As a child I was raised on a steady diet of Louis L’Amour and other formula Westerns—my parents had stacks and stacks of them. I was also fond of Don Wright and William O. Steele’s novels of the colonial American frontier of the 1700s, and of James Houston’s novels about the Canadian arctic in the mid-1900s. Among more mainstream children’s books, Encyclopedia Brown was a favorite of mine, as were Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and John Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain.
Would you say your childhood and teenage reading has had a distinct influence on how you write fiction now, and why?
Because I write a lot about Alaska’s frontier experience (which some would say is still an ongoing process), it seems logical enough to say that my childhood reading of frontier literature is the source of that. I did learn something of how to structure a novel from reading formula westerns; the story structure in those books is glaringly obvious, even to a ten-year-old, and it made for an excellent study in how to tell a story. But Louis L’Amour also showed me the kind of writing that I don’t want to do. I don’t write about the six-foot-two rangy rawboned loner who is good with a gun but is “no hand with the ladies.” If I do write about that guy, it’s with a very 21st century understanding that that sort of archetypal hero wasn’t really the driving force in America’s westward expansion, and that that Louis L’Amour guy is very much a 20th century creation, which in its own way says more about 20th century America than it does about America’s frontier experience.
What did you do before you became a published novelist, and how did you come to write your first novel and get it published?
Prior to writing my first novel I was an historian and archaeologist. I hold degrees from the University of Alaska and from Flinders University in South Australia. I was actually living in Adelaide when I wrote my first novel, The Devil’s Share. At the time I was madly trying to complete my MA thesis in archaeology, and writing The Devil’s Share was a sort of stress release for me.
How would you describe your style of fiction or your approach to writing fiction?
I like to think that I don’t have a style or approach to fiction—I just park my butt in a chair and tell the story. In very broad terms, I tend to write fast, that is, I move my stories rapidly from one scene to the next, with character development as needed. Truthfully though, I think one of the great pleasures of writing is using different kinds of voices to tell different kinds of stories, and it’s hard to distill my various voices into one distinct style.
Is your first published novel standalone or part of a series, and what advantages or disadvantages does this present for you?
The Devil’s Share is a stand-alone story; I have no intent to write a sequel. Readers often express disappointment when I say that, but the fact is that Jack—the main character—is really a bit of a dickhead, and while I’m happy with the story, I’m also happy to be rid of him. Being a stand-alone story does have the advantage of allowing me to just tell the story without having to worry about setting up for a sequel.
Have you found writing your second novel easier or more challenging than writing your first novel and why?
My second novel Turn Again, for which I’ve recently found a publisher (we’re working on the editing right now), was actually quite a bit easier to write. With that first novel, you’re sort of shooting into the dark, working entirely on faith. You don’t know what you’re capable of, or what you’re not capable of. But with my second novel, I knew that it would have a home, and that removed the fetters from my imagination. Additionally, with the second novel, I knew in a very concrete way that writing a book for publication was within the realm of my ability, and that knowledge gave me the confidence to take some risks that I think will pay off in the end.
Who is another novelist whose fiction writing you admire and why?
I really admire Richard Flanagan’s fiction. Wanting is currently near the top of a stack of books on my desk to be read, and I loved Death of a River Guide and Gould’s Book of Fish. I’m drawn to his work because his voice and his prose are, to my mind, so emblematic of his native Tasmania. Tasmania’s relationship to mainland Australia is much like that of Alaska to the rest of the United States, not the least in that we’re both the cold hinterland of a much larger, warmer country. Judging from his work, Flanagan seems to have a very clear understanding of the land from which he comes, its history, and the human and natural stories that have made it the place it is today. Flanagan has a knack for taking what might otherwise be viewed as yokel folk history and dark chapters of the past and crafting them into beautiful stories that could be nothing other than Tasmanian, but also have relevance to the whole of Australia, and to the world at large.
How would you summarise your debut novel in one paragraph?
My first novel, The Devil’s Share, is the story of Jack, an Alaskan kid from Fairbanks whose family was forced off of their wilderness homestead in the Wrangell Mountains when the Alaska National Interest Lands Claim Act (better known in Alaska by the acronym ANILCA) made the area into a National Park. In the spring of his eighteenth year, Jack returns to the Wrangells to work at a wilderness lodge owned by an old family friend. When his boss is killed by a bear, Jack gets pulled into the dark world of a local smuggling ring, using packhorses to move drugs and guns across the border between Alaska and Canada. When Jack elopes with a Canadian smuggler’s stepdaughter, the trail of bloodshed that follows shows him that no amount of violence and hatred will ever purge the ghosts of his childhood that continue to haunt him.
How would you describe the appeal of this novel to readers?
Virtually all of The Devil’s Share takes place in Alaska’s Wrangell Mountains. It’s a fast-paced story, and most readers who have felt moved to contact me tell me they couldn’t put it down, which is of course very gratifying to me as a writer. The whole story is told from a very home-grown Alaskan perspective, the point of view of someone who grew up in Alaska as opposed to someone who came to Alaska from the faraway land of Somewhere Else. Most Alaska-based books, either fiction or non-fiction, are told from the latter point of view, but growing up in Alaska is a very different experience from that of coming to Alaska, and I think my writing reflects my experience as a born-and-raised Alaskan. I also think that ethos is coming out more and more in Alaskan letters, particularly through the work of writers like Don Rearden, Seth Kantner, and Eowyn Ivey.
How would you summarise a chapter from your debut novel in one paragraph?
In the opening chapter of The Devil’s Share we meet Jack as a child, twelve years old. We see his youthful live in Fairbanks: Few friends, a love of horses and dogs, a poaching incident and his punishment of having to shoe all the family’s horses. A few paragraphs later we meet the eighteen-year-old Jack, and we also meet Gwen, the girl next door who hates Alaska and can’t wait to leave. She and Jack have made love several times, but she’s never allowed him to call her his girlfriend. Jack flies out Bud Cowell’s lodge where he will spend the summer working. Bud sets Jack up with a wall tent and woodstove, telling him stories of the days when Bud and Jack’s father were footloose young men, making their living as trappers in the mountains. Later, Jack meets Bud’s horses, which sets him to remembering the funeral of an old sourdough his parents knew well. Jack spends the next couple weeks digging the foundation for a new sauna. Then a strange plane lands at the lodge, bearing a man and a young Indian woman who will soon have a profound presence in Jack’s life.
How would you describe the contribution this chapter makes to the novel?
This first chapter introduces us to Jack and the world he lives in, including the federal action that evicted his family from their home in the Wrangells, and his parents’ lingering bitterness over it. This first chapter moves us quickly from town into the mountains, and sets up the events that lead Jack down his path of violence.
Author website: My website is www.krisfarmen.wordpress.com. My publisher is McRoy & Blackburn, www.alaskafiction.com.
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