Robert Eversz

Exactly. She’s an outlaw. She’s not so much of a SuicideGirl as she as Homicide Girl. But she’s very much a kindred spirit to the people on the site.

I joined in October of 2004. I think it was mentioned in LAobserved.com so I went right over.

Cricket and many more I can’t remember right now. What I usually do is skip around because I don’t want to get too heavily into one person’s psychology. I want to get the zeitgeist of it then spin that around in my brain and see what comes out. If you try to do a thinly veiled portrait of someone in fiction it can come as flat caricature. You can’t reinvent that person as they really are without it turning into caricature. If you read a lot of stuff all the same vein and throw it up in your subconscious then it starts coming out in fictional characters characteristics. I’m actually working on a new book right now called Zero to the Bone and it has a character in it called Nephtys. The original Nephtys was actually the first female Pharaoh. She had a brief matriarchal line in a culture that was entirely patriarchal. My character Nephtys is dedicated to reproducing all of the hieroglyphics in Nephtys’ tomb onto her body.

She is an Egyptologist so she gives herself the pharaoh look with the dark hair and the bangs. She is fair skinned because tattoos and tans don’t go together very well and she is about 25 years old.

I was raised with female voices more than male voices. My mother was my first example of a kickass action hero. She was born on a Montana ranch and she could outfight, outrope and outshoot most men in their prime. I have photographs of her standing on a horse bareback at the age of 14. I have another one with the reins of her horse Trixie in one hand and her rifle in the other. Her dad used to pay her a penny for every gopher she killed because gophers and ranchers don’t get along.

[laughs] Let’s just say she became a crack shot.

I had that example and also Montana ranchers are pretty taciturn folk. My dad was a city boy and was away from home most of the time. So listening to my grandmothers, my mother and my sister talk around the wood burning stove really stuck in my mind. I had this idea that all fiction comes from the silence inside yourself. You sink down into this subconscious silence and you listen to what pops up. The female voices came out of this childhood exposure to women. That’s why I write a female character. I write Nina in particular because I like outlaws, I love crime fiction and I prefer the outsider’s perspective on society. If you write crime fiction there are cop stories and robber stories. The cop stories are insider’s look at how even though things are corrupt but we are going to do the right thing to sustain order. But the typical robber story is that things are all fucked up so I like robbers. The idea with Nina is not to write an unending series of books that feature her. I think I have probably just finished the last one. I could come back to her later on but I’m not sure if that will happen. What I’m thinking is this character of Nina and her journey is really a story of how someone goes from being a baby portrait photographer to being a SuicideGirl. These books play out this story. The idea is a five act character play. I wasn’t smart enough to do five noir novels that have a character arc that swings you back full circle. But the idea is that by the end of the last book all the issues that were raised in the first book will be resolved by the last.

I get advice from women all the time without asking for it which is one of the great things about SuicideGirls. I have advice on demand with them. I also listen to what people and women are saying. Not in a sappy way but it’s important to listen then respond. Women talk a lot and they will eventually tell you what they need.

Though sometimes details trip me up like cosmetics. I don’t wear makeup and most of the women I know don’t wear makeup. Quite often I ask friends about stuff like that. I don’t claim to be a SuicideBoy.

Yeah, I don’t want to sit there in the nude with my book [laughs].

I’m a UCLA film school dropout so that’s where I was coming from. Los Angeles generates a huge amount of cultural white noise. In LA you are constantly bombarded with messages of what to buy, where to go, what clothes to wear and who to be. I found it very difficult to gain any kind of perspective on the culture while being inside the eye of this white noise hurricane. If you live your entire life in 72 degree weather you will never be able to describe what that weather feels like unless you go somewhere where it’s ten degrees below zero or 120 degrees in the baking sun. We learn things about ourselves by contrast and by seeing things we are not. By visiting other cultures we learn things about our own. I found that by moving to Europe I started to truly see some things about our culture I hadn’t seen before.

Also I have a real Jones for Czech women, in fact I married one.

It takes a lot of courage to do the unexpected thing. Every now and then I have the courage to do it. I have sometimes done things that have gotten me in trouble. I really do subscribe to the outlaw mentality meaning you don’t have to buy that fancy car or need those fancy clothes. You don’t have to live in the biggest house in town. You don’t have to measure your success or personal value by the amount of money you make. There are other values that are out there for the taking. If you don’t allow yourself to be desensitized by this mass consumer culture then maybe you can go out and find them. You can do something different and creative with your life. That to me, is personified by the outlaw culture.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck