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Darkness and Silence:
An Interview for Writer's Club
Writer's Club: Tell us a little about yourself...where you were born, raised, live now? Family?
Chris: I was born in Haverhill, MA, and raised there and in Lawrence until age 11, when my family moved to rural Maine to homestead. We built a stackwall log cabin and lived a pre-modern lifestyle (no running water, electricity, indoor plumbing and so forth) until I was 16 or 17, when we moved to the town of Fryeburg. At age 18 I walked from Fryeburg to southern New York State, sleeping in the forest or in odd places such as football stadiums. Shortly afterwards I moved to Portland, ME, where I live now, although I have also lived elsewhere for brief periods, including Tampa, Lowell, and East Boston. I’ve been married (and divorced) twice, with no children from either marriage.
Writer's Club: Tell us about your writing background...how you got started, and why mysteries.
Chris: I wrote poetry for years before I wrote any crime fiction. I started writing poetry at age 13 or so, after reading the early Romanticists such as William Blake, Coleridge and Keats. I also read a lot of early pulp fiction by Burroughs, Howard, Lovecraft and others. (That’s the real Burroughs, by the way- as in, Edgar Rice.) Later on, I was living what you might call an ill-advised lifestyle, and I started writing short stories inspired by things I had seen or heard about. Because of this I became interested in crime fiction, and started reading the works of Jim Thompson, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Andrew Vachss and James Ellroy. I also watched a lot of classic film noirs, such as DOA, The Big Sleep, Out of the Past and so forth. The noir worldview has a lot of appeal to me, but my crime fiction is also influenced by my fascination with the occult, and the art of HR Giger, Beksinski, and Hieronymous Bosch. I’ve never been interested in the whodunit; it’s the feeling of urban horror, fatalism, and beauty in the midst of ugliness that appeals to me.
Writer's Club: What are your strengths as a writer?
Chris: A simple prose style influenced by the hardboiled tradition and poetry simultaneously, and very bizarre ideas. I like to describe horrible things with a lyricism that makes them beautiful without losing the sense of revulsion. I like to create horror and wonder at the same time in the mind of the reader. These are my goals, but of course I can’t really know if I’ve succeeded or not.
Writer's Club: What do you like most about writing? Least?
Chris: I’m not sure I can assess whether I like anything about writing or not- to me it’s simply a type of work, and I’m called to do this particular type of work instead of some other type. In general, work is like a religion to me, which is very New England. I guess I like re-reading my own work over and over again, although that must sound narcissistic! The part I like least is the marketing, which I can’t stand even though I know it needs to be done. This always seems ironic to me, because my day job is Marketing Manager for a company that imports traditional Celtic music, and I have no problem doing that. I think I just get impatient when I’m marketing my writing, because I’d rather just get back to work at writing new things.
Writer's Club:Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
Chris: Don’t assume that you need to go to college, or have a “mentor,” or go to writing seminars, or do any of those other things writers do that are not really writing. You really only need to do two things- read a lot, and write a lot. Imitate whoever you consider to be a master until you have the style down, then start to pull away and create your own style. Don’t get bogged down in abstract concerns such as theme, archetypes, tropes and all of that jargon. Your job is to tell a story, and all of those other things (no matter how important) will come naturally if you tell your story well. Just tell the best story you can tell, and tell it in a clear and simple way.
Writer's Club: What inspired you to write this story?
Chris: Maker’s Mark whiskey, my second divorce, my obsession with noir and the occult, and a series of hallucinations and vivid dreams I was having as a result of a seizure disorder. Although I hasten to add that whiskey certainly doesn’t help you write better; it’s just that it helped me understand my alcoholic main character!
Writer's Club:Who is your biggest supporter?
Chris: I have a small circle of people that includes my immediate family and a few others. They know who they are, and I wouldn’t want to single any of them out.
Writer's Club:How much time do you devote to writing and do you have a daily routine? Do you have a favorite place to write? What does the top of your desk look like?
Chris: When I’m very focused, I write for 20-30 hours per week. When I’m less focused it might go as low as 10. When I go insane with ambition, I might go a few months without sleeping much, and then who knows how many hours I write- all night every night, basically. I set up different routines depending on which of these different phases I’m in, but I try to always be getting steady work done. I work from home, and I write at the same desk I work from, so when quitting time comes for my day job I just stay at the same desk working on my writing until the late evening, when I go out to the bars with my friends. As a result the top of my desk (and the table next to it, the table across the room from it and the floor beside it) looks like an incomprehensible mess.
Writer's Club: Do you have any hobbies that enhance your writing?
Chris: I don’t know if hobby is the right word. My tendency to see things has certainly kept me supplied with ideas. I am also a Historical Fencer, and my practice of historic Gaelic weapons arts informs the action scenes in my fiction as well as providing the subject for my martial arts writing.
Writer's Club: Who is the most memorable person you have ever met?
Chris: A man in New York City named Edgar, who is like a more morbid version of Joel Cairo from The Maltese Falcon.
Writer's Club: Who would you like to meet?
Chris: Mary Jane Lamond. She’s a traditional Gaelic singer from Cape Breton.
Writer's Club: Do you have a mentor? Do you mentor or teach writers?
Chris: I consider myself an apprentice to all the writers I admire, especially the masters of the American pulp tradition. I don’t teach anyone, but if someone asks me for advice I’ll tell them what I think. My editor Paul Barnett (aka John Grant) has been tremendously helpful to me, and I wouldn’t be writing this without him.
Writer's Club: Do you belong to any writer's organizations and how have they helped you with your writing?
Chris: Nope.
Writer's Club: Where do you get your ideas (characters, plot, places featured in your books).
Chris: From my dreams, my own experiences, people I’ve known, movies I’ve seen, my obsession with brooding about the past or blotting it out, and my imagination. Many of my characters are based on real people, and on real places although the real places in question are usually a lot more tranquil than my fictional versions of them. Some of the strangest parts of my stories are the parts that really happened.
Writer's Club: What are you working on now?
Chris: A sequel to A Season of Strange Dreams, a collection of short crime/horror fiction, a collection of poetry, and a book about historic Gaelic knife fighting.
Writer's Club: Do you have any previous books you would like to promote?
Chris: My previous books include a collection of short crime fiction called Games Dead People Play (which is set in Nottamun, the same fictional city as in the novel), a collection of poetry called City at the Edge of Night, a translation of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil, and a training manual for the use of the Scottish basket-hilted broadsword.
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