Tom Piccirilli lives in Colorado, where, besides writing, he spends an inordinate amount of time watching trash cult films
and reading Gold Medal classic noir and hardboiled novels. He's a fan of Asian cinema, especially horror movies, bullet ballet, pinky violence, and samurai
flicks. He also likes walking his dogs around the neighborhood. Are you starting to get the hint that he doesn't have a particularly active social life?
Well, to heck with you, buddy, yours isn't much better. Give him any static and he'll smack you in the mush, dig? Tom also enjoys making new friends.
He is the author of twenty novels including The Coldest Mile, The Cold Spot, The Midnight Road, The Dead Letters, Headstone City, and A Choir of Ill Children,
all published by Bantam/Random House. He's won the Bram Stoker and the International Thriller Writers Awards, and he's been nominated for the Edgar,
the World Fantasy Award, and Le Grand Prix de L'Imaginaire. Learn more at: www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com
DW: THE COLDEST MILE is a continuation of your Edgar Award-nominated THE COLD SPOT. We follow the further adventures of getaway driver Chase as he pulls scores to gather funds in order to track down his stone cold killer grandfather Jonah. Did you always intend this to be a series?
PIC: I'm still not sure it is a series, or whether it'll be a trilogy or whether it'll stop where it is, on something of a cliffhanger. The Cold books represent one facet of my work as I jump into the crime field, but there's a lot of other areas I'd like to explore as well. Suspense, thriller, other hardboiled or noirish avenues. I would like to get back to the series to finish a third book tentatively titled THE COLD AND THE DEAD. Hopefully within the next year or two. And who knows, maybe it'll keep going from there.
DW: Why the shift from horror to crime-fantasy to noir/hardboiled fiction?
PIC: As I started to slide over the hill it seemed that I became a lot more interested in dealing with more authentic and realistic matters rather than fantastical ones. My mid-life crisis was kicking my ass telling me, Man, if you want to talk about some of this shit you're going through with any degree of honesty, you've got to do something different with it. These fears, worries, regrets, hopes, whatever. I could be a little more honest in my exploration of them but still keep them in the dramatic context that I'd always known. So a small jump from horror to crime seemed in order.
DW: Is it a small jump?
PIC: I think noir fiction can be as frightening and cold and illuminating as horror fiction can be. You're still dealing with the same forces of good versus evil. Crime probably allows for more of a gray area between the two though. You can sympathize with the outlaws more, at least the "good" outlaws. Horror demands certain extremes. By definition you need something horrific going on. So the distance between the good and bad is greater. You get the selfless priest versus the devil. In crime fiction the gap is often narrowed. The cops are human, the villains are understandable. Even in noir novels where the protagonist commits awful acts for his femme fatale honey, you know he's doing it for a human reason. He's trapped by the inevitability of his vice and his lust. He was fated to go on a downward slide from the onset. In horror, someone is fated to stand up. In noir, someone is fated to go down.
DW: I didn't think it was possible, but THE COLDEST MILE might even be a more high-octane read than THE COLD SPOT. There's absolutely no "down time." The book starts off with blood and speed and just keeps ripping along.
PIC: The Cold books are heavily influenced by Gold Medal classic authors like Goodis, Williams, Thompson, Whittington, Rabe, Fischer, Brewer, and Westlake (Stark). I wanted to distill just about everything I loved about those guys' work and pour it into my own. And if it's one thing they knew about, it was how to keep a story moving at full-speed. There's some "down time" in TCS after Chase goes straight and gets married. I wanted to show the difference between civilian life and the bent life. But in TCM I could just haul ass and let the engine scream.
DW: It's hardboiled, but with real heart and soul. Did you feel it was important to have more thoughtful elements in the books to help balance the story out?
PIC: I think that's just a part of who I am and what my worldview is. Action is terrific but you need a greater context. The book has to actually be about something. I've got things I want to examine and scrutinize. Things that genuinely matter to me. The hardboiled elements just underscore and dramatize all the other stuff. The Cold books are as much about family, loss, love, and heartache as they are about guns and scores and wheelmen. Sometimes the action scenes and the emotional ones are the same thing. That's what I think I like best about the crime genre. You never know when someone is going to shake hands or pull a S&W .38. Or betray a friend or save a life. The whole human condition from best to worst can crop up at any second.
DW: With the economy in the dire straits that it is, publishing has been very hard hit as well. What can the industry do to turn itself around?
PIC: Treat every book as a potential bestseller. Give them all your very best where encouragement, publicity, are concerned, because you never know just what will catch fire with a little push. Publishers need to quit looking for the next big thing and simply treat all books as if they have the potential to be mega-sellers. Because they do. On any bestseller list there's at least a handful of books that appear to be uncommercial in the extreme. Julia Leigh's DISQUIET is a kind of surreal literary novella, and it's up there. Roberto Bolano's 2666 is a five-book monolith by a dead Chilean writer, and it's up there. No one knows what might be a major hit, what might take off. You just never know what the public might pick up on, so allow even the most uncommercial work to have a chance, because it might just pay off. Spread the love around the midlist. Give them a taste of publicity, encouragement, and advances they can live on,. Stick with them and help to build up their careers. Keep them healthy and working at top form and maybe we can build a bigger readership instead of losing our reading culture.
DW: What are you working on now?
