals. The story of rural criminal gangs set during Franklin Roosevelt’s first year in office, The County Line brings alive the Depression era problems and practicalities and puts the reader right in the thick of them by gradually winding the stories of the main characters ever closer until everything everyone does affects everyone else in a manner that always makes sense.

Trigger Guard, Chris Grall. (Non-fiction.) Outstanding review of firearms, from blunderbusses to M-4s. Grall has an engaging writing style that makes a topic that could be dry as duct flow past the eyes like a river. My plan had been to read a chapter at a time as a palate cleanser between novels, but once I read the first chapter I was hooked and read it straight through.

The Ones You Do, Daniel Woodrell. Book 3 of The Bayou Trilogy, this one focuses on John X. Shade, father of the brothers who carry the first tow books. John X. – he’s never referred to as plain old John – is a pool hustler whose hands are no longer steady enough to support him and bad choices through the years are catching up. He’s a ne’er-do-well piece of shit when you get right down to it, but you can’t help but root for him, as none of the people he’s shit on over the years seem to hold it against him. All the wry humor and bizarre situation that made the first two book such treasure are here in this worthy conclusion to the Shade family saga.

The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson. (Non-fiction) An informal history of the evolution of the English language. By “informal” I mean written in a breezy, engaging manner; the book is meticulously researched. Every page has something a lover of the language will find worth knowing, and Bryson’s easy writing makes the who enterprise a pleasure.

Black Betty, Walter Mosley. Maybe the best of the Easy Rawlins books I’ve read so far, though that could be because it’s freshest in my mind; Devil in a Blue Dress is very good. I’m glad I decided to read them in order, as Mosley’s writing becomes more refined and he keeps finding different ways to make Easy’s life hard.

An Interview With Robert Creekmore, Author of the Prophet Novels

 I first met Robert Creekmore at a Noir at the Bar reading in Hillsborough, North Carolina’s Yonder Bar, which may well be the ultimate venue for such events. The Venn diagrams of our writing lives overlap quite a bit even though we write considerably different kinds of stories, so we came to know each other more than we might have otherwise..

His first traditionally published novel, Prophet's Debt, was a Manly Wade Wellman Literary Award Finalist. The second, Prophet’s Lamentation, was a Lambda Literary recommendation for July 2023.

One Bite at a Time: Welcome to the blog, Rob. This should be fun.

You’re as personable as anyone I know and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you not smiling, yet your writing is dark. What draws you to that sort of fiction? Dear god, I hope it’s fiction.

Robert Creekmore: Darkness resides in us all, especially those who claim divinity. The difference between myself and a preacher is that I’m honest about mine and am better at interpreting it concisely.

OBAAT: You’re probably best known for your “Prophet” novels. Tell us a little about who the Prophet is.

RC: I based the original Prophet antagonist on a violent sexual abuser I knew of from the Evangelical Church of my youth. Several of the other characters are proxies for rotten individuals.

I was extraordinarily unkind to those characters. Specifically, Prophet’s Debt is said to have one of the most unique castration scenes in the annals of English literature. However, I’m not entirely sure it’s literature. More like a collection of snuff paragraphs.

In the novels, Proffit is a surname taken on by cult leaders. The first was Vernon Proffit. I named him as such and began the trilogy in 1993 because it was the year of the Waco siege. That was the spark that set off the modern Christian Nationalist movement, which we saw bear fruit on January the sixth, 2021.

Why Vernon? Because it was the birth name of Branch Davidian cult leader, David Koresh. I suppose it’s what you’d call an Easter egg. There’s another based around his name. See if you can find it.

I created him as a narcissistic sociopath who believed that the lives of others only existed to either benefit his goals or bring him sexual gratification. Those he’d finished with, especially forgotten children, were discarded in extremely cruel ways for his entertainment.

OBAAT: Your Amazon bio contains this quote: “Annoyed with the stereotype of the southeastern United States as a monolith of ignorance and hatred, [Robert] wanted to bring forth characters from the region who are queer and autistic. They now hold up a disinfecting light to the hatred of the region’s past and to those who still yearn for a return to ways and ideas that should have long ago perished.”

