Ten questions with Hugh Lessig
Hugh Lessig turned to fiction after a 30-year career as an award-winning newspaper reporter. In this interview, he describes how he was able to turn discipline and persistence into a successful debut as a novelist. Thanks Hugh!
1. Please tell us about your debut novel.
Fadeway Joe is the story of Joe Pendergast, 64, an aging mob enforcer diagnosed with early-stage dementia and abandoned by his boss. Joe plots his revenge, conscious of the clock ticking inside his head. By chance, he meets Paula Jessup, a twenty-something, wisecracking homeless woman running from labor traffickers. Paula needs protection. Joe wants revenge, and conniving Paula has an idea. They agree to help each other, but Joe’s thirst for revenge takes a backseat to his fondness for Paula. Maybe his legacy is about giving her a second chance.
2. I’ve read that only 4% of the people who start a novel, finish writing it. Why do you think you beat the odds?
I started distance running when I turned 50 hoping to run a 10K, or 6.2 miles. Once I became comfortable at that distance, I tried 7, then 8. I could always go one more mile. Same with writing. I wrote short stories for years and it was daunting to envision a novel. It was easier to imagine it as one step at a time.
3. Was your debut novel the first book you wrote? (Any prior efforts hiding on your hard drive?)
I have two novels in the drawer. The first is a science fiction novel that found an agent, but never found a home. The second is a mystery novel about a private investigator who takes a job running security for a political campaign. That never made it either, and I was advised by an agent to “try writing another novel.” I’m glad I took the advice.
4. What helped you become a better writer? Any books or resources you found helpful?
Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath is John Steinbeck’s diary as he wrote the famous novel. It’s a story of determination and creativity, also of self-doubt and paranoia. Perfect for writers, right? At the time, he had a sour stomach and hammers from construction work constantly pounded outside his home. But he set goals. That journal is an inspiration for anyone approaching the creative process. By the way, he wrote The Grapes of Wrath in five months. In long-hand. To be fair, he spent much longer on research.
5. What was your process like getting an agent?
Funny story: I don’t have an agent. I sent query letters to agents who attended a recent Thrillerfest, figuring they were looking for manuscripts. Included in that list was Sara Henry, an acquisitions editor at Crooked Lane Books. She was immediately interested, and it has turned into a great relationship. Sara is a great novelist in her own right, a badass editor (her term) and promotes her authors on social media. None of this would have happened without her in my corner.
6. How did you celebrate when you learned your book would be published?
I was numb. I don’t recall doing anything profound. I was in the parking lot of a J.C. Penny, waiting to walk around the corner and take a COVID test at a temporary testing center. I missed Sara’s call and called back immediately. When she told me the good news, I thought, “What the heck do I do now?” I might have gone out to dinner that weekend with my girlfriend, Shana, but honestly, it’s all a blur.
7. What was the most exciting moment involving the publication of your debut novel? (The moment you first saw the cover? The call when you learned when it was being published? When you cashed your advance check?)
Seeing the cover was the first rush, then I received a few copies of the book as advance uncorrected proofs. Holding the book in my hand finally made it real. It was interesting, because I had put so much work into that book, and when I finally held it, I thought, “Hmm, this looks a bit thin. The author could have written a bit more.”
8. What’s your best advice for someone who wants to be published?
I have a quote on my wall from Andre Dubus. It reads “Talent is cheap. What really matters is discipline.” I hesitate to label talent as cheap, but otherwise this quote is spot on. During 30 years in journalism, I’ve seen people with great potential who lacked discipline and never became successful. Conversely, I’ve seen people with pedestrian skills transform themselves into stars because they worked hard. You want to write? Don’t wait for the creative lightning bolt. Press your fingers against a keyboard and do it on a regular basis.
9. What are you currently reading? Or, what's one of the best novels you've read lately?
Lately, I’ve been reading outside my own hardboiled/noir genre and getting into spy novels. I just finished The Polish Officer by Alan Furst about a member of the underground resistance during World War II. Safe Houses by Dan Fesperman is set in a more recent time, focusing on a neophyte CIA agent in Berlin during the Cold War.
Closer to my own genre, you can’t go wrong with the taunt prose, gritty characters and settings you can smell, taste and feel from the likes of Mark Westmoreland, Scott Blackburn and James D.F. Hannah. There are too many books to mention among those three but google them. You won’t be sorry.
10. What are you working on now? Any projects coming out soon?
Later this year, I will have a short story in a mystery anthology set during the Prohibition Era. It is called, appropriately enough, “Prohibition Peepers.” A novella is due out later about a man who steals a vintage car from an Elvis Presley convention. It’s titled ‘Hunka, Hunka Burning Rubber.”
I’m currently working on my second novel about a celebrated thief in a small Virginia town who is trying to turn around her life, but she blackmailed into burglarizing the home of the town matriarch and discovers a horrible secret related to a secret society. It is tentatively titled “Mallets.”