When we started this website a few years ago, this was the place where I was supposed to answer questions people sent in. Well, of course, I promptly forgot I was supposed to do that here, and I've instead just answered emails whenever possible. And this part of the website remained untouched.
Now, as of Halloween 2006, it's touched up a bit. While some of the original amazon.com background stuff is still here - mostly for the benefit of those just finding this site - I've tried to spiff it up a little with some new material, in the hopes that some of it will be of interest to you.
New Question: So what's your new novel Ghost Band about?
J.W.: It's about 167 pages. Har-de-har-har. Actually, it's about a middle-aged trumpeter named Miles West touring with a ghost band -- which is a music-biz term for a group that performs under the name of a dead bandleader - who starts seeing real ghosts on the road. It's also about a lot of other things - coming to terms with deferred dreams, the concept of time and history as a circle rather than a straight line, even the notion of hipsters in heaven.
I've had people tell me it's about a lot of other stuff, including making peace with your own past and dealing with the losses we all collect in life. James Watts, the topnotch fine-arts critic at my old journalistic stomping grounds, the Tulsa World newspaper, told me he considered it a fable. I don't know what you'd call it, except a ghost story. I just hope a lot of people buy the freaking thing.
New Question: Didn't you start this book several years ago?
J.W.: Say, how'd you know that? In
fact, I started a draft in the mid-'90s, with the basic concept of a
guy in a ghost band seeing real ghosts. But it just seemed too mean or
too obtuse or something and I put it away.
Then, a couple of years ago, I visited the
campus of Oklahoma State University, where I went in the '60s and where
both of my sons were then enrolled. My son Jonathan had a film in a
festival there, so I went down for that and spent the night at a hotel
on the campus.
The next morning, I got up and stood on the
second-floor patio of the Student Union, sipping my coffee and watching
the students go to their classes. And damned if I didn't see myself and
my friends out there in the stream of kids, walking along as though it
were 1968 all over again. It was a weird but not unpleasant thing, and
it started me thinking about the ghosts we leave behind - after all,
your five-year-old self no longer exists, except as a ghost that you've
carried into adulthood. As we get older, we throw off ghosts like a
snake sheds skin, and pieces of them stick to us throughout our lives.
With that thought in mind, I took on Ghost Band again. And this time, I think it worked.
Amazon.com: Where are you from? How--if at all--has your sense of place colored your writing?
J.W.: I grew up in small-town Oklahoma, which is the setting of my first novel with Ron Wolfe, OLD FEARS, as well as my solo novel from 2000, DARK WITHIN. The people in a small town -- like Chelsea, Oklahoma, my own personal hometown -- are a lot like the people in an extended family, and that familial sense of community has not only colored my own writing, but my reading preferences. I especially love the books Steinbeck wrote about the characters around northern California, and Booth Tarkington's small-town Penrod books.
Amazon.com: When and why did you begin writing? When did you first consider yourself a writer?
J.W.: I began writing relatively early. I got my first rejection slip when I was 14 (from THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION) and sold my first story when I was 19 or 20 (a comic-book script to EERIE magazine). Although I've been making a living as a writer for more than a quarter of a century, I really considered myself a writer the first time I sat down and wrote when I didn't want to.
Amazon.com: Who or what has influenced your writing, and in what way? What books have most influenced your life?
J.W.: My grandmother, Mary M. Wooley, was a poet and writer and very big influence on me. She was the first to talk to me seriously about writing, and the writing life. The books that have had the biggest influence on my life, in no particular order, are Steinbeck's CANNERY ROW and SWEET THURSDAY, Booth Tarkington's PENROD, James M. Cain's POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, William Lindsay Gresham's NIGHMARE ALLEY, Frank Norris' MCTEAGUE, and the detective novels of Raymond Chandler. I'm also heavily influenced by many of the pulp writers of the '30s and '40s, particularly the hard-boiled ones.
Amazon.com: What is the most romantic book you've ever read? The scariest? The funniest?
J.W.: The most romantic, in every sense of the word, is SWEET THURSDAY. The funniest has probably S.J. Perelman's CRAZY LIKE A FOX, a book of essays. And I have to admit that Ron Wolfe and I scared each other a lot when we were writing OLD FEARS.
Amazon.com: What music, if any, most inspires you to write? What do you like to listen to while writing?
J.W.: I like to listen to big-band, cool jazz, and old pop music when I'm writing. Surf music is also good in certain situations. Lately, much to the chagrin of my wife, Janis, I've developed an inexplicable fondness for organ music, but only when its organ versions of pop tunes. I figure this is an extension of my love for those guys like Mantovani and Percy Faith, the easy-listening cats who made a pretty good living playing laid-back instrumental versions of rock and pop songs. I find myself increasingly nuts for that stuff. Go figure.
Amazon.com: What are you reading now? What CD is currently in your stereo?
J.W.: I'm currently reading a DETECTIVE TALES pulp magazine from 1937 and my friend Barry Friedman's great essay collection Funny You Should Mention It (from HAWK Publishing Group).
I've had an LP on my turntable since I've had a
CD in the stereo, and while I'll often go through three or four albums
a night, the most recent was a lush collection from the trumpeter Bobby
Hackett (as opposed to the lush comedian Buddy Hackett) called Night
Love. You bet.
Amazon.com: What are you working on?
J.W.: Mike Price and I should see the publication of the newest Forgotten Horrors volume, Forgotten Horrors 4: Dreams That Money Can Buy,
very soon. It was supposed to be out well before this, but the
publisher we'd gone with didn't exactly seem to be in a hurry to do it.
We're now back with Luminary Press, the publishers of the first three
volumes, and they assure us they'll do everything they can to hasten
its debut.
Also, I've collaborated with pulp historian and writer John Locke on a swell pulp-detective collection called Thrilling Detective Heroes, featuring stories from the Thrilling group of pulp magazines. It's a great group of characters - from groundbreaking detective Race Williams to the bizarre Doctor Coffin, who moonlights as "Hollywood's most famous undertaker." The tome includes John's groundbreaking history of the Thrilling pulps. Adventure House should have Thrilling Detective Heroes out for the Christmas season.
Amazon.com: Use this space to write about whatever you wish.
J.W.: God bless everyone who buys and reads a book this year -- or any year -- and big thanks for your interest. I wrote that when we built this website, and I still can't think of anything that expresses my sentiments any better.