Mark Crittenden writes great horror stories. They are honed and know what they are doing and edge unerringly towards the darkness.

He is also a talented artist who has created award winning covers.

He has stormed his way into publishing and has a multitude of projects on hand.

He is passionate about literature and art.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about film and the publishing industry.

If you were to make a horror film how would you make it different?

First off, I would ask for a small budget and a few very good character actors.  I think a lot of recent horror movies depend too much on C.G.I. and super-models, rather than employing good characterization and a building of fear through subtlety and good screen writing. I would also invest a good deal of the budget on concept art, because I don’t see how you can move forward with a movie until the vision of it’s every aspect is clearly defined. I don’t think enough of today’s movies spend enough time in the “concept” stage. I would like to try remaking a few films that I believe were intended to be visually stimulating, and would be more so with today’s technology. Some remakes I would like to take a shot at include The Keep, adapted from the book by F. Paul Wilson, Stephen King’s Carrie, The Incubus, Scanners, and The Thing.

Do you think it’s necessary to lose control?

Every artist has a raging fire in them.  It is necessary to lose yourself in creative projects, yes.  However, as an editor I will say this: the difference between tightly written stories and amateur scribbling is the amount of time one takes observing mechanics, and the necessary order of things.  Concision is the number one rule in writing. Every word should have its place, and there is simply no getting around the need to shave, trim, polish, edit, and re-edit until you have elicited your most carefully calculated reaction from the reader.  But before you get to these final stages, yes you should be a raging crazy person.  I would wager that the average writer lives very much inside their own mind, but I would caution them to never discount the necessary skill of being an observer at all times as well.  It’s hard to be a word smith if you can’t see the forest for the trees.

What is the most radical thing you have ever done?

The most radical thing I have ever done was to combine my artistic talent, my editorial skills, my ability to recognize the rough-cut gems in the field of undiscovered writers, and became an army of one.  I started Red Skies Press in August of 2010 with the intention of revealing to the world the most phenomenal talent in the small press arena. The first instalment is Their Dark Masters, a volume of extreme vampire horror that is guaranteed to hit every major artery and shock the senses into utter submission.  It’s not just a horror anthology.  There is something much deeper there.  It’s for those who have lost something they can never get back, and there are moments where the reader will come to terms with infinite sadness, and unquenchable longing. Good will make a stand against implacable evil, and remind us that all our struggles are eternal, even when life dwindles- that even if love does not conquer all, the spirit endures.  The authors in this book are on fire and have laid out their finest, most raw and spirited work.  I would dare to say it’s the only book of its kind.   Their Dark Masters hits book sellers in January, 2011.  Look for it on Amazon.com.

Do you think the publishing industry is in trouble when you consider the need for formulaic writing and massive sales and what do you think would cure its malaise?

This is where I go ballistic. The publishing industry would be fine if they stopped trying to package all these new authors into “look-we-did-it-again” categories.  In other words, seeing twenty different vampire series on one shelf that are all more or less mockeries of Twilight makes me ill.  Twenty seven books about the cutesy teenage necromancer (because it sort of reminds you of Harry Potter) makes me ill.  Disguising it with a mish-mash of Greek mythology so that it doesn’t seem so much like Harry Potter also makes me ill.  The list goes on and on from wife-beating pop stars, to troubled drug-addicted divas, to classics re-written to include zombies. I do somewhat blame this smog of superficial artifice on our current addiction to all things digital.  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against technology.  What I am against are reality shows that glorify dumb shits, teenage pregnancy, hooliganism, and all other things that numb the mind into oblivion.  I’m against some application that pops up on your phone telling you that something is “cool, awesome, highly recommended, and oh-my-god you’re gonna die without this.” The belief that you need to have everything right away or it’s just not worth having is a constant misnomer in our society that has led to this kind of throw-away mentality.  Out with the good, in with the instant.  For that matter who wants to read a book when you can listen to an audio of it, or watch the straight-to-dvd movie adaption just days after it hit the shelf? And by the way, how are we going to keep making all these instantly-produced movies without the aid of so many cookie-cutter dilettantes, all willing to stick to the formula that made the guy before him so rich? This is how one aspect of the publishing industry perpetuates the other, to placate us all, the digitally dependent, the now-generation, the affably stupid.  How to fix the glitch?  I’d say people need to start going back to the old fashioned method of writing…by coming up with their own ideas.

Do you believe horror really exists and if so how does it differ from the extremes of human pathology?

That is a tricky question.  I would say that horror exists when the ‘fight-or-fight’ response is evoked and you find yourself locked in that instant of dread where neither one is possible. It is an extreme word, which carries a sense of finality. I think that the reason people immerse themselves in it, either through cinema or literature, is to come to terms with something dark within themselves, maybe something they think no one else can see.  By looking at it through a lens of non-reality they can contain it…study it, away from prying eyes.  Everyone is deathly afraid of something. For some that thing is simply “the end”, one of the most abstract concepts for the human mind to grasp.  As for its relevance to the extremes in human pathology, I would say that most extreme mental states probably have origins in one acute fear of something. As a young boy I had recurring dreams of being in the middle of the ocean, and seeing giant sharks and other prehistoric fish circling me. I have since been on several shark-hunting expeditions.  Go figure.

Which artists do you admire and why?

Since I was a child my imagination was always somewhere in the dark ages.  For that reason my favorites were formed very early. I’ll give you three: Albrecht Durer, Hieronymus Bosch, and Gustav Klimt (who is not a renaissance/medieval artist, but his use of gold leafing and mythical arrangement of characters make them seem very ancient to me). I mention these artists because it is their paintings that always come up in my memory because of their perfect execution, and because each of these artists accomplished something very new in their time.

Some art critics have theorised that Hieronymous Bosch imbibed hallucinogenic mushrooms. Have you been inspired my hallucinations in your art and if so of what kind?

I’ve never been big on mushrooms.  The stuff I see is too terrifying. I draw most of my imagery from a hard life. Night terrors, being too scrawny as a kid and getting the shit kicked out of me.  Bad stuff, all bad. I do horror because horror is what I know. When I was nineteen I weighed 135 lbs. I was that kid who had parents and a home and everything, but didn’t really belong there or anywhere. A year later I joined the Navy. I made it a point to gain weight in boot camp, so I packed on about 35 lbs or so.  I ran all the way to Japan, but what I discovered is that everything follows you.  There is no running from anything.  That took some 4 years to figure out. The only time I’m happy is when I’m finishing a great piece of artwork or telling a story.  So, at some point I figured I would do both.  It took several years to build up the confidence to submit a single story anywhere, and I started submitting in 2008 and got all rejections for a year.  I kept at it and kept at it, and finally success.  My first publish was in Champagne Shivers 2009 and the editor who at the time was Cathy Buburuz took all three of my stories and said that she had never published a single author more that twice in any issue. I was very proud of that. I landed another story in the 2010 issue (as well as the cover art), which turned out to be the last issue of that magazine.  In that time frame I hit the ground running and have published stories in several magazines and anthologies, and landed the cover art on just as many, as well as the editing of one anthology (Howl, which hopefully everyone has heard of). I guess at some point I realized that there must be a reason why I can do all of these things that sometimes take whole teams of people.  Go figure.

