Forgotten Friday - THE HUNTER

Patti Abbott has asked me to join in on her new weekly event of asking crime writers to choose some overlooked novel and trying to bring a spotlight back onto it.  This week I've picked one of my all-time faves.

Considering that Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) and his seminal master criminal Parker are still going strong after 40 years running–the latest Parker adventure DIRTY MONEY was recently released in hardback–it's a damn shame that more folks aren't familiar with the first in the series THE HUNTER. The novel did make a comeback of sorts when the Mel Gibson-vehicle PAYBACK, a much watered down film version, hit the screens some years ago. But that interpretation wasn't much more faithful to the book than the Lee Marvin adaptation POINT BLANK. Both films are likeable in their own flawed ways, but neither of them does true justice to the cruel but still captivating characterization of Parker.

No, kids, if you want the real Parker, you have to read the books, and there's no better place to start than with number one in the series, THE HUNTER. You've never run into such a hard-edged criminal as Parker, and Parker's never been as brutal and single-minded as he is in THE HUNTER.

The novel starts off with Parker on the move after murdering a guard and escaping from prison. He's survived a couple of bullets in the gut put there by his own wife after being set-up by his former partner, Mal. They've stolen his cut of some big heist money, which Mal has used to buy himself into a mid-level spot in the syndicate.

Parker's all about the cash. If folks would just pony up what they owe, a whole lot of bloodshed would be avoided. But no, of course they all have to try to cheat him or ice him or offer less than what he wants, and that just don't cut it in the violent world of Parker.

Since Mal is being protected by his mob bosses, Parker has to start at the bottom rung of the ladder and work his way up. He doesn't mind. With complete concentration of his skills and attention, he moves through the mob leaving lackeys and flunkies dead in his wake. When the syndicate still won't turn over Mal, he starts in with the bosses.

Even though most of the characters in Parker novels are life-long bad guys who should be sharp enough to know what to expect, every so often there's some collateral damage. In THE HUNTER there's one particular scene where Parker ties up and gags a woman because he needs her apartment to keep watch on Mal's boys. Hours later he decides to check on her, only to find that she's dead from an asthma attack. The heartless way that Parker dismisses her death only goes to show how ruthless he is. Fierce and heartless, but in a completely cold-blooded fashion. He's not a maniac in love with bloodletting. He doesn't enjoy killing. He simply will do whatever needs to be done for him to get exactly what he wants. If you're in his way, you die. You might even die anyway.

Some of the novels focus in on the heist facet of the story (THE BLACK ICE SCORE, PLUNDER SQUAD, FIREBREAK), some on the revenge aspect (THE SOUR LEMON SCORE, FLASHFIRE, COMEBACK), and some on Parker just keeping one step ahead of the law or his enemies (SLAYGROUND, NOBODY RUNS FOREVER). They're all worth checking out and indulging in. Trust me, they're addictive. If you grab one, you're not going to be able to stop until you scarf every novel in the series that you can lay your hands on. You might even wind up stealing them (THE I NEED MY PARKER NOVELS SCORE). Get a move on.

7:55 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

New limited edition signed noir novella: ALL YOU DESPISE
Category: Writing and Poetry

ALL YOU DESPISE is a new signed limited edition noir novella of mine that's currently up for pre-order from the good folks at SHROUD Publishing. Limited to 500 copies, art by Alex McVey, intro by Brian Keene, signed by us all.

From the ad copy: Piccirilli's characteristically lean prose grimly illustrates the high price of redemption and the violent limits of brotherly love. When a nameless man awakens to find his blood-spattered brother passed out in his trailer it sets off a chain of painful, hard-hitting events that tests family loyalty and shows the savage impact of a father's dark legacy. Fast-paced and packing a visceral punch, All You Despise will keep the reader anxiously turning pages all the way to its unexpected conclusion.

You can only order directly from the publisher, they tell me. Check it out here SHROUD and learn more about their magazine, contributors, other anthos, etc.

12:49 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Get all warm & fuzzy with THE COLD SPOT
Category: Writing and Poetry

My novel THE COLD SPOT officially hits today (watch out for the elderly and small children during your stampede, folks), though it seems to have started sneaking onto shelves over the past week or so. If you nab a copy and enjoy it, consider doing a review for your blog or on Amazon.com.  Spread the word!  Tell your Ma, tell your Pa, make new friends just so you can tell them too.

