Bad Girl (6 page)

HANK WAGNER: Your writing career began in college? 

BLAKE CROUCH: I started writing seriously in college. I had tinkered before, but the summer after my freshman year, I decided that I wanted to try to make a living at being a writer. Spring semester of 1999, I was in an intro creative writing class and I wrote the short story (called “Ginsu Tony”) that would grow into
Desert Places
. Once I started my first novel, it became an obsession. 

HW: Where did the original premise for
Desert Places
come from? 

BC: The idea for
Desert Places
arose when two ideas crossed. I had the opening chapter already in my head... suspense writer receives an anonymous letter telling him there’s a body buried on his property, covered in his blood. I didn’t know where my protagonist was going to be taken though. Around the same time, I happened to be glancing through a scrapbook that had photographs of this backpacking trip I took in
Wyoming
in the mid 90’s. One of those photographs was of a road running off into the horizon in the midst of a vast desert. My brain starting working. What if my protagonist is taken to a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, by a psychopath? What if this cabin is in this vast desert, and he has no hope of escape? That photograph broke the whole story open for me. 

HW: Why a sequel for your second book? Affection for the characters? 

BC: It was actually my editor’s idea. I was perfectly happy walking away from the first book. But once she mentioned it during the editing of
Desert Places
, I really started to think about where the story could go, wondered how Andy might have changed after seven years in hiding, and I got excited about doing it. And I’m very glad I did, because I would’ve missed those characters. Even my psychopaths are family in some strange, twisted way. 

HW: Of all the reviews and comments about your books, what was the strangest? The meanest? The nicest? The most perceptive? 

BC: The strangest: This was a comment about me and the reviewer wrote something to the effect that I was either a super-talented writer with an immense imagination or one sick puppy. I think that’s open to debate. The meanest: From those [expletive deleted] at Kirkus. Now, keep in mind, this is my first taste of reviews and the reviewer absolutely savaged my book. It was so mean it was funny... although I didn’t see the humor for some time. The review ended, “Sadly, a sequel is in the works.” The nicest: That’s hard to choose from. I particularly loved the review for
Locked Doors
that appeared in the
Winston-Salem Journal
. The reviewer wrote, and this is my favorite quote thus far, “If you don’t think you’ll enjoy seeing how Crouch makes the torture and disembowelment of innocent women, children and even lax store employees into a thing of poetic beauty, maybe you should go watch Sponge Bob.” The most perceptive: The reviews that recognize that I’m trying to make a serious exploration of the human psyche, the nature of evil, and man’s depravity are the ones that please me the most. 

HW: Do you strive for realism in your writing, or do you try more to entertain? 

BC: First and foremost, I want to entertain. I want the reader to close the book thinking, “that was a helluva story.” Beyond that, I do strive for realism. I want the reader to identify with my characters’ emotions, whether it’s fear, sadness, or happiness. The places I write about, from the
Yukon
to the Outer Banks to the Colorado mountains are rendered accurately, and that’s very important to me, because I want the reader to have the benefit of visiting these beautiful places in my books. 

HW: The villain in
Locked Doors
seems almost a force of nature, cunning, instinctively brilliant when it comes to creating mayhem. Do you worry that readers might write him off as unrealistic? 

BC: I decided to approach Luther Kite a little differently than my bad guy, Orson Thomas, in
Desert Places
. In the first book, I tried to humanize Orson, to gin up sympathy by explaining what happened in his childhood to turn him into this monster. With Luther et al., I made a conscious decision not to delve into any of that, and for this reason I think he comes off as almost mythic, larger than life, maybe with even a tinge of the supernatural. I don’t worry that readers will find him unrealistic, because I didn’t try to make him like your typical realistic humdrum villain. What I want is for readers to fear him. 

HW: What’s the most important thing a book has to do to keep YOUR attention? 

BC: It’s actually very simple... a great story told through great writing. I don’t care if it’s western, horror, thriller, historical, romance, or literary. I just want to know that I’m in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing. 

HW: Who are your literary heroes?

BC: I grew up on southern writers -- Walker Percy, Pat Conroy -- the fantasy of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. In college I discovered Thomas Harris, Dennis Lehane, James Lee Burke, Caleb Carr, and my favorite writer, Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy just blows me away. His prose is so rich. He is unlike anyone else out there today. His 1985 novel,
Blood Meridian
, in my opinion, is the greatest horror novel ever written. 

HW: What makes
Blood Meridian
“the greatest horror novel ever written?” 

