CHARLIE STELLA'S WORLD — AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW McDonald: I read that you read George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle in a class and that’s what got you interested in crime writing. How long after that before you actually tried to write your own first crime novel?
Stella: Immediately after that, I left North Dakota and went to another university for one semester and I won a short story contest there and then I went into window cleaning and got married — the whole bit. I was window cleaning about a year-and-a-half and I tried to write a few novels.
McDonald: You’ve got no fear of heights, I take it.
Stella: Probably now I do; back then I didn’t. I was probably a 100 pounds less, then. Dave Gresham was my teacher out in North Dakota who I absolutely adore, because the guy was everything to me and he still is to this day. He got me started on this stuff a long time ago and he’s been there all along. And his son, Ross, is teaching at the Air Force Academy and actually reads a lot of my stuff now. He had suggested going through Scott Meredith. At the time — I think they still do it — they’d charge a fee to read. I was a hustler and I was making a lot of money and he said, ‘Look, take the shot, see what they say.’ So I did that. They sent back a standard,
‘Don’t quit your day job’ rejection letter. But it was a bunch of vignettes that didn’t really connect. Over the years, I would just keep hacking away and was eventually able to put something together. I’ve got a really great, solid corps of people who I send all my stuff to. I bombard them with two or three books a year. They all get back to me and let me know what they like, don’t like, and I depend on them now.
McDonald: You’re cool taking really honest appraisals of your writing?
Stella: Oh, absolutely. I’m an arrogant s.o.b. in a lot of aspects of life, but not in writing. When it comes to writing, I listen first, and I understand where people are coming from as far as their likes and dislikes. Certain people are never going to like what I write, that’s fine.
McDonald: How’d you get into playwriting?
Stella: That was literally from the Higgins thing. Understand, I came from a background where I wasn’t a reader. So, when Dave read from The Friends of Eddie Coyle, that opening chapter, it really set me off, and then I became an avid reader. So, when I saw that people wrote books and there was dialogue in the world beyond what I heard in the streets, it was enticing for me. I just started going to plays and reading plays and just became a voracious reader. I’m a wannabe playwright. I’m a wannabe playwright more than I am a novelist.
McDonald: Really?
Stella: Yeah, absolutely. There’s no money. Not that I’m makin’ much, but there’s no money in the theatre right now. Not for a new guy.
McDonald: Your dialogue, whether it be in the plays or in the books, is great. You definitely have that ear for vernacular, cadence…the way people speak. Was that something inherent? What’s your trick? There are certain crime writers who are known for their dialogue — Leonard and some others. You read some crime writers, and you can’t tell one character from another….
Stella: Well, that’s often a criticism of my new stuff, by the way. Not the stuff that’s been published, but stuff I have to go back and edit over to kind of distinguish the characters. I don’t know where it comes from. I honestly don’t. I guess I just picked it up. I was a very dreamy kid. I used to daydream and just sit there and always plot-out movies and novels in my head, whatever I was doing. I’d play Stratomatic Baseball and do the broadcast like I guess Reagan did. That always fascinated me — the way people spoke. I don’t know if it was inherent… I don’t know if I just got lucky with it, but it’s something that I love.
McDonald: Your web site offers excerpts from seven different works of fiction. Are these all books that are written?
Stella: I’m up to like, twelve.
McDonald: Really?
Stella: Yeah, I really am. It’s a source of frustration for me right now. I just finished a couple more, actually. I love writing and I write very very quickly, then go back and play with them. Some of them turn out like garbage. I’ll hit something three times in one year. I generally write three books a year and one or two of them are good. The other one, I’ll go back and try it again the next year and, eventually, give up on one or two of them.
McDonald: In Eddie’s World, you mention Jimmy (Mangino), who is the guy in the second book, and I’ve noticed in some of the excerpts on your web site, you’ve got excerpts such as Greene-Belziner, who are characters in Eddie’s World and ’Bench-Press. George P. Pelecanos and some other guys tend to have a lot of characters overlap and tend to view their novels as parts of one big book. Is that what you’re out to do?
