"WRITE RANK": THE GET OFF'S CHRISTA FAUST

Christa Faust has finished her trilogy featuring ex-porn star turned hard boiled heroine Angel Dare with The Get Off. In her plan for revenge, Angel accidently killis a cop, then learns she's pregnant. Her chance to get out of the country and find peace is through an underground network that puts her in the world of rodeo, particularly with the bullfighters. The book will explain that, I got Christa to explain some more.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: I remember you talking about what  would become The Get Off for over a decade. What obstacles caused the wait for us?

CHRISTA FAUST: It wasn’t one single thing, it was a combination of things. There was other paying work and the bills that work paid. There was the fact that it was going to be the end of the series, which made it feel weighty and complicated in a way that the previous books did not. There were several wrong turns where I needed to back up and rethink. Mostly it just took the amount of time it took.

S.M.: What drew you to the world of freestyle bullfighting and rodeo?

C.F.: I like to blame fellow crime writer Ben Whitmer for that. We had been talking about the film Junior Bonner and about how bull-riding was, like porn and MMA, a way for people to make a living by using their bodies to entertain an audience. That has been an ongoing theme for me in the Angel Dare series and it seemed like a perfect fit.

When I went down to Helotes, TX for my first rodeo, I thought I’d be writing about bull-riders, but I quickly realized that there was a far more interesting and not-so-widely-explored story to be told about the men whose job it was to protect those riders. To not just entertain us with their bodies in freestyle competitions where they show off their skills and athleticism, but also to put those bodies in harm's way to save a rider who has been injured. That was the key that turned in my head and made me realize that it was the perfect and only way to end the series. 

S.M.: Many of your books deal with jobs that are their own subcultures. What peaks your curiosity about that?

C.F.: While it’s been mostly work-related up until now, I’m also very interested in hobbies and other pastimes that form groups of like-minded individuals who share a singular obsession. Really any kind of subculture that is hidden from outsiders and spawns these unique factions, each with their own unfathomable slang and in-jokes. It takes a lot to shock or surprise me, but the project I’m working on now has managed to do both. No, I can’t talk about it yet, but I’m very excited to share when it’s finished!

S.M.: How did you deal with the challenge of a pregnant heroine in a pulp action crime yarn?

C.F.: The challenge had less to do with pulpiness and more to do with my own personal fear of pregnancy and birth. I have no kids and never wanted any, so I relied on the help of several amazing women who were generous enough to share their stories and advice. The brutal, gruesome and unrelenting horrors they endured, what so many women go through before, during and after birth, would make classic pulp tough guys like Mike Hammer or Jack Reacher tap out in under a minute. Yet the experiences of women are so often dismissed as unserious melodrama, unworthy of inclusion in manly action/crime stories. I wanted to call bullshit on that tired and unnecessarily gendered way of thinking.

Also, writing about a pregnant protagonist was a way for me to push my own limits. There’s a phrase in rodeo “ride rank, make bank.” A rank bull is dangerous, powerful and challenging to ride. I have a shorter version of this phrase tattooed on my right wrist. “Write rank.” It’s there to remind me to keep on writing about the things that scare me. Things that are dangerous, powerful and challenging. 

S.M.: You've done comic book work between Choke Hold and The Get Off. Do you feel it had any effect on your writing?

C.F.: Not specifically, no. But in a more general way, learning to write comics kept my storytelling chops sharp and also taught me how to pare down, streamline every sentence, and keep things moving. You know, “omit unnecessary words.” Being able to thrive under those strict limitations made me appreciate the freedom to say more. 

S,M.:. As a writer, what do you love about Angel Dare?

C.F.: It was very important to me that Angel be a normal middle-aged woman, not an action Barbie. There were already plenty of female characters in pulp/crime fiction who are basically just tough guys with tits. I didn’t want Angel to be a sharpshooter or a Navy SEAL or a black belt. I wanted her to be someone who was tough, strong and resilient because of her femininity, not in spite of it.

I’ve also been living with her in my head for almost 20 years. It’s almost like a marriage, being so intimate for so long. It isn’t the crush-like New Relationship Energy that you feel when you’re obsessed with fresh and unexplored ideas. It’s more like knowing everything there is to know about someone, good, bad and ugly, and loving them anyway. We’ve been through some shit together, Angel and I, and that’s why it was so hard to say goodbye.