This week our On the Spot guest is Jason Starr. His seventh novel, Lights Out, was released this past October. His other novels include: Twisted City, Tough Luck, Hard Feelings, Fake I.D., Nothing Personal and Cold Caller. He has co-authored one novel, Bust, with Ken Bruen and the sequel is due out in 2007. The two are also working on a graphic novel. Jason's eighth novel, The Follower, is due out in 2007.
Don't forget that we are also giving a copy of Lights Out away. The contest will be ending in about a week so there is plent of time to enter. All you have to do is send me a PM in regards to the contest, thats it.
Brian Lindenmuth - How did it feel to finally get the hardcover treatment with Lights Out?
Jason Starr - It's been great, even better than I hoped. St. Martin's has gotten behind the book in a big way and it's been a big success, my biggest book so far. Previously I was with Vintage Books, but I felt it was time to go into hardcover with Lights Out.
Brian Lindenmuth - When your books were being published in paperback was it a goal to get to a hardback release? If it is a goal is it difficult?
Jason Starr - I was being published in paperback by choice actually. I had an opportunity to do a hardcover deal early in my career, but there are certain advantages to paperback originals. You can often get more books distributed and build up a readership faster than you can in hardcover. But yes, I knew ultimately that I wanted to go into hardcover, but I knew the timing had to be right.
Brian Lindenmuth - Do you know yet if the next book will be hardcover?
Jason Starr - Yes, THE FOLLOWER, due in summer 07 in the U.S. and the U.K. is a hardcover. It's a somewhat different kind of book for me. I don't do a series, so I like to mix things up, and THE FOLLOWER has a much larger thriller element than in any of my previous books. There's also a female heroine, which I haven't done before, and a very creepy villain. The early response to the book at my publishers and elsewhere has been very positive. Ken Bruen read it and told me "It does for dating what Jaws did for swimming."
Brian Lindenmuth - For Bust is it true you and Ken each wrote the others parts? Him writing the American characters and you writing the Irish ones?
Jason Starr - Kind of. Some people (and reviewers) read the book and assumed we alternated characters. I guess that makes sense since there was an Irish character in the book, and one Greek-Irish character. But actually we do not switch off. We each worked on all the chapters and they're really a blend of both of us. I write differently than I do normally, leaning slightly toward Ken's voice, and he leans toward my voice, and we meet somewhere in the middle. When I look back at the book now it's hard for me to even remember who wrote what. I think Ken gets confused too. He was proof reading our new book Slide and he told me how funny one line was and complimented me for it. Meanwhile, he'd written that one.
Brian Lindenmuth - Did you like writing with Bruen's voice?
Jason Starr - It's not really his voice, it's a blended voice, what I call Bust-style...But yes, I loved writing BUST and the sequel SLIDE. It was constant fun and a great compliment to writing my own books.
Brian Lindenmuth - I've gotten very enthusiastic e-mail responses from Ken, Is he as cool to hang out with as I imagine he is.
Jason Starr - Even cooler. He's the rock star of crime fiction, and has that engaging Bill Clinton persona to boot....Just don't drink light beer around him and you'll be okay.
Brian Lindenmuth - Did you get to help choose any of the epigraphs for Bust & Slide?
Jason Starr - Definitely, I did about half of them. We wanted to pick some distinctive, stylistic things from our books and one of those were epigraphs which, of course, Ken is known for. But he did a lot of the stuff I'm known for, and I did a lot of the Bruen stuff. Even our publisher doesn't know who wrote what.
Brian Lindenmuth - By my estimation Ken produces a novel or story every 17 minutes, after three collaborations with him is it hard to keep up with his pace?
Jason Starr - I think one of the reasons Ken is so prolific is because he doesn't procrastinate. When he sits down to write, he writes, and thus he is able to produce a lot of work. He's making very good use of his time. I know this because when I met him in a Starbucks to work on SLIDE I started chatting and he said, "None of that, let's get to work." There was serious steel in his voice too; I knew he wasn't fucking around... But it's not hard for me to keep up with him. We each know our strengths and we go back and forth on the same sections until we get them right.
Brian Lindenmuth - Was JT (in Lights Out) based on any athlete in particular or just your imagination carrying the idea to a healthy extreme?
Jason Starr - His character is all from my imagination, though I think you can see some similarities to some of the big name, ego-driven athletes in the news. I've been a big sports fan all my life so it was easy to write about a baseball player. It really came naturally to me and didn't require any research.
Brian Lindenmuth - What do you see the state of professional sports as being today?
Jason Starr - Too much money, too many egos...But right now I'm just focused on the Jets and Giants making he playoffs. And the Knicks have a great team. Watch this team win a championship by next season. Mark my words.
Brian Lindenmuth - Why worry about the Giants and the Jets making the playoff when the Ravens are going to take it all anyway?
Jason Starr - I think it's up for grabs. Chicago is shaky at QB, and Indy and NE seem vulnerable this year. It could be Seattle's year...but here's hoping.
