I don't outline very
heavily. I work from a very loose structure when I start a novel. That
usually means notes I've been taking anywhere from a few months to a year,
bits of dialogue, characters, plot points, specific scenes I want to
incorporate. I'll have an idea of the world I'm building for these
characters. But the Hank Thompson trilogy and the Pitt series are
different from book to book. One book ends and you're heading in a certain
direction. I don't have a beat sheet that I'm working off, going Bang!
Bang! Bang! Bang! so there's always a lot of room for me to make a
decision on the fly, to have a new character introduced, or have planned
to do one thing and suddenly say, "Oh, no. It would be so much better if
this character got his ear ripped off here." And suddenly you have a whole
new area of the story open up that I'd never seen before. And that's
always a lot of fun and very energizing, but it's also very daunting
because you mentally prepared to go down a certain course and suddenly, "I
made one of those choices again where I might need to pay the
price."
You planned to take the path
to the left and suddenly you look down the path to the right. But you
packed for the path to the left and you're not sure what's gonna happen if
you go down the path to the right, but something tells you that there's
better shit down it. So you charge down it and hope you're
right.
In addition to your novels,
you write Marvel's comic series Moon Knight. What are the creative
differences between writing novels and
comics?
Well, the list is basically endless. With a novel,
I'm working with my own characters, my own world, my own material. There's
a gargantuan amount of freedom. I don't ever worry about someone saying,
"Oh, no, that character wouldn't do that because in Issue 23..." All the
work I'm doing is for Marvel, so I'm working with licensed characters by a
company. I've actually been very fortunate with Marvel in terms of
editorial involvement. They've had a very light hand with me because
[Moon
Knight ] is on the fringes of
what they do over there. If I was trying to work with Captain America or
Spider-Man or one of their mainstream characters, then their involvement
would be a lot more.
I had a taste of that. I
wrote a single issue of a Wolverine comic book, and I had more editorial
voice coming down the pipeline (not in a dictatorial way) letting me know
there were certain things that could be done and could not be done. I
think I had more [editorial voice] on that single issue than an entire
thirteen issues doing Moon
Knight .
You're definitely working with
their toys and need to play within their rules of that world within the
Marvel universe. That said, there's really nothing wrong with that. It
creates interesting choices. And if I didn't like Marvel comic books, I
didn't like those characters or the Marvel universe, I wouldn't be doing
it in the first place. It's a challenge and also a
pleasure.
When I sit down to write a novel, I
don't have to worry about where this thing's gonna end. I start a novel and
I don't have to worry about a page count. I know I'm going to write enough
to fulfill my contractual obligation and if I write considerably beyond
that, I don't expect it to be too much of a problem. As long
as I'm not getting too far over 400 pages, and I don't think I ever have,
it's going to be within the realm of a thriller. I'm also free to choose
how I lay the words out on the page, using prose, all these toys you can
play around with. I don't have to use chapters if I don't want to; I generally
don't. I don't have to punctuate dialogue the way you traditionally
punctuate dialogue, and I don't.
A comic book has a very
specific structure. A mainstream, monthly comic book is 22 pages. The
script can be a lot longer or shorter, but the actual page count when it
is produced, needs to be 22 pages. You're generally talking about using
six panels per page. You don't want to really go over that because, if you
do, it creates more work for the artist and the panels start getting
smaller and smaller, which means they carry less and less visual
information. You really have to work within that structure when you're
writing a comic book. It's not nearly as liberating as writing a
novel.
Your books are very
male-centric. Have you ever considered using more female
protagonists?
Yeah, I've got two short
stories out right now with the same female protagonist. I have a female
detective called Elizabeth Gordon who's the dirtiest, meanest cop and I'd
love to write a novel based on that character. I kind of circle around and
around about that. Part of the reason that my books are "male-centric" is
because I'm a guy and because I haven't felt confident in the way I write
my female characters. I have a tendency to bury them a little bit because
I don't feel as sure with them as I do with my male characters. It's
something I'm hoping to expand on. Some of the work I've done recently,
the female characters are coming to the fore and their relationships with
the male characters are becoming part of the fiber of the story.
Hopefully, I can mature in that way. I'd love to have more of that in my
books.
Is there a genre or area that
you haven't written for yet, but would like
to?
Like I said at the beginning
of all of this, my first loves were science fiction and fantasy. Those are
both areas I'd love to write in. I'm going to be starting work on a crime
novel soon. The intention is for it to be not really science fiction but
more "our world, slightly alternate"; our world today but something
happens two years ago that changed a lot of things. It's not totally
science fiction, but it is speculative, but the plot is very much a
traditional crime plot.
I have notes for a fantasy
concept that I tinker on now and then. Just notes on characters and the
world. I'd love to do that stuff. The one novel I'm definitely writing,
the speculative crime novel; the fantasy novel, I don't know if I'll ever
have the time for, but it's something that I'd like to play with down the
line. Certainly not in the near future.
I've been very fortunate to be able
to cross over. With the Joe Pitt books, once I was already starting on
the crime novels, the opportunity came along and I had this idea. My
publisher was interested in it, accepted the idea, and didn't pressure me
into using a [pseudonym] on the Joe Pitt books or anything like that. The
more I learn about the publishing business and meet other writers, I've
found that I've been really fortunate in my relationship with my editor
and my publisher and the way I've been
received.
I've been given a pretty
long leash. There are a lot of crime and mystery writers who work in a
scenario where, if they have a new idea, they're very much expected to produce
an idea that's close to what they've done in the past. When they want to
try and branch out from that, there's a real good chance their
publisher's gonna say, "You write the book, but we'll read it and tell you if
we're interested in it." I've been fortunate that I've been able to come to
a place with my publisher where I can generally tell them what the next
book I'm interested in writing is and they've been interested in buying
books just based on that verbal pitch.
I've branched away from what I started
to write. The
Shotgun Rule was a departure from the kind of
crime novels I've written before. I have a crime novel set in Los Angeles
coming out in February of 2009. That'll be another shift in tone. The
speculative crime novel will come out later that year and that'll be
different. I've had a lot of freedom to move around and try different
things, but I think straight-up fantasy might be a little too far outside
what they're interested in. (Laughs)
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