The Author Speaks: Garrett Cook

Garrett Cook is a great writer, a talent that's going places.  I typically write an article here prior to the interview posted.  This week, though, Garrett's been all over the place.  If I were to place anymore on here, I'd just be indulging in my bromantic lust for the man.  That's not entirely a bad thing.

What's not been said, I'll say briefly, and then plunge into the interview.  If you're questioning the talent level, just stop it.  How's this for accolades: Garrett Cook, Winner of the First Ultimate Bizarro Showdown; Garrett Cook: Wonderland Award Nominee 2010.  Yeah, I'm envious too.

But that's where this bromance is at.  Y'see, I want to hate Garrett Cook.  Any person selling copies, juggling multiple publishing houses, and winning awards has got to be an ass, right?  Well, Garrett is a great many things, but an ass he is not.  In fact, like everybody we've interviewed, he's a hell of a nice guy.  (The Authors Speak has a policy of not interviewing or offering publiciy to asses)

Eric Mays: Garrett, thanks for answering a few questions. Seems you’re in high demand these days. Weren’t you one minute celebrating Dahmer’s birthday, then promoting “Kangaroo Jack”, and then launching DollarBinMassacre! Phew! How do you fit it all in?


Garrett Cook: Well, Eric. If I may call you, Eric, I am currently unemployed, which is the ultimate free time acquisition system. You’d think in this current economy, this would provide one of the many Phd students without work a chance to cure cancer in his basement lab, but I guess those guys don’t think like I do. I figure if the locals won’t pay me for my time, I’ve gotta find a way for people elsewhere to do so and just generally occupy my time with awesome things. Like darkly satirical birthday parties for serial killers or making fun of fellow Bizarro author Jordan Krall for his appreciation of Halloween 3. I’ve began to feel, however, like I’ve been halfassing it a bit. So, I’m devoting this Summer to really bringing it on. I am not limited by time, only energy and ambition, so hopefully, I can use that to my and everyone’s advantage.

EM: So, I’ll come back to Murderland and the previous books, but first I’d like to discuss Jimmy Plush. I’ve had the privilege of reading a Jimmy Plush story and am anxiously awaiting the release of the book. When will it hit?

GC: NINJA SMOKE BOMB!
*cough cough*
I guess you’re supposed to run away after you throw one of those. Jimmy Plush experienced some delays. It got longer, some scenes were hard to choreograph and I had to make sure I was pulling the best possible mythos out of my ass. I believe I have that mythos. I would like to assure all my fans that Eraserhead editor Jeff Burk is working on moving this book into its final stages. Thanks to all who’ve waited, I hope you’ve enjoyed your free stuff. There will be more and better where that came from.

(Jimmy Plush will be released in 2010 through Eraserhead Press)

EM: Why a teddy bear detective? Are you a teddy bear?

GC: Plush was born one day when I was sitting at the Borders in Naperville, Illinois, where by the way you can buy both Murderland books. And I saw this kid there and he was dragging along a Paddington Bear, which got me to thinking about Jodie Sweetin’s bear on Full House and how that bear should have been solving mysteries because he was dressed for it. Then I got to thinking how weird it was that I would make such a leap of logic, that to be a detective you just have to be dressed as a detective. So, I sat and philosophized about mysteries and body image and…yes, in some ways, I am a teddy bear. I am an overweight person, I am a vulnerable person, I am a loving person and the sort of person you might not take seriously based upon their image. Jimmy Plush kind of comes out of that. I am a teddy bear and I am a detective. And so are many people.

EM: You know, teddy bears are so underrated. Did you ever read the book “Pookie”? It was a fabulous read about a teddy bear who gets caught up in everything from a terrorist plot to a teddy bear procreation lab. Fascinating stuff. What’s your favorite teddy bear book?

GC: I actually did not know that teddy bear fiction was a genre. I have read none of it, to be honest, not since being a kid and reading about Paddington and Corduroy.

EM: Have you thought of recording “Jimmy Plush” onto cassette and plugging that into an old Teddy Ruxpin doll? That would rock!

GC: I would sort of like that, but hearing my voice coming out of a Teddy Ruxpin would be pretty damn scary, so I’d have to wait until my girlfriend’s up so I wouldn’t be alone in a room experiencing this freakyass occurrence.

EM: Okay, now jumping forward, or rather backward…you put out “Murderland” in 2008, yeah? On the surface it seems like a plot that we’ve heard before, but then you go deeper and you see you’ve added the Lovecraftian Dark Ones into the mix, and really taken the gonzo quotient up to eleven. Seems serial killers are already celebrities, in a way. Why are we so fascinated with them?

GC: I’d just like to clarify regarding “put out” Murderland. I am not the publisher of the Murderland series, that is Jeremy Needle of ENE, to whom I am very grateful. I think we’re fascinated by serial killers because the extremes of our bad behavior are innately fascinating. We watch young Hollywood sexually humiliate themselves because we would never do that. We like sex, we want more of it and yet, we don’t go that far. Why don’t we go that far? What kind of person goes that far? When we find out, we can’t look away from it. We all feel anger, estrangement, obsession, and to varying extents perversion, and yet we don’t take them to extremes. And when somebody else does, some of us fear them and some of us lionize them, depending on how we feel about these feelings and whether they should have limitations. It comes down to somebody doing something so scary, you couldn’t imagine doing it. You’ve gotta watch that.