Brian Lindenmuth - I inferred in my review that Lights Out reminded me of true classic noir. Especially in the sense that Lights Out is not a crime novel, even though one occurs, its about a certain level of despair that's evident in these characters lives. Were you shooting for that classic noir feel?
Jason Starr - I guess so. I say that in all seriousness because I never set out to write noir. I wouldn't even know how to go about doing that. But I'm very flattered by your assessment and in retrospect I can noir themes in the book. In Lights Out, I'm writing about characters who are stalled, who can't get where they want to go. There's despair, but I think there's a lot of humor in the book too and I think that's an important point. Noir can be funny and entertaining too. Above all a book has to be entertaining otherwise people would rather watch TV or listen to the iPods.
Brian Lindenmuth - Do you wear Sarah Weinman's assertion that "nobody writes convincingly compelling assholes like Starr does" as a badge of honor.
Jason Starr - Absolutely. I love that comment (and paid good money for it :). Seriously, in a lot of books the psycho characters and villains and so-called bad guys are one dimensional. So I always try to make my dark characters as real as possible.
Brian Lindenmuth - Tom Piccirilli wrote this about Brooklyn:
"This town, it took your blood and replaced it with cement, asphalt, and pigeon shit. You became a part of it as much as the steel and iron, all the bone meal sprinkled into its cornerstones. No matter who you were, you got hard.
Brooklyn, New York
Fourth largest city in the United States, cradle of roughnecks and Nobel Laureates, center of America's most diversified gathering of angry cultures."
Is this a good summary?
Jason Starr - I love that. What I also like about writing about Brooklyn is its constantly changing. Canarsie, the neighborhood I set Lights Out in, is dramatically different than 20 years ago. And it still amazes me that Williamsburg has become such a hipster paradise, because when I was growing up you it was not a place you wanted to go.
Brian Lindenmuth - I know what you mean about the revitalization. The same thing has been happening here in Baltimore ever since the Inner Harbor was unveiled 20+ years ago. I also think that it’s interesting to note how the crime has spread to other areas as the original neighborhoods became gentrified.
Jason Starr - The same exact thing has happened in Brooklyn.
Brian Lindenmuth - Myself I'm from Baltimore, a city that breeds its own special kind of crazy, so I'm always curious how people feel about descriptions of their cities. Here's one recently from The Baltimore City Paper:
"Baltimore's greatest claim to fame is that Divine ate shit on Read Street. Great cities are not known for having somebody eat dog shit. Baltimore will never be great. It's just not going to happen."
Jason Starr - All I can say is you have to read Red Baker by Robert Ward if you haven't already.
Brian Lindenmuth - Robert Ward is on my short list of writers to read whom I haven't read before.
Jason Starr - He's excellent...and what an entertaining guy in person.
Brian Lindenmuth - I expect that the next couple of answers will be a very coy "fuck you" but what the hell you cant blame a guy for asking.
Is there anything specific that you can tell us about Slide yet?
Jason Starr - Slide features a few characters from Bust. Max and Angela are back, and one additional character who I don't think anyone would expect to see again. It's a very different plot line than BUST though. It has to do with a serial killer, Meg Ryan, the Rolling Stones, and the wonderful world of crack cocaine. It also has a lot of very black comedy.
Brian Lindenmuth - I'm very curious about this graphic novel that you two are writing? When will more details be available?
Jason Starr - It's for DC Vertigo, a supernatural thriller set in Ireland and the United States. Since it's a comic and there are really no boundaries for what you can and cannot do, there will be a lot of darkness in it. I don't think it will be like Bust or Slide or our individual novels. It will have a different voice. We're not sure of the release date yet, but it looks like sometime in 2008.
Brian Lindenmuth - Do you read comics?
Jason Starr - Yes, especially lately, the last few years, I've been reading a ton of them. I also wrote an introduction to volume 8 of the 100 Bullets collected edition.
Brian Lindenmuth - Did you find that writing for comics was easier, harder or just different?
Jason Starr - We're just starting now so I'll let you know. I imagine it will end up being just different. I've done a lot of screenplay writing and I know how it's hard to compare different forms of writing. It's just a totally different mind set.
Brian Lindenmuth - As a New Yorker have you read Ex Machina?
Jason Starr - Yes, and it's awesome.
Brian Lindenmuth - OK, end of the year question. What are some of the better/best books from 2006. What books should we be looking forward to in 2007?
Jason Starr - I don't think I've read enough new books in 2006 to really say which were the best, though I really enjoyed Damnation Street by Andrew Klavan and American Skin by Ken Bruen. Next year I'm looking forward to a lot of books including Hard Man by Allan Guthrie and Megan Abbott’s new book The Song is You. I read an advance copy of The Devil's Mambo, a pitch black first novel by Jerry A. Rodriguez, and it rocks.
Brian Lindenmuth - And finally if you could be a member of any gang from the movie The Warriors, which gang would you choose?
Jason Starr - The Warriors.