BC: The writing is mind blowing. The violence (which occurs frequently and in vivid detail) rises to the level of poetry in McCarthy’s hands. And the story is fascinating. It’s based on historical fact and follows a bloodthirsty gang through the Mexico-Texas Borderlands in the mid-1800’s, who have been hired by the Mexican government to collect as many Indian scalps as they can. I read
Blood Meridian
every year. 

HW:
Reading
Desert Places
and
Locked Doors
, it seems that you’re drawn to the horrific. The books are filled with horrific acts, and with terrifying set pieces, as in the descent into the Kites’ basement in
Locked Doors
. Did the horror genre hold any attraction to you growing up? 

BC: I honestly didn’t read a lot of horror growing up, but I always loved the sensation of fear produced by a scary movie or a great book. Some of my first short fiction (written in middle school) could be classified as horror. In fact, there’s a short story on my website called “In Shock” that I wrote in the 8th grade. 

HW: Might there be a sequel to
Locked Doors
someday?

BC: Midway through the writing of
Locked Doors
, it occurred to me the story might be a trilogy. I may finish out the trilogy at some point. I’m starting to miss my characters (the ones that survived), and I have a feeling that I will return to the world of
Locked Doors
at some point in the future to check in on them. We’ll have to see. 

HW: Your latest novel,
Abandon
, is set in
Colorado
, where you’ve lived for the past six years.  Did you intend to write a novel set in that state when you moved there, or did your surroundings inspire you to?

BC: This was definitely a case of my surroundings inspiring me. Two months after we moved from
North Carolina
to
Durango
, we had some friends come out to visit. My wife and I took them on a backpacking trip into the San Juans, and it was on this trip that I first saw the ruins of a mining town—
Sneffels
,
Colorado
and the Camp Bird Mine. It made a huge impression, the idea of living in these extreme conditions, particularly in winter. The claustrophobia, the desperation, the kind of people who would subject themselves to such a life fascinated me.

HW: Did you have any particular goals in mind when you embarked on this project?  Did they change as you worked?  Do you think you met your goals?

BC: The idea of writing a “mining town thriller” was with me for a long time, as early as the summer of 2003, before
Desert Places
was published.  Initially, I thought it would all be set in the past, a straight historical. Then in ‘05, while on tour for
Locked Doors
, I had a sudden realization that this was the story I needed to write, and that it wasn’t just historical. There would be present scenes, too, and the mystery at the heart of the book would be the mass disappearance of the town. My goal was to write a book that I would want to read, and in that regard, I think I succeeded.

HW: How long did it take to prepare to write the book?  How much research was involved?  Do you research first, then write, or answer the questions that arise as you dive into the writing?

BC: I started outlining in the fall of ‘05, and finalized the book with my editor in the summer ‘07.  There were 7 drafts, and tons of research, which occurred at all stages of the writing.

HW: Was it tough striking a balance between writing a thriller and the urge to display all your newfound knowledge?  Any fascinating tidbits that didn’t go into the book that you want to share with readers?

BC: Lots of stuff got cut, and some of it was wonderful (and it still pains me to have let it go) but in the end, it was all about what advanced the story.  For instance, there was an Irishman who lived in one of the Colorado mining towns, and the love of his life had died on their wedding night some years prior. Every night, from his cabin above town, the sound of a violin would sweep down the mountain. Mournful, beautiful music. The town got used to hearing it.  One night, after the violin went silent, a single gunshot echoed from the cabin. The townsfolk went up and found him dead, with a note asking to be buried with his wife. I loved that bit, wanted to put this guy into the story, but it didn’t belong, so I had to let it go.

HW: Your first two books followed the adventures of basically the same cast of characters.  Was it a relief or was it scary to move on to a whole new set of players?

BC: Both a total relief and completely terrifying. But what’s worse than the fear of doing something new and challenging is realizing one day that you’re in a rut, that you’ve essentially written the same book again and again.

HW: Your first two books could be described as pure, relentless adrenaline.  In fact, those are your words.  Was it difficult to work on a novel taking place in two different times, switching back and forth between the two?  How about working with a larger cast?  Did that present you with any particular challenges, issues, problems?

BC: It was hard at first, but once I got into the flow of both narratives, it wasn’t such a big deal to go back and forth, which is the way I wrote it. It sounds silly, but I wrote the present in one font, the past in another, and for some reason, changing fonts helped me to get back into whatever section I was working on.  This cast of characters, which I knew was going to be big going in, was intimidating starting out. I spent a month on character studies, really getting to know each main character and their back-story before I dove into the book, and I think (I hope) that made all the difference.