Filed under: Interview
Please forgive me a bit of babble and allegory. I am about to embark on a rather protracted bit of wordage to introduce you to our next writer.
In the poem Au Lecteur, that prefaces Les Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire declares his readers to be as inured of sins and lies as he himself is:
… If rape or arson, poison, or the knife
Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
Of this drab canvas we accept as life—
It is because we are not bold enough!
Six of the poems in Les Fleurs du Mal were suppressed and his publisher eventually went bankrupt. He was a poet in search of an audience for what was considered scandalous, vulgar work. Work that was in essence a beautifully blunt and perilous look into the darkest corners of human behavior.
Baudelaire had a bad end after living a life of excess, finding sanctuary for his embattled soul in opium and drink.
Ken Bruen is Baudelaire but with a steel spine and the courage of his convictions. He is not bound by convention or a need to please anyone but himself, as is readily evident in is writing. It is the darkest kind; a prose that peels back the layers so carefully cultivated by society to cover our ugly, festering human greed. It is all laid bare, and examined at length in Bruen’s bibliography.
If you like a book that gives you a hard shot to the gut then laughs as you gasp for breath, Bruen’s your kind of writer.
What is your favorite use of the word fuck?
AS IN…………AH FOOK, ACCOMPANIED WITH DEEP IRISH SIGH.
Do you recall when you heard the word fuck for the first time?
I WAS SEVEN AND A TINKER CALLED A GUARD A FOOKHEAD….I ASKED MY DAD, WHO GAVE ME A HIDING, SO THE TERM FOOKHEAD BECAME SYNONYMOUS WITH HIDINGS.
Do you think it’s possible for me to come up with a question that hasn’t been answered in one of the numerous interviews of you?
YES, AND HERE IT IS…….WHO ARE YOUR FAVOURITE WOMEN MYSTERY WRITERS? AND THE ANSWER IS……. MJ ROSE, LYNN HIGHTOWER, CORNELIA REED, CATHI UNSWORTH, SANDRA SCOOPOTONE (THAT’S HOW WE SAY HER NAME IN IRELAND), PJ PARRISH, VICKI HENDRICKS, PJ TRACY, BARBARA SERANELLA, ZOE SHARP………. AND HERE’S A WEE SCOOP FOR YOU; A FEMALE MYSTERY WRITER DISSED ME BIG TIME SO WE PUT HER FACE ON THE COVER OF TAMING THE ALIEN, WILDLY DISTORTED OF COURSE. WANNA GUESS WHO THE WOMAN IS?
Writing = primal scream therapy. You scream loud and long. Does anything else exorcise the demons as well?
I SAIL……ALONE, ON THE WEST COAST OF IRELAND, MUCH TO THE HORROR OF MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS. BUT EACH TIME, IT’S OUT ON THAT EDGE AGAIN, WHERE I SEEM TO HAVE SPENT ME LIFE, PRECARIOUS THE POSE. AND I ALWAYS THINK, EVERY SINGLE TIME………..FOOK THIS.
How do you conquer the dreaded blank page?
THINK OF THE BANK MANAGER.
There was a rumor going around, don’t know where it could have started, that you are a vampire. I believe the compelling and completely circumstantial evidence involved a lack of Ken sightings in the daylight hours and your aversion to garlic. What do you have to say to the conspiracy theorists?
DAYLIGHT IS OVER RATED. I PLAY BEST AT NIGHT AND IF BEING A VAMP MEANT I GOT TO HANG WITH BUFFY, HAVE HER ON ME CASE, WELL, BRING IT ON. BEFORE DARK, THE CLASSIC K. BIGELOW MOVIE, WITH ROCK N ROLL VAMPS WHO DON’T GIVE A TOSS. I COULD DEFINITELY HANG WITH THAT CREW.
What are you like pre-coffee (and please tell me you don’t sugar it up)?
SUGAR……. ARE YOU FOOKIN DEMENTED? AND PRE-COFFEE, I’M LIKE A WASHED OUT BANSHEE. I DON’T DO MORNINGS REAL WELL AND PRE-CAFFEINE, I’M LIKE A BASTARD. AFTER, I’M AN ALERT BASTARD.
Who are the musicians/writers you’ve carried with you through your life?
TOM WAITS, SPRINGSTEEN, COSTELLO, STRUMMER, MERLE HAGGARD, BOWIE.
Is there anyone you’d go fan boy about if you meet him/her?
I ALREADY DID……….M.J. ROSE……BUT I’D GIVE A ROSARY BEAD TO MEET PATRICIA CORNWELL….SEE THAT ARSENAL, PARANOIA UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL.
What is the disc in your cd player?
GORILLAZ, SENT TO ME BY A CERTAIN RUTH AND JON, FOLLOWED BY DEEP PURPLE, GIVEN TO ME BY THE LION IN (JIM) WINTER.
A snippet from Ken Bruen’s story, Spit:
Saoirse’s hair was auburn, fell in ringlets to her shoulders. Thing is, she wasn’t all that pretty.
But something.
Electricity in the eyes, attitude, a semi smile that danced around her mouth.
Her eyes were green.
I swear to fuck.
Green as shamrock. The key word there is sham.
What did I know? I was thirteen for Chrissakes. I do know she smiled at me.
Open Full
Radiant
Neon writ.
Cursed, blessed me, forever.
Then she turned away.
I was signed, sealed and delivered.
Filed under: Interview
Going on record to say you’ve deliberately set out to write a main character who wasn’t “The Greatest Detective Ever” isn’t the normal tack most writers would take in an interview or a career. But in John Rickards’s series lead P.I. Alex Rourke, that’s exactly what he’s done.
Rourke isn’t a grand crusader for justice or a smart-talking tough guy. Nor is he a troubled here beset by problems with alcohol and/or bad relationship choices. Nor is he in need of anger management classes. He’s the people that you meet, when you’re walking down the street. He’s the people that you meet each day.
