Michael Connelly

Ali Karim conducted a wide-ranging interview with Michael Connelly for The Rap Sheet.

While much of the interview is understandably about Harry Bosch and The Overlook, I especially enjoyed this back-and-forth about The Lincoln Lawyer, whose principal character, I was delighted to learn, will resurface in another book:

AK: I loved protagonist Mickey Haller and The Lincoln Lawyer. Where did that legal thriller come from?

MC: It was a long time coming. First of all, I love the legal thriller as a subgenre and had been looking for years for something that could become a story that could get me into that field. There are some great big titans of publishing involved in legal thrillers, so I wanted something that would be unique and be mine. It sort of fell into my lap, when I met a real “Lincoln lawyer” at a baseball game in Los Angeles. He told me how he operates as an attorney, and before the conversation was over I knew that this was my way in. It, however, took me a few years before I had the confidence to give it a go, as I was not so confident in that world as I am, say, with that of the LAPD and Harry Bosch.

I needed to do a huge amount of research and spend time with lawyers, sitting in courtrooms and so forth ... When it finally came time to write the book, it came very quickly, as (a) I had been researching it for so long, and (b) I was excited by this new character -- a clean slate. Whereas, say, with Harry Bosch I’m dragging around 12 books of back story, with Mickey Haller -- he was brand new with no baggage. When I go with a new character, I can usually write much faster, so in that particular year I squeezed out two books -- the Haller book, as well as a Bosch novel [The Closers].

AK: I heard you’re doing a follow-up to The Lincoln Lawyer. True?

MC: Yes -- but it’s not really a follow-up, it’s a Haller book and even Bosch makes a small appearance. But at this stage I haven’t a title.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ken MacLeod

Ken MacLeod, whose new book The Execution Channel is now out from Tor Books, was interviewed by Andrew Leonard for Salon back in 1999.

Here's the introduction to the interview:

Ken MacLeod is the greatest living Trotskyist libertarian cyberpunk science-fiction humorist. It's a safe claim to make, because he is undoubtedly the only such creature. The 44-year-old Scot and former computer programmer imagines futures full of both socialist unions and libertarian enclaves, warring with each other and within themselves. You don't often find communist mercenaries working for capitalist insurance companies in science fiction. In Ken MacLeod's future, such political incongruities are a joyous fact of life. Add your regular cyberpunk ingredients -- machine consciousness, post-human trickery, cool gadgets and lots of good drugs and rock 'n' roll -- and you have a heady, rollicking brew.

MacLeod's political fiction is no pose. He's a former Communist Party member who has won two Prometheus awards for best libertarian science fiction novel. After his American editor told me that MacLeod was a regular "trenchant" contributor to Internet-based discussion groups, I decided to do some cyberspace stalking. Where does he hang out? The bulk of his contributions are in the Usenet newsgroup "rec.arts.sf.written." No surprise there -- r.a.s.w. is one of the oldest watering holes on the Net -- quite a few authors congregate there with their fans, critics and peers. But his next most favored spot is "alt.politics.socialism.trotsky" -- and after that, a little down the list, "talk.politics.libertarianism." One of MacLeod's hobbies, it seems, when he's between books, is plunging into the Internet fray to argue about what Marx and Engels really intended, and to engage in the endless hair-splitting dear to libertarians.

Working out a left-wing theory of libertarianism might strike some observers as a headlong dive into a thicket of ultra-thorny contradictions. Can't be done, you might think. And certainly, there are no ultimate answers contained in the four-book arc -- "The Star Fraction," "The Stone Canal," "The Cassini Division" and "The Sky Road" -- that MacLeod has constructed since 1995. But MacLeod's keen intelligence and sharp sense of humor make the journey more than worthwhile -- and definitely beg the question: Who is this guy? Where did these politics come from? MacLeod agreed to answer some of these questions via e-mail.

Read the interview.

Discover more about The Execution Channel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jerry Stahl

Jerry Stahl, author of Love Without and other books, answered a few questions for Powells.com Ink Q & A, including:

If someone were to write your biography, what would be the title and subtitle?

For better or worse, I already wrote it. The title was Permanent Midnight. Maybe the subtitle would be If I wrote this now it would read a little differently...

What fictional character would you like to date, and why?

I'm going with Eve. It seems like she was up for anything.

What's the strangest or most interesting job you've ever had?

I had the great good fortune to work at McDonald's at the ripe age of 38. Good times.

Read the entire interview.

Check out Stahl's list of "five top narco-reads."

--Marshal Zeringue

Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee is the author of Free Food for Millionaires.

