MRR- I assume you began writing zines and it all evolved from there?
Romalotti- Actually, no. Just the two books. I have written other things in the past, other fictional stories, a couple were novel length, but I never worked them into shape enough for anyone to read. And honestly at this point I have no idea where those stories are now. Although my mother recently found things I had written when I was eight years old. What's funny is that these stories were like fifty to sixty pages long! I remember that by the time I had turned ten, I had written one thousand pages worth of fiction. After that, though, I stopped writing entirely for several years, all through my adolescence. My involvement in punk was as a musician. I did the band thing in the late eighties in Lawrence, Kansas. I played bass guitar for a couple of hardcore bands before switching over to writing novels in the early nineties. I find writing to be much more fulfilling than creating music, though I love few things more than music. Music inspires the writing, but I think Salad Days makes that quite clear.

MRR- Salad Days is your first novel?
Romalotti- Correct.

MRR- And Salad Days is self-published, or in more hip terms DIY…was this expensive?
Romalotti- It wasn't cheap! I could've bought a fairly nice car with that money! I had to work two full-time jobs for a year to raise the money. That wasn't easy, I had no life whatsoever during that time, I practically lost my head, which all goes to make the final product that much more of an accomplishment. I didn't want to cut any corners, I wanted the entire product to be on par with anything else in any bookstore. I am very satisfied with it, I think it's a very professionally packaged book, and I feel the price is extremely reasonable. I want people to read it, I'm not out to make money or recoup the investment, I want it to reach people.

MRR- Have you made a decent profit?
Romalotti- Hell, no! Nowhere near, and I won't. The way I saw it is I spent seven years of my life, 3-14 hours a day writing and editing and rewriting this book, so when I made that investment financially, I was spending a couple grand on my very own copy. One copy. And it was worth every penny. Every copy after that is breaking even, though not monetarily, it's the satisfaction of having such a great reception of my work. Far more valuable than the money I'd have blown on useless things.

MRR- And have you sold quite a few copies?
Romalotti- More than I originally planned. In fact, I had to reprint within the first two months. I can barely keep up, so I will be seeking a second job again soon just to make sure that the thing remains available. Right now it's being distributed by Last Gasp and AK Press, and I assume that list will grow in time, but for now that's all that I can really keep up with. I've sold a considerable amount on Amazon.com as well. Some record stores are really selling the hell out of it, which is great. In fact, there's one particular store in southern California that has sold roughly 90 copies. That is phenomenal! Most other stores are selling anywhere between 15-30 copies. It's overwhelming for me, I can't begin to explain how flattering that is and how much that blows me away.

MRR - How do feel about having your book in mainstream or corporate stores?
Romalotti - I don't shop in those places personally. I always tend to stick with independent places. Like my tour last summer, I avoided all corporate places, which made it a lot more of a challenge. As far as I know, Amazon.com is as close to mainstream as you'll find. I wasn't sure how I felt about Amazon.com until I made my way to Seattle on the tour and stayed with an old friend who works there. He told me about the company and its owners and history, I have a different perspective on them than I did. That perspective change came with an open mind, I had to set aside my boxed notions to listen and learn, something a lot of punk people could really benefit doing. Amazon.com is simply someone's innovative idea. I got a good sense from the company while I was in the offices, there was no undermining deviance lurking in their business corridors! And not to mention, that is the system that we live under, and the very nature of our species. The strongest survive, and I am very much a believer in that philosophy. The reality is good doesn't win out, endurance does. That's reality. And good people can run big companies, and shitty people can run the little corner store.

MRR- How are the reviews for Salad Days?
Romalotti- I assume there are folks out there who don't like it, but I've not heard from them, which is fine with me. Although most people tend to think it's their civic duty to tell musicians or writers something negative about their efforts, there will always be that. People think to criticize means to find something/anything negative and bring it out. Of course, I can only sit and listen patiently-I can't criticize their book, they haven't got one. I have a system that protects me against bad reviews, style and quality and content aside. When I finish a novel, I make my friends and family read it and give their harshest opinions so that when I finally present it to the editors, it's a pretty mean and lean work. My tactic is to allow all the bad opinions to rain upon me at the first, fix all the problems so that the finished product is as tight as it possibly can be. That's a hard thing to do, by the way, to take such a beating. It truly makes a better artist of you, though, at your ego's expense. But you get that confidence back when the first review comes back and praises the hell out of you. This approach must be the key because I haven't seen a review yet that was negative, and many of the reviews are absolute raves. It makes me know that every second of every year that I put into it was worth it. Like I said, it blows me away. Nothing in my life has been more rewarding.