Now Rickards’s bad guy from Winter’s End, Nick, is another story. He is a well constructed, well-thought psychological thug. He gets you where you think and delivers a mindfuck that may well have a greater impact on his victims than a kick in the kidneys. Not to say Nick isn’t capable of leaving a few bodies around for effect.
And The Touch of Ghosts finds Nick left behind as the new and improved antagonists.
Rickards short stories, so quickly and easily written he just tosses them on his blog for any and all to read, display a mind that can write in a plethora of genres, points of view and narrative voices. His stories are often peppered with humor that range from droll to pie in the face. And subjects that run from horror to faux dandy witticism.
Behind it all is a restless mind on a quest for fulfillment that will no doubt carry Rickards very far.
What is your favorite use of the word fuck?
Mid-sermon.
That’s a lie. It’s not like I’ve ever been to church, nor wanted to. But still, it’d be nice.
Do you recall when you heard the word fuck for the first time?
No – I was far too young at the time. I know the first time I actually got into trouble for using it was at school when I was about seven or eight, telling another kid to fuck off, and I seem to remember that by then I had the tone and inflection pretty much down pat, so I guess I’d grown up with it.
How is the chattering skull?
My skullbones are fine and strong. They have much caffeine. They tell me many things. My skullbones do not lie.
Clackclackclackclack.
So, do you still harbor negative feelings about my review of your first book (hee hee hee)?
I’ll get you next time, Jordan! NEXT TIME! You’ll not escape my ninjas!
Ahem. I mean, no. Of course not. There is nothing to worry about. There is no need to lock your door before going to sleep, and nor is there any reason to check your brake lines before starting your truck. Everything is fine. Fine. FINE.
Your short fiction crosses all genres. What is the likelihood of a full length non-crime fiction book?
No idea, but it might be nice. Depends what my fevered brain came up with, but if it was cool enough…
But first I’d want to see HARDBOILED JESUS become a TV series.
What in Odin’s name are you doing eating white chocolate?
It isn’t even real chocolate!
What the hell?
Dark chocolate tastes like freeze-dried shit. White chocolate is the sugary, vanilla-laden food of the gods.
It helps not to think of it as chocolate. Instead, think of it as the thin, adolescent semen of the Milkybar Kid compressed and dried into solid form, with every cube of chocolate a fresh stream of lukewarm ejaculate preserved for your eating pleasure.
Watcha readin’(she wrote after calming done considerably)?
Just this morning the first of Denise Mina’s run on HELLBLAZER showed up in the post, along with the most recent in Warren Ellis’s excellent ‘mystery archaeology’ series PLANETARY. Both good. The last actual prose book I finished was Duane’s SECRET DEAD MEN, which was very cool.
What is the disc in your cd player right now?
A snippet from John Rickards’s story, Twenty Dollar Future:
“The blow came out of nowhere. The man slammed the butt of his Kalashnikov into Abdi’s chin. Pain seared through his head and he could taste blood and dust as he dropped to the floor. The kicks the man followed up with hammered into his ribcage, but he could hardly feel them. His head swam with agony and he could do nothing more than lie there until the man picked him up and threw him across the street.”
Filed under: Interview
Much praise has been heaped upon one Olen Steinhauer. I imagine him plodding about, stooped yet grinning like a well fed cat, under the weight of it all.
Reading some of this glistening praise as Mr. Steinhauer makes his sure-footed way across his career reveals snatches of accolades that convinced me he was my kind of writer. Seeing ‘noir’, ‘menace’, ‘bloody-mindedness’, ‘uncompromising’ and ‘complexity’ in his reviewed resume would make any reader hungry for a dark tale seek him out.
Reading The Bridge of Sighs, I was in love with his writing from the first page.
The Romanian world of Emil Brod is a grim one, tinged with mordant humor that yanks the reader in by the whiskers. As Brod sits at his desk, the eyes of the other militia men upon him, the reader can smell the sweat, hear the typewriter in the corner and taste the bad coffee. And you can feel the intense dislike that radiates from his ‘fellow’ militia men.
Mr. Steinhauer is referred to as a writer. I think of him more as a painter whose medium is words.
His short stories are no less vividly drawn but jump to a present as dark and as feral as the one left behind in the late 1940’s.
I consumed The Confession and last year’s 36 Yalta Boulevard like a starving woman at an endless banquet.
I would add a word to his collection of praise: fearless.
What is your favorite use of the word fuck?
Fuckface. It evokes such a lovely image.
Do you recall when you heard the word fuck for the first time?
I was nineteen, living in Zagreb, and a male prostitute was trying to find a way to get some cash off of me. I might have heard the word before then, but the next morning I woke in a bathtub missing a kidney as well as most memories of my youth. I later uncovered some papers containing my adolescent poetry, and one verse was entitled “My Fucking Grades”. I imagine, though, that I’d misspelled “flunking”.
How cool is your Mom?
Way fucking cool. Ask anyone. She was a 70s feminist, and this means she takes no shit off of no one.
What has compelled you to live all over the planet?
Boredom. And a fear of becoming tied to community. Does that make sense? Not entirely. Because then you have to go back. Why fear of community? Because community equals responsibility beyond your own skin, beyond the person you fuck most regularly. Then: Why fear of societal responsibility? Because I don’t necessarily trust my abilities in that regard. Why not? Because, as an introvert, I keep people at a certain distance. Why do you do that? Because…wait a minute. This is none of your fucking business!
What led you to writing historical fiction?
When looking at the present, it’s hard sometimes to figure out what’s important, what’s going to last–with the past it’s self-evident. That’s one of the reasons I started with historical stuff, and since it was pre-9/11 it was a reasonable excuse. By the time 9/11 hit and the whole fucking mess was becoming more obvious, I’d already begun writing about the Cold War. I’m working on the last book in the series now, and after that it’s gonna all be
contemporary.
What’s the book on your nightstand?
Book(s): A Corpse in the Koryo (pre-pub manuscript) by James Church; Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis; Stealing Me (unpublished) by Grace Greene; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Sorry, no “fuck” titles there yet.
What is the disc in your cd player right now?
