« March 2005 | Main | June 2005 »

April 04, 2005

The Interrogation

On April 4, 2005, the quasi-retired, British Virgins-based CIA operative known only as "W. Cooper" filed transcripts of the following interrogation of one Will Staeger, conducted on the front porch of bungalow nine, on the property called the Conch Bay Beach Club. It is not known whether certain classified portions of the interrogation have been removed from the transcripts. Staeger identified himself as an "author," visiting the Caribbean for "research purposes."

XXX BEGIN TRANSCRIPT XXX

Cooper: Let's get something straight. I've been tortured, shot, electrocuted, whipped, knifed, bludgeoned, and bitten -- by people, barracuda, and small sharks. If you fuck with me, if you don't answer the questions I'm asking, I'll take some of my first-hand experience and apply it to you right here on this porch. We understand eachother?

Staeger: Excuse me?

Cooper: Let's get on with it. I see from your travel documents that you're referring to this visit as a "research trip." Explain.

Staeger: Um, sure. I wrote a novel about a quasi-retired CIA operative posted in the British Virgins, residing there by way of a form of extortion he managed to effect, and I came here to verify facts, remind myself of the feel of the locales -- the locals, too -- and to find some new territory to use in the second book in the series.

Cooper: Something sounds oddly familiar about the book you claim to have written. Sorry to tell you, amigo, I'm not sure your idea sounds all that original. Moving on here, you refer to a second book. Clarify. What are you calling it?

Staeger: I'm not talking about the title yet. I need to deliver it to my publisher by November. It begins in the same hero's world, but takes us north and south a bit more than is the case in Painkiller. Cuba, Central and South America, and Florida, for instance.

Cooper: Painkiller? Also unoriginal. That's the name of a cocktail invented here, in the islands.

Staeger: Correct. Rum, orange and pineapple juices...

Cooper: ...and cream of coconut, served over ice with a dash of nutmeg. Save it. I'm not much of a fan. It's a tourist's drink.

Staeger: Living here, you've got to be a drinker though. What's your poison?

Cooper: I'll ask the fucking questions, author-boy. Where'd you get the idea for this blatant ripoff of my life and times you call Painkiller?

Staeger: Well, I was hooked on a string of Elmore Leonard novels there for a while. You know how you find a recent novel by somebody and you realize there are fifteen, twenty of his earlier books you haven't read? It's like finding a paradise in paperback. I went through just about all of them but the westerns. I was hooked partially because I had just completed my first novel -- a kind of Robert Ludlum imitation -- and nobody seemed interested in the thing. I was drawn to the fully realized characters and settings Leonard pulls you into -- you feel as though you're there, fraternizing with these ex-cons up to no good, smoking dope, shooting people, stealing things...the best. I thought maybe I could find my voice as a novelist by writing in that world, with characters who live in a place of -- well, greater grit, I guess you could say. Scumbags. Expats. Recovering Cold War spies and people on the lam from the law.

Cooper: "Fully realized characters and settings" -- Christ, what are you, some kind of mamby-pamby artist? Maybe you are disturbed enough to travel to the BVIs simply for research purposes. Go on.

Staeger: I'd also had this idea floating around my head for awhile and didn't know what to do with it. The idea was to take a male, CIA version of Clarice Starling -- Thomas Harris's just-graduated FBI trainee played by Jodie Foster in the film version of his book -- and post him somewhere tropical, where life appears at first to be easy, but he soon stumbles across something disturbing, and the shit proceeds to hit the proverbial fan. I'd had an internship with an agency between my junior and senior years in college that gave me at least a modicum of first-hand knowledge, so I thought I'd be pretty informed about the recent-graduate spy. Thought maybe I could invent a new Bond or something. I've seen Dr. No maybe four or five thousand times and read all the original Fleming novels a few dozen times each. Got 'em for a dime each from Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon, back when there weren't a hundred collectors competing for each copy of the things.

Cooper: Hold on, hold on, there buddy. What "agency" did you have this supposed "internship" with?

Staeger: Oh, Department of Defense, or some such.

Cooper: (grumbling) Yeah, right. I'm thinking it's time to pull out my Abu Ghraib arsenal to get you to quit feeding me this line of bull you seem to think I'm buying. Think again. Get back to your story. I've heard of that Powell's Books, by the way.

Staeger: I pulled a bunch of history textbooks on the Caribbean, ran through them in a couple days, boned up on some Atlases, and came up with a rough outline of the idea. At that point I had an offer for a more appealing job than the one I was currently holding, and in taking the new position I had the chance to take a few weeks off in between. My dad lived in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the time...

Cooper: I know where San Juan is.

Staeger: ...so I headed there and brought a stack of legal pads with me. The stack was a little ambitious -- think I filled up two of 'em -- but I started molding the story, and in doing that, realized I was looking to tell a story about an anti-hero who, seemingly checked out from society, might just turn out to be the last, hugely unlikely hope for the U.S. if some major terror deal threatened the country. And for someone to be an anti-hero -- well, that person would probably have done quite a bit of living. So the new trainee idea went out the window.

