Rawson rants—Art vs. Commerce

Recently, Crimefactory friend, (and seriously kick ass novelist) Benjamin Whitmer, wrote a wrap up of his first Bouchercon experience on his blog, Kick Him Honey. The post mostly stuck to what a blast he had at old B-con getting hammered with some of the new millennium crimedawgs and a little bit about the old genre vs. contemporary literature thing. (Who else thinks that motherfucker is a dead horse? Seriously, folks, time to move on) But, Whitmer briefly mentioned something in the opening paragraph of the post that has been on my mind as of late. Here’s what Ben had to say:

“….There was some of the expected horseshit, where writers griped about their panels and whined about their sales, but whatever, somebody’s gotta do it. Talking business bores me fucking senseless, but then, that might be just me.”

I’m not talking about panels here (but I will say some panels at a few of these conventions seem a little half baked, but I digress.) what I’m writing about is novelists whining about their sales.

I’m around a lot of writers, (and I’m sure I’m shooting myself in the foot with more than a few of them with this post) whether virtually or face-to-face and when you’re talking shop with most writers, inevitably the conversation will turn to the commerce side of things, and like Whitmer, whenever the subject comes up, I tune out, because it bores the living shit out of me.

Admittedly, my writing doesn’t keep a roof over my head. I have the advantage of having a day job that I get up for at 3:45 in the morning (With the time change it’s now 4:45, thank god, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to keep it at those hours even when the time changes back and have the option of going back to the early shift. Because with me nearing 40, getting only 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night just ain’t cutting it.) and writing is just a side line. Something I do in-between the job and family obligations. Once in a blue moon I get a check for doing it and that’s pretty okay

But for the most part, I write because I love doing it and I do it without expectation.

That’s right, folks, I don’t really ever expect to earn my daily pay check from this. Would I like to? Hell yes I would! If Little, Brown or Random House came to me saying,

‘You know, Keith, you pudgy suburbanite you, we think you’re a fucking genius, a virtual Mozart of crime fiction and we want to offer you a six book deal. What d’ya say to that?’ I would probably simultaneously crap and jizz myself with joy. Now is that going to happen? Diffidently not. (They may offer to buy a book or two off of me in the future, but you know what I’m saying?) Will I keep writing? Yeah, I will, because without writing, without putting words down on the page on a daily basis, I’m a sad sack, I’m a whiney bitch and not all that much fun to be around. I’ve got the bug and it’s not going away anytime soon.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know publishing is a business. I know that it needs to make money just like Wal*Mart, Ford, or my company has to (Well, not so much Ford, they can just claim poor and have the government bail them out again) make a profit in order for it to exist. And it’s a reality for me, too, because guess what, folks, it takes money to run Crimefactory. (And I’m not bitching about the cost of operating the magazine here, folks.) The URL, the web hosting, the POD edition, all of it costs money and I have to concern myself with the bottom line because I want the magazine to continue, and the whole purpose of the Kindle and POD editions of the magazine is so Crimefactory can become a self sustaining entity and that it doesn’t become a huge drain on our time and resources.

Alright, I’m sure more than a few of you are starting to shake your heads, thinking, what the hell’s the point of all this, Rawson? Shit or get off the pot already. So here I go:

The commerce end of writing is strangling the artistic side.

There I said it.

When you have so many people—both the creative and business end—focused on the single idea of profit above all else, the art of writing is going to suffer. Novelists are going to write (or be forced to write.) books that they may not want to. They may write books that they think are going to be more commercially viable or switch to a style or genre that simply pays the bills instead of fulfilling them as creative people.

And, once again, I know I’m going to have a few people saying, ‘Ah, Rawson, you naïve little shit. If only you knew the realities of publishing.’ But guess what, I do know. Publishers, once again, are nothing more than a profit driven business and I work for a profit driven business which makes BILLIONS of dollars a year, and in the past year, despite my company making record profits, I was in serious fear of losing my job. So even though I’m not part of the mainstream publishing machine, I get it. I understand the fears novelists have of losing contracts if their books don’t sell well, because when it comes right down to it, writing is just another job, a way of putting food on the table.

