INTERVIEW
Heywood Gould Interviews Heywood Gould
Why are you doing this interview?
To promote my new book The Serial Killer’s Daughter.
Why should people buy your book?
To generate enough sales so I can publish another one. And maybe get a movie deal.
Let me rephrase the question: with so many books available why should people buy Serial Killer’s Daughter?
Because if won’t do me any good if they buy somebody else’s book, yo…
Okay. What’s special about Serial Killer’s Daughter?
It’s a sexy, suspenseful thriller that will keep you guessing at every turn, while providing a life affirming, redemptive, poetic exploration of man’s place in the universe.
So you have moderately good sales. What happens next?
I raise my profile in the market place. I e mail a hundred publishers and accept the least insulting advance. My next book drops stillborn from the press with no advertising and no book tour unless I pay for one myself. I drive hours to a signing attended by an old lady on a walker who thought she was coming for Mary Higgins Clark and a homeless guy who eats all the cupcakes. A producer calls, full of extravagant praise, although he’s only skimmed the three page “coverage” written by his assistant who read the book after being stood up by a Match. com date. I give him a free option for twenty years or the term of my natural life, whichever comes first.
That doesn’t sound so great..
It is for me and for the people around me. Consider the alternative. The book bombs. No publishers, no producers. I sit in the dark in my underwear, muttering imprecations. I become a burden on family and friends. Vast sums are spent on pharmaceuticals…
If your book doesn’t sell will you be able to muster the energy to write another one?
Oh sure. Writing is a compulsion, not a profession. I’ve been doing it since I was six and will continue until the day I die. I’m just lucky I can make a living at it. But repeated failure will cause me to doubt myself. Have I dried up? Has age taken its toll? I’ll write and rewrite, first the same page, then the same sentence, the same word. I’ll be attacked by punctuation anxiety. They’ll rush in to find me rolling on the floor screaming. “A comma…You idiot, it’s a semi-colon…No, goddamit, a comma…”
How about a brief biographical sketch.
I only recall fragments and images from my childhood.
Fine, give me fragments.
At the end of long dark hallway in my grandmother’s apartment in the Bronx a monster lurks waiting to eat me. My aunt’s false teeth are in a jelly jar on the bathroom sink. A memorial candle for my grandfather flickers in the kitchen. I see his ghost’s shadow flitting along the walls. A kid in a sandbox is raising a toy shovel and hitting me in the head. I open the bedroom closet and find my mother, hiding among the coats, sobbing…
Can we move on?
My adolescence is devoted to basketball and self-abuse; the sport changes to baseball during the summer. As I get older I diversify my self-abuse to include, alcohol, drugs, pathetic attempts at seduction, frustration at not being able to write a simple short story like Chekhov…
Thank you, I think we’re okay on biography. Can you give us a brief synopsis of Serial Killer’s Daughter?
I’ll let Peter Vogel, the protagonist describe the book. After all, he lived through it, not me…Take it away, Peter
This is so typical of me. I make a sex- for term papers- deal with a whacko chick in my American Lit. class. She sticks around just long enough to make me fall crazy in love with her, then disappears. Six months later she’s back like nothing happened. But then the weirdness starts. My apartment is invaded. Bodies are found in a dumpster. Thugs try to run me off the road. One night she confesses: she’s the daughter of a notorious serial killer, doing life in a super max for eleven murders. Somebody is trying to kill her and I’m the only one who can protect her. But now they’re after me, too. They stalk us on the road, in hotels, everywhere. The cops don’t believe us. They think we’re renegade drug mules being hunted by the cartel. I get so freaked out I kill a dude who’s been tailing us. So now I’m on the run. Our only chance is to figure out who’s after us and get them first. And the only person who can help us is her dad.
Sounds like a thriller.
It’s a thriller wrapped up in a mystery. But it’s really a love story.
Covering all bases?
I’m trying to break into the cosy market.
Is this book autobiographical?
Yes, except for the sex scenes.
Can you describe the book in one word?
It’s a warning.
About what?
About hot women—they’re always in trouble.
About getting what you wish for—you pay plenty and you’re always disappointed. About trying to save someone’s life—you won’t and the bad guys will come after you as well.
About commiting murder—it’s easier than it seems.
About criminals—they never feel guilty
About cops—they see a guy with a beautiful woman they want to throw him in jail.
About the world—it’s an unjust, capricious, place. Stay indoors as much as possible.
That’s pretty bleak.
Really? I think it’s positively Buddhist. Once you cleanse yourself of all passion, ambition and illusion, you can begin to find peace…only if you have abandoned all hope…
Okay, I get it. Let’s talk about your career.
