“You look mad.”
“I’m a little mad.”
“You want to talk about your feelings? Hold hands? Cry on my shoulder?”
“Fuck you, man.”
Tommy’s eyebrows went up. He sighed, as if he were growing bored, then spoke with the cooing tone of a kindergarten teacher. “You want to know why, Isaac? I’ll tell you why. You guys are a fucking joke. The pair of you. You’re dumb. You’re soft. You make mistakes.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m tired of having to worry about you. Babysit your stupid asses.”
“You won’t have to worry much longer.”
They stood there, neither of them blinking. Isaac heard voices above—the guys who’d gone outside coming back in.
Tommy said, “This is what I’m talking about, Small-time. What the hell are you waiting for?”
Isaac centered the barrel on Tommy’s left eye to give himself a target. Tommy could have tried for the gun, but still didn’t seem frightened enough to act.
“Well?” Tommy said. “What’s it going to be, Isaac? Did you come here for revenge? Or you come here looking for love?”
Isaac felt a rage swell through him that almost lifted him off his feet.
Then he felt a hand in his hair, his hair being gathered, his head whipping back and knocking the floor.
Ray stood over him, looking down.
Isaac, on the verge of unconsciousness, skull throbbing, raised his hand but the pistol was gone.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
And Tommy said, “Uh-oh is right.”
Isaac came to with his arms stretched overhead. His wrists ached from bearing his full dead weight. A dog leash had been knotted around them and looped over a pipe in the ceiling. His head hurt, but it paled in comparison to the fresh pain radiating through the rest of his body. They’d beaten the piss out of him. His eyes weren’t functioning properly. His mouth was filled with blood. He realized that he was naked, though he couldn’t feel the chill of the basement.
There were others with them now. Isaac heard them scraping around. He couldn’t turn his head because they’d done something to his neck.
Tommy stood where he’d stood before, arms crossed, a palm now cupping his chin.
Ray stepped into view. He had a blowtorch in one hand and an old lighter in the other, like a giant safety pin with a cup attached. He turned on the gas and it hissed like a demon.
This can’t be happening, Isaac thought. We should have never made that delivery. Never crossed that road.
“I changed my mind,” he said, the words jumbled by his swollen mouth.
“How’s that?” Tommy asked.
“I came here looking for love.”
The room erupted with laughter as Ray—grinning for the first time since Isaac had known him—scratched the flint and Isaac’s world became an orange hell.
* * *
Walter Conley has written and edited for a variety of media, including comic books, live entertainment and film. He also publishes original songs and does pen and ink illustration. Forthcoming are a short in the anthology Deadhead Miles and a Cthulhu Mythos Kindle book entitled Down by the Seaside. Walter blogs at katharinehepcat.com. You can find him online at facebook.com/wconley2 and reach him directly at [email protected].
NON-FICTION
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE
COLLECTOR SERIES AUTHOR CHRIS F. HOLM
STEVE WEDDLE
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Best American Mystery Stories. Any biography of Chris F. Holm comes complete with a list of the best magazines in the business, all honored to have had his stories. He’s been nominated for Stokers and Anthonys and Derringers and has won a Spinetingler Award.
A while back, Chris F. Holm published “The Hitter” in Needle, the magazine I work on. The novella was that great type of story that puts a thoughtful, feeling character in the middle of a thriller. While other writers might try to shock you with scares or dazzle you with the mechanics of a heist, his stories also put the reader right there, with the protagonist, so that you get carried along in the story, never tripped up by the backstory or exposition, as those are weaved in seamlessly.
Chris recently took some time to talk with me about his own backstory, as well as those of his characters. Of course, we also talked about Donna Tartt, writer’s stress, and onion powder.
Whether you start with Dead Harvest or one of his story collections, you’ll find out why Chris F. Holm is an author readers enjoy and writers envy.
