Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Koreatown Blues
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://markrogersauthor.wordpress.com/
CITY: Baja California
STATE:
COUNTRY: Mexico
NATIONALITY:
http://www.brash-books.com/author/markrogers/ * https://markrogersauthor.wordpress.com/about/ * http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-story-behind-story-koreatown-blues.html * http://kattomic-energy.blogspot.com/2016/12/an-interview-with-mark-rogers-author-of.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
Not found in LOC
PERSONAL
Born c. 1950; married (divorced); married; wife’s name Sophy.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and Journalist.
WRITINGS
Author of the Pissing on My Pistols blog. Contributor to periodicals, including USA Today, New York Times, and Village Voice.
SIDELIGHTS
Mark Rogers worked as a travel journalist while writing several novels, none of which sold to publishers until he was already well into his sixties. Then within the span of two years, Rogers had four of his novels published. As he told an online Rap Sheet interviewer: “When I was twenty-two years old, I used to explain away my lack of success by telling myself that Ernest Hemingway didn’t publish his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, until he was twenty-six. Well, my 26th birthday came and went, along with a bunch of other milestones. Now, here I was at sixty-four, still plugging away at the novel. People I’d grown up with were planning their retirement, while I was still trying to put even one run on the scoreboard.” Rogers added: “Then, in one six-week period last year, the floodgates opened. Brash Books contracted for Koreatown Blues; Endeavour Press took an early mystery novel of mine, Red Thread (written in 1990) . . . Common Deer Press picked up a middle-grade novel titled Rex, cowritten with Cody B. Stewart and Adam Rocke. And Tapas Media contracted to distribute a self-published novel of mine titled Basement, for download on iOS devices. (Basement was written in 1988).”
With the semi-autobiographical novel Koreatown Blues, Rogers introduces Wes Norgaard, who lives in a tiny apartment in Koreatown, Los Angeles. Wes scrapes by, working as the manager of a carwash, spending his nights drinking beer at a neighborhood karaoke bar. Most of the patrons at the bar are Korean, but Wes is a well-liked regular, and he becomes friends with the owner, Ms. Tam. Wes is intrigued when Ms. Tam offers to pay him to marry a beautiful Korean woman named Soo Jin, especially because the money would let Wes buy the carwash from his boss. Unfortunately, Ms. Tam warns Wes that a powerful Korean family is intent on destroying Soo’s family, and all of her husbands have been murdered.
According to a Publishers Weekly critic, the plot from there “follows a predictable course” but there is an “unexpected, up-to-date solution to the blood feud.” Alan Cranis, witting in the online Bookgasm, was even more impressed, asserting that “the plot takes a few turns before coming to the unexpected and thoroughly contemporary resolution. But thanks to our growing involvement with Wes and the other characters we willingly accept it.” Cranis then concluded that Koreatown Blues “is both entertaining and involving from beginning to end, and makes Rogers a crime author to watch.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, November 21, 2016, review of Koreatown Blues.
ONLINE
Bookgasm, http://www.bookgasm.com/ (August 21, 2017), Alan Cranis, review of Koreatown Blues.
Mark Rogers Website, https://markrogersauthor.wordpress.com (August 21, 2017).
Rap Sheet, http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/ (August 21, 2017), author interview.*
Mark’s career as a travel journalist has brought him to 56 countries and counting. These trips have fed his imagination while at the same time provided authentic experiences and sensory detail that find their way into his novels and screenplays. Mark’s won multiple awards for his travel writing, including an award for his Hurricane Ivan coverage in Jamaica. His work regularly appears in USA Today and other media outlets.
His novel KOREATOWN BLUES will be published by Brash Books in February 2017. His co-written novel REX, is slated for publication by Common Deer Press in October 2017, and his novel BASEMENT is distributed by Tapas Media. Mark lives in Baja California, Mexico with his Sinaloa-born wife, Sophy, where they recently built a rock house overlooking the sea.
Check out his blog Pissing on my Pistols, join him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/mark.rogers.75470, and follow him on Twitter @orpheusonthe101.
MARK ROGERS
Mark Roger’s career as a travel journalist has brought him to 56 countries and counting. These trips have fed his imagination while at the same time provided authentic experiences and sensory detail that find their way into his novels and screenplays. Mark’s won multiple awards for his travel writing, including an award for his Hurricane Ivan coverage in Jamaica. His work regularly appears in USA Today and other media outlets. Mark lives in Baja California, Mexico with his Sinaloa-born wife, Sophy, where they recently built a rock house overlooking the sea.