Some nice reviews/blurbs have come in, and I figured I'd share.

"Piccirilli (The Midnight Road, etc.) tells the gritty, violent and dark tale in an appealingly noirish narrative style, highly economical yet bracingly intimate."–Publishers Weekly

"Tom Piccirilli straddles genres with the boldness of the best writers today, blending horror and crime fiction into tight, brutal masterpieces. Pick up a copy of THE MIDNIGHT ROAD or THE COLD SPOT and prepare for a journey as thrilling as it is provocative."–James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of The Judas Strain

Also, check out first-rate fantasist, blogger extaordinaire, and reviewer Jeff Vandermeer's take on TCS in his very sharp review, where he says in part: "Few novels have the focus and driving energy of Tom Piccirilli's The Cold Spot wedded to an innate intelligence and rough lyricism."

You can also check out a brief interview with me here on Sandra Ruttan's blog. And while you're there make sure to read up on her new suspense release from Leisure WHAT BURNS WITHIN.

11:49 PM - 4 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Birth
Category: Writing and Poetry

Okay, so I'm forty-two years old and in a month I'll be forty-three. I'm not sure when middle-age officially starts nowadays, but I'm clearly there, right in the zone, and it's an odd feeling. Most of the time I don't give a shit, but every so often I get a little blue.

I met my wife Michelle pretty late in life. She has three grown kids from a previous marriage, and even if she was inclined to have babies now that she's in her mid-40s, the health risks put a kibosh on the idea. She had difficulty giving birth to her last child some 20 years ago, so kids–biological kids, kids from my loins as it were–seem out of the picture. Although Michelle does assure me that if she dies first she won't haunt my ass if I, as a drooling geriatric in a wheelchair, eventually wind up with a gold-digger some forty or fifty years my junior who manages to put a helmet on the little general one last time before I expire.

Ladies, the queue forms to the right. Get here early so you can get a low number.  Don't push.

But in the meantime, all those instinctual needs to be a father kind of fritz out with nowhere to go...except into the work.

Publishing a book is, for the writer, probably as close as a man can know what it's like to have a baby, up to and including postpartum depression. When I finish a novel I just go into a bleak and black state until I start to work on something else. The writing gives my life the sort of definition that children do other folks. It's a reason to be. It's a fulfillment of purpose. It's a definition of a humble existence.

I don't get to change diapers and have strained peas regurgitated onto my shoulders, but bringing a novel into the world is every bit as full of wailing and screaming and cholic as having a kid. It comes first in your life. It keeps you up at night. You want to head out to the beach and be free from any responsibilities? You can't. Your baby needs you at home. You have to make the constant effort to help shape it as it grows. You support it. You nourish it. The things that you believe, that you were taught, wind up going into it.

Just like your kid, your book reflects on you. How good a job junior does in the world, how he looks, what his manners are, how righteous he is, will either cast you in a good light or a bad one. He carried the family name. People will judge you on how well junior performs in life. You do your job as well as you can and then it's time to let the little bastard fly on his own. You wish him well, you do what you can to help out on his journey, but ultimately he's got to take the voyage all on his own.

So my latest kid drops into the world this Tuesday. His name is The Cold Spot. He's a beautiful bouncing boy, if I do say so myself.  He, along with his brothers and sisters, are the reason I'm here. The reason I stick around.

THE COLD SPOT is my first straight-up noir hardboiled crime mass market crime novel. While my two previous Bantam paperbacks THE MIDNIGHT ROAD and  THE DEAD LETTERS were suspense novels of a sort, there was also a slight nodding back to my horror roots with them. Not so with THE COLD SPOT, which is a flat-out story of thieves and con men, grifters and getaway men, shooters and losers. And of course, I hope you have a ball with it.

