#18 Johnny Shaw 1 on 1 with Mark Atley

Johnny Shaw is the author of seven novels, including the Jimmy Veeder Fiasco series and the Anthony Award-winning adventure novel BIG MARIA. His ridiculous side projects are often more interesting than his books. He’s currently writing real pages of imaginary books over at Torn Pages: www.patreon.com/tornpages and has gone full analogue retro and will have a staplebound zine, YOU HAD TO BE THERE, coming out in the Spring, which will include a number of humor pieces as well as contributions by a number of award-winning and bestselling author pals.

Hello everyone, and welcome to "1 on 1 with Me!" In this series, I highlight a new author and engage in a thoughtful conversation about who they are, what they care about, and their perspectives on various topics. I start with standard questions and then move into tailored follow-ups based on their responses.

I find the format to be conversational, and I truly enjoy it. My primary focus is to highlight the author I am interviewing.

Who am I? I am an author known for creating crime fiction, with a particular focus on complex characters, engaging dialogue, and narratives centered around crime themes. I genuinely enjoy listening to people and letting them share their stories.

If you are interested in being a guest, please reach out to me on social media or email me with the subject line: "Author Interview." This initiative is my way of giving back to the writing community. The guests you’ll hear from in these interviews come from diverse backgrounds, and they may or may not be familiar voices in the writing community. That’s the beauty of this platform on Substack—it's free!

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• —Everyone matters. 

• —Be positive. 

• —Gratitude in everything. 

• —Default action is compassion.

• —Empathy. Always. 

• —Motivations matter

• —Fight for Resolution

• —Resist Fear; embrace love

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On to the interview!

Johnny Shaw

Who are you and can you tell me a little about your work? What drives you? What do you hope to accomplish?

I’ve been writing for over 30 years. I started as an independent filmmaker and screenwriter, but shifted to writing fiction in 2011. Since then, I’ve had 7 crime novels published and have a mess of short stories and other stuff out there. More than half my books focus on Southern California and the Mexican border, which is where I grew up. They’re funny and violent and fun with a strong focus on character.

I’m all about the process. I write every day. And that part of the day is the best part of my day. I don’t know if I need three or four hours by myself so that I can write, or I write so that I can get that time by myself. Either way, it works for me.

I was more ambitious in my youth, but I’m older and wiser now. All I want to do is create work that I’ve thrown my whole body at. There’s a lot of half-assed writing out there, particularly in crime fiction. You might not like my books, but it’s never going to be because I half-assed. I always go full ass. 

How do you see your relationship with the reader?

Telling a story—whether in a room or on the page—is all about the reader’s experience. You can ask my wife. If I’m telling a story about something we did, and I feel like I’m losing the crowd, it’s pretty much a guarantee I’m going to make some shit up to get them back. When it comes to storytelling, I’m more interested in engaging the audience than something as dull as facts.

The reader does 90% of the work. It’s their imagination that the story lives inside. I see my job as curating that experience. Guiding the reader. My job is to give them a path to bring the story to life in their head.

How do you view your characters? What has changed over time, and what has stayed the same? How do you develop complex characters?

I try not to think of my books in the context of plot and character. It’s about people doing stuff. The more real the people in the story are to me, the more real they’ll be to the reader. And while there are some tricks, it’s about forcing the characters to make hard decisions, getting them to react rather than act, and throwing rocks and bottles at them to see what they do. 

If anything has changed, I’ve been more confident in writing characters that are further away from my own experience. As long as I’m true to the palette of human emotions that we all share and I do the right kind of research, I can make it work. Right now, my agent is shopping a novel I wrote from the point of view of a 16-year-old kid in 1980s Romania. That’s not something I would have considered tackling a decade ago.

What is your version of success? Has it changed during your writing journey? How so? What’s different now versus when you started? 

Any definition I have for success has nothing to do with writing, other than it’s an activity I enjoy doing. One type of success is about curating my day, because life is about the days you live. I haven’t had a day job since 1993. I’m writing this from Tbilisi, Georgia.

I grew up on a farm. At first, my big aspiration was to not be a farmer. Mission accomplished. 

Wealth isn’t about something as boring as money. Wealth is having interesting people in your life. And in that regard, I’m a rich man. I know a lot of cool people. I make a little bit of money writing. And I spend as much time outside the US as possible. I’ve spoken at writing events in—among other places—Slovenia, Sweden, and Scotland (I’m trying to get all the S countries out of the way first.)

I guess success when it comes to writing is just about keeping it going. Having the time to create the things that interest me. Getting my books to readers is cool, too. And not getting jaded along the way. I’ve written for money for a long time and managed to keep it mostly as play. If I don’t start taking myself seriously, I’ll call that success.

What type of reader are you? How do you view books you read, and how do they affect you and your writing? 

