Chat with Tom Piccirilli

Chat conducted 2/24/2009

*** (02:28):Welcome to SNUTCH TALK LIVE! ***

ELWilliams.u says (02:33): Tom Piccirilli is a multi-award winning writer, poet and editor of horror, crime and suspense fiction. Raised in Long Island, he redeemed himself by moving to beautiful Colorado, where all the best writers reside. He’s been described as “the master of southern gothic,” but lately has moved toward crime fiction with his “Cold” series.

ELWilliams.u says (02:33): He owns pugs, is an afficianado of Asian cinema and one hell of a nice guy. Just don’t ask him for a blurb. Besides being possibly the most commercially successful Snutch guest, he has the hardest-to-spell last name.

ELWilliams.u says (02:33): Welcome Tom

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:34): Ha, now that’s a bio all right

Sam W Anderson.u says to (02:34): In an interview on your site, you talk about your early stuff and how difficult it was to find your voice. My very astute assessment is your voice is now your strongest feature. Can you talk a little about what a writer’s voice means to writing? When I write longer pieces, I sometimes fall in and out of voice…do you find that still happens?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:35): It takes a while to learn your voice because it takes a while to learn who you are and what you care about, what kind of themes you want to write about

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:35): your narrative is a reflection of yourself, and the more confused you are about yourself, the more ungrounded you are (as I was) the harder it is to find out what you truly want to write about

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:36): so, since I started publishing in my early 20s, I was still pretty immature and still unsure of who I was or what I cared about, so it took a while to discover the sound of my own voice

Kurt Dinan1.shocklinesforum says to (02:36): When you look back on those pieces now, do you see the youth in your voice? Or do you see a lack of voice?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:37): yes, the really early pieces and even some of the pieces done up to, maybe eight or nine years ago, suffer from unsure footing…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:37): I see what I was going for but failed to achieve…I think, “Man, why didn’t I just say it this way, why didn’t I have the plot move in this direction, it would’ve been so much clearer”

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:38): but I think damn near all writers do that, especially when they look back over a fairly large amount of time

ELWilliams.u says (02:38): What writer’s or writers’s voice, if any, did you want to emulate?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:39): I wanted to emulate the most difficult ones because, for whatever reason, they touched me the deepest…so I wanted to be Vonnegut and Barthelme and Joseph Heller and Tom Robbins…all of these very very stylized writers…the simple fact was that I didn’t have anywhere near the chops to be like them

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:39): but it didn’t stop me from trying and mostly spinning my wheels in the mud

kdespins.u says to (02:39): Do you feel your voice continues to evolve?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:40): It continues to shift. The older I get the better perspective I have on my own past…or at least a different perspective, and so the themes that mean something to me come into a slightly different focus

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:40): so it’s only natural that I get onto a slightly different ground to cover them…

kdespins.u says to (02:40): so, pretty much, we’ll never really get it right?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:41): No, I don’t think that’s true…I think part of “getting it right” is being confident in your voice and understanding of your subject matter…but that subject matter will change and your voice will change a bit…it’s a natural part of writing

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:41): but like everything, first you’re a newbie, then you’re an amateur, and then you’re a pro…it’s a progression, and you never stop moving forward

petralee.u says to (02:42): Was it a concious change in your voice that you noticed? Like you were tired of it? Or did it change naturally as you wrote?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:43): It was a conscious change once I got to a certain point…I turned a corner and then things fell into place and I knew, “Hey, that’s what I wanted to say, in the way I wanted to say it, and it happened, it all came together the right way”

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:44): It was a natural change, but it only occurred because I wanted it to happen…everybody wants to get stronger and stronger, and it will happen so long as you keep trying

