RARA-AVIS: D. Daniel Judson - question for Gary

From: Gary ( piesbook@execpc.com)
Date: 19 May 2003


> Gary, I have a question about this. I haven't seen that June/July
> Mystery News, so am unable to look it up myself. Was that bit about
> writing the series backwards something that came up in the interview?

Here is what Judson said:

"Mac's life story, from birth to old age, is all mapped out, mainly in my head, though more and more of it these days is making its way into notebooks I keep locked up day and night in a fire safe. But I didn't want to write an epic Dickensean story, that David Copperfield crap, as Holden Caulfield would say. I made two attempts at Mac novels prior to BONE, but they weren't very good. They were short and grossly underdeveloped, but I knew I was onto something. They were really exercises in tone and voice. I wrote them too quickly and none of them sold, thankfully. So one day I just bucked down and started to work on BONE. I worked on it for over two years, shaping it and reshaping, taking my time. I finally hit my stride somewhere in the process of writing it. So, yes, I had something to work from when I wrote BONE, and it was both on paper, in part at least, and in my head."

Here was his take on noir:

"Growing up I used to watch classic movies with my mother. It was our bond. Even if we didn't watch them together, I used make a point of seeking out the movies I knew she liked and studying them. I remember loving the solitary, existential characters that Bogart played, once he got bumped up out of the B movies he started out in. They obviously stuck with me over the years, stayed in my head and shaped the way I approach storytelling. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is burned into my memory. Shadowy men working together and against each other, fighting each other and their own conflicting natures, all at the same time. It just doesn't get better than that."

And, he said he was working on a sequel to BONE, so he is going forward. This question the other day about why would we want to read about a character's childhood is answered here if you have read the series. There is a significant event in this character's young life that would make fascinating reading.

Best, GWN Gary Warren Niebuhr P. O. Box 341218 Milwaukee, WI 53234 piesbook@execpc.com http://my.execpc.com/~piesbook/piescatalog.html

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