You’re given money to produce a horror opera, tell us how you would do it?

I would do my own opera rendition of the story of Joan of Arc, but it would be sung to a mixture of orchestral and death metal music. I would use extravagant costumes: lots of golden armor covered in spikes, and the devil would be present during the whole affair to offer his own asides and frustrations, but assuring the audience that he will get his way in the end, because all men bend to their own greed eventually.  It would end with Joan on the pyre to the music of Mozart’s Confutatis, sans the chorus of “voca me”.  This will be replaced with Joan’s parting words, reminding the audience that the flames of woe will extend to each of them, because their own enduring greed and evil will lead them all to her fate.  I can’t think of a more horrific opera than that.

What are your immediate publishing plans?

Right now I have two anthologies in production and one on the side burner waiting for life.  Their Dark Masters is the first, which I’ve already mentioned.  That will be followed up by the reboot of my popular title Howl, themed around lycanthropy and the animal myths of horror.  That one is still taking submissions and will feature some reprints from the first edition, which was launched by Lame Goat Press in March, 2010 (Amazon).  The third in the line-up is called Medieval Nightmares, and will feature horror tales set in the backdrop of that time frame.  All submission guidelines are listed in the Duotrope Digest, and of course all authors are welcome to submit.  If you are an author please give it a look.

Which small press author is likely to break into the big leagues soon?

If I had to name just one, I would say Lee Hughes.  His stories are original, and he can write in long and short hand form with equal skill.  His instinct for writing tight plots is exceptional.  He doesn’t play around or linger on the small details (which is not to say that he doesn’t have a knack for detail), and he establishes his characters and plot early on in a way that engages the reader. I have had trouble putting his stories down, even though I wanted to take a break in between.  He understands drama and how to build tension, and these things come across in his work with seemingly effortless clarity and honesty, as I can only imagine have been taught to him by life’s experiences.  I was privileged to edit his tale They, The Discarded for Their Dark Masters, which is some of his most stunning work thus far. I have no doubt the world will take notice of him very soon. I am very proud to have had the distinct honor of being his editor.

Thank you Mark for giving an interesting and engrossing interview.

Mark Crittenden’s Red Skies Press is here.

Nigel Bird writes great crime fiction. It is stylish, dark, witty and well plotted and it packs a punch. Go to A Twist Of Noir and read one of his stories. He’s in the Best Of British Crime Stories and he’s working on a novel. He blogs at Sea Minor, where writers interview themselves, a brilliant concept.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about crime writing and gambling.

Scroll to the end of the interview for more links to Nigel’s work.

Does injustice anger you and motivate you?

Thinking back to being a kid and having chips for tea, me and my siblings used to scrutinise the piles on each other’s plates.  If I got the most I’d keep my views to myself, tuck in and try and get as many down as I could before the challenges came.  When anyone else had more, there was hell to pay.  I’ve not changed much and still love chips.

Justice, of course, is a relative term.  One man’s meat is another man’s poisson.  It’s a shifting, changeable mass that’s difficult to navigate.

Global, governmental, judicial or social injustices I tend to rationalise.  As such they might frustrate and anger me but don’t often drive me crazy.

It’s the little things that really get under my skin.  Speeding motorists, pushing into queues, the fact that at work only 5% of the staff seem able to empty a dishwasher even though 100% probably own one.  The fact that it can all seem so bloody unfair.  Stretch that a bit further to grossly imbalanced conflicts such as adult/child or group/individual and the temperature of my blood is likely to rise.  Sometimes the blood over-boils, but not as often as it once did – I guess that’s called wising up.

My chosen career (my vocation) is where I try to redress most of the injustices I perceive on a practical level.  I reckon it’s a lot to do with the fact that some of my teachers were barbarians and that I wanted to change the experience of others.  Being a Support For Learning Teacher is a bit like taking on the outweighed side of the scales and pulling like hell to try and lessen the difference.  It hurts sometimes, is exhausting, but my fingers are still clinging to the balancing pan.

I’m sure my reactions to injustices are there to be seen in my writing.  I guess I’ve seen things from lots of different angles.  I’ve been the victim and the bully; the out of control, crazy lunatic and the voice of reason; attacker and protector; pupil and teacher; I’ve let it out, kept it in and let it depress the hell out of me.

Anger and motivate?  Yes, sometimes.

Do you think that soft criminality is linked to deprivation and severe criminality is linked to pathology?

I saw a news report this morning suggesting that the more mothers smoke while carrying a baby, the more likely it is that they’ll end up in prison.

I don’t buy that and to the question I’d say no and no.

Which crime writers do you admire the most and why?

The first answer is easy.

Allan Guthrie.

There are a variety of reasons behind that.  I’ll try and list as many as I can.

First of all, his writing style is superb.  He’s extremely efficient with his language, throws the hardest of punches with seemingly minimal effort and keeps me as a reader hanging on for dear life.

I admire him for the effort he put in to get published in the first place.

I enjoy his modesty about his achievements.

In his role as an agent he looks after and helps place the work of his stable of talented writers without blowing his own trumpet.  He works with a bunch of extremely talented folk and I’d bet a lot that they’d all feel indebted to him in some way.

On a personal level, I have seen how he’ll go out of his way to encourage, foster and support ‘new’ writers like myself.

He knows the industry for what it is and holds more wisdom about it than most.

And he’s recently put his pride on the line by taking a Masters (I think) course in writing.  No playing safe for Allan.

He’s straight and balanced, is prepared to vary his style, is aware of his audience, uses character to drive his novels and is an all round nice guy.

Next on the list is a group of writers whom I’m only going to refer to as a collective.  They exist not only to write but to promote the genre and the people who are creating within it.  They’re the editors and producers of magazines, e-books, blogs, anthologies, competitions and on-line publications.

I know from my own experience of 5 years in producing ‘The Rue Bella’ magazine that it’s bloody hard work, vastly time-consuming, sometimes expensive and not always fully appreciated from those who benefit (or don’t).

Without the blood and sweat of these guys, there’d be nowhere to put our work, would be no grass-roots, little outlet for emerging talent.

