Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Keith Nixon

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Keith Nixon writes gritty, hardboiled crime fiction. His new novel is The Corpse Role. It is about a major robbery, and features DI Charlotte Granger investigating as her own past threatens to catch up with her. Keith met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about his new release and crime fiction.

KNIXON_350x218_CorpseRule-cvr photo KNIXON_350x218_Corpse Role Skull Kindle_Final.jpgTell us about The Corpse Role.

The Corpse Role marks a slight change in direction for me, into the realm of police procedural.

When the body of a security guard implicated in a major robbery two years ago turns up in a shallow grave DI Charlotte Granger is called in. £1.2 million went missing in the heist – the money has never been found and the culprits remain at large. At the time the robbery had been major news and becomes so again, with investigative journalists, her own superiors and career criminals crawling all over the case. However, Granger’s own past threatens to catch up with her…

To what extent do you think crime fiction sanitises crime?

My view is yes it does, but the extent will vary depending upon the individual. In the vast majority of cases both author and reader have little, if any, direct experience of the crimes they are portraying or consuming. In my debut, The Fix, there’s a death within the first couple of pages. I’ve been asked more than once if it’s autobiographical!

It’s not, by the way.

There are so many channels for people to experience an image of crime today – via the internet, news reports or newspapers – most of these are far more graphic in their depiction than a novel.

Do you think that the publishing industry is in a state of crisis?

That’s a very interesting question. It’s definitely in a state of change. Whether a change in the status quo is a crisis depends on how you generate your profits. I’m sure Amazon would see the current game as fabulous for them! But it seems that despite the changes in routes to market the big publishing houses still hold sway online and in the stores.

Whatever your perspective ultimately this is good for the reader because it increases choice.

Tell us what else is on the cards for you this year.

I have another Konstantin novel out May 11th titled, I’m Dead Again.

As for work in progress I’ve another police procedural well underway, which has meant a pause in writing the fourth Konstantin instalment and I’m planning the third, as yet untitled, part of my Roman historical series about Caradoc, the first British General. It’s been a hard choice what to focus on!

Keith thank you for a great interview.

KNIXON_250x250-AuthImg photo KNIXON_250x250-AuthImg_moi.jpgLinks:

Get a copy of ‘Corpse Role’ at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

See all Keith Nixon’s books at his website and Amazon Author Page.

Find Keith on Facebook and Twitter

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Quick Fire At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Kenneth Weene

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A New Englander by upbringing and inclination, Kenneth Weene is a teacher, psychologist and pastoral counsellor by education. His short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous publications and he is the author of Tales From The Dew Drop Inne. He has a new release, Brooding New Englander. Ken met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about juxtapositions in his writing and the frontier in America.

Tell us about Broody New Englander.

http://www.amazon.com/Broody-New-Englander-Kenneth-Weene/dp/1502759284/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430610034&sr=8-1&keywords=broody+new+englander+by+kenneth+weene“Broody New Englander” is a collection of three pieces. The first is a novella “The Stylite.” The next two are short stories, “Mothers’ Teat” and “Hansom Dove.” All set in Maine, these are tales of passions, hurts, and angers.

“The Stylite” is poetic in language and set during the second half of the twentieth century. It starts as a simple love story between a want-to-be author, Putnam Williams, and an au pair, Jeannine. Excerpts from Putnam’s single work, a scifi novel, are inserted into the story as it progresses.

Love does not always go smoothly, and the story includes affairs, illness, death, and alienation—all portrayed through a literary pentimento. As the story is revealed one layer at a time, the reader also gets to know the rural community in which it is set and the people who live there.

As we get to know the people, we also learn more about the chickens kept by Jeannine and about the highly intellectualized extraterrestrials in Putnam’s book. The result is an exploration of sexuality, procreation, family, childrearing, social organization, and dealing with death within these three contrasting species. And all the while, the deep brooding emotions of the piece remind us that finding meaning in life is no easy task

Underlying this brooding content is an almost sardonic humor.

“Mothers’ Teat” is set in the same area of Maine but between the two World Wars. It centers on the Scroggs, one dysfunctional farm family and on disappointed love. This short story centers on the women of that difficult world, on the hardness of their lives, at the endless soreness of that teat with which they give nurturance to an ungrateful world. Elizabeth has had enough. She is ready to poison her husband, Humphrey, her method a blackberry rhubarb pie made with the poisonous leaves of the rhubarb. Meanwhile, their oldest daughter, the good and loving Susannah has fallen in love only to have her youthful expectations dashed. At the end, it is Susannah who has possession of the poison pie. To whom will she give it, her abusive father or the man who has so cruelly disappointed her?

