The Robert R. McCammon Interview
by Hunter Goatley
Editor's note: This interview was conducted January 28, 1989, at
Rick McCammon's home in Birmingham. Armed with a borrowed tape
recorder (it belonged to the boyfriend of a friend of Sally's)
that didn't pick up voices from very far away and my list of
stupid questions, the following conversation took place.
Reference is made to several "future projects" that are no
longer "future" because of my delays in publishing this
newsletter. With that in mind, let's begin...
Q: Welcome, Rick!
A: THANKS!
Q: What are you currently working on? What's the title of your
work-in-progress?
A: It's called The Address and it's set in Hollywood
from 1919 to 1991. It's about a house in Hollywood and the
people who lived there from 1919 to 1991.
Q: Sounds interesting.
A: I hope it'll be. [Shouts into the decrepit tape recorder]
I HOPE IT'LL BE!
Q: Do you have any idea when it might be out?
A: In 1990, I guess. There's The Wolf's Hour in
March, Blue World in October, so I guess this will be out
the following May or June.
Q: I read about They Still Thirst in The
Horror Show a couple of years ago. Has that been totally
abandoned, or...
A: [laughs] No, I was really never planning on doing
that; it was fun to just play around with. I played around with
it mentally. At some point I may do it, but I've got other
ideas, things I'd rather work on right now than go back to things
from the past. They Thirst is pretty much in the past.
Q: It sounded great.
A: Well, you know, you could do a lot of things [with
it]. As a matter of fact, there was a person who was working on
a sequel, but it didn't work out. I thought about it, but...
We'll see; it might be fun to do sometime.
Q: Let's talk about film adaptations. Do you have
anything coming up? Of course, there was "Makeup" on
Darkroom and "Nightcrawlers" on The Twilight
Zone.
A: Well, it's not a film adaptation, but I've got a
dramatic adaptation, or rather a dramatic reading of some stuff
from Blue World. It's going to be coming out I guess next
year some time. William Windom has read some stories from it.
It's going to be on Simon and Schuster Audio. That's kind of a
first for me; I've never had anything like that yet. I think
there are two cassettes; each runs about 90 minutes. That should
be pretty interesting.
As far as dramatic movies and stuff, I don't know. I guess there
are some things working; I have some things optioned, but we'll
just have to wait and see what's going to happen.
Q: Will the audio tapes for Blue World consist of
all the stories or just some of them? [Editor's note:
Nightcrawlers: Stories from Blue World consists of
"Nightcrawlers," "Yellowjacket Summer, and "Night Calls
the Green Falcon."]
A: I think there are some of them. I'm very excited
about that book because there are some new stories that have
never been published and also the novellette "Blue World" is
one that's never been published. "Blue World" is different
[from my other stuff] because it's more a psychological piece.
It's about a Catholic priest in San Francisco who becomes
obsessed with a porno star being stalked by someone. I'm excited
about it, because it's different.
Q: Didn't you write "Blue World" in about a week?
A: Yeah, how did you know about that?
Q: Other interviews.
A: Really? Yeah, I wrote it in about a week. That's the
fastest I've ever done anything and it's like 140 pages. I was
very excited about it and it just went...
Q: How long does it usually take you to write a book?
A: It takes about 9 months; that's writing, research, the
whole thing. You may have been thinking about a book, getting it
together in your mind, for months, but it takes about 9 months
when you start doing research. You can be thinking about a book
years before you start writing it. You just have a sense, or you
hope you have a sense, when you're ready to write a particular
book. For instance, The Lady. I started that; I wasn't
ready to do it because it's a different experience. It's really
not that complicated, but it's told in first person viewpoint of
a black woman who's like 120 years old. I just wasn't ready to do
that yet. I think you know when it's time, when it's right to do
things. I started Swan Song years ago and put it aside
because I wasn't ready to do it. Things kind of happen in their
own time.
Q: When you write, do you do complete rewrites of anything, or...
A: No, because of the [computer] system I work on. It is
very helpful in terms of editing on screen as I go, so I can edit
on the screen, and then have an edited page rather than a
type-written page, so it makes it go a lot faster.
Q: You usually work from 11 PM to 4 AM, is that true?
A: Yeah. [But] I've found when I'm nearing the end of my
writing, I work in the day, too, so I kind of go into a double
shift.
Q: Let's talk about your books. Do you have a favorite
among your own works?
A: I've been asked that before and I've said, "Well, the
book I've just finished is my favorite." I really did enjoy
working on The Wolf's Hour. That was the most fun.
