Interview and Review

An interview I did a few weeks ago with my own publisher is up on their website now:

http://www.ecwpress.com/[catpath]/john_mcfetridge_interview

An interview with your own publisher has to be the very definition of softball questions, but it is kind of fun.

Also this week, Scene magazine in London, Ontario reviewd Swap. There's no link, but I'm happy to post the whole thing here:

Following on the heels of the well-received 2008 release, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Canadian author John McFetridge returns to the gritty streets of Toronto with his newest novel, Swap. When a husband and wife are murdered in their car on a busy downtown onramp, their unusual deaths spark an investigation leading police into the darkest recesses of the city’s criminal underworld. All of a sudden Toronto the Good isn’t looking so good anymore, and in McFetridge’s vision, the multicultural metropolis seems to assume a personality all its own - brooding, worldly, corrupt. Typical demonstrations of underworld power are passé here, and biker gangs consisting of well-groomed men driving European sports cars or Hummers roam streets filled with peeler bars and massage parlors. On the other side of the tracks, the cops are in disarray – having been the subject of a recent internal affairs probe - and rifts have started to fracture the force. Detectives Price and McKeon find themselves following the finest thread of a lead in the married couple’s murder case to an exclusive Toronto swinger’s club, where their investigation really starts to pick-up steam. McFetridge’s readership will recognize some of the shady characters from his earlier book here – Richard, Nugs, J.T. - but that knowledge is hardly required to appreciate the story. The magic of the writer’s electric prose lies in his sense of pacing and his ability to create plausible dialogue between characters. McFetridge doesn’t judge their actions; he lays bare their motivations, and benefi ts from all the tantalizing narrative possibilities he finds there. Come to think of it, so do we. ~ Chris Morgan.



.

Two Reviews - one good, one bad

Last week the Winnipeg Free Press ran a negative review of Swap:

Torontonian John McFetridge shook the manicured trees of Hogtown complacency with last year's gritty cops-and-bikers saga, Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere. But he seems to have lost his GPS in Swap (ECW Press, 240 pages, $25), a grimy sequel that seems designed only to set off another round of "oh-we-bad" titters among the overreaching Big Smoke glitterati.

The corps of ethnically hued cops is back, but this time they're little more than aw-shucks narrators on the sidelines of a greasy show that's all about the bad guys.

McFetridge strives for whorehouse/grow op-in-the-burbs shock value, but it all just seems like a low-rent Sopranos episode, full of suburban mob angst and endless reminiscing about gang warfare past.

An unrelieved dumpster-dive into Canada's criminal underclass, Swap is just too earnestly exploitive, a sleazy travelogue for dirtbags.

I think it's good to get some bad reviews. In this case it's tempered by the fact the reviewer also didn't like the new Dexter or the new Kathy Reich (full reviews here), but also I think I tried to write a book that didn't please everyone. If the book is going to be something that some people really like, it's also going to be something that some people really don't like.

Of course, that review is also tempered by a starred review in Canada's book magazine, Quill and Quire:

In Swap, John McFetridge gives readers an in-depth look into the world of organized crime in the form of outlaw biker gangs, and the difficulties law enforcement faces trying to quash them...The tension is palpable and the reader waits for the one spark that will ignite a bloody turf war...Swap’s dialogue displays much of [Elmore] Leonard’s sparkle, and the novel’s terse, staccato prose evokes [Ken] Bruen. But Swap is more than just the sum of its influences. It grabs you by the throat and squeezes until you agree to read just one page, just one more page.

You gotta take the bad with the good, right?

Street Performers

Do you like them?

Buskers?

You're walking down the street minding your own business and suddenly some guy is in your face juggling a bowling ball, a rubber chicken and a cross-country ski - is that fun?

Well, yes, sometimes it is. I've seen some great buskers. Some of the best musicians I've seen in my life have been playing in the subway or on the sidewalk ignored by almost everyone (and often by me).

This year at the CNE in Toronto we watched a guy try and do a routine that involved laying down on a bed of glass while someone stood on a bed of nails on his chest. I say "try" but actually the routine was good - it was just going on at the same time the planes were practising for the air show so everyone in the audince kept looking up to the sky.