Biography
Mark Rogers is a writer and artist whose literary heroes include Charles Bukowski, Willie Vlautin and Charles Portis. He lives most of the year in Baja California, Mexico with his Sinaloa-born wife, Sophy. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Village Voice and other publications and his travel journalism has brought him to 54 countries. These trips have provided plenty of inspiration for his novels and screenplays.
Basement is his first published novel. Rex, his middle grade novel co-written with Cody B. Stewart and Adame Rocke was published by Common Deer Press October 2016. His mystery Red Thread was also published Oct 2016 by Endeavour Press. His crime novel Koreatown Blues will be published by Brash Books February 2017. His novel Basement is also available for Android and iOS devices from Tapas Media.
Drop into his Wordpress blogs Pissing on My Pistols (pissingonmypistols.wordpress.com) and Mark Rogers - Author http://markrogersauthor.wordpress.com) for news about upcoming books from him.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2017
The Story Behind the Story:
“Koreatown Blues,” by Mark Rogers
(Editor’s note: This is the 68th installment in The Rap Sheet’s “Story Behind the Story” series. Today’s guest contributor is Mark Rogers, who lives most of each year in Baja California, Mexico, with his Sinaloa-born wife, Sophy. His work has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, The Village Voice, and other publications, and his travel journalism has taken him on assignment to 54 countries. While Endeavour Press beat Brash Books to market with Rogers’ mystery novel Red Thread, the author considers Koreatown Blues—due out on February 1, from Brash—to be his debut novel. In addition to penning fiction, Rogers blogs at Pissing on My Pistols.)
* * *
The warm rain fell on a tin awning in Mexico. I waited, up against the building’s wall, staying dry. The pieces of my crime novel Koreatown Blues were all there. Waiting to be remembered and imagined …
Back in 2005, a screenplay of mine had been optioned by a major player, and I’d been signed to a hip literary management company. At age 55, I knew I was way past my sell-by date. Even so, nothing was going to stop me from making the move from New Jersey to Los Angeles and giving screenwriting a shot.
I told my wife, “If I don’t take this chance, you’ll end up with a bitter old man. I don’t want to be him, and believe me, you don’t want to be married to him.”
I drove cross-country and sublet a dark studio apartment in L.A.’s Koreatown. The apartment had only one window that looked out on a brick wall close enough to touch. It was ugly as hell but in reality, perfect conditions for a writer, fulfilling Henry Miller’s dictum: “Writers should be put in a prison cell and given only bread and water.”
The plan was for my family to join me in three months (in a bigger apartment). Instead, they refused to make the move. And I was too stubborn to return to New Jersey.
Divorce followed.
Every three days or so the loneliness of my apartment would get to me. On one of those nights I wandered into a Korean nightclub a few blocks from my apartment. When I ordered a Hite, the beer arrived with a cordless microphone and the request to sing “Yesterday.”
“As usual, I was the only white guy in the place.”
That’s the first line of my crime novel Koreatown Blues. And that’s the way it was. The Koreans accepted me at once, and it wasn’t long before I developed a crush on the barmaid, Sung. Her husband was in South Korea, having refused to make the move to the States, which mirrored my own situation. Sung worked full-time and took care of her two teenage kids. She told me that once a year she liked to go to the beach and stare at the horizon line.
Part of my affection for Sung was driven by my respect for her. When she arrived in L.A. from Seoul, she first worked as a taxi driver, which had to be daunting for a newcomer who didn’t speak English.
(Above) Author Mark Rogers
During my hopeful nights sitting at the bar, trying to connect with Sung, the life of the nightclub went on around me, a mix of B-girls, Korean gangsters, and ordinary Joes Korean-style.
One night, a dude at the bar got tired of eating his rice and started playing the drums on my head with his chopsticks, like a deranged Gene Krupa. When he wouldn’t stop, I told him, “You’re fuckin’ with John Wayne.” A fight was only averted when he sped out the door and disappeared into the night.
A middle-aged Korean man sat beside me at the bar and told me about his son who had died in infancy. Then, when the mike was passed to him, he sang “Tears in Heaven,” by Eric Clapton.