Stinger was the most difficult. [The books] have
personalities in a way. Swan Song was the most
satisfying, but the one I enjoyed doing the most—there's a lot
in the book, and I'm very proud of it—is Mystery Walk.
And maybe because it's set in the South. It seems to me to be
real; the people seemed real and remain real, and I'm very
satisfied with how they turned out.
Q: I discovered you from They Thirst, but
Mystery Walk was the one that made me want to find
everything else you had done.
A: I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I know, like
we were saying, there are things in it that I look back on and
kind of cringe and think, "Why did I do that?" But basically,
I'm very pleased how that turned out.
Q: Was there any kind of inspiration for Mystery
Walk? Anything from your experiences that you drew upon when
writing it?
A: I used to go into that area as a kid with a boyhood
friend of mine whose grandparents had a farm there. It just
seemed kind of a bleak and atmospheric area. I don't know
exactly how I developed the plot. I don't really know where that
came from, and I don't exactly know how he became an Indian, but
I know the atmosphere—the background—is authentic.
Particularly in that book, because those are all places that I
saw and bits of people here and there that I knew as a kid. That
seems to be a very authentic book, from my experience.
Q: Obviously, there is a part of you in all of your
characters.
A: Yeah.
Q: Are there any characters that come to mind as being
very autobiographical? For instance, I was re-reading just this
morning Usher's Passing where Rix Usher worked at all of
these jobs that you did, writing ad copy, working at a B. Dalton.
A: Yes, that's right. Rix is a very autobiographical
person. I was raised by my grandparents, who are very wealthy.
You know, there's a price that you have to pay—no matter who
you are—there's a price that you have to pay for growing up.
You're expected to be perfect, you're expected to do this, that,
and the other. My grandfather wanted me to go into the furniture
business; he owned a furniture company. They wanted me to have
their house; they have a big house that is kind of dilapidated
now, kind of fallen to pieces, but they don't see it that way.
They still see it as being huge. It was built in the 1930s. My
grandfather had one of the first department stores in Alabama; he
owned Dauphin Island, down near Mobile. He kind of had a plan
for me. He wanted me to go into the furniture business; he wanted
me to keep the house as it was, as it is. And there comes a
point when you have all of these things that you want, and still
you've got to determine to make your own way. I had everything I
could possibly want as a kid. I wanted a bike, I got a bike --
whatever I wanted, that was fine. But, yet, you have all of these
things and the time comes where it's like, "We've given you all
of these things, and now we want you to be this person." And
there comes a point where you have to say to yourself, "I don't
want to be that person." You want to be somebody that you
envisioned yourself.
Q: You were expected to pay them back.
A: Yeah, you were in a situation where you were expected
to pay them back and you didn't realize that you were paid to do
something that was in the future. So when I first started
writing, my grandfather said that that was nothing but a hobby, I
shouldn't ever expect to make a living as a writer. I should
basically do what he wanted me to do.
Q: Was there a time after Baal was published that
you wondered the same thing? Or, after making that sale, did you
feel pretty confident that you could keep it up?
A: Well, there was a time when I almost tried to do
something else, while I was trying to finish Usher's
Passing, because I didn't feel my career was going anywhere.
I'd been working for a long time, and the work does get harder.
It really does get harder. Because the craft of it gets easier,
you know what you do, you know how to do it, but the stories get
more complicated. The stories get more real and the characters
get more real, so it's more difficult in that regard. After
Usher's Passing, my career was not going very well. I
felt I was doing good work, but my work didn't sell very well.
So I was thinking, "What else can I do?" and I determined that
there was nothing else that I could do. That was kind of a
turning point when I realized there was nothing else I
could do. I said, "Well, I'm in this for better or
worse..."
Q: Could you tell me a little more about what it was like
to write Swan Song? Did it come easily to you?
A: It really did. In every book I have signpost scenes.
I have a scene in the beginning, middle, and end, and other parts
along the way. By the signpost scenes, I know where I'm going,
which direction I'm going. But it was pretty easy to write. It
wasn't like I was struggling to get characters together; it moved
by itself. I guess that sounds ghostly or mysterious, but I
don't mean it that way. The hardest one was Stinger.
That one almost drove me crazy, it was tough. It was set in 24
hours, and I had to have all the characters at a particular place
at the end. The first time I wrote through it, I didn't have
Sarge where he needed to be. I had to go back 160 pages or so to
start him moving in the direction he needed to be. It's the kind
of thing where you write and write and write and you realize that
you've screwed up, you haven't gotten the character where he
needs to be, something is messed up and you can't figure it out.