My career has been a series of lucky encounters. A guy I met in Greenwich Village told me they needed copy boys at the NY Post. A man from IBM came into my office by mistake, then mistook me for someone else and hired me as a consultant. A woman I talked to on a bus was an editor at a paperback publishing house. A guy I played poker with was a producer for the TV show NYPD. An agent I knew had two partners looking for someone to write a cheap script about two cops in the South Bronx. A friend’s upstairs neighbor worked with Bill Devane who needed a rewrite for a movie called Rolling Thunder.
Didn’t talent have anything to do with it?
If you factor talent into the equation how do you explain the no-talent bums who are doing so much better than you?
Okay, so it’s all coincidence and luck and who you know. Does that mean there are geniuses out there whose work has never been discovered?
And never will be.
Well, that’s encouraging.
Oh it is. You see it’s so much easier to accept failure when you see life as a series of random collisions…
Thank you. I think we’re covered on the zen fatalism. You were involved in some pretty glamorous Hollywood projects. That must have been fun.
Oh yeah, laughs galore.. On Fort Apache the Bronx I was called a racist and chased down the street. Then, sued by a cop who said I stole his script. Then somebody posted a slanderous Wikiipedia piece about the movie
Everybody loves Cocktail now, but it was slammed so badly by the critics that I took to my bed for three days. I still meet people who say, “how could you destroy your own novel?” And I say, “what do you want me to do, send the fucking check back?”
One Good Cop was…
I think I get your drift. What’s your new book about?
A bitter writer wreaking horrific vengeance on people who exploited him…
Is it autobiographical?
Of course not. What would give you that idea?
Any place we can get a drink around here?
You buying?
For the original interview and other author’s interviewing themselves visit:
http://nigelpbird.blogspot.com/2011/07/dancing-with-myself-heywood-gould.html
College senior Peter Vogel is on the fast track to literary success—that is, until he becomes involved with Hannah Seeley. He’s fantasized about her almost non-stop since he first saw her. Then she offers him sex if he’ll ghostwrite her papers, which leads to a twisted entwining of their fates.
Peter discovers that Hannah is the daughter of convicted serial killer Arnold Seeley—the Robbinsgate Killer, who terrorized a small California town and killed eleven people. Now he’s on death row, and someone is relentlessly pursuing Hannah, planning to make her pay for her father’s sins.
Scared and not knowing which way to turn, Hannah seeks out Peter again. They head out on the road, running from assassins and hoping to find answers to difficult questions—all the while trying to stay alive long enough to discover who’s behind the attempts on Hannah’s life.
The Serial Killer’s Daughter is a simple little tale of misplaced judgment, spiced up with a pulse-pounding chase across the map. Author Heywood Gould does an excellent job of showing how certain minds can justify wrongdoing to appease their anger and guilt, even when they can’t strike back at the real target of their anger.
I was never a part of the whole college party scene, so it was a little hard for me to relate to Peter and Hannah. Peter comes across as a bit too impulsive and hotheaded for my liking. At times, I wanted to scream at him and tell him to slow down and think before acting. Hannah, on the other hand, seems to go with the flow, which tends to knock her for a tumble—almost as if she were absentminded. But that’s not to say that their personality traits make Peter or Hannah bad characters. In fact, they are, more times than not, entertaining in their faults.
Fast-paced, somewhat hilarious, and a little bit bizarre, The Serial Killer’s Daughter will keep you amused for hours. With its quirky, off-the-wall plot, it might not win any literary awards, but it’s most certainly an entertaining and hard to put down read that made me smile in spite of its dark subject matter.
Off on a book tour—signings, interviews, panels, car washes, eating contests, targeted assassinations, but you have to order at least twenty books—for the next few weeks. Will post a few of the interviews along the way….Best, Heywood
Interview with Richard Godwin
Heywood Gould is the author of 13 novels and 9 screenplays including ‘Fort Apache the Bronx’, ‘Cocktail’, ‘Rolling Thunder’, ‘The Boys From Brazil’ and ‘Double Bang’. His new book ‘The Serial Killer’s Daughter’ was released May 1st and is about a fantasist who gets caught up in the underworld. He is a highly accomplished author who is also a film director and screenwriter.
He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about detectives and killers.
To what extent do you think revenge is lawless justice?
Revenge is a prehistoric impulse.
Revenge on a large scale is war.
As the human population grew into ever larger groups something had to be done about the chaos of retribution.
Religion was invented.
“Vengeance is mine saith the Lord,” meaning, let God get even for you.
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” meaning if someone steals your ox don’t throw his children into the campfire.
“Love thy enemy” and “turn the other cheek.”
That never caught on.
Laws anointed the monarch as the official avenger.
Trials, prison, even execution.
Doesn’t satisfy the impulse.
People who call themselves God-fearing and law-abiding take blood-thirsty vengeance when they can.
Culture celebrates the avengers, from Hamlet to Charles Bronson.