What drew your focus to the queer and autistic?

RC: I’m autistic myself, so that makes sense. However, I am a straight man, so I reckon my focus on queer characters requires some explaining.

Growing up, I had a friend who was gay. I didn’t know that at the time, neither did he. This was pre-puberty, pre-sexuality for either of us. Yet, somehow every adult in our lives seemed to know and treated him worse for it. I wasn’t treated particularly well either, so I chalked it up to the fact that we were both nerds. This was rural North Carolina in the 1990s, after all. In school, if another kid was interested in books and computers, it was reason enough to punch them. This didn’t result in consequences but rather laughter and adulation. 

In 1992, we made plans to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower, which is how Prophet’s Debt opens. We did so on the expansive property where I grew up. It was a bit cool that night, so I went back inside and asked my mother for a second blanket to lay atop ourselves. We were using the first to lay upon.

She made a derogatory comment to the effect that we were going to bed together. I was twelve and didn’t understand completely. Though, I knew that if I were it would have been the end of my life as I knew it. After that night, I wasn’t allowed to see him any longer. I was sent to a fundamentalist, evangelical school. He stayed in public school.

Luckily for my friend, he excelled. He later went on a full ride to Duke and moved to New York City. The two of us reconnected two years ago because of the publication of Prophet’s Debt. He even attended my first New York City Noir at the Bar reading.

I suppose I’d been trying to make up for what happened since that night. In 2006, I became the first Gay-Straight-Alliance faculty sponsor at the high school where I taught in Raleigh, one of the first in North Carolina. Since the publication of the first Prophets book, I have been contacted by several people who have said that it had helped them process trauma or talk to their parents about their youths. This is something I’m extraordinarily proud of.

One side note, my mother’s attitude toward the LGBTQ+ community has evolved greatly since my childhood. She no longer holds the same bigoted positions.

OBAAT: You and your wife lived for several years in a mountain cabin in western North Carolina where you raised your own food and did subsistence hunting. How has that experience shaped your fiction?

RC: It had everything to do with the realistic tapestry that is the backdrop of the Prophets series. I grew up on a farm in eastern North Carolina, so I was familiar with hunting and survival skills. However, the stakes are much higher and the skillset more difficult in the remote Appalachians. I wanted to live the reality before I wrote it.

OBAAT: Who and what are your major influences as a writer? Could be authors, individual books, movies, or television.

RC: Kurt Vonnegut would be at the top of that list. So would Albert Camus. The tattoo I have on my right forearm is a depiction of the black death as illustrated in the first English edition of The Plague. I’ve had it for twenty years. Camus’s picture hangs on the wall above my writing desk.

I loved Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar growing up and am currently writing a literary fiction novel that finds its inspiration within those pages.

I get compared to Chuck Palahniuk often. While I enjoyed his work as a teenager and younger man, I never realized how much I had internalized his style.

The other person my work gets compared to is Quentin Tarantino. I grew up on his movies and it shows. I think what the two of us share is the love of a good revenge story.

OBAAT: In July I heard you read your short story “Sole Survivor” at a Noir at the Bar at Yonder in Hillsborough, North Carolina. It’s a story that begins with cousin incest and becomes less mainstream from there. I laughed throughout, all the while thinking, “I probably shouldn’t be laughing at this,” which I consider to be high praise. That’s a long setup to a short question: Do you set out to drop humor into dark stories, or is it organic to how you write?

RC: Don’t you mean, COUSIN FUCKING? I believe that’s how I framed it that night after having to pause the story because of all the gasps. [Editor’s Note: Yep. He did.]

I don’t set out to write one way or another. I simply try to be my genuine self. Often, what comes out isn’t contemplated before jotting it down. The dark humor is an inexorable part of my flawed character.

