📚 A Bookish Chat with 'The Butcher's Prayer' Author Anthony Neil Smith @anthonynsmith #AuthorInterview #BlogTour #Interview

Anthony Neil Smith is an English professor and crime novelist, born and raised in Mississippi, now teaching at Southwest Minnesota State University. The Butcher’s Prayer is his fifteenth novel. He loves cheap red wine and Mexican food.

You can visit his website at http://www.anthonyneilsmith.com or connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Welcome to The Writer's Life! How did you come up with the idea to write your book?

I was inspired by a real murder that took place down home in Mississippi, on the coast. A butcher – that was his day job – killed a man he owed money to, then chopped him to pieces and tried to get rid of the evidence in the bayou behind his house. Also, that butcher and I used to attend the same Pentecostal church, so I knew him well enough, even if we weren’t close.

I have been trying to find a way to write a story using that crime as a jumping off point. I’ve never been interested in approaching it as nonfiction, so I waited a long time, until I envisioned the detective who would take the case – a fallen preacher turned cop named Hosea Elgin, who would also be the butcher’s brother-in-law. Once he appeared in my head, it was time to start writing.

How would you describe your book’s ideal reader?

I have a bit of a reputation for writing hard violence and kinda-sorta graphic sex scenes, but in this novel, I toned it down because that’s where the story led me. I think anyone who likes a dark crime story where the “why” is more important than the “whodunit,” and they don’t mind the nastiness of the consequences, will end up hooked on this one. Anyone curious about the old-school religion of the book, and how that worms its way into every aspect of their lives, should give it a shot.

What part of the book was the most fun to write?

I haven’t been home to this particular area where I grew up since 2011, when my grandmother died. My parents moved to New Orleans before Katrina, and rebuilt afterwards. So when I wrote scenes about the places I remembered from my teenage and post-college years, those were fun, and a little bittersweet. By setting this in the nineties, I was writing about a world that had not yet been so battered. It’s pre-Katrina, pre-9/11, pre-internet, pre-George Floyd, and very nearly pre-cell phone (although Hosea has one, brand new). I don’t think I’ll be visiting my hometown, or ever attending a Pentecostal church again, for any reason in the near or far future, so this book is a bit of a farewell to it all.

How did you come up with the title?

I was torn between this one and Son of a Preacher Man. But in the end I wanted to emphasize the Butcher and the religious aspect of the book. He had experienced the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues, and all the fire and brimstone that goes along with it, but now he was “backslidden,” as they say, having just done something horrifying, and he hope there might be some sort of redemption for his soul. But as he keeps praying, his hopes turn from wanting a clean soul going to jail or the needle, towards trying to escape scott-free. Thus, The Butcher’s Prayer drives the story from page one.

What’s one fact about your book that would surprise people?

This book helped me climb out of a deep depression about my writing. At the time I started, I hadn’t written anything for about six months and thought I was finished with novels. I had made some missteps, I think, with the previous few books and was burned out. I wasn’t interested in any subject. But that’s when the idea for Butcher’s started calling me, and it was weird that this very personal book, maybe one of the most traditional novels I had written, was what lifted me up. Since finishing Butcher’s, I’ve written two more novels and a novella.

What advice would you give to a writer working on their first book?

Finish it. No matter what it is, finish it. Reach the sixty-thousand words threshold, even if it end up in the back of your closet somewhere. Novel-writing is one of those arts that you learn most by doing. You can read craft books all day for months, but until you’ve actually put those words on paper, in order, in an arc from beginning through middle to end, you won’t “get it.” The rhythm of novel-writing takes time to learn, and you learn by writing more novels.

How do you use social media as an author?

I’m torn on this, because it is the cheapest and fastest way to reach a large audience, but while I have no problems promoting my work online, I would get bored if that was all I did. So I try to joke around on Twitter, have conversations with others, make new friends and readers, without my timeline being one long ad for the books. I have to be careful, because if I’m not careful with Twitter, I’ll get sucked into arguments with people who don’t play fair, which is a bit crushing. I’m not a fan of cancel culture and the rush to judgement on Twitter, which has lost me a few friends there. So I’ve quit Twitter several times, only to come back months later with my tail between my legs and have to start all over again.

Now, Instagram, on the other hand, has been a hoot. There’s a lot more positive energy over there in the Bookstagram world. In addition to promotion, I like showing off books from my pulp collection, and from authors I want to promote. Also, my chili peppers, tequila bottles, new t-shirts, and anything else fun. When two of my novels were published in France, I started taking French lesson on Duolingo and worked on making new friends in that country via Instagram. That’s been very rewarding.

If I can’t be myself on social media (while I also recognize that none of us on there are ever completely ourselves), then why would I want to bother with it?

What other books are you working on and when will they be published?

I have just signed with a new publishing company for a book due out next year. I’m not sure when the official announcement will come, so I have to bite my tongue. But I think it’s a radically different book than Butcher’s, back to me writing about jerks (a**holes!) because they are fascinating, especially in the context of noir, where nothing goes right.