MRR- You said it took seven years to write Salad Days, when did you begin?
Romalotti- I came up with the story in 1993. The book came out in 2000, though I would say that the work on it in 1999 was more of the fine tunings and such. It had to be exactly right, and there finally came a point when I decided that this is the book I set out to write. Honestly, I had to learn how to write. I didn't know how much of a craft creative writing is when I first began. The whole process was self-taught, which is the best way for me to learn. I never went to college, I was too busy going to punk shows and rocking out.

MRR- Why did you set out to write a story like Salad Days in the first place?
Romalotti- I felt that it would be a very cool story to present publicly, not because it was some profound experience, but because it was one that so many people have lived and could relate to. I found, and still find that most punk-based books or movies still cater to cliched ideas or they are so politically correct that they don't challenge the reader in any way. If you aren't running the risk of potentially offending someone with your art, then you're failing as an artist, in my opinion. Not that I feel Salad Days is all that offensive, but Rash overcompensates quite effectively. I think Salad Days is pretty cut and dry. I didn't want to simply state facts, I'm not a guru on the topic and I wouldn't ever want to be. I wanted to write a book more about why than what, if that makes any sense. I wanted to explain why those old ideals are in place as best as I understand. Anarchy and chaos, yes, but why? What is at the heart of punk idealism and integrity and beliefs? Why be skinhead or Straight Edge or punk? I am very proud of how I told this story without making these themes overly stated or heavy. You see by the actions of the characters why they are as they are, what they get out of it, and why they chose to live this way. It simply made perfect sense to me to write a book that presented the heart of it, not the style. I tried to go beyond the whole 'punks are drunks' and 'skinheads are all racist' and 'sex and violence' themes to show them as a little more real and noble. Another thing about punk fiction is that it always talks about punk as being something that started and ended in the seventies when I feel that the best stuff came from the eighties. Black Flag, Descendents, Minor Threat…this is the generation and ideology that I wanted to dictate and delve into. I made a point in Salad Days to never mention the words: Sex Pistols. You'll see Tchaikovsky mentioned several times, but not Sex Pistols. Nothing against the Pistols, of course, I love them as much as the next guy, but that wasn't the era I wanted to represent with this book. That story has been written into the ground, I wanted to present something a little more fresh.

MRR - The protagonist of Salad Days is a fairly inflexible and head-strong bastard, is there any of you in Frank?
Romalotti - Never been in Frank, no. Frank is me, but I'm not Frank. I'm a little more open-minded and jovial than him. I think it's interesting that the narration has a sense of humor that he doesn't really outwardly convey in the story. I think that represents his caution toward the populous, and I think it brings the reader closer to him, as though you're getting the inside skinny on this mysterious and rigid person. He's pretty anal, he sees things one way, his way.

MRR - All the way down to his fantasies and random thoughts…
Romalotti - I had this idea that since I wrote it in first person that it'd be cool to see all of his thoughts, all the way into his daydreams. Those particular sequences were a lot of fun to write.

MRR - Was the background and atmosphere of Salad Days all from experience, or did you have to do some research?
Romalotti - It was all from experience. My dog co-authored as a ghost writer-not all of it, just the good parts. He'd get going on some crazy idea while I was away, so I'd try to write it off as though it were a day-dream of the character or something. He always told me that good fiction needs only one thing: a lot of hookers. I suppose Rash made up for the lack thereof in Salad Days.

MRR- I'm sure this is probably the most common question asked, but how much of Salad Days is based in fact? I know you call it fiction, but to what extent?
Romalotti- All of it is real, none of it happened. Does that make sense? It's all me, and it's all based on something, but did all that happen verbatim? No. It is certainly inspired by real events, though, but I think that's obvious. The story itself aside from the flashbacks is entirely fictional.

