Interview With "Sandman Slim" Author Richard Kadrey

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Richard Kadrey is a freelance writer living in San Francisco. He is the author of dozens of stories, plus five novels, including Sandman Slim (buy), Metrophage(buy) and Butcher Bird (buy/download). His Wired magazine cover story, Carbon Copy, was made into one of the worst movies of 2001. It starred Bridget Fonda.

Kadrey created and wrote the Vertigo comics mini-series ACCELERATE, which was illustrated by the Pander Brothers. He plans to do more comic work in the near future.

He has written and spoken about art, culture and technology for Wired, The San Francisco Chronicle, Discovery Online, The Site, SXSW and Wired For Sex on the G4 cable network.

He is also a fetish photographer and digital artist. His work can be seen at KaosBeautyKlinik.com (Warning: Adult Content; 18+ only!

You can also find Richard online here:

Wikipedia

Twitter

Facebook

MySpace

ModelMayhem

Flickr (Warning: Adult Content; 18+ only!)

Contact Richard at kadrey@gmail.com

What is the current project you are working on?

The third Sandman Slim book, Aloha From Hell, will be out this October. Right now I'm writing the fourth book, which is the first in another three book story arc.

I started out writing what was supposed to be a simple series about a hitman, but now the story has me rewriting the cosmology of the entire universe. I never planned on that but it's a fun surprise to see where the story and characters have taken me.

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Did you always want to be a writer?

I never wanted to be a writer. I just started writing as a kid and didn't stop. My mother worked for a local newspaper when I was young so she was very encouraging of my writing. I wrote a lot of odd little stories when I was a kid, mostly science fiction and horror, and usually based on whatever movie or book had scared me recently.

I had a lot of trouble with English teachers. I started out in New York and ended up in Texas and the Texas school system was a very different animal. Things were simpler and slower there. I thought the material we were reading was dull and that the teachers were treating us as if we were a little slow. Teachers hated me because they did tell that I had a fair amount of contempt for the classes, but they couldn't fail me because I was always the best writer. That doesn't mean I was a good writer. It means that most people are hopeless. I blame school for that.

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What is the best/worst thing about being a writer?

The best thing about being a writer is that you get to work at home. That's also the worst thing. It's easy to lose track of time, so you wind up working all day and night. It's easy to lose track of dates and not know what day of the week it is. I tried picking up some dry cleaning on July 4 and the store was closed. I couldn't figure out why until I heard firecracker go off and I remembered that it was a holiday for people who had real jobs.

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What is one piece of advice you can give to someone who also wants to become a writer?

Read a lot and find authors the authors you like. However, it's just important to find writers you hate. Good writers can inspire you but they're not good to read when you're writing because you'll end up comparing yourselves to them. Bad writers are always good to keep around. At some point you're going to decide that the story you're writing is terrible and that you should throw it away. That's when you pick up a book you hate and read a couple of pages. It will emend you that a lot of crap gets published and you'll find yourself saying, “My story might be crap, but it's no worse than this crap in this crap got published.”

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What do you like to do besides writing?

I like to travel. Everyone who wants to write should travel, especially out of the country. And especially out of the industrialized world. Go somewhere there's no heat and you can hear the rats in the walls. Go somewhere you have to ride in an oxcart to get to the bus station and back to a city. Go somewhere you'll see people doing ordinary things in different ways. I remember a man buying an orange soda from the street vendor in Bangkok. Instead of giving the man the can, the vendor poured the orange soda into a plastic bag and poked a hole in it with a straw. The man buying a soda didn't react and I realized that this was how things were done. An ordinary thing was made new again.

OF course, there are big things you can experience. While walking through a rhinoceros preserve in Nepal my guide and I heard a low rumble from the side of the road. The guide grabbed my arm and pulled me off the road, 20 or 30 yards into the bush. When we stopped he said, “That was a tiger. That kind of growl means it just killed a deer and was warning us not to get closer because it was eating.” Get a few moments like that if you can.

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Have you had any other jobs before you decided to become a writer?

I'm like most writers which means I had a string of odd jobs. I tarred roofs in Houston, worked in bookstores, sold fire extinguishers over the phone and worked in warehouses. The warehouse jobs are best. You got a work order which told you what pallets to put where and you did it, usually with a forklift. As long as you moved things where they were supposed to be people left you alone. I loved that.

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How would you describe your education?

My education is pretty spotty. Most of the interesting things I learned I learned on my own. They tossed me out of college. Twice. The first time because I called one of the teachers a fraud (an opinion I stand behind that to this day). The second time they threw me out for non-attendance of class. I'd became so bored and depressed by college that I simply stopped going. The only thing I'm grateful for in my college experience is that I saw a flyer for the Clarion science fiction writers workshop on a bulletin board. The deadline for that year had already passed by I applied for the next year and got on what was my first attempt at a serious science fiction story. It was horrible but they let me in. Clarion was and is great writing boot camp experience. Of course, it still took me five more years to sell my first story.

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Who would you want to play Sandman Slim if a movie was made?

A Sandman Slim movie is in development right now. I won't say who should play him or what Sandman Slim looks like. If you look at the books I give you some broad strokes of his appearance but it was important to me to leave a lot of room for readers imaginations to fill in the details. I want everyone to have their own Stark. I love it when fans tell me what they think Stark looks like because the range is amazing. People have said everything from Tom Waits to Jason Statham. Good for them. Make Stark anything you want him to be.

 

Thanks for doing the interview Richard. I'll be getting a copy of "Aloha from Hell" when it comes out in October.