An Interview with Mark Rogers, author of Koreatown Blues

Mark Rogers is a writer and artist whose literary heroes include Charles Bukowski, Willie Vlautin and Charles Portis.  He lives most of the year in Baja California, Mexico with his Sinaloa-born wife, Sophy. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Village Voice and other publications and his travel journalism has brought him to 54 countries; these trips have provided plenty of inspiration for his novels and screenplays. His crime novel Koreatown Blues will be published by Brash Books, Feb. 2017; his mystery novel Red Thread is available from Endeavour Press. Drop into his Wordpress blogs Pissing on My Pistols and Mark Rogers – Author https://markrogersauthor.wordpress.com/ for news about upcoming books from him.

You’re a journalist. Did you start off with short stories or dive right in to fiction?

I started writing fiction in the fifth grade, which was the year I discovered the writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan series. Reading was probably like a drug for me, a way to shut out the world. I’ve never been drawn to writing short stories, and didn’t write fiction at all for many years, until the 1980s, when I wrote the novella now titled “Night Within Night.” Other unpublished novels followed, as well as unproduced screenplays. Luckily, I found rewards in the process, since I had very little encouragement. This all changed last April, when I had four novels contracted in one month, from four different publishers. Some of these works had been knocking around for decades, while others, like “Koreatown Blues,” were written in the last year or so. That very first novella, “Night Within Night” will be published next year by London-based Endeavour Press. I’m very psyched to have made the transition from “writer” to “author.”

Most writers are readers, who are the writers who influenced you?

It’s a bit like an archeological dig, with the deepest layer being Edgar Rice Burroughs, up to Knut Hamsun and Henry Miller in my late teens, to Charles Bukowski, Charles Portis, Charles Willeford, and Willy Vlautin. I’ve come to enjoy a crisp, clean line, which is what I try to do in my own work.  Kaurismäki.

On the crime novel side, I’m a big fan of John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, and Raymond Chandler. There are other one-offs that I cherish, like “The Hustler” by Walter Tevis, and “Fat City” by Leonard Gardner. I think I’m also influenced by film, especially the movies by Finnish director Aki

Koreatown Blues by Mark Rogers ... a review

A man walks into a Korean karaoke bar and …

It sounds like the beginning of a joke but it’s not, and by the time the first chapter of Mark Rogers’ outstanding Koreatown Blues concludes with a bang, you’ll realize it’s just the opening riff of a mystery that revitalizes the L.A. noir tradition from the inside out. Readers who know Los Angeles will be delighted by the specificity of the local color. (I lived in Koreatown when I first moved to L.A., and Rogers nails it.)

The story is tight, the prose is taut, and the pacing is cinematic as Rogers unspools his plot, a fantastic thing involving blood feuds and murdered husbands and what the proprietor of the bar refers to (with grim understatement) as “bad business.”

All that would be pleasure enough, but Rogers also knows how to flesh out a character so that everyone from his Latino employees to a flirtatious gypsy cab driver have their moments to shine on the page. Rogers’ L.A. is people with hard-working immigrants who give the lie to stereotypes, racist cops who couldn’t care less how people see them, wannabe actors, and cranky old guys like Jules, Wes’ former boss, who used to tell him that you can outsource a lot of things in America but you still have to go local to get a haircut, your sink fixed, or your car washed.

Two of my favorite things--cats and science

If you're on Facebook, you might want to check out the remarkably silly page, "Cats in Space Quoting Scientists." Because some very funny people have WAY too much time on their hands.

A picture is worth a thousand words

The new president-elect is all about image so he knows exactly what kind of message he's sending with this Christmas tweet pic. Scares the bejezus out of me. Because really, nothing says "Happy Holidays" like a raised fist. And I love (not) that he felt compelled to add "President-elect" to his name, as if we don't know who he is.

Water Taxi in a River of Vampire Fish

I love it when I'm looking for something particular and then something completely unexpected pops up on my radar. I was following a link to a set of sci-fi romantic adventures and on a whim decided to see what was on offer in the freebie Kindle store today. (Because it's never too late to get myself a Christmas present.) I saw this book and went, "squee." A drowned New York. A sinister plot. And two bonus stories. My kind of read. You can find it free yourself here. And if you do download it, let me know what you think of it!

Poetry inspired by Shakespeare

Destination Shakespeare is a book of 24 poems published by Vancouver-based Misfit Press. You can see an animation of one of the poems here (just click on the book cover). I wish I'd known about this book before Christmas because I know a few people who would have loved to find it in their stocking (including ME).

I'm old enough to remember the last arms race

I was just a little girl when the US and Russia went eye to eye and toe to toe in Cuba. I remember sitting on our living room couch next to my mother as she watched John F. Kennedy's speech to the nation during those terrible days in October. (My father wasn't home. A career Army officer, he was "on alert" and getting ready, if need be, to be deployed.)

I didn't really understand what was going on so I asked my mother. "The president's telling us we're going to war," my mother said. I was terrified. The word "war" was still pretty abstract to me but I understood that if we went to war, it meant my father would be fighting it. In this Strangelovian world Americans now find ourselves in, I am more frightened now than I have been in decades.