All this is by way of explanation, of excuse, for how I got myself into a street performer's act in Dublin.

Normally if a busker asked me for help I'd run away. But here I was walking down Grafton street in Dublin with a video camera in my hand and I stopped to watch a guy set up his act. I kept the camera running. The act started. The guy was enthusiastic and funny but the audience was deadpan.



I started to feel for him. I was thinking about that poor guy at the Ex.

The next thing I know the guy on Grafton Street, Figo he calls himself - is standing in front of me asking to borrow my jacket. And to make it worse, he'd already asked another guy who refused. I could see this guy's act slipping away and I felt for him. I've given readings in front of two people, I know what it's like when the audience just isn't interested.




So I hand him my jacket.

And good luck to him, I think.

But the next thing I know, he's pulling me out in front of the audience.

Wait a minute, this isn't what I signed up for. My jacket, okay. I didn't even mind that he was joking how he might set it on fire while he did his trick with the cigarette (he was making it disappear, saying it would only take about five minutes as he smoked it. He also said he didn't actually smoke, that was just for his act - he was up to about thirty acts a day) but there was no way I'd go out there in front of the crowd.

But I do like to see a big crowd when I do a reading.

So maybe this busker and I were sort of in it together. I couldn't very well ruin his act, he's some guy trying to make a living.



The next thing I know I'm handing my video camera to a woman beside me and I'm in front of the crowd.

Maybe I don't like a big crowd for a reading. Maybe that intimiate connection between a writer and a single reader is the way to go.

Or maybe I should dress up in red tights and make cigarettes disappear.

Maybe not.

But Figo made the cigarette disappear and didn't even burn my jacket.

Great, now I can get off stage.

Oh wait, what's this? Now he's blowing up a balloon and saying he's going to swallow it. Good for him, I'll just get my camera back and film that, might even put it up on YouTube, the guy is pretty entertaining and what's this?

Now he wants me to walk around in front of the audience holding the balloon.





Did I mention the Bobby hat?

Then I probabkly also forgot to mention he's asked me to walk around looking as "butch" as I can.

The really sad thing, now that I see this picture, is that's exactly what I'm trying to do.

Before he swallowed the balloon, though, he put a rubber glove over his head and blew it up.






The rubber glove, I mean, not his head.









But really, he's just getting warmed up.

The big finale involves Figo laying down on a bed of broken glass.

And me standing on his chest.

Now it really feels like that poor guy at the Ex who couldn't get anyone's attention. I can't give up on Figo now.

As he's setting it up he asks me how much I weigh and I think does Ireland use that weird "so many stone" meaasurement because I have no dea how many stone I am and if I say ____ pounds will anyone get it and then I realize I'm not going to put a number on it, so I just say, "Too much."

He's a good performer, he can work a crowd and Figo goes with that. Makes a bunch of jokes that good Canadian diet and pats my stomach.

So here I am in front of a big crowd of people showing off my fat stomach.

Figo and I are no longer in this together. I am going to put my full weight (however many freakin' stone it is) on him. Oh yeah, baby.

He gets a kid out of the audience to help me balance.

He tells the sudience if they don't each put at least five Euro in his hat he'll go back to his old job of selling drugs to children and the kid who's supposed to help me balance says, "Can I have some."

This is the same kid who, when Figo said not to worry, he wasn't going to burn my jacket yelled, "Burn it."

Now I'm going to stomp on Figo and then punch this smarmy kid in the face.





But I can actually hear the glass crunching as I step on this guy. His face is red and he's tensed up every muscle in his body.

This is actually pretty cool, this guy is really trying to entertain this crowd.

And the kid manages to keep my huge body weight steady for ten seconds, so good on him, too.

Now I'm actually excited to be a part of the act.

The audience does a big countdown from 10 and when they get to, "Zero!!!" I step off.

Figo jumps up to accept the appluase and I see chunks of glass stuck to his back.

He's right, I think, that deserves five Euro.

Figo tells me it's only like two bucks.

All in all a pleasant afternoon in Dublin.

Though I can't help but think Peter Rozovsky comes to Ireland and he sees the hurling final, a once in a lifetime exciting game, and I get to stand on a man's chest.

