Interview With Warren Moore

One of the great parts about going to writer conferences is meeting the other writers.
Recently at Bouchercon, I had the privilege of partaking in Author Speed Dating, where we were paired with another author, and gave a pitch about our work to a table of folks- and then did it 20 times, to 20 different tables.

Bouchercon writeup and pics here.

So my partner was Warren Moore (Professor Mondo)

 

By the end, we could recite each others' pitch. His sounded good, so I got his debut novel, Broken Glass Waltzes. If you like crime novels about sex. drugs, and rock 'n roll, you'll love this one.

Now let him tell us about it!

Q: Tell us about your latest book.

A. Broken Glass Waltzes is my first novel. It’s a noir piece, set in the Midwestern hard rock scene around 1990. Kenny Rockford is the drummer for Cincinnati’s most popular heavy metal band – the pay is enough to live on, but the benefits are even better. One of them is a girl named Jean Cassidy, who he takes home one night. When he learns she’s married, he decides to walk away. She doesn’t. Complications ensue.

Q: How does it differ from your earlier work, or from other books in the genre?

A. I think BGW is anchored in the classic noir and pulp traditions of writers like Jim Thompson and James M. Cain, but has a contemporary setting and sense of place. Dee Snider (of Twisted Sister) once told me that it really captured the rock and roll lifestyle – though not his, he added thankfully.

Q: What do you use as the setting for your novels?

A. The book takes place in the greater Cincinnati area, where I grew up, and in the clubs where I’ve seen (and played) my share of gigs over the years. It’s a place I know, and a scene I knew. Jonathan Valin’s “Harry Stoner” P.I. series showed me that Cincinnati could have mean streets like any other city, so I figured if the Queen City could handle private eyes, it could handle noir.

Q: How would your main character react to different people?

A. Kenny’s pretty much a working-class guy, but instead of working in a factory, warehouse, or carpet store, he punches the clock behind a Yamaha drum set. As such, he’s just another 25-year-old guy with a job, but maybe with longer hair than usual. He’s not looking for trouble, but has played before enough rough crowds to handle it when it comes to him. Most of the time…
Jean, on the other hand, is much more of a chaos factor. She can go from seductive to terrifying in an instant. If you try to keep up with her, you’ll need a neck brace.

Q: How was your protagonist created as a character? Where did they come from?

A. Kenny and I have a fair amount in common: We both play drums. We both like loud music, baseball, and comics. We both come across as wise-asses, but a lot of that is the shell over someone who doesn’t really know how to fit in when they’re offstage. I’m smarter than Kenny (I hope), but pieces of my life pop up in his here and there.
Jean has elements of several different women I’ve known over the years, but a lot of her, thank God, is just Jean.

Q: What were the major influences that drove you to write?

A. It’s just always something I’ve done. My parents were both strongly interested in art, music, and reading, (they met as commercial art students in high school) so I grew up in a house where doing creative stuff was just something people could do, even if they made their livings in other ways.
As to why and how I write the way I do, my influences would include Lawrence Block, Harlan Ellison, and William Kotzwinkle, along with the above-mentioned Thompson and Valin. (I was born on Thompson’s 59th birthday, so if you find significance in such things, there you go.)

Q: Are there any themes in this book, or in your work in general?

A. Not intentionally, but when I take off my writer cap and put on my English Professor mortarboard, I think a lot of my stories are about isolation and people who have to deal with who they are, or who they may have discovered themselves to be.

Q: What advice can you offer the fledgling writer?

A. Read widely and deeply. Write frequently (and with greater discipline than I have.) Learn things like grammar and spelling; the language is your tool kit, and you should know how to use those tools correctly and effectively (as well as when it’s OK to use a screwdriver as a prybar in an emergency.)

Q: What drives you to write?

A. That’s a tough one for me, because I’ve always written – there are tapes of me making up songs and stories before I could actually write. As I said, I grew up in a home where reading and writing were perfectly acceptable things for a person to do, so I did them and still do.
Having said that, other motivations along the way were to impress girls (didn’t work) and to make some extra money (which has happened here and there.) Now I find myself writing for the sake of the work itself – am I pleased with these things that I’ve made? And that’s becoming a yes more often than it once was. I’m not ashamed of the older stuff I’ve written – it’s good for what it was, I think, but I like the stuff I write now more than I do the stuff I wrote 25 years or so ago. But even so, I would have written stuff anyway; it’s just a thing I do.