You just kind of lay your head on the typewriter and you sit
there (I don't know how long I sat there), and the awful thing is
that nobody is going to do it for you, you know? Your mother is
not going to come and do it for you [laughs]. You've got to
eventually get up and put in another piece of paper, and start
back 160, 200 pages back where you screwed up and start again.
Such is life! [laughs]
Q: I understand They Thirst started out set in
Chicago.
A: It did.
Q: And you got about 200 pages into it and it just...
A: It didn't. I wanted a place with a larger sense of
motion. It was set in Chicago in the winter, when it was cold
and frozen, you know, there was no motion. Everything was frozen
solid, so I needed a place where there were a lot of characters
and a lot of movement and interaction.
Q: I said earlier, They Thirst was the first book
of yours I read (I was attracted by the cover art; you know, a
vampire novel!). It has the distinction of being the only horror
novel I've read that spawned a nightmare for me. It was another
of those "everybody's a vampire but me."
A: Oh, yeah. Somebody called me after reading that and
said, in hushed tones, "Are there... are there really
vampires?" He was serious! So evidently it sparked it in his
mind that there might really be vampires.
Q: The way it was presented, it was very believable in
how quickly they could take over.
A: There was something that somebody pointed out about
that book, that these things could be going on in Los Angeles and
Hollywood and you would not know it; you would not know that it
was going on. There was a story that stuck with me. This
runaway girl was talking about where she went in Hollywood. She
lived in one of these old, dilapidated hotels in Hollywood. It
was a rent hotel and she lived with other runaways on the second
floor. She said that they got along OK, they were fine, they had
plenty to eat and everything, but she said there were some men
who lived in the basement, who lived down there in the dark. She
said she didn't want to go down to the basement, because they
were real strange. I read that, or heard that somewhere, before
I started the book, and it stuck with me. Things go on there
that you probably wouldn't know about. So much could go on there
that could go unnoticed. I think that's probably true of The
Address, too... Things go on that go unnoticed.
Q: Did you ever have any problem getting into some of the
characters that are so radically different from you, like Kobra
or Roach or Stinger?
A: No, not really. I don't know why, but it's not hard
to get nasty. It's not hard to think nasty, I guess.
Q: It has that effect when reading it. You're always
able to put yourself in the hero's place, but with your stuff,
more than most people's, it's easy to feel like the bad guy, too.
A: It's never that hard to put myself in that position.
You mentioned a while ago that there's a part of me in all
characters, that a part of the writer is in all characters.
That's certainly true, whether the character is vicious, or the
good guy; you're really part of them. I do believe it's true
that a horror writer is able to live out his... his... I won't
say compulsions... his... wonderments... you know, how would
you kill someone? A horror writer, better than most, is able to
act that out, think it out, fantasize it out on paper. Everybody
says, "Boy, you sure did a good job," and they pay you for it.
You did a good job, and you were wondering what it would be
like...
Q: Well, it's good you can get it out that way...
A: Yeah!
Q: What can you tell me about the limited edition of
Swan Song?
A: I hear that it's going to be out this summer. It's an
illustrated version. I'm very excited about it. It should be a
real quality production. I don't know what the art is going to
look like or anything. It sounds good.
Q: I was a little bit disappointed that Swan Song
was a paperback original. It was so good, I wanted something a
bit more permanent.
A: I'm glad it's working out this way. It's going to
look good, and it's going to last awhile.
Q: Does it bother you that your books come out in
paperback first?
A: A book like Swan Song would be so expensive
that people couldn't afford it. Also, unless you're a big name,
it's very hard to sell hardbacks. I want my books to be read by
the largest number of people. In that regard, I'm glad that
they're paperbacks and people can afford them.
Q: Let's talk a little bit about short stories. Was it
hard for you to do short stories in the beginning?
A: I started out doing short stories in college, but I
couldn't get anything published. I'd send my short stories out
and they'd all come back rejected, so I never thought I was a
very good short story writer because the first novel I wrote was
published. "Makeup" was my first published short story.
Somebody asked me to do a short story for this book and I did it.