I’ve been reading very little crime fiction lately. Except for books by pals, most of what I read is in translation, graphic novels, or children’s books. I’m always looking for new ways to tell stories, and reading an Albanian novel or a Korean novel that is informed by a completely different experience and storytelling tradition can be enlightening.

I started reading children’s books, because I wrote one and wanted to avoid any rookie mistakes to the approach. In general, there’s a much stronger sense of capturing and engaging the reader, and honestly just a sense of fun in these books. And some amazingly good writing. I’d put HARRIET THE SPY by Louise Fitzhugh or THE ONE & ONLY IVAN by Katherine Applegate up against any modern adult novel. They’re just great books, period.

How do you find readers? What works and hasn’t worked for you? What resonates with you when readers share thoughts about your work? And where do you see yourself in the writing community and publishing world?

Reaching readers is a bit of a moving target. I haven’t had a book out in a while, so I’m less on top of this. In the past, social media was a stronger bullhorn. I’ve also at different times had a publisher-provided publicity team. That said, I’ve always relied heavily on word of mouth. Me telling the world that my book is great isn’t nearly as effective as someone else doing the same thing. I had a lot of early champions for my first book DOVE SEASON when it came out, and I’ve been riding that ever since.

Right now, I can’t even get someone to see a semi-funny post about something dumb I thought of, let alone promote a book. The algorithm absolutely eats up self-promotion.

I don’t read things like Amazon reviews, but I do appreciate it when people email me about my books. Especially people from the Imperial Valley where four of my books are set. I get some great messages from farmers. However, my favorite email was from a prison librarian in Nebraska who wanted me to know that my books were the most stolen books in the prison library, which I wear as a badge of honor. But I’m pretty sure it’s just because they make the best shivs.

I’m not sure where I am in the writing community and publishing world. I know a lot of folks. I have a good agent. I should probably do a better job hyping my friends (Everyone, run out and buy Christa Faust’s THE GET OFF. It’s fucking great), but I just hate social media so much.

—Tell me something interesting about yourself that these questions stimulated thought about. And tell me something you want others to know. 

Every novelist should have a spit valve project that allows their brain to let all the crazy out. Right now, I have TORN PAGES and YOU HAD TO BE THERE. Among other past projects I’ve done: edit the men’s adventure magazine BLOOD & TACOS, wrote a Juggalo crime novella, WHOOP! WHOOP! under the name Icy Thug Nutz, and I’m halfway done with a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style book for action movie fans, and so on and so on. It’s often the best work I do in that year, even if it’s for a much smaller audience. But mostly it gives me a creative release when I hit the doldrums with a book.

How did you get into the screenwriting/filmmaking business? What qualities or aspects transition from shooting cameras to writing? What lessons are most important to learn from screenwriting for novel writing and what are some pitfalls you see others (or yourself) fall into when transitioning from one medium to the other?

I studied film and made movies in college, including co-producing, writing, and editing a no-budget feature-length 16mm movie when I was 21. It played some festivals and made people aware of me as a writer. When I graduated undergrad, I dropped all ambitions to produce or edit and focused on writing. All my friends who were hyphenates—writer/director/producer/actors—had a harder time finding work. When a writing opportunity arose, nobody thought of the people who did everything. When someone heard about a writing gig, they thought of me.

After college, I wrote everything: greeting cards, sketch comedy, gag writing, cartoons, crossword puzzles, movie & art reviews, etc. I made $25 for writing a novelty pin that read “Guess Where I’m Pierced?” I learned a lot. As a screenwriter, I worked on some TV pilots, did rewrites, and sold a few spec screenplays. Somewhere in there, I got my MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA, as well. 

When I got an idea for my first novel (which turned out to be DOVE SEASON), I didn’t tell anyone I was writing it, because I wasn’t confident I would finish it. It was a medium I hadn’t tackled. I hadn’t even written a short story since junior high.

From idea to a solid draft, I can write a screenplay in 8-12 weeks. It’s long-form, but a screenplay just isn’t a lot of words. A novel was a whole different monster. I didn’t even tell my wife I was writing it until I was over 100 pages into it and was pretty sure I was going to end up with a first draft.

Writing the novel, I leaned on my strengths from screenwriting (dialogue, story structure, scene construction, humor) and acknowledged my lack of experience elsewhere, particularly description, immersing the reader into the moment, and narrative voice. The latter I tackled by putting the book in the first person. If I just treated the story like a really good story that some drunk told in a bar, then I could hear it and keep it consistent. That became my aesthetic. When it came to description, I just set everything in places I had been. The book is set in the house where I grew up, across the road from the dive bar I grew up across the street from. I could see them clearly in my mind’s eye and then describe them.

How long did it take you to find an agent? Did they transition with you from the filmmaking world or did you find a literary agent after publishing? What tips would you suggest to those looking for an agent and what are some things to be on the look out for in an agent? Pros and cons-type of thing. 

I have no tips. I’m the wrong guy to ask about agents. I’ve been writing professionally for over 30 years, and I got my first agent 2 years ago. I mean, my first agent in any medium. I didn’t have an agent as a screenwriter either. My first novel DOVE SEASON came out in 2011, and since then I’ve had a total of 7 novels published. I found and brokered those deals myself. 

Then, I wrote a novel I didn’t know how to sell myself. I knew I needed a partner. A friend introduced me to Josh Getzler at Bouchercon in Minneapolis. We were aware of each other. He represents about a dozen friends of mine. He read my stuff, got what I was doing, and here we are.

You’ll hear people say this because it’s very true: No agent is better than a bad agent. Partner with someone who loves your work, because there’s a point the honeymoon is over when the book doesn’t sell out of the gate. That love turns to like, but the belief in it remains. If the agent just kind of like the work or think they can sell it fast, that’s going to turn sour as soon as there’s actual work to be done.

I’m proud of what I accomplished without an agent, but that shit’s exhausting. Just knowing I have someone in my corner goes a long way for my mental health.

That novel idea/premise sounds intriguing, and I find as we grow wiser (ah—older) we start writing projects that we consider ambitious. Does your world travel play a part in those idea transformations? Where did the nugget of the story originate?

A lot of time when writers travel to a place, they have research in mind. When I go to places, I try to accidentally step in a story. I’m not doing research, I’m listening. And the best way is by talking to people. I don’t get a lot of inspiration from looking at buildings. Although, I recently walked by an enormous, abandoned slaughterhouse on the edge of Budapest that got my brain moving. I mean, how haunted is that place?

When I travel, I try to go to a place for two or three months to really be there. I’ve spent around four years of my life in Central and Eastern Europe and I’m still fascinated by it. Some of that comes from my American education. I grew up in the era of the “Iron Curtain.” All the countries behind said curtain were full of godless Communists waiting in bread lines. They were presented as one big idea. Where I had preconceived ideas of France and Spain and Italy when I first traveled there, I had nothing when it came to Serbia, Albania, or Bulgaria.

It didn’t even occur to me that Romanian is a romance language until a few days before I went there—and it’s in the name. My ignorance sparked my curiosity more than anything else. 

And then it starts how all stories start. The definition of a good idea is one that immediately gives you more ideas. The book I wrote set in Romania came about from a footnote I read while researching smuggling in the 1980s in Yugoslavia (which was for a book I’m eventually going to write.)

How does the family handle your writing time? Is that the reason for the interest in children’s books? Or was it a fascination with pinpoint storytelling? And what did you learn in that research? 

I don’t have kids. It’s just me and my wife. We’ve been together for over 30 years. She gets me. She’s a painter and a writer. We both need time to create, and we respect and protect that time for each other. 

My interest in children’s books came about when I was in England for a month a couple years ago. My wife was participating in a one-month silent meditation retreat. That’s not my thing, so I got a place near where she was at in Devon and had my own personal writing retreat. When I travel, I read everything on the Kindle, but being in England is a treat because I can find physical books. So, I got in the habit of going to the charity shop near me and buying whatever book jumped out at me. The first book I grabbed a Roald Dahl book.

It was a reminder that kids’ books aren’t about teaching kids lessons. They’re about entertaining and challenging kids, just like any other readers. That gave me an idea for a story.

When you start doing this for a living, you can lose a sense of play that is essential in the creative process. Creating a story is a combination of a daydream and a puzzle. It’s playing with Barbies or GI Joes or whatever. It’s make-believe. If you take that shit too seriously, you’re doing it wrong. And that’s not to say that there can’t be depth and meaning in the work. It just means that it’s not necessary to be up one’s own ass to write something of worth.

Good questions. I hope that was what you were looking for. Thanks.

Johnny Shaw is the author of seven novels, including the Jimmy Veeder Fiasco series and the Anthony Award-winning adventure novel BIG MARIA. His ridiculous side projects are often more interesting than his books. He’s currently writing real pages of imaginary books over at Torn Pages: www.patreon.com/tornpages and has gone full analogue retro and will have a staplebound zine, YOU HAD TO BE THERE, coming out in the Spring, which will include a number of humor pieces as well as contributions by a number of award-winning and bestselling author pals.

Mark Atley is known for writing crime fiction, with his works often characterized by complex characters, engaging dialogue, and narratives that build tension towards explosive climaxes.

Atley's approach to writing often involves creating intricate plots where characters' histories and motives are deeply interwoven, providing readers with both entertainment and a commentary on crime and morality. His work has been featured on platforms like Audible for audiobooks, indicating a broad reach in the crime fiction genre.

Mark Atley also engages with his audience through social media, where he can be followed for updates on new releases and insights into his writing process