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Interview with Apollo’s Arrow author Warren Weisman

By Denny Lamier

On a short list of famous carpenters, Warren Weisman’s blue-collar background sets him apart from the turtleneck and suede authors and enabled him to blow the collective mind of intellectuals and scientists in a guerilla attack from the quarter it was least expected.
As more readers grow weary of having their intelligence insulted by big publishers choosing moneymakers over substance with monotonous regularity, Apollo’s Arrow isn’t just a breath of fresh air, it’s a typhoon. Weisman effortlessly mixes literature with action, fringe with mainstream, and wields evolutionary science like kung fu. Where the American McPublishing industry is criticized worldwide for its lack of depth, when Warren Weisman goes deep, it’s like being strapped on the back of a sounding humpback. With an uncanny knack for knowing precisely where the panic of ‘Am I going to make it back up?’ sets in, Weisman delivers a refreshing breach on the surface of ordinary life.

Weisman sat down with Sporeprint publisher Denny Lamier for an in-depth interview for Presenting Apollo’s Arrow.

Presenting Apollo’s Arrow: There’s been an entire genre of books built around the crime of serial killing. What makes you think you come along out of the woodwork—out of the far reaches of the Alaskan wilderness—and solve it in one fell swoop?

Warren Weisman: I give the human race a lot more credit than other writers do. Most people and the so-called experts want you to think there’s no solution to psychological disorders. I say there’s no problem we couldn’t solve and be home in time for dinner. I wrote as much in Apollo’s Arrow and I never would have known it if I didn’t believe it in my own life.

PAA: And what is that answer?

WW: The answer is right in front of us every day. A serial killer—anyone really who commits violence against women—is someone who wasn’t taught to have a will of their own and is this sort of mindless automation who follows the extremely violent, juvenile programming of Western civilization. People may say, hey, Warren Weisman is blaming society and absolving the individual of responsibility, but no matter how big it is, a society reflects the individuals that make it up. These guys were started on a path to inevitably hurt somebody while they were far too young to think for themselves and make choices.

PAA: So, are you saying a serial killer has no responsibility for their actions?

WW: Of course, legally they do, but that doesn’t help us to understand these crimes or preventing someone from becoming a serial killer to look at these crimes after the fact. We have to look at what makes them do it and to take a hard, honest look at it, even when it exposes something about ourselves, about basic human nature, that is really uncomfortable to talk about.

PAA: Who’s got blood on their hands?

WW: We’ve all got blood on our hands, but as far as narrowing it down to a good place to start I’d say the parents. Children don’t learn from books or at school, they learn by example. That’s how mammals teach their young. Deceit and hypocrisy is an everyday part of modern life and you put that together with not being open and honest about something as powerful as sex and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

PAA: You don’t suffer from any constraints about telling it like you see it. I don’t recall another voice in literature who covers so much ground in less time.

WW: I’m one of those guys.

PAA: One of those guys?

WW: I’m a ‘Can Do’ guy. I’m very problem-oriented. When I see a problem I don’t want to talk about it or pretend it doesn’t exist. I want to fix it.

PAA: The narrator in Apollo’s Arrow is completely invisible from beginning to end. You’re behind the curtains, but you use details only a carpenter or somebody who works with their hands would know.

WW: I’ve always believed you should never take advice from anybody who can’t fix their own car. That is, anybody who has specializes so much that they don’t know how to do the important things in life. I consider myself a Renaissance man. I like reading Kierkegaard and Sartre as much as rebuilding an engine or playing music. The most important thing I learned living in the cabin out in Alaska was how to live without relying on somebody else, and that really set my writing free. I didn’t write Apollo’s Arrow to get rich and famous in my lifetime, so I was able to be more honest than an author looking to move books.

PAA: What about your experiences with the Hell’s Angels and as a bush pilot? How much of an influence does your real life have on your writing?

WW: I believe your writing should be an honest reflection of who you are. I gathered some great experiences riding motorcycles and flying airplanes, but Apollo’s Arrow is just as much a product of the quiet times. I could never have gotten the final answers if I was still drinking and raising hell. The final answers in the novel were the answers in my own life, which I could only learn by getting beyond those things, eating right and caring about myself and those around me.

PAA: In the novel you make a tantalizing connection between Stone Age Europeans and Native Americans with the Buffalo People. A lot of what King Alexandros tells the people in the ancient Greek setting has obvious similarities to the Bhagavad Gita, especially the war against want. Is there a connection there?

WW: There is, but strangely it was not my story that imitated the Bhagavad Gita, I actually never read it before a friend who edited the manuscript said ‘Boy, this has some ideas that are from Hinduism.’ I was really pleased, because I’m such a huge fan of Thoreau and he was heavily influenced by it.

PAA: King Alexandros sounds a lot like Thoreau when he promotes a simple life.

