Jon Bassoff

The Memory Ward, to be released March 4, is Colorado author Jon Bassoff’s tenth novel. His first was published just a little over a decade ago. With the expansive range among his books, Bassoff surprises regular fans and draws in new ones. His ninth novel, Beneath Cruel Waters, is probably his most conventional—a moody, dark psychological investigation into a troubled family’s history and its connection with a murdered man in small-town Colorado. The Memory Ward, described by some as a psychological thriller, walks the line of identity, trauma, what’s real and what’s not real in the outwardly normal life of a mail carrier. Our reviewer admired its slow build and the book’s seamless trajectory from weird to scary.

Bassoff’s fiction is hard to categorize. Author Christopher Ransom said, “…there’s nothing else like it out there. Part mystery, part heartland crime, part horror … Let’s call it nouveau-noir Americana,” a characterization that made Bassoff chuckle.

He’ll be promoting The Memory Ward at events at the Boulder Bookstore on March 7, at Romero’s in Lafayette on March 12, at Bricks in Longmont on March 13 and at the Tattered Cover on Colfax in Denver on March 28. He’ll head to Austin and Seattle for events in April.

Rocky Mountain Reader caught up with Bassoff at his Longmont home last week and talked to him about being a teacher—he teaches English at Longmont High School—a writer and a reader.

RMR: As a public school teacher of high school students, are you concerned about AI, social media influences and trends in diminishing reading among young people?

JB: Yes, I worry about these things. Of course, there are always great students every year who are good readers. But in general, smart phones have captured the attention and shortened the attention span of a lot of kids. I see students in 11^thand 12^th grade who say they’ve never read an entire book.

RMR: What do your students think about you being a published author?

JB: They don’t think that much about it. Most of my stuff is inappropriate for that age group, but I did have a student who found a book of mine in a used bookstore and read it. She came up to me afterward and said, “Mr. Bassoff, I’ll never look at you the same.” That made me really happy.

RMR: Were you one of those kids who always wanted to be a writer, back when you were in high school?

JB: No, I didn’t write in high school, not creatively. Then I went to college and still wasn’t much interested in writing until I came across a book by this midwestern writer, Jim Thompson, who wrote noir thrillers, and that was it for me. He wrote from the point of view of a psychotic person and I thought, that’s interesting; I could do that. That was when my interest in the narrator began to grow. I like thinking about who’s telling the story and how they’re telling it. That’s what’s interesting to me.

RMR: How did the idea of The Memory Ward come to you? Did you know the whole story before you began writing it or does the character or an image carry you along a path of discovery?

JB: I know the whole story before I begin. I do a lot of planning and plotting, finding where the characters’ lives intersect, that kind of thing. I know a writer who says he starts with a single image and lets the book grow out of it but I can’t do it that way. I did have an image in mind, though, of someone peeling back the wallpaper and seeing what was behind it.

RMR: Who are your favorite writers? What do you like to read?

JB: I admire writers who have interesting narrators, unreliable narrators. I like southern gothic writers, Flannery O’Connor, some of Faulkner. I like Kazuo Ishiguro. But my biggest influence was Jim Thompson who wrote some fantastic books back in the 1940s and ‘50s. When I first read The Killer Inside Me, I decided I wanted to write a novel. It was unlike anything I’d read before. The first book I wrote was a blatant rip-off of that book. [That book has not been published.]

RMR: You’re so prolific, basically a book a year, and you teach full-time. How do you get so much done?

JB: I’m a pretty disciplined person. I write whenever I have a chance, and having summers off helps. I get a lot done then. But if you think about it, we have more time than we think. If you write 1,500 words a week for a year you’ve got enough words for a novel. Anybody can find the time to do that. You just have to want to do it and sit down and do it.

RMR: Your books often are referred to as thrillers or horror though they don’t necessarily fall neatly into those genres. Why do people love horror? True crime? Warped psychological thrillers? What’s the appeal?

JB: It’s a great question, and it’s probably different for different people. I think there’s something to be said for the roller coaster analogy, a way to get an adrenaline rush without actually putting ourselves at risk. But I also think that we all have that curiosity about violence, about evil, and this is a way to explore that. For me, the people I trust the least are those who never admit to any of this darkness, any bad thoughts. Their marriages are perfect, their children are perfect, their lives are perfect. Those are the ones I really worry about. Meanwhile, those who are honest enough to explore some of that darkness tend to be more open minded and empathetic. Or maybe that’s just the people I’ve met. But horror has also become kind of a comfort food for me. When my wife wants to relax, she watches romantic comedies. When I want to relax, I watch gore from the ‘70s and ‘80s. It works for both of us.

RMR: What’s next for you?

JB: Right now, one of my books, The Drive-Thru Crematorium is in pre-production for a movie. We’ve got a lot of the financing in place as well as the director and line producer and all that stuff. They still need to cast. But I’ve been close several times, so I don’t get too excited yet. As someone once told me, in publishing it’s always no, no, no, no until it’s yes. In the movie industry, it’s always yes, yes, yes, yes until it’s no. Another one of my books, The Disassembled Man, is also being shopped around. I wrote the screenplays for both of them. Adapting your own novel for film is kind of nice. You get to really trim things down to make it lean and mean. I’m not sure how I would do writing an original screenplay though.

RMR: Anything else you want to say to give readers a sense of what you’re up to with The Memory Ward?

JB: I’m doing quite a few live events, which is always fun. Writing can be such a lonely profession, so I look forward to connecting with people and seeing their faces. Plus, like most writers, I’m insecure and need that validation.

RMR: Why does literature matter at this moment in American history?

JB: I tend not to go about writing political novels, but I think our politics is always evident in what we write. And with the people in power so antagonistic to those who create, I think it’s more important than ever to keep writing and creating art and making music. I don’t think I could bear to live in a world without it.