The Globe and Mail Review

It's always stressful waiting for reviews of a new book - or really just wondering if you'll even get any reviews.

I've been very fortunate with my books to have received generally very good reviews.

I must admit I've been surprised that Margaret Cannon of the Globe and Mail has been so supportive. I guess I've always felt that she usually favours more traditional mysteries with a central detective, lots of suspects, clues and a resolution. But the fact that I don't really have any of those things in my books doesn't seem to bother her.

Here's her review of Swap:

If you're interested in learning about the backside of Toronto the Good, Swap is a great place to begin. Drugs, guns, gangs and just plain nastiness hide in the suburbs, just outside the shiny city centre. For Vernard McGetty, a Detroit homeboy in search of lucrative partnerships, Toronto's biker gangs are a perfect fit. They deliver the dope, he delivers the guns. Of course, he's a bit mystified by bikers who ignore their Harleys in order to drive SUVs, but who cares about appearances?

While Get is planning his get, Toronto detectives Price and McKeon have a pair of dead bodies on their hands. The couple are Mr. and Mrs. Clean, not so much as a traffic ticket. Someone sailed by and shot them as their car headed up a freeway ramp. Who knows what company these nice family folk may have been keeping?

McFetridge has his difficulties keeping the plot moving, and some of the dialogue owes a bit to Quentin Tarantino, but this is a slick little story.

Pretty good, I think.

In Stores Now

In Canada.



The official publication date is September 1st, but I was in my local bookstore yeterday and there was Swap.



It sort of feels like it's been snuck into stores in some kind of stealth operation. No reviews yet, but there is a fantastic blurb on the back from Ken Bruen:

"Swap is a stunning leap forward from an already fine author. This is John channelling Elmore Leonard at the height of his game and with dialogue Tarantino would kill for. A plot that moves lik Pulp Fiction but with a nice Canadian slant that keeps it fresh and different. John's creation of the African-American characters is like Sallis at his finest. With a wicked sense of humour that is irresistible, Swap moves Canadian mystery right to the top."


There's also a nice blurb on the back from Adrian McKinty and one from Tom Piccirilli.

Of course, I had a lot of help writing this book (and everthing else I've ever written) and I don't do those thank-yous in the books because I'll either leave people out or they'll be dozens of pages long but in this case I do want to make a special thank you to Patti Abbott for reading the manuscript and helping me with the Detroit references. I never would have come up with, "... a big house in Grosse Pointe, six bedrooms, a fucking library and a Sub-Zero on the patio in the backyard."

By the way, while I was in the bookstore I bought a first novel by Eugene Meese called A Magpie's Smile because Margaret Cannon gave it a good review in the Globe and Mail and it's set in Calgary in the late 70's and I lived in Calgary then. The wild west. It was booming then with tens of thousands of people moving in every month and I was one of them. I'm looking forward to the book.

And, one more time, here's the trailer for Swap.

The Bridge in the paper

This morning I woke up to see my boss on the front page of the Toronto Star. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. In this case it was very good.

Craig Bromell is the Executive Producer and Creative Consultant on the TV show, The Bridge. It's really his show, based on his experiences as a Toronto cop and then as head of the police union.

The article is straitforward enough, but then the comments start. Right away you can see how polarizing a guy Craig was in Toronto. Great fodder for a TV show.

In the pilot episode the character based on Craig, Frank Leo, says, "All I ever wanted to be was a cop." When he sees the way cops are treated by the brass and the politicians, the way cops are always guilty until proven innocent and the way their own bosses will sell out the cop on the street - the ones in the line of fire - for cheap political gain, it becomes too much for him and he gets elected pesident of the union.

At that point the brass go after him hard, one deputy chief telling him, "Whenever the public sees a corrupt, out of control cop, they'll see your face."

So now the guy who only ever wanted to be a good cop becomes the poster boy for bad cops.

Quite the internal conflict for a main character. Lots of emotional stuff to deal with. It's the kind of show that may take a few episodes to really find its footing so it's great that CTV and CBS are fully committed.

The Toronto Star article is here.