The third story, “Hansom Dove,” is set on a small island off the coast of Maine. The time frame is winter during the late twentieth century. An author, Quince Humphrey, is sent, by his agent, to a small inn on the island. This is a horror tale almost gothic in is form. It is designed to leave the reader brooding on the seductive qualities of death.

Taken as a whole, the three pieces share a sense of brooding disquiet and always that sardonic humor lurking underneath.

To what extent do narrative juxtapositions occur in your works and how do they mirror contemporary society?

First, a caveat about literary devices like narrative juxtaposition. I don’t believe in thinking about how to use them when I am writing. I try to write the best yarn I can and make it as effective and affecting as I can. Those literary techniques seem to occur as part of that process not through plan.

Still narrative juxtaposition occurs. Let’s consider “Broody New Englander.” In the first piece, “The Sylite,” for instance I juxtapose the gentle sexuality between Putnam and Jeannine with the rough sex of the chickens that Jeannine raises and then the more abandoned sex of Putnam and his mistress. I think it is the interspersing of the cock and his roughness that allows the reader to catch the difference between Putnam’s two relationships.

Of course, the entirety of “The Stylite” is in some sense a juxtaposition. Humans, chickens, extraterrestrials, and other species are constantly compared and contrasted. In one chapter titled “Marigold and Ash,” the joint topics of the ephemeral, the recurring, and the everlasting are explored. Marigolds, White Ash trees, baseball, berrying, and those extraterrestrials are all woven into this chapter which is entirely narrative juxtaposition.

In the second piece in “Broody New Englander,” “Mothers’ Teat”, the harshness of Humphrey Scoggs is apparent throughout the story in the way he deals with his family, but is that innate to his character or a result of his disappointment with them? The answer comes by comparing his reaction to a cow with an infected teat to the reaction of his neighbor, who cares for the cow in Humphrey’s absence. While the two events are not immediately juxtaposed, they are close enough to make it clear Humphrey is a generally uncaring and angry person.

Similarly, I needed to emphasize Susannah’s sweetness and goodness. That quality is highlighted by her younger sister’s bitterness. Much like their father, Hyacinth offers stark contrast to her sister’s gentleness, which of course intensifies the dramatic force of the final decision Susannah must make, to whom will she give the poison pie.

Do such juxtapositions mirror contemporary society? In a sense not. After all, we live in a world of complexity in which moral certainty has given way to the grayness of relativity. That is probably one reason we like to read and write literature. In a book we are able to see things with a clarity denied us in the real world. Assuredly, Putnam’s sexual behavior was not totally different with the two women and Humphrey cared enough for his cows that they did not all perish. Hyacinth is not the embodiment of evil, and sometimes what we think will last for ever disappears.

My works do not so much mirror modern society as to ask questions about it and about the human condition. Although my next book, “Times to Try the Soul of Man,” which will be out this summer, is very connected to current political issues, especially in the United States, even it is about a larger, more abstract issue. It raises a question about personal responsibility that goes way beyond the current times.

“Broody New Englander” asks us to think about the meaning of life and death. By the constant juxtaposition of those two states of being I am asking the reader to consider how each helps to give meaning to the other. Perhaps even more importantly, I ask if either can have meaning without love, without commitment.

What are you working on at the moment?

I have two projects at the moment and two major commitments at this time.
The first project is the final edits of “Times to Try the Soul of Man,” a crime/coming of age novel which should be out this spring. Based on real events—many of which relatively unknown but quite real—taking place in New York City just before 9/11, this is a tale of corruption at a massive and international scale resulting in a murder. The protagonist, a young reporter who is pretty much a waste-case but with some very unique experiences, is drawn into the events. The story is as much one of his growth and redemption, of his personal journey, as it is the roiling public events.

The second project is “Red and White,” a novel of the Native American experience. Set at the end of the nineteenth century, this novel is the most extensively plotted story I have worked on to date. I am about a fifth of the way into it and really like the way it is shaping up.

Then on an ongoing basis, I am one of the editors of “The Write Room Blog,” a collective effort by thirty-five of us authors from disparate genres and different parts of the world. As with most writers’ blogs, the goal is to garner attention and of course sales. While I cannot speak to sales, I do know we have received way more “hits” than most such blogs.

I am also co-host of “It Matters Radio,” a weekly Internet based show that is live on Thursday evenings ( 9 PM Eastern U.S. time) and then available on podcast. The show does both music and spoken word, and I primarily get to interview our great spoken word guests.

The blog is accessible at http://www.thewriteroomblog.com and the radio show website is http://www.itmattersradio.com

To what extent do you think the frontier is at the heart of the American experience?

When I was a kid, a long time ago, we were taught about the frontier mentality and many thought of 1846 as the quintessential year in American history simply because it was Manifest Destiny writ large. We watched lots of western movies and dreamed of riding the open range.