WW: I hate complication. It doesn’t appear naturally, and you won’t find it outside of human habitations, it’s a creation of deceitful humans to take advantage of other humans. It brings nothing but stress into your life. Nobody can honestly believe we can continue to live like we do in modern North America and Europe indefinitely, even if we wanted to. And you’d have to be nuts to want to.

PAA: You’ve been called Evolution’s Messiah. Does it fit?

WW: I suppose people have to put some kind of handle on me. I don’t mind it so long as everyone understands that I don’t think evolution and belief in a God or Goddess or Creator to be mutually exclusive. The natural sciences tell us how evolution took place, but they don’t explain why evolution took place. That’s something each one of us has to discover for ourselves. I believe that’s where we find our joy. Figuring out what we’re supposed to be doing here.

PAA: In Apollo’s Arrow you state that the missing link in evolution is psychological. That it doesn’t exist in the fossil record, but we can trace its development in the archeological record as well as in our own childhood.

WW: Absolutely. Evolution isn’t new, it’s just Western scientists figuring out what native people and people in the distant past have always known. We’re animals. Our lives are governed by food and sex. Duh. Evolution doesn’t contradict God, it shows us how beyond science God is.

PAA: Your characters are more than multidimensional, they’re archetypal, in both the modern and the ancient stories in the book. Where did they come from? How do you develop a King Alexandros, for example?

WW: King Alexandros is a combination of Achilles and the Old Testament prophet Amos.

PAA: Why Amos?

WW: Amos is actually the oldest book written in the Bible and for me the older something is, the more authoritative it is. Amos has no individual self, he doesn’t use the word ‘I’ as if he was talking about himself, he speaks on behalf of his people and he speaks as though he were channeling information directly out of the cosmic ether—from God—without filtering it through an interpreting system like a consciousness. Like a true poet does. What a perfect king. Somebody who’s incapable of thinking of himself, incapable of abusing his power.

PAA: It also makes him very much alone, too, even though he’s married to the most beautiful woman in the ancient world.

WW: Well, he doesn’t mind it. That’s the beauty of Alexandros. His responsibility to his people is what makes him happy.

PAA: What about Special Agent Wallace? A black former NFL football player who leads the task force to find the serial killer in the modern story. Where’d Wallace come from?

WW: Wallace is a combination of a couple of different people I’ve known in my own life. I really liked the football player aspect of his character, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear from people who really liked Wallace because he’s a Christian experiencing all of the things they encounter in Apollo’s Arrow. Most people in the West come from Christian backgrounds and he gave them somebody they could identify with.

PAA: He’s also big and intimidating. Is that from you?

WW: He’s based on men who were much bigger than I am, I’m five-nine. But most of my life I’ve been active and lifted weights, so I wanted somebody who had no idea what it’s like to feel small and vulnerable or to be a victim. LeMar Wallace’s size gives him freedom that other people don’t have in this society—such as walking down a dark alley with total impunity. Wallace learns how it feels to be one of those small women and children who are preyed upon by predators. He begins to care about others and he realizes he can’t always be there for them. It’s humbling to put hostages in the hands of destiny like that. The only solution is to make the world safer for everyone.

PAA: Who did you enjoy writing about the most? Who did you say, ‘Oh, boy, today I get to write about this person?

WW: Alexandros. It took all of my restraint to not over-use him.

PAA: So, what’s next for Warren Weisman?

WW: I’m putting together a collection of short stories. Short stories are really my first love in writing. I have a screenplay ready to go, but it’s a remake, so I can’t say anything about it until I get permission from the studio.

PAA: Is Apollo’s Arrow headed for the big screen?

WW: No. No movie. No sequel. That was the deal I struck with the Goddess to get the information out of the cosmic ether. Apollo’s Arrow isn’t the type of story that would lend itself to film very well, and there’s no way I could cushion its impact with a movie.

PAA: But, no sequel? People are going to be screaming to find out what happened to all of these great characters.

WW: Sure, but everyone’s going to resolve that in their own mind differently. I don’t have the right to impose my opinion about what happens to them on anybody else.

PAA: What is the impact that you would like to see Apollo’s Arrow have on the publishing industry?

WW: Certainly I would like to open up a wider audience to independent publishers and individual writers. Big publishing houses are no different than the record industry or any other big business in that they’ve been taken over by MBAs and bean-counters who’ve been taught the McDonald’s model of business. They choose books to publish based on if they can cover their overhead with it and turn a profit, and they make it a scavenger hunt for serious readers to find great stories in bookstores. They mass produce a cheap product and spin popular culture around it. If you project what’s happening now a few years into the future, you’re going to see the death of fiction as an art form, and that’s a pretty bleak horizon. What makes it so bleak is that art isn’t some business or another that nobody really needs in the first place, so they’re not going to miss it when it implodes under its own greed, art and that communication with the cosmic ether that artists are able to bring back to us are essential to human life. Technology can be harmful a lot of times and money makes us behave badly, but true art always improves us.