EM: Now did I read your blog correctly? Someone was pirating Murderland h1-h8? Doesn’t that kind of rock? I mean, you’re worthy enough to be plundered, right?

GC: Upon further inspection, that someone turned out to be me. Thank you to all who downloaded the book. If you’d like to review it or buy the sequel, that would be great.

EM: Murderland was followed by “Archelon Ranch”. I think of Archelon Ranch as the bizarre Seinfeld, in that it was (when I read it, and that was only once) about nothing and everything at once. Oy vey! A cyberpunk novel that had dinosaurs and some of the craziest stuff I’d seen. How do you summarize that while querying publishers? It’s not the easiest to summarize.

GC: I took the time to examine the paper trail regarding the genesis of that book and the answer to your question is an interesting one. I met Legumeman publisher Matt Revert through Myspace of all places. He read a story of mine, liked it and asked if I had any work they could use. He meant short fiction, but I don’t write short fiction very often so I usually don’t have any lying around. I asked him if he would like a novella. He said that they published novellas. I said that I had a novella. During the course of this conversation, I avoided summing up Archelon Ranch like the plague. This, I feel was a smart move but one I later had problems with while writing the back cover, which might as well say “Archelon Ranch is a book I guess”. Matt and Rob from Legumeman read the book without seeing even the vaguest of plot summaries. They’re very cool and flexible for that and not gullible because I am really clever and it is not fair to judge those that I outwit. If your buddy gets in a barfight with Mike Tyson and loses, you don’t laugh at him, you just understand that you too would have had your face rearranged because Mike Tyson is strong. Buy Archelon Ranch. I feel that whatever the hell it is, it’s my best book and I’ve been some getting some very good reviews.

EM: Now, in the mix of all the projects you have going on, your girlfriend Leza and author Jordan Krall, have launched DollarBinMassacre. How did that come about, first off, and why do these obscure cult movies need a voice?

GC: I wish I could say it was something beyond a random impulse I had, I really do. But most things I do are based upon my random impulses. I trust my intuition, perhaps to a fault. I had been watching Mill Creek and dollar bin stuff with Leza for ages, I knew Jordan had done the same, I knew Jordan and I were similar but not too similar to be dull in our tastes, and I knew that I wanted to get Leza involved in a project. So, I combined these things and we’ve been shaping it into what it is ever since. Dollarbin Massacre will be returning from its hiatus very soon. Very soon indeed. Cult movies need a voice for the reason any repressed minority needs a voice and that’s because classification is one of the worst impulses of the human mind. Our tendency to classify causes war, genocide and persecution for people and works of art alike. So, to show people that obscure cult movies are not just one thing is important because it also shows people obscure cult novels are not just one thing and hopefully will make at least a couple minds a little more flexible.

EM: How did you convince author Kevin Shamel to come to the defense of “Battlefield Earth”?

GC: I wish there was a cool story behind that one too. But, there isn’t. I asked Kevin Shamel if there was a movie everyone hated that he liked. He said “Battlefield Earth”, I said “knock yourself out, man”. And it occurred.

(Archelon Ranch is now available for the low price of $8.95 at Amazon.com)

EM: In the mix of everything else, you started the “Plush List”. What is that, and can people still get on it? I heard that’s the way people found out about the Viking Cowboy.

GC: A little while into the Plush process, I knew that this book could take a month and a half to put out or could take ten months. So, I decided to make sure that those who I sold preorders to were given something special. I gave them free PDFs of my work and a free serial starring the original evil Jimmy Plush and then started on Halberds Johannsen, who has been on hiatus because my creative energies have been so scattered. Halberds will be back soon, possibly in a cooler format. People can still get on the list and will get the chapters of the serials the other Plushlist people have gotten. It’s ten dollars, and you get the book shipped to your house when it comes out. No frills but some fun along the way and a savings off the cover price because the book turned out to be a longer than anticipated and shall thus be more expensive. Go to http://jimmyplush.blogspot.com/ to find out more about Plush and the preorder contest.

EM: Speaking of that, why the hell a Viking Cowboy?

GC: Because it was the silliest repository of pulp manliness I could think of. If a guy is a Viking and a cowboy, that guy’s got some sand.

EM: You were the first Ultimate Bizarro Showdown winner, right? That sets the bar pretty high-up. Any plans to reclaim that crown at this year’s BizarroCon? 

GC: Yes, but they’re secret plans. They involve not improvising completely and avoiding the subject of North Dakota. Also, like last year’s winner I might marry and publish some of the judges. But with such a good looking AND talented panel of judges, I’ll have a hard time deciding which to do which with.

EM: So what’s next, Garrett?

GC: Jimmy Plush, a book from Legumeman Books called Cart Fop, Fart Cop, and a bunch of things get queried when I polish them off in July. But, my hope is you will see bigger, better, weirder and more frequent everything out of me.

Thanks, Garrett!  Garrett really is a wonderful writer and a great human being - two things that seem to be fading from this mortal plain.

Next week on the Authors Speak, we spotlight a literary gonzo beer (Hunter S. Thompson endorsed), we'll sit down with the author of one of my favorite books - The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell and discuss her upcoming book on Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday (western fans rejoice...it's really good), and I'll review Kelley Armstrong's newest book, which is upcoming in August.

Further down the road: Women of Paranormal Fiction Week, Masters of Horror Week, and a touching interview with Matt Ruff, author of such classics as "Fool on the Hill" and "Bad Monkeys".