C.W. Blackwell is an American author from the Central Coast of California. His short stories have appeared with Down and Out Books, Mystery Magazine, Dark Yonder, Tough Magazine, Reckon Review, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Rock and a Hard Place Press. He is a 2x Derringer Award winner and 5x nominee. He was included on the Distinguished Author list in the 2024 Best American Mystery and Suspense collection. His crime fiction novella HARD MOUNTAIN CLAY was published in January 2023 from Shotgun Honey Books. His debut short story collection WHATEVER KILLS THE PAIN was released by Rock and a Hard Place Press in July 2025.
FR: First, let me say, this is an excellent collection of short stories. One of my favorite reads of the year. I really liked the point of view of the “criminals,” the people on the fringes, the downtrodden, those trying to make a go in a rigged system. In my own stories I don’t often view my criminals as bad people. They want more. They simply want a life like any other person. Overall, how was it putting this collection together? How did you feel about the characters?
CWB: Ah, thanks man. I didn’t make it easy on myself, that’s for sure. I went through my published stories trying to build a collection that I could really be proud of, but I’m so critical of my own work that I only ended up with six stories to use. This was out of sixty-something stories I’ve published over the past ten years. Sometimes I feel like my stories grow mold when they sit around too long and have to be thrown out like a bad sourdough loaf. I don’t know if that’s a normal writer thing or if I’m being too tough on myself. But I also had something specific in mind for the collection and wanted the reader to feel a cohesive theme. So, in addition to the previously published six, I wrote six brand new stories that were anchored in the kind of gritty social realism I wanted for the project and then we had twelve. In the end, I felt I had what I wanted—stories with characters you might recognize from your own neighborhood or who you might have grown up with. Working-class people who are fed up with the daily grind. They’re waking up to the idea, as many of us are, that our economic system is built for only a small fraction of people, and the American Dream is a kind of lullaby they sing to us to keep us showing up to work on time.
FR: I loved the story “A Little Rain Must Fall.” Tell us about Mirabel. What’s life like for her? The money, the job.
CWB: Mirabel is one of those characters I mentioned before—someone looking for a way out of the soul-crushing paycheck-to-paycheck bullshit. She knows she is not just treading water, but drifting backwards. She loves her partner, Tracy, who is suffering from treatment-resistant depression. In some ways it’s the most classic noir story in the collection, in that it depicts someone making a big play against powerful forces, similar to what you might read in an old dime store paperback. So Mirabel is working this gig as a plumber’s assistant (which I also did for a brief time) and she encounters something in the basement of a stash house that alters her and Tracy’s lives forever. There’s a getaway element to it as well. I love changing settings mid-story so I can take the reader on a road trip and explore the haunted backroads of America. I also like riding along in the backseat with my characters while they plot and scheme and tell each other their deep-down hopes and fears.
FR: Switching up gears. A question I ask in all my interviews. Three writers who have died that you love. Three living writers you dig. And one or two writers you enjoy that we wouldn’t think you like.
CWB: For writers who have passed, I’ll pick John Steinbeck (a local hero where I’m from), William Gay, and Daniel Woodrell (RIP). For the living writers, I’ll go with Willy Vlautin, Megan Abbott, and Jordan Harper. I also read a bit of poetry, which is something you may not have guessed. I’m a fan of Octavio Paz, Linda Hull, and Julianne Buchsbaum.
FR: How has it been working with Rock and a Hard Place? It’s a wonderful cover and the pages are crisp and smell and feel like pages in a book should.
CWB: Rock and a Hard Place is a great press! They were enthusiastic about the collection from the very beginning, and we worked really well together to bring it to life. Paul Garth was the primary editor for WHATEVER KILLS THE PAIN, and he was incredible to work with. I mentioned how critical I am of my own work—which mostly isn’t a good thing. But it also makes me eager for developmental suggestions from people I admire. So when Paul had an idea for this or that, I ran with it. We had this back and forth routine that really improved the project. Indie publishers are doing a lot of amazing work in a very challenging environment right now, so it’s important to seek them out and support them in any way possible. Buy. Rate. Review. Repost. Anything helps!
FR: You have stories set in different times, was there a reason for this? A way to explore different times, moods, and places? I often find when writing a story set in a different time, I find myself listening to music of the era. What rituals do you use? WHATEVER KILLS THE PAIN set in the early 60s. HARD RAIN ON BEACH STREET, in the 70s. It’s truly a wonderful collection of the era vibes in each story.