8:56 PM - 4 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Reinvention
Category: Writing and Poetry

Just received the first couple copies of my latest novel THE COLD SPOT, hot off the presses. (It’s due out in less than three weeks, and in case you want to pre-order, just head here: THE COLD SPOT at Amazon.com)

I’ve been a horror writer since I was twenty-one or so. And despite having written in just about every genre across the board, I always felt like a capitalized HORROR WRITER who just dabbled in those other fields. I’ve never quite understood those authors who only write in a single genre. I would think that most authors are inherent readers who read widely throughout all the breadth of literature. Since I read a little of everything, it’s only natural that I write a little of everything. One of the reasons why we do what we do is because we want to impress ourselves upon the grand annals of the fiction that we enjoy so much. You read a book that amazes and awes you, and you think, I want to do this too, I need to become a part of this thing.

But over the past couple of years I’ve drifted further and further away from the core genre I always felt most attached to.

The older I’ve gotten the less interest I’ve had in writing fantastical work and the more I’ve turned toward realistic fiction. Now I think I’ve actually become a CRIME WRITER, or maybe better put, A WRITER OF DARK AUTHENTIC STORIES, THE SHIT THAT MIGHT HAPPEN, THE SHIT THAT DOES HAPPEN.

It’s an odd feeling finding myself in a different home after all these years. The place isn’t as familiar or as comfortable or as easy to get around in, but it’s also fresh and exciting. This has become a process of surprise and discovery for me as I get to tackle my themes and subject matter from a new direction.

I dunno. Middle-age is spooky enough without uprooting the work too, but at least it’s keeping me on my toes.

11:32 PM - 15 Comments - 21 Kudos - Add Comment

Update
Category: Writing and Poetry

"Then one day I started writing, not knowing that I had chained myself for life to a noble but merciless master. When God gives you a gift, he also hands you a whip, and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation."–Truman Capote

News:

THE MIDNIGHT ROAD has been nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award. The awards will be presented at ThrillerFest 2008 at the Grand Hyatt in New York City, where the winners will be announced July 12th.

THE COLD SPOT is due out from Bantam in less than a month now, folks. You can pre-order at Amazon.com here:  THE COLD SPOT at Amazon

Ray Banks, the Saturday Boy himself and author of the dark as hell Cal Innes series including NO MORE HEROES, DONKEY PUNCH, and SATURDAY’S CHILD, gives a non-review of THE COLD SPOT here: The Saturday Boy That’s right, a non-review, wherein he tells you why you should NOT buy the book. So let’s hear it for Ray Banks, ladies and gentlemen, my new publicity manager!

The great Ed Gorman’s new political thriller SLEEPING DOGS is now available at bookstores everywhere. Scarf this bad boy up as soon as you can. Ed’s one of the best out there, and he always offers up fiction that has a deeply set moral center, sharp writing, and characters we actually give a damn about. I’m a hardcore fan of his Sam McCain series as well, but then again, I’m a hardcore fan of everything he’s ever written.

Ed has some extremely kind words about my novel HELLBOY: EMERALD HELL right here: New Improved Ed Gorman

Also, if you’re a collector of all things Piccirilli and you’re interested in catching up on some of the hard-to-find collectibles, you’ll discover the Delirium Books leatherbound editions to Hexes and The Deceased, the traycased Fuckin’ Lie Down Already, traycased Devil’s Wine, and lots of other rarities right here (and they all start off at a buck):  Auctions

2:28 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Pull
Category: Writing and Poetry

Usually when we talk about struggling to overcome limitations and meeting challenges head-on, we talk about pushing ourselves. But when it comes to writing, for me at least, it feels more like a pull.

Yanking the material from out of the guts, digging deep within and drawing forward the stuff that just doesn’t want to wrench loose easily. When I hit a real literary dilemma I find myself knotting up, and the process–which is already so difficult–tends to consume me until I manage to dredge up and confront whatever has stopped the flow of the story.

Case in point: I’m currently working on a novel with a blind protagonist. Now all the information and description that I usually work into the tale, all the visual and concrete imagery, has to be handled in a much different way. Metaphors and symbolism have to be shifted to the other senses. Voices and smells and memories take on a much greater meaning. My usual style and process have to be altered quite a bit.

It keeps throwing me off. A scene of falling snow has to be described through touch and sound. I find myself writing a lot with my eyes closed, trying to imagine what it would be like to have to see the world in darkness. Since my eyesight is already awful and blindness is one of my major fears, I find my heart rate ramping up as my imagination causes me to stress and panic. I clench and pull.

