Your new novel The Big Farewell
- in a few words, what is it about?
It’s
a “hard boiled”, “noir” crime story, a murder mystery, set in New
York City, in 1927, at the dizzy heights of the Roaring Twenties. The
mysterious death of a beautiful and debauched “Jazz Baby”, who, after
she dies, comes to the hero in supernatural form and tasks him with
solving the puzzle of her death. Her motive: to seek revenge on those who
used and abused her. He is a disillusioned World War One veteran badly
scarred both physically and mentally, who earns his living as a hit man
and muscle hired by gangsters. With her guiding him, he sets out on a
quest to resolve the riddle of her death and find redemption for them
both.
With The
Big Farewell being somewhat inspired by the mystery surrounding
the death of Starr Faithfull - do talk about the actual story for a bit,
and how did you happen upon it, and what can you tell us ab out your
research on the subject? Also, how close did you stick to the facts in
your book? Starr
Faithfull was the real-life beautiful and deeply damaged “wild child”
whose body was found washed up on Long Beach, Long Island, New York, in
1931. Her death provoked a “murder or suicide?” debate that was never
solved. Being interested in that period, I came across her story and
wanted to know more about it. I was midway through the definitive book on
the case, Jonathan Goodman’s The Passing of Starr Faithfull, when the
concept for my story just popped into my head. The catalyst was a photo of
silent screen icon Louise Brooks. I was reading Goodman’s book and I
happened to glance up at Louise’s picture framed on my wall, and the
whole idea came to me. I created my heroine as a part for Louise Brooks.
The Starr Faithfull case gave me my basic framework, which I adapted and
re-shaped, and into which I wove elements of my own. I stuck to the facts
of the Starr Faithfull case in as much as I cast some real-life characters
from Starr’s life in my story and adapted some of the central themes in
Starr’s tragedy and dramatized some of the key events that happened to
her. I did a great deal of research into Starr’s story while writing my
book, sourcing materials about her case, and accumulated a large library
on the subject dating back to 1931. That said, my heroine is not
“Starr”. Other sources of inspiration when writing The
Big Farewell in terms of story? My
physically and psychologically scarred “anti-hero” was suggested by
the character of Richard Harrow, the disfigured WW I Army veteran in the
television epic Boardwalk Empire. And the scarred protector Marvin in the
movie Sin City. And Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. Certain aspects of my
heroine’s damaged psyche were informed by my own experiences of mental
illness and by my encounters and close friendships with people with
various forms of ill mental health. I also found inspiration in Quentin
Tarantino’s radical re-imagining of the Manson/Tate murders in Once Upon
A Time In Hollywood. What can you
tell us about The Big Farewell's
writing style and stylistic influences?
My
writing style has been described as “cinematic”. I immersed myself in
the styles of the period, both in books and cinema. I watched “Jazz
Age” cinema from the 1920’s, on the subject of “Flaming Youth”.
Such as My Lady of Whims (1925), The Plastic Age (1925) and
It (1927) with
Clara Bow, and Our Dancing Daughters (1928) with Joan Crawford. And the
films that
Louise Brooks made with G.W. Pabst in Germany in 1929, Pandora’s Box and
Diary of a Lost Girl, A Girl In Every Port, directed by Howard Hawks
(1928) and It’s The Old Army Game with W.C. Fields
(1926) [W.C. Field bio - click
here]. I read a lot
of period “pulp” fiction such as Paul Cain’s definitive hardboiled
classic Fast One (1932) and stories published in the old pulp magazines
(and The Great Gatsby and Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott
Fitzgerald). And Raymond Chandler of course. The title of my book, "The Big
Farewell", evokes two of Chandler’s classics, The Big Sleep and
Farewell
My Lovely.
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You've set The
Big Farewell in the 1920s - why then, and what are some of the
challenges of writing about a period one has never lived through? I
chose the Roaring Twenties because it provided the decadent backdrop I
wanted for my story; and because my heroine was inspired by an icon of the
Roaring Twenties, Louise Brooks, someone who embodied that decade. I was
already quite familiar with the period, having a lifelong interest in it.
However, I needed to narrow that down to the USA, and to New York, and to
1927. Again, it came down to a lot of research, e.g. One Summer: America
1927 by Bill Bryson; Capital of the World: A Portrait of New York City in
the Roaring Twenties by David Wallace; Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex,
Style, Celebrity, and The Women Who Made America Modern by Joshua Zeitz.
Sometimes, that research went as far as providing new real-life characters
for me, to inhabit my story. And it’s the characters, their
personalities, and the way that they speak, that brings a story to life
and makes it authentic. Do
talk about the writing process as such! This
was an odd one. It normally takes me a long time to grind out a book, up
to two years. With The Big Farewell, I amazed myself by having a workable
first draft in about one month. And it was finished in about six months,
but that became eight months because I couldn’t make myself stop
tinkering with it. I think it had all to do with the pandemic and the
country being in lockdown and all the grim news and anxiety. It shows how
much I needed escapism, and so I escaped every day, every chance I got,
into 1927. As for the actual writing process, I don’t sit and strain and
force it. The way my brain works, often an entire scene will pop into my
head almost fully formed and then all I have to do is write it down. Or
other times, the opening line or two of a scene and then the rest just
flows. So, I just wait for that to happen. My writing tends to be very
“character-driven”, once I have the characters clear in my mind, and a
scenario, I know what they’ll say and what they’ll do given that
situation, they’ll just take over and get me there. The $64-question
of course, where can The Big Farewell
be obtained? I
self-published it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback. I assume that
it’s available wherever there’s an Amazon, although at present my
sales have been on Amazon USA and Amazon UK.
UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B091XPF2VQ USA:
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B091XPF2VQ Germany:
https://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/B091XPF2VQ
Anything you can tell us about audience and
critical reception of The Big
Farewell? It’s
only been out for a few weeks, and so far has two five-star reviews, one
on Amazon USA and one on Amazon UK. I know that some other reviews are
pending. As far as I know, those who are in the process of reading the
book are really liking it. Any future projects you'd like to
share? Potentially, The Big Farewell
could have a sequel, or even a series, if I could ever
come up with storylines. I do have another possible project that’s quite
well advanced and could be ready for self-publication on Amazon in the
near future. A fictionalised account of the Wild West outlaw gang, the
Daltons, who in 1892 tried to outdo their hero Jesse
James, by robbing two
banks at once, and came to a bloody end.
Your/your book's website, social media, whatever
else?
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Feeling lucky ? Want to search for books by Dan Leissner yourself? |
The links below will take you just there!!! (commissions earned) |
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I’ve yet to explore the potential for promoting The Big Farewell
online, be it
social media or the book promotion websites. First, I need to accumulate
some good reviews on Amazon. Many of the book promotion websites demand
that a book has so many five-star reviews before they’ll promote it.
Meanwhile, I am on Facebook. Anything else you're dying to mention and I have
merely forgotten to ask? Yes,
when is your next book coming out? Thanks for the interview!
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