From an interview posted on her website:

Q: You’ve chosen to write this book showing many points of view. Is there a reason why?

More than anything, I wanted to try to write novels in the style of the ones I loved. I have always loved 19th century literature from England and Europe, and early 20th century literature from America. The books I re-read for pleasure almost always employ an omniscient narrator — either a fictive person who knows everyone’s thoughts and how the story will be told or the author himself who knows how the story ends and why. There is a godlike quality to omniscience, and it is that I am vainly approaching in story telling.

Also, I think I loved Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Thackeray, Flaubert, George Eliot, Balzac, Edith Wharton, Maughm, Dickens, the Brontes ... because they reveal marginal characters as well as the central characters. I don’t know if this is important to me, because of my own background where I have felt both marginal and central in different spaces. Obviously, none of those books featured anyone biographically like me. I wonder if George Eliot could have telescoped that someone of my background would be so inspired by her. Well, come to think of it, George Eliot could have probably anticipated anything — she was that intelligent, but in the cosmic joke of my life — among other things, that I am fortunate enough to write fiction and to write in a language that is not my first—I have learned that pretty much anything can happen. I always feel that sense of amusement in Balzac who I admire deeply for his social intelligence. He knew everything about human behavior. It’s very difficult to share what you learn and speculate only through one point of view. The omniscient point of view lends itself to far greater flexibility and spaciousness.

I feel profoundly fortunate that I have been able to finish this book and to get it published. It took twelve years for my first novel’s publication, but it could have been longer. It could easily have been never, and waiting and working can teach you a lot about chance — especially in a city where I am surrounded by many, many talented writers. I’ve been told that this book might have been finished faster if I wrote it from one or two characters’ viewpoints. I don’t know. Middlemarch, perhaps my favorite novel of all time, is about a village and its people. It has central characters, but the book would not work as a masterpiece unless it had so many strands to truly express the character of a community. I was also this affected by Sinclair Lewis’ book Main Street when I was in high school — a beautiful and important American book which I think should be picked up again. On a minor note, I am tickled by the fanciful nature of a Russian novelist including a brief line from the point of view of a dog or a horse. Too much of this may not work, but sometimes, don’t you want to know what your dog thinks about you? Just a scrap? When you write something for a long time, you have to humor yourself because there is really no other payment in sight. I think it was lucky that in my first twelve years as a fiction writer, I had the wish to learn a curious technique and to be nourished by the learning along the way.

Perhaps I am taking this space to explain the merits of an omniscient narration because though it is an unpopular way of storytelling for modern writers, it can reveal how everyone in the room is thinking about the issues and each other and themselves rather than what they are actually doing and saying. Even the people of the finest character don’t speak truthfully or act honestly all the time. It is in fiction where all the dimensions of personality and behavior might possibly be witnessed. I wanted to have a go at taking it all down.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thomas Perry

In 2003 Bookreporter.com interviewed Thomas Perry. What he said then about his "predatory characters" certainly applies to the villains of his novels published since then:

BRC: You often shed the spotlight on the predatory characters like Roy Prescott of PURSUIT and the unforgettable Edgar-winning BUTCHER'S BOY. DEAD AIM has nearly a dozen such characters including Parish, the supporting staff of the Self-Defense School, and several unsavory students. What intrigues you most about those types of characters?

TP: The characters you refer to as predatory and unsavory are useful. They're the ones who make a novel into a thriller. They're active, and most of the common virtues, the signs of a good person, are not. Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience. What intrigues me most about these "bad" characters is that they're not like us. Their actions aren't restrained or modified by the possibility of guilt or remorse. They think only of expediency, and so their actions have a certain elegance and decisiveness. They're disruptive and scary, what nightmares are made of. But at the same time, the commonplace statement about them is true: every character is the hero of his own story. Each has a justification for his actions that is convincing to him. It's fun to give these people voices.

Read the entire interview.

The Page 69 Test: Silence.

The Page 99 Test: Nightlife.

--Marshal Zeringue

Irvine Welsh

Anna Metcalfe interviewed Irvine Welsh, author of the 1993 novel Trainspotting and eight other books, for the Financial Times.

A couple of the questions and answers:

What is the last thing you read that made you laugh out loud?

Chuck Palahniuk’s Rant – when he writes about smearing vegetable dye in his father’s underpants.

* * *

What book changed your life?

Moby Dick showed me the power of literature when I was still young.