Revenge has a nice mathematical symmetry. You do it to me plus I do it back to you=justice.
But justice can mean many things.
Divine justice: Hitler killed forty million. God sees the truth but waits. Hitler was defeated.
Not good enough.
Legal justice: Two evil men invade a Connecticut home rape, strangle and burn a mother and her two daughters.
They are condemned to death.
Big deal. They’ll be on Death Row for years pending appeals.
They won’t suffer the terror and torture they inflicted on their victims.
There is no justice.
Tell us about ‘The Serial Killer’s Daughter’.
I’ll let Peter Vogel the protagonist tell you.
This is so typical of me. I’m not a jock or a stud or a campus player. I’m an English major at a mega UC whose only interests are old movies and dead authors. I haven’t had a fight since I was nine. I’ve never had sex with a really hot woman. In other words I’m an intellectual. I am secretly obsessed with Hannah, a whacko chick in my American Lit. class, fantasizing epic encounters, but barely daring to say “hello.” Then one day she offers me a proposition: she’ll have sex with me if I ghost write term papers for her. I accept and she complies. She sticks around just long enough to make me fall crazy in love then disappears. Six months later she’s back like nothing happened. But then the weirdness starts. My apartment is invaded. Bodies are found in a dumpster. Thugs try to run me off the road. One night she confesses: she’s the daughter of a notorious serial killer, doing life in a super max for eleven murders. Somebody is trying to kill her and I’m the only one who can protect her. But now they’re stalking me, too. On the road, in hotels, everywhere. The cops don’t believe us. They think we’re renegade drug mules being hunted by the cartel. I get so freaked out I kill a dude who’s been tailing us. Now the cops are after us, too. Our only chance is to figure out who’s after us and get them first. And the only person who can help us is this insane, vindictive mass murderer– her dad. I’m running for my life, trying to figure who is trying to kill me before they succeed. But there’s one plus: the sex is getting better all the time.
Do you think the film industry despises writers and if so why?
Writers are outliers in the film business. They don’t fit socially. They don’t know how to act in public. They’re not photogenic and not particularly sexy. Not for nothing the old joke.
Question: What did the blonde actress do when she went to Hollywood?
Answer: She screwed the writer.
Yet a movie needs a script. Can’t get a director, a cast, a studio, a budget without a script. Which means a writer. Which used to mean a neurotic, unattractive, obstinate individual who refuses to give you the feel-good ending you need for big box office. Who haggles over obscure character traits. Who has a tantrum when someone changes a word and if he/she hasn’t been fired by the time picture shoots has to be banished from the set because he/she is annoying the director and eating all the croissants.
Hollywood has finally solved the problem of the despicable writer by doing sequels and remakes which don’t require an original story. And by allowing actors to make up their own dialogue, which leads to a harmonious set and a long winded movie.
There are exceptions, of course—King’s Speech, Social Network and True Grit this year. They did pretty well, didn’t they? But notice: two producers of King’s Speech did not thank the writer when receiving their Oscar.
Do you think it is possible to write a made for film novel and if so what components does it need to have?
If you write a novel with an eye to making it a film you will leave out the elements that make a novel great—character, complexity, multiple points of view–and, paradoxically, draw the attention of film makers. A good novel can be put down and picked up again, a movie can’t. A novel can go off the path of its narrative (a little bit) to tell a side story or feature subordinate characters; a movie has to speed like a bullet train toward its conclusion. The same audience that will read a novel full of side steps and digressions over a period of days or weeks without losing interest will get bored and downright hostile if a movie meanders.
The best way to get a movie made out of your novel is to establish yourself as a novelist. Pick up any well-written thriller and you can see the film possibilities. But only the books of the popular writers get picked up by Hollywood. A thriller is an expensive proposition so the studios are looking for the “marquee value” that the prominent writers provide.
There are exceptions, but the general rule is: Write a best seller and you’ll get a movie deal.
Do you think the best detectives have strong criminal shadows?
Criminals can hold two different ideas in their minds at the same time.
1. I want to be caught.
2. I’m going to get away with this.
Detectives don’t want to be caught.
Criminals are in rebellion against a social order that is denying them the wealth, fame and unlimited gratification they think they deserve.
Cops are fervent believers in that order, even though they know that it is corrupt, immoral and unfair.
A criminal has an idee fixe. Something inside of him/her finds a crime that fulfills some obscure need. He/she fetishizes this crime, doing it ritualistically the same way every time. Establishing a pattern that eventually leads to his/her apprehension. But not before he/she has destroyed innocent lives.
You can’t know what Detectives have repressed because you never see it. On the surface they operate like reverse statisticians, compiling and ordering information until it leads them to the culprit. They have erased emotion because it doesn’t help them do their jobs. Conventional morality is a given, although they like to bend the rules. They are occasionally repelled by the repellent creatures they deal with and will work long hours to make a case against them.
