LANSDALE: I was an adventurous kid. I was sick a lot early on, and then I sort of got over it. I ran the creek banks and the woods, rode bicycles, went camping and hiking, and so on, began learning martial arts. I never met an Injun Joe, but I certainly met my share of eccentric characters. The ones that intrigued me most, however, were the everyday folks who got up and did their job and took care of their families. I didn’t know that at the time, but as I grew older, I realized just how important my family had been to me, and how important I wanted it to be for my kids. A lot of my stories are about families. Natural, or made by choice.
PIC: I particularly liked the plot element you followed in Edge when Sue Ellen’s mother, a generally weak-willed, emotionally broken woman decides to join the kids on their adventure. It was a nice touch of possible redemption, especially since most of the adults are painted as ignorant, vapid, or cruel. What led you to taking the storyline in that direction?
LANSDALE: I felt this was the Sue Ellen’s story for the most part, but I didn’t see her mother as evil, just someone who had been self-centered. Someone who gave up for awhile. Sue Ellen reignited a spark in her. I felt an adventure with both mother and daughter would make it more interesting, more dynamic, especially as it took place at that point when Sue Ellen was starting to claim her own independence. In a way, so was her mother. I really liked Sue Ellen’s mother. I liked the way she went at pulling herself out of the hell hole she was in, and I liked the fact that it was Sue Ellen that led to her making the effort. It didn’t all work out like everyone planned. Plans seldom do. But at least everyone was trying to make a better life than what they had.
PIC: You’ve always put good use to the idea that the south is the province of the gothic and grotesque. Do you ever take any heat from your neighbors for making east Texas such a creepy and violent place to be?
LANSDALE: No, not really. I think I may have gotten a little heat here and there. But most Southerners who are honest about their region know that though there is a beautiful side to the South, there is also a gothic snake that lurks in the undergrowth, and it can raise its fanged head at any moment. I think like Flannery O’Connor said about Southerners, “We still know weird when we see it.” That’s true. But sometimes we are part of the weird. I think every region has its dark side. It’s just that I know this region better than any other, so that’s what I write about. I’m drawn to the darker part of it, because that’s the part that haunts me.
PIC: You’re quite active on the social media sites. How do you like keeping up with the fans via Facebook and Twitter?
LANSDALE: I’m not as active as some would like. The ones who want me to promote my stuff. But I’m making an effort. If you promote too much, you seem self centered. If you have a fan page and don’t promote at all, then you’re an idiot. I try to let people know about my work and where they can find it, but I’ll be honest. Much as I enjoy some of my conversations with people, I’d rather go back to no Facebook and no Twitter, if it meant I could just write my books and stories. That’s what I like to do. These days, even if you’re successful, to stay that way you have to let people know you’re out there. The good side is I do enjoy talking to people. I do email in the morning, do Facebook, and when I’m in between things during the day, I’ll drop in and answer questions, and when I’m in the car on the way to town, my wife driving, of course, I do the Twitter business. I think there’s a lot more time in the day than people think. I like being busy. Writing, teaching martial arts once a week now, teaching at the University one semester a year, visiting with family and friends, reading, anything else that interests me. I earned the right to enjoy myself, and I do. I worked more than one job for a long time when I was starting out, and then I was a house dad, and for nearly thirty years or so I’ve been full time, and for right at forty years I’ve been selling my stories and books and articles and essays, screenplays, plays, comic scripts, so my dream to be a writer came true, and it’s as wonderful as I thought it would be.
PIC: You also spend time doing a popular feature about writing tips and reading suggestions. How’d you wind up schooling so many folks?
LANSDALE: I did it because of so many questions. I kept getting fans who wanted me to write a book on writing. These were off the top of my head ideas, not always well spelled or thought out in great detail, but the kind of off the cuff responses I’d give to a writing question. I think I’m going to expand them into a book in the near future. These were more like tips, than lessons really. And they were take it or leave it lessons. I don’t think I know all the answers, just some that worked for me, and might work for another writer coming up, or might spur them to go off in their own direction. I only read a couple of writing books that helped me out, and there was only one bit of writing advice in both books that I took to heart. That was write regularly, and to not try and do a ton of work each day. Be steady. I try and do three to five pages a day. I nearly always do that, so I’m a hero everyday. I don’t feel like I have to turn out twenty to thirty pages of prose a day. That way I burn out. This way I can control quality, and not burn out. Also, I often get more pages a day than that, but all I expect is the three to five. When I get more, that’s just a bonus. The book where I got this advice, by the way, was a writing book titled One Way To Write Your Novel. I don’t remember who wrote it. (Dick Perry). And I think it was advocating one page a day. But it was the idea of a small amount done consistently and done well that stuck with me.
PIC: What else is on the horizon for you?
LANSDALE: I’m working on a new Young Adult novel for Delacorte. I’m writing a number of short stories, and I have another novel to do for Mulholland Books. As I said before, I’m also finishing up Dead Aim, the Hap and Leonard novella. No telling what else will come along.