CD player? Fuck, that’s so 90s. My iPod has everything of worth on it, particularly Belle & Sebastian, Nick Cave, Sinatra, the White Stripes, the New Pornographers, Brigitte Bardot & Serge Gainsbourg, Johnny Cash, some Len Deighton audiobooks, and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Whoops, I just erased that last one*.
Rarely, actually never, have I been so chastened by a writer. I rather enjoyed it.
Here is a snippet from Mr. Steinhauer’s story, Hungarian Lessons:
I’ve always felt you can tell a lot about a place by the way they design and keep their bathrooms, and the Marriott, by this estimation, was all about style and power. It made one—well, it made me feel as if there wasn’t anything in this world I couldn’t have, or do, if I really set my mind to it. Then I opened a stall door—silent, well oiled hinges—and found the Finance Minister sitting on the toilet, pants around his ankles, and Agota bowed between his legs, sucking his cock.
*Not such a smarty pants now, is he?**
**Yeah, and I’m such a smarty pants, I had to fix this post twice!
Filed under: Interview
There are times it’s good to be me.
You may hear me bitch and moan about reviewing on a rather consistent basis. Behind that is the knowledge that every now and again, books that I wouldn’t have the insight or knowledge to pick up on my own fall into my hands.
Manuel Ramos’ Mooney’s Road to Hell was one of those books that balance out all the infuriating ones. And Scott Wolven’s collection of 13 short stories, Controlled Burn, made just as powerful an impression on me.
In my mind, after I read it, I thought, “Every person who has written that short stories are a dying art are proven dead wrong by this book.”
If I were to hear from Scott that he just sits down and writes these stories without re-writes and bam! they’re that good, like Mozart and his one-off compositional masterpieces, I’d be sorely tempted never to write again.
That’s why I’ll never ask Scott that question.
I’ll post here what I wrote after finishing Controlled Burn:
“These are the most raw, brutal, lyrical and hard stories I’ve read in an age.
I meant to read a story a night and ended up consuming the entire book at once. There is a part of every human being capable of creating only grief and ruin, leaving chaos in their wake. Wolven writes of these people.
The stories are intertwined over years, location or happenstance who’s protagonists cross over into oblivion of their own making. It is an oblivion we’ve all at least set a toe into, scuttling away, scared by what we saw and felt. The men in these stories embraced it, breathing it into every cell.”
If you haven’t read Scott and are afeared of laying down your hard-earned money for his collection, read his stories Eight Ball or Barracuda and join his fan club.
Wolven’s work has appeared in the Mississippi Review and three (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005) Best American Mysteries collections. He is a master and a must read for any connoisseur of the short story. How’s that for some unadulterated gushing?
What is your favorite use of the word fuck?
As the first letter in the graffiti acronym FTW – fuck the world.
Do you recall the first time you heard the word fuck?
I don’t recall the first time I heard the word fuck, but I do use it now.
In a preponderance of your stories, and there are many, your characters are fucked. But most keep fighting even as the current is pulling them under. It’s almost fatalism with a silver lining. Do you view the world with the grim stoicism of your characters?
It’s a very difficult question to answer – I’m always trying to tell a good story and if characters and situations are hard, I’ll try to tell a good story about that. It’s always about telling a good story as best as I can.
Some of the most jaded, read-that-wrote-about-it reviewers read ‘Controlled Burn’ and hailed your work as, to quote Kevin Burton Smith, “…the arrival of an important new voice, not just in crime fiction, but possibly in American literature itself.” Do you nod your head in agreement or open your eyes wide in surprise?
When somebody reads a story of mine, or Controlled Burn, and writes great stuff, I feel very lucky as a writer. Kevin Burton Smith – yourself – you read a tremendous amount of fiction and I have great respect for that and feel lucky I’ve written something that stands out for you. It’s pretty amazing.
Influences (more lazy one word questions)?
Work influences a lot of what I write (Scott is, as of this writing, in Louisiana helping to re-build). Music of all kinds.
What are you reading?
The Lineman’s and Cableman’s Handbook, Section 36, Distribution Transformer Installation.
What is the disc in your CD player?
Buddy Guy.
Scott is one of the few people I know who might be able to out-nice Sean Doolittle. And that’s saying a lot.
Here is a snippet from Scott’s story St Gabriel,
Nobody asks a man why he drinks. Mixed in there with the private darkness of reasons, nobody wants to know the answer from the man who is already drunk. I was drinking to get a woman to come back to me, which is the worst reason of all. The cost of pain. When you see someone so bright, such a bright fire, a diamond, it stays with you and their image is on the inside of your eyelids when you close your eyes. I can still see her, she lights up the night of life. Who wouldn’t want her back? Her smile alone could cure you of whatever disease had got hold of you. Oceans of booze couldn’t put out that fire.
Filed under: Interview
Nathan Singer is one of the fiercest writers you may ever read.
Singer is a multi-dimensional artist channeling the rage of the streets, the passion of a bruised heart still willing to love and the pain of every child who’’s experienced the hand that was not held back in anger.
From the heavy metal stage with his band Absinthium, to the his solo stage presence doing spoken-word to writer for a stage occupied by others and directing them about the stage to the books lucky readers clench in their hands late at night, their brains too buzzed on words to sleep, Nathan Singer is a modern day knight errant on an eternal quest to make the world look in on itself, dark wounds and shining hope revealed. You can read a rant in CrimeSpree’s issue #9.
Benjamin LeRoy insisted I read Nathan’’s first book, A Prayer for Dawn. Normally when someone is that insistent, I ignore their advice just to fuck with them. But Ben has a sincerity to his insistence that can convince even a jaded Jordan to pay attention. I am so glad I did.
The two books you have out, A Prayer for Dawn and Chasing the Wolf, are brilliant and completely different from each other and everything else ever printed in the history of the English language. How did you develop this writing style?
Well, as for as the jagged, jumpy quality, that’’s just the way my brain works. Also, I’’ve done a fair amount of my writing actually in front of live audiences, so it lends a certain amped up immediacy to the work I guess. As far as my use of multiple narrators, I like the personality you can infuse in first-person limited narrators that third person loses. Conversely I like the ‘‘all-access’’ capability of third person omni, so this seemed the best of all worlds to me. I just naturally want to hear from more than one character in a story.
