Interview with Nick Kolakowski, author of Hell of a Mess
Today it gives the Indie Crime Scene great pleasure to interview Nick Kolakowski, whose novel Hell of a Mess we feature on August 26.
Is there an underlying theme that links your books, and what is it?
The utter lunacy of life. You can make all kinds of plans, anticipate all sorts of scenarios—but you’re still helpless if life decides to flip you around. Most of the characters in my books start off with well-defined plans, only to see everything around them descend into total chaos.
Your latest book, Hell of a Mess, debuts on August 26 from Shotgun Honey press. What can you tell us about it?
It’s about a heist that goes disastrously wrong during a massive hurricane. Fiona, a master thief and occasional assassin, takes a job to rob a luxury penthouse in downtown Manhattan. She discovers something in that penthouse that forces her to make a drastic moral choice, and from that point on, she’s on the run from not only a lot of hired assassins, but also the storm itself, which is destroying the city.
Hell of a Mess is a sequel to Love and Bullets, the story of a 21st century Bonnie and Clyde. In that novel, protagonist Bill was sick of the violence and girlfriend Fiona relished it. What are they up to now?
Despite her best efforts to live a somewhat less criminal life, Fiona finds herself pulling off yet another high-stakes robbery. Bill also sees himself as “retired,” but while Fiona is robbing that penthouse, he’s embroiled in his own troubles—a pair of dirty cops stumble upon him, realize who he is, and kidnap him. The tragedy of Bill and Fiona is that they genuinely want to do something different with their lives, and yet things never seem to work out that way for them.
Is there a genre that fits Love and Bullets and Hell of a Mess? Noir, dark comedy, extreme violence - what would you choose?
Dark comedy, definitely!
We featured your new release Absolute Unit from Crystal Lake Publishing in July last year. Two guys inhabited by a sentient parasite. What does the title mean and what happens to the hosts and their occupant?
Absolute Unit is told from the perspective of the parasite, who believes it’s the pinnacle of evolution, the organism that’s meant to take over the whole world, the “absolute unit” of existence. The ending of the book is deliberately ambiguous, but things don’t go well for the humans/hosts—in the end, they’re all too short-sighted and vain to stop this existential threat.
You contributed a short story to Lockdown (Polis Books), a charity anthology of horror and crime fiction stories nominated for an Anthony Award in 2021. The anthology’s title reflects the fact that the mutant virus story finally came true (in a way). What are your feelings about that and how did you respond to it in fiction?
When that anthology was put together, it was right as the COVID-19 pandemic was gripping the country. There was a lot of uncertainty, and for the writers in that anthology (including me), there was the opportunity to use fiction to regain some sense of control. We couldn’t impact what was happening in the real world, but in the context of a story, we could provide a framework, and answers, that could perhaps give readers a (temporary) sense of balance. Maybe even peace.
How important are satire and humour in your books?
It’s essential! The darker the story, the more you need at least some humor to balance things out, or the whole thing gets too heavy and implodes upon itself.
Your work has appeared in The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, Thuglit, Shotgun Honey, North American Review, and Carrier Pigeon, among other venues. What can you tell us about your short fiction, journalism and more, and how has it led to writing novels - or is that an oversimplification?
It's not an oversimplification! Short fiction is a great way to workshop ideas and see if they’ll work as longer pieces—Boise Longpig Hunting Club and Payback Is Forever, a novel and novella (respectively), both began life as short stories. Journalism is also essential because it gives you the toolbox for research, and a desire to actually get things right in terms of facts, how things work, etc.
In a recent blog post you discuss your novella Payback is Forever, and how it was influenced by a piece of software called GPT-3, which generates text based on whatever you input into it. How did that experience affect your writing and what did you think of the computer program?
I work as a tech journalist, so I hear a lot of researchers and experts declare on a regular basis that automation and artificial intelligence are coming for our jobs. After using the GPT-3 text generator for a couple of weeks, I realized it was a very good mimic of style—at one point, I pumped ten years’ worth of my writing into it, and it managed to exactly reproduce my tone—but every other aspect of storytelling is utterly beyond it; the system just has no idea of plot or how life works. If A.I. is capable at this point of just producing borderline nonsense, I don’t think fiction writers have a lot to fear about replacement by a synthetic mind—not for another couple decades, at least.
That being said, it was fun to use GPT-3 in the context of Payback Is Forever. The nonsense it produces is often lyrical and oddly beautiful, so I ended up using it for the book’s dream sequences and some other surreal bits.
Boise Longpig Hunting Club (Down & Out Books) tells of bounty hunter Jake Halligan who gets caught up in something menacing. Elements in contemporary US Society seem to make such stories disturbingly close to reality. What do you think?
I agree! The central conceit of Boise Longpig Hunting Club is that some folks just can’t let things go—whether it’s a personal slight from decades past or someone else having a different political opinion. The book’s villains are cartoonish, but I think they’re good representations or symbols of what happens when people get a bit too wrapped up in their own narrative about how the world works.
New York, where you live, is a very different place from Idaho, for example. How do you research the places and the people in your books?
I have family in Idaho so I end up there quite a bit—all of the locations in Boise Longpig Hunting Club and its sequel, Rattlesnake Rodeo, are based on real places, and a lot of the folks are based on folks I know.
It’s the same with Love & Bullets and Hell of a Mess: All of the locations—Nicaragua, Cuba, New York, etc —are places I’ve lived. In the case of Hell of a Mess, which takes place during a hurricane, I utilized a lot of what I experienced personally when Hurricane Sandy barrelled through New York a decade ago.
On a technical level, I’m a big fan of hands-on research. I don’t like writing about guns I haven’t shot, and any time a character utilizes a particular skill—such as lockpicking—I try to learn it myself, unless it’s illegal and/or dangerous. When I can’t do something myself, I interview knowledgeable folks: a relative who was a bounty hunter and a former roommate who was a soldier have both been valuable resources for certain things, for example.
With Hell of a Mess due out in August, what are your plans? Are you working on something new?
I am! It’s an old-school detective novel, almost Chandler-esque, with some big themes behind it like climate change. It takes place in California a few years from now.
What authors do you read and enjoy?
I recently finished Shoot the Moonlight Out by William Boyle, which is set in a part of Brooklyn where I used to live; I enjoyed it immensely. I also finished a horror novel, Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes that was highly entertaining. James Kestrel’s Five Decembers was one of the best noir books I’ve read over the past year. S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears is a must-read for any fan of crime fiction.
Who or what writers have influenced you?
George V. Higgins’ dialogue in books like Cogan’s Trade is always something I’ve aspired to match, but haven’t yet begun to reach anything close to that level (although one can always dream); Elmore Leonard’s books, for the same reason. Joan Didion’s control of prose, her musicality and use of repetition. Richard Stark’s lean prose and complete amorality. The list goes on and on and on…
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