Criminals are romantic narcissists and only like to talk about themselves.
Cops are cynical opportunists, who have a dark view of humanity. But they tell great stories and are more fun to hang out with.
Who are your literary influences?
1. The Bible, which I read every day before I start writing for its engrossing narrative told in simple, vivid language.
2. Shakespeare to remind me that you don’t have to be a Jew, a Moor, a woman, young, old, a king, a murderer, a cripple, a thankless child, a woman scorned etc. to understand and empathize. That the trappings may change, but people remain essentially the same and if you get them right your work can last for centuries
3.Georges Simenon to learn how to turn the environment of your story into an important character. Simenon makes the arena come alive, whether it be Paris, New York, Connecticut, Africa, small towns in Holland and Belgium. With repertorial economy he makes you feel the place.
4. S.J. Perelman to see how laugh out loud funny prose can be.
5. James Joyce because all modern literature is a commentary on Ulysses.
6. The 19th. Century novelists–Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Flaubert, etc. to steal from.
7. Hemingway’s “The Old Man And the Sea” because it’s the best portrayal of the ordeal every writer endures.
8. Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby stories to remind me of what happens when you’re not welcome in Tinsel Town anymore.
Has any one event influenced your writing and if so why?
When I was fourteen I was fired for stealing money from a legal service where I worked as a messenger. I knew the culprit was the dispatcher, an eighteen year old zit picking degenerate horse player. He looked me right in the eye in front of the bosses and lied. I went home in tears. Everything I had been told by my mother and my teachers was wrong: the world was unfair and unjust. People could not be trusted. You could never know what someone was really thinking. The helpless indignation of outraged innocence has haunted me ever since.
Do you think the media are involved in the mainstream manipulation of what we perceive and if so to what extent does fiction differ from so called factual writing?
The media are totally politicized. You can’t get a straight who what when where story anymore. Fiction is actually a better guide to the zeitgeist. It doesn’t attempt to manipulate behind a guise of objectivity. Fiction is a lie that lets you see the truth, as Picasso said about art. Journalism these days is the lie pretending to be the truth.
Do you think women killers are motivated by different drives than men?
Some women kill abusive males. Some kill their children and themselves as the supreme gesture of spite. Some kill a pregnant woman for her child. Freud said women didn’t feel guilt because they never had an Oedipal fixation on their mothers. But he had his own problems, wondering: “Women, what do they want?” And, by some accounts, stopping all sexual relations with his wife at the age of 37. Aside from a few gender-specific instances women seem to kill for the same reasons of greed, jealousy, hatred and fear as men.
We have seen many examples of authoritarianism since the Second World War which you in wrote about in your excellent screenplay ‘The Boys From Brazil’. Wilhelm Reich wrote in ‘The Mass Psychology Of Fascism’ ’Always ready to accommodate himself to authority, the lower middle-class man develops a cleavage between his economic situation and his ideology.’ Do you think he was right? And if so to what extent do you think that the deferral by the insecure of their authority to those they see as powerful and the sacrifice of or the submission to ideology is behind many of the problems we face today?
Wilhelm Reich was so right so often that they finally threw him in jail. (Anybody got a used orgone box they don’t need.)
The “Tea Party” movement is a perfect illustration of Reich’s thesis. Workers and small business people are clamoring to kiss the boots of the oppressor who is grinding them into the mud– the oligarchical Capitalist. This is cognitive dissonance in its purest form. Every plank of the Tea Party platform is inimical to the economical interests of its drafters. People who cannot survive without Social Security and Medicare want to destroy them. They want to lower the taxes of billionaires while seeing theirs creep up in the form of fees, property assessments, new charges for government provided services, etc. They want to protect the corporations that are gutting their pensions, manipulating prices and wages and slowly driving the small entrepreneur out of business. They can’t afford private sanitation, security and education, but have embarked on a Holy War against the public employees who provide them–many of whom count themselves Tea Party members. Talk about lemmings, about Kool-Aid, about running dogs, about millions jumping on the funeral pyre of their own class.
The wealthy liberal left is the most cynical class in history. It lives with an unbridgeable gap between its ideology and its interests. George Soros and David Koch provide a false dialectic. The only real difference between them is their taste in ballet. Wealthy liberals claim to support ideologies of environmentalism, equality, diversity while secretly undermining them. In Obama they have found a better front man than Clinton. So good, in fact, that they will make sure he has no serious opposition.
Thank you Heywood for giving a real and insightful interview.
For more interviews with Richard Godwin, please visit his website
SAVE ON AMBIEN
Pick up a Copy of Serial Killer’s Daughter. Do not use if you suffer from acute paranoia, delusions of persecution or general bleakness.
Off on a book tour—signings, interviews, panels, car washes, eating contests, targeted assassinations, but you have to order at least twenty books—for the next few weeks. Will post a few of the interviews along the way….Best, Heywood
Don’t miss interview on G-ZONE with with host Giovanni Gelati. Click on link below to listen.
Off on a book tour—signings, interviews, panels, car washes, eating contests, targeted assassinations, but you have to order at least twenty books—for the next few weeks. Will post a few of the interviews along the way….Best, Heywood
International Thriller Writer’s Interview
by George Ebey
Heywood Gould, former reporter for the NY Post, and author of thirteen books and nine screenplays including Cocktail, Rolling Thunder, and Boys from Brazil, brings us his newest thriller, The Serial Killer’s Daughter.
Peter Vogel has just made a deal with a wacko chick in his American Lit class. If he ghostwrites her papers, she’ll sleep with him. Seeing as how Peter has had his eye on this girl for quite some time, the deal seems like a good idea. She stays around just long enough to make him fall crazy in love then disappears. Six months later, she shows back up like nothing happened. Then things start to get weird. Peter’s apartment is invaded. Bodies are found in a dumpster. Thugs try to run him off the road. One night, the girl confesses: she’s the daughter of a notorious serial killer, doing life in super max for eleven murders. Someone is trying to kill her and Peter is the only one who can protect her. But now they’re stalking him, too. On the road, in hotels, everywhere. The cops don’t believe them. They think the two are mules being hunted by the cartels. In order to survive, Peter and this beautiful, yet mysterious girl have just one chance: to figure out who’s after them and strike first. And the only person who can help them is an insane, vindictive mass murderer – the girl’s dad.
Your book’s title is certainly an attention grabber. Did it come to you early on in the writing process or did it have to percolate for a while?
The title came before the book. I had always wondered what it would like to be related to a serial killer. What happened to the families. How they continued with their lives. How their community reacted. Hence the title and the book.
When we think of serial killers, most of us believe that we have a standard idea of who these people are: Jeffery Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy. What makes the killer of your title stand out from the rest?
The killer in this book is morally oblique. He actually believes that he is the victim in a world of hypocrites and manipulators. He has found a way to completely exonerate himself for what he’s done. He is maddening because he will not repent.
Your story features a protagonist who falls for the daughter of a killer. What interested you in approaching a serial killer story through this unique perspective?
Our daily routine is like a narrow path through a jungle full of ravening beasts waiting to pounce. The slightest misstep can send us into a world of horror. One cell grows into a malignant tumor. A drunken driver veers down a street we’re crossing. A homicidal weirdo opens fire in a bank or a restaurant. A serial killer stalks us for months without our knowledge. I wanted to show what happens to normal people who are suddenly plunged into the alternate universe of insanity that is all around us.
Your last book, Leading Lady, won the Independent Publishing Award bronze medal, was a finalist for the Hammett Prize, and was the Forward Magazine Mystery/Thriller of the Year. Would you care to tell us a little about it?
Leading Lady has a similar theme: a normal woman suddenly forced to survive in a threatening world.
What advice would you give to any bright young college seniors (like Peter) who find themselves propositioned by that one cute co-ed they’ve had their eye on?
Go for it. One way or another it’ll change your life.
Painless interview with Suspense Radio thanks to host John Raab. Click on link below to listen.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/suspensemagazine/2011/05/07/suspense-radio-with-heywood-gould
THE WHIRLWIND TOUR CONTINUES
RELEASE PARTIES & BOOK SIGNINGS
May 21, 2011 1:00 – 3:00 pm
THE BOOK CARNIVAL
348 South Tustin Street
Orange, CA 92866-2502
(714) 538-3210
May 22, 2011 1:00 – 2:30
THE FIREHOUSE RESTAURANT & BAR
213 Rose Ave (in Venice)
Los Angeles, CA 90291
(310) 396-6810
This will be followed by a general Q&A about the process of thriller and screenwriting.
Off on a book tour—signings, interviews, panels, car washes, eating contests, targeted assassinations, but you have to order at least twenty books—for the next few weeks. Will post a few of the interviews along the way….Best, Heywood
JOIN US TONIGHT
Thursday, May 5th 6:30 – 8:00
Mysterious Bookshop
58 Warren Street
New York, NY 10007
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Serial Killer’s Daughter-Heywood Gould
The Serial Killer’s Daughter
Heywood Gould
Nightbird Publishing, Apr 2011
www.nightbirdpubs.com
ISBN: 9780981951258
College senior Peter Vogel is majoring in English. He is an intellectual nerd with no friends; the loner finds women ignore him like he has a disease so he fantasizes about females with his vivid imagination. Thus he is shocked when student Hannah Seeley asks him to write her papers so she can graduate as women never talk to him even for a favor. Since she has no money to pay him, Hannah offers him sex. He accepts her deal and writes a paper in which she receives an “A”. After the promised tryst, she vanishes from his life without even a good-bye
Peter goes to Houston to earn his Masters. Hannah reenters his life insisting people are after her. A policeman investigates her claim and tells Peter Hannah is the daughter of Anoly Sweeney known as the Robbingate Killer who murdered eleven times, but now is in prison in the Pacific Northwest. The townsfolk of Robbingate are angry at Hannah because she the sole person her father loved. Many of the townsfolk have the means to hire a professional killer to murder her. Though she hurt him, Peter decides to protect her from a town without pity and dicover who is really trying to kill her.
