Maggie Estep
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Hex is the first in series of crime novels by former spoken word artist Maggie Estep. The main character of Hex is Ruby Murphy a recovering alcoholic with a fanatical devotion to animals. Through a series of unfortunate events Ruby is pushed into the dirty underbelly of horse racing and now finds herself in the company of extremely bad people with guns.

Many SGer’s may remember Estep from her the MTV show Poetry Unplugged in the early 90’s. Before the poetry boom in the media ended, there was a lot of buzz around her which she was able to parlay into a series of book deals. She has written the novel Diary of an Emotional Idiot as well as Soft Maniacs, a collection of short stories.

Her next book is the second of the Ruby Murphy stories called Gargantuan.

Check out Maggie Estep’s official website

Daniel Robert Epstein: What made you decide to do a crime novel like Hex?

Maggie Estep: It was a fluke. I’ve always read heaps of crime novels. Then I was working on something else and I got frustrated and bored so I started out just writing something to entertain myself and I wrote a whole chapter. Then I thought, “hey this is kind of fun” so I wrote a book.

Then I found that I like inflicting a certain structure upon myself because then I can show my voice and my shenanigans and I kind of love that.

DRE: It’s a big difference from other things that you’ve written.

ME: It’s a difference in that it’s a bit plotted but that’s about it. The voice is the same in everything. I can’t seem to get away from [laughs] that darn voice of mine. I was initially known for writing kind of spoken work, performance and specific pieces. I was working on novels but that got me nowhere so then I started performing a lot and so I wrote really short in-your-face kind of stuff and that is what a lot of people remember me for.

DRE: I found some info in Hex under a web page of “women sleuths” or something like that so that’s pretty unusual.

ME: It’s a little weird it doesn’t quite fit into any of the existing categories entirely. I like to think mine has some things that no one would possibly replicate. I don’t think you see a lot of the combination of Coney Island and the racetrack.

DRE: Did you do research for this?

ME: I grew up around horse people so it was inevitable that I would write about the damn people. A lawyer friend of mine was talking about his cases and he said ”oh yeah I just prosecuted this guy who was like you know whacking horses for the insurance money.” It turned out to be this guy I’d known growing up and that was kind of appalling so that was probably the instigating event for that book.

DRE: Did he like horses when you knew him?

ME: Yeah he worked for my dad transporting horses and stuff.

DRE: Wow that must have been kind of freaky.

ME: It was horrible. Like my dad’s protégé. He was this really bad kid and in and out of “juvie”. My dad was trying to help reform him by getting him into horses and we all thought it was working. Apparently it didn’t have the desired affect

DRE: Apparently not.

How did the transition to a novel like this work for you?

ME: I was working on something that I will eventually get back to. It was actually sort of a historical novel about female gangsters called the “Angel Makers”. That’s something I’ve been researching and thinking about it for probably six years now. It was just more than I could handle at the time and I’ll probably do it about two books from now

DRE: Was there a lot of female gangsters?

ME: I know there were some and there were two in particular who pop up in the book Gangs in New York. There’s not that much known about them which gives me more leeway actually. But they’re pretty fascinating because in a time when women couldn’t vote or anything they were leading these vast tribes of men, murdering and causing mayhem. I love it [laughs].

DRE: You’ve caused some mayhem yourself, right?

ME: Me? [laughs]

DRE: Yeah. You tried to, anyway, right?

ME: Wait when? [laughs]

DRE: In general, I mean I didn’t really expect to find, you know, I put your name into a seach engine and all this really nutty stuff popped up.

ME: [laughs] Yeah there’s a lot of stuff about me out there. I did all the performance stuff and then I did things like opening for Hole. I’ve done all kinds of very bizarre things and then my second book, Soft Maniacs, was considered rather pornographic although that certainly wasn’t really my intention it just came out that way.

DRE: How’d you get into the performance?

ME: Completely accidental because I’m actually very introverted. When I was like twenty I wasn’t very good at writing novels and I had some excerpts lying around. A friend saw some of it and she dragged me to an open mic night and it went really well. I was so nervous that I paced and was kind of frantic but a year later I found myself earning money performing. Not that much, like 50 bucks a shot, but it just kind of took off from there. Then I started to go on tours with other writers and for a few years there I earned a steady living just from performing not from publishing or anything

DRE: Didn’t you do Lollapalooza?

ME: Yes I did. There was a summer where they had a bus full of poets and I was one of them. That was really fun. [laughs] But that’s what burned me out completely on doing spoken word and performances as a steady diet because it had maybe twelve performance pieces that I was doing them all day everyday for eight weeks. I just never wanted to look at them again after that. Fortunately I had just gotten my first book deal so that was like the turning point

DRE: You were also on this MTV show that was very popular called Poetry Unplugged.

ME: The guy who created Unplugged, Bob Small, saw me perform really early on and he was really interested in my work and a few other people’s. So he talked to the powers that be into doing this Spoken Word Unplugged where it was just nothing but poets, monologue people and stuff like that. We actually did two of those and it got a tremendous amount of attention. I think that’s how I actually got a book deal.

