pornokitsch

PK Interview: Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block is a Grand Master. Officially, this happened when the Mystery Writers of America declared it so in 1993, but unofficially, this was obvious the first time he picked up a pen. The author of over sixty novels, hundreds of short stories and at least five notable series, Mr. Block is one of the greatest writers in his field. He confesses that he's made a "dog's dinner of his own retirement" with six new books out in 2011, as well as the (long overdue) eBook release of his backlist.

One of his 2011 releases, the sexy-sinister Getting Off, was with Hard Case Crime, who have been diligently bringing some of the best of Mr. Block's books (new and old) to readers.

We had the opportunity to ask Mr. Block a few quick questions.

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Pornokitsch: Getting Off is the triumphant return of Jill Emerson, one of your earliest pen names. Ms. Emerson is perhaps best known for her work on steamy Midwood Press titles. What prompted you to bring her out of retirement?

Lawrence Block: It was all her idea. While I was writing Getting Off, she pointed out that it was very much her kind of thing. “Put my name on it,” she said. “Play fair, dammit.”

PK: Portions of Getting Off first appeared as short stories in various anthologies. When did you decide that Kit Tolliver’s adventures should be collected (and extended) as a single volume?

LB: Three or four episodes in, I realized I was doing what I’d done a few times before — unwittingly writing a novel on the installment plan.

PK: Kit is a terrifyingly amoral protagonist in a terrifyingly amoral world. How do you (or Jill) get into the head of such a frightening person?

LB: (I’ll let Jill take this one.) “You really think so? Gee, she just seems like a fun-loving young woman to me.”

PK Interview: The Girls' Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse

One of our favourite new sites is The Girls' Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse. And judging by the numbers, we're not the only ones charmed by their madcap and far-ranging discussion of one of genre's hottest topics. The blog's editors have given us Christmas music, cocktails, tips on dating and accessories and a seriouss discussion of which of the Crowleys would be the last to die.

We got in touch with Adele (reviewer, zombie queen and feral leader) to get a look behind the scenes. Why is the Apocalypse such a hot topic right now? And why a guide specifically for women? The "Apocalypse Girls" delivered us a half-dozen answers to these burning questions.

PK Interview: Jonny Porkpie

We got a special holiday treat last year when Jonny Porkpie, Hard Case Crime author and Burlesque Mayor of New York City,  swung through London. We got the full Porkpie experience - first his eye-opening (and hilarious) show, "Grab My Junk", and then a lengthy interview about... well... pretty much everything. Read on for cruises, politics, crime and lots and lots of nudity. (No pictures though. Find your own.)

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Pornokitsch: We dropped in on your show in London. We're both ashamed to admit it, but that was our first very burlesque experience. It was so much fun, and everyone was very enthusiastic. Are the crowds normally like that?

Jonny Porkpie: Yes. People tend to come to burlesque shows without a chip on their shoulder. They come specifically to be entertained in a titillating manner. And that can mean anything from "jokey funny comedy" to "deep, emotional, angsty stuff".

Audiences are open. They’re excited, They’re ready. It's such an inclusive art form, not directed towards men or women or straight or gay. So you see all sorts of people in a burlesque audience. The gender balance is about 50/50, with a full range of sexuality.

PK: What prompted you to sit down and write a book?

JP: At the time, I was doing scripted theatrical burlesque shows, called Pinchbottom, with Nasty Canasta. The shows attracted a very interesting crowd - a literary crowd. Charles Ardai [Hard Case Crime] saw it, liked it, and the next time he came he brought along copies of Christa Faust’s Money Shot, which he left all over the theater.

When we did a show with a heist theme (called, of course, "The Boob Job"), Charles asked if he could sponsor the show. He contributed books to give away as prizes. That got us talking about projects on which we could collaborate, and I managed to convince him that the best idea was for him to pay me to write a book. Which worked out great for me.

Basically, he liked the writing he saw in the Pinchbottom scripts, and thought he’d take a chance on something with more words in it.

PK Interview: Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman is one of the most exciting new authors in modern fantasy. The Magicians (a 2009 Kitschies finalist) introduced readers to Quentin Coldwater, Brakebills and the magical kingdom of Fillory. The Magician King (2011), the sequel, is no less acclaimed or controversial; an insightful look at the "un-chosen ones" in fantasy fiction. Mr. Grossman is a journalist, a book critic and the winner of the 2011 John W. Campbell Award for best new writer. 

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Pornokitsch: You’ve some had pretty amazing news recently. What’s life like now that The Magicians is going to be a television series? Is the world a completely different place? Do you still go to the same restaurants?

