Reed Farrel Coleman

Farewell

With the knowledge that my Moe Prager series was coming to an end with this month’s release of The Hollow Girl, the ninth installment in the series, people have asked me if I will miss Moe. The answer is simple: I don’t know. We haven’t been apart long enough. What I can say is that I don’t miss him yet. Moe and I have spent fifteen years together, about half as much time as my wife and I have been married. That’s a mighty long time to have someone else living in your head. It’s both frightening and wonderful to think about, but I have probably expended more thought, energy, and effort on the fictional Moe Prager than I have on any living human beings other than my wife and two kids. Moe and I have had a wonderful partnership, but not all partnerships last forever. Sometimes, when you try to push partnerships past their logical shelf life, they turn toxic. I wasn’t going to do that with Moe.

 Moe has been wonderful to me. He has given me a vehicle through which to express my views on religion, politics, morality, sports, corruption, hypocrisy, music, love and friendship, truth and lies, romance and sex. Moe has allowed me to paint vivid, if somewhat distorted, pictures of the world I grew up in, of my little corner of Brooklyn, NY. I haven’t physically lived in Brooklyn since 1983, but Moe has allowed me to linger in the Brooklyn I loved and hated, the Brooklyn I left behind but that has never left me behind. It is surely a Brooklyn of the mind. My mind. Moe’s mind. It’s very odd for me now that my daughter Kaitlin lives in Brooklyn. But it’s not my Brooklyn. There was nothing hip or cutting edge about my Brooklyn. To paraphrase something  I wrote in one of the Moe books, my Brooklyn was always the poor relation, the girl in last year’s dress. I never thought I would live to see the day that Parisians would say something was tres Brooklyn as an expression of coolness.

I’ve also been asked what gave me the idea to end the series now. That answer is simple. I never envisioned this as an open-ended series. That’s why I aged Moe throughout. I built the end of the series into its initial conception. Though each book was written organically—I never had a series arc in mind when I wrote Walking the Perfect Square—I knew that I would eventually run out of things to say through Moe. And let’s be real, 65 may be the new 55, but Moe had been through a lot. I could no longer accept a 65 year old man who had just survived a near fatal bout with stomach cancer as a tough guy, hard-boiled PI. And if I couldn’t accept it, how could I expect my readers to accept it. No, when I was writing Hurt Machine, the seventh installment in the series, I was already planning to wrap things up.

It’s my hope that as I move on with my career that readers who have never heard of Moe or readers who have heard of the series, but for some reason have never picked up one of the books, find the time to read the series. I hope people realize that although I won’t be writing anymore Moe books, I will never really leave Moe behind. How could I? Whatever success I have achieved has been largely due to our partnership. Thanks to all of you for your loyal support. I can’t possibly express how much it’s meant to me … I mean, us. 

   

An Interview with Reed Farrel Coleman by Sara J. Henry

Reed Farrel Coleman has published eleven novels—two under his pen name Tony Spinosa—in three series, and the stand-alone Tower co-written with award-winning Irish author Ken Bruen. He’s won the Shamus Award for Best Novel of the Year three times, won the Barry and Anthony, and twice been nominated for the Edgar. He is a co-editor of The Lineup and was the editor of the anthology Hard Boiled Brooklyn. You can reach Reed on his website, Facebook, or Twitter. 

Innocent Monster (Tyrus Books, Oct. 5, 2010) delves into the art world and the life of a young artist “wunderkind” – what took you down this path and what type of research did you do?

I think child prodigies are a fascinating subject. As crazy and dysfunctional as my childhood was, at least I had one. What if you were never allowed to have a childhood? Worse, what if you were your family’s sole source of income? Talk about the child being father to the man. I also saw a documentary on a childhood prodigy artist. It was very well done and Innocent Monster deals, in a fictional way, with many of the questions raised during the documentary. Lastly, my son is an artist and, when he gets out of college, this is the world he’ll be stepping into.  

With this book, you came up with the title first, and built the book around it. Has that happened before, or do you usually come up with your titles later?

I always have a title for my novels before I write them, but I have never had a title so completely influence the book itself. I was just playing with words one day and the two words innocent and monster appeared in my head in juxtaposition. Wow! I was like, now there’s a title I can do something with. I didn’t know then that the title would do something with me.

Why is your main character, Moe Prager, such a terrible swimmer?

Because I’m a terrible swimmer. Moe and I have that in common. I didn’t swim at all until I had kids. Then I learned enough to swim if I had to.

Your five other Moe Prager novels are now available in reprint paperback editions, eBooks, and recorded books through Audible.com. How important are these publication options?

I wish they weren’t important, but they are, especially to younger readers and people who travel a lot. To deny their increasing relevance is to deny the obvious truth of things. I do, however, believe that paper books aren’t going anywhere just yet and that they shall always be a part of the market.  

Some of the characters in Innocent Monster – including a dog – are named after friends of yours. How do they react to this?

The dogs or my friends? :-) My friends think it’s a great honor. It’s also a way for me to pay back some folks in the industry who have been kind to me along the way.

All your Moe books now have been recorded – tell us what that experience has been like.

