The Junkman Cometh and Sometimes He Writeth / Author Guinotte Wise

Respect your readers, don’t cheat, cut when necessary, and by all means, keep going. I’ve never met this week’s guest blogger artist and author Guinotte Wise, but after reading this blog, I like him. A lot. Not only is he a good writer, he’s a heck of a welder. Nothing would make me happier than seeing a piece of his art and his collection of short stories sitting side-by-side on my office shelf. I’m a bit of a junkyard dog myself.

Happy Reading!

Clay Stafford,
Founder Killer Nashville,
Publisher Killer Nashville Magazine

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The Junkman Cometh and Sometimes He Writeth

By Guinotte Wise

That third person, man, you can get away with anything. It is rumored that Guinotte Wise came within a hair of winning the coveted … The award-winning sculptor and writer has just written a screenplay that some say … The former adman, who during his career won enough chrome and lucite industry awards to make three Buicks …

Snap out of it, Wise. Okay. Junkyards. I’ve loved them since I was a speed-obsessed kid with ducktails, a loud Ford and a smart mouth. Row upon row of decaying cars, some no longer in production, baking, fading in the summer sun. Smells of solvents, grease, gasoline, burnt rubber, and those unidentifiable odors peculiar to junkyards drifting like the turkey buzzards in the cloudless Missouri sky. Maybe that’s why I started welding steel and writing stories. I inhaled that stuff and it made me odd. But it’s my odd and I like it fine.

I have my own junkyard now, and no beady-eyed, bearded old fart in overalls to follow me around, making sure I don’t pocket a carburetor float or a chrome nutcap.

And if, when I’m writing, I get stuck, I go weld. And vice versa. They’re both fugue activities when I’m holding my mouth right and the coffee isn’t burned.

I don’t just stick stuff together when I weld. I’m represented by some galleries, and have solo shows. I’m serious about the writing, too. It’s just that I do what I want. No formulas, no rules, other than this: If I make something and it’s for others, not just myself, respect those people, give them credit for having probably more operating brain cells than I do, and some taste.

I had a horse named Mighty Mouse who passed away this spring. He’s buried on the place. He was a superb athlete in his day and a legendary horseman in his 90’s said of him, “He never cheated me.” From this guy, it was high praise. I would like readers and art buyers to say the same of me, and more, if they’re not blessed with his laconicism. I’d like them to be pleased. Never cheated.

So junkyards and welding and plasma cutting are metaphorically handy in this blog, which is aimed at writers and readers. The junkyard of my mind is cluttered with rows and rows of materials, ready to form new combinations. I’m not being enigmatic when I say of writing, or welding, it happens in the process. I may start out to weld a horse, and a horse happens, but I have no idea what that horse will look like as I construct a frame, an armature, and begin to give it form.

I wrote a book that way, and my agent liked it. No publishers have clamored for it yet, but who knows. I was putting together sculptures for a show the first of this month, and one piece drew a puzzled look from my wife. She didn’t care for it. I have a lot of respect for her opinion, art-wise and lit-wise—she reads a lot, and makes exquisite jewelry—so I left that piece out for a while.

At the last minute, I took it to the gallery and during the show, I was told it was the favorite of some whose opinion I also respect. Go figure.

I think I’m saying here, when you get rejections, have enough faith in your piece to keep submitting it. Your work is not for everyone. If it is, well, maybe you’ll be a bestseller and more power to you. And if, in your reading, you’re fifty pages in and you hate what you’re reading, toss it. Give it to someone else and they may love it.

The plasma cutter. Great when I need it for making things fit. But I sure hate to look at a big piece and realize I made a major error by welding something that doesn’t belong. The cutter comes into play, and not in an enjoyable way. But very necessary if the final form is to be pleasing: to me, to the viewer. Guess where that not very slick allusion fits in the writing process. I hate to cut, steel sculpture or the printed word. But it sometimes needs to be done.

When the rejection comes and they say, as they so often do, “unfortunately your work wasn’t the right fit for this issue,” (I just picked that up word for word from a rejection I got minutes ago) it could mean just that, or it could mean why the hell are you sending us this crap. Or, heat it up and refashion it some. Or write something new altogether. Roam the junkyard. It’s there somewhere.

If you would like to read more about Guinotte Wise’s books please click here.

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Guinotte Wise has been a creative director in advertising most of his working life. In his youth he put forth effort as a bull rider, ironworker, laborer, funeral home pickup person, bartender, truck driver, postal worker, icehouse worker, paving field engineer. A staid museum director called him raffish, which he enthusiastically embraced, (the observation, not the director). Of course, he took up writing fiction. He was the winner of the H. Palmer Hall Award for short story collection, “Night Train, Cold Beer,” earning a $1000 cash grant and publication of the book in 2013, Pecan Grove Press. His works have appeared in Crime Factory Review, Stymie, Telling Our Stories Press Anthology, Opium, Negative Suck, Newfound Journal, The MacGuffin, Weather-themed fiction anthology by Imagination and Place Press, Verdad, Stickman Review, Snark (Illusion), Atticus Review, Dark Matter Journal, Writers Tribe Review, LA, The Dying Goose, Amarillo Bay, HOOT, Santa Fe Writers Project, Prick of the Spindle, Gravel Literary Journal, and just had a story accepted in Best New Writers Anthology 2015. Wise is a sculptor, sometimes in welded steel, sometimes in words. Educated at Westminster College, University of Arkansas, Kansas City Art Institute.  Tweet him @noirbut. Some work is at http://www.wisesculpture.com/