Heywood Gould has written an exciting crime thriller that looks deeply into the various masks people wear and change to hide their peculiarities and what they consider a fault. Peter is the only person who is guileless so that what you see is what you get. Peter obviously cares about Hannah as he tries to help her in spite of her hurting him though that means he needs to relook his values. Readers will understand that even serial killers have families who are victims of their insanity too as Mr. Gould allows fans to see up close how the Serial killer’s Daughter survives the whisperers about her heritage.
Harriet Klausner, Midwest Book Review
Please join us for a Release Party & Book Signing
May 5, 2011 6:30 – 8:00
Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren St, NYC, NY 10007
LIBRARY JOURNAL
Gould, Heywood. The Serial Killer’s Daughter. Nightbird. Apr. 2011. c.258p. ISBN 9780981957258. $25.
After a major hiatus (one book since 1988), novelist Gould (Fort Apache, the Bronx; Cocktail) is back with a noir thriller, full of action, dark humor, multiple killings and a swath of eccentric characters plucked from the American heartland (bungling bad guys, a lawyer of dubious sanity, and a reverend with a unique take on eternal damnation). The story involves Hannah, the daughter of an incarcerated serial killer, who fears for her life. She ensnares Peter, a hormonally charged and quip-literate English major, as protector. Since English majors are more renowned for parsing sentences than defending princesses, this is a stretch. But the unlikely hero fulfills his role with aplomb, dark humor, lethal efficiency, luck and his repertoire of weak jokes. The masterly scoop and delineation of the story has inherent cinematic fell, not suprising coming from a screenwriter and director.
VERDICT Apart from the clichéd sexual gambit, this high-caliber redemptive road trip is quick-witted, stylish, and highly entertaining.
– Seamus Scanlon, Ctr for Worker Education, CUNY
Please join us for a Launch Party and Book Signing
Saturday April 30, 2011 6:30 pm
Eagle Eye Bookshop, 2076 N. Decatur Road, Decatur, GA 30033
www.eagleeyebooks.com
Sunday, May 1, 2011 4:00pm
Peerless Bookstore, 8465 Holcomb Bridge Road, Alpharetta, GA
www.peerlessbookstore.com
BOOKLIST
Issue: May 1, 2011
The Serial Killer’s Daughter.
Advanced Review – Uncorrected Proof
Gould, Heywood (Author) May 2011. 258 p. Nightbird, hardcover, $20.00. (9780981957258).
Gould is a movie guy (screenwriter for Boys of Brazil, among other writing and directing credits), and it shows in the big-screen style he brings to this novel. no essayish exposition, just snappy dialogue and narrative set forth in sentences bursting with energy. Peter Vogel, English major and uber-nerd, is approached by the beautiful Hannah for help with term papers. He happens to be there the night a jock slips her a roofie. He rescues her, and in the days to come, he realizes he has to keep rescuing her. After a few fights and chases, he learns she’s the daughter of a convicted serial killer. Someone could be punishing her for her father’s sins. Or just maybe the serial killer is a victim, too. Revelations come in layers as the violence escalates, accompanied by conversations about guilt and atonement that explain the action while advancing it—like a movie. As Peter learns to handle himself in this world, Hannah, like Lady Macbeth, grows alarmed at what she’s created. The reader gets to “watch” a fine thriller unfold.
— Don Crinklaw
REPRINT from November 25, 2009
Igor Yopsvoyomatsky, editor-in-chief of paranoiaisfact.com,
answers readers’ questions.
Dear Igor,
When the upcoming terrorist trials were announced my husband Todd rented a back hoe and started digging an underground bunker in our front yard. He’s down there now, about sixty feet underground, and won’t even come up for cuddles. Todd says the trials are the first step in the terrorist takeover of our country. That Obama is a sleeper agent of Al Qaeda, charged with sowing discord and confusion and leading to the dismantling of democratic institutions in the name of security, forcing conversion to Islam and imposition of Sharia on the US. Is this paranoia or fact?
Sara P.
Anchorage, Alaska.
Dear Sara,
This is paranoia with a germ of fact. Obama is not an agent of Al Qaeda. But he is a dupe. The naivete of his administration is matched only by its serene self-assurance. They are like the chess player who makes a move without considering his opponent’s response.
