Interview with Stephen Wilcox
by Jon Jordan
Stephen's Web Site

October 3rd, 2002

JON:  How would you describe the Elias Hackshaw books?

STEPHEN:  I'd describe the Hackshaw books as comic mysteries with the emphasis on humor and character development, although I think the plots are sufficiently involving as well. If there's a central theme running through the series, it has to do with human weaknesses bumping smack up against that other most
human of qualities, hope.

JON:  When you are writing them, does it sometimes get difficult to be funny, or are you naturally gifted?

STEPHEN:  I guess I'm naturally gifted, if a sarcastic sense of humor and an anti-social streak can be counted as blessings. In the first Hackshaw, The Twenty-Acre Plot (I wanted to call it Dead Indians but the marketing department wouldn't let me), my editor at the time actually had me take out dozens of one-liners, because they were getting in the way of "the plot flow". So, if anything, I have to be careful to balance Hack's narrative wise-cracks, etc., to keep the story moving along at the proper pace.

JON:  Does the small town setting make it easier to use humor in the books?

STEPHEN:  The key benefit of a small-town setting for any mystery is that it allows the writer to make the sleuthing efforts of his protagonist -- be he an amateur or a professional -- more believable. Crime in the city is usually handled by experts, from cops to forensics people; put a murder out in Smalltown America, where cops are fewer and less experienced with violent crime, and the bumbling efforts of someone like Hackshaw become a little more credible. As for the humor, Hackshaw himself will tell you (and does in the opening of The Painted Lady) that when it comes to small towns, "everybody comes from one. You, me, the mayor of New York, and the queen of England." Everyone identifies with a small collective of people and beliefs they grew up with; we all live in tight-knit, insular neighborhoods of the mind. That makes the humor universal, I think.

JON:  Do you tend to put a bit of yourself into your characters? It seems like writing Hack would be a great way to vent.

STEPHEN:  Writing Hack is a great way to vent, particularly over life's petty annoyances. (See Hack's column on the Opinion page of my web site, The Wilcox Gazette, if you don't believe me.) Friends and family members have often pointed up the similarities between me and Elias Hackshaw. Since he's selfish, vain, a womanizer, cowardly, manipulative, vindictive and a curmudgeon, how could I deny it?

JON:  The Sheridan books feature a crime writer as the protagonist. This seems like a wonderful way to do a mystery. Does your background as a reporter help with writing these?

STEPHEN:  Only the boring parts. Just kidding. A journalism background helped me to flesh out the Sheridan character, certainly; to make him more real. But my own reporting experiences were far more mundane than Sheridan's.

JON:  For the true crime part of the Sheridan books do you use actual cases?

STEPHEN:  I sometimes would reference a true incident, as in The Green Mosaic, when I wrote about the old Adirondack Mountains murder case that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, but for the most part the crimes Sheridan deals with are inventions of my mind (with a certain amount of background help or inspiration from real stories saved from newspapers). Is that answer murky enough for you?

JON:  Why did you decide to stop writing the Sheridan series?

STEPHEN:  St. Martin's Press decided for me. When they dropped both the Sheridan and Hackshaw series(es?) for low sales, I more or less let go of Sheridan; I'd anticipated doing another book or two, but didn't see the character as long-term anyway, largely because there are plenty of other intrepid sleuths out there for readers to choose from. But I wasn't prepared to give up on Hackshaw, a most intrepid and reluctant sleuth. I believed -- and believe -- he was distinctive enough as a character to deserve more books, and I knew I had several more Hackshaws in me. That's why, after sitting out mystery writing for a few years, I decided to get back in via the print-on-demand route, through a program set up by The Mystery Writers of America through iUniverse. I now have all my seven earlier titles back in print and available, as well as two new books; Hackshaw's fourth misadventure, The Jericho Flower, and a new direction for me, a crime novel titled Niagara Fall.

JON:  Can you tell me what the F stands for, or would I have to be killed?

STEPHEN:  I assume you mean the F in the middle of my byline? Because there are other Fs out there, as I'm sure you realize, the most famous of which stands for a noun/verb familiar to all. I'm not that one. In my case the F stands for Frederick.

JON:  What other types of jobs have you had?

STEPHEN:  Newspaper reporter and copy editor, liquor store clerk, Army private, assembly line worker, creative writing instructor, drywaller, tax preparer, singer in a garage band (high school, during the Jurassic Period), major appliance deliverer/installer, free-lance writer/consulting editor.

JON:  On your website you mention Dave Alvin's Blackjack David as one of your favorite CDs. I have to say, I love The Blasters. What are some of your other favorites?

STEPHEN:  I've always been drawn to singer/songwriter types (that writing thing again). In addition to the usual suspects -- Dylan, Elvis Costello -- I love Richard Thompson (who I got to see in a club about a year ago; fabulous), John Prine, Lucinda Williams, Mary Chapin Carpenter, John Hiatt, Joe Ely (actually got to meet him; great guy, great music), Radney Foster, and scores of others, but I'll mention two who are now up on the CD review section of my website: Alejandro Escovedo ("Man Under The Influence"; saw him at a club this summer, also fabulous) and Ryan Adams.

JON:  Do you have a writing method? Only in the morning, late at night, four hours a day? Or is it more unstructured?