Another young Korean was in love with Sung and challenged me to a bout of arm wrestling. I beat him easily and he insisted we try it left-handed. I beat him again and he complained, “You should have let me win one.” My response was, “You’ve heard of ‘When in Rome do as the Romans do?’ Well, I’m from New Jersey.”
One cadaverous-looking Korean got up in the middle of the floor and sang an impassioned version of Celine Dion’s “Power of Love.” At song’s end he sat down beside me and pulled out an envelope from inside his shirt: X-rays showing his inoperable lung cancer.
While I loved every minute of this, I was also developing much more than a crush on Sung. I’d ask myself, “If L.A. is filled with women, why did you have to go and fall for a married, non-English-speaking Korean woman with two kids?”
All during this time, I had the feeling of being surrounded by a culture that would ultimately and always be alien to me.
The romance with Sung never ignited and the optioned screenplay sputtered out, even though the production company had invested $400,000. I eventually drifted out of L.A., all the way down to Mexico.
A few years later, standing under an awning in Baja California, waiting out the rain, a stray remark from those L.A. days bounced around in my head: “There are many ghost stories in Koreatown.” I pulled out my notebook and in a half-hour had the main story beats for Koreatown Blues, although my ghosts would be flesh and blood.
Koreatown Blues is the story of Wes—whose purchase of a car wash in L.A.’s Koreatown comes complete with a young Korean wife he’s never met. Wes soon learns her five previous husbands were murdered before the honeymoon and finds himself with a ring on his finger and a target on his back. Will he become the next victim of this centuries-old blood feud—or will he emerge as the last husband standing?
Some of my favorite writers are Elmore Leonard, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis, Jim Thompson, John D. MacDonald, James Lee Burke, and James Sallis. While I admire all of them, the truth is they didn’t provide the inspiration for my Koreatown Blues protagonist, Wes Norgaard, who I describe as having no reverse gear. Instead, I was inspired by a simple exchange between two characters in Lights in the Dusk, a film by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki:
The heroine comes upon the badly beaten hero: “What will you do?”
Blood trickles down the edge of the hero’s mouth and his eye is bruised. He says, “I’ll open a garage.”
She says, “It’s good you haven’t lost hope.”
Once I started writing Koreatown Blues, the words flowed, 1,000 a day. This is how I like to work, making my thousand and stringing together as many writing days as I can—at least six a week.
When I was 22 years old, I used to explain away my lack of success by telling myself that Ernest Hemingway didn’t publish his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, until he was 26. Well, my 26th birthday came and went, along with a bunch of other milestones. Now, here I was at 64, still plugging away at the novel. People I’d grown up with were planning their retirement, while I was still trying to put even one run on the scoreboard.
Then, in one six-week period last year, the floodgates opened. Brash Books contracted for Koreatown Blues; Endeavour Press took an early mystery novel of mine, Red Thread (written in 1990), and will publish an ’80s noir novella of mine titled Night Within Night (written in 1986). Common Deer Press picked up a middle-grade novel titled Rex, co-written with Cody B. Stewart and Adam Rocke. And Tapas Media contracted to distribute a self-published novel of mine titled Basement, for download on iOS devices. (Basement was written in 1988).
What changed? Why is my work suddenly worthy of publication? Whatever the reason, I’m now a guy in his 60s who feels like he’s 26. I have a lot of catching up to do. Presently I have four other novels making the rounds, and I plan to write three more this year.
One of them is a novel based on that screenplay optioned years ago, the one that sputtered out. Who knows? If my book is a success, maybe I’ll see a film made from it after all.
Moving toward publication has been a charmed process, with an amazing cover design; great editing and support from my publishers at Brash Books, Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman; and lots of enthusiastic pre-publication buzz. Publishers Weekly called Koreatown Blues “an entertaining, fast-paced first novel, with an unexpected, up-to-date solution,” while Edgar Award-winning author Bruce DeSilva (The Dread Line) had this to say: “Koreatown Blues is a cleverly-plotted hard-boiled novel with crisp, muscular prose, a feverish pace, a vividly-drawn urban setting, and characters so real that Rudy Giuliani would stop and frisk them.”