Q: How has your background shaped your writing?

A. The home stuff I mentioned. I’ve told folks that I thought we were poor when I was a kid – I realized later that we were simply Bohemians living a semi-bourgeois lifestyle.
Obviously, I can write about rock and roll because I’ve played it (and still do, with the hearing loss to prove it), but I think in a larger sense I’ve spent lots of my life feeling like I didn’t really fit in. That’s probably one reason I’m an academic, because higher ed is an odd sock drawer for humanity, but it may also be a reason why I write about outsiders – I’ve always felt like one.

Q: The publishing world is a strange and scary place. Can you speak to that?

A. Heh. BGW was originally published by a small press in 2013. However, almost immediately upon its release, life got in the way of the good people at that company, and things basically imploded. That’s always a risk in the indie realm, but thank heaven for the people who try, even if it doesn’t always work. So the book was basically orphaned in fairly short order. But I was lucky enough to meet the folks at Down & Out Books, and so the novel is getting what I hope will be the exposure it deserves.

Q: Take us through your writing process from start to finish. Do you have a prescribed way of doing things, or do you have more of a "free form" approach?

A. I’m “Mr. Bad Example,” I’m afraid. I don’t really schedule my writing; generally I do it on an “as needed” basis. Sometimes the need is internal, and sometimes it’s external (as in, “Oh, yeah – I promised someone a story. Better write it, huh?”) While I may have scenes, titles, or lines that come into my head in advance, I typically “pants it,” and my main objective is to get out of the way of my story until it gets me to that scene or line I mentioned at the beginning of the sentence. I’ve written at least one published story while proctoring an exam for my British Literature class. Most of the time, though, I have some kind of music going while I write. Typically it’s either instrumental (Surf or prog rock, Bach, or the American Analog Set) or something so familiar that it keeps me from being distracted. I almost never do second drafts – because I was a magazine journalist for a number of years between my M.A. and my Ph.D., I learned to write very readable copy, editing as I type. As I said, I’m a lousy example.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to discuss?

A. Just that I’m grateful for this opportunity to get acquainted with your audience. Also, if you or they would like to read my thoughts on a variety of issues great and small – usually small – they can find my blog at http://profmondo.wordpress.com, or on twitter as @profmondo. Finally, I want to express how important it is for writers (well, this writer, anyway) to hear from readers. It lets us know someone’s out there paying attention, and that means a lot. Thanks again!

Interview With Peter Dudar

Here's Peter's latest book, a bargain on Amazon. Click the image to go to the Kindle version.
Published by Books and Boos Press.

It's a hella scary book. If you like creepy and scary, you'll want to read this.

Peter N. Dudar has been writing and publishing horror fiction for over a decade now. Born and raised in Albany, New York, Peter is an alumnus of Christian Brothers Academy, and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English at the State University of New York at Albany. He currently resides in Lisbon Falls, Maine and is a proud member of the New England Horror Writers.
Amazon page

So how did this novel come to be? Was it envisioned from the start as a bigger canvas, or did it expand organically out of an idea? Please tell us a bit about the origin.

I had originally gotten the idea for WHERE SPIDERS FEAR TO SPIN back in October of 2013.  I had suggested to the members of my writers group that we all try to write a ghost story for the week of Halloween.  I'd originally imagined my piece to be a short story, a one-act play where a terminally ill person was visited by the ghost of her late husband on her deathbed.  It wasn't until I started fleshing out the character and creating her back-story that I discovered this piece was going to be a lot longer than I'd originally perceived. When I realized that she was a soap opera star, and that she'd wronged her husband enough to make him want to drag her soul to hell, the entire manuscript fell into place.

Did you start with the germ of an idea and start writing to see where it went, or did you map a good deal out in your head (or even outline) before crafting?
 
I wrote the entire piece in three sittings, and then did several rounds of revision. I had the germ of the idea in my head, but not a whole lot in terms of structure or plot design.  I basically had the concept of a dying woman and her already-dead husband that wanted to punish her to the point that she was terrified of dying.  Writing the story was basically my way of piecing together where things went wrong between the husband and wife. What surprised me the most was how the titular spider became entangled in the plotlines, and ultimately became my character Sadie's eternal punishment for her sins.  It may be the best story denouement I've ever devised.  That whole story arc came out of nowhere and I'm pleased it worked as well as it did. 

What do you feel is the main theme(s)?
 