Creative Writing Classes

About twenty-five years ago I enrolled at Concordia University for English Lit and History. (a few years before that I'd tried a year of economics and, well, it didn't work out.)

I knew I wanted to write but I was unsure about creative writing classes. Can you learn to write, or do you just have to do it and hope you have "talent?" Concordia had a creative writing program and it seemed good, so I took some classes.

At the time, and for years after, I really didn't think the classes had much effect on me. Garry Geddes, a poet and now non-fiction writer, taught the short story class I took. He had us read our stories out loud. Only years later did I realize what a valuable tool this was for understanding how important voice is in fiction.

In the intervening years I've realized that I learned an awful lot in those creative writng classes. I don't know if the other people in those classes needed to learn as much as I did, but a few of them are very good writers today.

Michel Basilieres was the guy who told me about the Concordia program. His novel Black Bird, published by Knopf won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award in 2004 and was nominated for the Steven Leacock Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book.

Tess Fragoulis was in that class with Garry and was probably the most fully-formed writer at the time. Her story collection, Stories to Hide From Your Mother, was published in 1997 and her first novel Ariadne's Dream (sex, drugs, Greek mythology) was published in 2001.

There was also a guy in that class named David McGimpsey who understood poetry more than anyone else in the program. I mean he understood poetry the way I understood hockey. And he frustrated the poetry profs by using that understanding to write epic poems about Gilligan's Island and baseball. David has published a few books, still in the "literary-pop culture" world. Sitcom is very good but my favourite is still Hamburger Valley California.

And now comes word that another person from that same class, Lisa Pasold, has her first novel coming out in three weeks. Lisa has published a couple of very good poetry collections, Weave and A Bad Year for Journalits and I've been looking forward to this novel ever since she let me read the manuscript earlier this year.

Rats of Las Vegas is about... you know what, she has a petty good book trailer explaining it:



And there's more info on her webpage.

So, I would say that maybe the gestation period for creative writing classes can be quite a while, but it's a good idea to study your craft.

What do you think?

Mad Men week

It seems everywhere I look this week I see articles about Mad Men. Which is good, it's nice to see such a smart, well-written TV show getting so much press.

A lot of it seems to be the same, though, gushing fan stuff, so I was glad to pick up Jesse McLean's book, Kings of Madison Avenue.

Part episode guide, part history lesson and all fun, the book is an in-depth look at the show by someone who clearly loves it but isn't afraid to critisize it as well.

Of course, I don't get AMC so I'll have to wait until the third season gets released on DVD, but it seems worth the wait. It was nice of AMC to put last season's finale on their website to refresh everyone's memories.

New Blog

A little while ago I was asked if I'd liked to contribute to one of those group blogs like Muderati (which I really like) and I said, "yes," before I thought about it.

Now, I'm not too sure what I'm going to have to contribute (though the TV show gig has provided a lot of ideas for rants) but my day is going to be Wednesday.

The blog went live today with a post from Steve Weddle. The rest of the team is Jay Stringer, Dave White, Russell McLean, Scott Parker and Mike Knowles.

Looks like a lot of fun. You can find it at: http://dosomedamage.blogspot.com/.

One Week

My friend Alan Taylor came up with this challenge:

In the course of the next week, everything you ingest intellectually, books, TV, radio, film, magazines, papers, music will be written down.

Sounds cool, so I'm doing it. Started last night. I watched TV (I have a feeling this activity will show up more than I want it to). I saw the comedy/mystery show Castle which is good solid light entertainment and then the Dateline show about America's addiction to oil.

So far today I read the paper and bunch of blogs and I'm listening to classic rock on the radio. It's the 1969 weekend, to commemorate Woodstock, I guess, so there's been a lot of music from that year and from bands that were at Woodstock.

Okay, for one week:

Interview

Author Rafe McGregor interviewed me a couple of weeks ago and has the results up on his blog today.

Please check out Rafe's website where you can download (for free!) two audio short stories; The Long Man (featuring Sherlock Holmes) and Blue Mail a contemporary noir thriller.

Swap - catalogue copy

It's impossible to write a synopsis. Well, maybe it's just impossible to write a synopsis for your own work. You never focus on the right things, you over-explain the wrong parts or talk about the wrong characters.

