Daniel Weizmann

Daniel Weizmann is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Billboard, the Guardian, AP Newswire, and more. Under the nom de plume, Shredder, Weizmann also wrote for the long running Flipside fanzine, as well as LA Weekly, which once called him “an incomparable punk stylist.”

Weizmann'ss new novel is The Last Songbird.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

It wasn’t the first title of my manuscript, but I think it does a better job of setting the mood. First, a songbird is a thing of mystery and beauty…and like the victim in my mystery, former folk icon Annie Linden, there is a fleeting, capricious, or uncatchable quality to a singing bird. But there’s another even cooler meaning to the title which I myself didn’t see until the book was already off to the printer. Songbird is slang for a female singer, of course, but especially one that came up in the 20th century jazz age—the “canaries” started as caged birds, singing to support the big bands, but by the late ‘60s, many brave female singers really were free entities, writing their own songs and often performing solo too. Annie is the last of a certain tradition, the endgame.

What's in a name?

I specifically chose the name Annie because I’m in love with the Heart LP Dreamboat Annie, which is a kind of non-linear rock opera that tells the tale of a woman out of step with the hustling world around her. Also Little Orphan Annie, another wayward soul who’s all heart. I called my detective Adam after the late great Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys who always struck me as a soul searcher.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

My teenage self would be so pleased but maybe not surprised! I started trying to write mysteries at age 15 after years of listening to old time radio like The Saint and Dragnet and being completely obsessed with Chandler, The Rockford Files, Darrin McGavin’s The Outsider, etc. If anything my teenage self would say, “What took you so long?!”

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I wouldn’t describe beginnings as hard, exactly—it’s more like, if I’m not furiously compelled to enter the story, I can’t get started at all. Endings also have to have a kind of inevitability to even take shape, otherwise I back off and wait. Without a doubt, the hardest part of every story for me is 50 to 75%--I never get away with less than a half-dozen rewrites there!

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I guess my protagonist, amateur detective, failed songwriter, and Lyft driver Adam Zantz and I share some characteristics—like Adam says, “I’m about as hardboiled as scrambled eggs.” More importantly though I see people I love in the other characters. One thing I learned the hard way: If I don’t really love a fictional character, if they don’t have some aspect of someone I really care about in real life, they never come off.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

It’s a great question. Although I read a lot lot lot and not just mysteries—psych, high lit, poetry, etc.—to the degree that’s possible, I try to seek out answers to my stories in the non-literary, in the world around me. I don’t follow the news as closely as some, but I’m a chronic people-watcher and eavesdropper and anytime I see something that makes me feel something, especially watching strangers, I try to make a record of it.

Visit Daniel Weizmann's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Songbird.

--Marshal Zeringue