Steve Weddle: Sam is a fully-formed, intricate character. What pieces did you start with? Did you know his personality? Did the backstory develop as you went along? I’m curious about how he grew the more you wrote him.
Chris F. Holm: One of my all-time favorite characters is Donald Westlake’s Parker. The story has it, Parker began as a single scene in which a bedraggled, stone-faced man crosses the George Washington Bridge on foot. A motorist pulls over and asks him if he needs a lift, and the man tells this would-be Good Samaritan to go to hell. Westlake showed the scene to his buddy, Lawrence Block. Block asked him why the guy on foot was so damned testy. Westlake replied, “I don’t know. I figure I’ll write the book in order to find out.”
So it was with Sam Thornton. He began as a nameless figure in a scene that ran through my head as I was dozing off one night, in which he stalked a writer of some renown and, when the opportunity presented itself, tore the man’s soul free from his chest. That scene, without a single alteration, became the first chapter of Dead Harvest, and everything that follows in the series came from my interrogation of that scene. The process was downright spooky, because every time I asked a question—Why was he following that man? How come he apologized right before he tore out the guy’s soul?—the answer came in no time flat. In that way, Sam felt to me more discovered than created.
SW: As I understand it, you grew up in a sort of cop family, where story-telling was important. What is one of those stories that’s stuck with you, and in what sort of circumstances did these stories get passed around the family?
CFH: My mom’s side of the family is chock full of cops. Her dad rose from walking the beat to Deputy Chief. We’d get together for Sunday dinner every week—my grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles at the big table, me and my cousins at the kids’ table—and Papa would regale us with hilarious stories of dubious truth, all delivered straight-faced with an emphatic, “My hand to God!” I’m sure the grown-ups knew they were big fish tales one and all, but we credulous kids believed every single one of ’em.
Like the one about him and his partner engaging in a high-speed chase with a couple of crooks—for the life of me, I can’t remember what they were supposed to’ve done. Papa’s driving. His partner’s riding shotgun. As they’re barreling down the road at speed, the assholes they’re chasing start popping shots off out the window at them. Papa’s partner decides to return fire. He frees his sidearm from his holster, takes aim…and blows a hole clean through the middle of the cruiser’s windshield, shattering it. Papa screeches to a halt and says, “What the hell did you do that for? You couldn’t hang out the window to take the shot?” His partner shrugs and says, “I’m not right-handed.”
Now, of course, I realize there’s no way that ever happened. For all I know, the story’s been told a thousand times by every guy who’s ever worn a badge. But to five-year-old me, it was the gospel truth. And one of these days, I’ll find a way to put it in a story.
SW: You’ve put in a great deal of work—from ideas to execution—writing the Collector series. What’s the most gratifying reader response? I’m thinking of how we all spend days getting Thanksgiving dinner ready, only to have it gone in minutes. Do you feel complimented when people say the read through The Big Reap in an afternoon? If people say it’s taking them a month to read Dead Harvest, does that comfort you? Or have you let go of that concern?
CFH: I get a kick out of it when someone co
nnects not just with the whiz-bang pulp stuff, but with the quieter, more philosophical underpinnings of the series, too. Because sometimes I think I write the whiz-bang as an excuse to get people to read the other stuff. It’s nice to know that other stuff has its fans.
As far as people telling me how fast my books read…I think our habit of praising books based on their ease of reading—“The pages practically turned themselves!”—is kind of point-missing. There’s something to be said for savoring a book—of slowing as you approach the end, because you can’t bring yourself to leave that world behind. One of the deep, dark secrets most genre writers harbor is the fact that we still care about the sound and shape and melody of the words. I try my damnedest to write pretty sentences—to be artful within the limits of my abilities. That said, my aim with the Collector series is to thrill, so I tend to take it as a compliment when people tell me they read my book in no time flat. Hell, I’d probably wonder what I did wrong if someone told me it took a month to finish. It’s not like I’m writing Finnegan’s Wake.