Or maybe that's just me.

So the good folks at ECW wrote this fine synopsis which appears in their catalogue:

Detectives Price and McKeon are called to the scene — a husband and wife found slumped in their car, parked sideways on a busy downtown on-ramp, a bullet in each of their heads. That's what's in the papers, and that's all the public sees. Toronto the Good, with occasional specks of random badness.

But behind that disposable headline, Toronto's shadow city sprawls outwards, a grasping and vicious economy of drugs, guns, sex, and gold bullion. And that shadow city feels just like home for Get — a Detroit boy, project-raised, ex-army, Iraq and Afghanistan, only signed up for the business opportunities, plenty of them over there. Now he's back, and he's been sent up here by his family to sell guns to Toronto's fast-rising biker gangs, maybe even see about a partnership.

The man Get needs to talk to is Nugs, leader of the Saints of Hell. Nugs is overseeing unprecedented progress, taking the club national, uniting bikers coast-to-coast (by force if necessary), pushing back against the Italians, and introducing a veneer of respectability. Beards trimmed to goatees, golf shirts instead of leather jackets, and SUVs replacing the bikes. And now the cops can't tell the difference between bikers and bankers.

Detectives Price and McKeon? All they can do is watch and grimace and drink, and sweep up the detritus left in crime's wake — dead hookers, cops corrupted and discarded, anyone else too slow and weak to keep up, or too stupid not to get out of the way. This is Toronto's shadow city, and you won't recognize it.

That's pretty much what the book is about.

The Inside Flap

ECW asked me to pull a 200 word section out of Swap/Let it Ride to put on the inside flap. "Should be more or less self-contained, and emblematic of the whole book."

Well, that' a bit of a challenge. So, I offered these three possibles. Which one do you think they should use?


I.

"With gold you don’t have to worry about exchange
rates.”

“But gold, it can go down.”

Sunitha sat up on the bed, cross-legged, right beside
Get, looking right at him. “And it can go up. It could be a
thousand bucks an ounce in a few months. It could be two
grand an ounce next year.”

“Or it could be shit.”

“No, honey, it’ll always be gold.”

Get took a drag, let out the smoke, and dropped the butt
in the coffee cup. He took his time turning back to look at
her and she waited, knowing he was interested. She
nodded, yeah, looking at him, he never even looked at her
tits, just looked right at her and said, “And you want it.”

“Yeah, don’t you?”

“You talking about stealing from these guys?”

“Yeah, why, you got a problem with that?”

He laughed. “Not if you think you can get away with it.”

“That’s the beauty of gold, you get it, you can take it
anywhere.”

“Once you have it.”

She said, right, yeah, that’s the thing. “Once you have it.”

“And you don’t know where it is.”

“They don’t exactly advertise.”

“No,” Get said, “I don’t expect they do.”

Then Sunitha said, “But I bet you could find out,” and
Get laughed. She slapped his chest, harder than she
expected, but he didn’t budge, and she said, “This isn’t
funny.”

“No? You don’t think so? Coming up with a plan to
steal a few million bucks worth of gold from guys whose
official motto is, what is it again? Oh yeah, ‘Three people
can keep a secret if two of them are dead.’ They have a
special club in the club, you have to kill somebody to get
into. You don’t think that’s a funny idea?”

She looked right at him and said, “Not if you get away
with it.”


II.

The on-ramp to the Gardiner Expressway was closed; a
fire truck, an ambulance, and a cop car blocking the way,
and uniformed men and women from all of them standing
around smoking.

McKeon popped the siren a couple times and flashed
the headlights to clear a path in the traffic and pulled
right up to the ramp on Lake Shore, under the expressway.
One of the uniformed cops, a guy in his fifties, said,
“McKeon, you’re going to love this.”

She was already out of the car walking towards the
scene saying, “I am?”

The uniform, Dixon, said oh yeah, this is a good one.

“Guy was driving up the ramp, see?” The car, a brand-
new Dodge 300 with the big front grille and the little
windows making it look like a thirties gangster car, had
gotten halfway up the ramp, stopped, and rolled back,
turning sharply so its back end was against the left side
and its front end against the right, blocking the road.
Dixon said, “And pow, somebody shoots him in the
head.”

