More Than A Map

The hardest part of writing a book is pulling all of the thoughts from my head, translating them into words, stringing the words into sentences, into paragraphs, into chapters, into completion.

I take that back. The hardest part of writing a book is sitting my butt down in a chair and making myself stay there for three to five hours per day, every day, for months on end. I have a short attention span. I am easily distracted. The slightest thing can throw my off. There is one thing that can keep me in the groove, keep my butt in that chair, keep my eyes on the prize. Music. The right mix of music. And it is a constantly morphing chameleon of songs. It’d be great if I could punch up the same three hours of songs every day. I’d be one prolific mofo. My kudos to all of the musicians who inspire my heart and mind on a daily basis.

JACKSON FALLS is driven by music. One of the main characters in JACKSON FALLS is Johnny Turner, the town’s prodigal and most famous son. His band, the Cliff Dwellers, is in the exactly the right place, at exactly the right moment in time. They are children of the Seventies, so their music is influenced by the early age of rock and roll. I imagine Mary Turner loving the Beatles. I imagine Johnny hating them because his mother loves them so much. That’s what kids do. I imagine a spinning turntable. I imagine the next record dropping onto that turntable and Johnny’s mother smiling broadly and pulling a 1965 Fender Jaguar guitar from behind the couch and handing it to her only son. I imagine Johnny Turner learning his first song:

The Beatles “Birthday”

The opening scene is the Cliff Dwellers’ coming out party. Some of my favorite parts of this book are the ones that take place with Johnny on stage. Johnny is a guitar genius with the love for the heavy riff. I see the hot summer day, the windblown fair, and the apathetic small-town crowd, I see the Cliff Dwellers coming out on stage and electrifying the crowd with the songs like:

Creedence Clearwater Revival “Born On A Bayou”

Ripping their hearts out with:

MC5- “Kick Out The Jams”

Johnny hits New York City as the worlds of punk and glam are colliding and he feeds off of that energy. He is the guitar hero that everyone wants to play with, but he has a hard time getting his own band up and running. And then he goes to CBGB and wows the punk world with songs like these:

Richard Hell and the Voidoids “Blank Generation”

Johnny Thunders “In Cold Blood”

The nineties are a blur for Johnny, with celebrity marriage, fame and fortune, and endless touring taking a toll on his health and his personal life. I see him winning his Grammy with a song like this:

Rocket From The Tombs “30 Seconds Over Tokyo”

While alternately shredding ear drums with the likes of:

Ball and Biscuit by The White Stripes

At the turn of the new millennium Johnny turns back inward to his roots, straight-ahead songs with blues sensibilities. I imagine Johnny writing and playing hit after hit with gut-punching guitar lines:

The Black Keys “Tighten Up”

The Raconteurs “Steady, As She Goes”

When Johnny finally makes his return to Jackson Falls, I can see him sitting down with his old buddy Darryl, just two men and two guitars, and playing an old song that they both learned together, like this:

Papa Junior “Wake Up Mama”

JACKSON FALLS was a lot of fun to write. The Rock and Roll aspects of it are just a small but important part. The best part of being a writer is making myself smile. If you guys get a chance to grin a little that’s just icing on the cake. JACKSON FALLS will be released 11/16/2010. Signed pre-release sale copies can be purchased at:

Periodisa Online Store

xoxo
-tb-

All of my life I have been a reader. I read over one hundred books per year, every year. I was a reader long before I became a writer. The books that I have read inform the books that I now write. It could be no other way. Even though I was the jockiest of jocks, I still always had my nose in a book.

I started with SHERLOCK HOLMES and worked my way through (in no particular order) Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Ayn Rand, Jack Kerouac, James Clavell, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Jay McInerney, Charles Bukowski, Clive Barker, Stephen King, Philip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft, Paulo Coelho, Lawrence Block, Joe R. Lansdale, Joseph Wambaugh, and the list goes on and on. While you might turn up your nose at popular fiction, it has but one objective, to entertain. The constant in these stories is that they suck you in. They take you to a world that is not your own. I could fantasize about being in that world for a few hours or a few days.