Donald Trump is going to kill us all. It is no consolation at all knowing that Trump Tower and the White House are both at Ground Zero and no matter what nuclear horror follows the apocalypse he is threatening to unleash, he won't be around to profit by it.

Stephen King...

I couldn't have said it better myself. But then, I can rarely say anything better than Stephen King.

Cory Booker's Book Club

This is what he has to stay about it:

This past summer we read Just Mercy, a powerful memoir about our criminal justice system written by human rights attorney—and one of my heroes—Bryan Stevenson. It was an honor having Bryan join us for a live video chat to discuss his book and answer many of your questions. I look forward to having many similar discussions this year.

To kick off our 2017 Book Club, we’ve chosen a must-read book that takes a hard look at the human impact on our environment. Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer-prize winner, The Sixth Extinction, has been recommended to me by so many people I’ve lost count. And as we head into a year when we’ll need to fight even harder for a more sustainable future, it’s an especially important read—I hope you’ll join me and open this book right away.

Here's where you can sign up for it.

A new series for a new year

Thanks to cover designer Daniel Weiss of the Book Cover Designer, I have a shiny new cover for my new series of SF books that will be coming out next year. I have another book already planned, Data Witch, and the two covers look like a set. (My designer is still working on Data Witch.)

The two covers were my Christmas present to me and thanks to a holiday sale, I snagged both for less than $100. I have about thirty on my "wish list," so I suspect that a little more of my Christmas cash will go to the site. (I have been a remarkably good girl this year, although I didn't write nearly as much as I wanted to.) Daniel gave me three different options on where to put my by-line but I think I like this one best.

Advent Ghosts 2016

Photo by Sally Columni/Pixabay

This year I am participating in Loren (I Saw Lightning Fall) Eaton's writing challenge--a spooky little drabble (a story of exactly 100 words). You can go to his site for links to all the other stories. Check them out here. My story is below.

                                                      COLD COMFORT

It was snowing when Ella reached the cemetery. She didn’t really mind the wet smack of snowflakes on her bare skin; icy kisses that melted into her hair and trickled down her neck. Although the cemetery would not close for another hour, Ella was alone as she made her way to a grave heaped with blood-red roses that had faded and freeze-dried in the frigid air. 

She looked down, trying to imagine her husband sleeping beneath her feet. She supposed he was with Jesus now but she wouldn’t know. Neither murderers nor suicides go to heaven and she was both.

Syria needs the White Helmets; the White Helmets need Us!

What's going on in Syria is beyond words. The White Helmets, the Syrian Civil Defense, is just about the only organization left to help.

Here's what they do:

When the bombs rain down, the Syrian Civil Defence rushes in. In a place where public services no longer function these unarmed volunteers risk their lives to help anyone in need - regardless of their religion or politics. Known as the White Helmets these volunteer rescue workers operate in the most dangerous place on earth.
As the conflict in Syria worsens, ordinary people are paying the highest price. More than 50 bombs and mortars a day land on some neighbourhoods in Syria. Many are rusty barrels filled with nails and explosives, rolled out the back of government helicopters -- bakeries and markets are the most commonly hit targets. When this happens the White Helmets rush in to search for life in the rubble - fully aware that more bombs may fall on the same site. These volunteers have saved 73,530 lives - and this number is growing daily.

Here's what you can do. Donate.

The Blue Hour

It's been a really long time since I've lived somewhere it snowed. I've lived in Europe and states up and down the East Coast, and all of them got their share of snow. (In New Jersey it would sometimes drift over my head.) The whole time I lived in California, it only snowed once in a place where I was living, an inch in Northridge, just before the big quake. It barely coated the ground and yet people were calling in "snow days." Hah. Amateurs.

One of the things that fascinates me about living in the Pacific Northwest is that the light is different here. We'll have days where the sun is almost bronze in a gray sky. My bedroom faces southwest and the sunsets are sometimes apocalyptic looking. And this is what it looked like yesterday at midmorning when the snow was coming down thickly. The light went all blue. It was really pretty.

A book for the Wish List

I love cook books. I've edited them. I've written them. I've belonged to cookbook clubs and bought them at yard sales. When I moved away from Los Angeles I gave almost all of them away. That was partly out of self-defense. As a diabetic, my cooking these days is pretty simple and confined to dishes I like and that work for me managing my disease. I did not need forty-seven books on chocolate or baked goods or Sothern cooking. (I make amazing biscuits but seriously, my biscuit-making days are over.)

Every so often, though, a book grabs my attention. I love spicy food and I love learning bout the herbs and spices that combine to make those meals. This book is on my radar.

Random Reindeer Cat

For the record, I don't approve of dressing animals up in costumes. Except maybe on Halloweeen when their dignity won't be ruffled. But my sister used to have those silly reindeer antlers for her dog Lucy, and I have to say, Lucy was pretty cute. So maybe there can be Christmas exceptions as well. Or not. Seriously. It's one thing to dress up a dog--they'll do anything to make people smile because they're dogs. But cats...that's not how they roll. And yet, random reindeer cat!!! You can find all your animal's holiday costume needs here.