Interview with Reed Coleman
March 2003
http://www.reedcoleman.com/

I met Reed last fall in Austin. He is extremely interesting to talk to. His books are every bit as interesting and I think you'll want to find out for yourself after reading this interview.

Jon

1) First things first. Since I’m from Milwaukee, I need to know what the connection you have to this city is, especially since you named a book “They Don’t Play Stickball In Milwaukee” .

In the summer of 1976, two of my friends and myself, piled into a car and came to Summerfest '76 and to visit my oldest brother who was teaching philosophy at UWM (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) at the time. During the visit, I met and fell in love with a waitress at Century Hall, an old bowling alley that had been converted into a bar. She was an artist, dancer and actress attending UWM and grew up on the border of Milwaukee and Wauwatosa. We had a long distance relationship for a few months. After that, I decided to move to Milwaukee to be with her. It was a disastrous mistake and I knew I should have turned right around the second I arrived, but I was a stupid twenty year old and had too much pride to admit to the world I goofed. My relationship with my girlfriend completely disintegrated and became rather destructive. Yet in spite of that, I grew to have an abiding affection for Milwaukee itself. I worked at Eastside Foods and the Ihop on Oakland Avenue. People were very accepting of me and I loved eating at Karl Ratszche's (sorry about the spelling) and the beer and the Milwaukee Bucks. Before I moved back, I lived in a little house a few blocks away from County Stadium. I still can recall my days there with a sad fondness, if that makes any sense. When I see a Usingers label or a can of Point beer, I smile. It was also a pivotal time in my life and I decided I was too young to be so unhappy. When I got back to Brooklyn, I set about changing those things about myself which led to my unhappiness.

2) A lot of authors have other jobs. But you have a kind of unusual job for an author. Would you mind explaining what you do and why?

Yes, I drive a home heating oil delivery truck during the winters and owned a part of the company for a while until I signed my recent deal with Viking/Plume. For many years as my kids grew, I was a house dad. I stayed home and wrote and changed diapers and cooked and got the kids to school while my wife worked as a senior occupational therapist for a local school system. This worked for quite some time, but as the kids got older and my writing career stalled some, I found i needed to earn some cash and to clear my head from having been home so much. As a Brooklyn boy, I'd been playing b-ball regularly my whole life. I found an afternoon game at a local park. Most of the participants were guys like me, middle-aged, and just liked playing to keep in shape. One of the regulars, Bob Gloria, heard I was looking for a job. He owned several oil companies and always liked to hire older, responsible people. He taught me how to drive a truck, supplied me with a truck to take my test, etc. So for the last 3/4 years I've been hopping into a Mack truck and delivering oil. I like it. I don't have a boss watching over me. I'm alone with plenty of time to think. It gets me out of the house and it gives me a perfect venue from which to observe people. And, I make a decent amount of money.

3) Your first three books featured Dylan Klein, an insurance investigator. How would you describe Dylan?

My first three books do feature an insurance investigator turned writer named Dylan Klein. Actually, I was teaching myself to write prose and Dylan allowed me to do it. I went to college, at least partly, to study poetry. I had no idea of how to write entertaining fiction-- some might say I still don't! In any case, I took an evening class in detective fiction at Brooklyn college and I was smitten. Of course, I fell deeply in love with the writings of Chandler and Hammett. The Dylan Klein books show me trying to develop my own voice which started out as Chandler's voice. Aim high! Who me? Though in love with the subject, I had only really read Hammett and Chandler. This worked to my benefit because I didn't have a fear of trying to imitate the best. I also got overly ambitious and thought I'd be able to reconcile the sound of the old hard-boiled language with more modern themes. I also had no idea of how to construct a plot nor did I have a sense of what overwriting was. My readers, on the other hand, do. I have great affection for Dylan Klein and for his buddy Johnny MacClough. Johnny is directly based on my close friend tom McDonald, a retired NYPD detective and current employee of the u.s. marshall service. Dylan was more of a wiseass, always with a ready crack, than my current characters. He is an idealized younger me.

4) Your latest book, Walking The Perfect Square, is a departure from your series. It has a former cop as a protagonist who is operating kind of on his own. What’s different about this latest book?

