My Interview With Josh Bazell About His New Novel Wild Thing - Page 3

Not only does Bazell have footnotes but there's even a "guest footnote" at one point, penned by Violet, one of the characters of the book — a novel idea.

Now let's get to the interview.   

How did you come up with this story? And just how WOULD you summarize what this is about because I am struggling to do so but I blame that on allergy meds.

It’s about a physician who takes a job investigating rumors of a carnivorous lake monster in Minnesota while on the run from the mafia because he used to be a hitman. That’s obviously a pretty classic noir setup, but I think my approach to it is new enough to keep things interesting.

What kind of research did you do for this? Did you ride on a cruise ship to get those parts right or chase after what may be mythical creatures?

Homey don’t cruise, but at the moment I’m in LA trying to find one person in the film industry who doesn’t lie all the time, so I think I can say I’ve got the mythical creatures thing covered. Plus, I always keep up with unexplainedmysteries.com, and not just because they link to my book. Although mostly for that reason.

I love your footnotes. Do you and Lisa Lutz have a contest going to see who can a) help return footnotes to novels and b) who can write funnier ones? But seriously, why do you think you have more footnotes than most authors or is it the other way round and other authors should use them more?

Lisa Lutz uses footnotes?

Speaking of footnotes — last question on this topic, I promise — are all the footnotes accurate and true, particularly the one about cruise ships on page 11?

They pretty much have to be, since unlike with regular text, you can’t just append a footnote to them saying “Not.”

How would you describe your protagonist, Pietro? How are you similar to the protagonist and how are you different?

We don’t have the same name.

I'm very impressed by the amount of sourcing you did for this novel. In fact I think it's fair to say your source section and appendix are
longer than I've seen in some non-fiction books. Why did you decide to go into so much detail – I am not complaining (I especially enjoyed the section on Sarah Palin) — just curious.

Article Author: Scott Butki

Scott Butki was a newspaper reporter for more than 10 years before making a career change into education... then into special education.

He reads at least 50 books a year and has about the same number of author interviews each year and, …

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