I interviewed James Phoenix, author of the Fenway Burke.
Q: What makes Fenway Burke different from all other
hardboiled detectives?
A: Fenway’s a
feminist...He is the very first happily man in the genre. His wife is a true
partner, highly accomplished and independent and they have a beautiful baby
girl they dote over.
He’s capable of
tenderness, deep love and true commitment...But is also capable of punching a
hole through a brick wall with either hand and will never hesitate to use
violence when necessary or expedient.
I give full
credit to Robert B. Parker for the start of the feminist evolution of the
genre...If you take a look at all the hardboiled detectives of Dashiell
Hammett, Raymond Chandler and company and including early Parker, you’re going
to find hard drinking chain smoking loners with fedoras pulled down tightly
over their eyes, to whom all women are either broads or dames...Parker’s hero
Spenser was no exception in his premiere 1973 novel the Godwulf Transcript.
Spenser is drunk
most of the time, antagonistic and is sleeping with both his attractive client
and unbeknown to her, her daughter as well. He’s a real charmer.
But by Parker’s
fifth or sixth novel was see a real change in Spenser...Though he never
marries, he is in an exclusive relationship with a highly accomplished woman.
He backs off on the booze as well, keeping himself in top shape. He knows what
wine to order with what dish, is well read and even cooks gourmet. He’s a
gentleman...But a gentleman with a real edge.
Fenway is cut out
of the very same mold, but has taken the feminist evolution to the next level.
Parker took some
heat on this and so have I...(Though to this point the reviews of Frame
Up have been universally thumbs up.)
But my attitude
is the same as Fenway’s...He doesn’t need to be a chauvinist to be a tough
guy...He is a tough guy.
Q: How did you come up with the character?
A: I am not Fenway
Burke, but it’s a very safe statement to say, that I have a lot of Fenway Burke
in me. It’s no coincidence that he’s a 6’3” blue eyed blonde and comes in at a
very solid 220...He also knows how to handle himself, sports a full well
trimmed beard and comes complete with a gold loop ear ring.
I have never in
my life ever bullied anybody...Never, and I’m not going all butch
on you here, but I can introduce you to any number of follows who will tell you
without hesitation, that if you’re going to tug on somebody whiskers, I am a
very poor choice. Of course I’m an old guy now, coming into the literary world
very late in life, but it’s still not a swell plan to try to push me around.
When I see a
hardboiled detective writer posing on a jacket cover wearing a broad rimmed fedora,
it makes me smile...It’s a nine out of ten shot, that guy’s never broken
anybody’s nose in his life...I have...a number of times.
Writing Fenway
comes very easily to me.
Q: What are your thoughts on the whole e-book
revolution?
A: I’m not a
Luddite. Anything that makes it easier for people to read, I see as a step in
the right direction. They’re selling more e-books now than hard cover, and
though I must admit, I first felt I could never get the same feel from an
e-book that I could actually turning a page,at this point, I’m very much on
board.
A: Here’s a
prediction for you: Within one year, someone’s going to come out with a
perfectly serviceable e-book for around the same price as a hard cover volume,
around thirty dollars or so...And when that finally happens, the only books
that will be printed on paper will be printed on demand. And within one year of
that, publishers and book clubs will be giving e-books away with some kind of
tie in for people to download their books.
Q: What’s next for you and Fenway?
A: Volume # 2 in
the Fenway Burke series, Loose Ends, is complete and comes in
at around 375 pages, half again as long as Frame Up. It’s scheduled to drop
around this time next year. I’m 200 odd pages into Kestrel, # 3 in the series,
which is scheduled to drop the year after that. There are excerpts from all
three of these volumes on my site, www.jamesphoenixnovels.com .
There’s a second
series in the works as well, Gallo & Flaco.Gallo is in many
ways, Fenway’s opposite number, a former Boston Police detective who leaves
town under a cloud when a huge stash of cocaine under his watch to be used as
evidence disappears without a trace...They can prove nothing, but suddenly
Gallo resigns, is seen driving around in a red Ferrari and relocates to
Chicago.
He’s a rogue...A
genuine rogue, and comes with major substance abuse issues, and four ex-wives
with a high priced call girl as his primary love interest, but he’s a likable
rogue, non-the less.
I’m not what
you’d call the breath of springtime, at sixty-five, but I lift weights and run
anywhere from three to ten miles seven days a week, don’t drink and watch what
I eat. So unless I get run over by a bus, I expect to be around for a while.
My plan is to release twenty Fenway novels
and twenty Gallo novels before they shovel the dirt on me...We’ll see just how
that all pans out, but for the very first time in in my life I life, I’m doing
something I really love to do.
I’d do it for free if I had to, but it
looks like I won’t.
Q:
How do you promote your work?
A: It took me fourteen years and exactly
five hundred eight rejections, but finally through my agent, I had eight offers
of publication and thought I was out of the woods.
Nope...Publishers do a great job of
putting books on the shelf, but as far as promotion goes, it’s pretty much left
up to the author.
I had never promoted a book in my life.
After an exhaustive search, I signed with Kelley & Hall, who have a very
long list of author’s they’ve worked with to get the word out.