But after twenty novels and almost twenty years in this biz, I’m also learning something new. I’m breaking my own boundaries and coming at the process from a different direction. The pull is leading me to new places I never would’ve gone if I hadn’t challenged myself with fresh material.

Will it all work out? I have no idea. I like the book so far and those few who’ve read the opening chapters agree it’s some of my best work, but doing something new and challenging for 5k words isn’t the same as doing it for 60 or 70. I guess we’ll have to see–and feel and taste–what happens next.

Also wanted to drop a bit of good news:

My novella "Loss" from the anthology FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT will see reprint in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST NEW HORROR 19 edited by Stephen Jones

Also wanted to give hearty recommendations to two new books on the horizon: Ray Banks’ NO MORE HEROES and Allan Guthrie’s SAVAGE NIGHT.

NO MORE HEROES is the third in Banks’ Cal Innes series, and like its predecessors SATURDAY’S CHILD and DONKEY PUNCH this is a full-on noir/hardboiled asskicker about a PI working the rough streets of Manchester. As usual, Banks’ prose is sharp and lucid and the story is taut as a hangman’s noose.

Here Cal is working as muscle hired to evict renters from some tenements. Suffering through an addiction to painkillers and torn by the injustice of his newfound profession, Cal quits the biz only to be rehired by his boss to look into a recent blaze that burned down one of his buildings. Suspecting a case of arson that might be connected to the growing racial and political tensions between immigrants, college students, the government, and just mean-spirited street thugs, Cal finds himself caught up in escalating neighborhood pressures fated to explode into serious violence.

I urge everybody to get out there and buy the entire Innes trilogy asap. Banks takes PI conventions and skews them into a unique blend that will boot stomp expectations.

Al Guthrie’s new novel SAVAGE NIGHT is just as much of a ripsnorter as his previous title HARD MAN. Guthrie, along with Duane Swierczynski, is on the forefront of the new wave of writers putting a whole new spin on exactly what thrillers and actioners are. The story is juicy, wild, even insane. Trust me, you’ll get flash burns from turning the pages so fast. And you’ll be hard pressed to control your need to find out what happens next, and after that, and after that. Don’t be surprised if you lose a night’s sleep with this baby and read it all in one sitting. If the boss gives you hell, send him to Edinburgh to look up Guthrie.

In SAVAGE NIGHT we meet Tommy Savage, a wealthy real estate entrepreneur under attack by the masked Mr. Smith, who threatens Tommy’s family and demands 50 g’s cash for unnamed transgressions. After Tommy and his brother Phil drop off the money but decide to break some of Mr. Smith’s rules, Tommy finds himself even deeper in trouble than he ever reckoned. Also on hand is ex-con Andy Park, whose family is anything but average. His son is a hit man siting out a prison term, and his daughter is willing to do anything to help her boyfriend get vengeance for his murdered father.

Guthrie puts the story together in an intriguing fashion, jumping around in the narrative and giving us certain end scenes early in the book, moving between Tommy to the Park family and back again. It adds a different kind of suspense and atmosphere since we already know what’s coming but we’re not sure how things got there. There’s plenty of thrills, numerous brutal twists, and more than enough blood to please even the most deviant gorehound. SAVAGE NIGHT will be out in June, but you can pre-order now. Do it, and don’t miss out.

10:06 PM - 8 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

The Art of Sorrow, the Sorrow of Art
Category: Writing and Poetry

Tomorrow, March 12th, is the sixth anniversary of my mother's death. It was one of the two worst days of my life. I won't tell you what the other was.

My mother and I never had the best relationship in the world, although we were close in the ways that old married couples are close. With the same kind of love and resentment and puzzlement and apathy, and connection through time and loss and blood. We were probably more similar than either of us ever wanted to admit. I find that the things she used to do that would drive me out of my goddamn tree are things that I'm now starting to do. It's spooky as hell. And they drive me even more berserk now that I'm the one who's doing them. Oh yeah, bet your ass on that.

March 12h was also the day that I realized what it truly means to be a writer. I'm not talking about being a professional writer, or a genre writer, or a midlist writer, or a fiction writer or a published or unpublished writer.