Of course, by the end of the nineteenth century that geographic frontier was pretty well gone. However, a new challenge had taken the spirit of Americans, the pursuit of wealth. While T.R. pushed Americans to think of a role on the global stage, and Kennedy tried to in a small way return us to the frontier myth by directing our energies to space, the essential challenge for the average American has been creating his/her own personal wealth, be that the small plot of a suburban home or the massive holdings of a mogul. As one of the characters in my upcoming novel “Times to Try the Soul of Man” explains to the protagonist, we are all chasing our piece of the American dream. That dream was the driving force behind the immigration of millions from Europe and continues today as people stream to the states from South America and Asia.

Of course the American experience has always been more complex than just one iconic truth, such as the frontier or the pie. For example, racism is an integral part of the American experience, not only for Black Americans but for the Euro-Americans in whose hearts it festered. You might want to read my essay on race at http://www.thewriteroomblog.com/?p=2651.

Another central truth for Americans has, at least since the mid-twentieth century, been the denial of the trauma of war. “Were number one!” “U.S.A., U.S.A.” We here the chants and see the waving banners at sports events, but the underlying mythology that America must always be the best is, in my opinion as a social scientist, the result of our reaction formation to the trauma of war. We cannot admit the pain and loss of our military excursions. While our veterans may be heroes, those who cannot make it in civilian life, those who are living under bridges and slipping into drugged and drunken oblivion, are ignored. They can’t be real American heroes because “we’re number one.”

Of course the denial of pain and racism fit very nicely back into that “American dream” mythology. Blacks traditionally weren’t entitled to dream; their role was to serve the rest of us. And those who couldn’t make it were derelicts lacking the moral fiber that was so unique to us “real Americans.”

Thank you Kenneth for an informative interview.

KWeene_300x225_AuthImg photo KWeene_300x225_AuthImg_Tucson at park.jpgLinks:

‘Broody New Englander’ can be had at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Find other books by Kenneth Weene at his Amazon author pages, US and UK, and his website.

Follow Ken on Facebook and Twitter @Ken_Weene

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Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse: Interview With Lee Matthew Goldberg

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Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of Slow Down. It is a neo-Noir thriller about the effect of speed in the modern age. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and he co-founded the monthly reading series called the Guerrilla Lit Reading Series. Lee met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about his novel and the age of surveillance.

To what extent do you think we are manipulated by media speed?

LMG-SlowDown-367x_wDS photo MLG-SlowDown-367x228-wDS.pngI think we’re greatly manipulated by the alarming speed of media these days. Because of a twenty-four-seven news cycle, we’re constantly plugged into everything that is going on. Instead of solely reading the newspaper in the morning or catching a nightly news broadcast, our lives are continuously interrupted by a never-ending flow. On one hand this keeps us very informed, but it can also cause us to become desensitized. Tragedies will always be tragic, but it seems like certain ones are given the spotlight and then fade away shortly for a new horrific event to come and take its place.

The characters in Slow Down are affected similarly. While the world around them plays second fiddle to their own egos, they have become so consumed with a personal drive for success that they’ve lost the ability to discern between what is morally right and wrong. At the beginning of the novel, each would probably argue that they are energized by the onslaught of new media at their fingertips. By the end of the novel, the ones who survive just wish to slow everything down before they become a tragic headline too.

As Dominick the film director states towards the end, “Everything is so fast and awful, isn’t it?” To which, the main character Noah replies: “The world has become like that.”

How does your novel use narrative to counteract the manipulations of speed, for example, regarding contemporary media, or as Paul Virilio analysed it in his work Speed and Politics in reference to ‘the importance of accelerated speed, of the impact of technologies of motion, of types of mobility and their effects in the contemporary era.’

Speed and the idea of acceleration are huge parts of the narrative. Everyone in the novel is trying to cut corners to get ahead as fast as possible. ‘Fast’ becomes the designer drug they all take, which literally speeds up your heart. Noah and his brother Dex see a band called The Speeds. One character dies in a car crash from the breaks being cut. On the flip side, Dominick’s painting of a yellow circle and the yellow circle tattoos on all the actresses’ backs are overt warnings to literally ‘slow down.’ I think the rapid pace of technology these days and the ability to get whatever you want at the push of a button has caused people to become less patient. They are also unwilling to possibly change their oppressive situations because there is so much to distract them into believing they’re satisfied. The characters who survive Slow Down and flourish are the ones able to release themselves from the need for acceleration.

To what extent is identity central to the novel?