The thing is, who I am has been controversial for so long that the things I’ve said, done, and written are only now being absorbed and considered by the public at large. Modernity has produced a mono-culture of cold, calculating phonies chasing clout and currency. To be authentic is difficult and messy in the best of times. Sure, I’m a bit strange but it’s very real, which puts others at ease for reasons I don’t understand.

But, this is neither the best of times nor the worst. I remember when my friends were afraid to be arrested for who they loved, so I’ll take what I can get. However, don’t be too complacent dear reader, descent into hell is only one broken ladder rung away.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

RC: I’m working on a literary fiction novel about a young woman’s psychiatric break after witnessing the murder of her friend. I should have the rough draft done before the year is out.

After, I’m going to write a crime thriller that’s been begging me to get on the page for a couple of years.

While doing that, I’ve begun collaborating on a graphic novel version of Prophet’s Debt with Mikah Meyers, a graphic artist that I met at Creatures Crimes and Creativity Con in 2023. The first character sketches and cover art are amazing. Mikah is an absolute gem of an artist and person.

 

Michael Connelly and The Little Sister

 

I like to watch You Tube videos of author appearances, especially interviews. I recently saw Michael Connelly mention he regularly returns to Chapter 13 of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister for inspiration when he wants to be sure he’s getting LA right.

The Little Sister was published in 1949 so I wondered how what Chandler wrote serves Connelly today, as it obviously serves him well. I opened my copy to Chapter 13 and saw right away what Connelly is talking about. I suspect you will, too.

One small bit of context: private detective Philip Marlowe has had a rough day.

Now, in Chandler’s words: 

I drove east on Sunset but I didn't go home. At La Brea I turned north and swung over to Highland, out over Cahuenga Pass and down onto Ventura Boulevard, past Studio City and Sherman Oaks and Encino. There was nothing lonely about the trip. There never is on that road. Fast boys in stripped-down Fords shot in and out of the traffic streams, missing fenders by a sixteenth of an inch, but somehow always missing them. Tired men in dusty coupes and sedans winced and tightened their grips on the wheel and ploughed on north and west toward home and dinner, an evening with the sports page, the blatting of the radio, the whining of their spoiled children the gabble of their silly wives. I drove on past the gaudy neon and the false fronts behind them, the sleazy hamburger joints that look like palaces under the colors, the circular drive-ins as gay as circuses with the chipper hard-eyed carhops, the brilliant counters, and the sweaty greasy kitchens that would have poisoned a toad. Great double trucks rumbled down over Sepulveda from Wilmington and San Pedro and crossed toward the Ridge Route, starting up in low-low from the traffic lights with a growl of lions in the zoo.

Behind Encino an occasional light winked from the hills through thick trees. The homes of screen stars. Screen stars, phooey. The veterans of a thousand beds. Hold it, Marlowe. You're not human tonight.

The air got cooler. The highway narrowed. The cars were so few now that the headlights hurt. The grade rose against the chalk walls and at the top a breeze, unbroken from the ocean, danced casually across the night.

 I ate dinner at a place near Thousand Oaks. Bad but quick. Feed ‘em and throw ‘em out. Lots of business. We can't bother with you sitting over your second cup of coffee, mister. You're using money space. See those people over there behind the rope? They want to eat. Anyway they think they have to. God knows why they want to eat here. They could do better home out of a can. They're just restless. Like you. They have to get the car out and go somewhere. Sucker-bait for the racketeers that have taken over the restaurants. Here you go again. You're not human tonight, Marlowe.

I paid off and stopped at a bar to drop a brandy on top of the New York cut. Why New York, I thought. It was Detroit where they made the machine tools. I stepped out into the night air that nobody had yet found out how the option. But a lot of people were probably trying. They'd get around to it.

I drove on to the Oxnard cut off and turned back along the ocean. The big eight-wheelers and sixteen-wheelers were streaming north, all hung over with orange lights. On the right the great fat solid Pacific trudging into shore like a scrub woman going home. No moon, no fuss, hardly a sound of the surf. No smell. None of the harsh wild smell of the sea. A California ocean. California, the department store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing. Here we go again. You're not human tonight, Marlowe.