I think there are several main themes in this book.  Primarily, I'm fascinated with redemption tales and I think the conflict between Sadie and her daughter Theresa was going to reach a sense of redemption for only one of them.  Both of them are going through their own private hell, but in a way Theresa is actually a hostage to her dying mother and is desperately longing for some kind of catharsis in their relationship.  Which brings up the theme of justice.  I very much liked the idea of having Sadie's hospice in Theresa's living room being reflective of a courtroom, and having the spider being an unwitting juror watching from her web in the corner.  And of course, the ghost of Andy Mills is both prosecutor and judge.  Justice, redemption, and possibly even forgiveness.  I hope I accomplished this without delving into the melodramatic.

Why do you feel this is important, and what would you want a reader to take away from reading this book?

It's important because I believe there's an empathic connection for readers to bond with.  All of us have parents, and have most likely harbored some anger toward them (whether important or trivial) that have left us making passive-aggressive digs at them.   We reach that point where the tides will turn, where we end up caring for those who cared and raised us.  That's an uncomfortable notion for a lot of people.  I would hope my story reminds people that concepts like Karma and cosmic justice should be taken seriously, and that we need to strive to be better people.  That, and I wanted to leave them royally creeped out from the story's conclusion.  I want people to be shocked and skeeved out by Sadie's eternity of afterlife.

What makes a good book or engaging story?

I think it's that notion of empathy, and the bond that connects readers with the story.  I recently read Harper Lee's new book GO SET A WATCHMAN, as her previous classic book TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is perhaps my favorite book of all time.  I wanted more of Scout Finch's childhood capers because many of her hilariously bungled plans and schemes remind me of my own childhood.  I know what it's like to have a naive notion of how the world is supposed to work, and when that notion is rocked accidentally, it feels like someone yanked the carpet out from under you just to make you look like a fool.  I love coming-of-age stories in general, and comparing them with my own life.  Joe Lansdale put out a killer novel a few years back called EDGE OF DARK WATER, concerning some children who hatched a plan to bring their dead friend's ashes to Hollywood to fulfill a childhood dream.  That book left my imagination captivated for a long, long time.  Before that, it was Douglas Clegg's THE HOUR BEFORE DARK.  Before that it was Stephen King's THE BODY.  Friends in the horror writing industry keep telling me to read Robert McCammon's BOY'S LIFE next, so I suppose I need to get around to it.

I'm a tough critic.  When a book is going wrong, my mind tends to pick apart the story and figure out why and where the author messed up.  A good book will distract me from picking apart syntax and inconsistencies.  A great book will subdue the writer in me trying to find the seams and thin fabric of storytelling and keep me immersed.  If I'm swept away in the story, I cease to be a writer and remain solely a reader.  I stop thinking of where things went wrong and how I could improve on a story, and just allow myself to linger on beautiful prose.  When that happens, I cannot for the life of me put a book down.  The world around me could be falling apart and I'd never even notice.

Are there writers with similar themes to yours? Who are your influences (can be writers, or even artists, musicians, or others) and what is it about their work that attracts you?

I'm sure thousands of books with similar themes have been written already.  I can say that I love stories that take a left turn and lead me to a conclusion different than I had been expecting.  Stories that are too predictable tend to leave me cold.  I love books by authors like Joe R. Lansdale, Douglas Clegg, Chuck Palahniuk, Peter Straub, and Harlan Ellison.  I love stories that come across as both literary and entertaining, without being too over the top in terms of grossout horror.  I love ghost stories unabashedly.  They are my passion.  In fact, I found myself writing a short story called "A Taste of Green Voodoo Healing" a few years ago based on a song I heard from the band LIVE.  Their song was called "Ghost", and the lyrics had haunted me enough that I had to create something from my head based on the image they'd put in there.  The story was published in an anthology called NIGHTSCAPES; Volume 1.  Trying to list all my influences would be impossible.  At 43, I've been immersed in so many different mediums of art that I couldn't begin to identify all of them.  But I can honestly say is that I'm attracted to things that are morbid and macabre.  I love Poe, and Edward Gorey, and Midnight Syndicate.  I love dark and creepy things.  I see beauty in the grotesque, and I'm drawn to news headlines of the more sinister persuasion.  The band Tool did a song a few years ago called "Vicarious".  That song resonates with me in uncomfortable ways.

Is storytelling mostly entertainment, or does it serve other functions? Do you have particular goals other than telling a good story?