As I get ready for the release of JACKSON FALLS, I think about the world that I wanted to create. It is first and foremost the story of a small town. Everyone knows each other’s innermost secrets, or so they think. It is the story of the majestic Rocky Mountains and the sturdy folks that populate them. It is a story about Rock and Roll. It is the story of unconditional love, even in the face of utter betrayal. Here I try to pinpoint the five separate works of literature that helped shape the story and the style behind it. I owe these authors my deepest gratitude.

THE TIN-ROOF BLOWDOWN- James Lee Burke
The story takes place in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and captures the very essence of what it must have been like in New Orleans after the storm. James Lee Burke is the king of dialectical voice. When you read his books you get hooked on the southern drawl of the characters, the smooth easy style of it all. He remains true to his characters. Dave Robicheaux is so maddeningly stubborn throughout that it angers me at times. I love that. Start with BLACK CHERRY BLUES and read em all.

A WILD SHEEP CHASE- Haruki Murakami
To read Murakami is to see the world as if through sheer curtains. It’s a foggy dreamlike state where your not sure if you’re awake or asleep. The more you read, the more you are drawn into his world. He takes the magical realism of Garcia Marquez and makes it much more accessible. I was intoxicated by it. I think you my see a faint echo in my book. Murakami’s most famous is THE WINDUP BIRD CHRONICLE, but I prefer this and its sequel, DANCE, DANCE, DANCE.

RESERVATION BLUES- Sherman Alexie
Being a sixteenth of a Blackfoot Indian, I have long been fascinated by the whole Native American History and way of life. As a kid playing cowboys I was always the Indian. Pretty funny for a redhead, eh? Alexie is best known for his movie SMOKE SIGNALS and the book that it sprung from, THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN THE SKY. His works explore the dirt-poor existence of a reservation Indian, the bigotry and anomie of the city Indian, and the prejudices that manifest themselves within his race. RESERVATION BLUES is the story of a group of young Indians escaping the reservation on the wings of a recording contract. The result is heartbreaking. It is a seminal work of Rock and Roll fiction, and I pay homage to it.

PATTERN RECOGNITION- William Gibson
The father of cyberpunk, Gibson has long been revered in the Science Fiction community. Mine is not a work of Science Fiction. In his early books he wrote with such deftness that sometimes it was hard for the mind to keep up. But it made me think. Hard. His ideas were so cutting edge that they weren’t even being drawn up on a chalkboard yet. Somehow they are coming to reality. In NO MAPS FOR THESE TERRITORIES, the documentary that is really a fascinating two-hour interview, he explains that he had no scientific basis for his work. He just made it up. That is mindboggling. PATTERN RECOGNITION is the start of his third trilogy, a step away from the cyberpunk and into the world coolhunting. I steal nothing from it other than the idea that all is possible on the written page. If you haven’t read NEUROMANCER, his seminal debut, you don’t know “jack.”

THE POET- Michael Connelly
I read the book at a time when I was dabbling in bad poetry and hosting an open-mic night that meant that I had to keep writing said drivel. In 2007 I decided to take the summer off and travel. My extended road trip landed me in Tennessee for the Killer Nashville mystery conference. I was schlepping copies of my last book, the hastily written and poorly edited UNREQUITED. Michael Connelly was the guest of honor at the conference. I had the opportunity to chat for a few minutes, listen to his lecture, and break bread at dinner. For someone who has sold millions of books and won every award in the mystery universe, he is down to earth, humble, and grateful to spend his life getting paid to write. If that is not inspiration, I don’t know what is. Every one of his books is great. I choose THE POET because he helped me to leave that world behind and focus on spinning wider webs. Thanks Michael.

I hope to see you all sooner rather than later. In the meantime, if you choose to pick up one of these masterpieces, tell me what you think.