A Word on Words; 2609; Steve Womack

building hello on johnson in the once again welcome to word on words an old friend steven wommack his back chain of foods is the book harry james van rides again how are you fine fine i just turned in the fifth book in that series which will come out next year it'll be out in june of ninety eight and it's called murder manual and it it says unlike china for such a kind of different directions not quite as dark as china for one on the wall of solitary been full of maybe not the first real time the idea for the first time and lived peak glimpse blair and funny one of wobbling the underbelly of the sex work in nashville which was a great many people didn't know there was an underworld underbelly to nashville and then there is like almost any

large cities days but when i started doing research for the book i was shocked at at some of the things that go on in nashville this book came from a billboard there was a billboard on i forty in the number and broadway exit that i used to pass every day for years world's largest adult bookstore exit here we've all seen the and one day hit me that we also have the highest per capita number of churches in the city and in the country and i thought how strange the world's largest adult bookstore and the highest number per capita charges of the country interesting dichotomy one of there's a story in there there was a story there was a story there it went on you know you know i like happy endings and cash oh my god where for harry when they're saying in and away winds up another little twist on the end but but there's sort of a happy harry

discovers he's at it because at the end he went you know i'm more importantly life didn't always have in indiana and believe me it doesn't and when i started writing this book i didn't intend for it not to have a happy ending i didn't intend for it not to unfold and i didn't have four to unfold in the way that it did but i really look at this is my sort of attempted film a walk in a book well i think that's exactly what it is in let's say let them in many ways an exciting story in some ways a depressing story but in every way but really most of all thank you alice waters says observers over the depressing stories readers knew exactly as tall mary and and and somehow he gets into this mean for those who may not know was a place called domain it's really sort of a millionaire's a multi millionaires

enclave on the cities western no longer the west and we're going to see them live beyond that but one day harry is called on the girl this thing guaranteeing for those of you who don't remember i haven't read the previous three books harry was a newspaper reporter that far from his job and now is a private detective and betty jameson cotton become a look and her little sister stacy who is here to a lot of money a lot of money and is in a lot of trouble love big trouble big trouble he's gotten in with the wrong crowd she has some emotional problems of her own and she is spiraling downward very quickly and in the story and harry went you take terry where you had to go to research the book into the sex clubs into the club pros table this is the

gentleman's club says it will end the year the year three story triple x rated bookstores with the back rooms in the private dances and stuff like that you know occasionally have have taken some good natured teasing over the research i did for the book and i try to tell people that it was one of the most depressing experience in my life i had up until this time i had never not does not as places i hang out in my spare time and i had to in fact i have a friend to go with me one night because i just was so intimidated by or what i was saying and it was so depressing for cold and impersonal and the hard part for me was meeting some of the young women who work there who had not yet been scarred over in an emotionally burned by what they were going through what's on my mind i discovered in my research that really three or four years was about the turning point for most of these women once they've been dancing neuter working massage parlors or whatever for three or four years to

really start to undergo a spiritual change that take this guard over and that we can really different people and what was hard was meeting as i did one young woman from kentucky who i think was nineteen or twenty and i worked in a mall for six dollars an hour and gone to work at one of the clubs downtown and she delivered working three months and for her she was ridden jiggling as she told me about her work and it was still sort of nodding and fun and she was amazed at the amount of money you can and i take it she and others like her become corey yeah exactly corey was so it was an amalgam of several of the younger women on that there and act and i ask you what has italian do this i mean you know how can you know want to say does your mother know you're telling us that kind of thing and she finally said let ourselves as records almost midnight almost that night is a nice girl like you know in a place like this and you know this one that one girl told me you know i can go back to go back to work in a mall for six fifteen hour in august end of the table and do the splits nude for

twenty bucks for five minutes five hundred dollars a night and then these women tend to make a staggering amount of money and that's what i do of course and what happens is part of the part of the coldest part of the scoring over prices for them as they began to look at you know that you think that would be the man in the audience who would object to fire the women also believe that when an object of fun and then they began to look at these prices just sharks would love money there isn't you don't use is to the story by their gamer conversation going that when harry and baby faced a gruesome these men say prison and banned baby face and incidentally i mean you know for a prison quite welcome we're having cobbler but no navy face starts to love sex imposed prison and gang rapes in homosexuality

and becomes a line which is almost cliche chain nobody's journalists know what his family history which it translate in the mean there are kinks in our links an archaic occasionally cryptic surrogates in our lives nobody came late as i had an innate that actually was was i stole that line from an inmate am i am i am a writing workshop at the tennessee state prison years and years ago you give him credit and i gather that adds i would call the book that that was my original title for the book no one ever made the market a part of ballantine change my mind by saying chain of that ride the twisted my arm i thought nobody's trusted you title to the nigerian the owner micro biome none of them has i still like that title best but i have this ongoing titled

