Craig McDonald: Monday Interview

I first got to know Craig McDonald and his work through his first book, the interview collection Art in the Blood. As a reader of crime fiction, I found it to be a goldmine. It was full of interviews with some of my favorite writers in the genre. And the term “interview” doesn’t really do these justice, not when a handful of questions e-mailed back and forth like, say, this one, can qualify. These were insightful, in-depth conversations that likely taught their subjects as much as the eventual readers.

When I learned that McDonald was going to publish his first novel, 2007′s Head Games, I knew it would be worth investigating. Now, I’ll admit, while I was sure someone with McDonald’s depth and breadth of knowledge about crime fiction, and demonstrated way with words would mean he could write a decent book, I did worry that it would be like reading a term paper written by someone unwilling to leave a shred of research in his notebook. I shouldn’t have worried. Yes, his books are full of historical details, but those details are woven seamlessly into very crafty, intricate plots in such a way that the truth and the fiction blend into something that always places the story at the fore. McDonald’s novels are enriched by his knowledge and research, never burdened.

Which brings me to his fourth novel in as many years, the fantastic One True Sentence. It again follows Hector Lassiter, McDonald’s rakish pulp writer, and his friend, the very real Ernest Hemingway, as they work to figure out who is killing off the small literary magazine editors in 1924 Paris. Unlike earlier books that followed these two — Toros and Torsos and Print the Legend — here the two writers are much lesser known, their careers more promise than production. It is interesting to see these two in such a formative state (and yes, it feels like they are equals, in writing and in terms of character; McDonald’s real gift, on full display here, is in rendering his fictional characters in realistic fashion and the real people as believable characters within the story who happen to share the name, traits and accomplishments of those upon which they are based).

I won’t share more of the plot than this, because it is so intricate and captivating that readers deserve to discover it for themselves. Suffice to say that McDonald’s mix of characters both real (Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and others) and fictional (the mystery novelist Brinke Devlin, Hector’s love interest and perhaps McDonald’s most fully realized character beyond his main protagonist) come alive in this altogether satisfying novel.

The bad news is that we’ll have a year’s wait to get the next of his books, which will be the fifth of the seven total Lassiter books. The good news is that we have three more coming.

This is McDonald’s record-setting fifth Monday Interview, and as always, he is gracious, candid and enlightening.

To read about McDonald’s first author interview collection, Art in the Blood, click here.
To read about McDonald’s first novel, Head Games, click here.
To read about McDonald’s second author interview collection, Rogue Males, click here.
To read about McDonald’s third novel, Print the Legend, click here.

TIRBD: I know you have all of the Lassiter books written. As they are published and met with reader reactions and critical analysis, have you been tempted to go back and rework anything in the yet-to-be-published novels?

CM: In theory, that’s the dangerous thing about having all the unpublished books sitting here on my iMac: the prospect of endless tinkering. But, really, no, I don’t do much of that at all. I read all the reviews I’m made aware of and take what I can from them. Sometimes they result in a small tweak here or there. But at this point, the series is so tightly woven, that I resist big changes. It would create an ugly domino effect.

The other thing is, because the novels have jumped around in time and Hector’s later years were explored more fully in the first few novels, there is now a timeline and biographical record in place for the man you simply can’t screw with. Each editor, in theory, has a chance to put a stamp on each new book, but to date, Print the Legend was the only one of the Lassiters that changed in any significant way in editing.

This is the last Hemingway appearance in the books, correct? What has his presence meant for these stories, and what will his absence mean for the rest?

There are those who began to theorize this was actually a clandestine series about Hemingway, so that’s why, at the very opening of OTS, I make it clear it’s Hem’s swansong. What I was really going after with Hem’s presence in the series was a portrait of a writer who came up through all the phases and stages of 20th Century fiction — the ‘isms’ movements like modernism, etc. — and a look at how masculinity plays into that century and in art. Hemingway had to be at once a focal point and a counterbalance for Lassiter’s own brand of machismo.

