A Q & A WITH KEN MERCER

Just before the publication of his first novel, Slow Fire, Ken took some time to answer a few questions for Hector DeJean of St. Martin’s Press. The topics ranged from the inspiration for Slow Fire to Ken’s experiences writing and researching the book.

Hector DeJean: What inspired your book?

Ken Mercer: On Independence Day, 2006, my family and I made a trip to a small town in rural northern California.

We’d been to this particular town before: it’s charming, picturesque, and filled with Gold Rush-era architecture.

After unpacking, it quickly became apparent that the town had changed in the two years since our last visit. Homes had fallen into a state of disrepair. Stores were boarded up. People’s faces were covered with sores, as if affected by a biblical plague. The place now had a scary feel.

I asked my wife what the hell was going on, and she told me that it seemed as if the majority of the town’s populace was tweaking on meth.

I was skeptical — at the time I was unaware of the meth epidemic that was sweeping rural America.

When we got back home, I did some quick online research, and discovered that a large clandestine meth lab had just been raided not far from the town. As I dug deeper, I started to get excited by the dramatic possibilities inherent in a fictional small town that is being overtaken by the pernicious influence of a clandestine meth lab. I thought it could be Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Red Harvest, but written with a modern crime fiction sensibility.

HD: How and why did you start working on this book?

KM: I had been writing about baseball, and in 2005 I landed a contract from a magazine to do an in-depth profile of the president of the San Francisco Giants.

I reported the piece for over six months. Then, one week before my deadline, the Barry Bonds steroid scandal broke. The editor of the magazine loved what I’d turned in, but now wanted to peg the story to steroids.

I could see why he wanted to do that, but I had no appetite for writing it. Worst of all, I began to realize that the thing that had driven me to want to write about baseball in the first place–my love of the game–was starting to fade. I was disenchanted by what was taking place in baseball, and sickened by some of the ugly confrontations I’d seen take place between members of the media jockeying to get close to Bonds.

I knew I needed to take a break from writing about baseball if I was going to remain a fan of the sport.

As I thought about what to work on next, the idea of sitting alone in a room and making things up began to seem pretty appealing.

HD: What has it been like to write this book?

KM: Not long before I started writing Slow Fire, I was in a serious bicycle accident, and fractured my right hip.

I was basically unable to walk for close to a year.

So my main obstacle in sitting down to write the book was the physical pain of just sitting.

I needed to change positions frequently while I worked–I ended up writing a lot of the book standing up at my bedroom dresser. No matter what I did, though, the process of writing the book was painful. I tried to convince myself that it was actually a positive: that because the characters in the book are going through some suffering themselves, my own pain was helping me to get in touch with them. Or at least that’s what I told myself.

HD: Did you have any interesting experiences while you were researching your book?

KM: One of the characters in the book, Frank Carver, did time at San Quentin. I felt like I needed to have a deeper knowledge of what that experience was actually like. I’d become friends with a lieutenant at the prison, and after much begging, he agreed to get me inside.

This was an unofficial tour where I was able to experience the prison in ways that are unknown to most people who aren’t either inmates or correctional officers.

I spent time inside the cell of a convicted murderer (he was in there with me, too) walked the tiers of cell blocks alongside the inmates, and went inside what is considered the most dangerous place in the prison–the chow hall.

When I got back to my car and drove out through the main gates, I had to pull off the road. I was physically drained. I hadn’t realized how much stress I’d been experiencing while I was inside the prison. It gave me a whole new level of empathy for the correctional officers who have to work there every day.

HD: Is there anything about you as a working writer that you think might be unusual?

KM: Where do I begin… for one thing, I’m terrified of sitting down in front of a blank computer screen, so I always write up a ton of notes for each scene on index cards before starting to write it. By the time I finished the book, I had close to three thousand cards. I mean, I went through so many of the things that I felt as if I was single-handedly keeping the stationary store in my town in business.

I fooled myself into thinking I’d written Slow Fire on my computer, but looking back on it now, I think that’s a lie. I think what I was really doing was typing up what I’d written on those thousands of note cards.

For my new book, I’m calling a spade a spade and just writing it out longhand from the start.

(Ken Mercer photo by Heward Jue)