Stella: I hope to. Elmore Leonard impressed me to no end when I was a kid, I mean, literally, when I first started reading crime fiction. I loved the fact that some of his characters are just so wonderful and I can’t put it down, and Raylan (Givens) the federal marshal, he did a book of short stories last year and there he is again. I love that character. I always thought it was so clever to have these guys go back and forth — like the Crowes, the bad guys in some of his books. I did that very intentionally — to overlap characters…characters I like and characters I found interesting. In fact, the book I just started is a spin-off on a book that I just I finished, because I liked one of the characters so much.
McDonald: I interviewed Dennis Lehane recently, and he was talking about how he was poor enough in the beginning that he could resist being published in paperback because he viewed that as something else he’d have to transcend later in a career. How’d you go straight into hardcovers?
Stella: This was like, the weirdest thing in the world. Every once in a while, I would stop dead whatever I was doing — I was kind of a knockaround guy, a street guy — and I’d start writing. I knocked off a couple of books, sent them to Scott Meredith, paid the $500 or whatever it was, and they represented me. They sent me back one of those 1 in 10,000 or whatever it was letters. They said, "We’ll give you a shot." They had sent out my manuscripts to a bunch of publishers. A few of them rejected them with a caveat — like, "We’d like to see more of his stuff…we don’t want this one, but let’s see more stuff in the future." Well, I got like, instantly depressed and just went back into my old life and stayed there for seven years. Then I wrote Charlie Opera. What eventually happened, was one of those editors was Kent Carroll, and I wrote Eddie’s World after Charlie Opera, and they took it. What happened with Charlie Opera was, people didn’t like it — they absolutely hated it — and I got a nasty rejection. I said, "Would you take a read of another one?" And they said, "Not without a fee." One of the lines in the rejection letter was, "You don’t spell so good, either." My attitude was, "Well, can you spell 'blow-me?'" and I came back and wrote Eddie’s World and I just got very lucky, because Kent Carroll bought it. I didn’t know anything about the business at all — it went to hardcover and I didn’t even understand what that meant. I was just the happiest guy in the world that it got published. I don’t know the difference…I still don’t. I’d love to be in paperback…I guess I’m on the other end of the spectrum.
McDonald: Eventually you get down to that paperback level from the other side, and then your books start hitting the supermarkets….
Stella: Yeah, I’ll be very grateful for distribution — that’s what I want.
McDonald: You don’t have a paperback deal yet?
Stella: No, no.
McDonald: You said you’ve got 12 books written, and, if you’re writing three a year, pretty much, in four years you’ve written 12 books?
Stella: Naw, I mean, some of those things are old. Those were written after Charlie Opera. Charlie Opera was the first book I wrote where I stopped doing what I was doing for six months and just wrote that book.
McDonald: That’s the one that’s coming out in December (2003)?
Stella: That’s the next one, exactly. It’s been rewritten, dramatically, in the last two months — the backend of it. Then I wrote Eddie’s World. Jimmy Bench-Press took me three months. I knew when I wrote the character in Eddie’s World — referenced Jimmy Mangino — I knew that had to be the title of the book and just went with it.
McDonald: So the books are being published outside of writing sequence?
Stella: Yeah. It’s weird. They also made an offer on my fourth book which is an Eddie’s World sequel, Rough Riders. I went to school in North Dakota so I wrote this book in which (James) Singleton is relocated to North Dakota — he survives that thing in Eddie’s World — and he is supposed to do some heroin sting for the government. I wrote this thing very quickly — probably another three or four month project. They made an offer on it, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m still kind of biding my time, here.
McDonald: One of the things that’s kind of unusual about your books: In the two that have been published, you have these kind of short essays, or rants.
Stella: (Chuckling) Right. My pontifications, there.
McDonald: Right, you’ve got one on the Federal Witness Protection Program that you take a swing at in the first book, and in the most recent one, you’ve got Enron and corporate crooks. Did you have to fight to get those into the books?
Stella: No, it was amazing. I honestly thought I would get some resistance. Even thought I would get some resistance about my web page, but I haven’t.
