O’Brien’s Literary Speculator Weblog

Earlier this year, In April I believe I had the extraordinary good luck to be able to interview Christopher Moore. Chris Moore is my very favorite author and has been for some time. His writing is side-splittingly funny and intelligent. His only problems are he only puts out about one book a year and then I read it in three days, other than that I see nothing to criticize in his work. I previously published this interview in The Panache Experience, Issue 5 Volume 20.

I like a story that is quirky. I like stories where weird stuff happens, all the time. I never mind reading something with the hounds of hell or a dim angel or a melancholy lust lizard.

In any case, discovering the work of Christopher Moore was for me a wonderful event. The first of his writings that I read was Practical Demon Keeping and I was hooked instantly. The opening line, “The Breeze blew into San Junipero in the shot gun seat of Billy Winston’s Pinto wagon,” sort of exemplifies the writing. The way the Breeze leaves has to be read. The prose is efficient, funny and unputdownable. Chris’s books take him a year to write but I usually read them in a weekend. I am always ready for the next one.

Jerry O’Brien: You must have lots of ideas that are sitting around.

What makes you decide to tell a particular story? What makes you say, okay, this is the right time to tell this story?

Chris Moore: A lot of times it depends on what’s going on with my life and how I want to spend the next couple of years. Each book is sort of a reaction to last one. So when I came off of Lamb, which was very much concerned with academic research and reading and a lot of sitting around

thinking stuff, I wanted to do something, I wanted to get out of my office.

So I decided to write Fluke which is about marine mammalian biologists and ended up getting in the water with humpback whales and being out on the ocean and doing things that are lot more adventurous. Very often the story I choose is based on what I want to do in my nonwriting

life, because basically everything I do is geared toward writing a book and some of those books are very self-generating and some of them come from a lot of outside material. Whether I pick one or another will depend on that.

Also it has to do with time. Writing a book like The Stupidest Angel, I proposed that book because I thought I could write them much more quickly and so they would work on the release calendar. So I may have a great story but it’s not the time in my life that it fits. It’s too big a story to fit in the time that I have to write it and therefore it wouldn’t be appropriate to take it on at the given time. That’s generally what makes the decision of what I’m going to write in any given time. I may carry a story around for years that I just don’t have the time to write because it requires more research and writing time than I have before the next book is due.

Jerry O’Brien: Do you work on more than one at a time?

Chris Moore: Only to the extent that I will research one, say I’m in the last third of writing one book I’ll start researching ideas and start narrowing down the scope of an idea for the next book. I will work on another book as I’m editing or promoting the prior one because I have to do that

now. There’s just no way to wait for each one to come out and then start a new one but actually writing two manuscripts, I don’t do at the same time.

Jerry O’Brien: The new book, You Suck, A Love Story is in the stores. What are you working on now?

Chris Moore: I’m working on a historical comedy set in medieval England which is a big book because of the research that’s involved in it as opposed to You Suck which didn’t require that much research.

Jerry O’Brien I like the way You Suck which is the sequel to Blood Sucking Fiends meshed with A Dirty Job.

Chris Moore: Right. That was why it was appropriate to do at that time because I had already spent a lot of time in the city sort of getting the neighborhoods down and stuff for A Dirty Job so it was a natural transition to start working on You Suck which was a book I had to have delivered very quickly. A lot of times it sounds more like a commerce answer than a creative answer, but that’s how stories get picked and what you’re going to do now is how much time you have to write it.

Jerry O’Brien: Well, it also helps if you’re trying to make a living doing it.

Chris Moore: Well, exactly. If I could just write whatever I wanted without having any idea toward career building then I’d just go with what I was interested in at the

time, which I tend to a little bit anyway, but you know, you do make decisions based on timing.

Jerry O’Brien: San Francisco is a pretty protective city in terms of its reputation. Have you had any adverse reaction or very positive reaction from the actual people who live in that town?

Chris Moore: Everybody I’ve been in contact with loves the books. I think if you are the kind of person who reads my books you are going to be predisposed to enjoy how the city is portrayed and those people who would be more inclined to read non-fiction or have some different view of the city would not be inclined to read my books. A lot of times the reaction is self-correcting, but so far everybody who has contacted me that lives in the city or used to live in the city, I get a lot of people who used to live in the city and read the books and feel nostalgic for the city, so that’s a good sign, I think.