Your spoken word is reminiscent of Henry Rollins before I knew that he cleaned his hotel rooms up for housekeeping. Is the ‘you’’ on stage the same guy who sits down to write or is this a Nathan channeling the rage and injustice of the world?
Yes, that’’s the same guy. Also, I don’t sit down to ‘write’’ novels in a traditional sense. It’s a pretty active thing for me and, as I said, sometimes I actually ‘write’ live, so yeah. Same process. I actually became a spoken word performer without ever actually having seen any other spoken word artists. I was playing in metal bands and our shows were basically bloody experiments in sonic terrorism disguised as live musical entertainment. Mixing thrash with free jazz and 60s style psychedelia and anything else we could think of, it was wild and unpredictable and after a while I started mixing spoken word elements and more performance to the singing and screaming I was doing. Once my main band broke up, I wondered if I could bring that same level of danger and intensity to the stage with just me my words and a mic; no guitars or drums to support me and punish the crowd. It really took off almost immediately and it’’s been a steady climb upward since then (with plenty of fights and bedlam along the way).
What is your favorite use of the word fuck?
As a command.
Do you recall when you first heard the word fuck?
It must have been in utero.
What would the world be like without fuck?
Sparsely populated.
When is fuck not the right word?
“Which one of you wants to cut up this turkey carcass?” The word fuck has no business anywhere in that sentence. Perhaps a variation like the noun ‘fucks’ or the adjective ‘fuckin’, but no fuck itself.
What is the disc in your CD player right now?
Acid Bath – Paegan Terrorism Tactics.
Thanks so much, Nathan. I like you.
No problem, Jen. I like you too. Wanna go dancing sometime?
A snippet from Nathan Singers story, The Killer Whispers and Prays:
Twilight is my cloak and salvation. And the killer whispers and prays. I am still. Centered. My head is gravel, my teeth are arrowheads, my eyes are sand-packed tight, pounded clear and sharp into brittle liquid windows into your forever nothing. I am where chaos goes to die, dragged kicking and wailing, baffled and grief-struck into its own annihilation. I suffer neither the fools nor the wise.
I don’’t suffer at all.
Filed under: Interview
Ray Banks won this reader’s jaded heart with the first line in Donkey Work, featuring the perennial smartass, Cal Innes:
“According to Simon and Garfunkel, the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls. According to the subway walls, Gaz drank piss on Ordsall common.”
A simple, effective first line tear down of a sixties icon that left me smiling like a kid running from a door about to open on a flaming bag of shit.
Ray Banks writes it angry, fast and real. But in the midst of chaos and violence are lines of sheer poetry and insight. He’s another born writer who has honed his craft constantly writing, putting his work out for the world to see, then sitting back down to begin again.
One of the joys of a writer with a list of on-line stories is watching a character and a writer evolve together. From a good writer, Ray has begun to evolve into a great writer. His stories evoke vivid, gritty images of human beings at their worst with the occasional relief of a beam of light to set the dark off all the better.
Ray’s non-Innes book, The Big Blind, is as sweet and dark as a hot cup of Turkish coffee.
What is the cutest author in the UK up to for the next year?
“I think Al Guthrie’s writing another couple of books as well as his agenting gig thing. Why you askin’ about him? Why aren’t you asking about the two books I have coming out? Pfft.”*
What is your favorite use of the word fuck?
“”Don’t show me your paintings, don’t talk to me about books, you’re an asshole, go fuck yourself…” Ed Hamell in the “song”, “Go Fuck Yourself”.
Or
“The cops are looking all over for ya, you’re hotter than a freshly fucked fox in a forest fire.” Another Day in Paradise, Eddie Little.”
Do you recall when you first heard the word fuck?
“Probably when I was born: “For fuck’s sake, get this bastard out of me and get me some fuckin’ drugs!” Something like that. And it stuck. It was my first word. My second word was “Thatcher”. Right on. Fight the power.”
How do you feel about women using the word fuck?
“Hungry. And sometimes I get a cramp in my leg. Depends on the volume and the intent.”
What’s it all about, Banksie?
“The Benjamins, Jay-Jay. And meat millinery. Y’ain’t nobody these days without a quality spam cap.”
Whatcha readin’?
“Like Mr. Basso Profundo, I got two on the go right now. Knocking on the last chapter of By A Spider’s Thread by that cut-throat Lippman, and for light reading I got me Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone (“They’re mean and stupid and greedy, they’ll fuck you for laughs, they want you dead.”)”
What is the disc in you CD player right now?
“The Baby Huey Story: Living Legend – Baby Huey and the Babysitters.”
A snippet from Ray’s story, Money Shot:
“When I clicked the barrel against her rotting teeth, her eyes took on the sheen of the newly-weeping.”
*Ray’s books are Saturday’s Child (the first Cal Innes book) which is coming out in May… and the sequel Donkey Punch which is scheduled for September.
Filed under: Interview
Otis Twelve has a vast and varied history. This is his own take on it:
Otis lives in a very small town where nothing bad or evil ever happens, and where 70% cacao content dark chocolate candy falls from the trees. Although rumors of his involvement in several “distasteful” incidents last year in Chicago continue to circulate, Twelve maintains an almost Zen-like serenity in the face of these slanders and neither confirms nor denies their veracity. Currently in mourning after the death of his blind diabetic dog, he continues to peck away at his Mac G5 keyboard hard at work on his latest book, a critical examination of bunk beds – symbol or archetype? – in modern Crime fiction. Though once a “man of the cloth,” he now prefers to work in the nude as he has few visitors save the occassional Jehovah’s Witness. Otis spends his spare time building up his supply of freeze-dried food.