[He thinks about the case for a couple of paragraphs.]

Malibu. More movie stars. More pink and blue bathtubs. More tufted beds. More Chanel No. 5. More Lincoln Continentals and Cadillacs. More wind-blown hair and sunglasses and attitudes and pseudo-refined voices and waterfront morals. Now, wait a minute. Lots of nice people work in pictures. You've got the wrong attitude, Marlowe. you're not human tonight.

I smelled Los Angeles before I got to it. It smelled stale and old like a living room that had been closed too long. But the colored lights fooled you. The lights were wonderful. There ought to be a monument to the man who invented neon lights. Fifteen stories high, solid marble. There's a boy who really made something out of nothing.

Then he goes to a movie he doesn’t like.

 

I see how this helps Connelly but there is a downside: very little had actually changed over the past 75 years.

Queer Crime Writers

 Just because my books are straight white male oriented doesn’t mean I’m not sensitive to those who aren’t straight white males. I’m a straight white male, so those are the characters I’m most comfortable writing. I’ve tried to make my books more diverse over the years, but it can be awkward for someone of my background.

 

This past spring’s Malice Domestic conference brought Queer Crime Writers to my attention. I spoke with a friend of mine who is a member and he suggested I get in touch with John Copenhaver, who I knew casually.

 

Today John answers my questions about QCW, as well as talking about some of the hurdles queer writers and characters have to clear, and what straight cisgendered writers can do to help. I learned a lot, and my future books will be better for it.

 

One Bite at a Time: Thanks for coming on the blog, John. It’s great to have you.

 

Queer Crime Writers is a relatively new organization, founded in 2019. What was the motivation to begin the group?

 

John Copenhaver: From the beginning, QCW was Kristen Lepionka’s brainchild. She identified the need early on. There was no centralized community or support network for queer crime writers aside from a few Facebook groups. Kristen reached out to Jeff Marks and me, and we began brainstorming. We’d seen the great things that Crime Writers of Color had accomplished, and we wanted to create a similar organization to support aspiring and published LGBTQ+ writers. Then, COVID hit, and life became much more complex. Eventually, we began meeting and established a groups.io chat and a website. We also added more organizers, including Stephanie Gayle and Marco Carocari.

 

OBAAT: The QCW mission statement reads, in part, “to promote community and collaboration among authors of crime fiction who identify as LGBTQIA+.” How do you do that?

 

JC: We began with a groups.io chat that established a closed, queer crime writers-only space to come together, share ideas, network, and celebrate each other’s work. This in-facing community-building aspect is central, but we also want ourselves to be a resource for readers and the broader crime writing community, so we developed a website that features our authors, their books (as well as books of notable LGBTQ crime writer luminaries), and an events calendar. We also established a relationship with CrimeReads to publish a quarterly round-up of queer crime books coming out seasonally. We produce a quarterly newsletter and invite liaisons with established crime writing organizations like Mystery Writers of America, Bouchercon, International Thriller Writers, Left Coast Crime, etc. We also hope to continue to be a presence at conferences by hosting a table and Queer Crime Writer meet-up whenever possible.

 

OBAAT: I used to work for a company that sent its pre-sales technical staff (such as myself) to customer sites to conduct what they called FIND interviews. “FIND” stood for Facts, Issues, Needs, and Dreams. How would you answer those from a QCW perspective?

 

·       What are the facts of the situation as they exist today?

 

JC: Queer-identifying crime writers are still underrepresented in publishing and in the broader crime reading and writing community. For instance, in 2023 crime fiction anthologies featured a total of 517 stories across 30 titles. Five out of 517 stories were written by LGBTQ+ writers. That’s less than 1 percent. That’s not acceptable. Of course, we understand we are a majority, but the stats don’t fit the size of the population of queer crime writers.

 

·       What issues do you face?