Cooper: Quit bullshitting me. You didn't write that whole outline in San Juan. It's common knowledge you spent two weeks at a place called --

Staeger: The Cooper Island Beach Club. Correct. Like the name?

Cooper: Very funny. Total coincidence. And don't give me any of your "fully realized" crap on that one. I made up this name -- W. Cooper -- and as you must undoubtedly feel you know, I made it up by combining the name of the actor and the character in one of the only Hollywood movies I ever liked.

Staeger: (nodding) High Noon.

Cooper: High Noon. Get back to the beach club. And just to clarify the coincidence, I live and am interrogating you in a place called the Conch Bay Beach Club. So don't start in on --

Staeger: My dad and I found this place online -- www.cooper-island.com -- and it is, I can tell you nearly without reservation, one of the finest places on the planet. Quiet, small, great food, unbelievable snorkeling -- sea turtles, barracudas -- a spot that's well known among the yachting set for drive-bys -- dinner, lunch, cocktails, whatever. And there are some neighbors, some West Indian, some not, on the island itself -- the beach club doesn't own the whole of the island -- and I thought it'd be interesting to construct that anti-hero's home in the spirit of that place...although I won't reveal what I'm getting at in terms of the neighbors, and who owns what.

Cooper: Don't worry. There are certain answers I won't allow you to give. I'll interrupt you, if necessary. If I am to believe you, there is a story you've written, and we aren't looking to spoil the read by anybody reckless enough to plunk down the $24.95 to read the garbage you created -- except the parts that are coincidentally very similar to me and the place I live. Anyway, I get it -- we all get it -- the story came to you from that point on. "Fully realized," I'll bet. When do you write?

Staeger: Well, for a while, when my kids were a little younger and even before they were around, mornings.

Cooper: Let me guess, now they're a little older and up at the crack of dawn...

Staeger: Yep. Unless I'm up at the crack of midnight, I'm typically "visited" about five minutes into my morning session by my daughter sometime shortly after 6 am. So now -- and this is usually the case on the first draft of anything I write anyway -- I'm all over the place. As long as I log enough writing hours for the week, I'm happy -- an hour in the morning, ninety minutes on the train, a stolen lunch hour, weekend afternoons, and nights after everyone's gone to sleep. Lately I've been settling into 8 or 9 pm for a couple hours, when the kids have quieted down and I haven't quite passed out from the day job, commute, some actual quality social time with my family, and very infrequently, in fact alarmingly infrequently, whatever workout I got in on that particular day.

Cooper: Got any writing-discipline gimmicks up your sleeve?

Staeger: At one point toward the end of one of my last pre-publishing-deal rewrites of Painkiller I grabbed a pitcher, inscribed "5:15 - $100" across its face, and placed it on the bookshelf near where I wrote. Each morning I was up and writing by 5:15, I deposited a $100 bill in the pitcher. An advance on the theoretical advance I hoped to soon receive from a publishing deal...at the end of that rewrite I bought myself a PowerBook, on which I'm writing my next novel. I hear you've got a PowerBook of your own...
Cooper: I've got the 15". Sitting on the floor in the bungalow behind you. Right beside my Louisville Slugger, I might add. What about yours?

Staeger: 12". That was all the pitcher fund could procure.

Cooper: Too bad. I once heard Dennis Lehane couldn't afford to quit his day job until three, maybe four books in. This a common phenomenon? I mean, do you really expect us to believe you aren't already hanging out on some beach in the Caribbean as a result of this two-book HarperMorrow publishing deal you've got?

Staeger: I've heard that too. And you seem to have a pretty solid grasp on the latest branding in the publishing industry...
Cooper: Get on with your answer.

Staeger: Well, life ain't cheap. Plus there are probably twenty or thirty million guys out there who would willingly shoot somebody to take my job -- it's a pretty fortunate thing I managed to swing, working on original entertainment programming for ESPN after fleeing Hollywood with utter glee some years back.

Cooper: We don't get ESPN here. You can grab it from San Juan if you point the satellite in the right direction, but then again...
Staeger: ...You don't watch much TV.

Cooper: None, in fact. But you mentioned Hollywood, so that's my next question, big fella. I'm thinking the, um, "anti-hero" character you've created in Painkiller might make a great leading role in a film. Might even contend for my number-one favorite motion picture, now that I'm mulling it over.

Staeger: Painkiller, #1, High Noon, #2?

Cooper: I'll ask the goddamn questions.

Staeger: You may need to set up a second interrogation and bring your Abu Ghraib tools if you want to hear my opinion of Hollywood. Cut me a big enough check, we'll talk, but unless Clint Eastwood has a read while he's watching the sheep graze up at his Mission Ranch in Carmel, I'm planning on making it myself someday. Independently financed films are inevitably the best anyway.