This is by far and a way my most mature work and, self evidently, my best reviewed book to date. Even in the Dylan Klein books, the reader will note my fascination with identity- who are you? Who am I? Who is anyone? Can you really know anyone, even or especially yourself? This is always rattling around in my head. And living in or near a big city like New York, one always reads and hears stories of college students coming into town one night and vanishing. I believe there has been a rash of such cases recently in Wisconsin, if I'm not mistaken. Then there was another such incident and the book appeared in my head as an almost complete novel. I knew from the second I started writing it, how it would proceed and climax. It was far too serious a work to involve Dylan Klein and Moe Prager had been kicking around in my head for years. I wrote two unpublished novels featuring a character much like Moe Prager, named Moe Einstein. That name was just too cute, but that type of character really appealed to me. I like tough, smart characters, but characters with big gaping flaws and self doubts. I also liked the challenge of writing a book where the object of the search is almost entirely absent from that search.

5) Your next book, Redemption Street, also features Moe Prager. I like the idea of a series that seems to be working cold cases. Was this a conscience decision?

Redemption Street is the follow up to walking the perfect square and will appear in 2004 on Viking. it also features Moe Prager. for those of you who don't know, Moe will be looking into the death of seventeen people killed in a fire that happened at an old borscht belt(catskills)hotel in the mid 60s. Two of the girls who perished in that fire were high school classmates of Moe. Actually, this was taken directly from an incident in my life. In the early 70s, 3 girls from my high school were killed in a fire at a catskills hotel. It was my first experience with a tragedy that effected almost everyone around me. It cast a shadow over the entire school and neighborhood. The book gave me the opportunity to work through some of the feelings I've had since that time. But what I particularly like about cold cases is that dust has settled. People have forgotten. The world has moved on. Most of the world, that is. There are always a few people who can never rest, who can never move on. It's always more difficult to explore a cold trail. Some of the evidence is lost, people have died, agendas have changed. I enjoy mixing the old with the new and seeing what I get. But I also resist getting locked into any one pattern. The follow up to Redemption Street, tentatively entitled, No Secrets in Brooklyn, which I'm working on right now, deals with a current case. I hope the readers will find it just as emotionally complex as my other work.

6) You’ve also written poetry. Do you still write it?

My love of the written word started with poetry, but I'm afraid I don't write much of it anymore. I needed to be fiercely inspired to write poetry and found as I mellowed with age that sort of fierceness escaped me. For years I was a co-editor of a poetry magazine called Poetry Bone. If you'd like a back issue, go to my website and email me and I'll let you know how to buy an old issue. also on my website, you'll find some of my poetry. When I went to Brooklyn college in the mid 70s, GINSBERG, LEHMAN AND ASHBERY were on the faculty. Any chip I had on my shoulder was quickly ground into dust. I still love good poetry but find this new poetry slam stuff obscene. poetry is meant to be about the poetry not the poet.

7) Do you read mystery fiction?

For a while, while I was teaching myself how to write detective fiction, I tried to shy away from other writers' work for fear of repeating their words, phrases and tone.
Now, however, I read detective fiction quite regularly. Since b-con Austin, I've read much of the work of other writers I met. As I said before, I'm an obvious devotee of Chandler and Hammett, but I also love Block's Matthew Scudder and Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse. Most recently I've read Cold Day in Paradise by Steve Hamilton, Red Hook by Gabriel Cohen, Reflecting The Sky by SJ Rozan, Bad To The Bone by Katy Munger, One O'clock Jump by Lise McClendon, Right As Rain by George Pelecanos. I have an abiding affection for hard-boiled stuff.

8) Was this Bouchercon last fall in Austin your first? What was the most memorable part for you?

Austin was my first Bouchercon and I really have to thank Brant Janeway at plume for that. He's the head of publicity for plume and thought it would be really good for me to go and test the waters even though I didn't have any plume product out yet. It was a wonderful experience that i shall never forget. The panel I was on with Don Bruns and Jan Grape was great. The fans and booksellers were categorically charming and respectful. But for the first time in my career I felt a part of a brother and sisterhood. I was basically adopted and shown the ropes by Gabriel Cohen, Katy Munger, Lise McClendon and SJ Rozan. I loved the basketball game-- gee what a surprise! Also, I found people like George Pelecanos and Steve Hamilton to be very approachable. If you want to see what fun it was, go to the tartcity website and click on Katy Munger's report. I am looking greatly forward to Las Vegas.

