Steve Weddle

Steve Weddle is the author of The County Line, an Amazon First Reads selection. His previous book, Country Hardball, which The New York Times called “downright dazzling,” is a collection of connected short stories. A former newspaper editor, he is the cofounder of the crime fiction collective Do Some Damage, the cocreator of the noir magazine Needle, and has taught short story writing at LitReactor.

My Q&A with the author:

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

The original title for the book was Cottonmouth Tomlin and the Last Outlaw Camp. I felt that captured the fun of the book, giving it a certain pulpy feel while telling you who and what the book was about. David Downing, a fantastic editor who worked on the book, pointed out to me that it wasn’t, in fact, the last outlaw camp, as there were others mentioned as competition in the book. Also, there was also a feeling among those reading and working on the book that my original title provided an Indiana Jones and the Unicorn’s Legacy vibe that doesn’t really fit.

The Lake Union folks came up with The County Line, which turns out to be the perfect fit. In the book, the powers that be are fine with crimes being committed, as long as they are committed on the other side of the county line and the money spent in the county. And that’s a rule, or a line, that you don’t break. Until you do, which is when the fun starts.

What's in a name?

Cottonmouth Tomlin was originally called “Fed,” until I realized that a book peppered with “Fed said” throughout would be annoying. So I changed him to Caleb, an Old Testament name meaning “dog.” I did a find-and-replace, moving from “Fed” to “Caleb” and spent a good week when I was editing a section of the book trying to figure out what I meant when one of the characters was complaining about the Caleberal troops.

Cottonmouth worked for me because it seemed like a tough name, but was given to him as a baby because he was dry mouthed and weak. I ended up cutting the explanation out of the book, so no one knows about that. Well, now they do, I guess.

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

Pretty darn surprised that I wrote a novel at all. I wasn’t supposed to write fiction. Like many people, I wrote poetry as a teenager. One of my greatest achievements in life is that I have forgotten every teenage poem I ever wrote. I assume they were as maudlin as they were dreadful. I wrote poems in college, even editing the literary magazine. I went to LSU and got my MFA in poetry. As it turns out, poetry doesn’t pay terribly well. People will complain that fiction doesn’t pay well, but you try buying groceries with two complimentary copies of The Wet River Review.

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

The book opens with a card game and ends with a card game. I knew I wanted these as the bookends to the story, to show how far Cottonmouth had come. I knew that the card games would be different, that the stakes would be much different when the book ended. I worked my tail off on the ending, trying to make sure everything was set up properly, that the reader feels the ending is earned. There’s the old saying that a book is a beginning, a muddle, and an end. That “muddle” often slows because the author is trying to set up the ending, moving the bits and pieces around. So this book has kidnappings and shoot outs and car chases and fist fights, but each step has to get us from that one card game in the beginning to the very different card game at the end.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Photographs from the time period of the early 1930s were essential, not just in fact but in feeling. I did one of those cork boards above my desk, thumb-tacking up pictures of old cars and gangsters, but also one of a garage that existed in the town I write about at the time I write about it. All the automotive details I stuck in the book, from rags to rods, exist because of those photographs that I found on eBay and in newspapers and books. In fact, Lorena the mechanic became a mechanic because of those pictures. Before I made her a mechanic, she worked in the hotel for the Rudd sisters, which is a tough way to make a living. Not as tough as being a poet, of course, but plenty tough.

Follow Steve Weddle on Instagram and visit his website.

--Marshal Zeringue