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Bestselling Author James Lee Burke Rob Holden: James Lee Burke, welcome to ReadersRoom.com -- it is a pleasure to have you with us here today! James Lee Burke: Thank you for inviting me. Rob Holden: I would like to start this chat off asking about your latest book -- In the Moon of Red Ponies. Could you tell our readers a bit about it? James Lee Burke: It is narrated by Billy Bob Holland, an ex-Texas ranger turned defense attorney. It deals with the vanishing way of life in the American West. Rob Holden: Could you tell our readers a bit about the plot? James Lee Burke: Billy Bob tries to help an old friend, a descendant of the Sioux holy man Crazy Horse, and finds himself embroiled with people who may have sold bio-chemical agents to Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf War. Rob Holden: This is, I believe, your fifth Billy Bob Holland novel. Can you tell us a bit about how this character has evolved through the books? James Lee Burke: Billy Bob has been obsessed with guilt about the accidental killing of his best friend, L.Q. Navarro. L.Q.'s ghost often visits him. He is a convert to Catholicism but finds himself drawn again and again to the violent ethos of his great grandfather, Sam Morgan Holland, a gunfighter and alcoholic and saddle preacher. Sam Morgan Hollan (without the d) was my ancestor.

Rob Holden: I would like to move back a book now, to Last Car to Elysian Fields -- now available in paperback. Could you tell our readers a bit about it?

James Lee Burke: This book deals with a black songwriter who disappears into Angola pen and never comes out. I think it is one of my best books, on a par with White Doves at Morning, which I consider my best work.

Rob Holden: And this novel centers around what most people consider your signature character, Dave Robicheaux, does it not?

James Lee Burke: Correct.

Rob Holden: I would like to discuss Robicheaux for a moment. Like Billy Bob Hollard, Robicheaux is a haunted man, but his demons are very different. Can you tell us a bit about him?

James Lee Burke: Dave is the blue-collar knight errant who tries to give voice to those who have none. As a literary protagonist his antecedents lie in the past, with Elizabethan and Greek theater. Ultimately he's the everyman figure from the medieval morality play, a kind of promethean figure who represents what is best in the American psyche.

Rob Holden: And yet, through out the novels, he has a constant battle with alcohol. Is it difficult to keep the "spirit" of the character intact with that particularly nasty demon following him?

James Lee Burke: Dave is a recovering alcoholic, but the ethical problems on which he dwells go beyond the problems of recovery. The stories in the series are meant to reflect the problems of the larger society.

Natalie R. Collins: James, sometimes titles are the most important thing, yet writers don't have good ones. Yours are excellent, and so descriptive. How do you come up with them?

James Lee Burke: I almost always find the title somewhere in the narration of the story. Eventually it pops out of the page. Occasionally the title is already in place at the book's beginning but rarely.

Rob Holden: I would like to go way back in your career, to one of the most fascinating stories I have ever read about in all of publishing. Your first three books were very well received and then your fourth book took over nine years to sell. That book, The Lost Get-Back Boogie, DID eventually sell, and went on to be nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Can you tell us about that whole episode in your career?

James Lee Burke: After my first three novels, I thought I was permanently on board. But The Lost Get-Back Boogie was returned by the agency handling my work after about 10 rejections. I was very discouraged, but then I met my current agent, Philip S. Spitzer, who was driving a cab in Hell's Kitchen and running a one-man agency at night. Philip was my cousin André Dubus's agent and I liked him immediately and thought him a standup no nonsense guy. We became close friends and business partners and for the next nine years he kept The Lost Get-Back Boogie under constant submission, earning a total of 111 editorial rejections. LSU finally published the novel, and today it sells all over the world. Philip and I have been in business now for 27 years. He's one of the best if not the best in the book business.

Rob Holden: That is an absolutely remarkable story. Jim, since we announced this chat we have got a lot of reader's questions. Would you answer a few of them for us now?

James Lee Burke: Sure, all you want. That's like asking the Pope if he minds working on Sunday.

Natalie R. Collins: Sarah B. in Santa Fe, NM: Having grown up in New Orleans, I recognize many places in Robicheaux's books. Do you fictionalize any locations? If so, when do you choose to do that?

James Lee Burke: Yes, some places are composites of real places. I do this sometimes because I don't want to be sued or shot by the proprietor.