 

JC: Homophobia and transphobia in the publishing, writing, and reading community. While I’m sure some folks are openly biased, I believe most of it is an unconscious bias that emerges in the mind of the biased publisher, editor, agent, writer, reader, or event organizer as a preference or aesthetic sensibility. They can’t imagine a tough guy detective who likes men or a trans lawyer who is a bad-ass lawyer. They say to themselves that the book’s not for them or that the book won’t sell, but that’s just unconscious bias playing out, and it’s a failure of imagination. If we can move beyond that unconscious bias, we can make real strides. To do so means getting the community to discover the imaginative joy of reading and writing a counternarrative, the thrill of telling a story about a queer character that’s surprising because it breaks down old stereotypes.

 

·       What do you need to happen?

 

JC: We need allies to reach out, offer support, and read our books. If you read a wonderful queer mystery or thriller, tell folks about it, share it on social media. If you are building a panel or event, reach out to us or our members. While it’s wonderful to have a strong and supportive in-facing community, it’s getting the greater crime reading and writing community involved that’s necessary for lasting change.

 

·       In this context, what would a perfect world look like?

 

JC: In a perfect world, we’d have no need for this organization because our stories would whole equal status in the minds of mainstream publishing and have a broad readership.

 

OBAAT: Full disclosure: I am an aging (68 years old), straight, cisgendered, white male. What should I be aware of to most accurately and fairly depict LGBTQIA+ characters?

 

JC: So, I’ve been on many LGBTQ+ writers' panels, and we’re often asked a question similar to yours. Usually, a panelist will say: “do your research,” or “do your homework,” or mention some tropes to avoid, like “the gay best friend” (i.e., queer characters shouldn’t be the support staff for your straight journey to self-understanding) or “bury your gays” (i.e., tragic queer characters shouldn’t be written as fodder for straight catharsis. Don’t kill us so that you can come to terms with your homophobia.). Most problematic LGBTQ+ tropes result from centering straight lives in queer stories. While I’m not sure all my fellow queer crime writers would agree, I support cis-hetero authors writing queer characters and even making them point-of-view characters, but you should investigate your reasons for doing so. Do you have a compelling, humanistic reason for including character?  Are you willing to do the research? Are you willing to address your biases, especially those sneaky unconscious biases? Or are you just trying to chase a trend? If you’re chasing a trend, you’ll almost always fail to write a compelling LGBTQ+ character. Also, if you plan to include queer characters, be an advocate for queer writers.

.

OBAAT: When I was growing up and first became aware of such things, “queer” was an insult. Now it’s a term that is self-applied. Is the use context-dependent, or is it only appropriate for use by members who identify as such?

 

JC: “Queer” as a term emerged during the 1980 in academia and, now, has broadly been accepted as a catch-all term synonymous with LGBTQIA+. It’s a lot easier to say than the acronym, and it’s okay for non-queer people to use it as long as it’s spoken in a supportive and affirming way. It’s an adjective, so it’s okay to say “Queer people” or “Queer Crime Writers,” but avoid the noun “the queers” or “Are you a queer?” That’s offensive. The noun version is reductive; the adjective is descriptive. My sexuality is part of me (adjective), but not all of me (noun).

 

I know and appreciate that some older gay men don’t like the term, but it’s fallen into common usage and is here to stay, I think.

 

OBAAT: Which straight crime writers get LGBTQIA+ characters best? Not necessarily the most flattering, but most accurately and fairly?

 

JC: Laurie King did a fantastic job with her Kate Martinelli series and has a substantial gay and lesbian following because of it. Her new character, Raquel Laing, in Back in the Garden is also written in a balanced and compelling fashion. When I heard about the concept of Shawn Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, I raised my eyebrows—two men revenging the murderers of their gay sons—but Shawn, sensitive to the issues surrounding the portrayal of queer characters, balances the narrative beautifully. It’s a great example of how to write a straight redemption story without reducing the queer characters to pawns. It’s not an easy feat, but he did it effectively.

 

Thanks to John Copenhaver for taking the time to supply such thoughtful and thought-provoking answers. If you’d like to learn more about Queer Crime Writers, you can visit their website.