Dark Ride is a Partners' Pick and Independent Reader Recommended Book for August 1996.
In real life I am an American Novelist. I write full time and I love it. I also train a great deal for triathlons. I write in the morning and then go for a swim or a long run. It’s tough but somebody has to do it. I am used to keeping the wolf just outside the door. In fact, I like the wolf; I think he’s good for writers. I’ve written novels in odd places—unheated trailers, on the basketball court when I was a teacher, a hut in Spain and so on. But I like writing best in my own home with the wolf, my wife and the work.
I chose noir because at the time I was very broke and had been doing a job where people shot at me quite a lot, and I mean with bullets. I had decided to write another novel instead of going to law school, where I had been accepted. I chose to write Dark Ride, not an easy decision when you’re broke, and given the dark feelings I had about my future, I thought it would suit noir pretty well. Of course, there were attractions from the content point of view. American noir is a genre that is very strict in terms of its tone and architecture but incredibly liberal about intellectual spin. In other words, the characters in noir are, by the rules of the genre, outside the system. This outsideness is wonderfully liberating. Somehow in all that mud and mayhem you get to touch some truths.
How did I get my first book published? I was running out of stamps during a mailing to agents. I used my last stamp to send a query letter to William Morris figuring there was no way that they would even write back, much less take me on as a client. They did and here I am. The book went to St. Martin’s Press because an editor there loved the book and she went with it. I am proof that anybody can get over the counter. I don’t have a Ph.D. from Stanford and I didn’t go to the Iowa School of Writers. And I don’t know anybody in New York. Go figure. Yes, there is a paperback deal in the works with St. Martin’s Press.
As far as the industry goes, I have heard only that the book 'sold through', whatever that means exactly, and that Dark Ride is being called a cult classic by aficionados of the noir genre. Of course, I was thrilled to hear this but it all seems very abstract. I met someone in a bookstore who told me they read the book twice! I would love to hear what the audience liked about Dark Ride. After all, it’s not light reading. Maybe someone will write me a real angry letter or anything, telling me exactly why they hate or love this book.
My next book is called Day of the Dead and is 99. 9 percent finished. It’s a noir set on the border in the city of Tijuana. It is a crime story but not a whodunnit. It is squarely in the Thompson school—things go from bad to worse and there is a twist, but I think that it moves like a movie. One of the things I have tried to do is to push this genre’s envelope. This is the closest I’ve come to marrying the novel to the cinema. It’s something I’ve been working on and I think it’s both a failure and a success. (The definition of the novel according to an English wag was: It is a narrative with flaws. Well, I am now creating new flaws that have never been seen before.) Day of the Dead had one other interesting challenge. All of the action takes place during the holiday: Day of the Dead. Doing a twenty-four hour book is a bear; I wouldn’t try this at home.
Do I have some books hidden in a dusty drawer? Lots of them, unfortunately. They get very lonely in the drawer. I have plans for them. Next time I run out of money, I’m going to eat them to keep strong, burn them to stay warm. Of course, in all seriousness, I would like to have them see the light of day, but part of the price you pay in this business is knowing that everything you do is a gamble. You are a speculator with all the attendant highs and lows.
I think it is that, more than anything, that keeps most people from writing full time. They want something concrete, a pay check and some assurance about tomorrow. Writing is not like that. There is no assurance of anything. You write novels because, if you didn’t you would end up in a mental hospital. Now then, there are the “word processors” (and some of them are very successful), but I’m not talking about processing words, I’m talking about real emotions, ideas, the blood and tissues of the human experience. That’s a hell of a lot different. The word processors don’t give you anything except entertainment. The artist has to give you something of himself or herself every time he or she creates—there’s a big difference.