The F**k Dialogues

If you haven’t heard of Charlie Huston I don’t know how you made it to this website. Well, actually, I do. I have the stats, I’ve seen the Google searches and I don’t want to talk about it.

What I’m trying to say in my convoluted and asinine way is that Huston is on the verge. Riding the edge. He’s gonna be huge.

Actually he’s a rather tall, kinda lanky guy already.

But I’m writing metaphorically.

You know how you can tell someone is going to be a big name? When interviewers and reviewers start coming up with clever catch phrases to describe the exact sub-sub-genre the soon to be big name writes and then try to outdo each other with grandiose allusions. Read the reviews. You’ll see us all trying to out-cool each other.

Charlie Huston has inadvertently spawned the term “compassionate noir,” a contradiction in terms that readily applies to the Henry Thompson series. Pure every-man-meets-cluster-fuck-hand-delivered-by-the-Russian-Mob-and-a-bag-of-money.

I’ll give you a warning that anyone else that has devoured Huston’s book would readily agree with: do not pick up Caught Stealing or Six Bad Things unless you can safely miss a nights sleep.

I dare anyone to try reading these books in spurts instead of one page turning, eye-straining block of voracious reading.

Already Dead was almost too eminently readable. It isn’t fair to the other writers. They’ve got to make a living, too, Huston!

Tired of the simpering, soul-searching blood suckers of the last two decades? Joe Pitt is so hard-boiled he’s fucking cracked.

Tired of reading my babbling?

On to the interview.

What is your favorite use of the word fuck?

The biological.

Do you recall the first time you heard the word fuck?

I’m on the record as saying it was my mom telling me, “Watch your fucking language.”

Is it ever appropriate for a comic book character to use the word fuck?

As long as you spell it *&%$.

When I read ALREADY DEAD, I convinced myself that you created a vampire lead just for the opportunity of beating the shit out of a protagonist even more profoundly than you did to Henry Thompson. How close am I to the truth?

Actually, it was almost the opposite. I wasn’t concerned with writing a character who could be repeatedly beaten within an inch of his life; I was interested in writing a character that could beat other’s within an inch of their lives and be really good at it while having no moral qualms. Henry worries about people too much. It makes delivering an ass smacking a real logistical nightmare.

Your name is spread out all over the Internet like thousands of cyber billboards across a million mile highway. Do you have a fan club, can I be the treasurer and when am I going to see you in Teen Beat?

I am my own fan club. When I collect some dues from myself you can tend them like a weak fire in rain storm. I’ll be in Teen Beat when they give me a teen to actually beat on.

Do they still publish Teen Beat?

More importantly, do they still publish Over 50?

Your books feature a fair amount of violence with some of the most realistic outcomes I’ve read since Martyn Waites. Have you ever written a scene and then immediately thought you d crossed the line?

There are several scenes that have given me qualms for various reasons. Most of the discomfort has to do with hurting characters I’m fond of. However, the rape scene in Already Dead made me very uncomfortable. I didn’t want it to read as exploitive. Not there simply to make the bad guys badder. I wanted it to be horrifying, not utilitarian or, worse, titillating. Still not sure how that worked out.

When are eager readers going to get their hands on the next Henry Thompson book?

When they settle down and can all be quiet, they’ll get the book. That should be somewhere around September.

Who do like more, Jon (Central Crime Zone) or me?

Easy, girls, you’re both pretty.

What is the disc in your cd player right now?

Nothing in the CD player. However, “Tattoo You” is on the turntable, and Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach “In the Darkest Place” was my last play on my iPOD.

And here’s a snippet from Charlie Huston’s story, Like a Lady:

“Thought you quit.”

“Fuck, man, seein’ something like that don’t make a man need a smoke, he ain’t human. Fuck do you care I kill myself a little more.”

“Uh-huh. Well. Seven-fuckin’-fifty a pack, each one of those mothers is costing me about forty cents. So I’m wishing you’d quit, die, or take it up full time again and stop bumming my fuckin’ Newports.”