Jerry O’Brien: Now I completely enjoyed the Squirrel People. The artist Monique Motil who created them, did you work with her?

Chris Moore: No. I met her through her work. I found the squirrel people which she calls her sartorial creatures. I saw them in a gallery in the Mission and then wrote to her to ask her if I could use them and since then I’ve met her and we’ve become not close friends, but we have coffee together occasionally and she’s a kind of insane artist, I mean just creatively, I don’t mean she’s drooling or anything, but I haven’t worked with her other than after I wrote the book she created characters that didn’t exist in her body of work that matched my characters in the book.

In other words my description of a number of the characters in the book, they weren’t based on her, they were based on her sort of concept and way of working but they weren’t based on actual characters I saw and once I described them, she built them, and sold them already too. I’ve never actually worked in concert with her.

Jerry O’Brien: You do a lot of research. You went to Hawaii, learned all about humpback whales, you learned how to fly and crash helicopters. Did you do any investigation in the sewers of San Francisco?

Chris Moore: I did not and I say that right in the afterwards. No. I didn’t go down there because it’s the sewer. If you want to check on me, then have at it. So no, I didn’t spend any time researching the sewers. I had the book about half done and I read that in San Francisco there was an element of their sewer system that sort of made what I did not possible. That was irritating but I just went, well, anybody that checks it out has got a lot bigger problem than my accuracy.

Jerry O’Brien: You spoke on a panel with Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian.

Chris Moore: Yes, I was on a panel with her and two other authors who’ve written vampire books.

Jerry O’Brien: I was unable to attend. How was the audience?

Chris Moore: It went very well. I think there was a nice balance of experience on the panel, as well as different takes on the subject. The audience was smaller than the dark humor panel, but enthusiastic.

Jerry O’Brien: Did many of them think you or Elizabeth or the other panel were reporters?

Chris Moore: No. People got it.

Jerry O’Brien: I read the Historian and I really enjoyed it.

Chris Moore: I haven’t read it yet but it certainly did well and it was her first book so good for her. I think it will be interesting. Those kind of panels usually are fun, I think for the audience and for the authors who do them, but it’s not a teaching thing, you know sometimes you’ll have

some writers from the audience who ask questions and everybody addresses them but to answer your question, no I’m not teaching anywhere this year, I’m just doing a couple of, I’m doing that one writers’ conference speech and I did The Jack London Conference in the Bay area.

Jerry O’Brien: Let’s change gears here. I have spent some time on your website. Some of the things that you talk about there are writing tips. You say you should write in the omniscient and third person. Does that apply mostly or maybe it applies to everything, your style of writing?

Chris Moore: I change around. I recommend usually that people write in the third person limited and then switch point of views within third person and I just recommend third person because it’s harder to paint yourself into a corner, but the book that I’m working on now is first person and Lamb was first person. So you do what serves the material best, but I think in terms of a new writer and being able to get everything under control, I think third person limited and multiple point of view preferably is the way to go and if you don’t know what that means then you have a lot more learning to do.

Jerry O’Brien: Have you gone through an MFA program?

Chris Moore: No. I’m self-taught. I had a couple of extension courses from Shelly Lowenkopf who teaches the MFA program in professional writing at USC back in the ‘80’s but I haven’t actually been part of any program at all.

Jerry O’Brien: Shelly will be at the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference.

Chris Moore: And he’s terrific. When I taught there lastyear, I would go to his workshops at night so I could see what I was going to teach the next day in my workshop. I still think he’s the best teacher I have ever had and largely, what I learned from him is what is responsible for my success.

Jerry O’Brien: You also said one thing in that article you don’t want to use cheesy devices, like getting a description on the page by having your character look in the mirror.

Chris Moore: Yes, I just think it’s irritating.

Jerry O’Brien: Yes, but if your character is looking into a mirror because she just got sprayed with something toxic, took off
all her clothes and perusing the merchandise, can she say, the ever so sexy farmer’s tan?

