Sean Beaudoin is the author of Going Nowhere Faster and Fade To Blue. His newest book, You Killed Wesley Payne,
is due from Little, Brown February 1, 2011. Sean's articles and short
stories have been appeared in numerous publications, including the
Onion, Glimmer Train, The San Francisco Chronicle, Opium Magazine, The
Rumpus, The New Orleans Review, Narrative Magazine, Barrelhouse, Instant
City, The Nervous Breakdown, Bayou, Another Chicago Magazine, Bat City
Review, Redivider, Ballyhoo, and Spirit-the inflight magazine of
Southwest Airlines.
A review about You Killed Wesley Payne will be available soon in our blog but til then check out the awesome interview with Sean!
-Try to describe your book in
one sentence.
Raymond Chandler and Lindsay Lohan
go into an alley, only one emerges with teeth.
-Now you can tell us a bit more
about it. A small summary by you.
You Killed Wesley
Payne is a black
comedy murder mystery. The anti-hero, Dalton Rev, is a detective who transfers
from high school to high school to solve crimes for a fee. Wesley Payne, who was
found hanging from the goalposts at the end of the football field, is his
toughest case yet. There’s girls, guns, grift, garage rock, and guffaws. Also,
Dalton is trying to get into Harvard.
-Your genre in this book is
young-adult mystery if I’m not mistaken. You did that on purpose, or you just
start writing?
Yes, it was very much on purpose.
I write Young Adult novels that I hope push teenagers out of their comfort
zones, and can also be enjoyed by adults. I got a bit disillusioned with the
literary publishing world, and realized that through the exploding genre of YA I
could reach readers who genuinely cared about what they were
reading.
-What inspired you to write,
you took any ideas from other books, movies etc?
I grew up watching film noir and
classic cinema and it very much affected my desire to write this book, as well
as the way it came out.
-Did you do any research before
start or during of the writing of the books?
I watched a million movies, read
untold pulp novels, and lived through high school.
-Which scenes were the hardest
to write?
The ones that my editor didn’t
like and forced me to re-do. I think writing is hard in general. Which is why I
don’t really like reviewing other people’s books. Even if I don’t like it, I
know how much work went into it.
-How long has it taken you to
write a book ?
It seems to average about eighteen
months.
-What’s the best part of
writing for you?
When I sit down in the morning,
open my laptop, and the next thing I know it’s late afternoon. When I become so
immersed in what I’m doing I don’t have any notion of time passing.
-Are you reading or writing
something else at the moment?
The book after You Killed
Wesley Payne is
already done. It’s called Wise Young Truck. I am currently working on the
book after that.
-Did you have support at the
beginning and/or during your writing?
There have always been people who
believed in me, and people who dismissed me. I think that’s probably true with
most writers.
-Did you always had in mind to
be a writer or it just happened?
I feel fortunate that I knew as a
teenager that writing was something I wanted to do. I don’t know if I felt back
then that I could make a career out of it, but it was always something I
pursued.
-How important you find the
communication between you and your readers? Do you reply to their messages or
read their reviews?
It’s very important. They’re the
ones I’m writing for. I try to reply to all the messages I get. And the
publisher frequently forwards me reviews.
-Are you working on any other
projects except writing, right now?
Writing for a living involves so
many other things than actually writing, that I would have to say I am
constantly involved in other projects.
-Something special you want to
share with us?
My daughter just lost her two
front teeth.
Now some simple questions and more
fun^^
-Your favourite books and
author?
It would be easier to say my 20
favorite books and authors. I would say that Kurt Vonnegut and all his books
made perhaps the greatest impression on me as a teenager. Not long ago I read
Little Infamies, a book of short stories about
Greek life by Panos Karnezis, which I thought was very good.
-Your favourite
band/singer?
John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix,
Billie Holiday, and James Brown.
-Twitter or
Facebook?
Facebook.
-Favourite place in the
world?
Florence.
-Last movie you watched at the
cinemas?
True Grit. I really love the original novel
by Charles Portis, who is a favorite writer of mine.
-The last book you’ve
read?
I am almost finished with
Public Enemies, a compendium of letters exchanged
between Bernard Henri-Levy and Michele Houellebecq.
-Writing, reading or hanging
out with friends?
Writing in the morning, reading in
the afternoon, hanging out with friends at night.
-If you wouldn’t be a writer,
what you would be?
I always wanted to be a power
forward in the NBA. But I’m only 6’ 3”. So I guess I’ll say a professor of
linguistics.
-And last one....printed or
ebooks?
Printed. Forever and
always.
Thanks a lot Sean Beaudoin for the interview!
----------------------------------------------------------
He's come to do a job.
A job that involves a body.
A body wrapped in duct tape found hanging from the goal posts at the end of the football field.
You Killed Wesley Payne
is a truly original and darkly hilarious update of classic pulp-noir,
in which hard-boiled seventeen year-old Dalton Rev transfers to the mean
hallways of Salt River High to take on the toughest case of his life.
The question isn't whether Dalton's going to get paid. He always gets
paid. Or whether he's gonna get the girl. He always (sometimes) gets the
girl. The real question is whether Dalton Rev can outwit crooked cops
and killer cliques in time to solve the mystery of "The Body" before it
solves him.Sean Beaudoin (Going Nowhere Faster, Fade to Blue) evokes the distinctive voices of legendary crime/noir authors Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson with a little bit of Mean Girls and Heathers throwin in for good measure. This smart, slick, and alluring detective novel that will tease you, thrill you, and suck you in