I like trying new things, new voices, new style with each book. I’m always growing that way.

I’m sitting on a manuscript I love called Murderapolis, an old nickname for Minneapolis. I really want this to find a large audience, but I have to wait for the new publisher to get around to reading it to see if it’ll play. Crossing fingers.

And after having a ton of good luck and good reviews for my novella Slow Bear from Fahrenheit 13, I’m following it up in early ’22 with Slower Bear.

If you could spend a day with another popular author, whom would you choose?

I have been very lucky in my twenty-plus years of hanging around the crime fiction world to spend a good amount of time with many of my favorites (name drop alert!) like Linwood Barclay, Laura Lippman, Megan Abbott, Charlie Stella, so many more that I’m drawing a blank. But the couple of times I met Walter Mosley, I was tongue-tied and starstruck. I would love to sit down for a few drinks with him and talk about writing, or history, or anything. Instead, I blurted out “I…love you,” and he got away as fast as he could.

The one time I got to spend a couple of hours with James Crumley in a bar at a Chicago hotel was unforgettable. He is a huge influence on me, and he has a ton of fans clamoring for his time. But this time it was him, me, and my dear friend Sean Doolittle, listening to him tell war stories. One of the highlights. Having that with Mosley would be icing on the already-icing of this huge writing cake.

Finally, what message are you trying to get across with your book?

I have a complicated relationship to the religion depicted in the novel, even though I no longer follow that church. One of the questions I was interested in was what to do when you’re forced to choose between family and faith. I’d think a lot of religious people would scoff and say that would never happen, but in the Bible, Jesus encourages people to leave their families – shut them out, even – to follow him.

If there is one thing Americans are experts in, though, it’s twisting their religious beliefs to fit their other secular beliefs, not vice versa. We see that in politics constantly, and even more so now than in the nineties, when the book is set. So the question I set out is, if you have the choice between saving your family, saving your faith, or saving justice, which would you choose?

Thank you again for this interview! Do you have any final words?

Thanks for letting me ramble, and please, seek out and support small indie presses who are taking chances on fiction that the corporate publishers won’t touch anymore. Places like Fahrenheit Press do a lot of hard work for little pay because they really believe in the books and authors they publish, many of whom have no other outlet. So if you’d like to buy The Butcher’s Prayer, I would encourage you to first consider picking it up from Fahrenheit’s own website. Keep indie presses alive!

Title: THE BUTCHER’S PRAYER
Author: Anthony Neil Smith
Publisher: Fahrenheit 13
Pages: 275
Genre: Crime Fiction/Noir

BOOK BLURB:

Rodney Goodfellow watches his friend kill a man, and then volunteers the unthinkable – to carve up the body with his butcher’s knives in order to get rid of the evidence. But the victim’s girlfriend escapes halfway through the butchering, sending Rodney and the triggerman, Charles, on the run.

Charles is unhinged, flying high on meth. When it’s clear that escape isn’t a realistic possibility, he chooses chaos. He goes back looking for a little revenge, with Rodney and the girlfriend first on his list.

Hosea Elgin is a fallen preacher turned police detective…and Rodney’s brother-in-law. When he realizes Rodney is involved, he’s sickened, but he’s got to keep searching for his fugitives. He weighs loyalty to his job against loyalty to his family.

Rachel Goodfellow is Rodney’s wife and Hosea’s younger sister. She worries that Rodney might come looking for her in his time of need. He’s the father of her two children. Could they ever be a family again? Will her love for him overcome her revulsion, or will she be the one to turn him in?

And what about Hosea’s father, a Pentecostal pastor, and older brother, the pastor’s right hand man? Would they choose family over justice and give Rodney refuge in spite of Hosea?

Hosea and his partner are on the prowl, trying to find Rodney and Charles before they can kill again, but he never expects his own family to stand in his way. Ties are strained, faith is tested, and there has to be a breaking point.

PRAISE

“The Butcher’s Prayer is wine-dark noir, with a hammering and bloody heart. This is Smith at his bleak and soulful best.” — Laura Benedict, Edgar-nominated author of The Stranger Inside

“Anthony Neil Smith is a massive talent. One of the very best crime writers I’ve ever read.” — Allan Guthrie, author of Kiss Her Goodbye and Hard Man.

“Visceral, propulsive writing that cuts like a razor. Think Elmore Leonard with an injection of Southern Gothic. Heady stuff.” — Dan Fesperman, author of Safe Houses.

“Crime-fiction veteran Anthony Neil Smith wields a smooth yet serrated style that’s carved him two decades worth of fierce material, now being re-discovered by a younger upstart audience of modern noir enthusiasts. He possesses such an acute, vivid feel of time and place in his subjects, his stories immediately burrow into my memory and remain long, withstanding the static storms of our contemporary attention-deficits. It’s challenging stuff, yet wholly accessible; with spiking dark humor that confirms sure you still have a pulse.” — Gabriel Hart, author of Fallout From Our Asphalt Hell

For More Information

Pick up your copy of The Butcher’s Prayer at Amazon.