Identity is a central part of the novel. Along with a lot of camera-related imagery in the narrative, all the characters are seen in multiple senses. Noah is a spoiled uptown rich kid, but what lurks deeper are sociopathic tendencies alternating with true love for his old high school crush Nevie. Nevie is a gorgeous actress, but a drug-addicted shell of the girl Noah grew up with. Dominick is a supposed genius who directed a hit indie movie a few years back, but his wife Isadora may have be the one supplying him with all his ideas. In Dominick’s new movie called Slow Down, he wants the actors to truly experience whatever it is their characters are actually feeling. Since he’s unable to be real in his life, it’s almost as if he craves to make up for that with his film.

Inasmuch as we live in an age of surveillance do you think it is also true we live in an age of voyeurism?

In a lot of ways we do live in an age of voyeurism. From reality TV, to Facebook, to Instagram, to Twitter feeds, there is an obsession with the minutiae of other people’s lives that didn’t exist 15 years ago. Look at the Kardashians. I’ve never seen the show, but millions of dollars have been made from a glimpse into a family that really has no special talents and who was introduced to the world through a sex tape. This age of voyeurism bleeds into Slow Down as well. The characters are more comfortable viewing each other through a lens than they are face-to-face. Noah films the first time he has sex with Nevie. After she leaves in the morning without warning, he’s glad to have a documentation of their night together. It is something he can watch over and over to relive the experience, even if it never winds up happening again.

Marshall McLuhan wrote, ‘The medium is the message.’ While we document, do you think we are being documented and is it possible the records that are kept are part of social engineering?

It’s interesting because everyone has their own virtual diary these days. Through social media sites we can pinpoint exactly what we were doing five years ago today. Children are born and immediately given Facebook pages, dogs and cats are even given pages too. I just read an article about Marshall McLuhan on Pacific Standard that talked about how each generation gets some kind of a new medium, which the previous generation fears a little. 100 years ago it was radio, 60 or so years ago it was TV, and now we have teenagers who never knew what life was like before the internet and cell phones. If aliens came to Earth they would definitely think that a cell phone was a part of a human’s anatomy. But soon, a new medium is bound to come into fashion, or we might have a generation of Luddite-like kids down the line who will think it’ll be cool to live unplugged.

Who are your literary influences?

For Slow Down I was really influenced by Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney. Some of my favorite novels from them have been American Psycho, Rules of Attraction and Bright Lights, Big City. Also James M. Cain, especially Double Indemnity. Overall F. Scott Fitzgerald has probably been my biggest influence. I remember reading The Great Gatsby in high school and being blown away. I’m still blown away every time I read his work.

Do you think The Great Gatsby is the classic on the great American dream? And what do you make of Mailer’s view of the American nightmare?

I agree that The Great Gatsby is one of the classic novels about the great American dream. It’s a book I re-read every few years and it always amazes me because it’s literally perfect. I love that the book clocks in at under 200 pages but feels like a giant opus every time. I think that there are elements of Gatsby in a lot of what I write. In a lot of ways Slow Down is about the darker side of the 21st Century American Dream where fame and success become paramount to everything else and lead the characters down a disastrous path.

I read Mailer’s The American Dream in grad school and it was my first introduction to him. It’s interesting since the book showcases a character that initially might have been viewed as a hero in a Hemingway novel and then chronicles his demonic breakdown. It’s also a book that can be uncomfortable to read, which is why I remember being drawn to it.

Grahame Greene wrote, ‘There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer.’ What do you make of his observation?

All writers do have a splinter of ice in their heads. We become emotionally attached to our characters because we create them, but we also have to be cold-blooded and realistic about what happens to them. They won’t all get fairytale endings and sometimes their outcomes will be brutal. I think it also means that sometimes you have to live in the headspace of an unsympathetic character. Noah in Slow Down has more and more sociopathetic tendencies as the novel progresses. It wasn’t always pleasant to be in his head, but it was a requirement to tell his story.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m working on a trilogy of thrillers that center around a corporation called The Desire Card, which promises “any wish fulfilled for the right price.” I’m also working on a TV pilot that would be a dark drama. Eventually I’d like to adapt that into a novel as well. Lastly I have a literary novel that I’ve been writing forever, which has to do with hot chile peppers.

Where do you typically write?

When the weather is nice I have a tree in Central Park that I write under. I like being outside as much as possible. During the winter, I’ll either write from home, the main library on 42nd St., or I’ll rent an office space at Paragraph, which is a shared space for writers.

Thank you Lee for a great interview.

LMG_350x233_AuthorImg photo LMG_350x233_Portrait Urban Doorway2.jpgLinks:

‘Slow Down,’ sold in all good book shops.

Online quick-links are Amazon US and UK, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.

Find Lee Matthew Goldberg at his website and on Twitter @leematthewg 

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