What does stress me out a bit is people clamoring for the next one twenty-four hours after the last one was released. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful problem to have, but damn—gimme a week, at least! In a world where nearly any entertainment you could ever want is at your fingertips, the suspense of being forced to wait to find out how a story ends should be treasured, not resented. I get that they intend it as a compliment, but as George R. R. Martin or J. K. Rowling can attest, those compliments turn nasty quick. As a reader, I like the wait. Sometimes the anticipation’s more enjoyable than the actual end product.
SW: These three Sam books form a strong storyline, something that has heft and vigor and a sort of gravitas to them that most books don’t. Why are you writing these books at this time of your life? Do you think you could have written a Collector novel ten years ago? Is there something that happened in your life—some maturity of skill level or better understanding of people—that made you better able to tell this story now? Or is there something about the world at-large that has changed, that has influenced the telling?
CFH: First off, thanks! That’s kind of you to say. I’m way too close to them to have any perspective on what I did or didn’t accomplish.
The Collector novels are by far the most personal thing I’ve ever written. They’re a catalog of all my phobias, anxieties, existential musings, and pop-culture obsessions, laid bare across a thousand or so pages for all to see. And on top of that, they also tell an epic—and, I hope, thrilling—tale that spans thousands of years. There’s no way I could have written a Collector novel ten years ago, let alone a trilogy. I lacked the storytelling chops required—but more importantly, I lacked the confidence and honesty to put myself on the page in any meaningful way. I spent a lot of time as a young writer studying markets and figuring out how to write a book that would fit in alongside the stuff that seemed to sell. It didn’t work; I got my ass kicked for years, and never sold a single novel. Then I wrote this weird-ass passion project about an undead guy who collects souls, crammed full of jokes and references I figured only me and my wife would get, and all the sudden here I am. I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing: to discover the most important lesson I’ve ever learned was as fucking trite as “be yourself,” or to realize it took me thirty-odd years to learn it.
SW: You have a number of short stories out, including two collections—8 Pounds and Dead Letters. Are there stories you’ve written that you want to revisit and rework into longer, more layered pieces?
CFH: By and large, no. To me, a short story tends to present itself fully formed: I can see the whole picture before I sit down to write it, and once I’m finished, the idea’s all used up. A novel, on the other hand, is usually too big for me to wrap my head around at a glance—it’s only through the process of writing it that I figure out what it’s all about.
That said, there is one story that broke that rule for me. I wrote it for a buddy of mine who runs this kickass magazine called Needle. He wanted a longer piece for his second issue, so I wrote a story about a hitman who only hit other hitmen that clocked in at 11,000 words—more novella than short story. People seemed to dig it. My agent at the time said I should turn it into a novel. I thought she was crazy.
Then one morning, I woke up with a fresh take on it, and started writing. 90,000 words later, I had a novel. It keeps a lot of the beats from the short, but it’s got a totally different flavor, I think. Whether it’ll wind up published is anybody’s guess.
SW: From ghost writing to fan fiction, the shelves are covered with writers toying in sandboxes of others. Would you be interested in ghost writing any novels? Would you be interested in having other people write stories based on your Collector series?
CFH: Let me make this as clear as I can: if James Patterson is reading this and would like to offer me a steady paycheck to write crime novels under his name, I’m ready and willing. And I’m a cheap date; I could probably live for a year on the cash he’s got in his pockets.
The fact is, like most writers, I have a day job. I’d love to write full-time. If that means a portion of my writing time is dedicated to work-for-hire, then so be it. Oddly, I’d be less inclined to tackle something out of rabid fandom—say, a Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe novel—than I would for a paycheck, because I’d be terrified I’d fuck it up. Sixteen-year-old-punk-me would probably call me a sellout for saying that, but that kid was an idiot, so who gives a shit what he thinks?