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(Have an idea for our blog? Then share it with our Killer Nashville family. With over 24,000 visits monthly to the Killer Nashville website, over 300,000 reached through social media, and a potential outreach of over 22 million per press release, Killer Nashville provides another way for you to reach more people with your message. Send a query to contact@killernashville.com or call us at 615-599-4032. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks to Maria Giordano, Will Chessor and author Tom Wood for his volunteer assistance in coordinating our weekly blogs. For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com)

Otto Penzler: Four Decades of Rockin’ the Mystery World

By Maria Giordano
Killer Nashville Staff

In the world of mystery writing, Otto Penzler is one of those legendary rock stars.

No, crowds are not chanting his name and throwing their underwear on stage. Still, Otto appears to receive a similar kind of reverence, mostly among other writers. Voices fade away and eyes grow wide when they speak of the owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City and the publisher of some of the most well-known writers in the world.

Penzler, one writer said, is a major influencer in the publishing world and is responsible since 1975 for mainstreaming the mystery-writing genre in America. He has published such best-selling mystery and crime authors as Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, P.D. James, Ed McBain, Ross Macdonald, Mickey Spillane, and Donald Westlake. The Mysterious Press still publishes today as an imprint of Grove / Atlantic.

But it all started fairly innocently to hear Penzler talk. He arrived in New York in the 1970s as an English major fresh from the University of Michigan. He had been reading some of the greats in college, but needed a break. “I wanted to read something light and more fun, not so challenging,” he said. 

So, he turned to mysteries and discovered writers who were every bit as talented and complex as the ones he had learned about in college, including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Agatha Christie, to name a few.

Out of this experience grew a love of mystery fiction so deep, he founded a mystery store devoted to the genre, and developed the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, a book he co-authored with Chris Steinbrunner, and for which he won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1977.

Success with both enterprises found him in the business full-time and instrumental in the careers of many authors such as Donald Westlake and Ellis Peters. He also continues to edit and write.

Penzler has edited more than seventy anthologies of crime fiction, both of reprints and newly commissioned stories, including the prestigious Best American Mystery Stories of the Year. His 2012 title, In Pursuit of Spenser, was nominated for yet another Edgar Award.

Penzler says pivotal moments in his own career were 1) unlocking his appreciation for mystery fiction and 2) having access to an entire building on 56th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan to grow his enterprise. Another highlight was signing James Ellroy early in his career, he said.

A fast-talking sophisticate, Penzler continues to helm his specialty store now located in downtown Tribecca. As a credit to him, when times changed, so did he. When digital books looked like a train that wouldn’t stop, Penzler adapted. “It looked scary for a while, but then I started with the E-books. I wish I could tell the future.”

Upcoming major projects Penzler is working on include Jack of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates, works by Johan Katzenbach and Thomas Perry, and the continued growth of The Mysterious Press.

According to the Mysterious Bookshop website, Mysterious Press exists in three forms: MysteriousPress.com, The Mysterious Press at Grove / Atlantic, and The Mysterious Press at HighBridge Audio.

The following can be read at www.mysteriousbookshop.com:

MysteriousPress.com

Working in conjunction with Open Road Integrated Media, MysteriousPress.com is converting previously-published works to eBook formats from notable authors like James Ellroy, Donald Westlake, Ross Thomas, Brian Garfield, and Christianna Brand, among others. The press is also publishing original novels by previously published authors and talented newcomers, some of which are available as print editions.

The Mysterious Press at Grove / Atlantic

This press, an imprint of Grove / Atlantic, features new releases from such Edgar Award–winning authors as Thomas H. Cook, Andrew Klavan, and Thomas Perry. 

The Mysterious Press at HighBridge Audio

HighBridge Audio, a leading publisher of spoken word audio, is producing audio books of Mysterious Press’s books, from both the Grove / Atlantic and MysteriousPress.com lines.

Collaborations Can Be As Easy as 1-2-3 / Author Steven Womack

Writing with someone else is tricky. Most writers have their own toys, their own ideas, and they like to write in their own way. How do you keep the other person from being an intrusion rather than a partner? How do you find another person to write with at all? As a kick-off to a panel Edgar-winning author Steven Womack and Wayne McDaniel will be leading on “Collaboration” at Killer Nashville this year, Steve tells his story of working with a collaborator, how the process came to be, and what he learned from the experience. It’s excellent advice and couldn’t be timelier. Several of you have told me you are thinking of working with someone else and I’m about to start a detective series with another author myself. I love Steve Womack. I’ve known him for almost 20 years. He’s one of the best writers on the planet. He’s bright with a strong dry wit and, when I’m old with Alzheimer’s, I’ll still be remembering Steve’s wonderful fictional Private Investigator Harry James Denton until the day I die. I’ve just started his new book Resurrection Bay; the first page hooked me. You’ll definitely see a review in our Killer Nashville Book of the Day series.

