Mystery Author Interviews

MBTB employee McKenna Jordan interviews Victor Gishler, author of Gun Monkeys (Dell; $6.99)and Pistol Poets (Dell; $6.99).

McKenna: Who are some of your favorite authors and how have they influenced your comic noir writing style?

Victor: Raymond Chandler, Scott Phillips, James Crumley. These are the names that spring to mind right away. Scott Phillips and Crumley showed me that awful, nasty, violent things can be funny, too. I think maybe I'm a little warped, but as long as some readers out there are warped in a similar way, I'm good to go. I always thought Chandler was the best guy to teach hardboiled POV. Read all his novels and you get a crash course. Outside the genre, I'd say Kingsly Amis and David Lodge got me interested in campus novels, and they influenced the writing of The Pistol Poets.

McKenna: Are you planning to stick with stand-alone novels, or do you want to write a series?

Victor: Right now I go with whatever strikes me as a good, fun story. I have an idea to bring back Charlie Swift from Gun Monkeys (Bantam; $6.99), but it would probably be for one sequel instead of an ongoing series. But that would probably be one or two books down the road. At the moment I'm looking ahead to a strange book set in Prague featuring the ghost of alchemist and con-man Edward Kelley… but we'll have to see if my publisher goes for it.

McKenna: While your acknowledgements claim there are no comparisons between fictional Eastern Oklahoma University and Rogers State University where you teach, how have your teaching experiences played a role in this book?

Victor: It often baffles me what people think is poetry. It gets really frustrating sometimes. I took that to the extreme with burned-out professor Jay Morgan. He hates his students and himself and is starting to hate poetry. Also, every university is a strange little world unto itself. Often the connections between the university world and the "real" world grow very, very thin. As a grad student I often suspected that some of my professors had forgotten how the real world worked because they'd been in the land of academia so long. (But I'd like to go on the record as saying I mostly had some damn fine teachers. I learned a lot.)

McKenna: What's in store for us next?

Victor: Well, I mentioned the Edward Kelley book and the possible Gun Monkeys sequel... but that would be in the distant-ish future. Right now I'm working on a novel featuring a washed-up baseball player who repossesses cars. The story involves a Joe DiMaggio baseball card which has been signed by Joe, Marilyn Monroe and Billy Wilder and is very collectable and expensive. Speaking of which, I better get back to work...

McKenna's review of The Pistol Poets
When poetry professor Jay Morgan wakes up with a dead student in his bed, it’s only the beginning of his problems. Drug dealer Harold Jenks has joined Morgan’s class, bringing a stolen bag of cocaine, and his problems with him. Morgan and his straight-laced students have to learn new skills fast to survive the drug lords and rednecks chasing after them. With funny characters, fast-paced dialogue, and lots of action, this book will keep you entertained and wanting more. Lots of fun!

Interview added 01/15/04.