Closer now, McKeon and Price could see the passenger
window covered in blood splatter and the driver’s head
flopped onto the steering wheel.

McKeon saw the woman’s body, waist up on the
passenger seat, the rest of her on the floor, like she was
kneeling and slid off, as Dixon was saying, “Then they
popped the chick.”

Price said, “Holy shit.”

Dixon was laughing. “You know it, detective.”

McKeon walked around to where the driver’s side
door was open and said, “His pants are down.”

“And,” Dixon said, “get a load of her outfit, love the
fishnets. Getting a little road head, eh, couldn’t wait to get
to the room.”

Another uniform cop standing beside the car, younger
than Dixon but otherwise looked just the same, said, “Or
getting his money’s worth on the way.”

McKeon said to Price, “Great.”


III.

“Okay, and how much do you think gets spent on
them in Toronto?”

“You mean all drugs? Pot and coke and X and stuff?”
and she said, yeah.

Garry said, “More than gets spent on movie tickets,
that’s for sure.”

“You really think so?”

“Come on, what do you think the average pothead
spends a week? Hundred bucks? You talking the whole
GTA, Hamilton to Oshawa?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, that’s like four million people, maybe closer to
five, you go all the way up to Barrie, Guelph, all that? All
the potheads, anywhere from fifteen years old to fifty,
fifty-five, say it’s one in twenty.”

“Five per cent. You think that many?”

“How many people you know smoke dope?”

“How many do I know don’t?”

“Say it’s only one per cent, one dope smoker in a
hundred, that’s still like, fifty thousand.”

Kristina said, “Shit.”

“Times a hundred bucks a week, what’s that, like, five
hundred grand?”

“Try five million.”

“Hey,” Garry said, “that’s why you’re the money and
I’m the art. Then, you’ve got to add the partiers, the cokeheads
— I can’t believe people are still doing coke —”

“Are they?”

“Oh my God, get out more. And crack and X and
meth, you want to count all the speed at the casinos?”

“I’m trying to figure out how much money gets spent
on illegal activities a week.”

“Activities? You want to include hookers, escorts,
massage parlours?”

“Shylocks, are they still around?”

“Every club I’ve ever been in, and they are legion, had
a ‘partner,’” Garry actually making the air quotes, “came
in with the money.”

“So, it’s big.”

Garry said, “Honey, no city in the world could operate
without it. Nothing would get done. I thought the only
reason you were in the movie biz was to launder money.”

Let It Ride cover - first draft

This is the first pass at a cover for my next book, Let It Ride (Swap in Canada).

I like it. The main thing we're talking about is the image of the guy. It's an ensemble story and there are some strong women in the book, too. Plus, I just like the idea of a woman on the cover.




Here's the opening of the book:

Chapter One


Coming off the Ambassador Bridge into Canada,
Vernard pulled up to the customs booth, the sign saying it
was the longest international suspension bridge in the
world. The tunnel would’ve been faster, but there was no
way he was going underground, underwater, gave him the
willies, worse than all those caves in Afghanistan.

The Canadian customs guy looked at him and Vernard
nodded, serious, seeing the guy’s Glock, thinking, shit,
these guys just started carrying guns a couple months ago,
probably couldn’t get it out of his holster. Fucking Canada.

The guy asked him all the questions, how long he was
staying, was he an American citizen, carrying any firearms?
Vernard showed him his driver’s licence and his
Armed Forces id, blue for retired—honourable discharge,
Sergeant Vernard McGetty. Said, “Not any more.”

“What’s the purpose of your trip?”

Vernard said it was a vacation. “I’m going to the film festival.”

The guy said, oh yeah, and it’s not business?

Vernard said, yeah, “I’m Jamie Foxx.”

The guy actually laughed and said have a nice trip,
waving him through, twenty-eight-year-old black guy from
Detroit driving a brand-new Mercedes ml370 suv, leather
interior and twelve-speaker surround on his way to
Toronto to meet with some bikers, sell them a truckload of
Uncle Sam’s guns and set up a pipeline for their coke and
weed back to Detroit, stepping up to the big leagues.