I'm talking about being a deep in the heart and soul writer, when you can't turn it off because maybe it's saving your life, even if it's driving you absolutely crazy.

The scoop:

I was living in Colorado and tried to get back to New York a couple of times a year to see friends and family and get back home, you know? Being home, being back on your home ground, it counts for a lot. My mother had been ill for a while, but had been recovering. She'd been in and out of the hospital and physical therapy. She'd been released home but then suddenly needed to get back to the hospital. I wasn't sure why. I asked and got vague responses. She was more ill than anybody knew, but especially me.

Some family members suspected she was failing. They didn't fully know how to tell me and sort of talked about it in a general and circular way. Maybe I was blind or stupid, but I just didn't realize the situation was as bad as it clearly was.

I flew home on the 11^th and had a friend drive me immediately to the hospital.

By the time I go there she was unresponsive. This is the term they use now instead of coma.

My mother had been a very strong woman. She'd survived two husbands. She was highly independent and had been her whole life. You'd never think of her as weak or frail. And she still wasn't. She looked large in the hospital bed, she still had presence. A part of me kept expecting her eyes to slash open and start pulling all the tubes and wires and hardware off of her. She seemed capable of it.

But reality has a way of seeping in. Seeing her in a coma like that, and realizing after time that she was already gone, eventually hit like a blackjack to the back of my head. I felt very separated from myself. High, a little drunk. People talked to me and I responded seconds or minutes later. I realize now that I was in a state of shock.

I sat beside her bed and rubbed her wrist. Other family members spoke to her and laughed and told stories and tried to stay buoyant. They're the strong ones. Me, I could nothing besides rub her wrist in this kind of endless, rhythmic motion. I suppose I needed the human contact with her. Maybe it was a compulsion brought on by guilt over not being a better son. It was a circumstance that opened up every cellar door in your heart and let every conflicted and contradictory feeling raging and rampaging loose.

After a few hours I found that I was doing a very strange thing.

I was observing every detail of that night, seeing it both from the inside and the inside. I was very observant and I was aware that I was being observant. Anytime someone walked by I twisted my head and stared hard at the hall. When the doctors or nurses appeared they were burned into my mind's eye. All the sounds of the machinery around me. The fluctuating numbers measuring out my mother's life. The color of her yellowed skin. She had a small rash on her thigh. She was lying sprawled in bed, her limbs flung aside.

And I began to write. I became a character in my own story. I wrote in my head and said, "Tom is now writing in his head." When the young grinning doctor with the gallon of "wet-look" and mousse in his appeared in the door I wrote in my head, "Tom is thinking of heaving a chair against the hard, tight ringlets of the doctor's head. Anything to get rid of that fucking grin."

I knew it was weird. I knew I couldn't stop myself. I knew it was a tactic that a hyper-sensitive person like me is likely to do in order to hide from the awful reality unfolding around him. That's probably what writing has always been to me on a certain level, but I was never more sure of it than at that moment.

And so hour after hour as my mother died I wrote about it, the words flashing across my skull as brightly as if I was sitting at my desk and writing them across my screen.

My mother died early on the morning of March 12^th. I was one of the few family members who didn't speak at the funeral. I seemed incapable of speech. I nodded a lot. I muttered and mumbled.

I also found I was incapable of writing. I didn't go near my keyboard for more than six weeks, the longest time that I hadn't written a word of fiction since I was sixteen years old. The words wouldn't come. I had used them all the night my mother died. Sorrow had stolen them from me.

And sorrow returned them to me. When I finally managed I wrote a tale called "Confession" which was my first attempt to discuss the events of that night. I wouldn't be the last. I started a series of pieces that are loosely connected by theme, which I call my "Hospital stories." There are five or six of them, as well as scenes in several of my novels.

I mentioned in my last blog that books saved me after the death of my father. Thirty years later writing would save me after the death of my mother. That might sound like hyperbole or theatrics, but it's not. It's just my honest appraisal of how powerful the art within you is, and how it might carry you through the worst times of your life.

