THE MOJO MAN ~ STEPHEN MERTZ
Full disclosure up front. Stephen Mojo Mertz and I have been friends since
our early days of mystery fanzines. We both broke into professional fiction
writing in the mid-eighties, both in (different) men’s adventure series
paperbacks published under pseudonyms. Since those days, we’ve continued our
friendship through years of publishing successes under our own names, mystery
conventions, and marathon used bookstore crawls. We’ve also been through the proverbial
hell and high water of being poorly treated as mid-list writers by the major New York legacy
publishers who were once the gatekeepers of bestsellerdom. We’ve also been part
of the e-book revolution breaking free from those legacy publishers and working
with the new breed of smaller independent publishers.
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What
information would be on your author’s job application?
Good upbringing. Military Service. Free thinker. Devilishly
handsome. Unbelievably intelligent. Not to be trifled with.
Before we
dig into your writing, what should we know about the history of Mojo Mertz the
musician?
I've played in bars, clubs, and taverns from the Mississippi west and
from Canada
down to Mexico .
A lot of one-nighters, a lot of time on the road, but a long time ago. Never
made it to the big time. Once I realized I could make money sitting at a
keyboard, typing, it made more sense than bad food, bad lodgings and social
disease. So I made the switch from music to writing.
What came
first, the treble clef or the word stacking?
Well, if we were to drop in on a 16-year-old
Stephen Mertz, he would probably be spending all of his free time either
listening to The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley or reading
Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane.
How has
music influenced your writing?
The energy level! For years when I was writing
pulp fiction, I didn't have pictures of great novelists on the wall. Directly
over my desk I had a photograph of Chuck Berry doing the duck walk because I
was trying to get the energy and the vibrancy of his music into what I was
writing. Now I think about it, these days I have a picture of Howlin’ Wolf
rockin’ out over my desk. So, I guess I still try to draw from the same cross
pollination when I write.
Your new
novel, Jimi After Dark, is not so
much a sequel to Hank and Muddy as
a loosely connected companion piece. What can you reveal about the book and
what it means to you as a writer?
Jimi After
Dark is my ‘60s novel. I guess every writer of my generation has at least
one in him or her. It’s a look at my generation at a time when the world was
opening before us, people in our 20s. But there was a war going on. About half
of the guys in my generation were hanging out, on the job or on college
campuses, smoking pot and listening to Jimi Hendrix. An equal number of young
men of the same age were in Viet
Nam smoking pot, listening to Jimi Hendrix,
and killing or being killed. That is a pretty dramatic divide.
Yes, this is one of a sequence of books I hope to
write which looks at the American Experience through the lens of the people of
who were making the popular music of the time. Hank and Muddy offered me the opportunity to get into everything
from the blues to country western music to racism to sexual mores, and it is
the same with Jimi After Dark.
I was in London
three times as a US Serviceman on leave between 1967–1968, and I soaked up my
share of impressions that went into the book. Hell, I lost my cherry on one of
those trips! I managed to spend most of the rest of my time prowling bookshops
and nightclubs and hearing bands like Ten Years After and Peter Green's
Fleetwood Mac when they were still playing the clubs scene. A lot of those
impressions went into the book.
Will there
be another companion novel to form a trilogy of musically based stories?
Yes.
You
also have a new thriller, The Moses
Deception, making its debut. How is it different from Jimi After Dark?
Jimi After
Dark and The Moses Deception are
quite different novels, which I'm proud of as they showcase my range. Jimi would make a great tight little
kick-ass black and white or stylish crime film while the Moses book is a
widescreen 70mm thriller.
Was
the writing process or mindset different between the two books and, if so, how?
The Jimi book is largely
written in first person, so the dramatic effect is more centralized, being
channeled through this one guy’s perspective. It’s why first person is so often
used in suspense fiction—and Young Adult novels, for that matter. You really
get to know the protagonist with first person. The hero of Jimi After Dark is a tough guy known only as Soldier, and he had no
problem dominating the story he’s telling.
The
Moses Deception, on the
other hand, is painted on a far broader canvas with many characters...including
Moses, I might add. With so many characters and perspectives contributing to
the big picture, it would have been unfair to focus on just one, so it’s
written in third person in order to convey the full scope.
What
is your process when beginning a new book? Is it different for different books?
The process is pretty much the same. A lot of
walking around and thinking and making notes. Having people call me Easy Money
when I am working my ass off because it looks like I am just staring at the
clouds. After about a month of that, I open the flood gates and let it come
out. Once the writing begins, I shoot for one thousand words a day. By the time
the book is going off to the publisher, it has probably been through 3-4
drafts.
What was
the last novel to make you laugh?
You know, I forget the title. It was a Spenser
novel by Robert B. Parker, a clever guy. I grinned on almost every page.
What was
the last novel to make you cry?
I save my tears for real life and the occasional
country song.
What makes
books important to you?
Unless you remember the cigarette ads they were
putting in paperbacks back in the day, books don't have commercials! They give
you the story and the characters, but they leave it to you to experience both. It
seems so less passive than visual mediums. I love movies, but with a book, you
are off in a corner by yourself in your little part of the world and no one is
messing with you. In a book and you can be in any universe of your choice,
experiencing any adventure you want to experience, gaining any knowledge and
wisdom you may care to gain. Books rule!
You are a
collector and a first class bookstore scavenger. Who are the authors you love
to read and who you do you keep on your personal bookshelves?
Don't get me started! It’s really hard to hone in
on anyone. I just love to read. Sooner or later I always go back and read Louis
L’Amour. I always go back and read Dashiell Hammett. I always go back and read
Mickey Spillane. But, as you say, I have been scavenging and reading for a long
time. With so many friends who are writers, I try to keep up with their work,
keep up with those who are defining today's taste on the bestseller lists, and
of course those old favorites who I go back and revisit.
You are
often asked to talk about writing to many different groups. What advice do you
share and what do you think has the most impact?
Some of the advice I give, they get everywhere
from everyone: Just do it. Write one page a day. Read a lot to see how it is done. The
best advice I think I have been able to give, that has resonated, is to try in
your writing to get rid of any division between your life—who you are and what
you are doing day-by-day—and what you are writing about. By that I mean, you
might be writing about people on Mars, or you might be writing about people in
the 11th Century, but they are people. They have all the elements and aspects
of human nature we have internally, shaped by whatever society or culture they
are in. But inside they have the same
conversations rambling endlessly between their ears—regrets, goals, and so on—we
have in our lives. Unpublished writers of fiction often tend to think the world
they’re writing about is somehow different than the world they’re living in. I
try to get them to realize when it comes to characterization, there is no
difference.
When you
decide to write a novel, do you take the market into consideration or do you
follow the muse?
I very much considered markets
in the beginning to get a toe hold in the business. It’s why so many new writers
grab onto genres. I did. Earning while you learn by writing stories with
recognizable tropes and markets is a time tested way of getting started. But
after a while—well, for the past two decades—I’ve just written stories I felt
should be told. I write the book and then
try to sell it. So far, so good. Happily, I love the western field and the
thriller field, so there’s been a market for everything I’ve written…so far! I only write novels I feel need to be
written. The trick, of course, is adhering to the recognizable tropes of a
genre while striving to craft scenes which appear to never have been written
before.
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Thx to Steve for braving the
lights of the interrogation room and sharing his experienced perspective on
books, music, and his writing process...Be sure to check out his current
releases—the rockin’ Jimi After Dark,
and his high-concept thriller, The Moses
Deception...
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT STEVE'S BOOKS CLICK HERE
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT STEVE'S BOOKS CLICK HERE
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