Look for three unintended consequences of the trials.
1. SECURITY. The NYPD will establish a security perimeter around the courthouse. Within this perimeter it will be discovered that there are hundreds of Arab, South Asian and African Muslims selling halal food, souvenirs and clothing. Millions of man hours and hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent vetting each of these individuals and a number of them will be questioned because of association with mosques, imams and/or organizations on the watch list. There will be an outcry from the Muslim community. Ethnic profiling will be alleged, lawsuits commenced, predictable positions taken on both sides of the issue. In the end the US will be made to look like the polarized polity that it is fast becoming.
All employees of the NYPD, Corrections Department and Federal Marshall service will be checked. Muslim officers will object, saying they are being singled out, their loyalty questioned. In addition the net will drag up compromising information on all employees. Harassment and invasion of privacy will be alleged. Unions will threaten job actions and litigation.
2. THE JURY. It will not be possible for these men to tried by a “jury of their peers.” No normal person would expose him/herself to the inconvenient and perhaps hazardous interruption of their life for months. Not to mention the danger it might pose to their families when (not if, because it will happen) their identities are revealed. Only those with a secret agenda will vie to be accepted—zealots of both persuasions, publicity seekers who will try to profit from their jury service and, last but most troubling, possible terrorist moles. It would only take one recalcitrant juror to force a mistrial, which would be a huge propaganda victory for the enemy. The prosecution, fully aware of this, will try to impanel a foolproof jury. Everybody in the pool will be secretly vetted by the FBI. When (not if, because it will happen) this is disclosed there will be the inevitable reaction. The eventual jury, no matter how diverse, will be labeled as “stacked.” Its decision, no matter how carefully deliberated, will be seen as “fixed” by most of the world. Obama’s intention to show that the US is a nation of laws will backfire.
3. A SENSATIONAL OUTBURST. Terrorists are master manipulators of the media. This trial will give them the opportunity to take the world stage. Condemning the US is old news. They know they’ll need something sensational to dominate the news cycle. Look for one of the defendants, maybe KSM himself, to rise in open court and declare:
“I must clear my conscience. I was recruited, paid and trained by the CIA and Mossad to carry out this operation. The intent was to cause world outrage and justify launching the war against Islam and the invasion of Iraq. I was never waterboarded or tortured in any way. On the contrary I have lived in luxury since my alleged arrest and have been told that the CIA and Mossad will provide plastic surgery, millions of dollars and a new identity for me once this travesty is over.”
This cynical confession will ignite an explosion of controversy. There will be violent protests against the US, Israel and the so-called moderate Arab nations that will be seen to have been complicit. Tens of thousands of demonstrators will descend upon the Federal Court Building. New York will suffer paralytic gridlock.
The terrorists know that the first blow is the one that impacts global consciousness. Neither the US nor Israel nor the Saudis will be able to successfully disprove this lie. Tens of millions will be added to the millions who already believe that 9/11 was a US-Israeli plot.
Todd is right, Sara. An ordeal lies ahead. My advice is to keep a low profile. Do not say or do anything to draw attention to yourself. Stay in Anchorage where you’ll be safe.
Your friend,
Igor
This is so typical of me. I make a sex- for term papers- deal with a whacko chick in my American Lit. class. She sticks around just long enough to make me fall crazy in love then disappears. Six months later she’s back like nothing happened. But then the weirdness starts. My apartment is invaded. Bodies are found in a dumpster. Thugs try to run me off the road. One night she confesses: she’s the daughter of a notorious serial killer, doing life in a super max for eleven murders. Somebody is trying to kill her and I’m the only one who can protect her. But now they’re stalking me, too. On the road, in hotels, everywhere. The cops don’t believe us. They think we’re renegade drug mules being hunted by the cartel. I get so freaked out I kill a dude who’s been tailing us. Now the cops are after us, too. Our only chance is to figure out who’s after us and get them first. And the only person who can help us is this insane, vindictive mass murderer– her dad.
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Igor Yopsvoyomatsky, editor-in-chief of Paranoiaisfact.com,
answers readers’ questions.
Dear Igor,
I’m scared. First a computer named Deep Blue beats the world champion of chess. Then another one called Watson beats the biggest winners of Jeopardy. Rajiv, the IT guy at the office, says this is a positive: The thinking power of these machines will be harnessed to cure the ills of mankind, to improve our quality of life. But what hope is there for the Average Joe like me if the very best of our species can’t compete? I can’t sleep. I’m haunted by feelings of inadequacy. I ‘m convinced my worst scifi nightmare is coming true. Machines are taking over. They’re going to turn us all into fat, shuffling, overmedicated drones, servicing the giant , blinking Queen Bee computer. Is this paranoia or fact?
Al Angster
Cataract Falls, Pa.
Dear Mr. Angster,
This is fact. There is no hope for the Average Joe. But don’t blame the machine. Until there is a perpetual motion computer that can reproduce itself the culprit will be the human holding the plug—the engineer.
Computer engineers use the accretion of data to produce the illusion that a machine is actually thinking. But like the Wizard of Oz they are behind the curtain, pushing the buttons, doing their best to convince you that your mind is too slow and distracted to flourish in the high-speed world. It’s all about deception. The highest achievement in Artificial Intelligence will be to produce a “chatbot,” a computer that tricks a human into believing he/she is talking to another human.
All human vs. machine contests are designed to show the superiority of the humans who run them. Computer engineers, the Average Joes of the science world, want to prove that middle-of-the-pack knowledge workers can dominate the smarter and more highly skilled. They want to wrest the zeitgeist away from the poets and give it to the Sudoku solvers. Whatever the task, they say, a machine (meaning us, its human masters) will ultimately do it better.
IBM is willing to invest millions of dollars to prove this point. Deep Blue creator, Feng-hisung Hsu, began to develop his chess-playing computer in 1985. He worked for 10 years with an elite team, including an international grandmaster, toward one goal—to defeat World Champion Gary Kasparov. When they lost in Philadelphia in 1996 they went back to the drawing board. In 1997 they returned with a new improved Deep Blue Two. “Going into the match I had some apprehension,” Hsu said…”but… we made history and knew we could compete.”
Deep Blue might be an impersonal machine, but its creators sounded all too human. “After just an hour Kasparov realized how hopeless his position had become,” IBM flacks gloated.” We did not have to wait long for the killer blow from Deep Blow that ended the match…”
Now Hsu could claim that “brute-force computation has eclipsed humans in chess.”
But the victory was muddled by controversy. After losing a game the engineers discovered a programming glitch that allowed Kasparov to maneuver the computer into a trap. So they changed the rules to allow them to make a correction between games. To effectively coach the machine.
Kasparov cried foul, alleging Deep Blue had been given “human” guidance in violation of the ground rules. Program director C.J. Tan spinned his defense in computer-speak. “we developed a program to change the parameters in between each game…”
Kasparov demanded a rematch. IBM refused and dismantled Deep Blue. The episode ended inconclusively. Feng-hisung Hseu left IBM when he realized they were “not doing anything with the Deep Blue chess chip.” He tried to market it elsewhere, but couldn’t find a commercial application. So much for curing the ills of mankind and improving our quality of life.
Seeking a clear-cut victory IBM turned its attention to another form of competitive data accretion–the quiz show. It discarded the game-playing model and developed a “question-answering” program, which the corporate grovelers named Watson, after IBM’s founder. It spent millions on super computers that could “process the equivalent of 1 million books of information per second.” IBM challenged Jeopardy’s biggest winners, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. A reporter claimed the stage was set for “humankind to either claim victory over machines or encounter a sobering wake-up call.”
It’s been a PR bonanza. IBM is back in the headlines. Jeopardy’s ratings are the highest in years. Watson’s program director David Ferruci has become a media celebrity. Tweedy and tieless with a comfy salt and pepper goatee he is the perfect non-threatening representative for a system that IBM hopes will make billions.
For IBM everything is a sales tool. If Watson can get the right answers in Jeopardy it can also pick stocks, diagnose disease, repair complex systems—since most of life is a question-answering process the possibilities are endless. The research center is already at work developing applications.
Ferruci is calm and genial, but inside he must be churning. It is reported that he is in his office day and night and has to wear a retainer to keep from grinding his gums during the contest. He knows if Watson loses he will join Feng-hsiung Hsu on the IBM dead wood pile.
And again, the engineers behind the curtain are trying to deceive the public. It is not Watson’s knowledge that is carrying the day, but its speed. According to Richard Perez-Pena of the NY Times success in Jeopardy is “all about timing, and the inherent advantage that chips and wires have over flesh.” Factor in the nervousness of the human contestants who are in a death struggle against a machine that threatens to render the human species obsolete. “Well,” says Perez-Pena, “it should be obvious… that the computer’s timing edge would make a mockery of the contest.”
Win or lose Watson will not succeed in replicating human ability. Its high speed trading machines will cause markets to crater, power grids to crash, planes to collide. It will assuredly tell someone with lung cancer he has athlete’s foot. And won’t even have the good grace to send a wreath. Worst of all, it will put more of our daily activities at the mercy of some nose-picking, chain-smoking, Red Bull-swilling hacker in Guanduong Province, who can alter its questions and answers to sabotage our systems.
Yes, Mr. Angster, you will soon be a fat, shuffling, overmedicated drone.
Best wishes,
Igor