5:50 PM - 10 Comments - 18 Kudos - Add Comment

21
Category: Writing and Poetry

I've just started my 21^st novel, so I thought I'd take a minute here to reflect on my career up o his point. To be honest, the word "career" doesn't quite sit well with me, probably because I've always associated it with business, and professional writing, while it is a business, encompasses so much more.

In times past I always believed that anyone who burned to become a fiction writer did so because he was a fan of literature. He loved fiction and so wanted to impress himself upon the overwhelming grandness of literature. He waned to be a part of the thing that he loved.

In recent years, and with the advent and ease of POD self-publishing ventures, I've discovered that a lot of folks aren't necessarily filled with the joy of reading. They're not bibliophiles or fans of books or have a deep-seated love of fiction. They're filled with the desire to become famous or with the want of accomplishment, and they erroneously believe that because they can string a sentence together (even if they can't) and get a book printed up cheaply, that they've given themselves credence.

This isn't a bash at POD. It's just me trying to explain my puzzlement over folks who write without truly loving it, and who write but don't necessarily love to read.

I think books saved my life. At the age of seven, after my father's death, I became consumed with escape. I suffered through what most kids who lose a parent that early on–feelings of abandonment and significant rage and self-hatred. My father had already instilled in me a love of film and literature, sharing with me in his final months the things that mattered most to him. The need to fantasize overrode everything else in life. The need to broach other worlds, or better yet create them, took over in full force. I escaped my pain and the turmoil of my family by leaving it behind.

Okay, enough analysis. Skip forward fifteen years to a recent college graduate sitting in a room and surrounded by approximately two thousand books, eager to say something but not yet worldly enough to truly have something to say. He's got an English degree and has no idea what to do with it. His mother had told him to go into accounting. All his friends had gone into accounting and they all had good jobs in Manhattan now. His mother, who survived the depression, who has been working since the age of 15, who raised a mentally disabled daughter, who managed to outlive two husbands, who is a very strong woman, is giving him the look that says, Sweet Jesu, I don't understand this kid, how do I save him from this hard world?

He's still thinking about his Dad. He's still trying to sort out his own identity, and failing pretty flagrantly. A lot of what might be described as teen angst still resides within him. He's immature for his age, and naive as hell. He's published a handful of short stories and he's just started a novel that is part dark fantasy, part horror, part an effort toward the slipstream work of Borges, Barthelme, and Vonnegut. He's fifty pages in and is poring over his Writer's Market and decides to ship a partial off to Simon & Schuster, despite the fact that they do not accept unsolicited submissions. There's major no-no 1

Somehow the stars align and a major editor at a major house winds up with the partial, phones and requests to see the entire manuscript.

Ah ha. But there is no rest of the manuscript. The author, in his immense wisdom, thought that if someone got back to him, they wouldn't get back to him for at least six months or longer. Now he's in the unenviable position of telling said major editor that there is no finished book. There's major no-no 2.

Somehow he finishes the book, entitled OUR FATHER, which has moments of fiery poetry and deep themes, intense horror and interesting fantasy, and a whole lot of bombastic literary fireworks that go nowhere fast and do nothing much. The editor is perplexed but he still buys the book, and after offering some solid insightful editorial comments, he promptly quits Simon & Schuster and sets up elsewhere.

In the industry, this is called being orphaned. It's about the worst thing that can happen to a new author. Because now the editor that was championing the book is gone, and someone else with their own authors and titles will be saddled with the book and less likely to champion it.

Case in point. Said new editor is even more perplexed by OUR FATHER's bizarre slant on the haunted house in the deep woods, where death is somehow evolving into life, and the forest is filled with reanimated human-animal critters, and evil priests are on the march, and two brothers (one good, one bad, of course) who are vampiric-like beings and also kinda like witches and also kinda like kings of the dead and also...

Well, let's just say the new editor doesn't get it. In 1990 she dumps the book, now retitled DARK FATHER, on the market without fanfare where it sinks like a rock, and she promptly quits the biz.

The author tries not to take it personally that he's now been orphaned TWICE.

Okay, enough with the third person. It's heady narrative shifts like that which got me in trouble in the first place.

Despite the double abandonment–and let's remember that I was already having issues with abandonment because of my father's death, (ah ha, see, like a good story it all comes round again)–I kept writing. My second novel THE DECEASED was bounced by the new editor at S&S. As were a handful of others. I think I wrote four more novels including HEXES and HE NIGHT CLASS over the next four years, and they were all rejected.

