Synopsis:

A collection of conversations with some of the foremost stylists and influential fiction writers working today. Authors featured include James Crumley, Elmore Leonard, James Sallis, Ken Bruen, Daniel Woodrell, James Ellroy, Craig Holden and Pete Dexter, among many others.

CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION

 

PART I

THE LEGENDS

James Crumley: The Right Madness

Elmore Leonard: Ten Rules

 

PART II

KITH & KIN

Daniel Woodrell: Crime in the Ozarks

Alistair MacLeod: The Tuning of Perfection

 

PART III

DARK HISTORY

Andrew Vachss: Two Trains Running

James Ellroy: To Live and Die in L.A.

 

PART IV

PAGE TO SCREEN AND BACK

Max Allan Collins: On the Road

Stephen J. Cannell: Hollywood Tough

 

PART V

DUTY & HONOR

Craig Holden: Love & Death

Pete Dexter: The Poetry of Violence

 

PART VI

THRILLER

Randy Wayne White: Perfect Law

Lee Child: One Shot

 

PART VII

TROUBADOURS

Tom Russell: Tough Company

Kinky Friedman: Independence Day

 

PART VIII

THE DESERT DIALOGUES

James Sallis & Ken Bruen 

Book Excerpt:

FROM THE INTRODUCTION:

It is a dangerous thing to know a writer," Hemingway cautioned.

But I've chased down and tried my best to corner the writers whom I most revere. I've pressed my heroes for answers.

The writers I've spoken with over the past five or six years have by turns been funny, warm, truculent, insightful and sometimes brusque. Some have been extremely thoughtful, and some have been flip or prickly.

The interviews have been cordial and charged.

They've rarely been less than provocative.

In the following interviews, you will encounter mavericks, trailblazers and the gadflies. Men of conscience, entrepreneurs and magnificent bastards.

They are variously crusaders and reformers … exhibitionists and isolates. These are writers who have lost parents and wives and children, sometimes through tragedy, sometimes for pursuing their art, and sometimes as a result of their own head-shaking bad behavior. When it comes to their excesses, most of these men are their own harshest and best/worst critics.

Through it all, to a man, they have remained stubbornly creative, working alone, writing novels and stories through all manners of turmoil and adversity. These writers embody Papa's admonition and they "use the pain" to inform their best compositions—the works that are likely to be the ones that will endure and influence the next crop of rogue males who are, for better or worse, just testing the fences.

Echoing James Ellroy, "Here's to them."

Write a Review »

Topics/Categories:

Author Interviews, Crime Fiction authors, Crime Noir, Literary

Genre:

Writers and Writing

Type of Work:

Book

Publishers:

Bleak House Books

Original Publish Date:

May 12, 2009

• Share With:
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•