PIC: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us at length, Joe. The Big Click appreciates it!
© 2012 Tom Piccirilli.
About Tom Piccirilli
Tom Piccirilli lives in Colorado, where, besides writing, he spends an inordinate amount of time watching trash cult films and reading Gold Medal classic noir and hardboiled novels. He’s a fan of Asian cinema, especially horror movies, bullet ballet, pinky violence, and samurai flicks. He also likes walking his dogs around the neighborhood. Are you starting to get the hint that he doesn’t have a particularly active social life? Well, to heck with you, buddy, yours isn’t much better. Give him any static and he’ll smack you in the mush, dig? Tom also enjoys making new friends. He is the author of twenty novels including The Coldest Mile, The Cold Spot, The Midnight Road, The Dead Letters, Headstone City, and A Choir of Ill Children, all published by Bantam/Random House. He’s won the Bram Stoker and the International Thriller Writers Awards, and he’s been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, and Le Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire. Learn more at: www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com
Angel of Hospitality
by Ken Bruen
The R Hotel.
Simple, right?
The R for refuge.
At a hefty price.
Ok.
Run by a legendary second generation Irish woman. Name of Nora. Her surname, she wasn’t giving that out, least not anytime soon. The stories, you got a babe, and fook, she was all of that, with a mouth like a fishwife, there were going to be stories. The current being, she’d gotten her set up money off a bent cop who she then gut shot. The guy lived and was still looking for her. No one had sold her out, yet.
If the story was true. Certainly no one was going to rat her out to the cops.
There are rules, flexible and very few but they exist.
1.….….…Tell the cops fook all.
2.….….……see above.
She came in at about 110 lbs, all of it lethal. Unusual for a broad of Irish descent, she was blond, with a rack to die for, terrific legs, and a face that missed being pretty due to a scar above her right eye.
Guys, with one boiler maker past caution, said it looked like a small angel.
The booze talking. All I know is, it was livid and when she was pissed, which was often, it seemed to have a life of it’s own. But it was the eyes, dammit, eyes that haunted you. And no, that was without a few brews in me. A deep blue, almost transparent. They shimmered, caught the light in odd ways so when you were talking to her, the eyes, seemed to dance in her head.
Horse shit?
You may be right.
I have no stake in selling her assets.
Did I have a jones for her?
Fooksake.
I gave up that fools game when my wife fooked off with a guy from the UK.
A Brit.
Jesus wept.
A lesbian I could maybe stomach, even a regular guy but a Brit.
So, I want the urge dealt with, I phone up my hooker No 1, for five hundred I get round the world in one night and to have my bed to myself in the morning.
Guys say
Well guys say a lot of stuff, most it bollix. But their favorite
“I never pay for sex.”
Don’t make me freaking laugh.
Fook on a bike.
Every guy pays, one way or another.
And a lot and incessantly.
But how I got there?
I was first generation Irish, had left the States in a Romantic and Jameson haze to help the Cause.
The Irish sure saw us coming.
Them laughing… “Yah want to be a boyo, help the struggle, sure, here’s an Armalite, get your arse out there, show us your stuff.”
Put us on the front line.
Iraq, would have been safer.
The three other Yanks, even though we thought we real Irish, were always, regarded as real stupid to the Boyos.
Those three were gunned down with in a month.
I learned…quick.
Kept my head down, my mouth shut and my rifle on ready.
Took out a top guy in The Paratroopers. A dude they’d been after for months.
From the roof of a building in Derry, a shot they said couldn’t be made. The distance was too far. I’d had my rifle modified, without shouting about it. Made the shot and earned their respect if “Holy Fuck!” is a good response.
I was in.
Then after a bloody fiasco, I had to leave fast, went back to the States, where I was supposed to raise funds.
I did, a lot, nigh on a quarter of a million.
Good huh?
And ran with it.
Crazy?
Oh yeah.
Bit I was tired.
Wanted out.
You don’t get to retire.
I figured, I was born in The USA, I’d know more about hiding out than the Boyos.
So, I was running, fast.
And heard of The R Hotel.
* * *
Situated just off Herald Square, but a shopper from Macy’s.
It was a shit hole, the Square that is, decrepit, seedy, and the only light being a lone Starbucks.
When you see Starbucks as some sort of light, you know how desperate it is to find something to say about an area that is fooked and gone.
A cautious hundred yards from there, is the hotel. You need to have been given the address or bought it.
I bought it.
I could see how you’d easily miss it. It was a Brownstone, rare in that part of the city. But you could tell immediately, this was no run down flop house. This was carefully renovated, freshly painted and more exit’s than Clinton’s career.
Sure sign of a safe house, exits.
I expected the front door to be locked, no. Went into a small foyer. Saw the biggest man I ever, swear to fook, ever saw. Not black or spic or even mulatto. Just mega and hostility oozing out of his pores.
Nora was behind the reception, I recognized her from all the stories I’d heard.
I had a beat up Gladstone bag, carried my worldly possessions. The money was strapped to my body and the gun, used to be your regular handgun but I like to modify them.