McDonald: I was going to ask you about that — if, particularly with some of the political stuff, if you get negative feedback.
Stella: It’s weird. I think some of my friends — I used to be the, you know, poster child for liberal politics.
McDonald: Did you?
Stella: Yeah, until about four or five years ago. I guess that some of my old friends look at me cross-eyed now, my old friends, from that world, from my legitimate world. They kind of look at me like, "What the hell happened to you?" That kind of stuff. I don’t really get feedback regarding politics, and the other side of the coin — I enjoy it.
McDonald: You said it changed for you about four years ago. What was the sea change? What triggered that?
Stella: Well, I guess it was really three years ago. Mostly it was getting published and meeting Annie. I think the seed started four years ago. When I went back, fulltime legitimate, where all I did was work in the legitimate world, I was so turned off by what I saw around me. I saw the standards had been lowered so dramatically. It’s also that Churchill thing: You have to have a heart to be liberal until you’re 30, and then you have no brains if you’re not conservative after. It was a combination of all that stuff. My kids had all reached the college age. I just turned around and looked at what I was involved in in the legitimate world and just said, "You know, I’d fire half these people." Not as a cruel person, but just you know, "What’s going on here?" From that, it just kind of sunk into the rest of my life. Everything around — I just saw hardworking people get the shaft. Too much garbage going on and no accountability. That’s the reason I love Bush, even though we probably don’t agree on most social issues. The reality is that I just love that the guy’s got a pair.
McDonald: You live in Jersey now, but you’re right across from New York.
Stella: I used to live in Little Italy.
McDonald: You went through September 11, 2001….Does that color your reactions to Pres. Bush?
Stella: Oh my God. Me and Annie were living together at the time, and I was coming home from work and she had just got there, when it happened. I was working midnights and she was working days. I’m tellin’ you — that was horrible. I insist they should show that (the planes striking the towers) more often just to remind people.
McDonald: I’ve never quite understood the embargo on the footage.
Stella: It does piss me off they won’t show that more.
McDonald: Out of the gates as a writer, you got great reviews.
Stella: Luck.
McDonald: Luck? Naw. What was your reaction to that? Because you had the Washington Post, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus and on and on. They all gave you really great reviews for a first novel.
Stella: The funny thing is — this is how naïve I am — I get this e-mail from Carroll & Graf after the starred review from Kirkus for Eddie’s World: "Congratulations, you got a starred review." I don’t know who the fuck Kirkus is. I mean, I don’t. At that point in my life, this was all so foreign to me. I was just the happiest guy in the world that I finally got a book. So I sent it to my agent and I said, "I’m assuming this is good." He writes back, "This is fucking fantastic." Immediately after that, they had all three of my first books in their office already — they had Jimmy Bench-Press and Charlie Opera already. I sat down with Herman Graf, and he says, "Are you working on anything else?" I said, "You’ve got two of my next books already — one of them is kind of a sequel to Eddie’s World." Then I immediately had a two-book deal. So, I jumped and I was very happy about it. I do consider it a lot of luck, though.
McDonald: Do you take the negative reviews to heart?
Stella: I didn’t even know what a review was until Kirkus. Then Publisher’s Weekly came out and kind of slammed it. I was like, "Oh no, the guy didn’t get it," kind of making excuses for it. By the time Jimmy Bench-Press came out, I was a nervous wreck for reviews.
Publisher’s Weekly wasn’t so crazy about Eddie’s World, though. They came around for Jimmy Bench-Press. All the reviews were saying, "It’s good, but be careful if you’re squeamish…." I said, "You know, this is as subjective as was the submission process." One person would say the plot was engrossing, but the dialogue was flat. Another person would say, "The dialogue was engrossing, but the plot wasn’t there." It’s all subjective and it probably really doesn’t mean anything, but I’m too new an author to ignore it totally. I won’t write for reviewers. I’m not going to cut back my language or violence. People tend to qualify a little bit because it’s graphic and my language is a little over the top, sometimes, I guess.
McDonald: It’s nothing that isn’t matched in other crime novelists’ works….
Stella: I know some people are going to be offended by some of that stuff, but that’s life. That’s that world. I lived that world. That’s the way they talk.
