Give Me a Reason(er)

Others have linked to it already, but what the hell: you've gotta check out this great interview James Reasoner over at Saddlebums. James has just finished writing his 200th novel (no, that's not a typo, I mean two freakin' hundred, as in, another hundred and he'll be able to lead his novels into battle against the Persian Army at Thermopylae). But the best part of the Q&A is where James talks about writing and selling his very first--a certain cult private eye classic called Texas Wind.

The book was written (with a fountain pen, as I mentioned) between November 7, 1978, and February 14, 1979. I think this is the first time those exact dates have been mentioned in print. My wife Livia typed the manuscript, I revised it a little (based on some suggestions she made), and she typed up a final draft. Then we went to a drugstore with a coin-operated copy machine and copied it, page by page, so I wouldn’t have to submit my only copy of the final draft.

I love details like that. (I can't remember when I started/finished Severance Package, for Christ's sake, and I just wrote that last year.) But the kicker comes after James sells the novel, only to find that publication wasn't exactly what he'd been dreaming of:

And so it was, in October of 1980, when the book came out—exactly at the time when Manor’s distribution contracts collapsed, so that very few copies ever made it to the stands. They never paid me the six hundred bucks, either.

Which is why the original version is so damned hard to find. Luckily, Point Blank Press reprinted Texas Wind a few years ago, and it very recently earned some nice praise over at Nathan Cain's Independent Crime blog.

It's amazing that after a tortured birth like that, James went on to do it 199 more times. Now that's hardboiled, my friends.