Now it had a slide, eighteen shots in the clip that slammed into the handle and a slide, made the velocity as accurate as you were going to get outside of The Texas Rangers.
She looked up, no expression, asked
“Help you?”
Her intonation suggesting that help was the very last item on her dance card.
My hold-all was heavy and I went to put it down, she asked
“You doing?”
“Am, putting my bag on the floor.”
She fired a glance at the big guy, I fingered the customised in my waistband, she said
“If you were staying, you could put the bag down but who confirmed that?”
Ah fookit.
A ball-buster.
I’d been married, I knew the drill.
Asked
“Please, miss, may I stay in your fine establishment?”
She debated for a moment on whether to unleash the dog of war. I could sense he was good to go.
She did what she was to do, in the all too brief time I knew her, she surprised the hell out of me.
Went the opposite of what I was primed for, said
“Pretty arrogant for an ugly fucker, yeah?”
God knows, I’m no gift, I know, my mother told me often enough. Used to holler
“Sweet Jesus, what an ugly child!”
Yeah, like that.
My ex wife, an old movie’s buff, used to say, a lot
“You look like Victor Mature, after the plastic surgery went down the toilet.”
I said
“It isn’t arrogance when you can back it up.”
She liked that. Asked
“Is that a quote?”
“Cassius Clay.”
She looked at me, then
“Interesting that you use his pre-Muslim name.”
I shrugged. Then
“How long can we expect to have the pleasure of your company?”
Who the fook knew.
I said
“It’s flexible, can we do per week?”
We could and she named a figure.
Holy shit.
She was actually smiling, an invite, to what? asked
“So, can you back it up…Cassius?”
I laid out the freight on the counter.
She took a key from the rack, said
“Top floor, nice view and lot’s of space.”
I nodded.
I was heading for where I hoped some elevators might be when she threw
“What you had in your waistband, Plato would have been faster.”
Plato?
Jesus.
Welcome to the madhouse.
* * *
The elevator zinged and about to climb aboard when
“Hey.”
I turned.
She tapped a heavy book on the counter, said
“Registration.”
I gave a theatrical sigh, learned from the best, my ex, snapped
“That necessary?”
A tiny smile, not of warmth, Jesus, maybe glee, sprinkled with malice. She said
“Only if you want to stay here…or…”
Glanced at Plato.
Plato?…fooksakes.
He was grinning, gunning to go. I stomped back, my boot heels echoing on the mock Terrazzo floor. She turned the book to me. Christ, Thank God, I’d a pen.
To ask her?
No freaking way.
Plus, I was getting more a little tired of her mouth, gorgeous as it’s shape was.
I signed
“Ralph Finnerty. Home…Ohio.”
She looked at it, asked
“How is Ohio?”
“You ever been?”
“No.”
“Then, it’s lovely.”
She glanced at my Claddagh Wedding band. The heart turned out. Meant you were on the hunt and Sweet Jesus, the heart is a lonely hunter. The days of predator as dust in the Ohio wind.
I said
“Not no more.”
Her eyes, t
hat deepest blue, reeling and a rocking in her head, asked
“Couldn’t hack it, huh?”
I let that hover, seep it’s viciousness, said
“Couldn’t hack her smart mouth.”
Did Plato smile?
* * *
The room was large by Manhattan standards. Meaning it was larger than a closet, just.
Joy though, a glass/door window, opened to the roof. Stepped out there, stood, calculated.
Perfect.
I was invisible to prying eyes, unless they had a helicopter. An old disused air conditioning vent was attached to the side of the building.
Looking good.
Prised a board back, oh sweet Lord, nearly perfect.
For storage.
I’d need to but all weather wrapping, maybe a large briefcase. Got my face in tune, headed out and neither then, or my return, did I see Miss Congeniality.
Had grabbed a Starbucks double Grande Latte and slice of Danish. Snacked on those as I went shopping.
By late afternoon, I’d stashed the money, how safe it was?
I’d find out.
That evening I’d to meet a guy. Wore my battered leather bomber, 501’s, Converse, nicely scuffed and a T…with the logo,
Lizzie Rock.
The guy, not a friend but we had a history, purely financial.
Sheil’s.
A scumbag who made scumbags look bad. He’d sell me to the Boyos in jig time.
I was counting on it.
I met him in a bar on the Lowe East Side, as soon as I entered, I thought
“Fook, cops.”
He was in the back, sucking on a Corona. Looking like a rat who’d been turned inside out and then drowned.
He said
“Finn, looking good bro.”
I asked
“You meet me a fooking cop hangout?”
“Chill buddy, take a load off, cop bar, safest joint in The Five Boroughs.”
A waitress came, pretty wee thing, I ordered, A Jameson, Bud back. Sheil’s said
“Get me one of those babe, he’s paying.”
Oh, his winning fooking ways. I asked
“You get it?”
A new passport, driving licence, library card, the works. Primarily a new name.
The Big Click: March 2012 (Issue 1) Page 2