You know who I’m talking about.  I’ll not name them because I don’t know enough, but they’re the guys behind Discount Noir, Needle, Crime Factory, Thuglit (RIP), Pulp Metal, Beat To A Pulp, A Twist Of Noir, The Watery Grave, Spinetingler, Plots With Guns, Thrillers Killers and Chillers et al (you know who you are – I could go on and on if I were to do my homework and if I had a better memory, but if you’re not on the list and feel you should be, please don’t be offended and take my thanks).  Without your efforts the world of crime-writing would be a poorer place.

In some cases I have benefited personally and owe a special appreciation.  I’d also like to thank those who rejected me for their efforts – no part of the work is easy.

Other writers?  Georges Simenon for his prolific yet brilliant output; the Cains, Chandlers and Hammetts of this world who set a torch to noir and detective fiction; all those at the bottom of the food chain (like myself) who keep on making the effort even when the lights have been turned out; the friends I’ve made; those who offer constructive criticisms to take others forward; Maxim Jakubowski who seems to have been around for ever and to never have stopped; and everyone involved in producing The Wire.

Do you think British crime writing still has a distinctive flavour and if so what is it?

I’ve spent days thinking about this one and I’m afraid I’ve not come up with much.

I can say that I love British crime, but also that I tend to read more books from America – the ratio would be pretty poor, really, so maybe I need to be more careful in my selections.

Yes, I think there is a flavour to British crime-writing, but it remains so broad that it’s difficult to generalise.  For me it has a taste – earthy, clay soil or grimy industrial city air.  It has a sense of claustrophobia in many ways, perhaps stemming from an island mentality.  There’s often a really strong sense of place, which I love.  There are the subtleties of the class system that come into play.  Use of sayings, local dialect and slang is extremely colourful.  There are many sub-cultures to choose from and there’s often an uneasy peace between them that gives plenty of source material for conflict.

Alcohol and pubs feature to add splashes and shades.  Character is strong.  The fact that there’s a gun-free culture here means authors need to be inventive about their chosen weaponry.  There’s a huge amount of history to delve into. And humour – humour lurks or permeates or is thrown around in banter in ways I appreciate.  It’s nice to find yourself bursting into laughter at the most difficult of moments.

Whatever the flavour is, I like it a lot.

Are you a follower of Bacchus and what are your strangest ruminations?

I followed Bacchus wherever I could for a while.   You might say I was a stalker of his.  I spent much of my adulthood under the influence of something or other and I loved it.

I’m a fairly uptight kind of person, though outwardly appearance may suggest otherwise.  I was, and to a lesser extent still am, cursed by shyness. I worry a lot about myself and those I care about.  Using substances was always a great release from those burdens, like a change of skin or an illusion of liberation.  Everything I tried seemed to agree with me and I thought I was lucky.

A particular favourite among my evenings was at the Glastonbury Festival, lying back on the grass and watching the clouds go by.  They morphed into Marilyn Monroe, then great men with beards, then numbers; it was like the best of private shows and I’ll never forget it.

But there was a flipside, illustrated by the frantic searching of the floorboards to see if there was anything between the cracks that would go with a roll of tobacco.

Now those days have gone.

I became a father for the first time just over 7 years ago now.  That was probably the beginning of the richest period of my life.  I’ve been further blessed by the arrival of another girl and boy since then and it’s only got better.  Problem was I also have (had?) a self-destructive streak.  My drinking and smoking got worse and my gambling addiction was reborn.

First time I knew that I had a problem again was when I’d blown almost a month’s wages in three calendar months just by betting on the Olympics.  I’d have a couple of quid on practically anything (including synchronised swimming, I kid you not) and it just went mad.

I went along to Gamblers’ Anonymous and it felt good.  I went again and it was the same.  I didn’t go a third time.  The message was clear – I had to give up – and I didn’t need the meetings to keep that at the front of my mind.

After that, giving up became second nature.  I stopped drinking and then smoking in fairly quick succession.

At the end of last year, I got hold of some very good gear.  It was like I’d never been away.  Smoked myself senseless (literally).  I also fell into another of my serious depressions and it was back on the medication for me.

6 years of group psycho-therapy have supported me all the way.   Sometimes I remember to thank my group for what they do for me.

I don’t thank my family enough for just being there and I’ll try and put that right as soon as we all wake up in the morning.

The biggest worry I had about giving up intoxicants was that I’d lose my muse.  Funny thing is, it’s been the absolute opposite.  By facing life as it is, I’ve been treating writing as a craft and a commitment and a discipline in a way I’d never have been able to manage in the early days.

My ruminations?  I guess they become my stories when I’m lucky, so they’re out there on public display.

Many authors have had addictive tendencies. Do you think that addiction simply goes into other areas when a substance or habit is removed?

There’s another great question.

I think that addictive personality traits are fairly common and, yes, I do think those who have them need to find new channels when others are closed off – picture water being shunted around irrigation canals.

My own addictive traits are also defined as obsessive-compulsive disorder.  It sounds a lot worse than it is, really.  Mainly I get stuck into patterns of thought and find it almost impossible to get out of them.  It might just as easily be defined as ‘scratched record syndrome of the internal voice.’

There’s a plus side to all of this.  Addictions, obsessions and compulsions can be a curse as is pretty obvious, but they can also be a great blessing.  Another way of describing them could be as determination or doggedness.  Mine is now channelled into writing and into its peripheral links.  I can think about stories, write them, blog, trawl the internet, submit work in a way that after hard days of teaching and parenting would seem insane – to me it’s just normal.

Where I have to catch myself is when reacting to enthusiasm or on pure emotion – sending off work when it’s only half-baked, forgetting to spell-check or to attach or when making a careless mistake.

I also need to be careful that I don’t run myself into the ground.

It all gives me a drive.  That’s another place I need to be careful.  The drive that told me I was going to win on the horses or that there’d be no down after a big night or that I was about to win the National Poetry Competition is the same one that tells me I’m going to publish a novel one day and I never really managed to leave the bookies ahead.  Maybe I should add delusion to my list.

To counter the bleakness that appears to be seeping out here, there are a couple of things I need to add.

Having my wife and children close means more to me than anything and brings more happiness and safety to the world than I ever could have imagined.  I know and have known truly amazing people and feel their friendship and warmth whenever we’re in touch.  And I’ve found myself, for the first time in many years, within a community of like minded and supportive people whom I trust, admire, respect and care about, that being the crime-writing community.

The best part about all of that last paragraph is that as long as I stay as I am (and I think that will be for the rest of my life) I’m not likely to go bashing the hell out of what I have, to smash it all to pieces as if I couldn’t bear to be happy.  Not any more.

Do you think the unwelcome thoughts OCD sufferers experience are the thoughts of others?

In short, I have no idea.

I believe there’s obsession in everyone to greater or lesser degrees.

Judging by the volume of anti-depressants that are pumped out of pharmaceutical factories every year, I’d have to say that many must experience similar thoughts and may also have them whirling round their heads for extended periods.

