Duane Swierczynski

Duane Swierczynski writes:

I must have started at least a dozen novels -- some reaching the 100-page mark, others three paragraphs -- before I completed my first, Secret Dead Men. Call it an early case of attention deficit disorder. Invariably, at a certain point, I got bored, and moved on.

Then, in summer 1998, I told myself: Enough is enough, you pantywaist. You want to write a novel? Sit down and write one. So I gave myself a rule: 1,000 words a day or else. Good, bad, ugly… whatever. Just open up the Microsoft Word document and start writing. Don’t stop until you’ve added at least 1,000 words.

By August 1998, the first draft of Secret Dead Men was complete. Which confirms my favorite definition of writing, courtesy Joe Lansdale:

Writing = Ass + Chair

Months later, I found an agent (David Hale Smith), then took his notes and revised Secret Dead Men during summer 1999, David sent it out to five publishers in March 2000. All of them passed. Well, there was one near hit—a junior editor at Pocket Books liked it, but her bosses didn’t. Too many genres, they said. Was it a mystery? Sci-fi? Horror? Black comedy? (Beat the hell out of me, too.) Utterly demoralized, I let it languish on my hard drive.

Exactly four years later, in March 2004, Al Guthrie was foolish enough to mention he’d become the acquisitions editor at PointBlank Press. I sent him Secret Dead Men on a lark, thinking it’d give him a laugh, but not much else. In April, Al shocked me by accepting it.

That same month, I finished my second novel, The Wheelman (I’d taken time off to write six nonfiction books). The revision was done by July, and it sold to St. Martin’s in late August. A land-speed record. So this year, I’m enjoying the weird sensation of seeing two novels published that were written six years apart.

I hope to Christ the second one shows some growth.

Duane Swierczynski is the editor of the Philadelphia City Paper. His first novel, Secret Dead Mine, recently received a rave review in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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