Now I try to write short stories in between books. I try to get
a stockpile of them, but if somebody has a theme book or
something, and they ask me to do something, and I think it's
interesting... Sometimes you just don't have a good idea for a
short story. Then I've got two short stories upstairs that I
haven't finished. One's called "Dark Eye," the other's called
"The Night I Killed the King," about a guy who finds the real
Elvis Presley and tries to kill him, because he's an Elvis
Presley impersonator (I'll never finish the story, that's why I'm
telling you about it). He's an Elvis Presley impersonator and
he's found that Elvis is alive, so he decides to go kill him,
because he knows that when people find that Elvis is still alive,
all Elvis impersonators are out of jobs! [laughs] I'll never
finish the story! I say that because it's not that easy.
Sometimes you're writing a story and, smack!, you hit the wall!
It's like, "Where do I go from here?!?" You don't know where
to go... But I do tie short stories into books.
Q: What do you have new that's coming out?
A: I have a story in a book called The Book of the
Dead; it's called "Eat Me." I've done other short stories
over the past few months, but I've forgotten what books they're
in. I did one called "Lizard Man" and I've done a couple of
others, but... [laughs] Like I said, I have some short stories
in the Blue World book: "Something Passed By," "Pin"
is different, "Chico" is another one that's different. I have
one called "Haunted World" in a book called Post Mortem.
It's about a world, our world, in which all the people who ever
died start coming back to life. All the years, all the
generations and ages, come back to life at the same time. It's
total chaos. [laughs] It's funny, but then again, hopefully
it's kind of serious, too. I don't know when either book is
coming out. I enjoy short stories, but they can be tough to do.
Q: I know you don't read a whole lot in the genre, but
who, or what, do you read?
A: Well, I read Joe [Lansdale's] stuff, Peter Straub,
Thomas Harris... What can you say, really? It's hard to just
pick authors out of the air. I like Clive [Barker's] work.
Mostly I read biographies and histories. I get a lot of
manuscripts to read. I have one now that looks pretty
interesting; it's a vampire novel. These are just manuscripts
that the publishers send.
Q: To get quotes from you?
A: Yeah. I don't know how much that helps. It helped
me! Thank God Dean [Koontz] and John Saul read Swan Song!
It really helped me! Thank God they didn't say, "I really hate
to do this and I'm not going to do this!" So I better not say
anything...
Q: What about the cover art for your novels, from the old
Avon covers to the new reissues to the British editions. Have
you been happy with the cover art? And do you have much say in
what's done?
A: I have more say now than I did. Again, that's one of
those things where you're never going to be totally satisfied.
I've never been satisfied, though some of the British covers
come close.
[Tape change]
Q: Let's talk about hope at the end of your novels.
They Thirst is one that has almost no hope until the very
end and I've found that it's too powerful for some people. When
I read Cujo by Stephen King, I felt ripped off that the
kid died. I'm sure that that was realistic, but I felt ripped
off that I struggled with them through 300 or 400 pages and the
kid died...
A: I like to have somebody to root for. That may be
old-fashioned, it may be unrealistic, but, man, I'm tired of dark
all the time. I don't think something has to be dark all the
time. I can get hot about that! [laughs]
Q: That's a problem I have reading some of the older
stuff, Poe and Lovecraft; I like Poe, I don't care for
Lovecraft, but both are very dark, gloomy... I feel like crap
after reading them.
A: Yeah. I'm trying to work more humor in. I think
there's more humor in The Wolf's Hour.
Q: Stinger was full of it.
A: I hope so. It's kind of difficult to put humor in
sometimes. I just do not like dark, dark upon dark, and more
dark, without hope. I don't see the point of traveling with
people if you feel there's no destination.
Q: It's not fun.
A: No, it's not fun. It doesn't take you anywhere. And
there are some who will say, "Yes, it does take you somewhere:
it shows you how decrepit and how cruel, cruel this world is!"
And I'm sure that's true, it is a cruel, cruel world, but I don't
want to be a part of saying, "Yes, it is a cruel, cruel world."
They'll say, "That's fine. That's the way it ought to be." I
don't think that's the way it ought to be at all. And I want to
say that's not the way it ought to be.
Q: I think Swan Song got the message across well:
even after a nuclear war, there's still hope...
A: There is hope if you can somehow get rid of a person's
greed for power, which really doesn't mean anything. Everybody
wants more of what they have more of. It seems to me that if you
get rid of that and you get people working together, maybe that
sounds corny, maybe it is corny, but if you get people working
together, things get done.
Q: We were talking earlier today about comic books.
[Your story] "Night Calls the Green Falcon," which blew me
away: was that influenced any by the comic series The
Watchmen? Did you read The Watchmen?