Natalie R. Collins: Karin K., Palm Springs, CA: Your work is well known in Texas. Spring is coming and with it, all of our book festivals. Do you ever take part in such events? (If so, when is your next one?)

James Lee Burke: We're headed back to Montana to finish work on our ranch this spring and probably won't be traveling for a while. We went to Bouchercon in Vegas a year ago. Michael Connelly introduced me to the conference as "the father of Alafair Burke." I have never had to seek humility in my life. It has managed to find me of its own accord.

Natalie R. Collins: Michael Q., Savannah, GA: I love the character Billy Bob Holland. What was the secret ingredient you used when he was created?

James Lee Burke: I believe the characters live in the unconscious, just as the storyline does. I think the elements of good art are placed inside the artist by a hand other than our own.

Natalie R. Collins: Arlin L., Dallas, TX: When a person reads your books, you touch them in a certain way. How does that compare to touching a life through the Job Corps?

James Lee Burke: Again, I believe art and life are extensions of one another. I was fortunately to have been part of a great and grand era, what was called the war on poverty. The decade of the 1960s was one of great optimism.

Natalie R. Collins: Scott W., NY NY: The Robicheaux series is so popular. Is it possible Dave Robicheaux is immortal?

James Lee Burke: That's one break none of us gets. But good art is good because it survives one's own time. So in that sense perhaps my characters might have a long run, at least I hope so.

Rob Holden: And our final reader's question....

Natalie R. Collins: Anna Carson, Las Vegas, NV: White Doves At Morning, is a treasure. Did you do much family research as Willie Burke is based on your great-great uncle? Since it had a family tie, was it easier or more difficult to write?

James Lee Burke: Thanks for your nice words. I knew most of the stories about Uncle Willie and he also left behind many blue notebooks filled with his observations of life and history. However, he was notorious in New Iberia for his refusal to talk about the war. He disdained all those who abused power and viewed slavery as an abomination, although he served almost four years in combat for the confederacy. I think he was probably a very fine man, and in that spirit I tried to re-create him in modern times.

Rob Holden: Thanks for answering those. Jim, as you mentioned earlier, you are the father of best-selling novelist Alafair Burke. Do you critique her work -- or she yours -- before you send it off to your agents/publishers?

James Lee Burke: Alafair has always been her own voice. She has been writing mystery or crime stories since she was in the first grade. She never took a creative writing class but she graduated at the top of Stanford law and was also involved in the arts in high school.

Natalie R. Collins: You must be terribly proud of her.

James Lee Burke: She was a prosecutor four years in the Portland, Oregon D.A.'s office and out of that experience she created the plots for her first three novels. I call upon her often for information about legal matters in my books. All our kids have done well, and they did it on their own. Jim, Jr. is an assistant United States attorney and Andree is a school psychologist and Pamala is an ex-TV ad producer and now fulltime mom.

Rob Holden: One of the things our readers who are also writers like to know about is our guests' writing habits. Do you have a set time for writing? A set word or page count?

James Lee Burke: I aim for four double-spaced pages a day and usually end up with an average of three. By the way, when I say our kids have been successful on their own, I forgot to mention they get their brains from their mom.

Rob Holden: So, what is next -- publishing wise -- for James Lee Burke?

James Lee Burke: I'm working right now on the last chapter of a Dave Robicheaux novel titled Crusader's Cross. I have a bias, but I think it might be a whammeroo, as my old podjo lesicester Hemingway used to say.

Rob Holden: And our readers can find out when that is finished and on the way at your website, www.jamesleeburke.com ? As well as learning about your extensive backlist.

James Lee Burke: Yes, Pamala runs a website and people exchange ideas on it and actually I think have a pretty good time.

Rob Holden: Finally Jim, is there anything you would like to say to your readers out there who might read this chat at ReadersRoom.com?

James Lee Burke: Thanks for visiting our discussion today. One of the great pleasures of being a writer is the fact that people who love books are the best people in the world. Like people who love animals or the earth, they're fun to be around and ultimately it is they who reaffirm our faith in ourselves. All the best to people of good will everywhere, thanks for having me on board.

Rob Holden: James Lee Burke -- thank you for joining us here today, and we shall be anxiously awaiting Crusader's Cross! All the best!




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