POSTED BY J. KINGSTON PIERCE AT 11:57 AM
LABELS: STORY BEHIND THE STORY
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
An Interview with Mark Rogers, author of Koreatown Blues
Mark Rogers is a writer and artist whose literary heroes include Charles Bukowski, Willie Vlautin and Charles Portis. He lives most of the year in Baja California, Mexico with his Sinaloa-born wife, Sophy. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Village Voice and other publications and his travel journalism has brought him to 54 countries; these trips have provided plenty of inspiration for his novels and screenplays. His crime novel Koreatown Blues will be published by Brash Books, Feb. 2017; his mystery novel Red Thread is available from Endeavour Press. Drop into his Wordpress blogs Pissing on My Pistols and Mark Rogers – Author https://markrogersauthor.wordpress.com/ for news about upcoming books from him.
You’re a journalist. Did you start off with short stories or dive right in to fiction?
I started writing fiction in the fifth grade, which was the year I discovered the writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan series. Reading was probably like a drug for me, a way to shut out the world. I’ve never been drawn to writing short stories, and didn’t write fiction at all for many years, until the 1980s, when I wrote the novella now titled “Night Within Night.” Other unpublished novels followed, as well as unproduced screenplays. Luckily, I found rewards in the process, since I had very little encouragement. This all changed last April, when I had four novels contracted in one month, from four different publishers. Some of these works had been knocking around for decades, while others, like “Koreatown Blues,” were written in the last year or so. That very first novella, “Night Within Night” will be published next year by London-based Endeavour Press. I’m very psyched to have made the transition from “writer” to “author.”
Most writers are readers, who are the writers who influenced you?
It’s a bit like an archeological dig, with the deepest layer being Edgar Rice Burroughs, up to Knut Hamsun and Henry Miller in my late teens, to Charles Bukowski, Charles Portis, Charles Willeford, and Willy Vlautin. I’ve come to enjoy a crisp, clean line, which is what I try to do in my own work. Kaurismäki.
On the crime novel side, I’m a big fan of John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, and Raymond Chandler. There are other one-offs that I cherish, like “The Hustler” by Walter Tevis, and “Fat City” by Leonard Gardner. I think I’m also influenced by film, especially the movies by Finnish director Aki
What’s a book you wish you’d written?
The first one that comes to mind is “Lean on Pete” by Willy Vlautin. This is a very deceptive book that reads like a YA novel, but throws a wicked punch. You can read more about it HERE. Vlautin is an amazing talent with a huge heart. He’s often compared to Steinbeck.
Do you have an agent?
Yes. I’m represented by Italia Gandolfo at Gandolfo, Helin & Fountain Literary Management.
How did you end up at Brash Books?
I received an email from a site called Freedom With Writing, that mentioned Brash Books was open to unagented submissions. I looked at Brash’s site and liked what they were doing. I mentioned to my agent that I would approach Brash on my own with “Koreatown Blues,” since she was occupied with other work of mine. Brash was amazing. I sent them the first 25 pages and within a few hours they asked for the complete manuscript. I think it was only five days later that I got the email saying they loved the book and wanted to publish it. This kind of express train response is really rare and I was blown away. Working with the two publishers, Lee Goldberg, and Joel Goldman (crime writers themselves) has been an amazing experience, from editing, to cover design, to marketing.
You travel for a living—are there any countries that you want to visit again and again?
I have a great affection for Thailand, which I’ve visited a half-dozen times. I’ve just completed a crime novel set in Bangkok, titled “Sky Dog.” That’s presently going through a beta reader process and I hope to have my agent begin submitting it in January.
What’s on your travel “bucket list,” places you’ve never been but want to visit?
I always wanted to visit Cuba, but before it became open again. Unfortunately, I waited too long. It now appears to be going through an unappealing tourism transformation. A major part of my family tree is from Wales. I’ve never been, so that would be at the top of my list, especially if it was at least a three-month stay to work on a new book while exploring the country.
When you write, do you listen to music, or do you find that distracting?
I can’t listen to music with lyrics – that is way too distracting for me. I don’t always listen to music, but when I do, I listen to soundtracks. Some of my favorites are the soundtracks to “The Counselor,” “Drive,” and “Last of the Mohicans.” I also listen to a lot of Phillip Glass.
Have you ever done karaoke yourself and if so, what’s your song?
