
Rusty Barnes, author of the recently released Knuckledragger and a lot more besides, kindly answers a few questions for me........
Is
the writing full time? If not, what’s the day job? (Maybe a brief bio?)
I suppose you could call me a full-time parent, part-time writer,
part-time editor. In strict point of fact, I'm a kept man, as my much more
talented wife works a day job, and I take care of and homeschool two of my
three kids, as one is quite old enough to take care of herself, though she
still lives with us! Up until we had children, I worked as a university adjunct
instructor of writing, and as a bookseller in both chain and independent
booksellers. Now, I teach only occasionally. I was born and raised in rural
northern Appalachia, which informs a great deal of my writing.
To my knowledge, and please correct me if I’m wrong, you have published three novels, two short story collections and a couple of collections of poetry. Do you have a favourite of the bunch? Is there one in particular you would press into the hands of a new reader? Does your work in different genres attract different audiences?

I am sentimentally attached to my first novel, Reckoning, as it took the longest to write, almost a year and
change, and until I had actually finished it, I wasn't sure I had the stamina
to complete a novel. It took me till I was nearly forty to settle down and
really get to serious writing, though I've been submitting work for publication
since 1989: I'm a slow learner, but persistent.
Reckoning is a good place
to start with my work, as it's a coming of age novel with elements of crime in
it, as opposed to the crime novels I've written since then. It has, I think,
more general appeal, though my story collection Mostly Redneck has much more variety of approach and subject matter
to it.
I think my stories and novels
lend themselves to the same audience, but I think the poetry reaches a
different audience entirely, and I'm not sure why. The poetry is more personal generally, though I approach
writing a poem the same way I do a story or a novel--I get a character in mind,
or a line, or something from my past sparks me, and I try to make a moment of
it, a poem, or if the image or character persists in my imagination, a story or
novel.
From personal experience, undoubtedly limited and corrupted by unpleasant school day memories, I’m not a massive fan of poetry. It was always a chore, deciphering meaning, a bit like translating a paragraph of French into English and the effort involved seemed better spent doing other things. Is there a collection of poems or the odd poem you could point me in the direction of that could prove me wrong, or am I doomed to die an ignoramus?
From personal experience, undoubtedly limited and corrupted by unpleasant school day memories, I’m not a massive fan of poetry. It was always a chore, deciphering meaning, a bit like translating a paragraph of French into English and the effort involved seemed better spent doing other things. Is there a collection of poems or the odd poem you could point me in the direction of that could prove me wrong, or am I doomed to die an ignoramus?

From
reading some responses to your work, a lot of it seems steeped in Appalachia,
how important a place is Appalachia to you?

Do you have a typical writing schedule?
When I'm writing, I write about an hour a day, during which I try to
get out a thousand words, but will very often stop at five hundred. Rarely
fewer, though. Done consistently, this gives me two-three short novels a year,
which I've come to regard as my specialty. I feel most comfortable between 40
and 60 thousand words. The last novel I completed was a little longer than
that, and I imagine in the rewriting, which I've yet to do, that will swell
into a longer novel still. Mostly though, I stay in my my 48K sweet spot, or
just under 200 pages.
Does your approach to writing change dependent on what piece of work you are crafting? Do you need a different Barnes head on to write a poem as opposed to a chapter of Knuckledragger for argument’s sake? Are the poems a lot more personal than the prose?
Does your approach to writing change dependent on what piece of work you are crafting? Do you need a different Barnes head on to write a poem as opposed to a chapter of Knuckledragger for argument’s sake? Are the poems a lot more personal than the prose?
I'm writing either fiction or poetry, never both at the same time. I
suppose I could switch off if I needed to, as I've done it occasionally, but I
like to stay in a single mindset for a concentrated length of time. It's just
better for me to get work done.
Everything I write is personal to one extent or another, though people
take the poetry much more literally than
I'm sometimes comfortable with. They're all emotionally autobiographical, the
poems, if not strictly true.
How long did Knuckledragger take from an initial idea and conception to the completion of the book?
How long did Knuckledragger take from an initial idea and conception to the completion of the book?

