Interview with Norman Green

Jon) New York is pretty prominent in your first two books. Why New York?

Norm) I spent a lot of time living and/or working in New York, so I know it better than I know any other place. Plus, New York is and has always been a city of immigrants. You don’t have to scratch very hard to find characters to write about. Sometimes, if I’m stuck, I’ll just go find a park bench, sit down and watch the people go by. I always (so far) have gotten something, just from watching the faces, listening to the voices, looking at the clothes people wear, and so on.

Jon) Your characters are very real feeling. Any base in reality for them?

Norm) My characters are fictional, but I definitely borrow a quirk here and an accent there. For example, I used to know a guy whose appetite for life was truly impressive, and I tried to give that quality to Fat Tommy in Shooting Dr. Jack.

Jon) What did you do before starting to write novels?

Norm) I did a lot of things. I worked on construction jobs as a welder and pipefitter, I was a project engineer for a food processing equipment manufacturer, I was a plant engineer for a while. I also owned a couple of businesses.

Jon) Being a new author on the scene, was it strange to go to your first signing events?

Norm) The first book signing I did was wild, because my wife invited all of my friends, and about seventy-five people showed up and cheered. I’ll tell you, though, all it takes for a book signing to be fun is for one person to show up who is interested and is willing to ask questions.

Jon) What authors do you like to read?

Norm) All of the usual suspects, I guess. I read a lot, and I read a lot of different stuff. I love Lawrence Block and George Pelecanos, and I just finished a great sci-fi novel, ‘Altered Carbon’ by Richard Morgan. How long do you want me to make this list? I like Jefferson Parker, Robert Crais, I just finished ‘Stealing for a Living’ by Naomi Rand. I am currently re-reading Jung’s ‘Undiscovered Self,’ and I’m getting back into Alan Watts.

Jon) I’ve seen a lot of comparisons of your work to other authors work. How would you describe what you write?

Norm) That’s a very hard question for me to answer. I just hope it’s interesting.

Jon) What are your writing habits like? When do you write, do you listen to music while you do it?

Norm) The Puritan who lives inside me would love it if I got up and six in the morning and slaved away for some given time period, but I can’t do it. It’s usually nine-thirty or ten before I can get anything done. My normal goal, when I’m working on a first draft, is a thousand words a day. Sometimes I can do much more that that, but that’s my goal. I can usually work for three or four hours, but I try to quit before I write myself totally dry. That way, I’ve got someplace to start, the next time. I never listen to music when I’m working. I find it too distracting.

Jon) When you get ideas for something , or when something pops into your head, do you take notes?

Norm) Absolutely. New ideas are everywhere, but if I don’t write them down, I forget them. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with some brainstorm, and I get up and go write it down on the blackboard next to my desk. Plus, I read a lot of newspapers, and when I read something or see a picture that intrigues me, I’ll cut it out. I have a bunch of folders full of that kind of stuff.

Jon) In New York are there a lot of people who like to act like they are connected?

Norm) I personally don’t know anybody that does that any more. The bloom is kind of off the rose with that whole mafia thing, I think. Back in the sixties and seventies, those guys were sort of romanticized in the press and in popular fiction, but over the last twenty or so years, we’ve heard too many of the ugly details of that lifestyle. Plus, law enforcement has made great strides, both in undercover work and in the technology they use to put people in jail. These days, if you choose a life of crime, you have to accept the fact that you’re going to do some heavy time before it’s all over.

Jon) Are people you know surprised to find out that you’ve become an author?

Norm) Well, nobody actually said, ‘How did a moron like you actually get published?’, but I think a few people were a little surprised. Including me.

Jon) When you are writing, do you let the book carry you to where it wants to go, or do you have a pretty defined idea what’s going to take place before you write?

Norm) So far, I’ve started each book with what I thought was a strong character, a good locale for the story, and a kind of general idea of what was going to happen. In each case, I’ve gotten about a hundred or so pages into the story and then reached the point where I had to stop and figure out what the book was trying to be, and how everything was going to work. And even then, the finished product turned out to be something different than I thought it was going to be.

Jon) When I’m reading a good book, the story and characters stay with me while I’m reading. I’ll be at work and find myself thinking about Fat Tommy or Tuco. Does this happen while you are writing?

Norm) Oh, sure. Fat Tommy and Tuco were both very real to me while I was writing about them. It’s almost as though I spent a certain amount of time in their company, and then I moved on. I miss them, in a way, I know they are fictional but I still wonder what they’re doing these days.

Jon) What are you working on now?

Norm) Right now I’m finishing up what I hope will be the final draft of my third book. The current title is ‘The Birdwatcher.’ It’s about a twenty-eight year old guy from Brooklyn who grew up on the streets. When he gets out of prison for the second time, he decides to steal his five-year-old son out of foster care and run away. The two of them go up to the coast of Maine, where the culture is as different from NYC’s conspicuous consumerism as you can imagine. It’s a story about running away, and about facing up.

Jon) What’s your favorite line from a movie?

Norm) Heard this one in a Nissan commercial last night: 'Nothing's over until we say it is.' That was John Belushi in 'Animal House.'

Jon) Is there anything you are afraid of? I mean like white knuckle get me away afraid of?

Norm) Bears. I remember visiting my grandfather's house when I was a little kid, he lived up in Canada, no indoor plumbing. The outhouse was down behind his house, back just inside the tree line, and if I had to go, I would stand by the back porch waiting and listening to the night noises until the biological imperative overpowered my fear, and then I would run for it. I still get nightmares about bears chasing me back to that house.

Jon) What would be a perfect weekend for you?

Norm) My wife and I are staying at my buddy's house, up on top of the mountain at Tahoe. There's three feet of fresh pow, the approach road is closed, but the lifts are running and one is within walking distance... Oh, man. Excuse me, I gotta go check on season ticket prices.

Okay, I'm back.

Jon) Hollywood want to film The Norman Green story and you get to cast it. Who would be in it?

Norm) William Hurt in the lead, Demi Moore plays my wife. They could hold a casting call down by the Sanitation Garage in the Bronx for all the other parts.

Jon) Now that you have two books under your belt and are touring for them, any surprises that you were not expecting?

Norm) The whole experience has been a surprise, to tell you the truth. All I knew about it was me, sitting alone in a room with a pen and a legal pad. All the rest of it was unexpected. Of all the horror stories I heard, not one happened to me. All of the people I have dealt with, from my editor at HarperCollins to my agent, to the people in the bookstores everywhere I've gone, have been terrific.

Jon) Any plans to hit any of the conventions?

Norm) I'm just finding out about these things. I'm probably going to join MWA (Muthas With Attitude? Mass Weapons of Angola?) and go to their convention.

Jon) Knowing what you now know about life, if you could go back and make some changes in your own life, would you?

Norm) That's really tempting, because there's plenty of things I could have done better. The problem is, if you change one thing, you change everything. If I had made better choices as a teen-ager, for example, who knows where I would be now? I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out, but I probably needed to go through all of those negative experiences to get where I am now. So I guess the answer is no.

Jon) What's always in your refrigerator? Norm) Frank's Hot Sauce.