Do I have a hidden agenda?  I've never sat down to write something out for the sake of being preachy or trying to change people's minds about their ideas and beliefs.  Should art (in terms of writing) try to emulate reality as we know it or historically preserve an era within our society?  Definitely.  That's how the reader comes to identify with the story.  Stephen King has built an empire based on his observations of living in a small town because it resonates with an enormous segment of American life.  He's the Norman Rockwell of dark secrets and terrible ideas.   Writers do need to know who their audience is, and build narratives based on truth and reality. And the reader will always tell you when you get it wrong, so you need to be prepared for criticism and perform your due diligence in researching your facts and information.  But at the heart of it all, storytelling really is entertainment.  It's providing a safe means of escape from the real world.

Any other goals you've set for yourself, professionally or personally?

I've always viewed my writing as a hobby.  I'm not harboring any notions of making this my primary source of income or anything.  I've always loved the craft of writing, but in terms of the business end of publishing I'm really not all that enthusiastic.  I tend to be a private person and cringe at the thought of "being recognized" or looked at as "famous".  I prefer anonymity.  As far as goals, I'm writing fiction primarily in horror, but I also write erotica under a pseudonym, I write a film review column for Cinema Knife Fight, and I keep a blog called "Dead By Friday" on Wordpress.com.  Juggling all these things keeps me busy enough.  My only goal is to stay relevant and be happy.

Some writers write fast and claim not to rewrite much. Do you do this, or painstakingly revise? When you send the book off to the publisher, are you happy with it, or just tired of it?

I tend to revise painstakingly.  I'm not the fastest writer to begin with, especially now with two children in the house to distract me.  When I'm "in the zone" I can accomplish a great deal.  First draft is basically writing out the skeleton of the story.  First round of revisions is fleshing out the skeleton and fine-tuning details and being sure that chronology works correctly.  Second round is deleting errata and unnecessary words.  When I send a piece off to the publisher, I'm usually happy with the piece.  When they send me their round of edits to go through, that's when I feel tired and worn out.

Do you have good editors, and if so, how do they help you? Do they look for particular things? Do you have different people for different editing levels?

I have my writers group as beta readers and a wall for bouncing ideas off of.  I've been very blessed to have good editors so far, people that I appreciate professionally and love on a personal level.  I've worked with great people.  The best editors are the ones that know how to hone down your work without taking your voice away from you as an author.  They're the ones that are brave enough to tell you when something isn't working and force you to rethink plot structure and character arcs.  They're the ones that know how to polish a stone until it shines like a gem.

If a writer came to you for advice, how would you help?

I would give that person complete honesty.  That can be a tough thing to come by in this business.  I recently attended a convention where I was invited to sit on a panel and discuss the business of getting published.  A young woman raised her hand and asked if she should bend her writing to fit what she thought publishers are looking for?  From my experience, publishers are looking for people that write like Stephen King.  Or Nora Roberts.  Or John Grisham.  And if you have your head bent on writing like THOSE people, you'll never learn to find your own voice.  From my perspective, big publishing is on the endangered species list.  If they fall, literary agents will be the next to go.  The paradigm of publishing has changed completely since I first started writing, with the advent of the small-press and self publishing.  My advice was, "Screw 'em.  Write the stories YOU want to tell.  Find your voice and perfect your craft.  You will build a REAL fan base along the way and you will grow exponentially as an author."  Even now, I can go back to those stories I wrote at the beginning of my career and can tell instantly who I was trying to emulate at that moment.  I can tell when I was going for the gentle, cosmic trippiness of Ray Bradbury or the razor-sharp wit and scrutiny of Harlan Ellison.  I can even tell which piece I wrote made me break through that mold and learn how to let the story lead ME instead of me pushing the story out.  That moment in time, in my life, was absolutely cathartic for me.  From my experience, every writer that has achieved success before me has pushed that same advice, and most have given the benefit of their wisdom and experience freely to help the next generation of writers find success.  It always begins with finding your own voice.

Stories can be told by using a different medium. Can you see your book as a film, audio, etc.? How would that alter the telling?

