How I Came to Write This Book: Dana King's GRIND JOINT

I was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania. Haven’t lived there since 1980, though I go back several times a year to visit my parents in the house I grew up in. I understand better with time how the area shaped me, not least when I return and see the economy hasn’t changed appreciably since it persuaded me to leave.

Pittsburgh recovered by remaking itself into a center of education, medicine, and finance. The southern and northern suburbs came back, some even better than before. I don’t remember there being a Cranberry Township when I lived in the area; now it’s a suburb of choice.

Northwestern Westmoreland and northeastern Allegheny Counties missed most of this. There are isolated spots of progress in a landscape of small, local business trading money back and forth, helping each other to go under slower. This is the area I turned into Penns River.

On a visit home a few years ago, I looked at what had been a small strip mall—Montgomery Wards and J.C. Penney, connected by a handful of small local businesses—essentially abandoned for over five years, and thought, “Oh, yeah. This is exactly where a sleazeball developer would put a casino and tell the town their problems were solved.”

That idea might make a good book for someone else to write, but I needed a crime. (It’s how I roll.) I added peripheral Russian mob involvement that gets out of hand and conflicts with the local Pittsburgh Mafia—the boss of which lives in Penns River—and pretty soon there’s more than the town can handle.

I felt a little guilty about using the building site and bringing in the Russian mob until research showed the actual building is in far worse condition than I depicted. (In Grind Joint the building is renovated; in fact, the city says the land would be more valuable without the building. The real-life mayor has described the buildings as having “deteriorated to the point where we are worried about safety.”) I was also concerned about how believable it might be to have a silent partner in the casino who was a former Russian mobster until I came across several articles that showed the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board’s vetting process wasn’t all it had been cracked up to be; several examples of organized crime influence in casinos have been found.

Western Pennsylvania is a heavily ethnic area, dominated by residents of German, Irish, Italian, and Eastern European descent. I used characters with the kinds of names found in the area as a good way to remind the reader of the setting without continually describing things. The names Ben “Doc” Dougherty, Stanley “Stush” Napierkowski, Willie Grabek are no more common than names such as Schoepf, Zywiciel, Wierzbicki, and Neuschwander. A pronunciation key is provided at the front of the book. (Honest to God. You can thank Charlie Stella, who asked after reading a draft, “Ain’t no one named Smith in this town?” I changed a character’s name just for him.)

I worry people will recognize the location and think I’m throwing stones. Far from it; this has been a labor of love. Every year I become more aware of how the area shaped me, and how many of what people consider to be my better qualities came from there. I read the local paper online and avidly follow the Pirates, Penguins, and Steelers. As I wrote in my dedication to Worst Enemies, the predecessor to Grind Joint: “To the Tri-Cities, the Hotel California of the Rust Belt.” I may have checked out, but I’ll never leave.

GRIND JOINT is now available at Amazon and other book sellers. 

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS BOOK: Thomas Pluck

First let me thank Patti for having me today. She's one of the crime writers who made me realize that I wrote crime fiction, when I read her excellent story "The Perfect Day," at All Due Respect.

My debut novel, Blade of Dishonor, begins when MMA fighter 'Rage Cage' Reeves returns from Afghanistan to find his WW2 vet grandfather embroiled in a centuries-old war between ninja and samurai over a treasured Japanese sword.

I hate when that happens.

I came to write this action-adventure tale when David Cranmer, editor of Beat to a Pulp, approached me with the idea of an MMA fighter tangling with a ninja clan over a sword. He had the basics, and the character's name: Reeves.

Just Reeves. An action movie premise. High concept. A drifter. I'd written a tale for David's magazine called "A Glutton for Punishment," where an MMA fighter's coach is trying to talk him out of taking a fight. It was well received. Heck, before the website crashed, there was a comment from Lawrence Block. (How I wish I'd taken a screenshot!)

I was in the middle of another novel, but David's idea kept poking at me. It needed to be written. I read up on famous Japanese swords, and found that the Honjo Masamune, the sword handed down to the Tokugawa shoguns, went missing in World War 2. That's a story, right there. With my background in mixed martial arts--I train in Kachin Bando, a Burmese form of boxing and grappling--and my great-uncle's tales of service in World War 2, my imagination went into overdrive.

When the wheels stopped turning, Reeves' grandfather Butch was a veteran of the Devil's Brigade, the 1st Special Service Force, a US-Canadian joint commando group who went head to head with the SS in the Italian Alps. Reeves was a drifter, and he needed a ride. He found Tara, a former ambulance driver with a hot-rod Toronado. And he had enemies: The Black Dragon Society, a real Japanese espionage organization that pulp historians will recognize.