Chris Moore: Again, it’s the same device. You can do anything you want; I just think it’s cheesy and weak. When I said that in a speech that I gave in Jackson Hole, about 50 people in the audience gasped, because they had used that device in their books. It’s just a lack of confidence, so people think that there’s some reason that you can’t step out of your limited point of view and just describe something you know. I don’t know, use it if it works, if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work. There are professional writers who sell a lot of books who use that stupid-ass device, I’m not saying don’t ever do it, it’s just that I think it’s weak and very much subjective in that respect. It’s not going to keep you from getting published, put it that way.

Jerry O’Brien: And it probably won’t help you to get published either.

Chris Moore: No, unless you run into somebody who is like I am, who thinks it’s some weak stuff, then it’s not going to help you or hurt you, it’s just what it is. It’s something to be aware of, you can streamline your writing if you don’t lock yourself into that point of view that’s so rigid that you don’t shift out of it when it would be much more efficient to your writing and move the story much more quickly if you didn’t have everything observed through the characters’ eyes and if you’re decent at it you can step in and out of the character’s head all the time and nobody calls you on the carpet, unless it’s a writing workshop, that says, “Hey, you changed point of view there and it’s like yes, so. I mean for the first chapter of You Suck is seven pages long and I think I changed points of view in it oh maybe eight times in seven pages. Nobody’s ever written to me and say, hey you changed point of view here, because its sort of seamless, nobody notices it, but if you were in a workshop everybody would say, “Hey wait a minute wasn’t that in one character’s point of view and now it’s in his point of view.” It’s very inside baseball we’re talking right now, it’s very crafty stuff, but that’s sort of my reason for always bringing that up as an example. When I’m doing a writer’s conference if I get you to realize you use some of these devices, then you will realize that you, if you master your craft don’t have to use them. Then you only use them when you want to.

Jerry O’Brien: Will you be teaching anywhere this year?

Chris Moore: I am doing a keynote at the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference on June 27th and I think that’s it this year. I’ve had a whole lot of public appearance stuff going on in the first quarter and I’ve really tried to not schedule anything for the last three quarters so I can actually get something written. I did the LA County Festival of Books which isn’t teaching.

Jerry O’Brien: I looked at your website and you mentioned a whole bunch of picks, book picks and some of them I’ve heard of and some of them not, but I will check them out. How do you go book shopping?

Chris Moore: The best of worlds is to actually go to a book store and wander around for hours until I find something that’s cool but I just don’t get to do that much anymore. What usually happens is I’m on tour somewhere and a book store person comes up and puts something in my hand and I read it or somebody sends something to me or it’s recommended to me from people on my website and I have a huge list of things that are recommended to me by readers. I mean, its got to be two hundred books, three hundred books long and I just go through it and every six months or so I will order a bunch of those and read some of them and most of those books that you see in the later Chris’ picks were recommended by readers and so it’s really a sort of networking thing and less of that joy of just finding a book in a book store like it used to be. I just don’t tend to be able to do that any more, although I love to, I just don’t have the time.

Jerry O’Brien: You now have ten books published, where should the new reader of your work start?

Chris Moore: The gateway book for my work is Lamb. But it depends on what people read too, but the reader’s got to be prepared for the supernatural because every single book has supernatural elements in it and if my reader doesn’t want that then he should be reading Alice Walker or somebody.

Jerry O’Brien: Okay, so it’s either an Alice Walker book or a…

Chris Moore: No somebody who writes realistic fiction, Alice Walker is the first author that came to mind. I’m just saying that my stuff has weird shit going on in it, for people who need reality I definitely would not recommend my stuff for them and I am perfectly happy with someone saying this stuff is too weird for me.

Jerry O’Brien: Most of your books the weird comes up earlier than in Fluke.

Chris Moore: Yeah, and that book is really, like two books because it has one, the first part is very sort of, the detail is very accurate, you know, it’s got humorous stuff going on, but the detail of how the researchers do their work is very, very accurate and then it does take a huge shift, although just as a point, when you see “Bite Me” written on the flukes of a whale which happens like within the first three pages, you ought to maybe see that something’s coming. I’m just saying a lot of people may think okay, that may be an indication that things are goingto get weird at some point.

To Be Continued.