CHARLIE STELLA'S WORLD — AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW INTRODUCTION Charlie Stella is the best crime writer you haven’t read yet.
Charlie (nicknamed "Knucks"), a New York native who currently lives across the bay in New Jersey with his wife, Ann Marie ("the Principessa"), has published two novels — Eddie’s World and Jimmy Bench-Press (a book his mother-in-law, Stella notes with some pleasure, calls "Johnny Work-Bench" — "It's great," he says).
His third novel, Charlie Opera, will be released in December 2003 by Carroll & Graf.
Stella’s own novels can be traced back to a Minot State College course in which instructor Dave Gresham introduced his football scholarship-endowed student to George V. Higgins’ first book, The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
Stella’s own first novel, Eddie’s World (actually the second novel Charlie wrote) is a better book than Higgins’ debut.
Higgins’ book is often praised for its convincing depiction of low-level criminal life.
Higgins himself was a dapper Boston lawyer with a moustache and goatee…a haughty man who favored clubby restaurants that required ties and who was noted for handing out prepared press releases to inquiring interviewers.
Higgins’ first novel was repeatedly rejected by agents and publishers who often cited its unsympathetic characters.
Stella’s books are praised for their convincing depiction of low-level operators and for their dead-on dialogue. He also creates some of the most sympathetic and disarmingly charming lowlifes and thugs this side of James Ellroy — a tricky feat that Stella’s hero, Higgins, never quite pulled off.
Stella is also that rarity among the crime fiction fraternity — a big Italian guy who actually talks and looks like the books he writes. (He cops to his efforts at book-signings to "avoid direct eye contact since my first face-to-face radio interviewer said ‘You look just like a friggin’ hit man.’")
Charlie, born "Carmello" Stella in 1956, readily admits to a past as a borderline "knockaround" guy and could fill a resume with day and graveyard shift jobs — myriad positions that subsidized his still young career as a professional novelist.
Stella’s first novel garnered some pretty stunning reviews from all the heavy-hitters; its follow-up, likewise.
He awaits the paperback deal that will bring him wider distribution and a bigger audience.
Jump aboard his bandwagon now, and you’ll reap the smug factor of saying you read him "back then" when he eventually garners the wider readership he richly deserves.
Jump aboard now, and you can enjoy some direct interaction: Stella has one of the more generous web sites offered among current crime writers, with samples of several of his published and unpublished novels and plays available for free downloading.
He also offers an ongoing blog of his day-to-day activities that he has dubbed, "the Knucksline." Check it out or subscribe, and you’re likely to find accounts of dinners and drinking sessions with the Principessa & Company:
"And so begins another meter of reduction;
Herds of cattle are spared certain destruction.
Knucks on a diet, it’s always a bit risky.
Once my eyes see my toes (without mirrors) I get frisky."
Stella's retort: "Nothing, Janey baby ... it was exercised by that same 'bunch of stupid people' when they burned those CD’s .... "
Charlie Stella spoke from his New Jersey home with interviewer C.M. McDonald on Saturday morning, April 26, 2003, a couple of hours before setting off for a reading/signing at the Staten Island Barnes & Noble, where the author predicted the "Principessa" would be "poking" at him "to make direct eye contact, to sit up straight, and to get rid of my gum." He was looking forward to ending his day at The Palm Too, where he intended to "make up for five days dieting."
By C.M. McDonald
"She said, ‘I've never seen anyone eat as fast as you’ ... (I told her it was my inherent fear of terrorist retribution)."
His epic (poetic) struggles with dieting:"...according to Janeane Garofalo (on Bill Maher’s REAL TIME HBO show), all that Dixie Chicks bashing was nothing more than ‘an opportunity for a bunch of stupid people to get together and break things’ ... when asked why the Dixie Chick who blasted her president in London hadn’t done so while performing in Texas, Garofalo quickly chimed, ‘Oh, what’s the big deal? Whatever happened to freedom of speech?’"