McDonald: You’ve mentioned a couple of times since we started talking "legitimate" and "illegitimate" worlds….
Stella: Yeah. For lack of a better term, I was a knockaround guy. Basically, I was around gambling.
McDonald: Okay. I was going to ask you to define "knockaround."
Stella: You know, street finance, all that kind of crap. I was no big-shot — I was a peanut. I wasn’t over-involved. Let’s put it that way. I was always a wannabe writer more than anything else, but I had my little brief period in life where I was a wannabe gangster, I guess. But it never, I think, came to fruition, because it wasn’t for me in the end. You know, it just wasn’t for me. This is the thing — writing — I’ve craved for my whole life. I’m the luckiest guy in the world. The happiest guy in the world.
McDonald: You kind of describe your dad the same way.
Stella: My father was a knockaround guy. Yeah, he was a really knockaround guy. He was also the hardest-working guy I know. We had a very strained relationship, but a lot of my competitive nature came from my old man.
McDonald: Did he get to see you published?
Stella: That’s the one heartbreak of my life. My father died a few years ago at the point where — my father was a real pragmatic person — so he would look at me and roll his eyes when I told him I wanted to be a writer. When I came close that first time with Scott Meredith and they gave me the two-book contract and represented me, he was actually excited. But when the books were rejected, I think he kind of said, "Well, calm yourself down." When I went back to school at night — I was working as a window cleaner, a word processor and a football coach and I went back to college. And my father just thought, "What are you doing in college?" He had that attitude. But he also gave me my competitive nature. I like winning. I don’t like losing. Can’t pick a Super Bowl for my life, but I like winning.
McDonald: Tell me a little about growing up in New York.
Stella: It was great. Life was simple. I talk to Annie all the time about it — how kids today are so cheated in my opinion because of all the technology. It was great. I used to play with my cousin. There was a kid named Joey Gaetani — that’s where I got the name Gaetani from in Eddie’s World. Him and my cousin Louie are very successful in stocks from what I understand — haven’t seen ’em in 20 years — we used to play Wiffle Ball and Stratomatic Baseball and little league. I grew up in Canarsie of Goodfellas-fame — the Bamboo Lounge there, that’s two blocks from my house. It was great, it was sports, just hangin’ out.
McDonald: Ever hear from anyone you grew up with about your books?
Stella: Once in a while. My first little engagement with writing was at a Catholic school I went to in Canarsie where we had a contest, an essay on religion, or something. I wrote an essay and I was one of three finalists. I wound up one of the finalists and everybody said, "He didn’t write that." I think most people today who meet up with me after 20 or 30 years just say, "I can’t believe this. I would have never thought you were a writer." A couple of people thought I was in jail because they hadn’t heard from me. Literally. It’s kind of shocking to them that I’m doing this stuff now.
McDonald: What about some of your not-so-legitimate acquaintances? Ever hear from them about the books?
Stella: It’s funny. I really did step out of the world. I have a couple of dear friends who do their own things and are great guys. Have respect for them to no end, and I mean that, not to cover my own ass, but because they’re some of the hardest-working people I know. Some of the hardest-working people I know were in that world. The bottom-line is that some of them are real happy for me, some of them I’m sure are a little nervous, but I don’t write anything about them. All my stuff is pretty autobiographical and fictionalized. I did live that Eddie’s World story a little bit.
McDonald: That was my next question. Eddie Senta supplements his income as a word processor, which is something you’ve done. What kind of stuff were you processing?
Stella: Marketing research. I worked for Paine Webber for many years, for five years. I was a supervisor of the graveyard shift at Paine Webber. I was a manager of a place. I was a director of communications, if you can believe this — it’s actually hilarious to me. Most of these jobs I don’t last at, because at some point, somebody says the wrong things and I just don’t handle that kind of stuff well. And at law firms — that’s where I met Annie, at a law firm. Actually that was right across from the World Trade Center, One Liberty Plaza — that’s where we worked, but not during 9-11.
McDonald: You’re a pretty quick typist, I take it?
