Just Before the Dawn by Bonnie Kozek

Honey McGuinness is an addict. Booze, cigarettes, drugs, industrial chemicals, sex. You name it. Honey's addictions aren't the result of a spoiled brat living off of Daddy's credit card. No, Honey earned hers the old fashioned way: a horrible childhood. Her mother committed suicide and her father sexually abused her. The girl's got a hole in her heart that nothing but love can fill. Unfortunately, the world Honey lives in seems to be fresh out of love.

In the first Honey McGuinness book, Threshold, she set out to solve a friend's murder. I didn't read the book but I tried to learn as much as I could about it. This review and that one helped. By the end of that novel, Honey badly needed to get away.

In Just Before the Dawn, Honey is holed up in Pie Town, population 86. She figures that if she can get a taste of normal life she'll be able to stay out of trouble and clean up her own. Pie Town is wonderfully dull at first, but eventually Honey gets an old itch that she can't scratch. She falls off the wagon. Hard. She makes several bad decisions and before she knows it she's wanted for murder, maimed, and aware that some small towns harbor disturbing secrets.

Make no mistake, there's plenty of explicit sex in this book. While other authors would choose to fade out the scene and leave the sexual encounter to the reader's imagination, Kozek keeps the cameras rolling. These scenes share a frankness that one would typically find in Penthouse Letters, but the odd thing is that none of them were gratuitous. At first, the sex scenes are used to reveal how Honey came to be seduced by the story's antagonist, but later they're utilized to show how depraved and cruel he is. At every step of the way, sex either reveals something about the characters or advances the plot.

As Honey is the narrator, we have to rely on her to provide us with a sense of who these people are that she's interacting with and what's going on. Considering how often Honey is out of it, it's amazing that Kozek is able to make her reliable. She draws a wonderful portrait of Alice, the divorced, heavyset woman who runs the motel with her purse-sized dog, Romeo. And when Honey gets into trouble, we're just as lost as she is, which adds to the suspense. When Honey passes out, we're unable to watch over her while she sleeps it off. We feel her fear when all the promise of a normal life evaporates like a spilled bottle of gin on a hot desert highway. What may come as a surprise is that Honey is introspective enough to realize she has serious emotional problems. But there's also a level of brutal honesty that comes along with it whose confessions aren't admitted to outside one's own head.

In summary, Just Before the Dawn is a raw, unexpurgated noir thriller. Kozek gives us an unfiltered view of Honey's bruised and battered, yet still spunky, soul as she wrestles with her demons, both past and present. You know that horrific three car wreck that's been pushed to the median of the highway? You want to look but you resist the urge, partly to keep traffic flowing but mostly so you'll be spared the image of torn up bodies burned into your retinas. Well, Kozek pulled over to not only look but to write it all down for you to secretly read later in the comfort of your living room. You'll be glad she did the dirty work for you.

The book is available in print and ebook formats. The links can be found on Kozek's website.

Self-publishing symposium: Bonnie Kozek

NP: How does self-publishing differ from traditional publishing?
BK: At its most elemental level there's no difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing: Either way, the writer's job is the same: Write a book. Beyond this essential there's a whole heap of difference—the biggest being time. How much time does it take to get your work published? In traditional publishing, excluding the rare exception, the answer is, years, decades, even lifetimes. (Henry Miller’s first novel didn't get published until he was 44 years old; Raymond Chandler's first short story didn't get published until he was 45 years old; Emily Dickinson's poems didn't get published until after her death.) In self-publishing, the answer is that your book can be published within months. When you move beyond the printed page into ebooks and digital, you can be published in minutes. Time is a tremendous factor in a writer's decision about which route to take, traditional or alternative. I personally found it to be a complex and difficult decision.

NP: How do you respond to the following statement?  “Self-publishing is not a serious way to get one’s work into print now and never will be.”
BK:  Well, it’s just a silly statement.  The fact is that writers are self-publishing, and they are getting their books reviewed, distributed, and into the hands of readers.  I belong to a collective of eight very serious writers, called Backword Books.  Our work has been reviewed by highly-respected literary critics and reviewers, and we have each achieved recognition in our varying genres.  So, to put it another way: There’s nothing “unserious” about self-publishing.