Fucking Canada.

Looking back he saw the U.S. customs guys just
waving people through, too; cars and vans and campers
and trucks. Fucking trucks, must be thousands a day,
going back and forth, couldn’t check them all. Couldn’t
check two per cent of them.

Shit, Vernard was thinking, turning up his system loud,
Little Walter finding his Key to the Highway, it’s easier to
cross this border into another country than it is to cross
Mack Ave into Grosse Pointe.

Through Windsor it was all Taco Bells and KFC and
Burger King, didn’t seem like another country at all
except for the place selling Cuban coffee, Vernard thinking,
right, that’s not the only thing from Cuba in there.

Outside of Windsor this part of Canada was flat and
bleak, farms, gas stations, fast-food places, and lots of
traffic. Vernard was surprised there could be this much
open space so close to Detroit, a foreign goddamn country,
and you’d never know it was there.

Four-hour drive, Detroit to Toronto, six lanes of steady
traffic going in both directions.

An hour in Vernard pulled into a gas station. Filled up
and parked in the back behind the Wendy’s with all the
trucks, shit, looked like hundreds of them all lined up. He
went inside and saw the guy he wanted sitting there eating
a cheeseburger and drinking a shake.

“You keep this up, you might get fat.”

The guy, three hundred pounds at least, his whole face
smiled, shaking his big bald black head, standing up and
saying, “Fucking Get, man, they let you in this motherfucking
country?” They hugged, backslapping, and sat
down across from each other in the little plastic seats.

“Saw your cousin on the news, man.”

The big guy, once Corporal Duane Thomkins, now just
Tommy K, looked off into the distance. “She so fine, all the
reporters want to talk to her, all dressed up in her fatigues.”
Vernard, sliding easy now back to being just Get, said,
“They knew what she was sending home, man, blow they
muthafucking minds.”

“You know it.” Tommy laughed out loud. Then he
said, “Eat up, man, next stop is all Mickey Dees.”

“I’ll wait till I get there.”

They walked out back to the truck lot behind the
restaurant, stopping to look at Get’s new car, Tommy
saying, “Motherfucking German-ass piece of shit, man.
Drive American.”

“What do you drive?”

“Fucking Peterbilt, man, 370, air ride, mp3, dvd, got a
satellite map, goddamn double bed. Look at these sorry-ass
motherfuckers; Volvos, Swedish fucking bullshit, Hino,
what the fuck kind of rice paddy piece of shit is Hino?”

Get said, “You’re loyal, Tommy, patriotic. That’s cool.”

They got to Tommy’s red Peterbilt hooked to a fiftythree-
foot trailer and he opened the door, saying,

“Fucking right I’m patriotic, man. Where’d we be without
Uncle Sam?” Climbed into the sleeper and came out with
a dark green duffle bag.

Get didn’t even look in the bag, he just hucked it over
his shoulder feeling the weight, nodding, yeah. “We’d be
some sorry-ass niggers.”

Tommy said, “No hassle at the border?”

“Guy was happy to see me,” Get said. “But you never
know, next time they could tear my car apart.”

“Shine that fucking Maglite up your ass.”

Get said, oh man, don’t even joke.

Tommy smiled again, that full of life-is-good enthusiasm,
and said, “Don’t sweat it, a million trucks a day, they
can’t look at every one. You got somebody crosses here
every week,” and winked. Then he said, “There’s only one
can.”

“Yeah?” Anybody else Get would have given a hard
time, matter of respect, but not Tommy. Get was the boss,
but Tommy would never really be an employee. “Guess I
just have to shoot the motherfuckers one at a time.”

Tommy said, yeah, make every shot count.

Get said, “You going to Toronto?”

“The Big Smoke?”

“What?”

Tommy laughed. “Assholes call it that, looking for a
name, be cool, play with the big boys.”

Get hefted the bag, said, they playing with the big boys
now.

“They don’t even know it. Naw, man, I’m going to
Montreal. Some fine French chicks there. And the food,
shit, food alone’s worth the drive. You should come.”

“Maybe next time.”

