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Dan Woodrell Talks Country Noir
From: www.writerswrite.com

" Author Dan Woodrell discusses his brand of "country noir" with The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey Trachtenberg. So what is country noir? Woodrell says it's just a noir story set in the country, instead of in the city. It's dark and the themes are darker. The author says he made up the term so he wouldn't be called a mystery writer.

The Wall Street Journal Online: What is country noir?

Daniel Woodrell: It's a noir story set in rural America rather than an urban area. It's a term that I made up largely to combat the mystery label that had gotten slapped on me. I wanted a counter label. Then I realized I'd painted myself into another corner.

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WSJ.com: Unlike other current noir writers, there are very few literary references in your books. If your characters read, we don't know it. Does your work attract much attention where you live?

Mr. Woodrell: It hasn't until now. There are people who know but it's not like I walk around and everybody knows who I am. I was born here and moved away. I didn't think I'd ever want to live here, but I came back and find myself staying. There are 11,000 in the town now. I know people who have until recently lived with dirt floors. There are people who live way back off the grid, without electricity. Not a whole lot, but quite a few. That's a choice for a lot of them. There might be a religious element in their isolation, at least with some of them.

It's been more than a decade since he touched heroin, Welsh says, and these days the dread of an impending hangover tends to keep him from indulging too much in other intoxicants. "You just get to the point where you see the hangover," he told Reuters while sipping green tea at a Manhattan hotel. "You think, 'Well, I'll have a pull, I'll have a line of coke, I'll have a couple of beers.' Then you think, 'I don't really want to, I'm going to feel crap.'"

Dodging a hangover is the theme of his new book, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, published in the United States this month. It is the story of Danny Skinner, a womanizing Edinburgh City Council restaurant inspector in his early 20s with a drinking problem and an irrational hatred of his new colleague, a shy model-railway enthusiast named Brian Kibby. Somewhat to his own surprise, Skinner manages to impose a curse on Kibby, a teetotaler "Star Trek" fan who lives with his parents, suffers the hangovers and physical injuries incurred by Skinner.....

"I always had a fantasy years ago that I'd love to give somebody my hangover," Welsh said, adding that the idea crystallized when he re-read Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray," in which the unscrupulous hero remains eternally young while a portrait in his attic grows old and corrupt...... Reviews for the new book have been mixed but Welsh said he had stopped reading them.

"I get people saying, 'He'd be a better writer if he just stopped writing about drugs and the underclass,'" Welsh said. "They never said Evelyn Waugh would be a better writer if he stopped writing about public school boys," he said, citing Waugh, the author of "Brideshead Revisited" and "Men at Arms," as one of his major influences.

Sci Fi: Do you allow your characters the luxury of taking the story in an unexpected turn, or do you stick to the original outline? Any examples?

Hamilton: Outlines were meant to bend, or break. At least for me. I will never sacrifice characterization for plot. The plot can be reworked; character growth, once screwed up, is almost irretrievable. I don't always like the choices my characters make, but I am amazed that they were "alive" enough to make the choice, to argue with me. I've finally made peace with the fact I'm wrong, a lot.

Example: Early in the series I would have bet good money that Jean-Claude would never be a romantic lead. I was so tired of the vampire as a romantic figure. I mean, they are walking corpses, what's so hot about that? That was honestly how Anita and I both felt in the first book, Guilty Pleasures.

I swore that I'd kill him before he ever became a true romantic lead. It would take me two more books before I began to understand that I couldn't kill Jean-Claude off, that losing him would hurt Anita, and me. Anita is like most of my friends?I can give them dating advice, but they rarely take it. Career advice, I don't even try. I would like to see Anita truly happy for more than moments at a time, but I no longer know the route we will be taking to get there.

I have always believed in full disclosure. When I announced that I had a recurrence of salivary cancer that required surgery, I had no idea when I went into the hospital on June 16 that I would still be here on August 16.

On June 16 they removed the cancer in my right jaw area, including a section of my jaw bone. It was successfully reconstructed. On July 1, I was packing to leave the hospital when my blood vessel ruptured. We have since learned that the rupture was caused by a break down of tissue surrounding the artery as a result of radiation treatments I had three years ago.

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I am happy to report that despite all, I am doing well. I started physical therapy, I communicate with friends on a daily basis, I play my iPod and listen to songs with Chaz and the doctors and nurses, and I write. Don Dupree, the Executive Producer of Ebert & Roeper installed a plasma TV and DVD player in my room. I am going to watch "Half Nelson" and I hope Kevin Smith was right. I also thank my good friend Jay Leno for sitting in my chair in my absence, and, of course, thanks to Richard Roeper.

I thank all of you for your prayers, your well-wishes, your gifts, cards, e-mails and flowers. I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't tell you when, but I sure look forward to being back on the movie beat.

I wrote the American remake of The Eye, the Pang Brothers movie, and one of the producers called me up and said "I'm doing this movie at New Line called Snakes on a Plane," and I laughed and asked what it was about, and he said "that's it, snakes on a plane." So I read the script, and basically New Line was ready to make the movie, budget was in and director was in, but they asked if I could help out with character and dialogue.

I think it will be a really fun movie, but you definitely have to get past the ridiculousness of the concept. It's a movie that isn't in any way pretentious. My job was to try and do a dialogue and character pass that was never campy and keep a suspense tone, which is hard because you have a movie called Snakes on a Plane.

The all-new Cracked leaves behind its illustrated past and debuts a new look, a new editorial direction and a roster of high-profile talent-including author/satirist Neal Pollack and writers from such popular shows as Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show and Chappelle's Show.

Acquired in 2005 by entrepreneur Monty Sarhan, Cracked spent the last year-and-a-half on hiatus while undergoing a total re-design and "re-imagining" as a humor magazine for a new generation. The all-new Cracked features articles, parodies, magazine spoofs, pranks, recurring columns and a completely new section called "But Seriously ... " with news, reviews and interviews covering the world of comedy.

The new Cracked has almost doubled in size-from 48 pages to 80 full-color pages on glossy paper. With a cover price of $3.99, the new CRACKED will be available nationwide. It is being distributed by Curtis Circulation, the largest distributor of magazines in North America.

Sarhan, who serves as CEO and Editor-in-Chief, discussed the magazine's new look and its re-launch. "We're extremely happy to debut the all-new CRACKED. And while the new CRACKED is different than its previous incarnation in many ways, it is the same in one essential way: our mission continues to be parodying politics, pop culture and society. The way in which we go about fulfilling that mission is what is entirely new and different," said Sarhan. "The new Cracked is smart, relevant, sarcastic, clever and biting. Our goal is 'intelligent irreverence,' and we have evolved Cracked into a best-of-breed humor magazine."

Video clips of Carroll describing her experience in detail.

Video interviews with Carroll's family members and Monitor staffers who worked for her release.

A map of where she was held throughout her captivity.

Information about a fund to help the family of Alan Enwiyah, Carroll's translator who was murdered when she was abducted.