CWB: I think a lot of writers have a nostalgic streak. It’s sort of an occupational hazard, you know? Sometimes I love setting up a scene in an earlier decade just to hang out in it, and I like to imagine the reader getting a thrill out of it too. I can’t write with music playing unless it’s instrumental, but I love writing about the forties or fifties and getting some classic West Coast jazz in my headphones. Sometimes I’ll watch old news reels or read nonfiction to support the story. In the collection, the first story opens at an amusement park in the late seventies during Fourth of July weekend, there’s another in the early sixties as a family watches the Kennedy-Nixon debates, and one is set in the early nineties where (and I remember this vividly) you have Saddam Hussein constantly on the news, riding around on a tank and smiling at the camera. But I’m also trying to do a little more here than just have fun with it. These scenes are also political, and I’m trying to show how political events can frame working class issues and how people make decisions as a reaction to political pressures. We put a lot of stock in the ability of politicians to make our lives better, but they rarely do—and if you’re reading this in 2026, you know that’s a huge understatement. As writers, we have a unique opportunity to write about the impact of shitty policies impacting working people, or how hope fades when the relief never comes. If you’re a big fan of noir, this feeling of fatalism in the face of powerful, nefarious forces is something that might interest you.
FR: You have written both short stories and novels. What’s your favorite thing to write? The short story? The novel? Why?
CWB: I always feel that short stories are a little more enjoyable to write because there isn’t a whole lot of pressure attached. If the story doesn’t work, I’ve only put in a few weeks of time and I can just move on to the next thing. I also feel like I have more room to experiment and write outside my comfort zone. The stories in WHATEVER KILLS THE PAIN are written in different tenses, different POVs, both male and female protagonists, underrepresented characters, and different historical time periods. That’s me having fun writing from a variety of perspectives and settings. I really enjoy it. Novels always feel risky to me because they take so long to complete. If I can’t get it published, I have a year’s worth of writing just sitting in a drawer. I know that’s all part of it, but it freaks me out a little. But novels also give you more room to explore—I can take my time with descriptions and dialogue, maybe get a little indulgent here and there. I also know there is a much bigger market for novels, and if I want to quit my day job and become a career writer, that’s where I need to be. Some readers are really kind and tell me some of my short stories should be expanded into novels. So that’s the reason I’m alternating between the two formats right now. I like having a few stories floating around on the scene, but I also want to get novels into readers’ hands.
FR: “The Block and the Chain,” another story I loved. Tell us how you came up with Brooks. Who is he? What’s he trying to accomplish? Which brings me to my next point. How do you come up with such lush and interesting characters? Do you live with them? I liken it to method acting. I sometimes feel like I need to think like them, feel their hurt, their desire to do something completely fucked up. Maybe you know people like Brooks and the other characters in the stories.
CWB: I live in Santa Cruz County, which is the next county over from the South Bay Area, aka Silicon Valley, and I even worked in tech for a little bit. I’m not fond of tech culture at all, especially with all that obscene wealth pushing up housing prices to dystopian levels. My area has been ranked the most unaffordable place to live in the country three years in a row, and I blame rich tech bros for collecting homes in my town like Pokemon cards. So when Rock and a Hard Place announced a submission call for a crime anthology with the theme of rich people acting like assholes, I knew exactly where to start. I created this self-absorbed womanizing crypto bro so I could send him down a doomed path. Man, I had a blast writing this one. But yeah, I definitely try to walk in a character’s shoes and make sure their dialogue and reaction beats line up authentically. That’s the key to writing characters for me. One reason this story works, I think, is that Brooks is so phony and Narra is terrifyingly authentic. The contrast between them is so interesting to me. Whenever I can’t figure out what makes a character tick, I’ll use someone I know well as a stand-in, but in this story I didn’t need to.
FR: The quotes at the beginning of the collection, you use one from William S. Burroughs, where he says, Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. And you have one from Steinbeck, There is more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty. Tell us about your choices there in context with the stories, the characters, the emotions. Perhaps it all ties into the world today. A place where the average man and woman can’t afford celery.
CWB: The Burroughs quote works for me because for many of my characters, the risky decisions they make are because their backs are against a wall, not because they are necessarily bad people (with the notable exception of Brooks). I’ve always felt that it’s mostly out of desperation, not greed, that people end up on the wrong side of the law. Working people only want enough, while the ultra-wealthy seem to want more, more, more. The Steinbeck quote sort of underscores my preference for writing about real people with relatable issues. When you’re just scraping by, it really sucks, but there’s still a drive to live and love and to be happy even though an entire economic system is conspiring against you. The struggle is beautiful because it is true, and the truth of it shatters the myth of the American Dream.