battle with my editor at the actor as valentine we were together wonderfully but the marketing people and publishing now have so much control over how butchers show that they thought that it would sell better if it actually sold pretty well well corey is really judge injured and the juniors recording been harmed club name is ginger ale work under pseudonyms then yellow or comes in and she poses a pretense that she dropped out of summons and and he had gone to college and boston area hadn't so corey before she leaves at first light was visitors a year my religion is korea's court should worry quarter golden valuable stores and resort at that character the way that it became a wife for me in ways that sometimes secondary characters and books don't

i really fell in love with corey about the time i finished the book and it was very very hard to get to see her and harry wind up the way they did and to see what happened to corey end the book doesn't come out what happened to her becomes a pivotal there's actually in the story and the idea that she was she was a wonderful character and based loosely on some of the young women that work in the clubs the point that you make is that this young theres stacey from domain as roy them home was a very red dog nathan and corey in harry encounters on his first trip to the snow world knows red dawn when he identifies read bill and read all comes to an untimely and very quick and timely and very quick and stacey was there in the room a sign and a little bored and throw them and

he kidnapped or she drove drove the time he's posted that takes a back to get involved in them in historic perry really breaks the law and ally the absolute all over his recently on the lug them i'd say broken busted the underworld to be radical but they're very young join the story of a man in a story on now is stacey turns around to get away down there and i've had some people say this to me this in many ways i was part of the disputed film a war novel in many ways it's sort of a mile march to raymond chandler and some respects with a little the arizona been there before i think my sense of it is that maybe had chandler and i know it's not really done without knowing as we can i think subconsciously that attitude that chandler did so well in his work that perspective that character hasn't situation is something that

unconsciously europe perhaps even consciously translated into harry from the beginning and he has won the things i liked best about her character this is the attitude and and harry is a cervical irreverent and smart asked and but at the same time has some layers below that he doesn't he also the girlfriend who has many layers above the martian is directed oh thank you thank you and i have a lot of them that the next book the one after a chain of fools really revolves more around marshes and harry that's really there anyway to oust coking corey was going to show up again in a delighted to hear it i enjoyed her out a lot of fun and that she doesn't come back until later now the young ben jameson barrows sure wealth and dollars of general hayden and i know human induced in

general but you did very late in the book well he he he's ill and he's an elderly man who who was a world war to euro and came back in as one built a fortune part of patton's part of patton's third army corps and they call his nickname was reckon bracken the currency during world war two when his tank ran out of ammunition he just rammed into another german tank disabling to an end in a medal for that and comes back initial raises a family in and then becomes very wealthy and somewhat powerful and but toward the end of his life starts to become ill aren't i beasley has not been in many ways a great father because as children or show trouble especially the younger one and of course there's a dark family secret related to stacey jensen that doesn't that doesn't come out of a very can but it is it is the father in one of his rare lucid moments in his attempt to save his daughter that sets this whole chaotic

story in motion and i in the end i feel so sorry for the general and the idea that the end game he's slipping rapidly into familiar all times and losing touch with reality in his one last attempt to help his dorm backfired miserable jared air jeni turned out to be quite a pathetic figure in the air and i'm glad i'm not a learning disorder left incomplete love bug right right yet he was a good character work with on it enabled me to for one thing to build a real good backstory out of the idea of the family of the jantzen family and without him i could've done that he really came alive for me is you know leaving before we talk a lot about how writers write into their attention to been in a while and the first time we've talked as our call you

may be working at present teaching them are convicts and i had a sense of that would get in the way of your ability to write well i was doing as allocation you really wanted to see and i was doing it on a volunteer basis i was in the job actually i did that for four years it was very time consuming and i got when i close the walls are taught the old tennessee state prison he'll penitentiary which was which and you've been out there where we were very face was inserted some marvelous old century old castle it's sort of disneyland evil twin skippy i think it was it was it was a great disneyland fantasyland the fortress and i learned more out there i mean that was one the most valuable experiences i've ever had as a writer i think any writer could have but in the end it became drying and when they close the walls i was offered the chance to

go up to river which is the new sterile institution agrees and i turned it down at that was at a point in my life that i was really behind and which young boys have to do is you will know we had this conversation for you and how is it that had to do other things besides just ride on teaching them and part of it is my own nature and part of it is a chemical links so you know and i loved doing the books piles to do all kinds of other workers well an end but you said that the koreas a carriage ago a million new characters do that sometimes yeah the good ones do the good ones come so alive that after a while you begin to fear losing control of them which sometimes is as great somehow that's where stories spin off into russia's you never expected but it can be it can be hard to handle or c hairy is such a tough guy mean is it is a tough time eat as he courted the eye he's a building along in this in this

world i mean harry knows how to move and shake it it takes a bending of breaking the law to get his client out of this mess she jammed with red dog in the bath draperies you know that you'll be there on the other hand there is a moment in the book there was a scene in the book where he and korey alone and come together and he rejects her does and there's a side to harry i mean i don't think of areas hard world and the feel and the hard boiled detective traditional mysteries that's not what i wanted with him he's a tough guy he's willing to do what it has to to protect his clients and to do the things that that are necessary in order to just to solve whatever shrines or are