NP: Has the golden age of self-publishing already passed or is it yet to come?
BK:  The golden age of self-publishing has yet to come.  It’s still in its infancy. It has rattled, and radically altered traditional book publishing, and it will continue to do so.  It’s hard to predict what the book publishing industry will look like once the dust settles.  It’s also hard to predict when that might happen.  Until then, self-publishing continues an upward trajectory.  It has a cache of advantages over traditional publishing; technological innovation and infinite opportunity; unbridled creativity; and the excitement and energy of serious and committed individuals who have a love of books – be they reader, reviewer, marketer, or publisher.  When you add to that mix the willingness of professional writers to take control of their own destinies, well, it’s not hard to understand why self-publishing has so successfully breathed new life into an industry that had become both dull and stagnant. 

NP: What about the challenges posed to the self-published writer by having to promote and edit his or her own book?
BK:  It’s a tremendous challenge, no question.  In order to be successful, the self-published writer will have to wear many different hats – some which may not fit so well.  The writer has to become editor, proofreader, copywriter, blogger, marketer, maybe even distributor.  It’s a fulltime job.  On the other hand, the road to traditional publishing poses challenges no less daunting.  The writer has to become, primarily, a salesperson.  The writer has to shop the work around in hopes of finding an agent – which, even if one is secured, is no assurance that the work will be published.  The writer has to become, secondarily, a professional “waiter” – waiting for a response to an inquiry, waiting for acceptance or rejection, waiting for an agent to return a phone call.  Given all of this, it’s reasonable that a writer would choose to take on the challenges of self-publishing because the end result is not dependent on the judgments of agents and editors and publishers.  The end result is guaranteed: The writer will be published.

NP: Why is it that a self-published author has yet to emerge into national recognition as a self-published author? (As opposed to being given a mainstream publishing contract after a self-published book attracts attention.)
BK:  That’s an easy question: Writers want to write.  They don’t want to edit, proofread, market, distribute.  So, if a mainstream publisher came along and said, “You write, we’ll do the rest,” well, it would be an opportunity that most writers would find very hard to pass up.

NP: Has the experience of self-publishing changed the way you write?  (If you have self-published.)
BK:  No. 

Bonnie Kozek’s highly-acclaimed noir thriller, Threshold, is available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Powell’s Books and other online sites.  The second thriller, Just Before the Dawn, will be published in 2010.  Learn more about her work at: http://www.bonniekozek.com or contact her at: bk@bonniekozek.com

2009 INA Finalists

From the list of books eligible for the 2009 INA award I have picked two finalists. Bonnie Kozek’s Threshold, the hardboiled tale of skid-row life and Shooting an Albatross by Steven R. Lundin, the story of revenge that takes a lifetime to come to pass. Both are very strong books. But which will walk away with the award?

Author Interview: Bonnie Kozek

Bonnie Kozek is author of Threshold. Her work has been recognized by major arts and letters organizations, and she has taught writing at a major American university.

Q: When did you first catch the writing bug?

A: I came to “art” very early on in my life – while still in my single digits. It manifested in all sorts of disciplines. Drawing, painting, filmmaking, writing. But for the past fifteen years I’ve been writing – to the exclusion of everything except an occasional collaboration with other artists.

Q: What artists have you collaborated with?

A: The Spanish artist Salvador Dali. Over the years, and until his death, we worked together on numerous projects. The Dutch artist Jan Frank and I collaborated on “Mania” – a book of my poetry for which he created a series of original drawings. I’ve also performed in pieces by Jeffrey Perkins, the American fluxus artist. But, like I said, this isn’t my primary focus.

Q: Okay. So, what impelled you towards art at such an early age?

A: I think people become artists for differing reasons. Some are born with immense talent, others make art to survive. I am of the latter category. It’s a less intellectual approach – at least in the beginning. And it involves a lot of catch-up and tremendous risk-taking. But, there you have it.

Q: So writing began as a means of survival. Has that changed?

A: Oh yes, that has changed. Survival isn’t my issue anymore. That ended long, long ago.

Q: So, why do you write?