Another indicator might be the popularity of crime fiction in general.  Readers seem to like to look into the minds of those obsessed with things that lead them to committing crimes or those obsessed by solving them.

Many gamblers have experienced moments of telepathy at the table. What do you believe this is caused by?

Mainly I think it’s an issue of delusion meeting probability.

For a while the horses were my favourite subject.  In fact, outside of teaching, it was my only subject.  I remember falling head over heals for a girl once, sitting on her balcony and sipping wine only to realise I had nothing to say.  The only things popping into my head were horses and races.  One night, just after realising that I needed to branch out if I were to win her affections, I swerved from the door to the bookies and bought myself and Indian meal instead.  It tasted great.  There was no happy ending with the girl, though – she thought I was lovely and kind etc etc, but we were never going to be a couple.

Anyway, the point I was going to make was related to my choices of horses, not women.

Generally I’m a rational guy.  I knew that studying the form and statistics was the way to go.  Problem was I tended to chose by names or the colours worn, gut feelings and coincidence.  I even tried dangling crystals and ripping up the names of horses to put under my pillow overnight and see if they’d invade my sub-conscious.

You see, to gamble on anything you have to be under the impression that you are probably going to win.  It’s no accident that in the poorest towns there are the most bookmakers’ shops per head or that the queue for lottery tickets lengthens when times are hard.  It’s about hope, and as the Count Of Monte Cristo said, hope is something we must hold onto.

And that’s the delusion.  That a gambler is going to be lifted out of difficulty by a divine intervention of sorts, that they are special, have suffered enough and must be the chosen one that day or the next week or eventually.

The probability comes in later.  Sometimes, when picking horses with a crystal, I’d win.  I might have picked 10 that day in the same way, but the one that won, now that was fate.  It’s like the chimp, typewriter and Shakespeare thing.  Sooner or later you’re going to come out on top, but mostly you’re not.

Isn’t that an element at the core of noir fiction, too?  Hope and delusion meet real-life outcomes.

But I did have a couple of nice moments.

Driving down from London to Preston, I’d been listening to Ride The Tiger by the Boo Radleys.  I switched it off and on the radio there was a programme about tigers.  I changed the channel and there was a summary on golfers for some Open or other, including the name of Tiger Woods.  It was fate, I thought, put on a tenner, was backing a man I’d never heard of to win his first major and he blew everyone away.

Another time I had a dream about a race, woke up remembering the first and second.  Next day I saw the two together, big field and big prices, put on a forecast (first and second) bet that stood to win me thousands.  I could hardly believe it that the two pulled ahead of the rest of the field and I could have jumped off a bridge when they came in the wrong way round.

It was an if only moment, ‘if only I’d reversed the bet…’.  I used to live in ‘if only’, which was essentially a good way to beat myself hard every time things went wrong.

Nowadays, I try to remember it’s about hard work, letting go when things go wrong and rolling with the punches.

It’s never stopped me hoping though.

The other day I heard a writer tell a group of young children that writing was really daydreaming.  I guess that’s partly right.

As a writer delving into the shadows it shows something of what runs around my brain.  The fact that I keep at it also tells of the hope – yeah it’ll happen for me one day.  What I have to hold close now is that in many ways it already has.

And there I was, going to leave it at delusion and probability.

Tell us about your novel.

I’ve been writing my novel on and off for most of this year.

In it can be found the characters from my short story ‘An Arm And A Leg’ (published in ‘Crimespree’ and soon to be out in the ‘Best Of British Crime Stories’ anthology).

Carlo Salvino gets about in his wheelchair now that he only has one arm and one leg.  His missions are to get revenge on the men who took his limbs and to win back Kylie and his son.

Kris and Mikey Ramsay are putting together an event called the ‘Scottish Open’, an all-comers tournament for fighting dogs and their owners.

The MacMerry brothers fancy their chances in the tournament and quietly go about their business.

The Hook family try their damndest to cope with the arrival of the baby born to teenager Kylie.  It’s not something they find easy.

Kylie’s delinquent brother finds out about the Ramsay’s tournament and runs off with the prize-money causing all hell to break loose in Tranent.

What follows is kidnapping, torture, murder and the usual kind of mayhem.

Also involved are under-cover police officer Smokey Arbroath, his wife (a plastic surgeon specialising in injuries caused by dogs) and a drug dealer who peddles his wares from an ice cream van.

In the main it’s pretty dark, but there are bursts of humour that appear from time to time, or at least there are moments that I find very funny.

I’m 50,000 words in and have another 10,000 to go.

I’ve known the barest bones of the story since the beginning and now I’m getting excited at the way the characters are playing things out.  It’s like they’re telling me the story rather than me creating them and that’s a great feeling.

I’m enjoying them all, even the ones I should really be disturbed by.

The hardest part of writing it is the length.

I don’t struggle with short pieces because I can keep the whole thing in my head at any given time.  I can let things ferment until they’re ready and at that point I write and let things go wherever they happens to go.  All that remains is the vital business of editing and it’s done.

When I try to tackle a novel, I have difficulties seeing the whole thing.  It’s easy for me to tie myself into knots.

I also find it hard to use chapters effectively – some might find it reads a little too much like a string of short-stories for their taste and, even though I’m aware of it, I’m not sure I’ve managed to overcome that yet.  I tend to use the end of the chapter as a full-stop rather than as a cliff-hanger.

I’ve also stripped out everything back to the bone and now I’ve realised that I’m going to have to put a bit of flesh back on to give a sense of place and point.

Also difficult is writing after a day’s teaching in a difficult environment and with the remainder of my time looking after my three children.  By the time I settle down I’m already spent physically, mentally and emotionally.

That’s the reason I’d like to have this published – to give me a real burst of confidence and to maybe give me just enough money to get some time for writing in daylight hours when I’m fresh.  It’s a long-shot, but I was always one to back the outsider.

So what will you do if the novel isn’t published?

If my novel isn’t published after I’ve send it round agents and publishers once, I’ll take into account any feedback I get and see if I can answer the points.  Once that’s done I’ll send it out again.

If I still can’t find any takers I’ll probably think about self-publishing and probably veer away from that.  I do think that agents and publishers generally do a pretty good job as fiction’s gate-keepers (sure, they could be more ambitious and risk-taking, but who couldn’t?) and if I can’t get by them I’ll just have to assume that I just wasn’t good enough on this occasion.

As soon as I realise it’s doomed to live in my head and on my work laptop only, I’ll carry on writing stories until the next idea for a novel hits.  When it does I’ll be back on the novel-writing job.

The other thing I’d do next time round is to keep things simpler.  I’m not exactly sure how that can be done, but maybe by using only one point of view and sticking to one or two main objectives that I can mess up for the leading character I’ll have a more straightforward piece on my hands.