But now, having more or less charted the length and breadth of the Hector/Hemingway arc, it’s time to broaden the scope and let Hector carry us through the middle- to late-20^th Century after Hem had pretty much abandoned the field. Hem’ll have a tiny cameo in the next-to-the-last-book, but that’s about it. There are those who thought Orson Welles was going to be a constant in the series, too, but he had his role and Orson, too, ran his course. The novel after One True Sentence has no historical figures whatever. The three novels left after that one will bring in some real people, but nobody, I think, anyone would expect.

You have had a rather torrid publication schedule over the past four years. Does it feel like you’re always either promoting a current book or ramping up to promote the next?

In a word, yes. My one great advantage has been the fact I have a tremendous backlog of material and, in theory, could go two-books-a-year for several years and never pick up a pen. That’s a very good thing given the amount of web promotion required now. Honestly, I feel this year like I’m one of a very few still going out on the road with a traditional tour this season. At the same time, I’m putting down thousands of words for guest blogs and essays, and I try, for all kinds of reasons, to really write those pieces and say something in them. I take everything I put my name to very seriously in that sense, and it’s a huge time-eater.

I assume that you have been writing in the four years since the Lassiter series was first published, and you have three more to go. That means it may be 2015 or so before we get the chance to read what you’re working on now.  Is that frustrating?

If the publishing world stayed the way it has always been, you’d probably be right about that time frame. But in this age of disruptive innovation — i.e., the eBook — it’s tough to say what next week will bring. I retained my digital rights for all my Bleak House books, and Art In the Blood. At this point, I’ve put out my own eBook of Toros & Torsos, and not done a lot of promotion of that fact, but I can honestly say, in a royalty sense, I’m making more from that version of T&T than the printed version to date here in the States. (France is a much different beast, where significant advertising is done on my behalf and I’m actually printed in mass-market paperback). I may yet put something out as an eBook exclusive just to see what happens. Head Games will go to eBook format in early March.

That said, you will also be seeing a standalone novel later this year from Tyrus. It’s the novel I wrote between Head Games and Toros & Torsos, and I approached Tyrus with it primarily because I wanted to do something with Ben LeRoy and Alison Janssen again. It’s a brave new publishing world and terrain and I’m aiming to explore it in a lot of different ways, tactically speaking.

You have shifted the order of the Lassiter books a bit, having originally intended One True Sentence to follow Toros & Torsos, and seemed to expect Roll the Credits, which is thus far unpublished, to follow Print the Legend. Do the books mean something different taken in this order rather than another?  Have there been drawbacks or benefits to changing their order?

That’s more tactics. The order changes are a function of various editors coming and going and my own reading of the zeitgeist. I definitely have a sequence in mind for publication order in the series – one with an eye toward evolving reader sentiment toward the Lassiter character – and the publication of One True Sentence as number four puts the series back on its intended path.

Have you had any nibbles from Hollywood? One True Sentence in particular has a story that is compact and action-oriented enough to seem perfect for the big screen.

Many nibbles for the first novel, including one from the actor I once thought would be perfect to play Hector circa Head Games. It’s heady when they come courting, but getting asked out? Elusive. So far, no inquiries about OTS, despite the fact that it is the most traditionally structured of all the novels.

You talk a lot about musicians like Tom Russell. Do you listen to music as you write? If not, do you find inspiration in music that ultimately results in something creative on your part?

Nearly always, I write to music and lyrics and mood help set pace, and, once in a while, plot points. Head Games was dedicated to Russell because his music was playing throughout the writing of the novel and, in fact, his cover of Jim Ringer’s “Tramps & Hawkers” inspired the Lassiter character in the most primal form. Lassiter 2, Toros & Torsos, was written to standards and vintage torch songs, but probably the most played-song in that novel’s writing was Bryan Ferry’s cover of “Where or When.”

One True Sentence was directly affected by — and written to — an album called Thumbelina’s One Night Stand by Melissa McClelland. When you detect the strand of self-destruction that runs through Melissa’s album, and you read OTS, I think you quickly see the nexus.