It is a pulp tale of big characters with big emotions and lots of action, but it is based in fact and on real people. Fighters I knew in Japan, real war heroes, and the samurai and shadow warriors I grew up watching Kurosawa films and the baby cart movies.

Blade of Dishonor is available for Kindle and in Trade Paperback.

Part 1 is also available as a standalone novella for .99 cents on Kindle: The War Comes Home

How I Became a Published Author: Dana King

When Patti graciously offered me a chance to flog A Small Sacrifice, my first question was, “What would you like me to write about?”

Her reply: How about how you evolved into a published author?

Which is, actually, a pretty good story, with one caveat: what worked for me almost certainly will not work for you. It’s not because I’m irrationally talented and my deathless, unique prose transcends the boundaries that bind mere mortals. Uh-uh. I am, quite possibly, the luckiest SOB ever to earn a contract.

Here’s the deal:

I wrote a book and found an agent. The agent sent the book around, with encouraging rejections, until a small, but highly respected press asked for an exclusive. Said small, but highly respected press then jerked me around for two years before sending me a two-line e-mail rejection—with grammatical errors. (Sorry, I will not name this small, but highly respected press. You can ply me with drink, large sums of money, and sexual favors; I won’t tell. Feel free to try, though.)

I thought the series as envisioned had a low ceiling, anyway, so I re-tooled the main character and supporting cast while waiting for the small, but highly respected press. (This is the one piece of advice that applies to everyone: keep moving. Write the second book while the first is making the rounds. Then the third, if necessary. Someone may ask if you have anything else like this, and you don’t want to have to say, “I will in a year or so.”) The agent and I disagreed on the new direction, which was much harder-edged than the book she had signed on for, and we parted amicably.

I found another agent. She circulated the second book to even more encouraging rejections. (My personal favorite: “Too good for a paperback original, not good enough for a hardcover series.” My first thought: “Make me an offer on a paperback original. The amount of pride I don’t have may shock you.”)

By the time we gave up on this one I had four Nick Forte PI stories in the proverbial drawer and decided to write something else. The agent said it was good, well-written, and she wouldn’t represent it because Italian mob fiction was dead, and that I should have checked with her first. This arrangement did not dissolve as amicably as did the first. I’ll accept much of the blame, as I should have clarified beforehand what she was, and was not, willing to represent. (Another piece of advice everyone can probably use.)

So I did what anyone would do in such a situation. I quit.

At least I tried. Tireless supporter of crime fiction Declan Burke read my kiss-off blog post and recruited a posse of people to urge me to reconsider. Anyone weak-willed enough to quit is weak-willed enough to be talked out of it, so I started a new series. I resolved to write only for myself and whoever else might like to read it; no more chasing contracts. I self-published the mob book for Kindle, as Wild Bill. It sold well into the dozens.

I started a new series, about cops in a small, decaying Western Pennsylvania town. Around this time I interviewed the Dean of Mob Fiction, Charlie Stella. Charlie asked to see my writing, so I sent him Wild Bill, with some trepidation, because you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, and you don’t even think about trying to bullshit Charlie Stella about mob fiction. He wrote an enthusiastic review, so I sent him the first book in the new series, which I had just made available for Kindle. (Worst Enemies, a working class derivative of Strangers on a Train.) He liked that, too, and asked to see the draft of the second book in the series, Grind Joint. He dug that enough to get after me to send it to his publisher, Stark House, which I was reluctant to do, given my previous experience with small, but respected, presses. Unknown to me, he also started in on Rick Ollerman, his editor, to read the book.

A moment to describe Charlie Stella: he is a force of nature. I have never known anyone more loyal, or willing to put himself out for something, or someone, he believes in. An e-mail thread evolved where I agreed to send Rick the book and Rick agreed to read it, if Charlie promised to leave us alone about it.

Rick liked it. The publisher, Greg Shepherd, liked it. Grind Joint will be released by Stark House on November 21.

I hear you now. “What does this have to do with the book you released last week for Kindle, A Small Sacrifice?” Thanks for asking. A Small Sacrifice is the book the second agent almost sold. I used the Nick Forte PI character in Grind Joint, in a minor, but pivotal role.  A Small Sacrifice and its three brothers are his backstory, and I can let them out in dribs and drabs as I feel like it. Like I said above, always have something ready, in case there might be a use for it.