If that doesn’t work, I’ll do the same things again.

I’ll be dusting myself off until I’m fit for nought but dust myself.

Thank you Nigel for giving an honest and memorable interview.

Some particularly good Bird here:

The WGI 1^st Place entry ‘Beat On The Brat’ at The Drowning Machine and ‘Taking A Line For A Walk’ at Beat to a Pulp.

AJ Hayes writes stories that are dark gems. He writes poetry that can stand up there with the best on the net. His comments are insightful and supportive of other writers and he is magnanimous towards the online writing community. He is witty and dark by turns and has a wealth of knowledge about literature. He is also passionate about all things Southern. He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about his experience riding AMA class C and Southern literature.

You’ve ridden AMA class C. Do you find any correlation between speed and writing?

I think not so much speed as the plain fact that you’re doing something that can get you killed. On one mile dirt tracks for example you have to have to hit as least 140 miles an hour on the straightway to be competitive. There’s no room for mistakes at that speed. I’ve had close friends who made the smallest error in judgment and died. I was lucky. I got off with my knees intact and only six or so broken bones and innumerable concussions. What that pressure breeds in the competitors — the only way to handle it really — is laughter. I have yet to meet a successful racer who didn’t have a graveyard sense of humor. When I broke my right heel three times at three different races in a row my nickname became Thunder Hoof. It’s that same sort of doomsday laughter that I try to carry into my writing.

In ‘Hamlet’ the hero is haunted by his father’s ghost and embarks on a course of revenge for his death. Do you think when a father dies he ceases to exist?

Since I have had four major influences in my life, none of whom were my parents, I couldn’t answer to whether or not fathers live on after death. I do know that my grandfather, who raised me the first seven years of my life, does. I hope I’ll live in the memories of my daughter and  granddaughter. One thing that hampers my opinion on that question is the hole I have in my memory from age eight to age twelve or thirteen. No memory of that time at all. Except for my dog, Chief and my cousin Lynne. As far as I know I was on my own raising myself during that period. I guess it was bad times but I’ve never asked anyone what went on back then because a long time ago I decided that I didn’t want to know. It’s not that big a deal. I don’t miss the information. I lived a life full of a lot of bad things and good things and I’m pretty happy I turned out the way I did.

If the question was is my dad is in heaven or not, I’d counter with Isn’t that where all war heroes go?

Aldous Huxley named his book ‘The Doors Of Perception’ after a line from William Blake’s poem ‘The Marriage Of Heaven and Hell’, where he writes ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite’. To what extent have altered states of reality influenced you and changed your life?

Blake’s poem sought God in extraordinary visions of ordinary things. Huxley’s book sought God in mescaline and the shadow and substance of the root systems of a plant. Both authors generated Hunter S. Thompson’s, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, which did not seek God at all but revealed the true engine behind both of the other books: We’re all gonna die!

That particular thunderbolt hits us all pretty early on and comes right out of the blue. Bwanggggg! (Louis CK’s monologue about telling his five-year-old that the sun is someday going to go nova is a great example of that revelation.) It wasn’t any different for me. I forget just when and where it happened that I realized that everybody and everything I knew, myself included, was going to, well, Fucking Die! That piece of news hit me pretty hard. Especially the Me Too part. That launched me into my own recapitulation of the immortal journeys of Blake, Huxley and Hunter Thompson.

Blake entered my life in the form of the Foursquare Gospel Church Of The Lord God Triumphant in El Cajon California. It helped that both my parents discovered religion at the same time I was desperately seeking protection from the Reaper. When they took me to church and I saw all those people praising Jesus, rolling on the floor, talking in tongues and yelling about Life Everlasting, I knew I’d found the answer. For a whole two years of perfect attendance medals I held that opinion. Then my Sunday school teacher got killed on a church mission to Africa and all the pastor could say was it was God’s will that his favorites join him sooner than most of the rest of us. What that translates to in kid speak is, “God likes death.”  Because of my perfect attendance record, I was obviously one of his favorites so I was outta there.

Huxley’s vision came in the form of  a buddy carrying a copy of “Doors” and a pillbox full of synthetic cactus buds (and later most every other kind of  inner, outer, upper, downer, spinner, crosstop or blue heaven available). I got my lenses polished peering minutely at the same vegetative universes as the Great Man had. Wasn’t enough though. Lurking at the bottom of every grassy civilization I stared at was the dirt from which it sprang and the decay to which it would return — in other words, The Man With The Scythe still ruled. Let me tell ya, I was one morose teenager.

Hunter S. Thompson came kicking his way into my existence and philosophy with a bottle of Wild Turkey in one hand and a fistfull of methamphetamine sulphate in the other. And that drunken, loaded, projectile vomiting, wreckage of a man showed me the way, the light and the means to finally lay the skull faced piece of shit chasing me to a full and total rest. I just stayed loaded. The booze put the threat at bay and the speed gave me a fairly optimistic outlook no matter what the situation. Blackouts covered the rest. It worked great for twenty-five years. Then I quit.

Don’t ask me why I quit. I just did. No great revelations. No sky-parting visions. No worries about dying alone. Nothing. Just a Doctor I liked telling me. “AJ, you gotta quit.” And me saying, “Okay, Doc.” And doing it. It’s been twenty years now and I think the Reaper’s lost some ground on me. At least he’s running a little slower and I just might have gained a step or two on him. Makes things a bit quieter in my head. I got no moral for you here. No great answers to eternal questions. Nothing you can take to your spiritual bank. I guess it happens that way, sometimes. At least that’s the way it happened for me.

So, concluding the longest answer to a yes or no question ever written, I’ll say altered states have affected or changed my life very little but have changed the different aspects of  that same life a whole lot. I got lucky with the people who love me and whom I love. For the most part they’re — for some reason I cannot fathom  –still here and still love me. As far as all the chemically enlightened verities I discovered? The beat, beat, beat of whiskey powered philosophy? Sidetracks man, just sidetracks. I guess I echo the sentiments of that other great philosopher,  Fox Mulder, who said, The Truth Is Out There . . . it’s just not There.

I’ll keep looking.

William Faulkner said that the South had the best writers because it lost the Civil War. Do you think this is true and to what extent does the polarisation between South and North still affect cultural perceptions in the US?

First off, as much as I admire William Faulkner — and that is a whole lot — the pure fact of the matter is the Confederacy did not lose The War Of Northern Aggression. We’uns just got too broke to pursue the course of victory to its fullest extent. The North prosecuted the Great Disagreement in the same way it would later combat the former Soviet Union — Them Damn Rooskies, as we who speak the true mother tongue call that particular foe — it relieved them ole comm’nest boys of their wallets. No glorious bugles a’blowin victory there either. It’uz just another Yankee slickity trick.

