Wow, Nick Kolakowski is back for a fourth go ’round with my questions. I’m a major fan, and really enjoy these. I hope you do, too. Be sure to check out my take on his upcoming novel, Rattlesnake Rodeo earlier today.

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How has 2020 treated Nick Kolakowski the writer—have you been able to work? Are you finding writing time vanishing into doom-scrolling or binging something? Is there a pandemic novel in your near future?
When New York City went into lockdown, I threw myself into writing and editing. It became my coping mechanism, to such a degree that I had to step away a bit a few months later. First I poured my energy into “Lockdown,” a charity anthology of horror and crime stories that I co-edited for Polis Books; proceeds went to support BINC, which is helping booksellers through this weird time. With that completed, I finished work on “Absolute Unit,” a horror novella coming out next year from Crystal Lake Publishing; I’d started writing it last year, well before the pandemic, but it has some uncomfortable echoes with what’s happening now—mass infection is a big theme. By that point, I was pretty fritzed out, so I started trying to balance out the schedule; less writing, more actually getting outside.
How was it coming back from the dystopian-SF/Crime of Maxine Unleashes Doomsday to something very contemporary, very non-SF?
It felt good! With contemporary crime fiction, you don’t have quite the same pressure of world-building as you do with sci-fi and dystopian fiction. That being said, I did struggle with the plot of “Rattlesnake” a bit—for the longest time, I had the first two-thirds written, but couldn’t figure out a way to end it that really came together.
As much as I enjoy Frankie, Jake, and Janine—the character that keeps hanging out in the back of my mind is The Monkey Man. (Shockingly, a criminal always wearing a rubber gorilla mask is memorable!) Where did he come from? Too much time spent listening to The Traveling Wilburys? I’d imagine there’d be a big temptation to go wild with the character, but you kept him fairly low-key and reserved over these two books. How’d you resist?
The Wilburys were the inspiration for the name. And there was a lot of temptation to unleash him in a particularly messy/funny/creative way. What held me back was, of all things, Hannibal Lecter.

Specifically, when I was writing “Rattlesnake,” I was also watching both Hannibal Lector movies, and what I noticed was that Hannibal was a more effective character the less he was shown doing. He’s an incredibly powerful character in “Silence of the Lambs,” but aside from talking, he doesn’t do terribly much beyond his brief escape at the end; his power comes from his reputation. In the sequel, by contrast, he’s doing lots of things, and that drains the mystique from the character; he becomes something of a hammy joke. So that curbed my impulses to do something grand with Monkey Man.

Sometimes I think I resisted that impulse a little too much, though. Someone who dresses like that is no doubt capable of some freaky shit.
Jake’s wife, Janine, is never the focus of these books, but I think she has the most interesting arc over the course of these two novels. Somehow, she and Jake have managed for years to keep her pretty isolated from his world. But in the few days these two books cover, all that’s gone away, and she reacts better than Jake (and probably Janine herself) expects. Why tell that story in the midst of all the action and chaos? Was there a version where she gets overwhelmed by everything and can’t adapt to the circumstances?
Nope! In so many thrillers, there’s this cliché of a civilian character (whether the wife, daughter, husband, etc.) who falls apart completely under stress, and I wanted to steer away from that as hard as I could. Janine’s ability to deal with the situation, I felt, also gave some additional nuance to Jake and Frankie—they’re so tough that they can’t grasp that someone like Janine, who doesn’t have any criminal or combat experience, might be totally adaptable to a hard situation; it’s a huge blind spot that reveals something about their egos.
It’s one thing for authors to make specific geographic references in New York City—most non-New Yorkers have enough of a grasp of that area to mostly understand them. To a lesser extent that’s true of LA, Chicago, Boston, etc. But in Rattlesnake Rodeo, you throw around references to the Boise-area like a native, 97% of which are going to mean nothing to anyone not from around here. Is there a risk in that? Yeah, it’s a very authentic feel, but does the authenticity outweigh the potential alienation of someone from another part of the country/world? Or in the age of a search engine, does that not matter?
I’m not sure there’s a risk in it. This summer, I read S.A. Cosby’s “Blacktop Wasteland” and David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s “Winter Counts,” both excellent thrillers/mysteries that take place in areas not well-trod by most crime fiction (rural Virginia and a Native American reservation, respectively). Both of those books have tons of esoteric detail about those locations, and it adds a lot of nice texture to the narrative. I look at “Rattlesnake” (and “Boise Longpig Hunting Club”) the same way—a substantial portion of the audience is never going to go to Nyssa or any of those towns along the Snake River; they’re never going to swing by Fanci Freez, which has some of the nation’s finest milkshakes; but hopefully all the detail gives them a sense of place.
As usual, I’ve got to ask, what’s coming down the pike? Are you far enough into your next book to talk about it?
“Absolute Unit,” a horror novella told from the perspective of a sentient parasite living inside the body of a corrupt health inspector, is the next one (mid-2021)! Then after that, there’s another novella, “Payback is Forever,” that should come out from Shotgun Honey in late 2021. The latter is my attempt at a classic Chandler-style thriller, although there’s a contemporary twist to it that the audience will hopefully never see coming.
Thanks for your time—and thanks for another great ride with Jake and Frankie!