Andrew Miller
Namaste Mart Confidential
Adam Minor and Richie Walsh work at Namaste Mart, a hippie grocery store in West Hollywood frequented by celebrities, cult members, and every variety of absurd character L.A. has to offer.
The Writer’s Dossier 4/30/2024 – The Andrew Miller interview
DOSSIER: Since moving to Los Angeles, you’ve done a lot of writing, you’re involved in writing groups, and you’ve even done a documentary film. How much of your wholesome, Midwest Ohio roots influence your professional work today … have you totally gone all west coast?
MILLER: I went spiritually West Coast as a kid, long before I had a chance to ever actually move here. Watching Dragnet re-runs on Nick at Nite did it. I thought Sgt. Joe Friday was so cool and I still do. When each episode began, “This is the city…” I wanted desperately to somehow live in that city. I’ve since come to regard Jack Webb as a great artist, a truly underappreciated original—no one else did what he did with his career, and no one else could have. Like the narrator of my book, many of my characters come from wholesome Ohio, but Southern California is my home, literally and creatively. That being said, there are things I miss about the Buckeye State: Buckeyes (the candy, you can’t find it anywhere here), Cedar Point, fried fish from Lake Erie, Donatos Pizza, autumn and being able to find a parking space.
A Place in West Hollywood
DOSSIER: Your debut novel, NAMASTE MART CONFIDENTIAL, paints vivid colors of West Hollywood with a broad brush as seen through two guys who work at a hippie grocery story and end up playing private detectives. Out of all the visual input of being in L.A., how did you choose the grocery store setting for your book? (Do you want to change your answer about your Ohio roots now?)
MILLER: The concept seemed so obvious to me, almost too simple—what if the detective didn’t make enough money detecting and had to put in time at a grocery store? What if, at some point, he saw the suspects in his case shopping for groceries? A grocery store setting is an organic reason to put anyone in a book. Whoever the character is, they have to buy food. Many of the celebrities who are mentioned shopping in the book (Charles Martin Smith, Drea DiMatteo, etc.) were all people I actually saw at grocery stores in L.A. at one time or another. It was funny for me to imagine, after the requisite moment where the detective gets beat up, that he still has to put in time on a cash register. “Paper or plastic?” he asks with a black eye, and cuts all over his face. Hilarious!
Quiet On The Set!
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (Absolute silence/music playing/a coffee shop on Rodeo Drive).
MILLER: It’s about half and half between writing in my office with music playing (usually Beethoven, or some other classical music) or writing late at night with absolute silence. Sometimes the jolt of energy from the classical stuff is just the ticket, and sometimes the quiet and solitude is just what I need. Whatever gets the work done.
Reckless Verisimilitude
DOSSIER: Tell The Dossier about your unrelenting research for this book. There’s a hippie grocery store, a retired Hollywood actress, the Armenian mob, and a chain of high-end lingerie stores. You got deep into all four of these environments … right? What was that like?
MILLER: Namaste Mart Confidential comes from a mix of real-life experience and heavy research and I (mostly) want to keep my readers guessing which is which. “Reckless verisimilitude,” as James Ellroy says. The Armenian mob is a significant presence in L.A., and has been for a while. A friend had a violent encounter with them many years ago and I’ve often thought they were underused in crime fiction. The fundamentalist Mormons have long been a fascination. I have some ex-Mormon friends who told me a few stories. My research there included Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman, No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie, Prophet’s Prey by Sam Brower, and, of course, Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. The high-end lingerie shops were inspired by a real-life business run by a real-life actress whose work I’ve long admired. Stories that seem fake in L.A. often turn out to be true and vice-versa. Hopefully my various methods paint what L.A. really felt like in 2013.
Hot Beds of Anti-cat Bias
DOSSIER: Your cats are named John Wayne and Calamity Jane. There has to be a good story there about how they live up to their namesakes. Please explain.
MILLER: While no one in my direct family was guilty of this, large swaths of Ohio are hot beds of anti-cat bias. Do you feel this way? I’ve always loved dogs, but growing up in Ohio, it seemed to me that I was taught by my environment that cats were somehow inferior, and the people that like them were disproportionately neurotic or difficult. This is false. Cats are intelligent, emotionally honest, and badass to the core. My girlfriend and I wanted our cats, who are brother and sister rescues, to have names that reflected this. So the boy became John Wayne (like his namesake, John Wayne answers to Duke) and the girl became Calamity Jane. Posting pictures of either is the most justifiably reliable way to drive engagement on any of my social media accounts and both of them make appearances in Namaste Mart Confidential.
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