ROGUE MALES: CONVERSATIONS & CONFRONTATIONS ABOUT THE WRITING LIFE "ROGUE MALE: "An uncontrolled animal that lives apart from the rest of its herd or group, acting independently and using unorthodox methods that are unpredictable. His reasons for challenging the status quo are often excellent. (He is) a dark horse and an unknown quantity." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FROM THE INTRODUCTION: It is a dangerous thing to know a writer," Hemingway cautioned. But I've chased down and tried my best to corner the writers whom I most revere. I've pressed my heroes for answers. The writers I've spoken with over the past five or six years have by turns been funny, warm, truculent, insightful and sometimes brusque. Some have been extremely thoughtful, and some have been flip or prickly. The interviews have been cordial and charged. They've rarely been less than provocative. In the following interviews, you will encounter mavericks, trailblazers and the gadflies. Men of conscience, entrepreneurs and magnificent bastards. They are variously crusaders and reformers … exhibitionists and isolates. These are writers who have lost parents and wives and children, sometimes through tragedy, sometimes for pursuing their art, and sometimes as a result of their own head-shaking bad behavior. When it comes to their excesses, most of these men are their own harshest and best/worst critics. Through it all, to a man, they have remained stubbornly creative, working alone, writing novels and stories through all manners of turmoil and adversity. These writers embody Papa's admonition and they "use the pain" to inform their best compositions—the works that are likely to be the ones that will endure and influence the next crop of rogue males who are, for better or worse, just testing the fences. Echoing James Ellroy, "Here's to them." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PART I THE LEGEND James Crumley: The Right Madness PART II KITH & KIN Daniel Woodrell: Crime in the Ozarks Alistair MacLeod: The Tuning of Perfection PART III DARK HISTORY Andrew Vachss: Two Trains Running James Ellroy: To Live and Die in L.A. PART IV PAGE TO SCREEN AND BACK Max Allan Collins: On the Road Stephen J. Cannell: Hollywood Tough PART V DUTY & HONOR Craig Holden: Love & Death Pete Dexter: The Poetry of Violence PART VI THRILLER Randy Wayne White: Perfect Law Lee Child: One Shot PART VII TROUBADOURS Tom Russell: Tough Company Kinky Friedman: Independence Day PART VIII THE DESERT DIALOGUES James Sallis & Ken Bruen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Coming soon from Bleak House Books French translation coming from Moisson Rouge