An Interview With Eric Beetner, Author of Real Bad, Real Soon

 Among the joys of being a writer is getting to know people like Eric Beetner. As nice a person as I know, Eric is, in addition to being a gifted author, a musician, an artist, and a telented video editor with seven Emmy nominations to his credit.

It’s been way too long since he’s been here, so the occasion of hois newest book, Real Bad, Real Soon, the sequel to last year’s outstanding The Last Few Miles of Road.

One Bite at a Time: Your books read as though they’re passing directly into the reader’smind with little or no authorial intrusion. As a writer myself, I know that’s a lot harder todo than it might sound. How do you manage it?

Eric Beetner: As much as I love a well-crafted sentence that makes you pause and marvel over the word choice, the simile, the metaphor I’d have never thought of – they also risk taking a reader out of the story. The scenario I just described means I’ve stopped reading and am now thinking of the author. I don’t want people to think about me at all when they read my books. I should be invisible.

In a way, I think my day job as a TV/Film editor may influence that. My craft, when done right, is invisible to the viewer. You should never come out of a movie and think, “Man, that was so well cut.” If you notice it, then it’s not really well cut except in instances of music montage or specifically designed editorial moments, but even those are there as showpieces and outliers when it comes to telling the story. You have your moment (think of the many music montages in Goodfella, let’s say) then the song fades, and you go back to being invisible.

 approach writing the same way. My favorite books to read are ones where the story moves along as if by an unseen hand. There is craft in that. It’s not dumbing down language so the reader doesn’t have to “think” about it. Rather, it’s being aware that language is there to be understood easily and in most cases, simplicity is best to communicate your story.

 

OBAAT: You always have a unique take on hit men. First there were Lars and Shaine inthe Devil books. Now it’s Carter McCoy, Breanna, and a third person I won’t namebecause it will spoil the ending of The Last Few Miles Of Road. I’m not asking youwhere you get your ideas – well, sort of, maybe – but what inspired these twists on agenre that has been done to death?

EB: If I’m starting to write a crime novel I assume going in there will be death, so I think how can I make it something you might not have seen before? I like exploring the consequences of violence. I don’t ever want to take it lightly. I want there to be a cost to any death on the page. If I’m thinking in those terms, then the characters have to adjust and they sort of automatically get this extra layer on top you don’t get if someone is just a cold-blooded killer.

If you look at the best books and films where there is a cypher of a person whose only job is to be the best killer out there with zero emotion, then the true center of the story is usually someone else who the audience can connect with because there’s no empathizing with an emotionless killing machine.

OBAAT: This is mostly for the fledgling writers out there, but how has your experienceas an author differed from what you expected?

EB: You are catching me on a day where my only answer is that is has been SO MUCH HARDER than I wanted it to be. I’ve been kicked in the crotch by this business more times than I can count and I often wonder why I persist. I could run down the list of all the indignities and bad breaks I’ve gotten, but we don’t have the space and nobody wants to hear me complain.

When I started publishing in 2009, I had a Freshman class of other writers who I knew and was close with and others who I was aware of and have followed their careers. I’d say easily 75% of them have fallen away. Cancelled contracts, dropped by agents, lost the fire – whatever the cause, I’m still hanging around where so many have quit. Others of the peer group are still going because they’ve achieved a measure of success which is great to see.

I’m sure I’ve made some poor choices, trusted some wrong people, which has contributed to my frustration and my lack of sales. But every time I think of writing my big send-off letter on my way out the door and detailing the crushing lows of what I’ve endured, I’m reminded of how many kind people I’ve met, how many hands up, favors, kindnesses small and large I’ve been on the receiving end of over my time and I realize it’s not at all bad. Not in the least.

So yeah, I’ve never been a best seller. Can’t seem to make a foreign sales deal, never had a movie made. I’ve had MULTIPLE publishers go out of business while publishing my stuff. Had books I delivered in full end up never coming out. Had to pivot and adjust and re-think everything at every turn. But what makes it worth it are the friends I’ve made. Many are the same names on my shelf who I love to read year after year. And the experiences I’ve had, even in the relatively small-time world of my publishing career.

