with Josh Shoemake
We are delighted to welcome novelist Josh Shoemake to Omnimystery News today.
Josh introduces a most unusual detective in his first book, Planet Willie (Opium Books; June 2013 trade paperback and ebook formats), and we recently had a chance to chat with him about it and his series character.
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Omnimystery News: Planet Willie is the first in a new series. Tell us a little bit about the central character and what direction you think the series will take.
Photo provided courtesy of
Josh Shoemake
Josh Shoemake: This is my first Willie Lee novel, but I imagine he's a character I'll want to come back to. It's a first person novel — Willie's telling his own story — and I just fell in love with his voice. He's funny, irreverent, and takes the sort of risks we all imagine we'd like to take. I like being Willie, and I don't imagine he'll develop significantly over time — he's just Willie. When you look at series — on the page or on the television — change is finite, I think. You assume an arc with change, and the story eventually must come to an end. Iconic characters, however, like Marlowe, or Willie, can just keep on going forever.
OMN: From the synopsis it doesn't seem like Planet Willie neatly fits into any single genre. As the author, how do you categorize the book?
JS: The genre is comic angel cowboy detective. What? That's not a genre. I had no idea … Really I don't think Willie fits into a genre at all, and that's his disadvantage and his advantage. People who love purely "hard-boiled" or "angel" stories may be disappointed, because he's more of a smorgasbord, but those who love good literary fiction bordering on the experimental, with a healthy dose of humor, will hopefully love Planet Willie.
OMN: Tell us something about the book that isn't mentioned in the synopsis.
JS: Willie's fond of inventing dance moves of his own. I'm talking about the Inadvisable Moonlanding. I'm referring to the Extravagant Chipmunk. And then of course ultimately the Great White Wildebeast, a combination of acrobatics and crowd roar and maybe too many bourbons that will never be repeated again except maybe in more intimate groups of two or three.
OMN: Is Willie Lee based in part on anyone you know?
JS: Absolutely not, though I'd like to think I share Willie's determination to live life to the fullest, a mission that becomes particularly important when you're a detective for the Paradise Police Department — and dead — and only get occasional chances at life back on earth.
OMN: Is the setting of the book, Paradise, a real place?
JS: I try to give a general sense of the place, and I've been to all of the places I describe, but since the book is a comedy, I think settings can be sketched rather than photographed.
OMN: Describe your writing environment.
JS: At my computer anywhere, everywhere I can disconnect from the world around me and get inside my own head. When the computer itself becomes a distraction, I'll take a notebook out to a café and write that way. Again, the change in routine is important.
OMN: Where might we find you when you're not writing?
JS: I'm interested in a lot, and have brief or extended flings with all sorts of hobbies, which probably comes through in Willie's eclectic tastes and interests.
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as an author?
JS: This is an impossible question to answer, since every author's analysis of what works is constantly evolving, but in a sense, I guess that would be my advice: set a rigid routine to help you get words on the page as often as possible, then adopt a new routine when the first routine becomes a routine.
OMN: Complete this sentence: "I am a writer, and so …"
JS: I am a writer, and so I am a mystery to myself.
OMN: How did you come up with the title Planet Willie? And what can you tell us about the book cover?
JS: The publisher worked with a great designer on the cover to get that explosive, comic book look. Then a writer friend gave me great advice for the title. Originally the title was Fallen Willie, a play on "fallen angel" that I thought was funny. But this writer friend repeated some advice he'd gotten from the advertising man and art collector Charles Saatchi: a title should never have a negative in it. "Fallen" was negative — and nothing about Willie's negative — so we went with Planet Willie.
OMN: Did any specific authors influence how and/or what you write today?
JS: I was a high school English teacher and headmaster, so my sensibilities have definitely remained literary. I love a heavy, European novel, and though Willie is absolutely not heavy or European, I do take great care with individual sentences as those authors do, and the crime writers I love the most are those with a literary sensibility rather than a pure plot sensibility — Chandler, Hammett, Thompson. The southern voice of Thom Jones in some of his short stories was also an inspiration.
OMN: Do you have any favorite literary series characters?
JS: Philip Marlowe is without a doubt my favorite detective. I'd hire him just to hear those great one-liners. How effective he might be at his job would be irrelevant to me. He'd be well worth the money for his sentences alone.
OMN: What kind of feedback do you get from your readers?
JS: I most enjoy receiving extravagant praise from my readers. Outrageous criticism comes second (but a distant second).
OMN: Create a Top 5 list for us on any subject.
JS: Top 5 Willie Lee smiles you might want to try in appropriate situations, with proper training:
1. The Heartstopper
2. The Smorgasbord
3. The Diligent Schoolboy
4. The Mozzarella
5. The Billboard Jesus
OMN: What's next for you?
JS: I have another book coming out at the same time as Planet Willie: Tangier: A Literary Guide for Travellers. It's a history of all the edgy writers who lived in Tangier, Morocco, especially Paul Bowles and a surprising number of characters from the Beat generation.
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Josh Shoemake was born in Virginia and is based in Paris and Marrakesh, Morocco. He attended Columbia University, taught literature at The American School of Tangier, and was headmaster of The American School of Marrakesh. To learn more about Josh and his work, visit his website at JoshShoemake.com or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Planet Willie
Josh Shoemake
A Willie Lee Mystery (1st in series)
Willie Lee is a highly unusual angel. Irreverent, hilarious, and politically incorrect to the extreme, he tends to make the most of his time on Planet Earth whenever he gets sent down as a detective in the Paradise Police Department, Lost Souls Division, to re-inhabit the body that was woefully lost to him when some misguided stranger put a bullet through the back of his pretty head, four years, eight months, and fifteen days ago.
Now Willie's on the trail of a beautiful art dealer named Fernanda Shore who may have stolen her father's prized painting and who's wandered far off the straight and narrow. Not that Willie's complaining. He's looking for any excuse to extend his investigation in any direction that enables him to prolong his time away from the boring clouds and back in his old body on earth. Which partially explains the belly dancers, the fine Western apparel, the Albanian terrorists, the cape, the bourbon, the nuns, and the cliffs of Acapulco.
Et cetera.
Because for Willie it's the et cetera that makes life worth living, as long and as hard as they'll let him. And in the meantime he might just figure out who shot him.
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