It was completely ass backwards. Once I got on TV the New York Times wrote about it and the next day I had five or six phone messages from publishers and editors asking to meet with me. It was a happy day.

DRE: All it takes is a write up in the Times.

ME: It’s amazing how powerful that is.

DRE: When you do book readings do you revert back to when you did spoken word?

ME: I’m a good reader but I’m not showy. I know how to edit some things to make it kind of juicy for the audience. You have to make people either laugh or have some strong emotion every thirty seconds or you’re screwed. I don’t have those same twelve spoken word pieces so it’s quite delightful to do it.

DRE: Do people still throw crap at you?

ME: I don’t really usually end up reading in those kinds of venues. That happened opening for rock bands. That comes with the territory [laughs].

DRE: What was it like opening for Hole?

ME: That was mostly pretty good. I had a band behind me while I was ranting so we had a good time.

We were just all friends and we used to get the other to play for fun and then we got a record deal and then we’re opening for Hole. It was all really unexpected. One time Courtney was indisposed and so Hole wasn’t going to play and they announced to the 5,000 waiting kids that it was us and Veruca Salt or nothing at all. So we had to go first and surprisingly they were pretty receptive. That was fun but there were other times where I went on between Henry Rollins Band and Cypress Hill. That was the time that I got like mud thrown at me. That was at Woodstock II. It was like 250,000 people and I was there in my little dress I’m shouting out stuff and they’re like not having it

DRE: You seem to say that you said that you fall into some of these things but I you must be fairly talented for people to pick up on stuff like this.

ME: Well when I was sixteen or whatever the age when you decide to do what you want to do is, I just wanted to write. But I didn’t know exactly where I was going to go with it and then a lot of stuff just kind of fell my way. I just went with it until I got really burned out on like on rock-type venues and having to write really loud kind of splashy stuff. It’s limited so after awhile I would just have to move on.

DRE: But were you a child prodigy?

ME: No, I wasn’t that young. By the time stuff started happening I was twenty-seven already.

DRE: I read you were reading Camus at age ten [laughs].

ME: [laughs] That’s because I was withdrawn, introverted and living in France. I had no choice. My mom divorced when I was seven and took me there.

DRE: Are they selling Camus in the airport there?

ME: [laughs] No I was a bad kid.

DRE: You were a bad kid at age seven?

ME: Yeah, I was always in trouble for ripping boys’ clothes off and just being bad in school. My stepfather decided that every day after I had to go home all I was allowed to do was read. At the time I hated reading and he got me Camus, Moliere and stuff in French. I spoke a bit of French but it was the only thing I had available to me so I and that’s how I ended up reading

DRE: What did reading those books do to you at such a young age?

ME: That’s a good question. Maybe I’m scarred for life. No but I really think that Camus was a good influence because he writes so simply. I love that.

DRE: I want to get back to ripping boys’ clothes off. What is that all about?

ME: I was so aggressive. I remember there was a boy from Madagascar. His name was Beth Haun and he just had this great skin. I terrorized him, chased him into the bathroom stalls and tried to rip his pants off.

DRE: I didn’t know girls like that. If I did that I would get kicked out of school for doing something like that

ME: [laughs] It was Catholic school too.

DRE: Oh my God.

ME: I know. Then eventually I went back to live with my dad when I was thirteen and then I was really wild [laughs]. I just did whatever I wanted [laughs]

DRE: Was he just busy?

ME: Yeah, he was busy. He was a horse guy and he managed barns for people most of the time. He generally didn’t have enough money to have his own operation so he would kind of manage other people’s barns and train their horses. At the working class level of it, it’s just unbelievable grunt work. I mean you’re just working, and working and working. I had my share of chores and stuff but the rest of the time I was playing guitars, smoking pot and listening to Patty Smith [laughs].

DRE: Did you get into harder drugs too?

ME: Yeah, for a while I was a maniac. I got into anything available until like my early twenties and then it I almost killed myself like five to ten times by accidentally ODing. I had this friend who used to have to revive me all the time and finally one day she said “fuck this I’m leaving.” Then after a various series of circumstances I found myself in rehab [laughs].

DRE: So this past year has been big for your career.

ME: Yeah it is sort of new and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I think I’m pretty much where I’d hoped to be, providing I still keep getting book deals and I won’t have to get a day job. I don’t get huge advances but I get enough that if I’m slightly careful I can get by.

DRE: Do your books do okay?

ME: Each one does a little better than the previous one like and Hex definitely outsold all the others combined. It went pretty quickly which still isn’t saying that much but it generated enough interest. So since it is a series I’m doing at least three of them and the next one is coming out in like May or June

DRE: What other modern crime writers do you like?

ME: Well, I love Andrew Vachss. He’s amazing. Walter Mosely is great

The first stuff I read was actually like Jim Thompson. Patricia Highsmith is flawless. Both her and Jim Thompson are so fuckin dark and scary that I just get disturbed for weeks. I can’t read them anymore, as much as I love them. Raymond Chandler I can handle with all those quips and that amazing dialog. But Jim Thompson I just haven’t read them in a couple of years because I get freaked out.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/words/Maggie+Estep/