Kurt Dinan1.shocklinesforum says to (02:45): All of us have been learning the craft through writing short stories like I know you did. However, when approaching novel writing, some of us – okay, mostly me – have difficulty breaking out of the constraints of the short story, and can’t let ourselves “just go” to develop more detailed worlds and characters. Knowing you’ve had success with both long and short fiction, how do you approach and write these pieces differently? When writing a novel, is there a point where you feel like you’re just bullshitting to fill in space, and if so, how do you avoid that?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:46): I never bullshit to fill space, and my editors keep getting pissed at me because of it. My novels fall on the short side, about 70k words, while they want closer to 80 or 90…but I feel most comfortable telling my tales at around that length

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:46): ultimately, the only answer is that you have to be merciless on yourself…if you know you’re starting to bullshit, then scratch it out…if you know you’re going off in some other direction just to kill time, scratch it out

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:47): it’s a difficult transition to make from short stories to novels, or in my case from novels to short stories (I wrote a couple of novels before I ever tried doing a short)

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:47): I wanted lots of room to move but I didn’t know where my boundaries were…I think both forms help to serve the other

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:48): learning how to write a good short story will teach you how to self-edit, how to keep focus…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:48): learning how to write a novel will teach you how to write with several different layers, with a number of sub-plots, to keep moving from point a to point b or p or z

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:49): you only learn how to write a book by writing a book…I only wish there was some shortcut to actually doing the work well before you do it poorly, but that’s just the natural way of learning and becoming skillful

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:49): write a shitty book, and it will help you to write a good one

ELWilliams.u says (02:49): Somewhat on topic: How long does it usually take you to write a novel?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:50): my first novel took me about nine or so months…now I can write one in three or four, but I prefer five or six so I can take a break from it and do some other projects to clear my head, then get back into it

Sam W Anderson.u says to (02:50):
Do you have a game plan when you begin a novel, and how much tweaking goes on after you start? Do you remember any pitfalls at this point? Any definite “do this” items?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:51): there’s no real game plan besides writing a good book…I don’t use an outline although I will start to put things together more and more as I progress…I usually start with a basic concept or just a scene…something that makes me interested to learn the story

kdespins.u says to (02:51): Have you ever gotten into a novel or short story and lost that lovin’ feeling? If so, how do you get to the ending? Or do you?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:52): if I have a room where two guys have just knifed each other and one is holding a photo of his mother, then I will get eager to continue that story…I start asking questions…who are these guys, why did they knife each other, why is he holding that photo…are these guys brothers?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:52): and that inspires me to move forward…keep yourself interested, keep yourself curious in your own story

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:53): I’ve quit on a handful of stories, not because I lost the love but because I wasn’t sure how to follow it to an end that I was happy with…with novels, you have such an investment in them that you learn to keep loving them…even when you’re in the middle and things look hopeless, you learn to grind on…you can’t invest three months on a story and quit on it…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:53): and very often, what you feel most hopeless about turns out to be your best work…

ELWilliams.u says (02:54): You said sometimes you start with a concept or scene. Do you know right away, as you start playing with it, that’ll be a novel or short or does it take 5k words before you know?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:55): I know right off how long it’ll be because I’ve learned to control my imagination…I’ve never started a short and had it turn into a novel, or vice versa…but there is some play to that

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:55): sometimes I’ve meant to write a six thousand word story and wound up saying, this will work better at ten or twelve thousand…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:56): you need to be open to changes as you go on, but there’s a specific process where you either open your imagination or you kind of keep it closed…you say, Okay, I can either keep myself focused to this one plot or I can bring in three others…if you bring in three others, you’re writing a novel…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (02:56): so you have choices along the way on what you want the work to be, and when you learn your craft you make those choices earlier rather than later

petralee.u says to (02:58): Along those lines, when the six turns into twelve, you are in that between stage of short story to novella. Do you then try to turn it into a novel, or leave it at the novella stage.?
Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:00): well, you don’t necessarily want to “turn it into” anything other than what it is…so you guess, okay, what’s this want to be…if it wants to be a novel, then go for it…but in general, my point was that I’ve gotten to that point in my career when I start a project I can usually guess at what it wants to be early on…within a couple thousand words…I don’t start a short and it turns into a novel…you learn control of your subject matter

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:00): of what you want to do and what the work wants to be…and when you’re professional and you’re writing to fulfill obligations, you want to sell a short story to an anthology, not write a novella and have no idea where to sell it

petralee.u says to (03:01): Right, that’s kind of what I thought. I made that mistake once, and realized what I was doing wrong.