You may have heard of him and/or his work before if you:
a.) listened to the radio in the seventies. Remember the song Dead Puppies? He wrote it and recorded it. A little Dr. Demento nostalgia for you – Otis was Space Commander Wack, Dingo and the Mean Farmer.
b.) happened to notice that in 2005 he won the B@@kplace “people’s vote” for On the Albino Farm, the first in his “Tools” series.
c.) happened to notice that in 2004 he was short-listed for the Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger Award his second book, Sometime a Prozac Nation.
d.) didn’t overlook that in 2004, he landed himself $10,000 by winning an essay competition called The Power Of Purpose Awards for piece called The Goodness of Trees.
It’s almost annoying, isn’t it? The accolades. The praise. The vast and varied past.
He and the yoga-challenged Sean Doolittle live and write in the Great Plains. They both say nothing happens there. I suspect something does. But neither of them wants me to know about it.
I know this because I had the joy of reading a story Otis sent in to CrimeSpree (run in the Sept/Oct issue) called Dead Puppies. Failed rockstar, bored, looking for a kick and finding it in the Obits he writes. Before the people die.
When I met him this last fall, I grew to adore him. He is a gentle, sweet man with one of the sharpest wits I’ve ever encountered (and that’s saying something) and a baritone voice that could out sweet honey.
What is you favorite use of the word fuck?
Overheard yesterday at the grain elevator: “Fuck the
soybeans!”
Do you recall when you first heard the word fuck?
In third grade when Lazlo Zelinsky asked me the riddle, “What starts with ‘F’ and ends with ‘U – C – K’?” I answered “Firetruck.” I was wrong.
What is the disc in your CD player right now?
Book?
“Memoirs of Hadrian” by Marguerite Vourcenar & “Rain Dogs” by Sean Doolittle (Always do two books at once)
Inlfuences?*
G. Chaucer, E.A.Poe, M.Wollstonecraft-Shelly P.K.Dick, A.Watts, D.Lessing, A.Huxley, R. Madelin, A.Moore with D.Gibbons, and I.G.Parker.
A snippet from Otis Twelve’s story, Fluff:
“Take that cock out of your mouth, Sarah, and talk to me.”
*getting a little lazy with the questions, aren’t I?
Filed under: Interview
I’ve been a satisfied reader of Michael O’Mahony’s for over a year now. I first ran across him when I was doing an internet search on how to write erotica. I found a piece he wrote for his blog called: Secrets of Erotica…Revealed!
Fucking hilarious! Instead of my usual method of skating through text to glean what wisdom there is as fast as possible, I actually read the whole thing, word for word. And laughed my ass off the entire time. I’ve reproduced it below and you should be glad I did. Mr. Mahony has had two sites since then and it’s no longer available except here, the web’s home of written fuck.*
Mr. Mahony is a closet writer. He’s tried to quit. But peer harassment and an addiction to the written word have got him hooked. Hooked bad. And thank God for it.
In every story of Michael Mahony’s that I’ve read over the past year, not a one has disappointed. He’s got a natural pacing and characterization prowess that has me green with envy. Emerald green. With a little apple green and forest green thrown in for effect.
Anyway, to read one of his stories is to know the man is a born writer. And he’s not just an erotica writing machine. The man can write anything he wants.
So, Michael, where’s the book? Huh? Where’s the fuckin’ book?
What is your favorite use of the word ‘fuck’?
“Shut that cunt’s mouth or I’ll come over there and fuckstart her head.” – written by Christopher McQuarrie and delivered by Ryan Phillipe in The Way Of The Gun. Dialogue like that just doesn’t come along very often.
Do you recall when you first heard the word ‘fuck’?
Probably at school, but I honestly can’t remember ever having had a fuckless life.
What would the world be like without fuck?
There’s an essay in that question, but the simplest answer is that you’d be putting together an anthology called Fiddlesticks Noir, and I sure as fuck wouldn’t be contributing.
Who rubs you the right way?
That is a hellish pseudo-question with approximately twelve million potential answers. At the time of writing, I’ve been thinking about it for forty minutes. You are a scorpion woman. That said, I am currently rubbed the right way (for a brain-frying variety of different reasons) by my wife, Bill Hicks, Hunter Thompson, Clive Barker, Chuck Palahniuk, Alkaline Trio, The Eels, Tanya Donelly, David Fincher, George Romero, Bruce Campbell, and that guy in The Warriors who sits in his car banging beer bottles together and going, “Waaaaaaarrioooors, come out to plaaaa-aaaay.”
What is the disc in your CD player right now?
What do ya think of that?
Is this an official question?
A snippet from Mr. Mahony’s story, Every Ounce of Soul:
“Don’t,” she said.
“What?”
“Fall for me.”
I smiled at that. I kissed her shoulder as I began to move in her again, one arm draped over her hip, hand covering her crotch, fingers finding her. She tensed immediately, held my eyes as her breath steepened until each exhalation was a soft moan.
“Alex,” she said. She reached back and grabbed at my waist, nails digging into my skin. “Alex.” She bit her lip and her eyelids fluttered, her body still but trembling all over for a long, silent moment before the breath rushed out of her in a shaky sigh and she relaxed. kissed her neck and the side of her face. I brought my mouth to her ear.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Flatter yourself.”
She turned and kissed me.
*Don’t know about you but I am becoming completely desensitized to that word. Fuck, fuck, fuck. It really isn’t that shocking after you write so many times.
Filed under: Meandering
“The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.”
Yes, in this one-time-only post, I, Michael O’Mahony, bestselling author of such self-help books as But It Looks Nothing Like A Fucking Flower!: How to Write Descriptive Prose About the Female Genitalia, and Why Everyone Laughs When You Call It Admiral Winky, have gathered my considerable knowledge of writing dirty stories into one, easy-to-read package so that you, my readers, can go away and write the kind of erotica that will ruin underwear all over the world.
Before we start, please feel free to browse my recent forays into filth and depravity; A Conspiracy of One, Collect Call to an Unknown Lover, Tomorrow, Five Minutes Alone, Rain, and Fitz And Me.
