C.W. Blackwell
Hard Mountain Clay
DOSSIER: Given the fact that you work as a crime analyst in Santa Cruz County, CA, is there anything in your writing these days that you don’t run through the filter of the knowledge you’ve acquired through work?
BLACKWELL: Oh, you bet. Crime analysis has given me a huge advantage when coming up with crime plots, but there are aspects of my writing that go beyond my on-the-job knowledge. As a musician, I’m obsessed with the rhythm and cadence of prose, and I like to structure paragraphs almost like a guitar solo—the long runs, the quick hammer-ons. A big slide up to the twelfth fret like a sudden stab to the heart. There’s a pattern that feels right and you just have to find it. I’m also very focused on precision, and I think that comes from writing poetry. So, yes—crime analysis helps my writing, but there are lots of different inputs as well.
DOSSIER: A lot of writers have day jobs. Do your co-workers know that they’re sitting next to a Derringer Award winner and a Derringer Award finalist for your work as a writer, or do you try and keep things on the down low? (Warning: given The Dossier’s wild popularity, they’ll probably see this online, so…)
BLACKWELL: Haha. Truth is, I don’t talk about my writing at work. Most writers I know have awkward experiences discussing their work with day job colleagues. I don’t know exactly why this is, but I think folks like to make up their minds about you, and when they suddenly find out about an entirely new and interesting aspect of your life, they’re unsure how to handle it. Or maybe they just think it’s too personal. I have one or two friends at work who regularly ask about my writing, but that’s it. It’s almost like having a secret identity.
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (Music/silence/back of a squad car?)
BLACKWELL: Believe me – you want to avoid the back of a squad car if you can help it. Thing is, it’s very tough when you have a full time job, a wife, kids (and you remotely care about getting exercise). Finding time to write fiction is like a back alley knife fight—you have to strike when you can and hope it’s deep enough to count. I write during breaks, at lunch, late at night, you name it. I can’t write with music playing unless it’s old-school jazz. Miles Davis, Coltrane, Mingus, Chet Baker, Paul Desmond—you get the idea. Anytime someone starts singing, though, it ruins my focus. Something about hearing lyrics crosses wires with my writing brain.
DOSSIER: For your current book that’s out, HARD MOUNTAIN CLAY, was there a real-life person or a specific case you were able to draw from when you created the meth-head truck driver Lou Holt?
BLACKWELL: I definitely knew a few Lou Holts growing up, though he’s mostly an amalgam of lots of different people around town. Meth will make you crazy. Opiates can kill you outright, but meth will make you lose your goddamn mind. And if you have existing mental health disorders, it will amplify them. So when a guy like Lou Holt smokes crystal, all bets are off. If you notice though, Lou Holt never actually strikes the kids. It was important for me to show that the constant fear of harm can also be a source of deep trauma. It’s like there’s a buzzsaw loose in the house, skipping from room to room, and you never know when it’s going to cut your legs off. When I was a kid, I lived with my grandfather for a time. He would come home incoherently drunk and scare the crap out of me, screaming and yelling. To this day, I feel uncomfortable taking my shoes off indoors in case I might have to quickly run out the backdoor—or out a window. It really sticks with you.
DOSSIER: The folks at The Dossier go through a lot of audiobooks while in the car, but you … you, decide to learn an instrument while sitting in traffic. Did you choose the harmonica due to its portability or did you hear there’s an opening in Taylor Swift’s backup band?
BLACKWELL: Believe me, I’m not that good. And I also went through a lot of audiobooks. But when I was a teenager, I worked with this old plumber who would pull a blues harp out of his overalls and play when he had idle time. He taught himself in between jobs or when he was stuck in traffic. So when I grew up, and it was my turn to sit in gridlock (it comes for us all, Jeff),
I remembered this guy and started playing too. It was funny how people on the highway would inch past me in the other lane and give me a thumb’s up, like I had somehow tamed one of life’s most unbearable monsters.
Author link: C.W. Blackwell
Jeff Circle 