He's new, he's fresh, his novel cherry doesn't get popped till the fall, so when we got out the rubber hoses,
Grant McKenzie caved and went straight to the top, gave up the boss of bosses:
As a writer, every book I read is an influence. From the brilliant ones, I learn pacing, characterization, dialogue, etc. From the bad ones, I try to learn not to make the same mistakes.
In high school, I became obsessed with Mickey Spillane. While the rest of my peers were busy comparing notes on JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, I had stumbled onto a copy of I, The Jury (probably on the library's list of banned books, which is where I found most of my favourite novels) and was scouring every used bookstore I could find for a complete collection of Spillane's hard-boiled paperbacks. Dog-eared, soiled, I didn't care. It was all about the stories. I read every Mike Hammer mystery in sequential order, relishing my time spent with hard-as-nails Hammer, the voluptuous and equally-deadly Velda, and best bud and voice of reason Pat. Sure, when you binge like that you're bound to spot all the ways that Mickey basically told the same story over and over, and the reveal of the villain never quite takes you by surprise anymore, but, man, did he know how to tell it well. Spillane always started with a bang, kept the punches and bullets flying and delivered characters that you really cared about. Broke my heart, along with Hammer's, when Velda vanished for a few novels. That he also wrote tough-guy dialogue with all the poetry of a Tom Waits song, so much the better.
One of my writing goals was always to co-author an idea I had for a Mike Hammer novel with the master himself. Unfortunately, my journey as a writer is just now entering the starting blocks, while Mickey's legacy is entering the history books. But in this wonderful world of fiction, the possibility still exists, so who knows, maybe one day.
Wikipedia has a whole lot of
quotes by Mickey Spillane, including:
Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.
Now there's a guy who knows what he's talking about.
So does Grant. His short stories have appeared in
Spinetingler Magazine,
Out of the Gutter 2 and
The Late Late Show.
His first novel
Switch will be published in October, 2008.
Grant's bio:
Born in Scotland, living in Canada and writing American fiction, I like to cover all the bases. My debut novel, Switch, will be published in mass-market paperback by Bantam TransWorld UK in October, 2008. My short stories have been featured in Out of the Gutter and Spinetingler magazines and my first screenplay won a 2007 fellowship at the Praxis Centre for Screenwriting in Vancouver, B.C. As a journalist, I have worked in virtually every area of the newspaper business from the late-night “Dead Body Beat” at a feisty daily tabloid to senior copy/design editor at two of Canada’s largest broadsheets. In between regular newspaper gigs, I have also contributed technology/humour columns to various magazines around the world. I currently reside on British Columbia’s beautiful Sunshine Coast with my wife and teenage daughter.