But, recently, my company has started to think of things a little differently and has started banking on long term gains as opposed to the short term, and because of this change, they’re attempting to change their business model and with them doing this, well my day job has become a much more pleasant place to spend 9 hours of my day at.

And publishing seems to be pushing in this direction with the recent creation of Mulholland books and Little, Brown’s signing of Michael Koryta to a six book deal. It seems that Little, Brown is taking more chances on authors like Koryta, Swierczynski, and Woodrell and helping them develop an audience (or in the case of all three, develop a wider audience) because they know (hopefully) that if you put a little time and effort into an individual, your long term profits via back catalog and not just new releases will help increase profitability of not only the company, but of the writers as well. My only hope is that the other five big New York houses clue into Little, Brown’s model.

Okay, to wrap up (because this shit has gone way too long) from a personal stand point, writing is writing, if I don’t enjoy doing it anymore, or I get too concerned with how much money my writing is making, I’m going to walk away. Done and done and I’ll spend my free time hanging out with my family, watching bad movies, and basketball, and whatever writing I get done will get sent along to small presses like PM Press, New Pulp Press, Serpent’s Tail, Gutter books (By the way, folks, have you taken a look at some of the titles being put out by the small presses? Most of the time I think they’re doing a better job of tracking down, signing, and presenting promising talent than the big boys are.) to see if they want to put it out, or it’ll just sit on my hard drive collecting dust and my sole audience will be me.

(One last thing before I sign off, make sure to check out Crimefactory irregular Andrew Nette's blog Pulp Curry. Andrew has DTK Molise of the blog Kabul Noir, guest posting about Afghan based crime fiction. It's a good read, so make sure to check it out.)

RABID CHILD and the Bad Girl Tradition by Peter Risley

When I first started reading Rabid Child by Peter Risley, a slight involuntary shutter ran through my entire body. The protagonist, Desmond Cray, was one of the most repulsive characters I’d encountered in a number of years, but Risley’s sharp, surrealistic prose drew me deeper into Cray’s depraved world and my sympathy for the character grew and like a bloody ten car pile up, I couldn’t avert my eyes and had to continue reading. Recently, Mr. Risley contacted me and I asked him to write the following piece on Rabid Child and his evolution as a novelist. I hope you enjoy—K.R.

RABID CHILD and the Bad Girl Tradition by Peter Risley


I'm very flattered that I've been invited to write a brief piece about myself and my debut novel RABID CHILD for DAY LABOR. However, I'm afraid there's nothing very interesting about my background that I can relate. I'm a writer from Columbus, Ohio who's had a long and rather difficult apprenticeship. Unlike many of my fellow wannabe scribes, over the hard years of learning my craft I’ve never worked as a lumberjack, short-order cook, bouncer, hotel detective, jazz musician, Chippendale dancer or male prostitute. I do have a day job, clerical, but I'd rather not say where. I'm not married and have no children. I've never done much traveling, either. There’s really not much to say about me. I like old Hollywood movies, but who doesn’t?

OK, here's something -- you know those cartoon tracts put out by the Christian fundamentalist publisher Jack Chick, 'This Was Your Life!' and so forth? I have a sizeable collection of those, accumulated one by one over the years from people handing them out on the street. And this little interest of mine does have something to do with RABID CHILD.

RABID CHILD is my first published novel. I failed to complete the first novel I attempted, a cozy mystery about a string of cat-detective slayings investigated by a hamster and goldfish pet detective duo (no, I'm not kidding). I (wisely, I think) decided to try a noir scenario instead. I think it's fair to say that the main influences on my novel, the writers I most wanted to emulate, are Nathanael West and Jim Thompson. I hope that readers who esteem those two writers might take a look at RABID CHILD and see if those influences are apparent.

Readers may notice as well that a character in RABID CHILD named Mr. Wince uses some phrases that are reminiscent of a very familiar figure in a classic 19th century American novel. This may sound like a rather sophomoric literary joke, but I felt there was good reason to present Mr. Wince in this way.