A: No, I haven't read The Watchmen, but it is
influenced by all the comics I used to read as a kid. And it's
influenced by all of the serials that I used to go to when I was
a kid, the Batman serials, Zorro—those were great.
Q: I loved the story. The whole thing, the serial killer,
the serial chapters, the serial star...
A: You know, it's funny. Somebody said, "This is
interesting how McCammon did this. This guy used to be in the
serials and then there was a serial killer." And I sat there
and thought, "I didn't even think of that!"
Q: Really?
A: Really. I didn't even think about the idea that there
was a serial killer and this guy was in the serials. I didn't
even think about it until someone pointed it out.
Q: We were talking about a favorite among your own works.
Do you have a favorite short story that you've done? Or is that
too hard to decide?
A: Well, there are two that I really like that I guess
could be my favorite two. One is "Something Passed By." I'm
excited about that, because it's got other horror writers' names
in it. Everybody I could think of came together. And I'm also
excited about "Haunted World." Neither of those are out yet,
but...
Q: I liked "Makeup," although it was slaughtered on the
TV show Darkroom. The story itself had a Robert Bloch
ending, a Twilight Zone ending to it.
A: Well, the dramatization changed everything about the
story, down to the minor characters' names, for some reason. I
could just see a big table full of people saying, "I don't think
this guy's name should be Joe; his name should be Red. Don't you
think his name should be Red?" (laughs) "No, I think his name
should be Mr. Green. And I'll fight to the death to see his name
changed to Mr. Green!" I can just see that. I don't know why
that should be so.
Q: Were you pleased with The Twilight Zone
adaptation of "Nightcrawlers?"
A: Yeah, they did a good job, and I was excited about
how it turned out. When I sat down to watch "Makeup," I was
scared because this was my first thing on TV. And then after it
was on a few minutes, I wasn't frightened anymore because it
wasn't my work. It didn't have anything to do with me or what I
had written. I was kind of waiting in trepidation to see what
The Twilight Zone would do; I wasn't committing myself
emotionally, whether I should be nervous or excited. But they
did a good job.
Q: I liked your short story "Best Friends."
A: Well, that was different. I wrote that specifically
to try my hand at more graphic horror. I wanted to do something
more strictly horror because I figured people would enjoy reading
that kind of horror—die-hard horror fans [would]. So I figured
I'd go ahead and try something that was just outright horror.
Q: Horror Writers of America (HWA) is a relatively new
organization. Didn't you start HWA?
A: The idea. Other people did the work, really put it
together.
Q: Are you still active in it? Weren't you the editor
for the first year's newsletter?
A: No, just the first two issues. I'm active in that I'm
on the Board, whatever that means. I don't really have to be
active in it anymore because it's gotten off to a good start.
Dean [Koontz] and Charlie Grant... Dean worked so hard on it, he
got such a good foundation, that it's going to run itself. It's
strange to think that it's really happened. But it has happened.
It was amazing to go to that convention in New York and see all
of those people there, people who were happy in being part of the
group.
I've heard it said that there were some politics involved, this,
that, and the other. I hope that doesn't happen, I think that's
a bunch of bullshit that doesn't need to be there. It may be
that wherever people gather there's going to be politics and
those kinds of things, but I hope that doesn't get into the
organization. You know, who knows this person better, who likes
this person better; that doesn't need to be there. There were a
lot of very pleased and happy people there, happy to be part of a
group or community, and that's very exciting. I'm very glad it's
worked out so well.
I think there are great things ahead for it, too. I think there
are a lot of things in the future, the bringing together of
American and European horror writers and bringing the work of
European horror writers to American readers, it's going to help
with that. There are a lot of things left to be done... I hope
there'll be an HWA anthology soon. We were hoping to do an HWA
calendar, and some other stuff. I'm hoping that HWA gets tougher
in terms of dealing with publishers, and dealing with agents,
too. That's where the organization can be important—how does
it deal with publishers? how does it deal with people who hold
purse strings?—those things.
Q: Were you surprised that you won the Bram Stoker award
for Best Novel for Swan Song?
A: I knew it was up (of course, I knew it was up!), I
could see the voting, so I was excited about it and I hoped it
worked out. I was extremely floored about "The Deep End,"
which won Best Short Story. I thought I had a pretty good chance
to win with Swan Song because I could see how the voting
was going in the newsletter, but I had no idea about "The Deep
End." It took me by surprise.