Cooper: Ever hear of a guy named Bartleby? Suit, tie, totally out of place in the Caribbean?

Staeger: Bartleby? Sure.

Cooper: Maybe he'll pay you a visit.

Staeger: I'll keep an eye out.

XXX END TRANSCRIPT XXX

Posted by Will Staeger at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2005

The Second Book

Alright, so it isn't actually my second book; I wrote a notably bad but still complete novel before figuring out how to write competently by way of many drafts of Painkiller. And I wrote a few other, shorter stories, "semi-books" if you will, before that -- plus some screenplays, and all kinds of disjointed chapters, usually first chapters, of spy novels that never got finished, chapters that currently reside in some file cabinet somewhere like so many forlorn jigsaw puzzle pieces. But the second Cooper novel, which I am writing now, is the first "second book" in a series for me; so too is it the first "second book" under an actual publishing deal. Said publishing deal, of course, involving such things as deadlines, dollars, and, presumably, expectations.

It is also the first "second book" I've had to write while also, thankfully -- blessedly -- happily -- rewriting and copy-editing the "first book," reviewing cover art revisions, press releases, copy edits, and flap copy, building web sites, meeting and strategizing with "inside" and "outside" publicists, meeting booksellers, mapping out a potential signing tour, and managing foreign and film rights representation activities, a whole world of stress, rejection, and hope all over again.

And oh, yes, I forgot something: there remain in my life all the same factors that made that "first book" take five years (okay, seven) to get right, namely, a demanding "day job," at least two hours a day of commuting, a couple of kids, a wife I like seeing at least once in a while --

You get the idea.

It's funny -- I will never grouse, ever, about the good fortune that fell into my lap and resulted in the Painkiller publishing deal. I am living my dream. And I suppose I enjoy working hard, maybe even take the most pleasure at tackling the hardest possible challenges available to me. But I do find it funny that upon achieving one key item on my short, simple list of dreams I hope to accomplish while in this world, my life, in the short term anyway, has become one hell of a lot more challenging, and exhausting, rather than easier and more peaceful. My publishing house was kind enough to offer a two-book deal, and I jumped all over that like flies to the proverbial pile -- a writing career! I've done it! Two books! I'm in! -- and well I should have. I was practially willing, in fact, to agree to a super-aggressive deadline for delivery of the second book, partially because I understand at least a couple things about the publishing industry -- not many, but a couple -- for instance, that, unless you're Dan Brown, publishers love to build a series around the annual coinciding release of the new hardcover in the series with the prior installment's paperback...and, with this being what I want to do when I grow up and all, far be it from me to do anything besides make life easy on the generous souls and their employing corporation who've seen fit to actually pay me to write. A second Cooper novel? You got it! In one year? No problem! Sign me up! Deal! Let's rock!

The mind, however, is not good at remembering pain. It's kind of a fortunate flaw for human beings to possess -- allows us to remain just irrational enough to actually accomplish things. You forget, for instance, how hard it was to survive the first year of child-rearing with that first kid...once you clear the forest, and you're sleeping again, and this nice little two-year-old is smiling at you, you think only of the joy, and you decide to have another one -- and then you remember that you forgot how hard it was, at least until you've got another two-year-old smiling at you again.

I forgot the pain of Painkiller.

I forgot how I wore myself down to the nub, waking up at four every morning -- I am not a morning person -- to rewrite the whole goddamn thing over the course of another nine months because the prior draft wasn't fit to show to the family dog. I forgot how I did that again, and once more, and again, before I had something I was reasonably proud of. Forgot those hilarious moments, reading a book to my daughter at six-thirty at night to put her to bed, and suddenly being awoken by her: "Daddy, quit snoring! You're supposed to be reading my story!" Forgot how, when you're riding on no sleep, no energy, too much food, and too little exercise, that you catch every cold that comes anywhere near your household -- a kid sneezes in your son's daycare group and you're laid out with the shakes, hooked on Sudafed, for a week or two.

So here I am, the genius who thought he could do it all, trying to write a much better second book than first, in about one-fifth (okay, one-seventh) the time. I put things off for a couple months there -- a page here, a page there -- but I've kicked back into the deadly sleep-deprivation routine, mostly out of a fear of sheer embarassment...either of delivering late or, worse, finding out I'm not anywhere near the writer that two-book contract supposedly proclaimed me to be. So at least if I finish a draft early enough, by sleep-depriving myself now, then maybe I'll have to time to assess, and decide whether I need to pull a Tom Wolfe -- throw out a few hundred pages at a time because it ain't working, and head back into the mill to churn out some more.

Suppose being this busy makes for efficiency anyway...be nice if it turns out such a lifestyle makes for a good second book too.

Posted by Will Staeger at 09:41 PM | Comments (1)