Lev Grossman: I still go to the same restaurants. I could tell you how little money is involved with a TV deal, at least at the beginning, but it would only depress you. We’re not talking life-changing numbers here. TV deals start small, and I mean tiny, and get bigger as they go. If – and it’s still a long shot – the show actually makes it to air, then the world will start filling up with rainbows and unicorns. But that’s a long way off.

PK: How excited are you? And how involved do you get to be in the process?

LG: I’m getting more excited. I think a pretty small percentage of shows that start out in the fall actually end up getting made, but we’ve cleared a lot of hurdles already, and the tea leaves are starting to look pretty fair. There’s a hell of a lot of good reasons to make this show.

As for the process, I hover. I consult. But I’m not a TV writer. TV stories are shaped really, really differently from novel stories. I’m leaving the screenwriting to the pros.

PK: Probably prompted by an early New York Times review, The Magicians is often compared to Harry Potter, but ‘for adults’. My instinct is that this is a pretty specious comparison - one school doth not a Rowling make - but how do you feel about it?

PK Interview: Simon Morden

It took a full six pages of Equations of Life to realize we'd discovered another capital-A-Author-We-Like. But we didn't realize how fully awesome Simon Morden was until we did some internet poking. A proper rocket scientist, a speaker at Greenbelt, a prolific essayist, former Arthur C. Clarke judge... this is a man of many hats, all of which fascinate us no end.

Fortunately, as this (wide-ranging) interview shows, he's also incredibly patient, as we fired all our questions at him at once.

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PK: You have an impressive scientific background (advanced degrees in geology and planetary geophysics), so how (and why) did you turn your hand to writing fiction?

SM: This comes up a lot. I became a scientist because I read lots of science fiction. I was already interested in science – especially space stuff as I was three when they first landed on the Moon – but one fed off the other in an entirely organic way. And when I was at school, we were still allowed to electrocute each other and set things on fire, so it was proper science. To me, science fiction was simply an extension of lessons. Fair enough, almost all the science I learnt from SF was wrong, but it was a good wrong. Massive space battles, exotic energy sources, unlikely biology and weird alien sex: of course all spaceships should look like Chris Foss covers, of course we’re going to live in domes and have robot servants, of course we’re going to make a hash of First Contact.

What I eventually realised is that it’s still all up for grabs. Science fiction allows us to choose the future we want to live in. In that future, I wanted to be a scientist. So that’s how that happened. How did I then start writing?

PK Interview: Richard Morgan

As the author of Altered Carbon, the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Black Man, The Steel Remains, the upcoming The Cold Commands and a host of other acclaimed works, it isn't an exaggeration to say that Richard Morgan is one of the most significant figures in science fiction and fantasy today. 

He's also - if you'll excuse the moment of shameless fannery - one of the most significant figures to us. The lure of Richard Morgan is what brought Jared to his first British convention and it was our review of The Steel Remains that brought more people to this site than... er... us. We're indebted to him on many levels, not least of which is the simple fact that we love his books.

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PK: You’ve commented that the process of becoming a full-time writer was incredibly rapid (“Gollancz published it. Hollywood bought it. I gave up my day job.”). The pragmatic financial bits aside, was there a moment when the switch flipped and you knew it had capital-h-Happened? Or was it a slowly dawning awareness that your life had changed...

RM: I think it was the film deal that did it. Of course, I was blown away when I got picked up for publication, and again when I got all the great reviews. Truth was, I was even blown away when I first managed to get an agent, it had been so long coming. But it was the movie deal that secured me a life as a full time writer, and I was always well aware of that fact; the sad truth is, the pragmatic financial bits are the bits that really count - without that film money, I could never have gone full time. And more importantly, nor would I have had the freedom I then enjoyed to write exactly what I felt like writing instead of churning out a series of no doubt lucrative crowd-pleasing Altered Carbon copies.

PK Interview: Trevor Richardson

For the past few weeks, we've been having an ongoing conversation with Trevor Richardson, artist, script-writer and, now, author. American Bastards, a layered and slightly trippy journey through the American cultural subconsious, is one of the most exotic books we've read this year. We had to meet the man behind it - and he didn't disappoint.

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PK: I’ve now spent 48 hours in Texas - most of which was spent circling the 10,000 highways strangling Houston. From the car window, I didn’t see a lot of culture. But if American Bastards is to be believed, the cowboy state is one of the creative centers of America... what did I miss?

TR: First up, the South at large is one of the biggest creative contributors to American culture. There’s a kind of art that comes out of the cities that is powerful, relevant and cool, sure. But there’s another kind of art that comes from the bottom rung, the poorest of the poor, the uneducated voicing their desires, losses and pain.