My novel deals with some very grim and controversial subject matter; with perverse sexuality, religious fanaticism, dementia, misogyny, abortion, the abuse of children, and the devastation of a family. Despite this, a lot of it is intended to be not only dark, but funny as well. However, I wouldn't want anyone to pick the novel up thinking it was going to be a rollicking, willfully outrageous laugh-fest. The protagonist, Desmond Cray, is a child molester. In fact, by my judgment and my intention, the story involves a lot of shame, despair and anguish. I never intended it to amount to cheerful-nihilism-as-uplift, as black-humored fiction is sometimes conceived to be.

The strain in American crime fiction that interests me the most has to do not so much with urban street vibes, criminal enterprise, police procedures, etc, as with human perversity, and not only, or primarily, in a sexual sense. The anecdote in Dashiell Hammett's great THE MALTESE FALCON (1930) about Flitcraft, the man who starts his life over after nearly being crushed by falling beams, only to end up living as he did before but with a second wife and family, interests me as much as the tale of the struggle over the rara avis itself. I wouldn't wish to choose one over the other, I like having them together in the same sharp-eyed and sharp-elbowed work.

I don't wish to reveal too much about the plot and characters of RABID CHILD in this piece, and I certainly won't make inflated claims for it. It's fair to say, however, that my novel at least attempts to deal with some key themes and characteristics of noir fiction. I understand that there's a fair amount of discussion in academic studies that cover the work of Hammett and Raymond Chandler, in particular, of the figure of the 'femme fatale' as represented in THE MALTESE FALCON by Bridget O'Shaughnessy, and in Chandler's THE BIG SLEEP (1939) by the Sternwood sisters.

What's striking to me is the moralizing condemnation of these sultry female vipers (not that they're all the same, not at all) made by male characters (the heroes) in these classic noir novels, and the fact that alluring female sexuality is, not only in these works but frequently throughout the genre, an aspect of the perceived menace in these young ladies. Many will remember Philip Marlowe becoming so enraged at the remaining imprint of slutty and crazy Carmen Sternwood's nude form in his bed after he's thrown her out of his home that he tears the bedclothes apart "savagely." Sam Spade in MALTESE FALCON, a far more cold-blooded fellow than Marlowe, finally dispatches Bridget with the line "I won't play the sap for you." Beyond that, as a moralizing/punishing male rejection of femme fatale attempts at seduction, lies Mike Hammer's famous and brutally sexual final riposte in Mickey Spillane's I, THE JURY (1947).

The main female character in RABID CHILD, Tracy Honnecker, can be judged yet another variation on the femme fatale figure, but is presented a little differently from what could be called the norms of the tradition. No one should mistake me for a supposed 'male feminist' due to this. I'm not sure whether anyone will, or if anyone will even care to speculate that much about the novel, and about its author's views. In case anyone does care, however, I'll just assert that despite the grim humor of the novel, I take these matters seriously.

In any case, let me advise that anyone who finds RABID CHILD offensive or disturbing after the first couple of chapters should probably not read the rest of it. Perhaps I should add that neither Desmond Cray, Tracy Honnecker nor any other character in the novel is based on a real person.

- Pete Risley

RABID CHILD is now available from NEW PULP PRESS

The Track of Sand by Andrea Camilleri--reviewed by Jonathan Woods

The Track of Sand by Andrea Camilleri,

Penguin (non-classics) $14

I’ve been a fan of Andrea Camilleri’s Sicilian crime novels starring “Chief” Inspector Montalbano since the first one appeared in English in about 2002. The Track of Sand, the eleventh in the series masterfully translated by Stephen Sartarelli, does not disappoint. Fast, clever, funny and cynical. Who could ask for more?

Inspector Montalbano awakens to the sound of waves outside his window. After revisiting the fleeting images of a dream involving a woman who turns into a horse and the instructions “Mount me,” Montalbano comes fully awake. Looking out his window he discovers lying on the beach not a dead body but the bludgeoned and bloody carcass of a race horse.

The description of the dead horse and its last minutes alive as surmised by Inspector Montalbano is grotesque and horrifying. Montalbano concludes that four men beat the horse with iron bars, while two others stood by and watched. A nasty business.