All done with those? Still want to be a master/mistress of the erotic arts? Marvellous. If words be the food of love, read on…
Be Able To Write In The First Place
If you can’t string simple words together in a coherent fashion, you will never be an erotic writer. Brutal but true. While erotica is a much-maligned genre that is rarely taken seriously by the mainstream, it still requires a certain degree of talent to become respected and read in the field, even if your hardcore audience does consist of men in dirty raincoats who buy books with glossy covers that depict impossibly beautiful women pouting seductively whilst writhing amongst silk bedsheets.
Understand Your Genre And Your Audience
There are many different varieties of erotica, and not all of them are literary. On the internet for example, The Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository (Adult Site) contains a veritable blizzard of strange, horrible, and poorly written tales in categories ranging from Non-Consensual Gay Sex to Mind Control (I wish I was kidding). ASSTR is basically a portal to the largest collection of erotic stories on the internet. I haven’t read them all. I doubt I’ve read 1% of them. But I have seen enough and know enough to be sure that of these thousands and thousands of dirty stories, about twelve are actually any good. The reason I want you to go there is not so that you’ll have a fine old time reading some awesome fiction, but to give you an understanding of just how huge and varied this genre is. If somebody somewhere has fantasised about it, you’re bound to find a story that features it.
Chosen a Category?
Spiffy.
Now Let’s Get To The Actual Writing.
Now you’ve chosen a Category (and those that chose vampires, vacuum cleaners, a video game character, or Mind Control can find the exit in the top right hand corner), you need to think about how you’re going to write your story and what it’s going to be about. In my own work, there is a huge difference between Fitz and Me (a lengthy tale with three-dimensional characters that actually attempts to tell a story and tap into the reader’s emotions as well as their pants), and Rain (in which two anonymous characters engage in clumsy, passionate sex against a backdrop of rain in an empty, nameless city). The contrast, to me, is obvious. Whereas the latter story’s erotic content is its centrepiece and meaning, the former uses erotic elements as a means to an end, in this case the telling of a doomed love story. These are two different approaches that attempt to make the reader feel similar emotions (though the overwhelming e-mail response to Rain suggested that it invoked a feeling of nostalgia and lost love).
So…decide what your story will be about, how long or short (approximately) it will be, and what it is you want to give your readers. If your answer to that last question was “an orgasm”, then that’s absolutely fine. I now plan to show you how to do this with style.
How To Write Sex
There is no right way to bring the glare of your descriptive prose to bear on sexual interaction of any kind. But there are many, many wrong ways. In my experience, and assuming the writer has talent in the first place, there is a tendency to go in one of two directions.
“Pamela screamed in ecstasy as I splattered her smiling face and jiggling tits with my thick, creamy man-custard.”
This kind of thing is most commonly found in works written by males that spend too much time reading the letters page of Reader’s Wives and surfing internet porn sites. Crazy as it seems, I have read work exactly like this. Erotica can be funny, but nobody wants the audience to laugh when they’re not supposed to.
“Camilla gasped and clapped her hands to her heaving bosom as Robert unveiled his throbbing manhood and then reached to rend her blouse asunder.”
You are a woman. You read too much Mills And Boon. Your writing would lose a battle of erotic content to a cheese sandwich. Danielle Steele sucks, and if your work reads like a sub-par attempt to copy her, then you may as well give up now.
While those two examples are still fresh in your minds, I’d like to deal, for a moment, with language. ‘Man-custard’, unless you’re writing in character and such a colourful turn of phrase comes (no pun intended) naturally, is not an acceptable euphemism for semen. Admittedly, ’semen’ is not exactly an erotic word in the first place, but surely you can do better than that. I pretty much always use ‘come’. Yes, that’s ‘c’,'o’,'m’,'e’. There is no such word as ‘cum’. If you attempt to use it in your erotic fiction, I will have you killed.
Acceptable Euphemisms for Penis:
Cock, Dick, Prick…or any descriptive variations on the theme…it’s not too difficult to write descriptive prose about the penis and its activities. There certainly isn’t a need for any of the following: Bacon Bazooka, Bald Avenger, Beef Missile, Bitch Stick, Captain Howdy, Charlie Russell The One-Eyed Muscle, Dr. Cyclops, Fun Truncheon, Gash Mallet, Godzilla, Jive Sausage, Little Jesus, Meat Thermometer, Mini-Me, Mr. Giggles, Muff Mole, Optimus Prime, Piss Whistle, Pump-Action Yoghurt Rifle, Purple Avenger, Slit-Eyed Demon, Soul Pole, Spurt Reynolds, Twelve-Inch Train Of Pain…or any variation thereof.
Acceptable Euphimisms for Vagina:
This one’s tougher. The only really useful one is ‘cunt’, and some folk are deeply offended by that particular word. I rather like it myself. ‘Pussy’ is also widely used, but I’ve always thought it sounded a bit lame. Then again, it’s possible it has simply been ruined for me by too many years of hardcore pornography. Either way, a good writer can see the image in his or her head and write about it without ever resorting to using any of these: Bearded Clam, Beef Jacket, Birth Cannon, Bitchcake, Camp Coochie, Cock Holster, Finger Warmer, Flesh Wallet, Four-Lipped Man-Eater, Front Butt, Fuck Hole, Garage Of Love, Gleaming Mound Of Venus, Growler, Gutted Hamster, Hairy Chequebook, Meat Curtains, Momma’s Silk Purse, Ninja Slipper, Old Toothless, Panty Rabbit, Pink Palace, Snake Charmer, Wizard’s Sleeve, Wookie….etc. etc.
Rely on your natural talent for writing good, sound prose, no matter how obscure the similes you may find yourself drawing on. Good erotic fiction understands the rules so that it can break them.
You are Now Ready to Write Erotica
That’s it…the end of this short but educational trip into the realm of the erotic. Go forth, my students. Go forth and write of warm skin, glistening flesh, and throbbing shafts. Fill the world with love and spectacular prose, not man-custard and beef missiles. Your readers will thank you, and so will I.
Filed under: Interview
Sorry.
Had to do it.
And I hope Tribe will forgive me. As an audiophile, I think he will.
