> Gary, I have a question about this. I haven't seen
that June/July
> Mystery News, so am unable to look it up myself. Was
that bit about
> writing the series backwards something that came up
in the interview?
Here is what Judson said:
"Mac's life story, from birth to old age, is all mapped out,
mainly in my head, though more and more of it these days is
making its way into notebooks I keep locked up day and night
in a fire safe. But I didn't want to write an epic Dickensean
story, that David Copperfield crap, as Holden Caulfield would
say. I made two attempts at Mac novels prior to BONE, but
they weren't very good. They were short and grossly
underdeveloped, but I knew I was onto something. They were
really exercises in tone and voice. I wrote them too quickly
and none of them sold, thankfully. So one day I just bucked
down and started to work on BONE. I worked on it for over two
years, shaping it and reshaping, taking my time. I finally
hit my stride somewhere in the process of writing it. So,
yes, I had something to work from when I wrote BONE, and it
was both on paper, in part at least, and in my head."
Here was his take on noir:
"Growing up I used to watch classic movies with my mother. It
was our bond. Even if we didn't watch them together, I used
make a point of seeking out the movies I knew she liked and
studying them. I remember loving the solitary, existential
characters that Bogart played, once he got bumped up out of
the B movies he started out in. They obviously stuck with me
over the years, stayed in my head and shaped the way I
approach storytelling. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is
burned into my memory. Shadowy men working together and
against each other, fighting each other and their own
conflicting natures, all at the same time. It just doesn't
get better than that."
And, he said he was working on a sequel to BONE, so he is
going forward. This question the other day about why would we
want to read about a character's childhood is answered here
if you have read the series. There is a significant event in
this character's young life that would make fascinating
reading.
Best, GWN Gary Warren Niebuhr P. O. Box 341218 Milwaukee, WI
53234
piesbook@execpc.com http://my.execpc.com/~piesbook/piescatalog.html
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