With one novel out from a major publisher, I was a has-been/never-was and on the verge of burn out. Clearly I was doing something wrong. I had to step back and be as objective as I could be. That's a lot easier said than done. It's hard for anyone to be completely objective over anything, much less over his art, if that's what it really fucking was.

But the facts were evident. The work wasn't selling. Other authors had always said that the first book was the hardest to sell and everything else would run smoothly after that. But here I was, years after my first novel was published, and the door was not only shut, it was triple locked from the other side.

Unlike most other writers, I more or less started by writing novels. I'd only written and published a handful of short stories at that point. And I thought that maybe that's where I should I had to go. Back to a beginning that I had missed out on, but which seemed to work for a lot of other people. The short story is a kind of training ground for the novel. You learn how to tell a tight tale. You learn how to quickly detail your characters, to get your story moving along from the word go.

So in early '94 I decided to do nothing but focus on short fiction. I tried writing one a week. They were weird and perplexing too, oddball dark fantasies. I kept the tales in constant submission rotation, always in the mail. And little by little they started to sell. They started to sell because the more I wrote short fiction, the more I finally began to find myself. I refined the seriously rough edges. I discovered my themes and the elements that for whatever reason meant something to me. I began to learn about myself through what I put down on the page.

It's not just about saying something, it's about having something to say.

My reading tastes had shifted and I was devouring more and more mystery and crime fiction. I wrote a mystery SHARDS, published by Write Way Publishing, a very small press in '96. It was followed by THE DEAD PAST and SORROW'S CROWN. Later on TDP & SC sold in mass market paperback to Berkley, as well as a couple of different mystery book clubs. Things were starting to pop a little more.

I went back and re-edited the unsold novels. I could see a lot of my own editorial problems now (not ALL my problems, of course...I still go back and cringe, but I suppose that never stops..to look back a month later is to give yourself the heebie jeebies, much less several years later). Dorchester was restarting their horror line at Leisure Books, and editor Don D'Auria picked up HEXES and brought it out in '99. To be followed by THE DECEASED in 2000 (a full TEN years since I originally wrote it) as well as THE NIGHT CLASS, A LOWER DEEP, and two westerns GRAVE MEN and COFFIN BLUES.

All this time I was publishing short fiction and busily working in the small press, releasing short story collections, chapbooks, poetry collections, and the initial publications of a couple of novels.

I skipped over to Bantam four years ago and have published seven titles with them including THE MIDNIGHT ROAD, THE DEAD LETTERS< A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN (originally put out in a beautiful hardcover edition by NightShade), and the forthcoming crime novel THE COLD SPOT.

Another crime novel THE FEVER KILL was pubbed by the first-rate small press Creeping Hemlock Press.

HELLBOY:EMERALD HELL hit the shelves two weeks ago.

A few days back I started my 21^st novel (ah ha, remember what I said about a good story coming round...), and I've been in something of a gray mood. Maybe it's a reflection of the subject matter, maybe it's a reflection of the sky which looks like it's about to upend another blizzard on us. Maybe the fact that I'm 42 now and still haven't had that breakout novel. That I'm still in the midlist trenches. That the health problems are increasing and there's still no insurance. That Hollywood has never come knocking. Maybe I'm just moody because the mood is where the fiction comes from, it's the well where we draw the water from.

Maybe it's because I still haven't found myself, or maybe it's because I have.

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Allan Guthrie’s NOIR ORIGINALS
Category: Writing and Poetry

Hey folks:

Here's a new interview with me, done by the very hip Scotsman Allan Guthrie, author of such brilliant crime novels as HARD MAN, KISS HER GOODBYE, and the forthcoming SAVAGE NIGHT for his uber-cool website NOIR ORIGINALS

http://www.allanguthrie.co.uk/Feb08/Tom%20Piccirilli.htm

While you're at his site, check it out at length.  He's got tons of interviews, reviews, and info for all your crime fiction needs.

best, Pic
www.tompiccirilli.com
THE MIDNIGHT ROAD and THE DEAD LETTERS available from Bantam Books

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