Q: What other awards have you gotten?
A: Usher's Passing won an award here for Best Book
of the Year for 1984 from the Library Association, which was
neat, because it was the first time a horror novel had won.
Q: Things have been nominated for World Fantasy Awards,
Swan Song...
A: Swan Song was [nominated], "Best Friends" was
[nominated], "Nightcrawlers" was nominated. Awards don't...
[struggles with how to say this] If you're proud and pleased
with what you've done, if you feel you've done a good job and the
best job you can do, that's, you know, that's it. You can't do
any better. So whether somebody... And, gee, there are so many
good books out there, really, really good books, and people doing
the very best they can do, only one can win an award.
Of all the things that people in HWA seem to get fired up about,
it's the awards. I hope it doesn't turn into just an awards
ceremony. To me, awards are fine, they're fine for ego. But you
know whether you've done a good job or not; nobody has to tell
you whether you've done a good job or not. You don't have to
tell somebody else that they've done a good job. And again,
there are so many good books out every year, that just saying,
"Well, this person did a good job and he did a better job than
this person here..." How can you do that? But I guess it's
just a measure of our society; we need to have some sort of
criteria.
What was really neat, though, about HWA is that some people
earned awards who I don't think had ever won anything, in terms
of the World Fantasy context. And they were so thrilled at being
recognized that it would break your heart. They worked long and
hard and were so thrilled to be recognized, it just meant
everything to them.
Q: A little more personal history. How did you meet your
wife, Sally?
A: I met her at a B. Dalton bookstore where she was
working. She was teaching first grade and working there at
night. I was working at a B. Dalton bookstore, not the same one,
but one of my first jobs was working there. So we met and I
asked her out. Our second date was to see, on Halloween, "The
Innocents" or something like that, and an old movie, silent
film, where everybody looks like they used to sit in a flour
factory, everybody's walking around with flour all over their
faces... Strange movie. That was our second date. [Calls for
Sally] Sally, how long have we been married?
Sally: 7 1/2 years.
Rick: 1981. [Calls] Thank you. [laughs]
Sally: I'll remind you in August about it again. Our anniversary?
A: Right, right. Sally taught third grade for three
years and first grade for seven years, and I worked at a
newspaper as a copy editor, I worked at a department store in
their advertising department, and I worked at B. Dalton
bookstore.
Q: And became a writer.
A: And became a writer. Again, that was a period of
feeling kind of caged or trapped, because I wanted to be a
reporter and I was working at the newspaper with this guy. I
asked him, "What are my chances of becoming a reporter?" I was
working at the copy desk, copy editing stuff, and he said (he
didn't like me for some reason) that they didn't work like that,
they didn't promote people from the copy desk. If they needed
reporters, they hired reporters from outside. And he said as long
as he worked in that place, I would never be a reporter. I don't
know why he said that; he just did not like me for some reason.
But really, he said as long as he worked in that building, I
would not be a reporter.
Q: I'll bet that made you feel good.
A: Oh. I'd done some work (this was the Birmingham
Post-Herald, the Birmingham News is the afternoon
paper), so I'd done some work for the Birmingham News as a
freelance reporter and I went to do stories like a rumored
sighting of a Bigfoot-like creature. I spent time at the
homeless missions, freelance stuff like that. But, anyway, this
guy at the Post-Herald said that as long as he was at the
paper, I'd never be a reporter, and it felt like, again, that I
was trapped, because I would be at that copy editing desk if I
didn't do something to get myself out of there. So I started
working on Baal and it worked out.
Q: Were you able to quit working and become a full-time
writer immediately after Baal was published?
A: No, it was a couple of years later.
Q: So after The Night Boat and Bethany's
Sin were out.
A: Yeah. About that same time—1980. I had never
dreamed of being able to make a living writing. What got me:
there was a bookstore near the newspaper. I would go to this
bookstore. They had all of these books, hardback books. And you
know when you open up a book, you smell... I don't know what
that smell is, but that's the most wonderful smell in the world.
To smell that smell of ideas on paper. And I wanted to be part
of that world, if I could possibly be. And the perfect pages. Of
course, nothing is perfect, it's certainly not a perfect world,
but it is a free world. You can construct your own world every
nine months or so. One of the problems that I had working for
other people is that I got bored silly after about 9 or 10
months. So now I can change it, I can shake it up. When I finish
a book, I don't have to do the same exact thing; I can shake it
up and do whatever I want to do. That to me is priceless.
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