Oh boy, where to start? Hold on to your hats, ladies and gents, because this is a big one.
Made to Kill started with “Brisk Money” and “Brisk Money” started with a little interview I did for Tor.com way back when. It was a form interview, the standard shtick for new authors not worth a dime who were lucky enough to get a seat at the big table. There were questions and lots of them and they said I could take my pick. So I did. And the last one on the list was pretty fun. It was: “If you could find one previously undiscovered book by a nonliving author, who would it be? Why?”
Little did I know that my answer to this was going to start me down a road that was long and winding and a heck of a lot of fun. Because I answered the question with the first thing that came into my head: What I really wanted to read and what I really wished did exist was Raymond Chandler’s long-lost science fiction epic.
I’m a Chandler fan, big time, and it’s always amused me the way Chandler hated science fiction. Hated it. In 1953, he wrote to his agent about it and in the space of 152 words wrote his own little sci-fi vignette that’s full of pink pretzels and the rising of the fourth moon and—if you can believe it—what seems to be a computer called Google. He was proving a point, and the story is meaningless nonsense … but it’s meaningless nonsense written by Raymond Chandler.
And Raymond Chandler was a genius.
Of course, what Chandler was really doing—well, I’m pretty sure, anyway—was fishing, running this kooky sci-fi thing up the flagpole to see who saluted. Alas, if his agent ever replied, the answer remains unpublished. That’s a letter I’d love to see.
But Chandler writing science fiction? Wow. There was a neat idea. And it seems my editor at Tor, Paul Stevens, thought so too, because he said I should write that lost Chandler sci-fi epic. Maybe he was joking and he never told me, but I took him up on his suggestion and the result was a novelette called “Brisk Money,” which was published on Tor.com in July 2014.
A funny thing happened while I was writing “Brisk Money.” I got some more ideas. I’d just met Ray Electromatic, and his boss, Ada, and when I was done with that story I wanted to tell more—a whole novel’s worth. No, two novels—screw it, make it three.
You’re holding the first one, right now.
Paul Stevens was there at the start and really all this is his doing, so he has my thanks from now until eternity. My heartfelt gratitude to everyone else at Tor who took a liking to my little story about a robot who killed people for a living in the Californian sunshine, in particular Irene Gallo for the most amazing art direction in the history of art direction (I mean, come on, just take another look at the cover of this thing. It’s okay. I’ll wait. You back? The cover is great, right?), Patty Garcia for diabolical master plans and devotion to the Electromatic Detective Agency above and beyond the call of duty, and to my new editor, Miriam Weinberg, who not only loves Ray and Ada as much as I do but also really gets them as much as I do. As an author, I can’t ask for any more than that.
Thanks to Will Staehle, who is now firmly established as my artistic wingman (He did the cover, like he does all my covers, but he really went the extra mile on this one. Go take another look. Go!), and to my agent, Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency, who yet again helped me get this thing up to the next level of literary magic. She also gave this book its perfect, perfect title. Make sure you buy her a drink next time she’s in town.
Made to Kill needed research, and lots of it. Not only did that include another close study of the Raymond Chandler canon itself but also of two superb reference works: The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909–1959, edited by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane, and A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler, by Tom Williams.
This book would have been a great deal harder to write if it wasn’t for The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles: A Guide to the Usual & Unusual from Herb Lester Associates, compiled and described by Kim Cooper with excellent design and illustration from Paul Rogers.
My thanks to the usual (and unusual) suspects: Kim Curran, Joelle Charbonneau, Daryl Gregory, Miranda Jewess, Emma Newman, Alex Segura, Victoria Schwab, Chuck Wendig, and Jen Williams. Thanks to everyone who has supported me both in private and in public. There are too many of you to list and I’m up against a deadline here, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say I know who you are and I know what you did and, for some of you anyway, I know where you live. Which means Ray and Ada know where you live, too. Remember that …
To my wife, Sandra, whose support and belief and patience are without end. This book is for you.
And finally, to the grand master of detective fiction himself, Raymond Chandler. Thank you. I hope I did okay and I hope Made to Kill is, indeed, a scream. This book is for you, too.