9)What is the writing process like for you? Do you sit down every day and try to write? Do you take notes? Do you try to get it all out and then go back and rework it? Can I word this enough different ways?

I love being asked this questions at signings because I think process is too often overlooked. Process is an integral piece of the product. I write every week day, leaving weekends for family, leisure and battery recharging. This way when Monday morning comes I can charge right into things. My Mondays often set the tone for the rest of my writing week. I write for 3 to 4 hours a day in the mornings. That's my limit because I am such an intense self-editor, I don't have the energy to do more. As I said previously, I studied poetry writing in college. Poetry is a discipline which requires you to constantly check meter, the look and sound of individual words, how words align, etc. This practice has followed me through to prose. That's why I write on a computer. If I did it long hand I'd never finish a thing.

10) The Website is new. It looks great. What prompted you to get one put up?

I had a website created for several reasons. My 1st 4 hardcovers were published by a small art house, Permanent Press. And I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Marty and Judy at Permanent Press for keeping my career alive and having believed in me. We have since had a falling out of sorts, but I will always be grateful to them. Having said that, Permanent Press did not believe in promoting its works. They relied almost exclusively on reviews and word of mouth to boost sales. I was always responsible for doing my own p.r., arranging for signings, interviews, etc. When I signed with a big house I was determined to do whatever I could to help spread my readership. I was advised by the Plume publicity department that a website would help insure that end. Also, other authors suggested I do it, saying they found it enjoyable and worth the investment. When I got my advance, I bought a new laptop. It was a kind of reinvestment in my career. For the same amount of money, I had a website designed which is just a different kind of reinvestment in my career. Also, I guess, it is a bit of ego on my behalf. It was a reward to myself for having lasted so long and not having given up.

11) Who’s your toughest critic? And do you read all your reviews?

I suppose the pat answer to this question would be myself. And of course, when I'm doing the actual writing itself, that's true. But I rely on my wife Rosanne and my friend Ellen Schare. Rosanne and Ellen are both avid readers. I met Rosanne in a writing class and Ellen is a school librarian. Rosanne is a tough critic and never bullshits me. I've changed whole sections of books based simply on her tone of voice when giving me feedback. Ellen, on the other hand, is a more emotional reader. I know if I've hit the correct emotional notes at the correct time if I pass Ellen's tears test. Now that I've signed with Viking/Plume, I also depend heavily on my agent, Wendy Silbert, and my editors, Trena Keating and Ryan Harbage. They do, after all, have the final say. What I'm not inclined to do, however, is to send my work to fellow writers. Firstly, because until this year I didn't know many. Secondly, because I would feel uncomfortable doing it. It's not the competition thing at all. I just think it changes the nature of a relationship and I value friendship too much to risk it. As far as actual published reviews, I try to keep them at a distance. Because if I take too much to heart the great reviews, I will then have to give credence to the mixed and bad reviews.

12) You've had a really interesting life so far. Any thoughts about doing something non-fiction, or would you rather filter your experiences into your fiction work?

As you know, I still do occasionally write poetry. I have also dabbled in short stories. I have written an as yet unpublished collection of stylized and fictionalized short stories based upon my life in Brooklyn. I call it an automythology. If I ever gain any fame at all, it probably has a shot at getting published. I am working in my spare time on a sci-fi stand alone and I think I might like to take a shot at journalism. However, I think genre writing is really important and undervalued. I find great literature and genre writing completely compatible. Genre writing is exciting, entertaining, informative and unpretentious

13) If you could go back in time and talk with a 18 year old Reed, what would you tell him?

I'd tell my 18 year old self to get a damn haircut. That giant red afro will be embarrassing when your kids see it 20 years later! Actually, I'm not a regretter and try never to say what if to myself about the past. The only things I ever want to take back are those things which have hurt other people. Painful things are crucial for a writer, actually for anyone. Even though my time in Milwaukee was horrible, I used to and continue to use it for my benefit. I guess I might tell my 18 year old self, to enjoy myself a little more, take a few more risks, travel more and be less hard on everyone. God, that sounds like Davy and Goliath, but...