A: I write for two reasons. The first reason is Words. I am wildly attracted to words. They are powerful and mysterious. I mean, in the extreme, words have the potentiality to Create or Annihilate. Although this is a dogma I’d love to discuss, I think it best left for another forum. So I’ll leave that there. In the less extreme, but no less compelling, words are awesome – thrilling – miraculous! I mean, there seems to be a code – an answer to great mysteries – that lies just beneath the surface of the words. So, I write in order to get my hands dirty – to dig down – to unravel the enigmas. Secondly, writing grounds me to the earth – to time and space – which fulfills an intense hunger I have for terrestrial connection. It’s funny because, theoretically, fiction writing doesn’t really seem a natural conduit to “reality” – yet somehow it works for me. Beyond these two things, I write because that’s what I’ve chosen to do. But then again, I’m not so sure if I chose writing or it chose me.

Q: What do you want to express in your writing?

A: I like the idea of taking deep, profound, weighty philosophical concepts and questions and stripping them of all adornment – wrapping them in “ordinariness,” if you will.  I want to express how extraordinary the ordinary is.  I want to suggest to the reader that human beings are perfectly flawed, and that even though permanently stained, we are worthy of redemption – redemption as imperfect as the flesh.  And, I want to convey these concepts in unconventional, unexpected ways.  With the Honey McGuinness series, of which “Threshold” is the first, I employed the “hardboiled noir crime thriller” genre, with its monosyllabic style and tough-guy vernacular.

Q: Let’s talk about Honey McGuinness.  She’s a complex character.  How did you go about creating her?

A: I have a fairly large reservoir of idiosyncratic characters in my head.  I pulled her from that reservoir.

Q: Why did you choose Honey McGuinness as a character to write about?

A: Well, in order to answer that I have to first talk about how the story developed.  The nascent philosophical questions I wanted to examine in the story were these: What happens when the life of a “non-believer” intersects with the life of a “believer”?  And what circumstances might bring such two disparate lives together?  I was interested in the vertex – the exact point of intersection.  Now, as I indicated above, I didn’t want to write about such a lofty subject in a conventional way – long sentences composed of multi-syllabic words wrapped in a reflective and problematic story rooted in the compound complexities of the human condition.  Nope.  I wanted to unburden the reader of the traditional pulling of heartstrings.  So, I turned to the classic noir genre – very unorthodox. Enter Honey McGuinness.  Honey is sacrilegious, off-kilter, haunted, and severely damaged – a most unlikely heroine for whom no depth is too low to sink, and for whom no line is too sacred to cross.  In short, the perfect protagonist for my purpose.

Q: In “Threshold” your description of Skid Row life seems very real.  How did you go about researching that world?

A: I enlisted the left hemisphere of my brain, and hit the streets.  I talked to and observed the itinerant and the drug addicted; DEA and regular beat cops.  I spent time in homeless shelters.  I’m crazy about doing research.  It’s the perfect counter-balance and repose to the glorious and torturous years I spend in the right hemisphere of my brain once I start writing.  And no, my research did not include smoking crack!

Q: What adventures do you have in store for Honey McGuinness?

A: In the next book she searches for “love and sex” in all the wrong places and gets caught in a terrifying xxx-rated nightmare of biblical proportions.  Now, when I say “love and sex,” I mean it’s a Honey McGuinness story, and in that context “love and sex” reads ultra-ultra-unorthodox.

Q: What is the title of the book and when will it be published?

A: “Just Before the Dawn.”  It is scheduled for publication this year.

Q: Speaking of publishing . . .  how was your experience with self-publishing . . . with iUniverse in particular?

A: Very trying.

Q: Will you use iUniverse for “Just Before the Dawn”?

A: I think everything that could have gone wrong in terms of working with iUniverse on “Threshold” did go wrong, so I learned a lot.  Now I know what I have to do to make the process run more smoothly.  Plus I developed a good relationship with an editor there, who has agreed to work with me on the next book.  So, I would say probably – I will probably use iUniverse for the next book.

Q: Do you have any advice for writers who might be considering self-publishing with iUniverse?

A: Absolutely.  Have your manuscript finalized – proof-read, edited – before you submit it.  Have your back-copy written and finalized before you submit it.  Know your audience.  Consider having your cover designed by a professional outside of iUniverse, which will lower the cost of the package that you purchase.  Basically, the more you can do yourself the better.