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:01): you have to rein in the material and your ideas of the material…as I said, you sometimes have to “close” your imagination down otherwise you’ll never finish the project, it’ll just get bigger and bigger…

petralee.u says to (03:01): Then it’s filled with bullshit, like we previously spoke about.

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:01): there ya go

petralee.u says to (03:02): Tom, you are an amazing writer, and as Sam pointed out earlier, you have an amazing voice as well. Choir of Ill Children is a testament to that, definitely. What was your experience with Night Shade Books? I met Jeremey at WHC SLC and he was great. I can only imagine working with them was just as cool.

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:03): it was a terrific relationship…Jeremy was a very hip guy…I met him at a couple of cons, but I don’t think I’ve ever met Jason…I mostly dealt with Jeremy, and I was very happy with the whole process…it was a weird book and I wasn’t sure anybody would really “get it” or want to do it, but they took the ball and ran with it, and I’m indebted to them for the respect they showed the work

petralee.u says to (03:04): That’s how they struck me, actually. Glad you validated that. They certainly had faith in your work, that’s for sure. And that’s a big thing. It was a great book.

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:04):
thanks, and they did a beautiful edition of it…love the cover they used…my editor at Bantam couldn’t get it to pass at Bantam because the mucky mucks thought it wouldn’t sell…they thought the kid on the cover looked too dead and no woman would ever buy it

kdespins.u says to (03:05): What author, book or short story would you recommend every writer read?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:07): I don’t think there is just one…I have my personal favorites, and there’s classics like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” that damn near everybody HAS read…but I think that people just need to read more in general…especially writers…I’ve met so many writers who don’t read enough, and don’t read enough outside of their personal favorite genre

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:08): they should read all genres, and mainstream, and modern lit, and classic lit…whatever they can get their hands on…but double-edge sword of writing is that everyone can do it to some extent…we all know how…we’ve all been taught to write a sentence and read a sentence…so many folks think that’s all they need, they think they already know how to read so they know how to write

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:08): even the biggest selling writers in the world keep reading…for one thing, it’s good for the writing, but for the main reason, why be a writer if not for the love of literature?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:09): to be a part of the overwhelming grandness of literature

ELWilliams.u says (03:11): Seriously, though, I’ll ask the question everyone seems to be asking now: what do you think the future of publishing is based on both the economic impact of the recession and further advancement in technology?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:12): I think publishers need to rethink how they publish…they’re too worried about looking for the next mega-seller…the next Da Vinci Code and the next Harry Potter…the trouble with that is that yes, you’ll sell millions and millions of units, but those readers will ONLY read that one book…after they finish Harry, they finish reading…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:13): publishing needs to spread the love…push more mid-listers so that instead of only one mega seller, they have hundreds of lesser sellers who can reach more people…get the people reading not just one book but many books, many authors

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:13): if they’ll ever do that, or if they’ll ever get to the point of willingness to do that, I don’t know…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:14): but it’s the only solution that I can see…everybody thought that those Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine books would really get horror to sell, because all those kids reading those books would grow up and read more horror novels

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:15): but they didn’t…they read those big sellers at the time and then stopped…most people only read one or two mega sellers a year…they might read the new King, the new Koontz, the new Grisham…we need to take the spotlight off the mega sellers and put it on everyone else…because only then will most people get back to reading more and more…

ELWilliams.u says (03:16): So, kind of follow more of the small-press business model. More spotlight on a broader range of authors.