The difference between South and North might be expressed best in two lines of John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem, Barbara Frietchie. The poem concerns General Thomas Jonathan (Stonewall) Jackson’s passage through the conquered Union town of Frederik, Maryland and his conduct concerning an old woman who is waving the flag of the United States — that had just been blasted off it’s pole by the gunfire of a passing rank of Confederate troops — from her upstairs window. Jackson arrives as his troops prepare to fire again. This time to blast the old woman and her flag to smithereens. She leans out her window and says:

“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag,” she said.”

Jackson considers her words and addresses his troops:

“Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.”

Whittier, an abolitionist New England poet, thought he was writing a tribute to the courage of the old woman and her love of country in the face of an enemy and indeed she was. But, the truer statement here, as written in the second couplet, is a larger testament to the courage, conscience and gallantry of Stonewall Jackson.

Grant or Sherman would have fired immediately.

The first colonies in the New World were established in the southern portion of this country because the weather there was more favourable to the agrarian society the founders had envisioned. Roanoke, Jamestown and other fledgling colonies pre-dated the northern settlements by twenty years and were firmly in action by the time the second Plymouth Colony was established in 1620 in the North (the earlier Plymouth settlement had been abandoned after only a year for various reasons.) Time of settlement though is not that important in the differences between the North and South; nor were the highly different climates. The difference was stamped on North and South from the jump by the makeup of their populations.

The Northern colonies were comprised of English religious zealots and some English Army soldiers, a few English aristocrats and of course a lot of “indentured servants” (oh so different from slaves down south, now weren’t they?). As far as the Puritans were concerned the New Land was to be an earthly paradise for the followers of their severe faith. Mostly this lead to branding, imprisonment in stocks and making unsuppressed feminists wear a large scarlet letter A affixed to their clothing, indicating to others of the town that they should: Beware! Here is a woman who thinks for herself. Run away, run away! That particular punishment was a lot better than the other option: Burning them as witches. Other members of the Northern communities, in order to escape the rather Gothic governmental approach to anything resembling, well, fun, became sea captains and set out on long, long ocean voyages to hunt whales and practice the real money maker of occupations: running slaves down to the south.

The ice and snow of the northern winters did not lend themselves to a storytelling or myth making culture either. Unless your cup of tea consisted of biblical tales (highly edited by the Puritans to not include anything close to resembling sex or saloons or dysfunctional families of gods drinking themselves silly on top of a high mountain). It was just the nature of those northern bluenoses to pitch (as my granma used to say) a hissy fit and jump in the middle of it at the slightest hint that folks somewhere might be even thinking about enjoying themselves. Lately, this trend seems to have re-surfaced.

Down South, population demographics were an uncontrolled riot. I think the expression we use today is a Hot Mess. English aristocrats, English commoners, Irish, Scotch-Irish, the ubiquitous indentured servants, some Hispanics off Galleons floating around the Caribbean, a few Voyageurs from out west floating around in their canoes, Creole Pirates and slowly growing under it all, the jet black gumbo of slavery was bringing the lore and myth of Africa (and the Caribbean) to the place. All of these groups had stories and they were not afraid to tell them loudly and openly (Maybe not so loudly for the slaves right then, but they were whispered in the holds of the Blackbird ships and around the fires of the quarters and the plantations and would soon be known to every white baby who had a black mammy telling him or her bedtime tales . . . so much so, that the people of the southern states today would swear that the stories have always been there.) And that, best beloved, was how the tradition of storytelling came to the New World — the Southern part that is. (All of this is deliberately ignoring the other obvious contributor to the southern writing tradition — the music that arrived with the settlers. That’s a whole ‘nother story.)

If you are trying to find a definition of just what Southern Writing is by researching it, you’re going to come up with a lot of tired ass descriptions of Form. “Strong sense of place. Odd or unusual characters. Poverty and pride. An underlying sense of guilt about the defining fatal flaw, slavery.” All of which, of course, are critical to the lexicon but do not capture the heart of the literature. Most all attempts to categorize the form crash on the reefs of “I might not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it.” I think there is another engine driving the art: wisdom.

One of my favorite writers, Robert Anson Heinlein, defined wisdom this way: Primary man sees the world and rages against it. Secondary man sees the world, sees the way it works and rages against it. Tertiary man sees the world, sees the way it works, understands why it works that way and does something about it. (I’m quoting from memory here and that is not the exact wording but I think I captured the gist of it.) Southern writers are of the tertiary persuasion,. Northerners are not. In an admittedly flawed attempt to explain what comprises Southern writers, and by default, the South in general I will cite an example from the Civil Rights movement of the early Sixties.

One day in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus because — as northern writers would have you believe — she had had a long day and was too tired to give up her seat. If you are a Northern Writer you bought that reason completely and immediately started to raise money for Freedom Riders and busses and all the other accoutrements of A Noble Cause. Southern Writers knew better. They knew Rosa Parks was not physically exhausted. We knew another kind of tired was involved. A few years later Rosa Parks said: “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

That’s a stiff-necked rebel soul talking. A rebel who knows who they are and where they’re from and how they got there. A rebel soul who, with their feet firmly stuck in the red clay of their native land and with a thousand voices from their treasured past filling their ears, says: That’s enough. Look deep into the heart of the next novel you read and if you find a Hero Journey — what Campbell called the Wonderful Song Of The Soul’s High Adventure — you’ve just read a Southern Writer.

So, darlings — as Jimmy Callaway says — thereby hangs the reason why Southern writers seem for the most part to be better at it than Northern writers. We were brought up with stories talking in our ears from birth. The poor Northern boys are forced to learn it from school or reading other writers works. I mean it’s hard to do, but it’s not impossible, to learn the art of storytelling without my Grampa sitting on the hearth of the stone fireplace teaching you to read, at age four, from comic books. You probably don’t need my Uncle Bird Duck scaring the pants of you telling you tales of the fearsome critters and goblins and wood sprites who live in the woods you’re walking through. Or Tillie Butts, your mammy, softly sending you to sleep on the wings of stories about villages and heroes and firelight holding back the dark jungle and hearing creation stories from people whose ancestors were there when it all began. Yeah, I appreciate how hard it is to get your art started without all that in your head. But keep trying. Some of you are getting . . . pretty darn okay.

*In fact Roy Blount Jr. has started a little fund to which all us Southeren Boys are going to contribute and send North. You know, a little sumptin’ to keep yaw’ll encouraged. Maybe buy yourselves an RC Cola and a Moon Pie, you know?

Do you think Oedipus was wise to crack the Sphinx’s riddle?

