I sure do. Not sure what that says about me, but there it
is.
I can go along writing cozy and traditional, I can dial my
time machine way back and write about life 28,000 years ago, for a while. But
then I have to bust out and write dark.
My dark writing isn’t as inky as some people’s, but it’s
liberating for me to cross the lines. To use language that real people use—language
that hasn’t been cleaned up for the kids or for publication. Come on, you know
what I mean. Language that I learned in the tractor factory and at college.
Both places run neck and neck for that sort of thing.
I can also write about the kinds of people I knew when I
waited tables in places where you don’t get much in the way of tips. People I
knew when I worked as a nurse’s aide. Good, solid, working people, but people
without varnish.
Maybe this is because I didn’t grow up very far from the
wrong side of the tracks, and had friends on the other side. My cousins and I
were the first generation to go to college, so our veneer isn’t always that
thick. Most of the sororities at Northwestern, where I went on scholarship,
didn’t ask me back after they learned that my dad was an electrician. Blue
collar is part of who I am, a big part.
Anyway, my story that is coming out in November from Akashic
in MEMPHIS NOIR was very fun to write, and uses that part of me. The story is
called “Heartbreak at Graceland” and I’d love to know if you like my murder
method as much as I do. The book is available for preorder, so you can find out
soon.
(Goodness, I didn’t know this was going to turn into the
biography of my early life.)
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