A Word on Words; 0926; Steven Womack

it's been or downwards books and their authors this week stephen moore mike talks about this nation forward and words mr johnson singing a murder mystery and real mystery called smash cut that's the name of a book the author steven waldman with of the back door of the word faggot or less every year we you know we were in new orleans then you had created this warrior

hero then now or back in orland soon and he's back with us you really sort of done segal that that was a staple of murphy's law name what i gather he was one of a corrupt unconscionable outrageous human being walking yes he really was and he was the bad guys good guys survive in your book at least until now the attack a good beat but they did survive they did take a beating i mean you know i think everybody in america list is going to put everybody in america got a normal at some point as heard the siren seen flashing light and thought oh my gosh one of the very few others have a pistol on a frosty silence

was that scene i thought when i read that same la times i have software might say this county gets up there it happens in the middle of the night at a time when the hero narrator jack lynch's is hot on the trail of something and distracted and stressed out and and he's got a pistol lying on the seat next to him and they're too tough new orleans street cops and they go on and he winds up pregnant women jailed beaten up been thrown in jail and a less that's a that city and that's the stratosphere thing i said was a murder mystery rosen said to march in it you know i don't know much about so i don't know much about film commissions and how they work in the state so that i said to myself if the wallet had written this book twenty years ago the only setting for a live in hollywood

but they are absolutely but there's so many places across the country a national being one of them where in tennessee being one of them where annual in where where film state film commissions are actively trying to get to get business what i did was i took a promise that actually happened the promise of this book is that there is an independent film producer a very rich very wealthy man from the orient who wants to turn an abandoned nuclear power reactor a cooling tower into an underwater sound stage and you give this guy the name quite quite an alarm that in fact has happened in south carolina the movie leviathan and this and the abyss were found above those movies were found in an abandoned cooling tower nuclear plant i took that premise which andree decided to move it to new orleans because i'm fascinated with louisiana politics and live their lives there and i think it you know loving relationship between mostly latino i mean it's it's the thing that not that

people try to put apply the same standards to was hannah that the rest of the country goes by an epic it doesn't work that way down that we see as a very very different place from any other state in the country as were saying as david duke in it it says as the candidates for governor of the state house gala wagoner nazi riots it's a fascinating place it's a wonderful it's a wonderful thing to mine for writers and i also took a lot of the stuff that i've heard here in nashville a few days you know stores in the tennessean all the time about people appreciate on an initial concept sounds to the year that the apple plant across the down the river was going to be a huge sound stage and that didn't work out i wondered why you think is booked my pride it's been a year won their lives listening to tell me how that sounds vague but anyway that that so you took it took the little piece of

south carolina look these donors they planted them in more nuanced tests world all in the sinai and then you create the law and one of those why leslie there a couple of islands there is one villain gets it and that she's not a nice person she's non experts jews very much i took i did something in this book almost is an experiment that up until the very end of the book every character in the book including the narrator most of the time is a lot and i was when i started the book i wanted to see what would happen if nobody in this book told the truth into a variant so every word that comes out of every character's now up until the the denouement the story is a half truth at best and so when i set up this kind of broad playing field and turn the characters clues and just watched what they did it was fascinating so if you now when you said i

want to live you know what lies until sometime not always and the lies just evolved of sin if you have a law and a fledgling screenwriter and i've been hanging around come on the fringes of the of the screenwriting community here in nashville for five years now and my experience has been listening to people who are in the film business that's mostly the way they they behead that you never it's almost hamas get the feeling that people in the film business would lie wants to their advantage to tell which as well as you about habitable let's talk about our our goal on this on the daughter know paul one mission over government which is how she got her job and she got a job because he believed and nepotism is more full of politicians and media have over the years what talk about her character because she's very strong character she is outed she disappears fairly

