F. Paul Wilson

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SUNNI: [laughs] When did you slip me a sip of it? Paul, you've been wonderfully sweet to me for several years now, sending me advance review copies of many RJ books. Much as I love the books themselves, the stuff that accompanies them -- usually an outline, but one had an interview with you focusing on Jack -- might be better, because they allow a glimpse behind the curtain that's usually separating the final product from the creative process. I take it that doesn't cause you any discomfort? How did that outline tradition start?

PAUL: You mean publishing the outline in an accompanying chapbook?

SUNNI: Yep, that's the word I couldn't find.

PAUL: Barry Hoffman, whose Gauntlet Press has been publishing signed limited 1st editions of the RJ novels since Conspiracies, likes to offer a little lagniappe to folks who buy directly from him. After trying an old short story and an interview, we settled on publishing the outline -- with all my handwritten corrections -- as a chapbook. People seem to like a peek at the process. They see that an outline isn't carved in stone. It's a process, it has an evolution. What starts out as a straight path begins to wind back and forth to suit the terrain as you explore it.

SUNNI: Exactly. And writing fiction is probably the most mysterious process of them all to those who haven't attempted it. In one of those chapbooks, you briefly recounted how you began your writing career. Economy was a large factor in creating an outline rather than just starting in on a novel.

PAUL: Sure was. As a part-time writer I couldn't afford a 100- or 200-page false start. I needed to know I had an interesting progression of events, but most of all I had to be sure the story would have a satisfying conclusion that was a result of those events, not just tacked on because I'd run out of story. And you know you've read books like that.

SUNNI: Ohhh yeah! Now that economy is less a factor, has your use of outlines changed any?

PAUL: If you'd asked me this 8 months ago, before I started Harbingers, the answer would have been no. But with that novel I ran into a wall on the outline. The book was sketched out in my head but I couldn't seem to outline it. I got just so far and stalled. So I started writing the book, figuring that when I wrote through to the end of what I had outlined, I'd be able to outline the rest. But I rarely went back to the outline. Sure, I'd jot down situations and certain progressions that occurred to me as I went along, but for the first time in my life, I wrote a novel without a pre-existing hardcopy outline. I don't know if I'll be able to do that again. Harbingers is an odd combination of an intensely dark plot but, despite all the pain and suffering and tragedy, it moves at a pace even more frenetic than my usual. I think something in my subconscious warned me that I might vitiate those elements by working through them in advance. Whatever, it worked. My editor thinks it's the best yet, and he may be right.

SUNNI: You sure do know how to make it hard to wait patiently for your books, Paul! [laughs] In your interview with William Simmons, you say you're an individualist. Are you an anarchist, too? Any other -isms you want to accept or deny while we're at it? [laughs]

PAUL: Anarchy seems so attractive in theory, but I look at western Iraq and see how anarchy could play out in the real world. If the killers were limiting their attacks to US personnel, you could called it resistant insurgence, but they're not. They're killing other Iraqis for religious and political reasons. The Iraqi social fabric has shredded. There is no law. That, by definition, is anarchy. Now, when you add a prefix or suffix to qualify anarchy, you've got a genetically altered beast. But in a pure form, you're seeing anarchy in western Iraq.

I'm a limited government guy: Government should walk softly and carry a big stick to kabong anyone who initiates force. Other than that, KYFHO ["Keep Your Fucking Hands Off"].

SUNNI: I'll agree with you this far, Paul: the definition of anarchy is no law -- but the result isn't necessarily no social fabric.

PAUL: Maybe, maybe not. Humanity includes a large population of jackals -- mean, sneaky, cowardly creatures held in check only by fear of reprisal. Remove that fear and they run wild. Look at Bosnia. Look at New Orleans after the police withdrew from downtown. Remove the big stick and you hand a bunch of little sticks to the worst of us. We're a soft and, because of the demonizing of guns, a disarmed society. I can't see it taking too long before, depending on where you live, you're under the thumb of the Crips or the Bloods or Aryan Nation or Nation of Islam. ... Damn, I'm depressing myself.

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