Tom Pitts Week kind of happened on its own. I mean, I was not scheduling it. Neither was I scheduling Joe Clifford Week (next week). Old reviews, a new Kindle and my family obligation in late July helped the stars to align. So I submitted both guys to this flash interview thing for the occasion, which they were both nice enough to accept.
So that begs the question: who is Tom Pitts?
He is the author of PIGGYBACK and HUSTLE. He is an acquisitions editor for Gutter Books and co-editor of The Flash Fiction Offensive (which has featured some of the best work of yours truly in the past). He is a man who grew up the hard way and who received his education in the streets of San Francisco. * Now without further ado...
Walk us through your ''I gotta do this''
moment, where you sat down and wrote fiction for the first time.
Strange
but true story. Back in the nineties, I
owned a small messenger company and we upgraded the operation with a computer,
thus I had to learn to type. My mind was too drug-addled to be patient with the
learn-to-type programs I found for the PC, so I decided to write a book
instead. Delusions of grandeur, I know. My first effort was a true-crime book about the
fledgling San Francisco organized crime scene. I got bold with some of the
investigative journalism, but due to a leak from the FBI to the media regarding
the case I was researching, my source with the FBI OC unit clammed up. (That’s
another funny story. Having no experience as an investigative journalist, I
decided I’d hit up one of the guys I’d been reading, Bill Roemer. Bill Roemer
was famous as a gangbuster, like a real life Elliot Ness. He’d gone face to
face with Sam Giancana, butted heads with Joe Bonanno, and written several books
about fighting the Mafia. I looked him up in the yellow pages and called him at
home. He was so gracious. “Tom,” he said. “I tell you what, call my old
partner. He’s head of OC at the San Francisco office of the FBI. Tell him
Roemer sent you.” I did, of course, but that’s when I got the kibosh on my
biggest lead. )
I decided then and there I was not a journalist and instead I’d
try writing a novel. Keep in mind I was strung out on heroin, doing speed
daily, keeping up with a 120 milligram-a-day methadone maintenance program, smoking
a lot of pot, and drinking heavily—and I mean heavily. I had no business trying to write a novel. Does the book
still exist? Yes, and although it’s unfinished, it ain’t too bad. I think I may
have to go back in there and finish it one day. Of course now it’d be a period
piece.
What piece of your own writing are you
the most proud of, why is that so and where can we find it?
I’m going to have to go with my new novel,
CALIFORNIA LIBERTINE. Why? Because it’s a natural progression from HUSTLE. It’s
tighter, more layered and textured. I mean, we’re supposed to be always
improving, right? (After I finish the current book, I’m sure it will be my favorite) Where can you
find it? Probably in the submissions box at a bunch of publishers. My agent is
currently shopping it. After that I’m most proud of HUSTLE,
my unsavory crime tale. You can find that at Amazon alongside PIGGYBACK.
What was the single best writing advice
you were ever given? What was the worst?
Best advice? Everything Chuck Wendig says
is right. Worst advice? Everything Chuck Wendig says is right.
Seriously though, Zarina Zabrisky once told me: Do
something every day. Even if it’s a small thing—email a submission, proof-read
a finished piece, nudge a publisher—do something for your writing career each
day and you will reach your goals, even if it’s inch by inch.
Worst? Write a synopsis before you write a novel. Plotting takes the fun out of not
knowing what’s happening next. I have to be careful not to give myself spoilers
in my own work.
Who are the five authors you would
recommend to someone who wants to familiarize himself with what you do?
Shit,
that’s a tough question. I mean, no matter who I list it’ll seem as though I’m
comparing myself with them. It’s not the same as asking who my favorite authors
are. I fear that kind of hubris could backfire on me. If I pick writers too far
up the literary food chain, I think folks might be saying, No, Tom, you’ll
never be Don DeLillo or Cormac McCarthy (and, of course, others will say, Thank
God!)
That
said, I’ve always been envious of Elmore Leonard’s lean and easy style and
often try to emulate it.
And there’s
always Joe Clifford, to whom I am inextricably linked. Joe and I share the same
agent (Liz Kracht at Kimberley Cameron and Associates) and after reading our
last manuscripts, she said we shouldn’t read each other’s work so much. I had
to explain that we hadn’t read the other’s manuscripts. She obviously saw
similarities, but Joe and I think our work is very different, albeit two sides
to the same coin.
The worst
answer is to say I’m unique, that I’m doing something no one else is doing.
Perhaps I’m not well-read enough to know who to compare myself with. When Ken
Bruen blurbed PIGGYBACK he called it a cross between Don Winslow’s SAVAGES and
Christopher Cook’s ROBBERS. Embarrassingly, I hadn’t read either author at the
time.
Let’s
see, who else? I dunno. I think this is a question for readers to answer.
Hardboiled, Crime, Noir, Gun Porn,
Fairies, Whatever. Should genre label matter? Yes or no and why is that so?
I get pigeonholed in the noir box all the
time. When I sit down to write, I don’t have a genre in mind. The fact that I tend
to generate crime tales may be a result of my own troubled past. James Ellroy’s
definition of noir is the only one I see as relevant to my work. The main
character starts out fucked and then things get worse …
I don’t understand why
certain authors get
subjected to the genre treatment and others don’t. Cormac McCarthy for instance.
NO COUTNRY FOR OLD MEN is as good of a crime novel there is, but you never hear
of Cormac being referred to as a crime author, or a western author, or
whatever. Perhaps that’s not the best example, but there are plenty more. Take Stephen
King. He’s been a victim of genre typecasting his whole career. No matter what
he writes, he’s still a horror author.
On the other hand, I understand the need
for marketing. Readers want to know what they’re getting themselves into. It’s
the same with music. Is it punk, or disco, or hip-hop, or what? It’s tough to
sell if you don’t have a label and it’s even tougher to sell to a publisher (or
record company) if they can’t figure out how they’re going to market you.
That being said, whenever I hear that a
work is tough to put into a box, I perk up my ears. It’s the stuff that crosses
over that interests me. Call it my punk rock aesthetic, but I like it when art
breaks the rules.
What are you currently working on and
what can we expect from you in the next year or so?
I’m currently working on a new novel called MEA CULPA. It involves the movie
business and illegal stock trading. Big subjects for a guy that writes mostly
about petty criminals. We’ll see how it pans out. I’m also trying to bang some
dents out of an old novella (well, not that old. I wrote it in 2011.) It’s a
baseball-themed crime story that’s near and dear to me because it’s the first
longer work I completed. During the next year? Hopefully I’ll get that magic
email from my agent to tell me CALIFORNIA LIBERTINE has sold. When that
happens, I’ll be ecstatic for a few days, then sit back down and try to hammer
out the next scene in MEA CULPA. Ain’t no rest for the wicked.
* I totally paraphrased Tom's bio here. In case conspiracy theorists want to cry foul.