[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: Which is your favorite part of the writing process?
Chip Jacobs, Author/Journalist: I think when you get an idea that you know is going to do something, is going to be your life for the next two years, I think that’s pretty great.
I also love the last sentence of my book. There’s never been one where I’m not absolutely verklempt, weeping, feeling spiritual, thankful to my mom for her belief in my writing. That is not like giving birth because what does a man know about that? But it’s something…it’s almost like holy. That last line and it just I don’t know it’s like that’s my purpose in this world. The first sentence of the book is pretty amazing too and you have to really think about that for my Smog Town book it probably took me two hours. How do I find that first line? Is that crazy because I have the word beast in my first line of my smog town book The Beast you couldn’t stab found fanned across the waking city. I thought God, does that sound corny? Would Raymond Chandler ever say that? I just had to get it right. That first line sometimes. I think you can tell. You asked how do you know somebody has an “it” quality? Sometimes I think you could know it from the first line of a book. Sometimes…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
About:
Chip Jacobs is a bestselling author and journalist. His latest book is the Kafka-esque, true-crime caper The Darkest Glare: A True Story of Murder, Blackmail and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles, which Kirkus Review praised as “engrossingly bizarre” and “entertaining.” Jacobs’ previous book was his debut novel, Arroyo, historical fiction set around construction of Pasadena’s mysterious Colorado Street Bridge in 1913. It was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, a CrimeReads most anticipated book, and a medalist at the Independent Publishers Book Awards. Before them were the biography Strange As It Seems: the Impossible Life of Gordon Zahler (an Indies Book of the Year finalist) and the environmental social histories The People’s Republic of Chemicals and the international bestselling Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles (the latter two with William J. Kelly). He has also contributed pieces to anthologies, among them the bestselling Los Angeles in the 1970s: Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine and Go Further: More Literary Appreciation of Power Pop. His prize-winning reporting has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, L.A. Daily News, CNN, The New York Times, Bloomberg, L.A Weekly, among others.
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