PIC: SHADOW SEASON is due out in October. It's the story of a blind ex-cop turned teacher at an isolated girls' school. Amid some scandalous events concerning a student, he tries to struggle by with his handicap and a lot of unresolved issues dealing with his girlfriend, his dead wife, and his former partner. Currently I'm working on THE UNDERNEATH, a crime-suspense crossover about a family of thieves who have to deal with a possible serial killer.
DW: Thanks for letting us turn the tables on you, Pic.
PIC: As always, thanks for having me at The Big Adios, Dave.
[Tom Piccirilli interviewed by David T. Wilbanks]
DW: THE COLDEST MILE is a continuation of your Edgar Award-nominated THE COLD SPOT. We follow the further adventures of getaway driver Chase as he pulls scores to gather funds in order to track down his stone cold killer grandfather Jonah. Did you always intend this to be a series?
PIC: I'm still not sure it is a series, or whether it'll be a trilogy or whether it'll stop where it is, on something of a cliffhanger. The Cold books represent one facet of my work as I jump into the crime field, but there's a lot of other areas I'd like to explore as well. Suspense, thriller, other hardboiled or noirish avenues. I would like to get back to the series to finish a third book tentatively titled THE COLD AND THE DEAD. Hopefully within the next year or two. And who knows, maybe it'll keep going from there.
DW: Why the shift from horror to crime-fantasy to noir/hardboiled fiction?
PIC: As I started to slide over the hill it seemed that I became a lot more interested in dealing with more authentic and realistic matters rather than fantastical ones. My mid-life crisis was kicking my ass telling me, Man, if you want to talk about some of this shit you're going through with any degree of honesty, you've got to do something different with it. These fears, worries, regrets, hopes, whatever. I could be a little more honest in my exploration of them but still keep them in the dramatic context that I'd always known. So a small jump from horror to crime seemed in order.
DW: Is it a small jump?
PIC: I think noir fiction can be as frightening and cold and illuminating as horror fiction can be. You're still dealing with the same forces of good versus evil. Crime probably allows for more of a gray area between the two though. You can sympathize with the outlaws more, at least the "good" outlaws. Horror demands certain extremes. By definition you need something horrific going on. So the distance between the good and bad is greater. You get the selfless priest versus the devil. In crime fiction the gap is often narrowed. The cops are human, the villains are understandable. Even in noir novels where the protagonist commits awful acts for his femme fatale honey, you know he's doing it for a human reason. He's trapped by the inevitability of his vice and his lust. He was fated to go on a downward slide from the onset. In horror, someone is fated to stand up. In noir, someone is fated to go down.
DW: I didn't think it was possible, but THE COLDEST MILE might even be a more high-octane read than THE COLD SPOT. There's absolutely no "down time." The book starts off with blood and speed and just keeps ripping along.
PIC: The Cold books are heavily influenced by Gold Medal classic authors like Goodis, Williams, Thompson, Whittington, Rabe, Fischer, Brewer, and Westlake (Stark). I wanted to distill just about everything I loved about those guys' work and pour it into my own. And if it's one thing they knew about, it was how to keep a story moving at full-speed. There's some "down time" in TCS after Chase goes straight and gets married. I wanted to show the difference between civilian life and the bent life. But in TCM I could just haul ass and let the engine scream.
DW: It's hardboiled, but with real heart and soul. Did you feel it was important to have more thoughtful elements in the books to help balance the story out?
PIC: I think that's just a part of who I am and what my worldview is. Action is terrific but you need a greater context. The book has to actually be about something. I've got things I want to examine and scrutinize. Things that genuinely matter to me. The hardboiled elements just underscore and dramatize all the other stuff. The Cold books are as much about family, loss, love, and heartache as they are about guns and scores and wheelmen. Sometimes the action scenes and the emotional ones are the same thing. That's what I think I like best about the crime genre. You never know when someone is going to shake hands or pull a S&W .38. Or betray a friend or save a life. The whole human condition from best to worst can crop up at any second.
DW: With the economy in the dire straits that it is, publishing has been very hard hit as well. What can the industry do to turn itself around?
PIC: Treat every book as a potential bestseller. Give them all your very best where encouragement, publicity, are concerned, because you never know just what will catch fire with a little push. Publishers need to quit looking for the next big thing and simply treat all books as if they have the potential to be mega-sellers. Because they do. On any bestseller list there's at least a handful of books that appear to be uncommercial in the extreme. Julia Leigh's DISQUIET is a kind of surreal literary novella, and it's up there. Roberto Bolano's 2666 is a five-book monolith by a dead Chilean writer, and it's up there. No one knows what might be a major hit, what might take off. You just never know what the public might pick up on, so allow even the most uncommercial work to have a chance, because it might just pay off. Spread the love around the midlist. Give them a taste of publicity, encouragement, and advances they can live on,. Stick with them and help to build up their careers. Keep them healthy and working at top form and maybe we can build a bigger readership instead of losing our reading culture.
DW: What are you working on now?
PIC: SHADOW SEASON is due out in October. It's the story of a blind ex-cop turned teacher at an isolated girls' school. Amid some scandalous events concerning a student, he tries to struggle by with his handicap and a lot of unresolved issues dealing with his girlfriend, his dead wife, and his former partner. Currently I'm working on THE UNDERNEATH, a crime-suspense crossover about a family of thieves who have to deal with a possible serial killer.
DW: Thanks for letting us turn the tables on you, Pic.
PIC: As always, thanks for having me at The Big Adios, Dave.
[Tom Piccirilli interviewed by David T. Wilbanks]