STEPHEN:  I like to write fiction from mid-morning (nine or so) to early afternoon, usually four to six hours if things are going well. This is a schedule I've gotten into over the years as house-dad to our 12-year-old son, Bennett. If I'm working to a deadline, or if the words are coming particularly well, I'll write as long as possible each day, sometimes into the wee hours of the night, although I like to save those times for reading and SportsCenter.

JON:  What lead you to writing in the first place, first as a journalist, then as a writer of fiction?

STEPHEN:  I've always had a love and a facility for the written word. I went from the high school paper to become a college journalism major and then a newspaper reporter because it was a way to earn a (meager) living putting words together. After a few years of writing other people's stories for a newspaper, I realized I wanted to tell my own stories. Mystery and crime fiction was something I enjoyed as a reader, so I decided to go in that direction as a writer. (There's something cathartic about seeing that bad people get what's coming to them; only as writers of fiction do we get to be judge and jury.)

JON:  What's the weirdest thing you ever had to write as a journalist?

STEPHEN:  I once wrote a few articles for a newspaper about a dog virus that was making the rounds, dangerous mostly to smaller breeds and pure-breds. The key symptom was a high fever for Fido, which may have led me to slip in something about "hot dogs". Until that story hit the doorsteps of Rochester's suburbia, I never really knew how humorless owners of tiny dogs could be.

JON:  Your website is really nice. I love the layout and look of it. Do you spend a lot of time on it?

STEPHEN:  Thanks, I appreciate that. I was totally ignorant of all things Web-related when I began, but I was able to design the whole thing myself (thanks to Uncle Bill's MS Publisher software). Choosing to go with a weekly newspaper style suited both my series character (Hackshaw, the small-town newspaper editor) and my goals for the site. I wanted it to be content heavy -- not just with info about my books, but with humorous articles and ads, my own capsule reviews of music and books, a short story, and so on. I spent several months initially designing it and writing all the articles, etc., before launching the first edition in March. And it took a few weeks to do the second edition, with almost all new articles and an archive section, which I launched on Aug. 1. People seem to like what they find there. I hope more will take the time to visit and drop me a line through the letters section, let me know what they think.

JON:  Does it take an understanding woman to be married to a man who writes for a living?

STEPHEN:  We're talking sainthood. During a recent speaking engagement, I was asked what it takes to become a writer. My first comment was, "Marry well."

JON:  What's your description of a perfect weekend?

STEPHEN:  Since it's fall, I'll go with a Saturday afternoon drive down to the Finger Lakes to see the changing colors of the trees, with a stop at one of the wineries for a glass and maybe a stroll around the Naples (NY) Grape Festival for live music and grape pie, then home to an evening watching the Yankees break the hearts of their latest playoff foes. On Sunday, a round of golf on a cool, sunny course, followed by a visit to the sports bar for beer and cigars and to watch the Bills or the Giants try to beat someone, preferably not each other (or themselves). Then drive home to find that all the leaves have ridden a mild nor'west breeze into the neighboring yard, my beautiful wife has Sunday dinner on the table, and there's a new Simpsons episode on the box.

JON:  If you were to decide on a career change and become a criminal, what type of criminal would you be?

STEPHEN:  CEO of a major U.S. corporation. You can steal billions, live a lifestyle that would make a king blush, claim immunity and/or ignorance if you ever get caught and, should you actually have to do any time, it's at a Club Fed, with conjugal visits and tennis.

JON:  Who are your favorite writers?

STEPHEN:  The obvious big names: Leonard, McBain, Parker. James Crumley was an early influence (Hemingway of the whodunit). As with musical choices, the complete list is too long and ever evolving, but a few names are Loren D. Estleman (hard-boiled PI), Steven Hunter (body count thriller), Harold Adams (period mystery), Bill Crider (regional), Jonathan Gash (Lovejoy inspired Hackshaw), Troon McAllister (golf humor), Peter Lefcourt (general humor), and George Saunders, an upstate New York writer whose short stories (most of which first appeared in The New Yorker; his latest collection is called Pastoralia) remind me of the Vonnegut of my youth.

JON:  Can you tell me anything about the new book and what's next?

STEPHEN:  I'm still promoting The Jericho Flower and the crime novel that came out in August 2002, titled Niagara Fall. Coincidentally, this one was triggered by a true crime story, a suburban Rochester housewife who (allegedly) hired or seduced an amateur hit man into killing her husband and leaving his body in the family mini-van in a Niagara Falls parking garage. If that's not the makings for a comic crime novel, I don't know what is. Naturally, I threw in a few other characters, like a Buffalo mob capo and his lethally dumb future son-in-law, Dale; and a late-thirties waitress who's actually an undercover Customs Agent; and an ex-monk who has a thing both for the waitress and for the mighty Niagara Falls.

As for what's next, I'm hashing out a fifth Hackshaw mystery, tentatively titled Hell Or High Water, involving a local peeping tom and a preacher's widow who, while making out in the back seat of someone's car parked in the graveyard, thinks she sees the face of the Virgin Mary in a giant rust spot on the town's water tower. Murder and miracles ensue. Hopefully it will be out sometime in 2003.

JON:  What's the one thing that's always in your refrigerator?

STEPHEN:  My arm, reaching for something to stuff in my mouth. The fingers of my right hand have third-degree frostbite. (Place rimshot here.)