You’ve seen the name, you’ve read a few stories and you probably wondered who the fuck is this guy? I had to ask him – you know, inquiring minds want to know and all.
So he tells me, “At this point, it frees me to write just about write anything I want…that, and it makes me look cool and mysterious…not to mention silly and pretentious.”
Clever. Anonymity. Wish I’d thought of that.
He is clearly a well-read, thoughtful man with a very warped side.
By warped I mean that Tribe writes about the awful, nasty things human beings are capable of in a very no holds barred, very real and very lucid way. His characters are not really the kind of people you want to share breathing space with, but as you read, you get involved. And that is one of the keys to his writing.
His story in the PLOTS WITH GUNS anthology was enough to get me to his website. His intelligent irreverence there was enough to beg him to write an article on Phillip K Dick for CrimeSpree. And then I begged him for a story.
And he wrote one!
He wrote it because he is a writer. He is one of those people who sit down and bang a story out because that’s what they do. He has woven his way into the crime fiction community and I don’t know of one person who has read Tribe’s fiction that doesn’t want a larger dose.
When I asked him where he thought he’d be in a year, he mentioned getting a book out there (and I really wish he would). But he is wise to the ways of a writer’s life.
“What may happen in the next year is that I get a book deal and I can quit the day job…and I also acquire x-ray vision….and leap over skyscrapers… But seriously…I expect to be exactly where I am.”
Where ever you are in a year, dear Tribe, please just keep writing. Or I’ll kick you ass.
Now, let’s find out what goes on the mind of Tribe in regard to fuck.
What is you favorite use of the word fuck?
“”Fuck me!” as in when I hit my finger with a hammer or hit my shin or knock my head against a girder or I’m late for work…”
Do you recall when you first heard the word fuck?
“It must have been in 1965 or thereabouts…I saw it written in chalk on the sidewalk outside the rectory at St. John Cantius in Cleveland …the next day at parochial school I decided to use it on the playground and got ratted out. Sister Ralph rapped my knuckles with the metal edge of a ruler.”
Influences?
“William S.Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, Jim Thompson, Thomas Pynchon.“
What is the disc in you CD player right now (you knew I had to ask that)?
“Disc One of the Anthology of American Folk Music.”
A snippet from Tribe’s story, Every Evening of my Life Seems so Long:
She walks towards me, her skirt still up around her waist. She grabs me by the hair and forces me down onto the desk. She holds the letter opener so close to my eye, Mr. Whittington’s blood gathers on the tip. It plops onto my thigh.
Filed under: News
This is an anthology whelped by food poisoning, a late night magazine editing session and exasperation.
The lovely and painfully intelligent Ruth Jordan had written a story. A story I loved.
Little Blue Pill had everything any noir fan would love: sex, violence, murder and sex.
But this was not a story that could find a home just any where. Online, there are some excellent purveyors of all that is dark and ugly and infinitly readable about people. But in print? Not so much.
In print, a writer is generally more limited when it comes to what their nefarious protagonists and antagonists do. And say. And think. And those magazines accepting submissions for print short stories are backed up ’til the next decade when it comes to the actual ‘in print’ part.
What is a girl, namely Ruth, who writes stories with sociopathic women who like to murder men with what they’ve got between their legs to do when she’s got her story all polished up and ready to be read by the world?
As she and I lamented the fate of nasty short stories that night in the CrimeSpree offices, my brain would no doubt barely have registered on the most sensitive of CAT scans. My whole body was involved with exhaustion. My whole brain, what little was still firing from synapse to synapse, was stymied about where to go with LBP.
“I should put together an anthology and put your story in it.”
I’m surprised Ruth heard me say this. The file cabinet that was holding me up absorbed most of the sound. But hear me she did.
“What kind of antholgy do you put a story like that in?”
A good question. Anthologies have themes. Place themes, crime themes, hobby themes, etc.
Another synapse fired.
“How ’bout Fuck Noir?”
She and I bothed laughed our proverbial asses off.
Then we got back to the work of the magazine and forgot all about it.
A few months later, I brought my fake anthology name up to a few people. They loved it.
“Now, that would be fun!”
When enough people expressed interest, my sluggish mind went into action mode.
Anthologies have themes. I knew just saying, “The theme is fuck,” wouldn’t be enough. Did Fuck Noir mean fuck noir as a subject?
Well, I’ve had quite a few laughs at panels in which authors from Loren D. Estelman to Paul Johnston tried to define noir at the almost inevitable “What is Noir?” panel one finds at crime fiction conventions.
Loren Estelman, an incredibley nice man and a brilliant fucking author, summed the whole mess of ‘what is noir’ up best when he said:
“Noir is the French word for black.”
Damn straight!
Despite my amusement about the unending debates about what noir is, I know I love noir.
So, no, it wasn’t going to be fuck noir.
Fuck Noir also suggested a rather dark, erotic theme. Nothing wrong with that.
But I wanted to go farther and deeper than erotica beacuse fuck is more than sex.
Fuck can be an angry, funny, terrified, loving word. It’s all in the intonation. I knew Fuck Noir could be all about tone as well. And what the fuck, let the writer of the story choose the tone.
And damned if they didn’t. I know some of them really cracked themselves and me up with their ‘tone’.
Some of them surprised me. They were dead serious. Sometimes the funniest people write the most serious works you’ll read.
The main gist of the anthology though, is what fuck* stands for today.
It is a naughty word.
A word many people from celebrities to politicians have gotten in a lot of trouble for saying. It is on every street and in every bedroom but it’s still taboo.
Mark Billingham has stated on numerous occasions, and I’ll badly paraphrase him here, that people have written to him after reading his books. They’ve written to admonish him; to waggle a finger. Why? His characters swore. They swore, some had sex, they (gasp!) drank. For shame!
Mark was amused and confused. His characters shouldn’t swear or have sex or (gasp!) drink, but they can brutally murder whomever they want? Slashing people up is OK, but no profanity while you do it. An investigator, after a long day of seeing the very worst humanity has to offer, better not have a drink when he gets home or stop off at the pub. But the evil doers strangling women in alleys is fine.