Music is a clear indicator. Without the darkness of the South so many musical forms would have turned out very different. Jazz, country, bluegrass, even rock and roll, all of it found its sea legs in the South, and Texas is part of that. And like so much of the art world, where there’s a musical form there’s a literary form to match it, or a visual form, or a backyard trailer junk poet. The point is, creativity is not strictly reserved for NYU students or crazies in the South of France.

PK Interview: INJ Culbard

Our favorite graphic novel of 2010 was - without a doubt - Mr. I.N.J. Culbard's stunning adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.

Lovecraft's work is inspiring, but also incredibly tricky - something to which a thousand film-makers, novelists and artists can attest. Mr. Culbard stunned us (and the Guardian, Geek Syndicate, etc. etc. etc.) with his amazing interpretation, both in the svelte editing and the jaw-dropping artwork. With pen in hand, we tracked the man down in an expedition of our own.

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PK: How did you first get in to comics as a reader (not a creator)?

INJC: I got into them because I couldn't read. I've always "read" comics.

PK: …and as an artist?

INJC: I saw an ad from Dark Horse Comics about their new recruits program so I went for it and got "in", whatever "in" means. This was 2004 I think. It was published in 2006. I followed that up with some work in the Judge Dredd Megazine, a six page short of my own called "Monsters" with a hero in it who was a sort of Kung Fu fighting all action Wogan via James Bond and then I met up with Matt Brooker, who lives near me, and he gave Ian Edginton my email and Edginton mailed me to ask if I'd like to draw Dorian Gray for SelfMadeHero and I said yes please. That was essentially it.

PK Interview: China Miéville

Earlier this year, I was a panelist with the Independent Literary Awards. The ILA is unique in that the books are nominated and judged by book bloggers - a peculiar and persnickity sub-category of consumer. Last year's winner in the Speculative Fiction category (much to my personal delight) was China Miéville's Kraken.

Following the award, we coordinated a Q&A with Mr. Miéville about the award-winning book. The questions are crowd-sourced, so it is a bit bonkers, but Mr. Miéville's responses are all brilliant. A big thank you to fellow ILA panelists Bryce and Jamie, it was a great experience all around.

So, with no further ado, China Miéville on Kraken...

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ILA: Why a Kraken? Don't get us wrong, I love Krakens, they're awesome, but why did you center the book around one?

CM: When they got a giant squid for the Natural History Museum in London, what was I going to do, not lose my shit with excitement? Please. So I went, several times, as of course I was always going to, and it was as astonishing as one would imagine, to see a creature like that, in a tank like that, in a room like that. I'm a cephalopod fan, of course, a lurker at TONMO, a lover of ammonites and belemnites, cuttlefish, argonauts, squid and all of them. I was always going to write something revolving around a tentacled beast at some point. I'm a verbose lover of them, though in my own soul, the octopus unquestionably looms largest. Nonetheless, the squid - the giant squid in particular - has a cultural presence that none of the others can match, so it really did feel like having a myth right there in the room. Pickled. So that was the start. It's less, in truth, the Krakenness than the Giant Squidness of the thing that was the spur. The equation of the two is an arguably tendentious innovation of modernity, though one I'm perfectly happy to go along with.

PK Interview: Sophia McDougall (Part 3)

Previously, we discussed the timeless appeal of Rome and the epic scope of Rome Burning. In the final part of our interview with Sophia McDougall touches on how she visualizes her characters, genre labels and, perhaps most importantly, what she's working on now. 

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PK: You’re known for drawing sketches of your characters…at what point do you visualize them? Do you write first and then draw? Draw and then write?

SM: I mostly wrote them and then drew them. I guess I always knew, more or less, what they look like. I started drawing pictures initially - theoretically to illustrate what the costumes would look like.

Even though I don’t talk about it, I wanted to know what clothes they were wearing, so I’d be able to refer to fabrics and designs in passing, and make it sound more real. I didn’t want to stop and say, “he was wearing a mmm made of mmm” because you don’t do that – in the same way that you don’t go, “he was wearing jeans, which was a kind of blue canvas garment which originated from Nîmes”.

I was in France, researching where the characters go in the first book and I showed the drawings to my mum. She said, “aww, it is so sweet – just like when you used to draw pictures of princesses and write stories about them when you were seven.”

“It is not like that, this is very serious design!” Eventually I had to go, yes, it is exactly like when I used to draw pictures of princesses and write stories about them when I was seven.