Tom Piccirilli lives in Colorado where, besides writing, he spends an inordinate amount of time watching trash cult films and reading Gold Medal classic noir and hardboiled novels. He’s a fan of Asian cinema, especially horror movies, bullet ballet, pinky violence, and samurai flicks. He also likes walking his dogs around the neighborhood. He’s the author of twenty novels, including The Cold Spot, The Dead Letters, Headstone City, November Mourns, and A Choir of Ill Children. He’s a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and Le Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire. His The Midnight Road is a nominee for an International Thriller Writers Award, the winner of which will be announced 12 July. His official website is www.tompiccirilli.com.
SFScope: When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?
Piccirilli: I guess, like most writers, the call came early, when I was a kid. The need to fantasize fuels a lot of us, and it did me. Maybe because my father died when I was a child, or maybe there was some other reason, but I found solace in books and knew that, somehow, I wanted to become a part of the overwhelming grandness of literature. Writers start as fans, as readers. That’s where the love begins, and so it generally begins early.
SFScope: Who are the writers you admire, and who has influenced you?
Piccirilli: I read widely across genres and have done so forever. I admire damn near anybody who’s chosen this strange and brutal life of being an author, and everyone I’ve read has influenced me in some regard. Specifically, personal literary heroes include Jack Cady, Donald Barthelme, Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Bukowski, Jim Thompson, Charles Williams, Richard Brautigan, Raymond Chandler, and Charles Willeford. But really, the list goes on and on and on.
SFScope: When you set out to write a story or a book, how do you go about it?
Piccirilli: I guess that’s the question none of us can ever truly answer. How do you write? How do you do it? I don’t really know. Somehow, I find a kernel of an idea somewhere, it strikes me the right way, and I find I need to explore it. Ultimately my own interest in the work starts with the first sentence. I try to write an involving, intriguing opening sentence or scene, and then reverse-build the story from there. I need to know what the hell that scene is all about, and so I discover the story as I go along. The trick is to make it seem like each new sentence was an inevitable outcome of all the previous sentences.
SFScope: Do you have a specific time of day that you write?
Piccirilli: I’m more of a night-owl, so I tend to write in the evenings and into the night. I tend to write in bursts, though. I might write for twenty minutes, then watch a movie, then write for a half hour, then read for a bit, etc. etc. I tend to burn-out if I’m sitting in front of the screen for too long. Writing is organic and I need to mull it over for a bit, then get back to it, then mull it over some more.
SFScope: Do you have a special place where you write? Please describe it for us.
Piccirilli: My office. It’s a sanctuary from the world. I have my books, comics, movies, toys, posters, photos, and my dogs underfoot. It all helps me to get into the mind-set and somehow stay there.
SFScope: How long does it take you to write your books?
Piccirilli: Approximately four to six months. Some are a little easier to write than others. My latest, Shadow Season, features a blind protagonist, and though the book is relatively short, I was forced to write in a way I hadn’t done previously. No concrete images, no visual descriptions. It was very difficult going and slowed the process down quite a bit for me.
SFScope: Do you create your characters first and then build the story around them?
Piccirilli: I don’t have an easy time separating characters from story from theme from narrative. It’s all more or less a group part of the process, or an end result of that process. A character reacts to the situation, but the situation is shaped by the character, and both are underscored by the theme, and all of that is driven forward by the narrative voice. So, like with your previous question about how does one write a story, the answer is, I have no idea. It all just works itself out somehow.
SFScope: What are your inspirations for your stories, characters and locations?
Piccirilli: A better question is, What doesn’t inspire me? The inspiration is there, everywhere, in my past, in my life, in my dreams, in my fears. It comes from everywhere, all the time. Writing is a very messy business. It’s all a matter of composing something from the chaos all around you.
SFScope: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Piccirilli: Yes. Become an accountant. Seriously, go. You will be much better off, have some money in your pocket, get health insurance, and you’ll wind up with a retirement plan. But if you’re insane enough to be a part of art in action, if you can live with insecurity, if you can’t be swayed from your mission in life, then maybe you might make it as a writer. But consider accounting.
SFScope: What else can we expect to see from you soon?
Piccirilli: My next novel, The Coldest Mile, is a sequel to The Cold Spot, and it’s due out from Bantam in early 2009. A couple of limited edition noir novellas will be out before the end of the year, entitled The Nobody and All You Despise, and as I previously mentioned, Shadow Season will be out from Bantam maybe by the end of 2009.
SFScope: Thanks for your time, Tom. I enjoyed talking with you, and best wishes on all your projects.