Was it wise? All wisdom is hindsight. When you’re in the middle of a jackpot you can’t take the long view. It’s only later that the carrion crows get to hootnanney about the “wisdom” of what you did. Probably the ultimate version of that question, at least in our iteration of civilization, would be: Was it wise for Jehovah to create Eve? The answer to that question is the same. It depends on your point of view. Let’s hear from the cast.

The Girls.

The Sphinx: Damn right it was a bad decision. It made me commit suicide.

Jocasta: Bet your ass it was stupid. Made me hang myself.

Antigone: You kiddin’ me? I got to spend the rest of my life taking care of a blind old man. In a fucking cave yet!

The Boys.

Laius: Beats me, but then, I’m dead.

Oedipus: Oh the tragedy, the tragedy. At least I atoned for my sins. I decided that suffering was superior to suicide and went for that tired old eye gouging trick. Even if none of it was my fault, I think the punishment fit my slight lapse in judgement. Learn from this O My Children.

Final Word.

Antigone: Fuck you, you asshole! If you’d of asked me if suicide was more appropriate, I’d of handed you the rope and tied the knot myself.

(Little did Antigone know that Sophocles had even worse plans for her. Buried alive in a stone coffin was the first. She slipped that business by employing the tried and true solution to which all the Oedipal ladies eventually resort — yep, she strung herself up. Can I have a rim shot please.)

If you look at the progression of the Oedipus saga the theme is not particularly concerned with wisdom. The story is a compilation of cause and result cautionary tales. If this hadn’t happened then that would not have occurred. It’s one of the myths that seem to me to be more of a fable. Of course elements of true myth appear in the tale, like the Green Man aspect of Laius. The King was corrupt so the land was dying. The Sphinx was there to keep the curse going until the King was slain. I suspect the way back original story was concerned with Laius and didn’t really care whether he was killed or killed himself. The land must be healed with the blood of the king. In the end, that demand was pretty well satisfied.

Joseph Campbell had another, kinder view. In Hero With A Thousand Faces he says: “The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.”

Personally, Joe, I’m not buying the whole romance angle. Especially in light of the faithful, loving wives who bit the dust during the course of the story. All because of the hot temper of a spoiled rich kid.

I’d better stop now. I think Antigone has gone to get her shotgun.

Robert Penn Warren is a Southern author who won the Pulitzer Prize for both poetry and fiction with his novel ‘All The King’s Men’, whose central character Willie Stark is based on the radical populist governor of Louisiana, Huey Long. Why do you think Robert Penn Warren is not more widely read these days and who for you are the leading Southern authors?

Probably the reason that RPN is not widely read today is that Huey Long was a charismatic, flamboyant, contradictory character who captured the popular imagination. The rest of  RPN’s works, mostly scholarly volumes on race and bigotry which (although they feature such other charismatic men as Malcolm X) are not written in the unbridled style of All The Kings Men. The novel was made into an Academy Award movie and gained an even larger readership because of that. Warren’s later work, however, did not excite the imagination of the reading public further — perhaps because most of them were volumes of poetry and as any poet knows, the audience for poetry is composed of the poet, his mother and a few foolish people such as myself who actually think poetry doesn’t suck. (Well, okay. Maybe a few more than that, but still not enough to raise a nationwide groundswell of attention.)

Another possible factor was the movie, A Lion Is In The Streets, which was in competition with the cinematic version of All The King’s Men. Between the two pictures they pretty well mined out the Lovable Southern Scoundrel In Office as a theme and audiences, both readers and cinematic took out after other tropes, such as the career launch of another fledgling politician (and union leader), Ronald Regan, when he made the deathless epic, Bedtime For Bonzo, in which the flamboyant scoundrel was a monkey. Some say the central characters in the other two movies were also monkeys — but that’s another answer. I have my hopes that someday Bill Clinton will get the LSSIO treatment, but that probably won’t happen until we get our national sense of humour back– sometime about the year 2055. (Yes, that is when the Mayan calendar predicts it)

To introduce my list, I’m grabbing a page from a very good southern writer, Tom Wolfe, who said a while back that the only meaningful US fiction being written today is genre fiction. Which pissed off The New Yorker, Harvard Review, Atlantic Magazine, The New York Times and every other Academic publication on the face of the planet . . . mainly because Tom was right on the money. I’m not good at the pick ’em game since I admire all good writers in whatever form they practice their art. But I have a few faves listed. There’s lots more. I mean like LOTS! more.

Tom Wolfe (gotta keep my Virginia homies tight close).

Tom Franklin ( if he had never ever written anything but Poachers he’d still be at the top of the list)

Cormac McCarthy (love to hate him)

Roy Blount Jr. (funniest man alive)

Ace Atkins(dark south)

Daniel Woodrell (pitch black south)

James Lee Burke (Love him hate him, ain’t NObody more Southern)

Horton Foote (Tender Mercies, ’nuff said)

Harper Lee ( Yes, MOCKINGBIRD. And you don’t like it, well just f . . . never mind)

Jimmy Callaway (Yes, I know he ain’t Southern. But I put him on all my lists anyhow)

Richard Dansky (Horror south – Firefly Rain)

Ian Ayris(south London)

Molly Ivers (late great Texas funny lady)

Carolyn Haines (Sarah Booth Delany, Daddy’s Girl Detective)

Charles Washington Carr (best storyteller who ever lived and my grandfather)

About four hundred more names need to be added, but I’ll stop there. The list is long. Life is short. Read fast.

What makes you angry?

A short list of things I do not allow myself to become angry about. There are more but who cares what I’m not angry about?

The economy

People saving “The Ecology” (to which ecological system are you referring?)

Banks and bankers.

Big business

Small business

Lawyers

Democrats

Republicans

Tea Party-ites

China

India

Shri-Lanka

And, for all I know,

Space Nazis on the Moon

These are just a few of the fleas that have been biting the national dog for a long time and will be shaken off naturally when they become too pesky. I’m pretty cool with all the stupid stuff you can’t control. Anger usually just riles you up for days while the other person goes on their happy way undisturbed. Blow ’em a kiss and drive ’em crazy, you know.

However.

Hate is an interesting thing. Though it usually inflicts more damage on the hater than the object of the hate and I don’t recommend it to anyone — there are some things out there that deserve that much attention.

Like:

When I see a five-year-old girl with JUICY across the butt of her sweats, I should be required to punch her mother in the face.