I am dying for the moment when someone approaches me with the desire to turn one of my stories into a movie.  I think SPIDERS would make a wonderful film, especially from an art student anxious to cut their teeth in the business.  Would it alter the telling?  That's a tough question to answer.  The film review column I write for Cinema Knife Fight specifically deals with the big-screen adaptations of the works of Stephen King.  I've read almost all of King's books and I know where the screenplays deviate from the actual stories.  Mr. King has always been cool about being lenient toward his written work vs. how his stories transform in the hands of other people.  Sometimes they improve his work.  Sometimes they don't.  King is cool because he knows that his source material is ALWAYS in print form for people to discover, and the film versions of his work cannot detract from that in any way.  I would hope that I will be the same way; that if one of my books hits the big screen, I'm not going to get my panties in a bunch if they don't do my work justice.  All the same, if I had my druthers, I would hope that someone like Rob Reiner or Frank Darabont would be interested in WHERE SPIDERS FEAR TO SPIN.  Those are the guys who know how to turn literary visions into reality.

What's the next step in your writing world?

I'm working on my next full-length novel called THE GOAT PARADE.  It's an occult tale; one that deals with Satan and how he can influence several lives on different levels and play them against each other at his own personal whim.  It's very dark and disturbing.  Beyond that, I have another ghost novella planned for next year.

Tell us a fun fact about yourself.

I'm an unabashed Walt Disney fan and have a full-length animated screenplay in my head called "The Rainmakers" that I would love to write for them.  It would be a musical about a pair of orphaned children (based on my adopted daughters) that save a dying frontier town from drought and find a loving set of parents in the process.

Any other information you'd like to impart?

For the love of God and all that is holy, never let self-doubt stop you from following your dreams.

Me and Harlan Ellison

I am humbled- and awed today by something I discovered by accident.

While looking up my story collection The Big Book of Genre Stories, on Kobo, I saw the "also boughts".

I am placed on the same page as works by Harlan Ellison.

The Harlan Ellison. The writer with more awards than any other writer- and unless you're aware, you've not heard of him. One of the giants, the classics.

Which tells you something about being a successful, working writer for 50 years. Yeah, 50.
He's the man. And I'm listed on the same page on a retail site.

I'm not worthy! Though I carry his torch. As he said of himself, comparing to Fritz Leiber- "I'm not fit to carry his pencil-case."

How often are you placed in the pantheon with your heroes? It makes me weep with joy.

I've actually met the man, who said nice things about me.

You probably haven't read him. You need to.

The Sky is Falling (Again)

We constantly hear the cries from Big Traditional Publishing (BTP), telling how whatever new thingie means the End of Books As We Know It.

"Nobody's buying books these days!"--- Uh, yeah, they are, and lots of them. Sure, in these tough times there many be fewer people plunking down thirty bucks for a new formula hardcover, but overall, books are doing quite well.
BUT-- folks who want a good story need not support a big company with $29, while the producer of the work (the writer) gets $1, there are other options.
Writers can now deliver a good book for under $10, and keep a chunk of that for doing the real work.

"Amazon is killing us by being unfair!"--- People don't just use the online retailer for lower prices and convenience, they return for the great customer experience. Amazon has changed the game, no doubt about it. But the lumbering old companies want the clock rolled back to their distribution monopoly.

Writers put up books at Amazon and have enormous distribution and exposure. In many cases, the writer can make more money via that route than going to BTP. And get a book up for sale a hell of a lot quicker than BTP ever can. The way BTP is mistreating so many writers means more work-producers are leaving BTP every day.

"Ebooks are killing us by flooding the market with cheap crap!"--- BTP has tradtionally been in the business of pushing expensive stories on paper, with high costs for printing, shipping, and storage.
With ebooks, those costs have gone away, and a writer can get a book out for a few hundred dollars.

Of course, an easy delivery method has opened the floodgates to many new books, so yes, there's a lot of crap. But there's a lot of very good work as well, that would never have seen the light of day under BTP.  A writer can get editing for a good story, put on a good cover, and compete with the best.

It's the reader, the buyer who decides if the book is crap or not. I've read a great deal of BTP professionally-produced garbage, including NY Times Best-Sellers, so that's no guarantee of quality whatsoever.

And guess what? On Smashwords and Amazon, you can preview sections of the book to check the quality for yourself. You need not pay for crap when you can screen it out in a minute or two of sampling.

As a historical note, this isn't the first time we've heard the shrill cry that a new thingie will flood the market with cheap crap. Remember paperbacks? And yet, all these years later, we still have the sky where it is. Check out this article posted on The Passive Voice.

And for those who think writers won't make any money in the new world of publishing, a good writer now has a better chance of making money than any other time in history.

Why should we, who have spent many years learning craft give away our time and expertise?
Harlan Ellison said it best: "Pay the Writer!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE