For author, speaker and gentleman Jim Jackson, the path to writing has been a winding one. He’s the author of the pulp mythology Kiss of the Cockroach Queen, the devil-dealing tale Stones in My Passway: A Novel in Bluesand the self-explanatory How to Tell a Really Good Story about Absolutely Anything in 4 Easy Steps.
But it took a while to get there.
“The first word I ever read was f*#k,” he says, recalling a seminal childhood event. “I was four years old, and it was scrawled on the inside of a tube slide. I looked at the letters, sounded them out – just like I was taught – and read the word. I went around the playground repeating it until some woman gave me a dirty look. Since then I’ve always found reading and writing to be a transgressive act.”
From those humble beginnings, Jim found how powerful words can be.
“I actually learned how to play guitar so that I could write songs. I was playing in coffeehouses for most of my teens.” He hesitates. “I tell people it was to meet girls, but I wasn’t cool enough to think of that. Meeting girls was a perk that came after. Writing was first. Square, I know.”
But, after a year as the ragamuffin darling of the Ottawa, Canada folk music scene, Jim walked away from the musician’s life.
“I don’t know. I guess I changed. I’d turned twenty and was feeling old. Back then, there weren’t the indie distribution channels there are now. So I traded my vintage leather jacket for a blazer, did an English degree and decided I’d be a famous literary writer. Those exist, right?”
What kind of writing did that produce?
“There was an awful story about a trans-Atlantic sea voyage in the late nineteen-twenties that came from a dream I had. Obviously something I know a great deal about. I’ve read Fitzgerald – what else do you need? I submitted that to Saturday Night magazine’s short story competition, sure I was going to get at least third prize. (I didn’t). There was an aborted novel based on a Scottish folk song. There was a traveling circus story (I really liked that one). They’re all on a floppy disk somewhere. Good thing nothing can read floppy disks anymore. Here’s a note to writers – there’s no better storage medium than paper.”
He takes a long swig of Bordeaux and smiles. “I think the court records are sealed. I’m not allowed to talk about it. But it did lead to my self-imposed exile in China.”
What is writing in China like?
“I had a gig writing a weekly newspaper column, in basic English, from an expatriate’s perspective. In four hundred words. Hard. So little space to make a point. In my storytelling book, I talk about how that forged a sense of brevity in my writing.”
How to Tell a Really Good Story about Absolutely Anything in 4 Easy Stepsis Jim’s first book – a non-fiction look at the power and method of storytelling.
“That’s a consistent seller around the world and has climbed a bestseller list twice. I love the success of that book, which was something that came out as an adjunct to the public speaking teaching that I do. If could do anything differently though? Shorter title. I thought the ridiculously long title would be cute. Not so much when I have to type and tweet it several times a day.”
Jim’s last two books have been fiction. What started that?
“When I got back into writing, I wrote a truly awful novel about World War II superheroes that should never see the light of day. But I still wanted to try my hand at fiction. So, when National Novel Writing Month came around a few years ago, I hammered out sixty thousand words about a deal with the devil at the crossroads, using blues folklore and imagery. There’s always music in my writing. This time it was my early love of the blues. When I give readings for this book, I’ll often noodle around on some blues.”
(You can check that out here).
Is there music in Jim’ latest book, the pulp mythology Kiss of the Cockroach Queen?
“There’s the accidental music of Hong Kong, my favorite city in the world. The sounding of the Star Ferry, the jackhammering construction, the dozen languages hawking knock-offs. And there’s the music of that old-time, hard-boiled detective voice. You know the one. She was the kind of woman you’d bring home to your mother – if your mother had a nasty temperament, a heart condition and a large insurance policy naming you as beneficiary.I love writing pulp. And mixing it with Chinese mythology was a blast.”
Pulp detectives and Chinese mythology?
“King Wong is the world’s only exoterric consultant and expert on the Otherkind. He’s down on his luck with a leaky, keep-you-up-at-night shower and a fold-out bed in grungy Kowloon. So, when an expensive-looking dame from the swanky Mid-Levels offers him a year’s rent to find her missing shady, financial-wizard husband, he takes the case. Now, he’s tracking down an ancient, Tang-dynasty magic and a buxom, violet-eyed barmaid cult leader in Hong Kong’s seedy, mystical underside with only the help of a hippie girl in dreadlocks and whatever allies he can muster from the mists of Chinese myth. The thing is, you never quite know if all this mythical stuff is real or just in his head.”
So why did Jim fill a room full of rubber cockroaches?
“For the launch of Kiss of the Cockroach Queen, we scattered a bunch of fake cockroaches around the bookstore. The person who collected the most got a prize – a much bigger fake cockroach. I think there are still a couple dozen hidden and waiting to scare innocent book buyers.”
Jim is deeply involved in his local writers’ community. What tips does he give to aspiring writers?
“Write fast and type hard. Get the words out. Fix them later. Hammer out what you can every day. And find your people. The other writers in your community are the ones who will buy your books, who will tell others about your books and who will generally keep your head above water when this crazy choice of vocation starts to drag you under. A writer writes. So write.”
Read more about Jim Jackson here . Or at ReallyGoodStory.com . Or buy his books here
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