When I see four-year-olds in six-inch spike heels and full makeup, false eyelashes included, doing the “sexy dance” routine across a stage I ought to be ordered to horsewhip the crowd; mommies, daddies, grammas, grampas and pedaphiles included. (Yes I do include Howl Ginsberg in that whipping. More on pedaphiles coming up)

The Fuck It, It’s Worth The Price section:

Pedaphiles, child raping priests, pimps who trade in kiddy porn and short eye sex, media whores who tell teenagers “size zero is the new six” and damn them to the madness of anorexia and bulimia, parents who deliberately fuck their kids up in the head because they know that all children are better than we are ( thanks for the quote Louis CK) you cowards who turn little kids into bombs to further your fucked up manias — in fact, all of you genetic defects who harm kids, be warned. You are enemies of the human race because you are messing with it’s children — who are the only hope we have of survival. And we’re coming for you with death (and more than a little bit of torture) in our eyes. Soon.

That’s some of the things on “me little list.” There’s more. Be careful.

You’ve written a lot of poetry. What qualities do you admire in a poet?

Clarity is important. The continental divide in poetry between Classical and Modern occurred about 1944. The period from after the divide to today also marked the rapid rise of college classes mainly concerned with “What the hell is this poem about?” as subject matter. Sometimes the subject matter was simply “What the hell?” It was the first time in history that a poem’s meaning had moved beyond the understanding of the “common man” and had to be taught by full-time instructors with college degrees. The era also spawned one of the most puzzling college degrees of all time, Master Of Fine Arts. Again, “What The hell?”

Purpose ranks high also. If a poem is stuffed clear full of dazzling images, torrential rapids of metaphor, complex contrapuntal rhythms and whole buckets full of clever wordplay but goes nowhere and illuminates nothing of value then it crashes and burns with no effect. The tree fell but nobody was home in the forest.

Transportation of the mind counts. Take me a place I’ve never been even if the poem is concerned with mundane matters. Lift me up through your words. However, please don’t tell you about “your day.” Unless your day was fraught with cosmic insight and infinite purpose it was boring. Though, if you’re Kim Addinesio, then just glugging wine, washing the dishes and cussing about your day would do it for me too.

Brevity is good. Today the short stuff is king. Write short and you will get to be poet laureate of the US. Billy Collins found that out early and cashed in. Poet Laureates make twenty five grand per speaking engagement. Their book sales gross maybe six or eight thousand.

Have a Beginning, a middle and an end. Please. They don’t have to be in that order but they should be in the poem.

Mostly I admire poets who take me deep into their dream, who make me come out of their work not knowing whether I’ve been under the spell of their words for seconds, minutes or hours. I like poets who can put a word or a phrase or a line or a stanza in my head forever. It’s simple really. I want to be fucking AMAZED!

You’re up.

Many authors in the US have questioned American identity. What to you constitutes being an American?

I’m the worst guy in the world to define what an American is. All I have to go by is me. I am a citizen of the United States Of America. Born here. So by, classical and legal definition, I’m one. The trouble starts when I try to define me. And I have to do the defining because I’ve tried all my life to not allow anyone but myself to make that definition. Yeah, I’m political. But I change those politics every fifteen minutes depending on what “those sonsabitches” are saying right now. Yeah, I was a soldier and like all soldiers understand what the fourth verse of the Star Spangled banner is talking about when it says “ thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand between their loved home and the war’s desolation!” But I also know how wrong military action can get. Yeah, I believe that rule of law in open court is the strongest quality of this nation. And you bet your boots I want to string up immediately those who would cause deadly harm to innocents with or without benefit of a judge and jury. I quit seeing color of your skin as a definition of you a long time ago because it’s a waste of time. I want the Bracero program back in California so decent people who want to work their way into US citizenship can do so. I understand why those sea containers full of dead Asian women and men and children they find on the San Francisco docks far too frequently exist and the frozen bodies up in the mountains to the east of San Diego just Norte of the border in the California snow. They exist because folks out in the world believe in something that a lot of us no longer believe in: The Promise of the American Dream. They believe it enough to risk everything for it. I believe some of us have forgotten what it means to be American — and the some of us I mean might surprise you. Guess I’d have to simply say Americans are generally confused and sometimes fucked up and some times really fucked up and sometimes fucked up beyond all recognition, but we’re workin’ on it. We’re tryin’. That’s the only definition that’s ever really worked for me: We’re tryin’ — hard.

If you were to write a Southern novel, what would you write it about?

A friend gave me a book by Pete Hamill called Forever. It’s about an Irishman who is given a boon/curse. The boon is he gets to live forever. The curse is the stipulation that if he leaves the island of Manhattan he’ll die. The story begins following the protagonist in pre-revolutionary New York and finishes in the present day. In between lies one of the most compelling first person histories of a place ever told. (It also has one of the most shitty, deadline-coming-down-let’s-get-this-damn-thing-finished ending ever. Read it anyhow.) It’s an immense work adorned with intricate detail and absolute historical accuracy.

That ain’t what I’d write.

There’s a movie called Sin Nombre that tells the story of three people — a boy, a girl and a bad guy — as they ride the tops of boxcars along with a hundred or so others trying to make it to the States from San Salvador. Romeo and Juliet stuff right down to a similar ending, except one of them makes it to the golden land of a Stateside Wal-Mart parking lot just outside of El Paso, Texas.

More like it.

The territorial capitol of Arizona back in the days following the Civil War was in Prescott, a tiny town buried in the mountains in the central part of the state. The territorial government selected this hard to get to site because they didn’t want anything to do with the larger cities of Phoenix or Tucson to the south. The reason they avoided the southern part of the territory was that it was practically overrun by a couple of Confederate armies who had no intention of being reconstructed along with the rest of the South. Indeed, the generals of these armies had a plan to re-launch the Civil War and attack from the west. A plan that might have worked. For various reasons that rebel plan never came to fruition and the armies dispersed. Most of the soldiers and their officers returned to their homes in the South and were lost to history. A few went south to Mexico and over the years, blended in with the native population of that nation. To this day you’ll find Mexicanos with red hair or blonde hair and family names like O’Reilly or Carr in certain parts of the country.

Perfect.

If I had the time to research the Confederate escape to Mexico and how they all turned out after they got there, I might have the start of the Southern Novel I’d think about writing. Maybe follow a descendant of one of the families on a journey from deep in Mexico on a mission to enter the US illegally seeking his perception of the American Dream. You could take him through Mexico over the border into Arizona and a new kind of slavery. Hm, maybe the kid could have his great granddaddy’s sabre. Maybe through family legends he would have a vague idea of his family’s history. Maybe he could trace the story of Grandpa’s sword. Maybe he could rise to political prominence. Maybe he could be the first Hispanic president. That would make a great story. Maybe in his journey you could find a new way to view the South and its history. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe . . .

Damn it, Richard. You got me thinking. You’re pretty good at that.

Thank you AJ for a revealing and sincere interview. 

AJ’s got a couple of things coming up you’ll want to look for:  check the December issue of Yellow Mama for a poem of his ‘To The Earth We Return’ and he’ll be story #645 ‘Shared Pain’ over at ATON’s 600 to 700 challenge.