Interviews
Interview by: Larry Stanley
www.penguincomics.net
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Lws: Hi Chris. Glad to have a chance to talk with you.

CAB: Thanks so much for reading PUZZLEMAN and being the very first to review it. Not to mention giving it such a stellar critque!

Lws: How was it to write Puzzleman? Was it clear to you from the start where you wanted to go with it?

CAB: PUZZLEMAN is certainly the most difficult, tedious, and endless project I've ever worked on. Many, many years in the making. It started out to be merely a 100-page novella, but once I started writing, it exploded into what became nearly a 1000 page manuscript. The historical section was also twice as long. Over the years of rewriting, I was able to better develop and tighten the story, eventually trimming those 1000 pages of madness down to what I hope is a solid, well focused 400 pages. The writing of this book definitely required a lot of nurturing and evolution over time. Also, one of my original concepts for PUZZLEMAN was to tell a story that started very small, with simply the dialogue of a couple faceless characters catalyzing the events to come, and then quickly expanding the story to include several more characters with different outlooks and pasts, and then to tie them all together in a tale that would grow to encompass mysteries, truths, and dangers that approached an almost universal scale. But at the same time I wanted all of that to be unfolding just below the surface of what all of us call everyday life. Kind of like a shark swimming with its fin just beneath the water. The surface appears normal and calm to our eyes, but just below, just out of sight, immense danger is lurking and could strike at any moment. I think most people don’t realize just how precarious their life, lifestyles, and world are. Of course September 11th certainly helped to wise up a lot of folks. At any rate, I’m so glad you took the time to read PUZZLEMAN and enjoyed it.

Lws: My pleasure. It is always a treat to read a really good Horror novel anymore. Tell our readers a little about your past, where are you from.

CAB: I was born in Oklahoma City then moved to Dallas, Texas, when I was 8; I lived there for the next 23 years until I moved to LA almost 9 years ago now. So, I guess now you can bash me for being unbearably incompetent with a Texas dialect, owing that I'm mostly Texan.

Lws: Speaking of °•dialect°¶, why did you go the route you did?

CAB: It was something I debated over even in the last rewriting. I knew I would take some flak if I kept it in. There's just no way around that. But let me tell you why I did it.

In the beginning I wanted to experiment with characters talking differently from each other. I wanted to create living breathing people, and when they spoke on the page the reader would not only know who they were by what they said, but by how they said it. The extent of the characters' accent was also intended to show something about them and possibly where they’ve come from in their lives.

Amanda is very stiff and angry at the world and has very little accent; she does not like most people around her (Texans, in this case) and does not like to conform to the norm; so practically no accent for her.

Now we meet Erik, he's got a touch of a Texas twang that is more intense than Amanda's, but he's no hick; so, a bit of dialect for him when he says certain words.

Then there is Rainbow, who has an even stronger accent, but doesn't get slack on certain words because he is an educated man. Ben Henfry, on the other hand, has the strongest twang in the book. He's a full on Texan -- probably from a poor upbringing to a bit of college to a job as a local policeman and then detective. He's one of the few in the book that uses the words "ya'll" and "pilla" (for pillow). I put that in because those are words one of my strongly accented Texas friends always used and they stuck with me.

Now, on to Jeannette and Victor. They have a very proper way of talking that for me implies French speaking English. No real depth in that. But I think it does distinguish them form all the other characters.

Lws: That is true. But, when it comes to being about distinguishing characters, I think Puzzleman himself makes the best statement in his manner of speaking.

CAB: Yep, all that speaking in broken, oddly accented sentences.

Lws: I was impressed by the way he seemed to always space his words. It was interesting to picture what he looked like, or how he would look talking in person.

CAB: Yeah, I agree. Certainly there are technical/artistic reasons I used dialect the way I did, but in the end, the main reason I went with it is because I had lived with the characters for so long that when I tried to write them without their personal grade of dialect they lost all identity for me. They just weren't real people to me anymore. So, for better or worse, I chose to let them talk they way they talk, the world and my readers be damned.

Lws: You say an old friend influenced the way Detective Henfry talked. Who do you think you actually influenced in the characters?

CAB: Well, a little bit of me is always in all my characters. But I’m far more like Amanda. I have very little accent at all and I’ve always fought it because I thought it sounded stupid.

Lws: Ahem&Mac255;(Concealing my Southern accent now)

CAB: OK, maybe that’s a little harsh. But I just didn’t ever want to be like the people I usually met. Amanda is the same way. Our personalities are very similar. What’s also scary to note is that the other character I most relate to is Puzzleman himself. His dark humor is all mine, and he too, like Amanda and myself, have a bleak outlook on life and have found great fault with others and the world in general. To me Puzzleman and Amanda are two sides of the same coin. Amanda is just a lot sexier. (And so am I, female readers!)

Lws: Getting to the characters. I thought Rainbow and Jeanette could have used more of a conclusion. Why did you go that way with them?

CAB: Let’s just suffice it to say that you'll learn more if I ever get to writing PUZZLEMAN II. There’s much yet to happen.

Lws: What about Erik?

CAB: I also always felt that Erik got off a bit easy, but that's life isn't it? Very often the most wicked seem to suffer the least. Besides the story just seemed to demand that he go out the way he did. Of course you could say Erik had been suffering his entire life, so getting his just due the way he did really was plenty for him.

Lws: Ok, how about a hard question. Is the Puzzleman God? Or is he the Devil?

CAB: I never really explain who or what Puzzleman is. Which is a real problem for movie producers it seems. But I think my readers so far are fine with leaving Puzzleman as a mystery.

Bottom line is, there's a lot more to learn about good ol' Puzz. At least in the "what he isn't" department. At any rate there’s still more to the story of PUZZLEMAN than is in the book, or has yet been imagined or written.

Lws: Who was the street merchant at the beginning?

CAB: The unknown street guy Amanda buys the earring from is, to me, obviously some poor black Texan...or is he? His dialect is almost too over the top to be genuine –– so is he really just a street vender? Is he another pawn of the Puzzleman? Or is he possibly even the Puzzleman himself? If only we could see him, maybe we could judge with our own eyes.

Lws: When I read him, I kept seeing a homeless guy trying to make a fast buck. I °•heard°¶ him quite differently then I did the others when I read them.

CAB: Speaking of which, you say you kept hearing the main characters as New Englanders. Interesting. I know a Brit who can only hear them in varying degrees of British accent. I'm sure others will hear them as Australian, or god knows what. I knew this would happen. For me and other fellow Texans who have read the book, we can only seem to hear the characters as pure Texan.

You being from Arkansas would definitely see conflicts with my dialect writing. Texan is only one of many southern dialects.

It's different from Oklahoman and Arkansaian for sure. And especially from that spoken in Louisiana and Georgia. I couldn't even attempt to write those dialects. But I do know Texan, even if some might strongly disagree.

I actually had a mid western girl read the manuscript once and she asked me why all the characters kept saying "ya". She heard it as the German "ya" meaning “yes”, not the Texan "ya" which is pronounced "yuh" and means “you”.

At any rate, I guess I've put my head in the noose on the dialect issue. Oh well... Ha! You'd die if you saw the extent of crazy dialect in my yet unfinished horror novel, HEATHER'S TREEHOUSE.

Lws: Well, it is true that a Arkansas accent is different than a Texan. Sounds more intelligent anyway.

CAB: Ouch!

Lws: Well Chris, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. For all our readers out there, feel free to check out the Black Cab Productions home page at http://www.blackcabproductions.com.

I think you will find something that fits your taste.

http://www.penguincomics.net/Book_Reviews/puzzint.html