Stella: Yeah! It’s weird.
McDonald: How many words a minute?
Stella: I get up to 90. I fly sometimes.
McDonald: You need to, if you’re writing three books a year.
Stella: What’s so funny is I’d sit there at night and write these things. That’s how I met my co-screenwriter Jaxon Ronin — "J.R." is his nickname. We met at Cleary. I watched this guy: I was in the middle of writing Eddie’s World, and half of my motive for writing that was to impress Ann Marie.
McDonald: You’re in heady company there — that’s why Fitzgerald wrote his first novel.
Stella: For Zelda?
McDonald: For Zelda.
Stella: That’s great.
McDonald: ’Course it didn’t work out well in the end.
Stella: Listen, I’m the luckiest guy in the world (with Ann); it’s incredible. But, I’d watch this guy and I got lazy halfway through Eddie’s World and I started playing solitaire and I got this horrible carpal tunnel from it. I’d see this guy sitting there, writing this screenplay and he’s really talented. We got together. We just finished writing a screenplay for Jimmy Bench-Press.
McDonald: Are those screenplays stuff you’re doing on spec, or do you have options on the books?
Stella: I am totally winging everything in my life. The reviewers have been very kind and I’ve gotten really good things going on as far as fan mail, but I’m still kind of smalltime. I’m still a small leaguer.
McDonald: You’re not supporting yourself strictly on the novels yet?
Stella: I’m kind of running out of cash on that end. I’ve actually gone back to freelance word processing to supplement it. We’re also considering a move across the country to stretch it. Unless something great happens this summer which I’m hoping for.
McDonald: You’re a New York guy. Where would you go?
Stella: Oh, I can live anywhere. I can write anywhere. I intend to come back to New York someday. I’d like to live on the water, but as far as that goes, I can live anywhere. I almost moved to North Dakota a few years ago just to stretch.
McDonald: You’ve got some computer skills. Do you do a lot with your own web site?
Stella: Oh no, I’m a hack. I’m good at what I know. Teach me something and I learn it very quickly and I’m good at it, but I don’t know anything about computers. I can plug it in and that is about it. I’m useless as far as handiwork goes. Any kind of technology — I’m the last person to figure it out.
McDonald: I’ve told you that I’ve gotten addicted to the "Knucksline." But it’s a totally different voice from your novels. It’s hilarious. You mentioned that got started as a result of your word processing. How’d you get into this thing?
Stella: When I worked at Paine Webber many years ago, I started there and worked about three months, then had an altercation in a bar and broke my hand. I came in and somebody — the best word processor I ever knew — saw me and nicknamed me "Knucks." Ten years later, I’m working at this marketing research firm, and I decided to send out these company e-mails, and everyone knew me as "Knucks." Everybody got such a kick out of them, I started a little monthly bulletin called "Knucksline." It was just a lot of fun. It got a little out of hand — I got a little crazy with it. I kind of poked fun at the wrong people. I was warned about it, which is the worst thing you can do to me, because then I go and do it anyway. So I quit, but I would have been fired. I just decided, this is fun, I’m going to keep doing it.
But my life has changed dramatically in the last three or four years. I literally used to burn the candle at both ends. I never went to sleep. I did everything to an extreme — I still do a lot of things to an extreme — but I was never home. Now, I’m a hermit. All I do is walk, read, write and once a week we go out and go crazy, but it’s very different. The one thing that I’ve held onto because of this arrogance of having once been a half-assed athlete, is I continue to lift weights. And I do bench-press close to 400 pounds. (Chuckling) But, I also weigh almost 400 pounds, so it’s really not all that impressive.
McDonald: Do you do police ride-alongs? Have any police sources?
Stella: No, not at all. I don’t need to do research on the criminal end; as far as the police stuff, I actually ask questions once in a blue moon to some generic clubs and Internet chat rooms or whatever, and a good friend of mine wrote a book that was published last year, Bob Mladinich, wrote a book called From the Mouth of the Monster. He was a detective in New York and a really terrific writer. He did a book about Joel Rifkin, the New York serial killer. Bob is my "(Alex) Pavlick" to some degree — the guy I modeled Pavlick after, to some degree. He’s the guy I had in mind when I wrote that character. He was a boxer. Bob Mladinich was a professional fighter.
