RARA-AVIS: Life Changes for Leo Haggerty

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 20 Dec 2001


This question is addressed to our guest author, Mr. Schutz.

I'm interested in the reasons you decided to put your character through such extreme changes between the novel MEXICO IS FOREVER and the short story follow-up,
"Lost and Found."

Haggerty had already gone through some truly wrenching experiences in A FISTFUL OF EMPTY, the novel immediately preceding MEXICO. Had you decided that you wanted an extreme change for Haggerty and, on balance, what he had gone through in FISTFUL wasn't extreme enough?

In terms of milieu, the character in "Lost and Found" is almost a completely different type of character. Where Leo in MEXICO and the books preceding it is a professional PI in (relatively) good standing, a very good example of one kind of PI character, the Leo of
"Lost and Found" is an ex-con who's lost his license and takes cases under the table, an equally fine example of another kind of PI character.

Usually, though, we are introduced to the "unlicensed ex-con" after he's already gone through the life-changing experience. His status is already a fait accompli. By contrast, you'd spent a half-dozen books and several short stories developing Leo the Well-Though-Of-Pro, then suddenly scuttled him in favor of Leo the Ex-Con-Who-Takes-Cases-Illegally.

You bring it off very well, but the change is so radical, I can't help wondering what led you in that direction.

JIM DOHERTY

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Check out Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Auctions for all of your unique holiday gifts! Buy at http://shopping.yahoo.com or bid at http://auctions.yahoo.com

--
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 20 Dec 2001 EST