14) What kind of movies do you enjoy? What are some of your favorites that you could see over and over?

I love all sorts of movies, even bad ones. One of my favorite memories was going to a bad film festival in Manhattan which featured they saved Hitler's brain(in a pickle jar, mind you) and Plan 9 From Outer Space. As far as my favorites, the list is long(see my website). Some are: Dr. Strangelove, Clockwork Orange, Annie Hall, The Producers, The Entertainer, The Third Man, Touch of Evil, The Outlaw Josie Wales, Little Big Man, The Godfather, Goodfellas, The Day The Earth Stood Still(klaatu barata nicto)... but I must warn you, people hate going to the movies with me. Even as a kid, plots were transparent to me. Now, it usually takes me about ten to twenty minutes to guess the entire movie. I think it's an occupational hazard. Even in reading, I can guess a plot early on. Maybe that's why I write character driven novels.

15) What’s the strangest experience you’ve ever had?

Ten years ago I received a call that my Father had died and that I had to go to his apartment to wait for the police. It took me about 90 minutes to drive from my house on Long Island to his apartment in Brooklyn. They were a very strange 90 minutes, because I had been waiting for his death for almost 40 years. I went over in my head all that had passed between us and all that had not. He had been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer when I was 4 years old and though they never really discussed it, it was obvious that my parents thought he could die at any moment. My whole childhood was spent waiting for my father to go into the hospital and not come out. I always saw my Dad as wounded, as damaged goods, yet he had survived the pain, the more than twenty operations, amputation, radiation, chemo... he outlived my mom. And when I got to his apartment, there he was, in bed, in his underwear. I'd seen him like this a thousand times before, but this was as different from those thousand other times as different could be because this would be the last time. it was just really strange. I'm not sure I'm doing a very good job of telling you why.

16) You mentioned earlier that you feel part of a brother/sisterhood now. Is it helpful to be able to discuss things with people who are going through the same things you are? I would imagine it’s almost like AA. Common problems and situations.

Yes, since b-con in Austin, the thing that has changed the most for me is that I'm no longer isolated. I've developed friendships with several other detective authors who have sort of adopted me. Though I'm older than some of them and have been publishing for years, I'm still new to the world of MWA and big time publishing. They have provided me with guidance and taught me some of the tricks of the trade. They help me figure out what events are important to attend and which are a waste of time. But most importantly, they help me through the rough spots of publishing. It helps to hear their war stories and how they deal with editors and agents. What is really amazing though, is to hear how similar an experience it is for everyone to write.

17) Do you challenge yourself to make each book a bit better and more complex than the one before it?

I try not to set goals when it comes to writing. I just like sitting down and seeing what comes out. I try not to think of the previous book when I'm writing the next one. Of course I have to take background into account, but I try to look ahead even when I'm looking back. I enjoy the actual physical act of writing. I don't enjoy the planning and goal setting aspects of it. That too much resembles the rest of one's life. I try to let writing be it's own thing. I hope that makes some kind of sense.

18) What has been the coolest day of your life so far to date?

There are about 100 answers to this question. Let me give you a few, there was the time I saw my name in print for the first time when my high school literary magazine came out in my junior year. There was the time my friend Larry and I met the band Squeeze in a bar in Milwaukee and drank with them for several hours. There was the time I re-met my wife after three years on a street corner in Greenwich Village and I recited a stanza of her poetry back to her and she couldn't remember my name. There was the time last December when I went to 7/11 and got an early copy of the Sunday NY Times and saw the review for Walking The Perfect Square. The days both of my kids were born. The list is really long.

19) Do you want me to bring some Usingers Brats and some Point beer to Vegas?

Sure, bring some Usingers brats and knockwurst, some Leininkugel, Point, etc. Anything Milwaukee is cool with me. They may not play stickball there, but they
do plenty of other cool things.

20) What’s the one thing always in your refrigerator?

I do all the cooking in my house, so there are always tons of things in the refrigerator every week. That's an awfully boring answer, I know. Did you expect me to say a shrunken head?