McDonald: Not so much a question as a compliment: Your ability to make unsavory characters sympathetic — more sympathetic than the cops chasing them — reminds me a lot of Ellroy.
Stella: Any comparison to Ellroy is a compliment. My second favorite book in the world is American Tabloid. I read him constantly. Reread him. It’s really funny — I don’t read all that many crime fiction writers. I have a handful that I reread constantly for an idea or a trick or something. I’ll go back and read a Higgins book.
McDonald: Higgins first book — the one that inspired you so much — was rejected several times, wasn’t it?
Stella: Isn’t that amazing? Right after I got published, Elmore Leonard wrote a forward to The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and that forward is worth a billion dollars to any guy who hasn’t gotten published yet. Let me tell you something — that is so on the money. I used to dream two things when I was a window cleaner — I used to clean Harper & Rows’ windows, and that was like, twice as enticing — I used to dream about getting published and getting Dave Gresham his due for giving me the support and helping along. And I always wanted to quote the first lines of The Friends of Eddie Coyle which Elmore Leonard does in that forward.
Anything new by Leonard or Ellroy I devour — that’s just the way it is. Ellroy is wonderful. He’s probably the most sophisticated guy out there. Tabloid — I think that should be taught in every friggin’ high school in the country. I love that little bit he does at the beginning: "Here’s to all the bad guys." I love that. Higgins is my Capo di tutti capi. Elmore Leonard is the underboss. Ellroy is the consigliere. I’m some associate wannabe, waiting to work my way up.
McDonald: Have you met many other crime writers?
Stella: I haven’t at all. I’m not good at the going out and doing things stuff. I’ve been to a few libraries recently and I tend to attract Islamic fundamentalists, the homeless and lunatics. I’m kind of steering away from it. Just doing the book store thing. Got to do one today. It’s flattering on one hand, but I’d rather stay home and write.
McDonald: You still keyed into gambling? I was going to ask for Derby tips.
Stella: Aww, I was the degenerate of all degenerates when it comes to craps tables. I had one in my bar — my second wife had built one for me in a bar — because I was a lunatic. I really did cure myself with my beloved New York State Buffalo Bills. When it became time for me to quit, instead of driving south to Atlantic City, I’d drive north to Buffalo Bill territory and watch the games. That really did start me quitting. Then I kind of got into it in my other world — taking the action, rather than making it. I don’t do that anymore. I really don’t bet anymore. Once in a while I go to a casino, but I’m very careful about it. It is what I write about. I will bet the Derby — three races I’ll bet. My daughter’s ex-boyfriend is an incredibly good writer. If you read the Knucksline, in the guest Knucks, he gave the Wood Memorial picks. Every year he picks the big races, so, if you want a good pick, follow this kid. Mark Perkins. He’s an incredible writer. He should be writing for the Racing Forms.
McDonald: You’re really into opera, I’ve read.
Stella: I took my daughter and two sons to "Growing Up With Opera Singers" — you know, the divorced parent doing the right thing. And I got hooked. I said, "Jesus Christ, I remember this thing from Bugs Bunny!" It was the Barber of Seville, know what I mean? I became so hooked. Everything I do is totally, obsessively compulsive. It’s all over the top. I love it. I love it.
McDonald: What’s it with you and the Bichon-Friese? I keep trying to reconcile you and that dog in my mind.
Stella: Aww, I love that dog. My third wife had picked out a dog one time, and I bought it for her and we named it "Gilda." She could pick the dog; I had to pick the name Gilda from Rigoletto. We split up and me and Annie got together, and I bought "Rigoletto" about a year-and-a-half ago. I named him "Rigoletto." Her dog, but I’m like the Alpha male. The dog got attached to me. The only thing in this world that Annie is jealous of is my relationship with Rigoletto. I don’t get it, but that dog just like adores me. I love that dog.
— © C.M. McDonald, April 26, 2003
By C.M. McDonald
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