FR: What’s next for you? Working on any new projects? Maybe taking a break? If working on something new, can you give the readers a look into it?
CWB: Man, sometimes I wish I could take a break, but I’ve been feeling this drive to keep writing. Maybe it comes with getting a little older and thinking about all the books I want to write and how the years I have to write them aren’t guaranteed. It’s a haunting feeling, but also motivating. I’m a slow writer, too. So that means I have to be consistent and try to meet the monthly goals I set for myself (which I rarely do). I wrote a short novel in 2024 called THE COLD DARK FOREVER, which is coming out with Shotgun Honey Books in August 2026. It’s about a commercial fisherman in 1942 who teams up with a female mob enforcer to hunt down a stash of gold. It’s violent, sexy, and noirish—and I absolutely loved writing it. I wrote WHATEVER KILLS THE PAIN after that one, so now I’m back to novel-writing again. My current project is called BLEED THE MACHINES and it’s about a local bar owner who learns about a Silicon Valley conspiracy to cause massive social unrest using artificial intelligence. Twenty years ago it would be sci-fi but now it’s just a modern thriller, which is crazy to me. The protagonist is a complete Luddite, which ends up being somewhat of an advantage since the tech companies can’t easily track him (he doesn’t even own a phone). I’m writing the ending now, so I’ll be querying agents soon!
FR: The world as we know it now is sick. The mental state is unhealthy. Times like neither you nor I have lived in or experienced before. It’s natural to create art, write stories, and take photographs. It’s a way to give a middle finger and scream a while. I think certain authors speak to different times. For example, Jim Thompson and Steinbeck are being picked up more by readers. Do you find yourself dipping deeper into the dark, or trying to understand your characters in a way you haven’t before? Maybe you are trying to relate to them, their motives, the empathy or the like of? Give us an example or two from the book.
CWB: Looking back on my childhood, I can remember some very tough times. My parents both had working-class jobs and divorced when I was two years old. Mom worked clerical jobs and my father was a machine operator for a commercial printing company. I never went hungry, but I remember how dicey things would get. After nearly fifty years of trickle-down economics, things have only gotten worse in this country. Now, the bottom 50% of wage earners own just 2.5% of the nation’s wealth. Forget billionaires—soon we’ll have a new trillionaire class to contend with. I find this kind of inequality completely nauseating. In this country, if you’re not born wealthy, a single bump in the road can send you over a cliff. An illness or an injury can destroy your life savings or force you into bankruptcy. A single arrest can prevent you from getting good-paying work for the rest of your life. There are no second chances. I have always written from a place of darkness and anger because of this, and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon. My characters are certainly aware of all this.
In my story “Whatever Kills the Pain,” Claire tells her brother:
“People like that, with all the money in the world, they’re used to doing whatever they want while folks look the other way. They think they own everyone, so they treat us like property. Like a toy they can break when they’re angry.”
In “Paloma,” Jeanie tells us:
Debts grow deeper, rents slip further out of reach. Next thing you know, you’re swapping a studio apartment for a sun-faded Dodge Caravan with missing hubcaps and illegal tinting—but hey, at least it’s a coastal town and the views from the top of the parking garage aren’t bad.
In “The Breakwater Club,” Emmett says:
“We like to talk about second chances and turn-around stories, but that’s all fake. In this country, you’re lucky to get a chance at all, let alone a second one.”
BONUS QUESTION
FR: So you pull up in a souped-up muscle car, it’s 1969 or 1970. You are about to commit crimes to put bread on the table. Who from your short story collection are you picking up to help you and why? What music is blasting out from your radio? What book is on your front seat? What’s in the duffel bag sitting on the back seat?
CWB: In the book I’m writing now, the main character drives a black and chrome 1970 Plymouth Road Runner, so that’s what I’m sticking with here. I probably stole it fresh off the lot. I’m picking up Claire from “Whatever Kills the Pain,” since she’s okay with going outside the law when there’s a moral imperative. She also has her father’s old S&W revolver and she’s not shy about pulling the trigger. Black Sabbath just dropped their debut album, so that’s definitely plugged into the 8-track player. You’ll also find some Zeppelin, Hendrix, Stooges, The Kinks, and The Rolling Stones if you dig around a little. On the front seat, I’m reading the June issue of Scanlon’s Monthly, which contains an article called “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved” from an up-and-coming writer named Hunter S. Thompson. What’s in that duffel, you ask? I’m sorry, but your readers will have to check out the first few stories of my collection to find out!