Read the entire Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tom Zoellner

Tom Zoellner has worked as a contributing editor for Men's Health magazine and as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. He is also the co-author of An Ordinary Man (Viking, 2006), the autobiography of Paul Rusesabagina, whose actions during the 1994 Rwandan genocide were portrayed in the movie Hotel Rwanda, and the author of The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire.

From a BookBrowse interview with Zoellner:

Q: Why are diamonds such a big deal in America?

A: It’s now a $25 billion dollar business. Seven out of every ten American women own at least one. But as it turns out, the idea of a diamond as a popular luxury item is fairly new in this country. A magazine advertising campaign sponsored by De Beers created the consumer desire just a few years before World War II. They sought to make diamonds not just rare, but essential for every man seeking to get married. Famous painters such as Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali were commissioned to create landscapes next to advertising text that had a strange fixation on death, of all things. But De Beers tried to plant this subtle idea that diamonds are a kind of shield against mortality. "Diamonds are the most imperishable record a man may leave of his personal life," said one of the ads. That’s part of the source for the famous slogan they eventually cooked up in 1948: "A Diamond Is Forever." A phony "tradition" was also established: a groom must spend two months’ salary on his wife’s stone. But this was not a global standard. British men were viewed as more stingy and were told to save one month’s pay. The Japanese, seen as more obedient, were told three.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Martin Edwards

Martin Edwards is a prolific crime novelist and story writer -- and a lawyer. His books and stories include three Lake District mysteries featuring DCI Hannah Scarlett and historian Daniel Kind: The Coffin Trail, The Cipher Garden, and The Arsenic Labyrinth.

Part of a Q & A with Foyles Bookshop’s crime newsletter Soho Noir:

What led you to a life of Crime?

A youthful devotion to Agatha Christie and to baffling mysteries.

The picturesque landscape of the Lake District contrasts greatly with the somewhat disturbing nature of the crimes featured. Did this opposition between beauty and brutality configure in the descision to set some of your novels there?

Yes, Sherlock Holmes and W.H. Auden pointed out the drama in the contrast between tranquil setting and violent crime – and they were dead right.

Read the entire Q & A.

The Page 99 Test: The Arsenic Labyrinth.

Visit Martin Edwards's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ben Tanzer

What To Wear During An Orange Alert? recently interviewed Ben Tanzer, author of Lucky Man.

One exchange:

OA: Who are some of your biggest literary influences?

BT: This is such a good and tricky question, how do you separate influence from inspiration? I will leave that up to someone else to answer, what I will say, is that Jim Carroll and the Basketball Diaries was one of my first great inspirations and remains one of my long time inspirations. He was writing about a world I couldn't believe existed and he wrote it in such an evocative fashion. It killed me, really killed me. Another book in that vein was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, and to ever write anything that wowed me like that would be very cool. There are influences though for sure, Raymond Carver and his ability to create this very clear and fully realized world all his own, Alice Munro for sure, I see both of them sneaking into my short stories, Elizabeth Crane as well, and Junot Diaz. Lynda Barry's novel Crummy made me want to read like few other books and I read all the time, and most recently Don De Grazia's novel American Skin and Haistyles of the Dammed by Joe Meno made be believe I could and had to write a novel on the one hand, but also that I can't set the bar high enough. Similarly, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Jimmy Corrigan - Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware, and Scalawag by Steve Lafler, all of which are graphic novels, are books that make me think anything is possible if you can just picture it. Finally, and this is not meant to be snarky, but the songs and writing of Bruce Springsteen and The Ramones are touchstones of mine when I write for sure - keep it simple, keep it clean, and tell a story, loudly if necessary.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue

Matt Richtel

Sara Peyton interviewed Matt Richtel, author of Hooked, for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

A couple of their exchanges:

Q: Tell us a little bit about "Hooked." Did you write the story you wanted to read?

A: In a nutshell, the story is a fast-paced mystery about Nat Idle, a medical journalist who narrowly survives a cafe explosion. The note warning him to leave the cafe before it explodes appears to be written in the hand of his deceased ex-girlfriend. He goes on a frantic hunt to discover what is going on. I definitely wrote the story I wanted to read. I've always liked stories -- whether books, movies, etc. -- that save key information or twists until the end.

Q: Did your characters surprise you? If so, which ones?

A: Yeah, they did. But I'm loath to say more because I don't want to give away the forces of good and evil in the book. I'll just say that I expected one of the main characters to wind up as a force for good. But the narrative demanded something different -- maybe something different than I would have idealized or romanticized. How's that for cryptic?

Read the entire interview.

The Page 99 Test: Hooked.

--Marshal Zeringue