Somehow the wanton slaughter of an innocent animal is more disturbing to us than a human corpse. Though we don’t hesitate to chomp down on our New York strip steaks and barbecued pork loins so beautifully displayed in the butcher’s case.

This juxtaposition of sexual innuendo and sudden brutal violence are the yin and yang of existence in Camilleri’s Sicily. Montalbano himself juggles two (or is it three) mistresses while managing to shtup a randy lady equestrian on the side. Montalbano’s dream actually comes true!
When the horse carcass disappears while Montalbano drinks a coffee and then takes a shower back in his house, Montalbano is determined to bring the sadistic killers to justice. Montalbano’s investigation takes him to a private horse race staged by Sicilian elite. Other clues point to involvement of the Mofiosi, whose fingers are inexorably entwined in the rugged hills and valleys and hard towns of Sicily. Here’s the inside scoop on getting by in Sicily:

"Family relations, even those so distant that they would no longer

be considered such in any other part of Italy, were in Sicily,

the only way to obtain information, expedite a bureaucratic procedure,

find the whereabouts of a missing person, land a job for an unemployed

son, pay less taxes, get free tickets to movies, and so many other things

that it was probably safer not to reveal to people who were not family."

The story thunders along with an occasional aside for a quick fuck in a convenient pile of hay or the enjoyment by Montalbano of a sumptuous meal prepared by his housekeeper and star chef:

“He took a shower and went out on the veranda to eat. Adelina

had made a salad of baby octopus big enough for four and some

giant prawns to be dressed only with olive oil, lemon, salt, and

black pepper.”

Or at a favorite restaurant:

“A few minutes later, there wasn’t any room left on the table for so

much as a needle…Shrimp, jumbo prawns, squid, smoked tuna,

fried balls of nunnatu, sea urchins, mussels, clams, octopus morsels

a strascinasale, octopus morsels affucati, tiny fried calamari,

calamari and squidlets tossed in a salad with orange slices and celery,

capers wrapped in anchovies, sardines a beccafico, swordfish

carpaccio…”

Be forewarned, there is no graphic sex here. For that you’ll have to reread your Henry Miller. Or check out some Italian costume porn on line. The Italian ladies always have such big soft glorious boobs. In The Track of Sand it’s all innuendo and your own erotic imagination at play.

Camilleri throws plenty of humor into his fast-paced tale, mostly of the slapstick variety. There is an ongoing riff throughout the story about the fact that Montalbano has reached that certain age when he needs to wear glasses. Tres amusant.

Before you know it, you’re turning the last page of The Track of Sand. Evil has been derailed, at least for the time being. And besides for Montalbano it’s time for lunch with a pair of his lady friends. Is he going to try for a ménage a trois? All shall not be revealed.

The Track of Sand is an enjoyable, sometimes cynical and ultimately romantic trip through the dark side of Sicilian life. If I have one complaint, it is that Montalbano is too well adjusted, a guy for whom the glass is always half full. We see darkness in Camilleri’s tale, but we never confront it face on as in one of Derek Raymond’s bleak but wonderful police procedures or in the novels of Italy’s master of noir, Niccolo Ammaniti.

This complaint aside, The Track of Sand is an entertainment to be thoroughly enjoyed in the company of several glasses of whiskey, some sliced prosciutto and a plate of olives.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jonathan Woods resides in Dallas, Texas. His book of noir crime stories, Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem, was published April 20, 2010 by New Pulp Press. New York Magazine called Bad Juju: "Hallucinatory, hilarious, imaginative noir." “Violence, sex and gonzo plot twists fuel Woods’ diverting collection of 19 stories, most set in sun-and-blood-drenched borderlands. [These stories] amp up the volume to 11…” said Publishers Weekly. Ken Bruen wrote: “With Bad Juju Woods has arrived fully fledged as a maestro…astonishing.” Jonathan's stories have appeared in 3:AM Magazine, Dogmatika, Plots with Guns, Crime Factory, Pulp Pusher, Thuglit and other Web literary zines. Jonathan's website is at www.southernnoir.com The book trailer for Bad Juju is on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9vcOKXF098