A Conversation with Craig Terlson

from Mexico to Canada, with a detour in Japan

For the past few years, Craig Terlson has read my books (and some of my short stories) in draft form and given me insightful comments on plot, character, and writing. “Be kind to the reader,” he’s fond of saying. I try to remember that …

Craig knows what he’s talking about. He’s written books that flirt with magical realism, is the author of the Luke Fischer crime series (Luke says he is NOT a detective, even if he does the kinds of things detectives do), and has penned short stories published in various literary magazines. He is also a graphic designer living and teaching in Winnipeg, Canada.

We often chat on FaceTime about what we’re working on, the challenges of the publishing industry, and life in general. This conversation is a tad more structured than our usual improvisations.

First I asked him how the character of Luke Fischer was born …

Craig Terlson: After way too many close calls and near misses with agents and publishers, any enjoyment I had as a writer had been sucked away. I decided to quit writing. I let that simmer for a while (I can't recall how long). Then I had a thought. Wasn't writing supposed to be fun? What would be fun? What about a neo-noir, sort of 70s guy who knew how to fight and drink, and was pretty funny to boot? 

So, I got up every morning, early, and wrote for nine months. Appropriate for a birth … Luke Fischer, there he was. In truth, I knew absolutely nothing about him. I wanted the story to take place somewhere that was not Canada. That, and my love of guys getting beat up in movies and books, was where I started. I didn't know why Luke was in Mexico. I didn't know where he'd come from or anything about him.

I banged out this first sentence:

Awake. There’s a patch of wall the exact shade of a honeydew melon that looks so perfect I can almost forget about the .45 pointed at my forehead.

So Luke awoke on the floor of a bathroom in Puerto Vallarta with a gun pointed at his head. And away we go.

M.E.: That scene is in Surf City Acid Drop, the first Luke Fischer book. He’s hired to find a man and the search takes him all the way from Mexico to Montreal. When I read it, I thought this is a road movie. The people Luke meets on the way are funky. In particular a contract killer in lizard boots named Mostly Harold. In Luke #2, Manistique, he’s in Michigan and New Mexico and shares the stage with the local sheriff, Sam Galliard. Three Minute Hero, the third Luke book starts in Mexico but the action takes place in Canada, with Mostly Harold in a return performance. Your characters cover a lot of territory and they clock serious mileage. Being on the road is a recurrent theme in your books. The road is practically a main character in Correction Line (not part of the Fischer series). For the non-Canadians reading this post, can you explain what a correction line is?

C.T.: Growing up on the prairies, I heard the term a lot, usually when someone was giving directions. “Oh yeah, head south about ten miles, just past the correction line you'll see the turn ...” If you have driven through the Canadian prairies, or the U.S. Midwest, chances are you have been on a correction line—a  long curve that seems to go around nothing. In a grid road system, they have to put in these “s-curves” every 24 miles, on the account of us all living on a ball. If they weren't there the roads would eventually converge.

Early on when I thought of a story where a man hits a curve in his life, I came upon this metaphor of the correction line. The title works on a few different levels, as the main character, Roy, finds his life needing to shift, and the changes are dramatic. When I look back on this novel, I think a lot of characters were in the middle of their own correction lines—even the way the non-linear timeline moves in the book suggests curves and shifts. 

When I was first writing Correction Line, I had been reading a lot of South American fiction, notably Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The mysticism of those books set in the jungles, where it would rain yellow flowers for three days, deeply intrigued me. I wanted to take that mood and put it in a setting I knew more about.

The dog, Delta, is a bit like a familiar that would be a spiritual guardian, or an aide to a practitioner of magic. I didn't see the character of Lucy as a witch, but it seemed right that she would have a deep connection with her dog.

M.E.: And then there’s these jars that everybody is after, that contain something magical and powerful …

C.T.: The jars are supernatural—and this definitely comes from the South American magical realism influence. But I always like to plant a bit of doubt in the reader's mind. Like does the liquid in the jars really heal? It seems to heal Roy at one point, and Dave (the dark force in the novel) believes it can heal the disease ravaging his body.

Not trying to be cagey, well, maybe somewhat. But there is a power in the glowing liquid if you believe there is. But that healing power will only go so far.

Weird side note—a couple of years after I'd finished my book I came across a strange mystical novel by the British writer, Charles Williams. In his novel a character applies a liquid all over their naked body and has a transcendental experience. The similarity to my story was kind of chilling.

M.E.: Talking about supernatural, you went the whole way with Samurai Bluegrass that was published last year, a radical change of genre from the Luke Fischer books. Luke #3 was released last year too, at about the same time.

C.T.: The story of a time-traveling samurai, if he really was one, was a return to the kind of writing, the themes, and definitely the mood of Correction Line. I wanted to ride the line of the supernatural with Gordo, the main character, who believes himself to be a 12^th Century samurai, and now inhabits a 20^thCentury man in Toronto.

For sure it's a bit of a different set of writing muscles, though my focus is always on story and character, whatever the setting. The two books crossed paths as I wrote them, Samurai Bluegrass taking much longer, around nine years. Three Minute Hero was in the Luke Fischer universe, so those boundaries were already set up—it took around two years to complete. I guess both offered a kind of freedom, because with the Fischer book the challenge was how to keep the series fresh, interesting, and action-packed, all within a realistic setting. Toronto in the 1980s was also a realistic setting, but it was freeing to imagine Gordo traveling in time to get there, and to imagine his life back on the Japanese shōen before he was banished.

I spent focused time on each book, in chunks of several months. I think I would have gotten very confused otherwise. I don't have the best memory for when things began and when they ended (speaking of writing the novels). I would bring the story to a certain point and leave it to simmer. Around the 50,000-word marker in Three Minute Hero, I left the story, and wandered over to whatever stage Samurai was in.  

Just the other night I worked on a short piece because I liked the challenge of a 200-word story that the magazine editor had put forth. It's like a sprint, rather than the marathon of novel writing. And ha, I just realized I have two totally different novels sitting at different stages on my computer right now.

M.E.: What I love about Samurai Bluegrass is how much it tells me about your graphic designer mindset. Heather, the second point of view in the book, is struggling to get recognized as a commercial artist. It felt very personal.

C.T.: Yes, for sure my story is in Heather's, it’s what I lived through in the 80s. I had graduated art school and was trying to break in as an illustrator, rather than a designer (which is my current day job). Though Heather was certainly based on that time in my life, she’s also based on other illustrators I knew at the time. It was an exciting venture to try and get your work in magazines, and it was also grueling. You needed a lot of fortitude to survive—and many didn't make it in the industry. I think it was one of the reasons that Heather is such a strong character. 

M.E.: Correction Line is being reissued this month, what else are you currently working on?

C.T.: I'm coming off a time of great busy-ness. For the last few months, most of my time was spent on writing a play that will be produced for the stage this summer. It's a comedy about AI—because that's funny, right? Now that I've finished the script and assembled the cast and crew, I can return to other projects that I started a while back. I have one other novel that I will be re-issuing, but that won't be until fall. I also continue to post chapters of my time-travel story, Bent Highway, on my Substack, Craig Terlson Talks Story.

In the Luke Fischer universe, I've been working on book four, which is still untitled. It features the sheriff from Northern Michigan that a lot of readers enjoyed in Manistique—Sam Galliard is back. I've also started a novel that will be a series of connected short stories. When I talk about this one, I usually say it's my Jennifer Egan book.

M.E.: Thank you so much, Craig. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. As always.

You can find Craig Terlson’s books on his author page. He’s also on Substack, Twitter (X) and Facebook.