ELWilliams.u says (03:16): But on a grander scale

petralee.u says to (03:16): I agree with you, but RL Stine got my kids to read more and more, that’s for sure – my 8 year old is a prodigy…but I’m biased. My point is that you’re right with those that only read the bestsellers. But I don’t think it will kill the publishing industry – there’s thousands of us readers out there and growing.

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:17): sure, the more choices someone has, the better off we all are…but the publishers give folks a very limited choice…they only promote ten major books and ten major sellers…so folks read those ten and that’s it…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:17): well, hope you’re right, Petra…but the fact is less and less folks are reading, sales are way down

ELWilliams.u says (03:17): I think the point, too, is that big publisher tend to circle the wagons around big names in tough times to ensure a bottom line.

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:18): kids are playing more video games and reading less…my own step-kids are proof of that…all three were raised in a house full of books and not one of them gives a shit…

ELWilliams.u says (03:18): Sad

Kurt Dinan1.shocklinesforum says (03:19): How did your now recurring character Chase come into existence? Was it a calculated creation on your part hoping to write more than one novel with a character? Did your agent/publisher ask you for a recurring character? And how did you approach creating the character in the first place?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:21): It wasn’t a calculated move on my part…I just approched it as a story of two mortal enemies who happened to be related…I liked the idea of two criminals, a “good” one and a really evil one, and the two of them constantly being in conflict, but the good one needing the other when he needed to get some revenge

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:22): I only decided at the very end of The Cold Spot to keep the storyline moving, keep it open-ended enough that I could return to it, and since I really enjoyed the process and liked going to that noir/hardboiled place, I immediately jumped back in for the second book

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:22):
after those first two, I decided to turn my attention to some other projects, but I’ll eventually get back to doing the third…whether the series will end as a trilogy, I don’t know, but I would like to try my hand at one more at least

Kurt Dinan1.shocklinesforum says to (03:23): Well, I enjoyed the hell out of The Cold Spot, so I’m looking forward to the others (Look at me brown-nose, everyone!)

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:23): The Coldest Mile hit bookstore shelves today, btw

Kurt Dinan1.shocklinesforum says to (03:24): Congrats!

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:24): thanks, go out and buy a copy, even if you don’t get to it for a dog’s age

Sam W Anderson.u says to (03:24): Is that what you’re reading in Windsor?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:24): yeah, figured I’d read the first chapter or so

Kurt Dinan1.shocklinesforum says to (03:25): Tom, is it better to buy your books in a brick and mortar, or online through a place like Amazon? Does it matter to your sales or to your publisher?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:26): brick and mortar is always better. Because the books that show up in bookstores can always be returned if they don’t sell, and those returns are applied against an author’s numbers and royalties

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:27): if a book gets 20 orders on Amazon, Amazon orders 20 books…no returns…but if 30 copies are in a bookstore, and they only sell 20, then 10 are destroyed and counted as “returns” and those losses are applied against royalties

Sam W Anderson.u says to (03:27): Agents – have one? Love them, hate them? How do you avoid a bad one?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:28): I’ve had five in my career…four were pricks who couldn’t find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight…they never sold anything for me and didn’t really try…I just got a new one and he’s already proven his weight in gold…they can help immensely if you find a good one to work with

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:29): how to avoid a bad one? Wish to Christ I knew, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:30): make sure they have a list of authors who work in a similar field as you do…if you’re doing horror and the agent is selling chick lit, you will probably have troubles

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:30): if they’ve handled some great writers, or writers who are similar to your own stuff, then you can guess that they’re probably professional and competent…the trouble lies in an agent asking you do whatever it is that they happen to be selling

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:31): I’ve had agents who were good at selling horror, but after the bloom was off the field, they decided to turn toward something else, and asked me to turn to that thing…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:31): you don’t want an agent who tells you to write something else just because it’s selling at the moment, because by the time you finish the book, something else will probably be selling hot

kdespins.u says to (03:35): When Sam and I saw you about this time last year, you talked of your disdain for collaborations…Do you still feel the same way? What do you like/dislike about collaborating?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:35): I’m a control freak. I want complete control of the material.