The tact is very straightforward. The work
must stand by itself, but my promoters know how to put it in front of the right
people. Then it works just like a Broadway Play...If you get great reviews, you
run forever...If they pan you, you close in a week.
Our very first review set the tone. Amazon
#1 Hall of Fame Reviewer,Harriett Klausner. She gave Frame
Up, FIVE STARS.
There’s a dozen more in, ditto...The worse
review we got was THREE STARS, the big kick being predictably that Fenway
Burke was in a committed relationship with a woman he considered his
equal...How romance just didn’t really seem to fit in this kind of a book...But
even that reviewer said she very much enjoyed the work,
thought it was very well plotted and how it kept her attention all the way
through.
I put she in italics, because though I
expected that reaction here and there, I didn’t expect it from a woman...Hope
that’s not sexist of me.
There’s a memoir in the works, that not
only deals with my fourteen year Grand Adventure finally reaching
this point with my literary effort I call The Phoenix Project, but also a
factor that had a huge impact, right from early childhood on, in every single
success I’ve ever had in my life.
At the age of sixty I was given an over
the top diagnosis of ADD/ADHD, Adult Attention Deficient
Disorder.
I always knew I was different, but this
diagnosis really filled in a lot of blanks. The psychologist was amazed I could
function at all, but then almost immediately saw just how my mind worked.
They call it Hyper Focus. This isn’t
the clinical term, but in my case, Crazy, Insane, Nutso, Over-the-Top, Out of
his Mind, Bonkers, Screaming Hyper Focus.
The building I’m in could be burning down
around my ears, but I’d never smell the smoke of feel the heat...Why? Because
I’d be 10,000% focused on whatever task I was at hand.
That’s why it was possible for a guy who
had never written anything in his life beyond letters to friends and family,
post card and a few business brochures here and here, to ignore five hundred
eight rejections and work for fourteen years with never a thought of quitting
and ending up with five star reviews.
I’m working with CHADD, Children
& Adults with Attention Deficient Disorder, a National Non Profit
out of Landover, MD, USA.
They do great work and are receiving a portion of my royalties forRelentless.
Relentless is under contract to drop in the spring of 2013 and
working with CHADD, I’m being scheduled to appear on the full talk show
circuit. I promote CHADD...They promote me around the memoir.
Q:
What other genres do you like besides crime?
A: My background is as a seat of your
pants entrepreneur. They say write what you know, so my first efforts, which
didn’t end up going anywhere, were Heratio Alger stories, about guys who
started out with nothing and ended up captains of industry. The genre was
family saga. Just as I did later with the giants of Crime Fiction, you’ll find
very few if any writers of Family Saga or historical fiction I haven’t read.
But my taste are very eclectic and I’m
good for at least two to three books a week...And like my hero, Fenway Burke,
for years I’ve read with a dictionary by my side.
I use it less and less now of course, but
whenever I came upon a word I was not absolutely sure of, I’d look it up and
add it on an alphabetized list with it’s definition.
Here’s one for you: autodidact. A few years
back, I looked it up, smiled and added it to my list.
Turns out, that’s exactly what I am.
Q:
What’s your idea about the psychotic sidekick in PI novels like Hawk and Joe
Pike?
A: I love them. It’s a great device and
gives the hero a sometimes different point of view while playing on the same
team. In the first Fenway Burke novel, his sidekick, if you can call him that,
is childhood pal and a giant of a man with a very shady background, called Tiny.
Tiny contracts with our hero to find the
truth about a man doing life for a crime he may not have committed.
He’s a great character and a big man in
organized crime. He’ll always be around throughout the entire Fenway
Burke series, but another character who was also introduced in Frame Up, steps up in the second in the series, Loose
Ends, as Fenway’s real side kick.
He’s an associate of Tiny’s. They call him
Ax.
Ax could have had a brilliant career as a Navy Seal,
had he not decided to beat the hell out of a superior officer.
He’s 6’6” with a 24 inch neck, a shaved
head, a busted nose and an expert certification in hand to hand combat, small
arms and demolition.
Nobody fools with Ax.
Q:
In the last century we’ve seen new waves of PI writers, first influenced by
Hammett, then Chandler, Macdonald, Parker, later Lehane. Who do you think will
influence the coming generation?
A: That’s an easy
one: James Phoenix...I’m way better lookin than
those bums...(Only kidding, I love each and every one of those guys.)
Q: Keith Dixon came up with this following question:
How do you arrive at the structure of your books?
A: There’s less than a dozen story lines
in the hardboiled genre that get reworked again and again with each author
putting his own personal spin on them. “Something of great value has gone
missing, find it. A man is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, find the
guilty and see that justice is done. Someone’s been kidnapped, rescue them. The
damsel in distress, Someone’s in danger, make it go away, etc.”
I put myself in
whatever rough story line I come up with and just see where events lead me,
telling the story in the first person though dialogue.
In any of my
books you’ll find it almost like watching a movie or a stage play. There’s
minimal flowery description. You get to know the characters by what they say and
that’s how the story unfolds as well.
They’re told in a
blunt no nonsense masculine style, a style they tell me is tailor made for me.
Q: What question should we ask every PI writer we
interview and what is your answer?
Q: Where did your
hero come from? Who is he...really?
A: Lynn, Massachusetts...And
he’s me.