early in the us but she was she's had strong she's physically impressive and physically imposing on she's very political she's she's very well i think and is utterly amoral arm she has as has as i write in the book out of the governor's voice where he talks about it's almost a genetic predisposition to get into trouble and anti behaved improperly an inappropriate way and the only thing that keeps it in check for her and indeed for the governor is is another genetic predisposition for survival yes and in this one case it doesn't it doesn't work for what doesn't work for him and it's difficult to say that that might not work forming and i'm fascinated by the process of the name

selection pearl that's not going on that's fascinated by how authors select names of clothing selection really good design to send a message to a subliminal message to the reader for example if i read jacqueline should i get a sense i mean jack was an all american boy and then later a slightly irish so my sense of it is nadia jacqueline should be a hero my dear my hero need to be made here but then there are the connotations that go along with the word lance is your arm which i didn't pick up on until i was about three quarters through the first book if if there's any message in those things it is so subliminal that i don't realize what i'm doing it at first a struggle with names and for a merger i didn't say so badly not not until the book was done and then i look

back on and realize that there's an inherent ivan owen wilson just made it up at the low as finn lace an accent on the second syllable that all those names i went to boarding school with a gun and then less than that and i just barnes nine i borrow a lot of names from gaza with the wharton school my roommate's name in and boarding schools led terribly disappointing on our she was more often all four legs at those some hidden meaning inflections nine weather is in the senate and that families and really mad something to do with us lasorda wharton gotten such a turnout that went to and so i guess on that level there's a subliminal motivation that on why don't offer is i mean i've done i mean what bothers me that that i do notice though when i'm reading all those that who are into spy novels are crime

that to me at least the name's some outfit that kept i mean dr strangelove is korea is yet it's too it's it's too gets to pat an example of this is that it's too obvious not sure those calculations in the creation of doctor strangelove but if you go back for example through dickens what wonderful names i struggle with names so much and i think part of it is i struggle with names i struggle with titles naming characters in any book that really hard i find i don't do it well and don't do that easily in a sense i like to think i do it well after struggling with for a long time but it's all on i'm mostly and trying to write myself out of a corner so when i come up with a name like jack lynch i think there is some sense you know robert penn warren and the character jack burden of this and and and he was a great influence on me and seeing how

how he handled that sort of thing it's so it's such a light touch such a delicate touch and that's in that sense that's what i try to go after well let's go back to the law he didn't have a pearl burroughs debated ray price and get on both there has to be a suspect then is there is a suspect the cops have to a motive and for our bureau clang you have an obvious motive talk about the development of that it may get across i'm a pretty early on you know to shoot against and yet she's against roger and and the first is not want that on the wall of sound that she does not to japan and her her service reason is that the kind of movie quantum mechanics is not will not represent the state of louisiana favorably that he makes basically slash and garish slasher movies cheap in the movies that are they're very

successful in like a ton of money but that they're often risk and violent and then and he in that sense is not a very nice man and she bad as her service reason in fact there's a much more involved reason that goes back decades in and we see a state government and in her own life so she's got a multilayered reason for not warning cuenta succeeded in his in his endeavors the force a homicide investigator told me once i was doing research for the book i just finished after that and a homicide investigator here in nashville told me that the first thing they ask is who benefits when somebody dies when there's a win is a violent crime or who benefits and that's kind of it the way i worked again it doesn't hurt her well so that when jacqueline start setting out to the term to find out who kill coral because he represents mr represents clank as well

pr public relations piece of one man struggling pr firm so he's trying to find out and now the one that investigators investigator right foot as he is he says he's accused of being a detective at one point he says i'm not a detective on the sewage control officer he works in the end the back alleys in the back rooms of louisiana politics trying to make things work where we had a less time with omar right exactly that's where that's wanting are affirming you know mara skylark no more of milk is down and that's the way it was that when he was then fighting corrupt about prices and he you know he came out he came out here but not quite as the driven snow well the last time we talked about were peaceful you said something that has stuck with me you may not even recite it but you said that jack which was a fallen ideal body and he was end and that some of the same name that he maintains a little image here

