“The Interview”

When will we see a new Steve Thayer book?

I'm hard at work on something now. But I can't tell you when it will be finished or when it will be published. Still, I remain hopeful.

When do you write?

I'm a night writer. I usually begin writing around 11 P.M. and work until one or two in the morning. That's just when my brain works. Always has. If school had started at noon I'd have been the valedictorian. Unfortunately, it started at 8 A.M. and my brain didn't wake up until football practice. I used to be able to write until the sun came up, but I can't do that anymore. It's an age thing. I save my days for research, reading, and scribbling notes.

How did you become a writer?

I failed at acting.

How about school, were you a good student?

I was a terrible student. They let me out of high school. They threw me out of college. I barely graduated from St. Paul's Harding High School. After that I went to Southwest Minnesota State College in Marshall, Minnesota to play football, but I flunked out after two years. However, in my second year of college I was chasing after this girl and she took an Introduction to Theatre course--so I took it because she took it. The girl got away but I got the acting bug and took off for Hollywood the next year. I graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, in Pasadena, California.

Where did you study writing?

I never studied writing. Never took a writing class. Everything I know about writing I learned in theatre, especially building a character. Create good characters and readers will follow them anywhere. I bummed around Hollywood for five years after acting school. After failing at that I thought maybe I could be a writer. So I moved home to St. Paul and began writing my first novel. Saint Mudd.

How did you first get published?

Actually, I didn't. For Saint Mudd, I can produce forty rejection slips. I finally decided to self-publish 250 copies and give them away to family and friends and call it quits. But once they started printing books there wasn't much difference in cost between 250 books and 1,000 books, so I decided to print the thousand books and then try and sell them. Those thousand books sold out in six weeks. Saint Mudd was then picked up by a small press in Washington, D.C. We printed 10,000 paperbacks and those quickly sold out. After that, Viking Penguin offered me a two-book contract for Saint Mudd and the first hundred pages that I had written of The Weatherman.

What do you use for writing?

I have a laptop now, but a lot of my scenes I still write out in longhand on a legal pad. Moon Over Lake Elmo and The Wheat Field were almost completely written in longhand before I put them on my computer.

Is it true you write the endings of your books first?

Yes, I usually write the ending first—that way I always know where I'm going. Everything has to lead toward that end. There is nothing worse than reading a good book with a lousy ending, and it's usually because the author didn't know how to end it. I don't want to get on a plane with a pilot who doesn't know how to land, and I don't want to read a book by an author who doesn't know how to end it.

What authors influenced you the most?

It was a bizarre combination of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Joseph Wambaugh. I was reading a lot their books back in the '70s before I began writing.

What kind of books do you like to read now?

Most people are surprised by how little fiction I read. I stopped reading it almost as soon as I started writing it. Most of my reading today is non-fiction, with a heavy emphasis on history and biography.

What book of yours is your favorite?

It would have to be Saint Mudd because it was my first book and because of all that I went through to get it published. Though, personally, I think The Weatherman is a better book. The Wheat Field is another favorite just because it was so much fun to write.