What would be the creative process be for one of your poems?
I hinted at this above, but basically, I get a spark, from somewhere,
an image or a character or a specific line, and I try to write forward and
backward from that line or image, which almost always comes from what ends up
to be the middle of the poem. I don't recommend the method, it's just what
works for me.
Any unpublished gems in your bottom drawer?
Nothing at the moment. I have the one I just finished a few months
ago, about a Croatian hitman, which I need to revise, and I have the current
one. I've had the great good fortune of publishing most of what I've written
since 2015 or so, and I do have a collection of Appalachian stories I haven't
been concentrating on in some time, plus a collection of flash fiction, but I'm
more interested in novels at the moment, so they're in need of revision and
expansion, too. I'll get to them, just not soon.
Is there a current work in progress? How’s it going? Any hints as to what it’s all about?
Is there a current work in progress? How’s it going? Any hints as to what it’s all about?

What’s the best thing about writing?
The best bit about writing is having written, knowing that what you've
got is finished and in good shape. This is in addition to the mere pleasure of
getting words down, without which I suspect none of us would spend much time
writing. I'm proud to have another four books coming out in the next couple
years from Shotgun Honey and ABC Group Doc and Electric Pentacle Press, so
that's some of the best part of writing, too, seeing the body of work pile up.
The worst?
The worst?
The worst part of it, by far, is trying to promote the writing having
finished it. Most of us are not natural hucksters, and it's counterintuitive,
even. Most of us are inner-centered people, and promotion forces us into the
limelight, and needless to say, some of us are more comfortable than others at
this.
What are the last five books you’ve read?
What are the last five books you’ve read?

Is there any one book you wish you had written?

You
also have recently started up a paying blogazine – Tough, which publishes short
stories and reviews. What are the aims with that venture?
Tough is my attempt to give back to the crime community. There aren't
many journals that pay even our token amount, so it's been instructive and
affirming to fill the place in the community above the freebie market but below
the journals that pay pro rates. I hope to bring attention to small press books
in this respect too, to do on a small scale what David Nemeth does on his
website Unlawful Acts, for example.
Favourite
activity when not working or writing?
I spend a lot of time in family activities, but when I'm by myself I'm
reading or playing guitar, ukulele, and cigar-box guitar, badly.
What’s
the last film you watched that rocked you?

TV addict or not? What’s the must watch show in the Barnes household?
I don't watch a lot of TV. We watch CNN, sadly, or the basketball
game. Baseball when it's in season.
In a couple of years’ time…
In a couple of years’ time…
I hope to have completed another three to four novels and shepherd
them into the dull light of publication. I'd like to write a multi-generational
crime saga, too, sort of a Sopranos in Appalachia kind of thing, but there's a
lot of that going around lately, so I'll probably change my mind. I also hope
to have written at least another book of poems and another collection of short
stories.
---------------
Many thanks to Rusty Barnes for his time
You can catch up with him at the following locations
His website here
Facebook page here
Twitter - @rwilliambarnes
His blogazine site Tough can be found here.
Rusty's books are as follows.
Novels - Knuckledragger, Ridgerunner, Reckoning
Short story collections - Mostly Redneck, Breaking it Down
Poetry - I Am Not Ariel, On Broad Sound, Jesus in the Ghost Room, Redneck Poems, Broke
Knuckledragger and Ridgerunner have featured on the blog before.
I've been to the Pennsylvania Appalachians ('though I didn't grow up there). I can see how that land and the atmosphere could really stay with a person. Thanks for a really interesting interview, both.
ReplyDeleteMargot, I'm glad you enjoyed the interview.
DeleteReally interesting interview. The juxtaposition of the poetry with the rest is really curious -- I'm not surprised that Barnes finds it reaches a completely different aufience!
ReplyDeleteJohn, glad you enjoyed it. I wasn't especially surprised either that the poems have a different readership. I can only think of one other author I've read who wrote poetry and novels, though I'm unsure if he was doing both at the same time - James W. Hall. I think the novels came after.
Delete