Dear Miker,
No, I've had no publisher suggest specific themes or
directions -- those are not the sort of editors with whom I
work. There is a strong pull among publishers for writers,
especially in the mystery field, to write a series.
Most recently I read Don Harington's new novel, WITH, which
is his third or fourth masterpiece, and Anthony Weller's THE
SIEGE OF SALT COVE (both of these as ARC's, since they await
publication), plus Robert A. Heinlein's previously
unpublished 1939 novel FOR US, THE LIVING (this one for a
column in F&SF) and a handful of books by Ken
Bruen.
Influence is a tricky thing to assess, especially in one's
own writing. I've certainly learned from Tom Disch, Jim
Burke, Iain Sinclair, Jerome Charyn, W.S. Merwin, Robert
Lowell, Walter Mosley and a host of others. Older influences
include Blaise Cendrars and Boris Vian, Guillevic, Theodore
Sturgeon, George R. Stewart, Alfred Bester, Edgar Pangborn,
Chester Himes, Nathanael West, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett,
Machado de Assis, Charles Baudelaire. This list could go on
longer than either of us could stay awake.
Thank you for your interest in my work. I sincerely hope that
you'll continue to enjoy it.
Jim
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # 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 : 09 Feb 2004 EST