really want a wide area have a human side and and one of the things she struggles with it are his relations issue of people that are important to him as religions whitmarsh especially and he is attracted to corey that that that for the first time in years he's really seriously attracted to somebody else and that's that's our friend ana when he really wrestles with it it's agonizing and in the end he does push her away when she comes to ramadi and won two he's doing what he thinks is the right thing whether it is or not for him as problematic well it it occurred to me also in the area doesn't deals a year and so that keeps him how big was her right he's a guild is operating neurosis and herrings and insecurities some anxieties he has some ghosts that haunt him marcia so soon the war ii didn't happen when she news and diamond in the flesh parts of the community

and only in a city in the central city the layout is suster it clearly says turn on are doing take this job and the money are men and she says you only use your shoes maybe he says you do need him see and that's right it two years and he needed and of management a girlfriend of yours are siblings are a nightmare and speaking of jokes there are a couple of really old jokes that start one chapter heroes who held now well usually usual using his jokes mitsui and they start a chapter end and they're all souls about your sister you write about

and some of touch on in certain amount of your remote year there was thought i wondered why you had a militia areas from the south and of course that those kinds of very old cliched jokes there is a moment in the story where one of the turning points involves incest and harry of course hear some of your voices about incest in the south and old jokes he's heard the old jokes that even before times of a pop up in his consciousness and come through a narrative and yeah i think that was just hairy talk and harry darling to sell itself but they're not really funny too many more now i'm in which sought to use what i thought when i read that the first joke gosh i didn't allow it to myself our a second job at nine eleven although one is stephen doing here and

then you say i'm from falling and then i would ask you while a joke where i think that you hear for that for that very reason to show that it is harry thinks of these these these old jokes about obviously sensitive issues as they become less funny to him it's time and i think it does two or three times and you know i hope it's not overkill you know the two or three times as harry and his reaction to these job changes to me was was some character evolution some changes in the way you saw it because as the story unfolds things that might have been funny to him in the past become very and funny now and i think that what worked that way the total about love this fight you have periodically made of sharif over the mountain overtime last book how there are some as sunlight is true say no problem i

know from that culture i mean you get we longer a dire i didn't know about was it sometimes god then what's our relationship is we have a great relationship with my editor and a publisher and even though i complain about the title battles i have with them very often they're protecting me from my own worst instincts i'm ashamed to say that i want and title the manuscript death on a soda cracker and so like my prized time so i would say was that will be i should have and then they protected me from my own right instincts and so i am and i had some obscure title us obscure literary title for roy for towards town boogie that they changed and i was along title something to do with arsenal fire starting and so that most of the time it works out just fine that i get excited about these titles are hard as anywhere will tell you is hard to come up with you know patrick

anderson who has written a number of novels and some fine books of nonfiction we'll hear on this program while black the smithsonian stores early is always makes a point i dont and up he had written a novel that he wanted a call an affair of state the publisher so i'm over it and finally insisted on calling it the president's mistress the book came out long week that bum that judith campbell exner acknowledged that she had a book coming about her relationship with john f kennedy were the result of that was that anderson's book which had been our farm for months and was not doing anything called on it best seller list

and was really picked up a paperback switch gave him a lot of dough for enjoying speeches from jimmy carter and rosalynn going to come off the airplane there in the campaign areas of seventy six maybe carrying that carrying material presents this is jimmy losses are actually relevant it says only about one about the promise of marketing skills don't change too about luck of the line you can either and three about amazon's marketing skills to give a copy to a rolling hard but you indicate that you're relationship with a publisher has been relatively smooth then i thought well i love working with my editor and there had been support among crowds of that going up with its books on africa so what do what does he say about the ending of this book the only comedy hand when i turned the

management was that i hope it i hope this isn't a direction you're going to stay because this this is a darker book then a more serious book and and there and i told him no that's our a wonderful aunt but that's where the story when i'm going and i think it works for for what it is i hope it does anyone but in the next and the national guard that term we'll let that sewer that on the world so workers out there and there are many a fine young people men and women from middle class america and from the wealthy in the eye and from those are disadvantaged get caught up in that and they have a terrible time and act as if it's if you get that you can wade in the end the lead singer and come out smelling like perfume his loan is is not it's not benign and it sometimes as we've seen here initially very tragic

consequences already we have those limited everywhere everywhere but there were year after two years ago there were two young women work in a n n n n tanning parlor assad parlor hoover who ruled who were murdered down on church street and it was an image that traumatize the whole community and brought home to a lot of people who didn't know all that stuff was going on here have already looking in your career as a writer i know that some will know there's another one on the way a contract for one more than that started on all very all american attitude a contract valentine to wind up with at least six different one