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The Pink Room Short fiction Strange news Street Talk The Screaming Room Author bio
Mark LaFlamme on... Mark LaFlamme
Lewiston Sun Journal Dec. 17, 2006
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Sun Journal reporter
Mark LaFlamme recently sat down with author Mark LaFlamme for a discussion
about his new novel "The Pink Room." The interview alternated between
friendly and antagonistic as the journalist pressed the novelist for answers
about his book. The following is the result of the exchange.
Q: It's been said
that you sleep until 1 p.m. each afternoon and then work the night beat at
the paper. Tell me, where does this leave time for writing fiction?
A: That's a very good
question, Mark. I write just about all of my fiction between midnight and
roughly four in the morning. When I'm working on a novel, I write at least
2,000 words a night, no matter what. I often write more, but I won't leave
the computer until I have at least 2,000 words of fresh copy. One time, I
did a word count and found that I was eight words short of that goal. I had
to go back and pound out eight new words just to maintain that discipline.
Q: What were the
words?
A: "They found the
severed limb the following day." Actually, I just made that up. But I may
use it in future work.
Q: Considering the
themes you write about in works of fiction, do you ever scare yourself?
A: Why, yes. Yes, I
do. When I write, I'm surrounded by various ghouls and goblins I keep in my
room. When I'm creating a particularly spooky scene in a story, I fancy I've
seen one or more of them moving in on me from the corner of my eye. I also
have my back facing the door, which was just really bad planning. On
occasion, I'll wheel around in my chair, absolutely convinced that someone
has crept in behind me. Sometimes, I need to go outside and shake it off.
Q: Not the bravest
guy in the world, are you Mark?
A: Not when it comes
to the world of the supernatural. At least I don't wet the bed.
Q: I heard you've
written hundreds of short stories since you were a kid. Where do you get
your ideas.
A: I'm glad you asked
that, Mark. I understand most writers hate that question. Stephen King has a
stock answer in which he quips that all his ideas come from a warehouse in
Cleveland or something. Me, I've been dying for someone to ask.
Q: So, will you
answer the question?
A: Right. I
absolutely cannot go to sleep each night unless a mental movie is playing in
my head. I call it my cerebral cinema. I need to have a story line going and
characters to act them out as I'm drifting off. Usually, it's just a very
simple scene to start with and the story develops as I go to sleep. I don't
remember a time when I approached sleep without that happening in my mind.
Q: Is that how the
idea for the Pink Room was conceived?
A: It is. I was
trying to fall asleep one night when I conjured the image of a man walking
down a very dark road at night. Just a man strolling into nothing, content
and at ease. In my cerebral cinema, a car rolled to a stop beside him and a
man spoke from inside. He said: "We understand you've been inside the house.
We'd like to talk to you about that."
At the time, I was
reading a lot of Discover magazines and books about quantum mechanics. The
concept of string theory very naturally wormed its way into my mental
storyline. A night or two later, I had most of the plot worked out. A night
after that, I started writing "The Pink Room."
Q: How long did it
take you to complete the novel?
A: Around six weeks
for the first draft. At 2,000 words or so a day, that brought me up to
roughly 85,000 words, a fair sized novel. But that's just plodding right
through the story at a sprinters pace. After that, I had to go back and
rewrite some really horrible sections, tweak a little, add elements of
foreshadowing, etc. That takes longer and it's not as much fun.
Q: Is "The Pink Room"
your first novel?
A: No. My first novel
is tentatively titled: "Worumbo." It may eventually take on the title: "The
Screaming Room." It's about government experiments with mind control at an
abandoned Maine mill and a young newspaper reporter with blossoming psychic
abilities. It was a blast to write. The story takes place in a city between
Lewiston and Lisbon.
Q: You are aware that
there is no city located there, are you not?
A: I am aware of
that, Mark. But in my world, there is a rather large city called Myrtle
right outside Lewiston. A lot of nasty things happen there.
Q: Will "The Pink
Room" be your last novel.
A: Not a chance. I'm
about to start a third. It will be about a man who nearly derails a
presidential campaign by digging up his dead wife, or about a man who sees
dead people every time he detoxes from alcohol.
Q: You're a strange
person, Mr. LaFlamme. Did you have any friends at all when you were growing
up?
A: I had lots of
friends and many girlfriends, Mark. I was a normal kid in every way. Except
I thought a lot about dead things at night. But hell, we all did that,
right?
Q: Is "The Pink
Room" just a long winded version of the Street Talk column?
A: No. I love
writing the column but there are definite limits to what I can involve
there. The same narrative voice might be present in the novel, but
otherwise it's entirely different. The gloves are off when I create
fiction. Things are described as I imagine them. There is no point where I
have to rein myself in and say: "Okay. That's not appropriate for the
readership." The landscape of the story is filled with violence and
cruelty. Some of it is graphic. There might even be a nasty word or two in
"The Pink Room."
Q: That's about all
the questions I have for you. If I could just ask one more?
A: Shoot.
Q: Who's that coming
in through the door behind you?
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