Interviews

A Conversation With Dana Kaye About PR, Harsh Realities of Promo, And 'Your Book, Your Brand'

September 20th, 2016

Book promo is a lot more than copying Amazon links onto Facebook. It's about building your brand, and focusing your efforts where they'll be effective, and, most importantly, going into the game with realistic expectations. Problem is, there's a lot of noise out there—people who like to tell you they know what they're doing, but really it's just rehashed nonsense. 

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A Conversation With Chris Holm About Editing, Redemption, and His New Novel 'Red Right Hand'

September 12th, 2016

I'm a junkie for hitman stories (The Professional is my favorite film of all time) so Chris Holm's Michael Hendricks books almost feel like they're written for me. Smart, tense thrillers starring a dude who hits hitmen. Essentially, when you're targeted for assassination, he offers to kill the rival hitman—for 10 times the price on your head. If you can pay, great: He doesn't miss. If you can't or don't want to, oh well. Good luck. 

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A Conversation With Todd Robinson About France, Gay Characters in Crime Fiction, and His New Novel 'Rough Trade'

August 12th, 2016

Full disclosure: Todd Robinson and I once took a trip to Boston and both got food poisoning and shared a small hotel room so we both know each other a little more intimately than we'd like. I'd call him a pal.  But if I didn't know him, I'd also call him one of the best writers in crime fiction today. His voice is so incredibly strong and unique. And it straddles this line of humor and heart that I think is pretty much unparalleled. 

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A Conversation with Nick Mamatas About Lovecraft's Legacy, Writing Conventions, and His New Novel 'I Am Providence'

August 10th, 2016

There are a lot of ways I Am Providence could fail. It's a book about writers, for one thing. And it's told from two perspectives: The third-person viewpoint of a sleuthing horror writer, and the first-person perspective of another writer—who just happens to be lying dead on a slab in a morgue. Plus the whole thing is an exploration of and homage to H.P. Lovecraft, as divisive a figure as you can find in genre fiction.  And yet, it works.

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10 Questions with Donald Ray Pollock

July 12th, 2016

Writing an introduction to a Donald Ray Pollock interview is kind of like writing one for Margaret Atwood or George Sauders: They’re the best at what they do, so what else really needs to be said? His three books, the masterful short story collection, Knockemstiff, and his equally brilliant novels, The Devil All The Time and The Heavenly Table—which comes out today—have set the standard for working-class fiction, which also happens to be an almost near impossible standard to replicate.

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A Conversation With Ben H. Winters About Racism, Outlining, and His New Novel 'Underground Airlines'

July 8th, 2016

You know that feeling, when a book knocks your socks off so thoroughly, and you struggle with how to describe it, because you don't want to appear overly effusive, but you can't figure out any other way to talk about it?  That's where I am with Underground Airlines. It's excellent—both completely thrilling and incredibly smart, shining a bright light on a controversial subject without ever being pedantic. 

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"I don’t need a second-rate Chandler. I need a first-rate you": An Interview with Hard Case Crime Founder, Charles Ardai

June 1st, 2016

From Hard Case Crime’s website:

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Joe Hill Remembers Where He Came From (Part Two)

May 27th, 2016

Photo Credit: Shane Leonard Read part one HERE Aspiring writers are looking for a magical bullet.  They pour over how-to books, clickbait articles, random blogs, searching for that one thing—confirmation that they're doing this thing that pulls them away from friends, family, primetime television, and the internet right. 

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Joe Hill Remembers Where He Came From (Part One)

May 20th, 2016

Photo: Gage Skidmore Craig Spector, one of the founders of splatterspunk, once explained to me in an interview that the splatterpunks were people who "had grown up reading Stephen King." Joe Hill is not a splatterpunk, but he grew up the same. And that's part of the problem.

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A Conversation With Alex Segura About PR, Archie Comics, And His New Novel 'Down the Darkest Street'

May 17th, 2016

Alex Segura wears many hats.  He's a new dad. He does PR for Archie Comics. He's the editor for Dark Circle Comic. He teaches a class on pitching and writing comics for LitReactor. The second entry in his Pete Fernandez mystery series, Down the Darkest Street, just came out. Honestly I'm a little shocked he had time to do an interview with us.

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