I lived in Koreatown in LA for a couple of years, and used to drop into my neighborhood nightclub a couple of nights a week. I sang pretty much everything, but my signature song was “Always On My Mind.” The song reverberated for me, since I was going through a divorce at the time, and I had a crush on the Korean barmaid. I now live in Mexico, and at every family party someone eventually fires up the karaoke machine. Those of us who don’t go to church have to sing somewhere, so I guess it’s karaoke for me.
Is Koreatown Blues a one-off or will it be a series? (Please)
I’m really happy you’d like to see a series, but it’s definitely a one-off for me. I like where my protagonist Wes ends up – he’s earned his peace. Depending on the reception it gets, “Sky Dog” will be a series, but it’s too soon to tell.
POSTED BY KATHERINE TOMLINSON AT 9:16 AM
LABELS: BRASH BOOKS, JOEL GOLDMAN, KOREATOWN BLUES, LEE GOLDBERG, MARK ROGERS
8/11/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Print Marked Items
Koreatown Blues
Publishers Weekly.
263.47 (Nov. 21, 2016): p90.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
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Full Text:
Koreatown Blues
Mark Rogers. Brash, $12.99 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-941298-98-5
Wes Norgaard, the narrator of travel writer Rogers's entertaining, fast-paced first novel, is happy enough
just to survive, living in a tiny apartment and managing a carwash in the sprawling L. A. neighborhood
known as Koreatown. He enjoys having a beer and singing an occasional song in his local karaoke bar,
where he's usually the only white guy. One night at the bar, a Korean man dressed in a sharp-looking suit
gets his head blown off by a shotgun. Like everyone else present, Wes didn't see the shooter. Meanwhile,
the bar's owner, Ms. Tam, offers Wes a deal that could put him on easy street. If Wes will marry an
attractive young Korean woman, Soo Jin, Ms. Tam will pay him enough cash to allow him to buy the
carwash. The hitch is that a rival Korean family has vowed to wipe out Soo's family, all her previous
husbands having been executed. The plot follows a predictable course as Wes dodges bullets and cooks up
plans to keep everyone alive, until the unexpected, up-to-date solution to the blood feud. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Koreatown Blues." Publishers Weekly, 21 Nov. 2016, p. 90+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471273953&it=r&asid=612dab39828e1662df1fa4b4b0d5bc6e.
Accessed 11 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471273953
Koreatown Blues
Author: Alan Cranis* Comments(0)
As the title implies, Mark Rogers’s debut crime novel is set in the seldom-celebrated section of Los Angeles known as KOREATOWN. It features a protagonist who finds himself unexpectedly entangled in the traditions of the Korean population he lives and works among.
Wes Norgaard has worked for several years at a carwash in Koreatown. At night he hangs out at a bar not far from where he lives and works, and often finds himself the only white guy in the place.
Then Wes’s boss announces his retirement and offers to sell the carwash to Wes. Wes is eager to own the business but finds himself short of the cash for the down payment. The manager of the bar offers Wes the money he needs – but only if he agrees to marry a young Korean woman named Soo Jin. Seeing no immediate problem with the arranged marriage Wes agrees to the terms.
But before long Wes discovers that his new wife is involved in a decades old blood feud between two Korean families. In fact, five of Soo Jin’s former husbands were killed shortly after their marriage. Wes tries to negotiate a truce, but learns that if he wants to stay alive he must find a different way to end the killings and the feud as well.
The story is told through Wes’s first-person narration, and Rogers keeps the events and action flowing. Yet he allows us to know Wes better through Wes’s frequent, semi hard-boiled personal observations of his neighborhood and most especially his life as it goes through its several changes.
Growing up in Pittsburgh and with only minimal family ties in his adult life, Wes finds it difficult to understand how events in the distant past result in a feud continuing for several generations. But the violent threats to his life and his growing affection for both Soo Jin and another local Korean woman force Wes to accept this odd situation and find a way out of it.
While most of the events take place in Koreatown, Rogers is familiar enough with Southern California to know that life in L.A. means plenty of driving. So Wes often finds himself on the freeways and surface streets in route to other settings.
The plot takes a few turns before coming to the unexpected and thoroughly contemporary resolution. But thanks to our growing involvement with Wes and the other characters we willingly accept it.
At just under 220 pages KOREATOWN BLUES can be read in one or two sittings. But it is both entertaining and involving from beginning to end, and makes Rogers a crime author to watch. —Alan Cranis