Q: Okay.  Who are your favorite authors and influences?

A: For a long time I only related to really tortured writers, poets, artists: Baudelaire, Rimbaud – the usual suspects.  I remember reading an interview from 1919 with the writer Djuna Barnes.  The interviewer asked her why she was so morbid and she answered, “Look at my life.” I mean, that’s what I related to.  Not anymore.  Now I like rhyming poems … and Artaud!  In the noir crime fiction genre of the Honey McGuinness books, I’d say my favorite writers are Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Chandler.  Outside of this genre?  Oh, there are so many.  Among contemporary writers I’m crazy for Jeanette Winterson, Jonathan Lethem.  I read Alice Munro, Carl Hiaasen, Walter Mosely, David Foster Wallace.  Then there’s Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, Anais Nin, Henry Miller – that crowd.  There’s Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck.  And of course, Gabriel García Márquez.  I’m sure I’ve missed some but as you can see, my stock is eclectic.  Once you clean house, there’s room for everything.  I like that.

Q: How did you change over the years as a writer?

A: I used to write for myself.  Now I write for others.  And I feel a tremendous responsibility to the reader.  I mean, it’s an issue of trust, and I don’t want to break that trust.

Q:  What would you like to tell struggling writers out there?

A: I would tell them that writing is a discipline that requires immense self-control.  It is difficult and terribly lonely – so be prepared.  Set a schedule and stick to it.  Don’t deviate.  If it’s not flowing, write one word after the other.  Don’t give up.  Be ruthless in your editing.  Don’t cling to words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters, that aren’t working – no matter how long you’ve worked on them or how precious you think they may be.  Try to advance an authentic open-mindedness.  And, most importantly, never never censor yourself!

A Death on Skid Row

THRESHOLD
by Bonnie Kozek

Available from Amazon.com

Only in her mid-twenties, Honey McGuiness is already an old soul who seems to have lived a life twice as long. A self-described loner and outsider with no connections and no meaningful relationships, she hides from life in a self-imposed exile from society in Los Angeles' Skid Row, wallowing in the gutter along with the rest of the damaged persons. Of course, Honey is not like them; she could be somebody, as one of the other characters insists, but Honey neither believes that, nor does she want to hear it from anyone. There is something dark in Honey's past, something that she's not yet ready to accept and deal with, and that something is killing her chances at life and living.

Honey is not completely isolated, however. There is one person in the world of the homeless that she has a thing for. Not that this thing could ever be anything other than it is, a simple a connection that's pretty special to Honey's jaded self. Billy himself isn't much. For one thing, he is blissfully unaware of the world around him, including Honey's attention. And he communicates in seemingly random rhymes out of the words that he hears around him, like a parrot. But there seems to be something innocent about Billy, something genuine, something that draws Honey. Billy is the only person she cares about.

Working at the urban mission, living in a building targeted by developers, and Billy seem to be the building blocks of Honey's new life in hiding. But Honey's skid row honeymoon from reality is shattered when Billy is shot by unknown assassins. Dying in her arms, he whispers “mother.”

Shattered by the death of her simple friend and thirsting for vengence, Honey launches on an all out, one-woman investigation into Billy's death. That a recording device was strapped to Billy leads Honey to suspect that Billy was being used by the police, a turn of events that she finds particularly upsetting for how the system had used Billy's innocence.

In her quest to get even with the slimy players responsible, Honey encounters the last boyscout, an idealistic cop who still lives by long-gone values of right and wrong, joining the force in order to do some good. The two become close, ersatz partners, each on an idiosynchratic quest for justice. In order to turn up some leads into Billy's death, Honey herself must descend into the local drug scene. The first real contact she meets is Abel, the street boss and drug dealer with an unlikely conscience. But is this the same man whose name is mentioned on the tape she recovered from the recorder on Billy's body? Through Abel she meets another player in the drug scene, Mr. V. But Honey is treading in dangerous waters, for Mr. V knows far more than Honey suspects, and before she knows it her world erupts with violence.

Threshold is stellar writing, a work populated with complex characters, and a story with a hypnotic narrative pull. And Bonnie Kozek is a talent to watch.