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:36): I don’t want somebody else rewriting my stuff, or taking my plot and going in a different direction with it

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:36): so the only time I’ve “collaborated” with anyone is when they send me a half-finished story and tell me I can completely rewrite it and do what I want with it

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:37): so I’ve done pieces with Ken Bruen and Ed Gorman since they gave me control

JohnMantooth.u says to (03:38): First, thanks for being here, Tom. I just came from a fiction class where my short story got totally ripped to shreds. Made me wonder, how do you handle criticism? Not that you’ve had a lot of it. But nobody is immune, right? As a side note, I just finished Midnight Road this week and totally dug it.

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:40): Glad you liked TMR, thanks. Everybody gets criticized, everybody gets shredded. So long as the shredding is constructive, and someone points out exactly why something doesn’t work and gives you some idea on what you can do to fix it, then just let it slide off your back and learn from the experience

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:40): my editor at Bantam is merciless on me, but she’s also more right than she is wrong, so I appreciate her making the work stronger

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:40): fiction writing classes are a little different because your fellow writers are usually newbies and young’uns and their criticisms often fall into the “I don’t like this” category, and they can’t really explain themselves and they can’t offer any suggestions on how to fix it

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:41): in that case, take it with a serious grain of salt…

JohnMantooth.u says to (03:41): Yeah, there was a little of that
petralee.u says to (03:42): Tom, what’s your writing day like? A day in the life, if you will? We are all aspiring to write full time, and I wonder what your schedule is like.

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:43): I try to do a thousand words a day…and I’ll bounce around the house doing this and that, then coming back to the desk, writing a bit, then bouncing around again…watch a movie…walk the dogs…then write…read a book…play online…then write…it helps to keep me from burning out…I don’t understand these folks who claim to write for twelve hours a day or to write only between the hours of noon and five…it’s not my way

Sam W Anderson.u says to (03:44): Tom, thanks for staying so long with us – you’ve broken the record for longest chat by far. But, your rep for southern goth – besides Choir, where does that come from? We have a member working on his masters and focusing on this genre…any advice for this punk?

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:46): I really got into grit lit when I tumbled to Harry Crews…loved his fiction…but as a movie buff, I’d watched a ton of 70s southern sadism flicks…Walking Tall, White Lightning, Return to Badham County, etc….and I liked the southern atmosphere and the swamps and backwoods moody evil…so I watched all those movies again and read a lot of swamp noir fiction

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:46): which was very popular in the 50s…SWAMP SISTER and stuff like that…and I sort of distilled all of it into one crazyass story

JohnMantooth.u says to (03:46): That southern gothic punk would be me. I’ll have to lok for some of those films. Just curious, did you take in flak for making Nuddin the villian in TMR? I loved that risk, but I could see the easily offended making a big deal about it.

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:47): thus Choir was born…following that I wrote NOVEMBER MOURNS, another southern gothic, and did about a dozen stories with that setting…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:48): no, no real flak…in fact, one of my best buddies has a son who is autistic and even he didn’t mind…I was a little worried about that…but hey, there’s no reason why a woman, or an autistic kid, or a priest, or anybody else can’t be either the hero or the villain…

Sam W Anderson.u says to kdespins.u (03:49): Thanks, Tom….and now, about that blurb…

kdespins.u says to (03:49): Thanks, Tom. This has been fantastic

ELWilliams.u says (03:49): Thanks for joining us, Tom

petralee.u says to (03:49): Thanks for spending time with us Tom – really great information!

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:49): now, everybody go buy my books, off you go…

Tom Piccirilli.u says to (03:49): thanks for having me, folks

*** (03:50):Tom Piccirilli.u quit the room