Interview with Editor Vernon Smith

 

I am interviewing author/editor Vern Smith. He is the author of the novels Under the Table (a payroll heist on a Hollywood North TV shoot, circa 1989) and The Green Ghetto (an urban western set in the most depopulated region of Detroit). His novelette, The Gimmick—a finalist for Canada’s highest crime-writing honor, the Arthur Ellis Award—is the title track of his second collection of fiction. His third novel, Scratching the Flint, will be published by Run Amok Crime in 2023. A Windsor, Ontario native and longtime resident of Toronto, he lives on the wild blue yonder of the Illinois prairie.

Question: What is the title and genre of your new anthology? Why were they selected?

Answer: The anthology is called Jacked (Run Amok Crime). It’s entirely made up of first-run crime fiction, although not every piece is what I would call classify as genre. Beyond stories and novelettes that revolve around fractured laws, we decided to simply go after the best crime fiction we could get our hands on, without a single worry of what any of it could be about. In all, we had some 400 stories to audition and ended up running 21. All of which means each piece had to be very, very good, yes, but also singular in such a way as to give this book another gear. Or, in the words of my Run Amok labelmate Aaron Jacobs, the work couldn’t just be okay. It had to kick ass.

Ultimately, we settled on five decades of authors from five countries who give Jacked range in terms of style, politics, sexuality, gender, experiences of people of color, war veterans, an actual cop, and people who might not have always stuck to the letter of the law. There’s more to them, but I don’t pretend to know, which is sort of the point. Predominantly, we were looking to discover writers who were at least new to us, and I’ve just started tracking down their earlier works. To a person, each is magnificent.

Question: What inspired this book? How did it come about? 

Answer:

Simply, I was pulled from bed into a virtual Run Amok Books meeting in which the ME, Gary Anderson, who was already running a fair bit of crime fiction on his Run Amok Books imprint, said he wanted to launch a new crime fiction imprint, Run Amok Crime. Best way to start, I suggested, was to put out a proper crime fiction anthology to beachhead what the new press would be about by finding stories that spoke to Run Amok Crime’s vision, which tends towards hardboiled. I was open to someone else being the editor, but everyone involved seemed to like the idea then just sort of looked back at me and said, you do it. Within a few weeks, the call for submissions was out there. 

Question: What are you working on now?

Answer: Mostly on a combination of editing matters and promo. With Jacked just out and my third novel, Scratching the Flint, coming in 2023, I’ve been primarily focused on helping to guide these two books through the minutia of the publication process, then doing my part in terms of getting the word out. So, as I’m beating the drums for Jacked, I’m again working with our key editor, Krysta Winsheimer, to get my novel shipshape, and that’s about the extent of my bandwidth for the written word at the moment. Otherwise, I’m doing a fair bit of gardening, Zen, if only I could keep the bunnies out of the dill.

Question: What’s your novel about?

Answer: In a nutshell, Scratching the Flint is a literary crime thriller that puts here-and-now into proper historical context by examining the lowest common denominators of policing. It’s the story of how conflicts of interest, casual racism, petty dissention, gatekeeping, and the slow death of information came to destabilize North American law enforcement, and, in turn, society. As much as it’s a crime story, it’s the story of institutional failure. For comic relief, I’m told I give you absurdities of the same.

Question: What made you start working as an editor?

Answer: I have past experience as a deputy news editor and a copy editor but Jacked is a different species entirely. The key part of being an editor here was the curation process, being the key curator. I worked in radio in another life doing music shows, so I’m pretty much at home with the selection process. If you’re doing it right, you’re looking well beyond your own tastes and limitations. You’re looking for range in all its variations, so I knew, to find that, we couldn’t just throw open the call for submissions and hope for the best. You have to know how to be a literary hunter and gatherer, looking for everything in hopes of finding some of the things. I’m a bit of a culture junkie anyway, so taking this on didn’t seem like a stretch. More than anything, I’ve been a reader of crime fiction for a good 30 years, and that’s really all you need to do to know from good. You need to be a dedicated fan.  

Question: What advice would you offer to those who are currently writing?

Answer: Wow. Not sure I’m the right person to ask, so you probably want to run this by the nearest adult. But for me it’s all about maintaining a sense of yourself during a time that actively discourages the same. You need to get to the place where you know what you think. I’m not talking about what your party thinks, your friends, family, coworkers, dudes making bold declarative statements on social media, or your clique. If your work is to be singular, you need to know what you actually think. Everyone needs a good editor, no question, but you have to be able to use your own words and phrases, as well as those of the voices in your head and whatever idioms you pick up hanging around the food truck. Avoid newspeak and gobbledygook at all costs. Your own ways of saying things will inform your characters and story so much better. Fiction, poetry, whatever, don’t bother with people preaching on what your work should be about. That’s for each individual writer to decide. So, you know, be an individual writer. Be singular.  

Question: Where and when will readers be able to obtain your anthology? 

Answer: Now through your local independent bookseller and online at:

runamok.news/jacked-amazon

https://runamok.news/jacked-bookshop

https://runamok.news/jacked-indiebound

Comments for Vern are welcome here!