What is even stranger, really, is that these peole got upset about what fictional people do in a fiction world. It’s a story. It’s made up. Not real. Let it go.
This set my mind on fire. That’s what I wanted in the anthology. All the things those people want Mark to keep out of his books. All the bad things.
Most of the stories for the anthology are in.
Every one has been an utter joy to read. And most of them will really piss off those people that like to keep their fictional characters on the straight and narrow.
Harriet Klausner will give it a rare one star review for being so maleficent.
If you like your fiction dead of night dark with a dash of vicious, this is the anthology for you.
There is sex.
There is drinking.
There is most certainly profanity of the worst kind.
And that’s just the first story.
* it makes it sound like I should have a fuck flag made up. Instead of ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ it says, Don’t Fuck with Me. What to put on it in place of the angry snake. Hmmmmm….
Filed under: How Do You Say...
Fuck is generally associated with sex.
Not sweet, affectionate, bonding sex.
No, fuck is the fierce, passionate, boundless sex that leaves one bruised, exhausted and happy.
But like the word dude, intonation turns this one simple word into a launguage unto itself.
Fuck can be angry. Very angry.
“Fuck you!”"This is fucked!”
“Fuck the fucking fuckers!”
Fuck is dismayed.
“I’m fucked.”"Fuck it.”
“I fucked up fucking the fucking fuck.”
“For fuck’s sake!”
Fuck is surprised.
“Fuck me!?!?”"Are you fucking with me?”
“Fucking hell.”
Fuck is a cut, a dis of the highest order.
“He’s such a fuck-up.”"She’s a fucktard.”*
“He’s really fucked in the head.”
“Stupid fuck.”
“Fuckwit.”
Fuck is confusion.
“What the fuck is going on?”"Fuck if I know.”
Fuck can be happy.
“This is really, really fucking brilliant!”
Fuck can be affectionate.
“I love you, ya fucker.”
Fuck can be drunk.
“Dude, I was so fucked up last night.”
Fuck can be a big lie.
“You totally fucked me over, you fucker!”
Fuck is the end of the line.
“We’re fucked.”"Oh, fuck it.”
And, of late, fuck makes anything more than what it was.
“That is in-fucking-credible!”"You’re un-fucking-believable.”
*Let’s all thank Tod Goldberg for that fucking jewel.
Filed under: History Lesson
Fuck.
One of the most interesting, variable and emotional words used in the twisted and strange English language.
English has a myriad of words that begin with f, but only one will get you grounded if you use to early in life. Only one can consistenly make people frown, wince, smile or glower. And only one is known instantly by referring to it simply as the ‘f-word’.
The history of the word fuck is as varied as the modern uses of the word. Some say it came from Germany, others that is a Saxon word that slipped into profanity when the Saxons lost their land to the Romans. There is one legend that states:
In ancient England, single people were forbidden have sex unless they had the consent of the king. The king was said to gave the eager couples a placard to be placed on their door whilst the deed took place. Thusly did the couple prove to passers by that all was well. For on the placard was written: Fornication Under Consent of the King. And from an acronym, a word was born. Supposedly.
This same story is said to refer to the dispensation an invading King gave to his troops when they were in the mood to pillage but religious laws forbade them after battle snacks.
Of course, they King would be so busy attending to the needs of his horny constituents, one would assume the King would have little time for anything else. Like, say, running a kingdom.
Snopes goes into greater detail as to why this story is… well, fucked:
One last nail in the coffin of the ‘fornication under consent of the king’ origin
comes from the word ‘fornication’ itself.
Though many reasonably conclude fornication is the old-time word for having sex,
the term specifically excludes the physical union of man and wife.
One can fornicate premaritally or extramaritally,
but not intramaritally.
In light of this, any claim wedded couples trying to entice the stork down their chimney
were granted fornication permits crashes
against the rock of the wrong word being used.
From a purely entymological standpoint, fuck may be connected to the Latin word futuere (hence the French foutre, the Italian fottere, the Romanian fute, the vulgar peninsular Spanish follar and joder, and the Portuguese foder).But the most likely source may be the common Germanic fuk- which appears in Latin and Greek words meaning “fight” and “fist”.
The word was likely used first as a slang or euphemistic replacement for an older word for “intercourse”, and then became the usual word for “intercourse”.
Fuck finds it’s way into other Germanic languages, such as Middle Dutch fokken (to thrust, copulate, or to breed), dialectical Norwegian fukka (to copulate), and dialectical Swedish (to strike, copulate) and fock (penis).
Fucks first foray into print may have been in a poem by William Dunbar called “Brash of Wowing”. Here are a few lines:
“Yit be his feiris he wald haif fukkit:
Ye brek my hairt, my bony ane.”
For quite a while, the bird we know know as the kestral was referred to as a ‘windfucker’.Fuck did not makes its way into any commonly used dictionary until the Oxford Dictionary in 1972.
D.H. Lawrence popularized the word with his scandalised Lady Chatterly’s Lover, printed in 1928.
When Henry Miller, Lenny Bruce and James Joyce used it, their work was outlawed. That’s a lot of power for just one little word.
Urban legend has Norman Mailer’s publishers convincing him to change the ever offsensive “fuck” into “fug” in “The Naked and the Dead” in 1948. Supposedly, Tallulah Bankhead greeted him with the quip, “So you’re the young man who can’t spell fuck.” It’s lucky she had a team of PR men to come with such clever quips for her.
Kurt Vonnegut* wrote a short story called “The Big Space Fuck” in the early seventies and fucks inclusion in daily life, on the tongues of rebelling youth and angry protesters, was born.
Although fuck is currently protected by the United States Constitution, people still get more than a mere slap on the hand when using it freely on public airways. But with people like Bono to Dick Cheney, and from Madonna to Larry Flynt (“Fuck this court!”) using it and using it good, it is clear that fuck is here to stay.
Mr Vonnegut came up with one of my favorite retorts:” Take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.” in his book Slapstick*