Total time from the day I started serious work on the book the small, but highly respected, press rejected until Grind Joint will be available: fifteen years.

That’s how I became a published author. Your mileage with this method may vary.

How I Came to Write A WIND OF KNIVES

"Becoming through a Wind of Knives,"  Ed Kurtz

At a recent convention for horror writers, I was frequently asked—as we often do when catching up at such events—what was my most recent published work. As it happened, my new Western novella A Wind of Knives had just been released by Snubnose Press. It’s my first foray into the genre, though not my last, and I was ridiculously excited to talk about it. Of course, I was at a horror convention, so not a few of my colleagues were a bit puzzled.

“You mean it’s a horror-Western?”

Nope. As a matter of fact, it’s a love story. It’s also a revenge narrative, a meditation on loyalty, and did I mention the main character is gay? Hard sell. Lucky for me, Snubnose was up to the challenge. Of course, I get a tad irritated whenever I hear someone refer to A Wind of Knives as a “gay Western”—I can’t help but feel that diminishes the point, pigeonholes it in a way that devalues what I’ve tried to do with the book—but yes, the crime of homosexuality in Civil War era Texas is very much at stake here, and central to the forward motion of the protagonist’s journey. But more than that, more than anything, it is my hope that what I’ve written is a story about love.

I make no bones about being a genre writer; in fact, I’m damned proud of it. I started out in horror, and have since branched out into crime. But I always wanted desperately to write a Western (or 20, time permitting), as it is the most uniquely American form of narrative storytelling. As I’ve said elsewhere, many Western tales are enormous in scope yet at its best the genre is always about character: fascinating characters we get to know in important and intimate ways that give us no choice but to look inward as we join them for their journeys. The journey Daniel Hays undertakes in A Wind of Knives couldn’t be done any other way but under the aegis of this genre, as far as I’m concerned. The story of the American West is a story about becoming, for better and for worse and everything in between. I can’t think of a better template for a character’s inner expedition, and I think you’ll agree.

Besides, I just dig all the horseplay and gunfights. It’s fun, ya’ll.

I haven’t yet decided if we’ll see Daniel Hays, the protagonist from A Wind of Knives, again. Like I said, the genre, and this book in particular, are about becoming. And Daniel is only just beginning to come into himself by the story’s end. His journey (in true Western fashion, I think) is both geographical and deeply internal, yet incomplete. But ain’t life like that?

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.” ―Louis L'Amour

[A Wind of Knives is available now in ebook from Snubnose Press; paperback forthcoming.]

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS BOOK: PENANCE

Where PENANCE came from

When you ask the question “Where did this story come from?” and it’s a story that’s been rattling around my head for almost forty years, that’s a tough one to answer. 

I went to a peculiar high school – a Catholic military academy.  Great training for cognitive dissonance. One period we’re discussing the Beatitudes, the next period a sergeant who’d spent a little too much time in country during Vietnam is demonstrating how to kill somebody with a copy of Sports Illustrated. Even the school motto kinda freaked me out. Crede de Deo, Luctari pro Eo – To Believe in God and to Fight for Him.  I always figured if there was one guy who could handle his own beefs, it was the almighty. Hell, ask Noah’s neighbors. As the good folks of Sodom.

Anyway, one fine spring day back in 1976 one of the monks who ran the place pops this question in the middle of theology class. If you were going to die unexpectedly – say you were going to be murdered, when and where would you want that to happen?  I was leaning toward never and nowhere. Turns out the answer he was looking for was stepping out of the confessional. Seems you’d be in a state of grace, seems you take the A-train to Elysium. 

I was already having my issues with Catholicism, and that didn’t help. But I do remember thinking “That might make a cool place to kick off a story.”

OK, if you’ve seen any of my other interviews, you know the whole tale of woe. How I always wanted to write fiction, but I ended up writing technical financial copy, marketing copy, how I decided that fiction writing was a childish dream and that I should act like a grown up and follow the money. Which I did for decades.

A few years back when I finally had my epiphany, realized I’d spent my adult life pissing on my own dreams, and I decided I was actually gonna by-god write me a novel, the confession idea is what I went back to. Really, at first, that was all I had.

See, I don’t do the whole outlining thing. The only way writing works for me is to just start and then follow the characters around my head and take notes. So everything grew out of that beginning.

I decided I wanted the killer to be a sniper, so I had to figure out where and when he would have learned to shoot like that. I had to give him a backstory that would account for his bizarre religious motivations. Things snowballed from there.

But it all started with a strange question in Theology class at Marmion Military Academy almost forty years ago.