It is NOT for the weak or the thin skinned. It’s a brutal, heartbreaking, commerce-driven business that will chew you up and spit you out. But if you need to tell stories, if you love other book people, if you want to meet your heroes up close and see how down-to-earth they really are, then come on in. Even if you only last a short time, once you write and publish a book, it’s something nobody can take away from you and something relatively few people actually do (though on most days it feels like everyone and their mother has written a book)

OBAAT: When we chatted in 2017, you said, “I’m always fighting my instinct to write acharacter who is fifty as the ‘older’ guy.” Carter McCoy is well past fifty, so you clearlygot over it. What changed in your outlook, and not just that you got older. A lot of writersget older and never get past that hurdle.

EB: I like writing characters with a history and some life experience. For Carter, I needed someone with nothing to lose. Literally. You can’t take his life from him because he’s only got weeks, maybe months to live. I could have given a young guy his disease, but I also liked the idea of a man who has reached his 70s and lived a good life and now has to struggle with himself to see if he can become someone else, and if killing someone who he thinks deserves it will fundamentally change who he is. These were all interesting ideas to me that carried more weight when he had a few more years in him. Everyone changes in their 20s in a thousand different ways. Far fewer people reinvent themselves in their 70s.

But hey, I’m smart enough to give him a younger person to interact with and readers to react to. The Carter McCoy books aren’t written for a geriatric crowd, even as I quickly approach that stage myself.

OBAAT: When you were here in 2015 I asked, “If you could have written any book of thepast hundred years, what would it be, and what is it about that book you admire most?”Your reply: “I’ll say Wild at Heart. I’m a huge Barry Gifford fan and this is ground zero formost people on his work and the start of his most famous creation, the Sailor and Lulabooks.”

It’s been ten years. Would your answer be the same?

EB: I’m not sure. Maybe the cynical answer would be to pick something that has sold much better. I honestly think that the satisfaction for me lies in the fact that I have written books and created now a body of work of which I am enormously proud. I’d hate to think of writing someone else’s book. That’s their story to tell just as I think my books could only have been written by me. When I think about quitting or the inevitable day when I’ll be done by choice or by circumstance, I know that I did what I set out to do creatively. Commercially, there are many goals still left to attain. I have ambitions and goals both big and small. But I can rest easy knowing I have created more in the fiction world than I ever thought possible. I’ve told stories that are different and while I know I’ve recycled themes that are interesting to me, I’ve written mostly vastly different books. I’ve taken chances, experimented, stretched beyond my comfort zone. I have books I’d put up against most of my favorite authors and can think, “Yeah, that belongs on the same shelf.”

It’s gratifying to think that and it took a while, but I’m at a sort of peace with what I’ve done for myself, even if I haven’t cracked a wide readership. Knowing I connected at all with even a small audience is amazing and beyond my expectations when I began.

OBAAT: You are a master of the short series, two or three books. Have you ever been tempted to go back and revisit an old series, say, for instance, Lars and Shaine, or the McGraws from the Rumrunners books?

EB: Three seems right to me. I don’t know that I could write a ten- or twenty-book series. Hats off to those who do. It’s a challenge.

When Wolfpack picked up the Rumrunners books there were only two. A trilogy seems better, especially in a book bundle the way they are packaged now, so I wrote a third book many years after the last stab at that series. It’s called Sideswipe and it’s only in that ebook bundle and because of that it may be my least read novel, but I still like it.

Going back after so long was easier than I expected.

I co-wrote a trilogy with Frank Zafiro, The ‘List’ Series (The Backlist, The Short List, The Getaway List) and he floated the idea that we revisit that one. I hesitated, then he suggested two novellas we could pair into one volume and that sparked an idea (because the end of Book Three felt fairly final). So I did write that and Frank is going to write his half when he has time in his very busy writing schedule. That’ll technically be four books in that series, which will make it the longest I’ve done.

Lars and Shaine for sure is done. I can’t see another story with them. The McGraws as well. After Carter I may be done with series entirely, even trilogies. But I know myself enough to know that if an idea comes or if someone wants more books with characters I created in any of the unsold books I’ve written, then I doubt I’d say no. If someone challenged me (and gave me contracts) for a ten-book series, I’d take the challenge and try to push myself because that’s just what I do, ill-advised or not.