Conversations with the Bookless: Albert Tucher

A couple of years ago Jeff Vandermeer ran a series of blog posts called Conversations With the Bookless. The Conversations with the Bookless series was designed to showcase those writers who are up and coming, who don’t yet have a collection or a novel out, who are making their names known writing short stories. With Jeff’s blessing I will be continuing the series here at BSC over the next couple of weeks, but with a focus mostly on mystery/crime fiction.

From the first generation successes of Anthony Neil Smith, Victor Gischler and Sean Doolittle that came out of Plots With Guns to the later success of zine author/founders Sandra Ruttan and Russel McLean to a lot of others the online zines have, over the years, proved to be a fairly successful and fertile ground for emerging talents to launch a career, highlight their own work and showcase the work of others.

These writers are the next generation and it will be interesting in the next couple of years to see which of them will make it and which will stand out.

Nothing else to say really except to end with a quote from the original series.

The fact is, if you don’t have a book out, it’s harder to get attention and it’s harder for reader attention to crystallize around you. I hope these interviews introduce readers to some of the great talent that, in the coming years, will be amazingly and bountifully bookful. — Jeff Vandermeer

    
According to his bio Albert Tucher is the author of over twenty published stories and four unpublished novels all featuring his character, a prostitute named Diana Andrews. David Cranmar said that “Al has created a character we care for” about Diana Andrews.

    
Who are your influences and what is your most unlikeliest influence?

I just rediscovered one of my influences. In my novels, one of my supporting characters is a small-town police chief named Bert Jadlowsky. He’s wise about human nature, but also very hard on himself, and he has an inner life that many people who know him wouldn’t suspect. I liked him from the beginning, and the more I liked him, the more he reminded me of someone. Just recently I came across a copy of The Rocksburg Railroad Murders, and I realized that I had never read the first novel in K.C. Constantine’s series set in hardscrabble western Pennsylvania. The protagonist, a police chief named Mario Balzic, is the character I had in the back of my mind. I’m relieved to discover, though, that I didn’t simply rip him off to create Jadlowsky.

    
What do you most value in the fiction you love?

A protagonist who is so real that he comes off the page and lets you see the ketchup stain on his shirt.

    
Why do you write?

To tell stories. That sounds flippant, but it’s not. Telling stories to make sense of the world is as basic a human endeavor as reproducing the species. Print-on-demand publishing has made some observers speculate that more people are now writing books than reading them. I’m not surprised or alarmed to hear that.

    
What’s your favorite story written by someone else?

The Devil and Dan’l Webster, by Stephen Vincent Benet. If you want to call it hokey, or me sentimental, I’ll cop to it.

    
What do you like most about short fiction?

In short fiction I can see the mechanics of writing more clearly than in novels. A short story is like an experiment. The writer poses a problem and solves it.

    
When did you start writing short fiction and what prompted you to do so?

I had written three Diana Andrews novels before I even thought about short stories. Then I made a tactical decision to build up a resume that I hoped would impress the agents I was querying. I soon came to understand the challenges and the value of the short form, and I plan to keep writing them, no matter what happens with the novels.

    
Of your stories, which is your favorite; the one that showcases best your abilities?

Hard to say. At the moment I feel good about The Full Hour, which appears in issue 29 of Thug Lit. In many of my stories Diana Andrews is the smartest person in the room, but in this one she makes a mistake that has real consequence. I think I managed to keep her sympathetic in spite of her screwup. This story also makes use of an anecdote that my “technical consultant” told me. For about two years I knew a young woman in Diana’s line of work. She gave me priceless material, but unfortunately (for me), she has left the business, and we are no longer in touch.

    
Do you have any short story publications forthcoming?

The next one due out is No Hands, which will appear in Beat to a Pulp.

    
How do you plan to rectify your booklessness? From what I understand you have 4 novels written about your character Diana Andrews, any luck in selling those yet?

I have four ready to go, while the fifth and probably final novel in the series is well underway. I have queried a great many agents, but
these days no one in publishing is taking risks. Some people say I should cut my losses and write something else, but that wouldn’t solve the problems in the industry or the economy at large. I also think the Diana Andrews story is the story I have to tell.

I remind myself of something a writing teacher told me: the way in which books will be published and sold five years from now hasn’t been invented yet.

Maybe that will help me down the road.

    
Here is a more in depth interview with Al Tucher with further discussion of his character Diana Andrews.