this is why when i'm called a mystery writer iconic right don't know how much i'm a writer who happens to have an outage know one day when they nail him when they nail him in the car he already as beast and he has a he has a strong and he's about to find a nose who knows what's going on and i worry about whether you are sleeping and sing it and what webb well i mean nobody told me the truth at any point in this book that have no letters are read the book no i didn't but biden bumped the ballot than jack wakes up in a jail cell on exporting having been barefoot around a lot and i've been lied to a lot about it anne and me it would not attend beyond stephen wants

kin to mislead me again that's remained and he says get the lieutenant and got to see the lieutenant got a story for him and i wondered if there was another oh henry twist down the road that i was not really looking a lot wasn't that wasn't i was doing i had the feeling a number of times in the book that that i was second guessing myself that's a no i had to from your point eight years and it has been an employee our headsets and sidetrack four but at that point by the time jackie's is arrested and beaten up and thrown in jail pretty clear it's it's pretty clear what's happened and at that point it becomes a race because that's right there are people who are in physical danger this as a result of the things that jacques is found out and there they are people in whom he is emotionally invested he cares for these people very much

even in his cynicism and his his doubts he does have a great deal of feeling for especially lowest their lesson and so it's a race at that point there's there are no more scientists this fall there is at the end of a confrontation with the with a distinguished and is it was a lawyer and an absolute is in fact says jack specs following events follow many of mine now comes to put things and i had them in the back in the line throughout the course of all this book who's going to the failure in this in this poll and you gave us you gave us some options are

you had to unravel a mystery right that down at the much more than merck his fault this is a classically structured ministry that plays by those rules and the rules are you do you have to have a number of suspects know what a live one of the you know one of the characters you developed is a washed up spring and what about what about it what about what about and well armed he was he came out of my imagination from from a number of people that is not based on any one person you didn't go to school with a violent taylor no no but i did go to school with a woman who moved to new york city and became a soap opera actress and changed her name to really so that did come out of their full names on he's he's a fascinating character named anna i'm

cynical real street wise i'm a survivor busier in very much a survivor and i mean for him to come across as kind of a scoundrel but one that that the readers the law and have our all of roads on and a man he's just a huckster he's the pentagon most of the waitress by leaving a tip on expired for that overrun grid they go to a gun over one credit card and leave the poor waitress with having to pay his bill and he's not a very nice guy at all and he is he is a one of the people who's trying to set up an independent film studio in new orleans and is thwarted by clients effort and he's a comic and you want me to know and think that he's flying on the outset pretty much in and that he's he's out for the money still bilk investors

nor were alaska you know i i really don't have a desire to you with a candle in this program that have either love and he who really view it the red markets fall preview that you love you love jackie taking is taking you on this investigation found out done the dirty deed did marilyn this is good and the even darker secret that the thoughts right i mean there is even within a sit well i thought it might be another twist beyond beyond the guilty party that age you know about the secret within the secret that before you started writing no i didn't bet involved and as it does it does it come to welcome again i'm i'm fascinated by politics and and especially the dark side of the

corrupt soccer politics and so i wanted to weave that story in tibet as well so that again it would become a multi layered that there would be an obvious surface motivation for the crimes that are committed and in an obvious solution but then something much deeper the tide in the louisiana politics like throw a rock into a pond had some larger work just as it as it went out and affected more more people and i wanna jack lynch drawn into it and that's where that that's with it because i wanted the tide it was impossible really know where i was going to start of it well i think inject through and you've just written a new book and i said they had this love hate relationship with new orleans and it's obvious that it's more of the night and it is upsetting it's only orlando to land their acts specks of a small person fascinated by the evidence by the corruption the little things