So, let’s get started. Here’s Steve. Happy Reading! And best of luck to you in your collaborations.

Clay Stafford
Founder of Killer Nashville

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The writing life is a lonely life. Writers sit in a room alone, stare at a blank screen, and live inside their heads while they try to create a world and characters that don’t exist and yet will feel completely real.

No wonder we’re all bats#!+ crazy…

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Almost by chance, I’ve found a way to combat the solitary aspects of this process. Before I go into detail, though, I need to deliver a little of what is known in the screenwriting trade as backstory.

About three years ago, I found myself at a bit of a crossroads. I was between books, teaching full-time and Chairing a department, saddled with whopping child support payments and health insurance premiums and was, frankly, tired and discouraged. Nothing was really ringing my bell, and while I knew I’d never completely give up writing, I was definitely in a trough.

Then an email arrived in my inbox from my former agent Nancy Yost. She had a friend who knew a guy who was trying to write a novel, was having some struggles with it, and was looking for a collaborator. She had no financial interest in the deal, she added. She was just trying to do someone a favor.

Was I interested?

For a moment, I almost said, “no.” I’d collaborated on a novel about ten years ago and while it was a good experience, it was a hell of a lot of work and the book never sold. Then, almost on a lark, I said “Sure, put us together.”

So Nancy introduced me to Wayne McDaniel, a screenwriter in New York City. Wayne explained that he’d written a spec screenplay called Resurrection Bay, which was loosely based on and inspired by Robert Hansen, Alaska’s most famous serial killer. The script had been optioned by Lawrence Bender, an A-list producer with a long list of credits, including a few movies directed by that handsome young feller Quentin Tarantino.

As Wayne related the story, the project was moving forward. He’d gotten notes and was in rewrites when, out of the blue, a package arrived in Bender’s office. It was the script to Inglourious Basterds.

“There went my movie,” Wayne said. The script to Resurrection Bay, like so many others in this business, disappeared into the black hole of development hell.

Wayne’s agent recommended he write a novelization of the screenplay and sell that, thereby putting the script back in play. Not a bad strategy, except, as Wayne explained to me, he’d never written a novel and was finding it a challenge.

We talked, made nice, and he sent me the script and what he had of the novel. The script was dynamite; the partial novel manuscript was good, but I could see where it could use some help. Plus, it needed to be finished…

To cut to the chase, we made a deal (Wayne very generously brought me into the project as a full partner), went to work, and a year-and-a-half later, took the manuscript to market. Resurrection Bay was sold to Midnight Ink and will be published in June 2014. The experience of working with Wayne on this book was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had professionally. In fact, we’ve become friends and are already considering another collaboration.

So what did I learn from this? How do you make a literary collaboration work? Three things:

No. 1: Check your ego at the door. A literary collaboration is an equal partnership. Sometimes your idea is the best; other times it’s not. Either way, you can’t let it get to you. As Queen Elsa sang in Frozen: Let it go!

No. 2: A literary collaboration is like any other partnership—including marriage—in that the ability to listen is vital. When your partner is pitching you a scene, an idea, a plot twist, an off-the-wall suggestion that on the surface doesn’t make a lick of sense, then listen. And hope your partner does the same for you.

No. 3: Keep your perspective. It’s not about you and it’s not about your collaborator. It’s about the project, so remember that every bit of thought, effort, creativity and energy must, above all else, serve the story. If you do that, then you’ll serve the reader as well.

Wayne and I are waiting to see what happens with Resurrection Bay. Like all parents, we’re sending our baby out into the world with the highest of hopes.

But here’s the odd part: unlike most parents, Wayne and I have never actually met each other, never even been in the same room together. When he gets down here in August for Killer Nashville, we’ll all get to meet him for the first time.

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Steven Womack began his first novel when he was eighteen-years-old. A short eighteen years later, he finally sold one. His first published novel, Murphy’s Fault, was the only debut mystery on the 1990 New York Times Notable Book List. Since then, he has published ten more novels, winning an Edgar Award for Dead Folks’ Blues and a Shamus Award for Murder Manual. His latest novel, written in collaboration with New York City-based screenwriter Wayne McDaniel, is Resurrection Bay, published in June 2014 by Midnight Ink Books.

A scriptwriter as well, Womack also co-wrote the screenplays for Proudheart, which was nominated for the CableAce Award, and Volcano: Fire On the Mountain, an ABC television movie that was one of the most-watched television movies of the year.

Womack lives in Nashville with his writer-wife, Shalynn Ford Womack, and teaches screenwriting at The Film School of Watkins College of Art, Design & Film. Visit his website at www.stevenwomack.com

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(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks to author Tom Wood for putting this blog together.)