“You say that, man, but you all business, never take a
break. You still that skinny-ass nigger on the bike.”

“Yeah, but the Army made a man out of me.”

Tommy laughed and gave him a hug, saying, “You
fucking funny, you know it. Shit. Your mama be proud.”

“Thanks man.”

“Don’t have to thank me,” Tommy said. “You paying
me.”

Get said, yeah, but you’re worth it.

Tommy got into his rig and started it up, saying,

“Every penny.” He blew the air horn on his way out, and

Get walked back to his car, his German-ass suv.

Three hours to Toronto, see what it’s like, this Big
Smoke, wants to play with the big boys. Meet with these
bikers think they’re running the show, sell them this
weaponry, see if they really can deliver the meth and X
and coke and the tons of weed they say they can.

Get felt good, ready to really step up, make some
changes in the Motor City, make his mama proud.

Back to Books

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Short Stories

Today I was in a bookstore and I picked up these three books. It was only at the cash that I saw the similarities and the theme I was working with. It seemed like a punchline. What we have here is....
























... the midlife crisis of a guy with a short attention span.

Half the writing team of The Bridge - Dannis Koromilas, me and Peter Mohan.

Clearly craft services is doing a top notch job on this show.

The Bridge - Anytown North America

There's an article in the New York Times today about Canadian TV shows in the US and about "The Bridge" it says, While members of the Strategic Response Unit on “Flashpoint” sport Canadian flags on their jackets, “The Bridge” seems to be moving toward a more generic sense of place. “Cops are the same in Italy, Canada, Spain,” said the show’s star, Aaron Douglas, best known as Galen Tyrol in “Battlestar Galactica.” “I’m playing it like Anytown, U.S.A.”

The article is here.

In my novels the Toronto setting is very important. The way the city has emerged over the last twenty years as the biggest in the country and the financial centre affects the way the people interact. Those changes to Toronto's character (and the change to my hometown of Montreal over the same time - all those head offices and people moving from Montreal to Toronto, "Bill 101 or the 401" and all that, not to mention the move of organized crime from Montreal to Toronto) are, I hope, deeply ingrained in the novels.

But "The Bridge" has different themes that aren't as dependent on setting. The stories that inspire the show are from all over North America, the challenges for the citizens and the police are, as Aaron Douglas says, pretty much the same all over the world.

Setting is an important consideration in a novel or a TV show and it's more than just a patriotic stance. If you look closely, "The Bridge" takes place in Toronto, but it could take place in any big city in 2009.

My novels could only take place the way they do in Toronto.

I think these are the right choices for both "The Bridge" and my novels.

More from The Bridge

Publicity is starting to heat up for The Bridge. Here's an interview with the star, Aaron Douglas:

http://watch.ctv.ca/etalk/tv/extended---the-bridge/#clip169797

I particularly like the part around 2:08 when he talks about how good the scripts are ;)

Of course, the credit for that really has to go to showrunner Alan Difiore and co-exec producer/writer Peter Mohan (as well as the other writers Tracey Forbes, Graeme Manson and Dannis Koromilas). I'm learning an awful lot from all of them.

Also, exec producer Craig Brommell keeps us honest and never lets us take the easy way out. We've only started to scratch the surface of his experiences as both a cop and the president of the union, but maybe more important is the attitude he brings.

It's very exciting as the show comes together. The cast really is good, Aaron Douglas is terrific as the beat cop-turned union president and the rest of the cast is excellent as well.

Aaron is right, I think, there's a lot of stuff here that hasn't been in previous cop shows. There are a lot of conscessions to the limitations of the real world - people can't do everything they want. Budgets are tight, manpower is limited, priorities have to be set - which all means some very tough decisions have to be made - usually on the fly.

July 9th, 10:00 pm.

Swap/Let It Ride

The new book will be called Swap in Canada and Let It Ride in the USA.

This is what the Canadian cover will look like:



I like it, it's really starting to look like a series. Well, in Canada, anyway.

Swap comes out in Canada in September (should be right around the time the epsiode of The Bridge that I wrote will be shown) and Let It Ride will be out in the USA in early 2010.

The artwork for the USA edition should be ready in about a month.