Luckily, I’ve become pretty friendly with Andy Caploe, the gentleman who performs the Moe books for Audible.com. We spoke early on and he asked me to do something for him I had always previously resisted. He asked me to cast the books. I never tell people who would play Moe in a movie or who would play Mr. Roth or Katy. I want readers to see who they see, not who I see. But Andy explained that it makes it easier for him if he has a particular actor in mind when he voice books. So I gave Andy a cast for each book. The funny thing was his asking me to cast characters I’d forgotten about. Andy would send me an email asking about so and so and there I’d be, sitting at my desk, looking feverishly through my books for that character.

Describe Moe’s perfect meal – what and where. And maybe with whom.

That’s a funny question because I don’t think of Moe in terms of food. I know kosher deli would be his comfort food. But his perfect meal … Thai crispy duck in tamarind sauce comes to mind. A mixed green salad with peanut dressing. Mango ice cream. A nice Santa Barbara Pinot Noir to start. A French cabernet with the duck. Perrier Jouet Champagne with dessert. He would choose to have his meal with Katy, the Katy he fell in love with just after they met.  

You shocked some of your fellow writers recently when you signed onto Twitter – why were they so surprised, and why did you finally take the plunge?

Because I’m a Luddite at heart and I have always felt that my energies should be put into the writing and not the marketing.

When and where will we see Moe again?

Hopefully next year in Moe #7, Hurt Machine

Have you ever considered spinning off some of your characters into their own books, as Michael Robotham has done?

Yes, actually I have. I have toyed with spinning off Carmella Melendez, but I’m not sure there’s any demand for it. I already have a million books in my head to write.

What other projects are on the horizon?

I’m considering doing a few collaborations. I have a short story anthology project about the Holocaust that’s been in the works for years with Busted Flush.And there are several stand-alones I want to write. And I think maybe I’ve got an eighth Moe book in me.

To close, a Reed Farrel Coleman poem:

The Dying Man

His chest heaves.

He shudders.

There’s a red dot,

a dime-sized hole in

the belly of

the dying man.

The dying man has a name

but I don’t know it.

No one helps the dying man.

We want him to ask for help.

We wait for permission.

Simon says help the dying man.

The ambulance comes.

Men poke at the dying man.

The dying man’s chest

does not heave.

His fat body does not shudder.

The dying man stops dying.

He’s the dead man now.

He’s the murdered man now, forever.

The murdered man had a name.

I will never know it.

Reed Farrel Coleman

(originally published in The Lineup, Issue 2)

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Interviewer Sara J. Henry’s first novel, Learning to Swim, will be available from Crown in February 2011. Visit her at www.sarajhenry.com.

Fun Things You Can Discover While Browsing the Blogs (like Reed Farrel Coleman)

One of the things I love best about the blogging world is the wealth of talent I've discovered in the art of storytelling.

We expect great stories from our writers who also blog - that is, after all, what they do so beautifully. But I've discovered great story telling from others as well - some of them are shown right here at my Meanderings and Muses blog roll to your left. I browse these sites almost every day, and it never fails that a couple of them lead me to still more sites. One that always leads me to interesting spots is David McMahon's authorblog. Mr. McMahon is "totally committed to encouraging excellence in others." You'll find interesting, fun items, and be treated to some quite stunning photography.

Today's meanderings through my blog roll found a terrific story told by Reed Farrel Coleman. Ironically, I have just recently discovered Mr. Coleman's Moe Prager series, and am presently reading the third in that series - "The James Deans," which was the winner of the Barry, Shamus and Anthony awards. I'm totally wowed by Mr. Coleman's writing, and have a huge crush of Moe Prager.






My reading has gone through a sea change over the past couple of years, thankfully. Otherwise, I would not know names I'm just now beginning to recognize, read and thoroughly enjoy.

While I've always read a wide range of different types of things, and have never been one to say no to trying a new writer, I have, in the past, given wide berth to what is referred to as "hard boiled crime fiction." I have favorite writers in a wide spectrum of writing - romance, chick lit, horror, and so it goes. I'm a fool for biographies, and short story anthologies. Mysteries, however, have long been my favorite, and I was mostly reading the more traditional mysteries - bending more in favor, perhaps, to the "cozy" rather than the "hard boiled."

I'm finding that to be changing a bit. I'm still firmly in the traditional category, but overly cozy no longer has the appeal it once did. And lo and behold, hard boiled is finding its way into my everyday reading more and more. And so —voilà!— a whole new group of writers to start piling onto my already sagging bookshelves. One of the authors I've discovered during this journey is Ken Bruen. I'm over the moon for Ken Bruen's work. I've read somewhere recently that reviewers are discouraged from using over-worked words such as "lyrical" when writing their review. Good thing I'm not a reviewer, 'cause I can't come up with a word more fitting for Mr. Bruen's work. Heartbreakingly lyrical. That's the best I can do.

Two of my newest discoveries, and favorite writers - Reed Farrel Coleman and Ken Bruen - have collaborated on a book which will be released in September by David Thompson's Busted Flush Press.

Am I excited to hear this?! Well, Boy Howdy - YES, I am!

The name of the book is Tower. And Mr. Coleman tells the fascinating story about how it came to be at the Busted Flush Press Blogspot. You'll love the story. It's a fun tale, and who knows - after reading it, if you're not already familiar with Mr. Coleman's work, you may find you want to gobble up everything else he's written. Just like me.