in and sadly this is not that far removed from what can and has happened in that in that the red rats that is broke a lot of what our budget i know how you pay it really jack or got about one more book to do it any time i am signed on for for one more and it my sense is i never intended for for this to be in the series i never really intended for a sequel to or peaceful to be written it just wound up that he has put on airplanes lineup tonight and it hopefully grand ole opry augusto of his investigation and i thought for doing that but in fact jack is or is a real dark character and i've been carrying around since nineteen seventy five which is when more peaceful was written it took twelve or thirteen years at a labor lawyer jake collected a bunch of armed assad been living with this guy long time he's

used dark there's a depressed side to him on and even though he's seen the same as a noble good character on as you said the faults not always like really and this is not the main nano so i mean it's you know reciting get depressed great run out by this book it was not a while and he'd get depressed well what a mystery isn't this treated doesn't have arrived at a depressive a dark side to have before the excitement you know what i wanted to try something different i've got one more jack welsh folk rock on but i wanted to i had just finished a book set in nashville with with a character that jack lynch's fourth cousin twice removed or so i mean not literally but emotionally and then creatively they're related but he's a much different kind of care now using thin the day using the music

of teeth to tell a story in nashville know is in effect i wanted to i wanted to break stereotypes i want to break barriers down and john wasn't until overcome stereotypes and break rules and that in that are we now so i started out this book but the one i just finished my you know this guy doesn't know anything about country music doesn't work in the business is not that can steer a typical of course he gets his friends or the music business and you can't write a book about national without having music in there somewhere but what i wanted was to show how the other side guessing this is a fascinating time really is politically artistically it's a much more sophisticated people i think that people in some ways it is as sophisticated culturally different boats and as sophisticated oh yeah i agree with that in on in tennessee's history is full of dollars have been charged with

armed for corrupt accenture of someone who's gone to prison i saw it on a new orleans doesn't have a corner on that but no state doesn't still there is there is a tendency on the part of some writers i'm in and read war and was one of those who fell for a louisiana man who went for the media and did so successfully or when the town becomes the metaphor for the thing that right is right too and it becomes a character i mean it didn't really becomes a living breathing entities and the citizens of the city itself the us and the state itself was i see as early new orleans jazz and having a native of nashville i can't wait to rule next year it'll be about a year november and it was the time of that you know one of things i've talked all of hezbollah's program is their regimen and we talk a little bit about that with less

time than you know that two books well reviewed well reviewed and a third is soon to come now you will have had you made that clare for fifteen years that's what you want to line oriented bay and sure you teach simon sure you find other ways to feed itself but you'd love to be loved to be authored best selling books books that automatically get right yeah and one of the nice sunday night and i never said turn that down that happen but what i'm mostly what i do is i am you know i have an office in the attic and why muscle and you sit there and write books and it's a great any riders who is honest will tell you it's the greatest lifestyle in the world because you know you

work your own hours and i was you know put on them euro cup stadiums has uprooted what produced that was one of the producers of the artist louisa met him once and we were talking and he said he's a binge writer and that's that's a good description for what i do when i'm in a book i write long hours and a lot the last book i finished i did i have fifty pages of started by the time i showed it to the publisher and i fought it and the other three hundred and twenty pages i finished and seven weeks so it was about sixty five seventy thousand words and what about getting process on that book than the editors say hey we write reduce restructure its no not surprisingly not a lively told me last time about the difficulty that with publishes an editor's does it say something about development as a writer or does it say something about success and reading respect among editors and publishers i won't ever i never thought of it and maybe a little bit of both but i have found that that

that now that i've come out to get a couple times it's a little easier in a sense to get people listen to your chinese your write the books but also i think you know it's like anything else you do it long enough you're bound to get a little more polished and if you're a woodshop are you now and do it for twenty years you could be chopping wood better and faster than somebody who is just starting so there is that part to do you better know that it works when it works than you did before now i am smash that has been our guest on or downwards euro's does ben johnson can follow this program was produced in the studios of wbez an with fb