Hello dear readers,
I’ve been making an effort to become a part of the #writersoftwitter community and have since encountered quite a few compelling books and authors–including the mysterious pulp writer Wolff McNamara.
Wolff’s office sits on an undisclosed street in an undisclosed town on the Colorado Front Range. It’s here, that he decided to sit down to do an interview with yours truly (via email, of course).
Trista: Thank so much for joining me on this blog interview! I truly appreciate your time. Let’s get started. How many books have you written? Want to tell us a little about them?
Wolff: As myself, so far, only the two Adventures of Hideous Lee books. But I’ve also written under a couple pen names. Under one pen name, I wrote a sci-fi webcomic that ran for five years. Under another, I published a rather pretentious novel and a beer review blog that ran for maybe three years. Something like that. I do still get the occasional box of free beer from some loyal readers of the blog though, so I guess I can’t complain.
Trista: How long does it take you to write a book?
Wolff: About six months from actual start to finish for a novella. That’s a rough outline, a first, second, and third draft. And a proofread of course. Sometimes it takes me a bit to get rolling though. So overall it can take me a year.
Trista: What is your work schedule like when you’re writing?
Wolff: Three to five nights a week, a couple few hours a night. I do a lot of first drafting in the morning before sunup. But when it’s time to really work, cutting and polishing and all that, it’s pretty much always at night. Sleep deprivation is wonderful to trigger creativity. Gets those synapses firing on overdrive.
Trista: Did you self-publish or go the traditional publishing route, and why?
Wolff: Self-published. I like to be able to write when I feel like it and at whatever pace I want to. I’m not trying to have a career here—not that I would necessarily turn down that opportunity were it to arise—but my main goal is to have fun writing and find an audience, however big or small, for my quirky little books.
Trista: Your protagonist, Hideous Lee, has a unique character name. Quite punny. What’s the story there?
Wolff: Well, there’s a couple parts to that. The first is how I came up with it, which was a happy accident. I sent a text to a friend telling him that something was hideously overrated and my phone autocorrected to hideous lee overrated. I thought: “Hideous Lee, what a great character name.” It took me a couple years of letting that gestate to figure out who Hideous Lee was.
Now, the second part is, what does the name mean? Well, that’s just it.
Nothing. It’s purely incidental. It’s just his name. That’s not to say I don’t
use it humorously (pun intended.) But always in a way that the reader
might not catch if he or she isn’t paying attention.
Trista: Do you develop your characters as you write, or do you already know them before you start?
Wolff: I have a pretty good idea of who my characters are before I start the first draft. But I leave them ample room to breathe. To surprise me and come to life organically.
Trista: Have you ever traveled to gather more research for your book?
Wolff: For Foul Play in Fairplay, I took a day trip to Fairplay, Colorado. It’s only a couple hours from me. I had been there before but wanted to get a feel for the town by walking around a bit. Even though the Fairplay in my book is fictionalized, I still wanted to have the real town in mind as I developed it.
Trista: What is the most trying part of your artistic process? The easiest?
Wolff: The first draft always feels like I’m trudging along. The real fun begins in the second draft. I love cutting words and sentences and even paragraphs. Hell, I’ll remove entire scenes. If it doesn’t move the story along, it goes. There are many dead darlings on my cutting room floor. My final draft is usually a good twenty to twenty-five percent shorter than the first draft. But to me, if I’m cutting, I’m improving. Getting rid of all the parts that detract from the story. You know, the whole Elmore Leonard thing: get rid of the parts readers might skip. And dictionary words too. When I find a word in my first draft that might cause an average reader to pull out a dictionary, that word goes. But that’s all fun to me. So, the easy part is rewriting.
Trista: Which elements of writing are the most important to you?
Wolff: The storytelling. I try to describe people, places, and things in one sentence with only a detail or two. Sometimes I need more, but I try to spread it out and keep it as lean as possible. If done right, the reader gets what you mean, fills in the rest, and gets on with the story. I like to use the example of a dive bar to illustrate this. We’ve all been in one. Show me the old jukebox, the pool table, and a couple scruffy fellas sipping gin, I’ll get the gist and you can get back to keeping me interested in the story.
Another thing is concise dialogue with no exposition. I try not to lead the reader. Show and never tell. Maybe I drop that ball sometimes. But I don’t know. I think you’d be hard pressed to find exposition in one of my stories. And for the record, some readers like that sort of thing and wouldn’t like my books. So, I’m not saying my way is the only way. Just the way I prefer it.
Trista: Are there any hidden secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
Wolff: Oh yes. I’ve hidden easter eggs throughout both Hideous Lee books and they will be in the next one too. They are related to the story only in the most esoteric way. So far, I don’t think anyone has found any of them. But I’ll tell you this, once you figure out the theme to the easter eggs in each book, they will all jump out at you.
Trista: Any hints as to your current WIP?
Wolff: I have three projects going right now. The next Hideous Lee book, of course. And a couple standalone short stories—a dystopian and a classic sci-fi—although one of those is pushing novelette length. My current plan is to release short stories between each Hideous Lee book and compile them when I have enough for a collection.
Trista: Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Wolff: Just that I appreciate you taking the time to show interest in my writing. It was fun sitting down to answer these questions. I could’ve done this all day. Cheers!
Well, friends, that wraps up our interview. I hope y’all have enjoyed it. Let us know in the comments!
It’s no secret that I love author interviews. It’s my goal to lift up and encourage fellow writers and you can help me do that by liking, commenting, and sharing these interviews on social media. I’m not immensely tech-savvy (or social media-savvy for that matter) but I’m learning as I go.
You can check GoodReads for my review of The Adventures of Hideous Lee: The Art of Murder (click the link to order a copy!). I planned to read it in one sitting and I would’ve gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling kids. 😆 I wouldn’t trade them for anything, though! ❤️
I’m looking forward to reading the next adventure of Hideous Lee! You can find Wolff’s books on his Amazon author page. Don’t forget to follow him on Twitter (@wolffmcnamara) for updates!
Books by Trista 