As for my stuff…it depends. I’m cool with people writing fanfic, because I think it stems from a genuine affection for the original work. And I’d be psyched to see a comic, movie, or TV show that expounded on the Collector universe. Dexter, True Blood, The Walking Dead, and Justified have all proven it’s possible to diverge from the source material in creatively successful ways. Ditto comic book continuations of beloved-but-cancelled TV shows like Firefly and Buffy. As far as officially sanctioned books by other authors…I’d never say never, but it would take some serious convincing for me to let someone else write a Collector novel. That’s kind of my job.
SW: In writing, I find myself going back to certain themes, certain ways to build a story. I might use the same setup, but then alter it in some way to get to a different point with the story. I think of it like a musician building a song from the same chord progressions, then maybe mixing up the bridge or the rhythm. Have you found yourself doing that sort of thing? Using similar tools? Painting on a similar canvas?
CFH: I never do it consciously, but as I glance down at my bibliography, patterns certainly emerge. It seems I write a lot about the tragic consequences of love. The ripples caused by sins early in life. About the secret world that lies just beneath the one we see. And a lot of my characters are myopic idiots with delusions of grandeur who’ve consumed so much schlocky pop culture they start thinking that’s how the world really works. I assume that bit’s autobiographical.
SW: If you’re an author, is it normal to worry that your author picture makes you look fat and that your official bio makes you sound like a dick? Asking for a friend.
CFH: God I hope so. It took like fifty shots to get a pic I didn’t hate to put inside my books. Thirty-five or so were from a camera; the rest were whiskey. And last time I updated my bio, I (er, I mean my trusted assistant, because why on earth would I write about myself in the third person?) must have gone through ten drafts before one stuck. I’m still not sure it’s any good—could be I just got sick of trying.
SW: When people introduce a writer to prospective readers, they’ll often make comparisons. She writes like a Russian Alice Munro or he writes like a talented Emily Bronte. Have you ever read any comparisons to Chris F. Holm that seemed off? Or any that you hadn’t thought of, but really seem to nail something in your writing?
CFH: The two I seem to get a lot are Jim Butcher and Stephen King. I assume the people doing the comparing are talking tone, not quality. Butcher I understand, because we both kinda sorta
write supernatural detective novels. The King comparison, I’m wobblier on. I mean, we both live in Maine. We’re both white dudes. We both like punk rock and cheesy horror movies. But King is one of the most influential, prolific, and successful storytellers of modern times, whereas I…kinda sorta write supernatural detective novels.
You know what? On second thought, me and King are totes alike, so if you’re a fan of his go buy my stuff.
SW: Over at The Rumpus, Erin Lyndal Martin asked a clever question of musician Eleanor Friedberger and I’d like to appropriate it for our use here: “Is there something you go to when you feel like you need more inspiration? Do you have standard go-to albums or books or anything?”
CFH: Oh, god. I have too many to count. The Parker books by Richard Stark. Lawrence Block’s Eight Million Ways to Die. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Twin Peaks. Sports Night. Neko Case’s Blacklisted and Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” All are works I’m drawn back to again and again, for creative sustenance as much as enjoyment.
I’m also fond of taking walks to get my gears turning, and exploring hidden places—old rail tunnels, decaying wharves, abandoned buildings. And there’s a place in town called Portland Architectural Salvage I’m nuts about. It’s three stories of reclaimed doors, fixtures, furniture, windows, statuary…you name it, all piled high with neither rhyme nor reason. Mason jars full of skeleton keys, stone lions, the front end of a ’57 Chevy—it’s like a building full of writing prompts.
SW: When you’re in the middle of grilling ribs, you’re able to tell someone what spices you used. This much chili powder. This much brown sugar. Onion powder. Maybe the next day, if you haven’t worked in a different rib rub, you can tell people. But after you’ve filled the grill each week for a year, going back and talking about what you were thinking fourteen months back when you used cayenne instead of chili powder, well, sometimes people want to know details that you might not be able to tell them.
All Due Respect Issue #1 Page 9