MRR- No best friend died?
Romalotti- Well…I wouldn't go that far! Like I said, all of it is real. But it didn't happen as you're reading it. I changed names and mixed things up to preserve myself. It's a lot of smoke and mirrors that keep me a step away from the reader, and I like that. They get to really know me, but yet I gave up nothing to them. People ask what band I was in and I'd be very proud to say, but to mention it in an interview like this would come across as a plug, and I don't want to do that. So we'll not go there.

MRR- It would be very easy to consider something like Salad Days a self-promoting glamorization. How do you feel about that?
Romalotti- I don't think that the main character Frank is put in a very pleasant light throughout portions of it, and I think that's what really bonds him to the reader, or so I've been told. It's that he's flawed like all of us, and especially like me. One of my favorite comments on it is that it reads like a painfully honest diary. It's far from a glamorization. And besides, the actual three hundred page book itself is more ego boost for me than the supposed gallant adventure that takes place within its pages. The novel itself is my biggest accomplishment, that is my pride. It's not the content of the book, it's the work that made it what it is. I love it. I'm very proud of it.

MRR - How many free cans of Pepsi have you gotten from writing this book?
Romalotti - None. You can be the first.

MRR - How do you perceive the punk scene these days compared to fifteen years ago?
Romalotti - Not much has changed, in my opinion. I'm 30, so you're talking about when I first started going to shows-I'm not that old! There are some things about punk that just bug the hell out of me, though. For instance, the way it considers itself a movement, yet if someone tries to reach people outside of the scene, they're shot down. Called a sell-out. That's just the voice of the cowards who are too afraid to take that challenge themselves so they preach to the converted and shun the efforts of those who really do try to better things. To me, selling out is compromising your vision to become accessible. And what if your vision never changes but merely becomes popular? That is something different, back in the eighties you had to switch from punk to metal or something more popular to get successful. But nowadays the neighbor's hardcore band can have a hit. Take Green Day. Their sound has remained almost perfectly intact throughout the history of their career, the only difference is the label and the sales. I don't think Green Day changed, I think the world changed. Changed for the better, I might add. I would say that most people in the present punk scene got their start with a Green Day album, so is it really that bad of a thing that they made a name for themselves? Think of all those people introduced to punk because of them. What band got you into this scene? Offspring or Green Day? Probably in most cases nowadays. And while I'm speaking of it, go check out your Sex Pistols and Damned and Clash and Buzzcocks albums and notice what labels they were on. So really, what's the difference? I'm not necessarily saying they should be praised or even supported, but if you don't like them, don't listen to them. Why get all worked up over them and the choices they've made for their lives? People act as though they have some direct investment, and of all the inane and ridiculous concerns…there's plenty of great bands out there, don't sweat it! Go see local shows, there are plenty of new bands to love.

MRR- What are your literary influences?
Romalotti- With writing, none. I don't want to be influenced, although anymore I don't feel I could be. I feel very set in my voice, it's all my own. The narrative style of both books is obviously from the same writer. Now, I can tell you what books I really like, if you care. Geek Love, Wasp Factory, The Fountainhead, Fahrenheit 451…and if you want to know what punk cultured books I really enjoyed, I recommend American Skin. Very well written, fun story, very gritty, but with feeling.

MRR- So what is next for you as a writer?
Romalotti- My second book is out now. It's called Rash. This one is shorter, tighter, more suspenseful, and very disturbed. It's a dark and macabre story that is pretty morbid, has some plot twists, and I really fucking love the story. I think it's a pretty clever premise. I'm very eager to have it circulated as largely as Salad Days, I don't think people will be disappointed at all, not from the feedback I've gotten already. The testimonials are incredible on it, calling it a masterpiece of underground culture, or a horror story for the industrial generation. You can imagine how flattering such comments are, but I worked very hard to avoid the sophomore slump, I edited this thing over and over and over…it's a very different story than Salad Days. Very different, much more of a malicious and twisted tale. Having a good second book was critical to me if I was to be taken seriously as a writer.

MRR- Does the story of Rash deal in punk culture, too?
Romalotti- To an extent, but nothing at all like Salad Days.

MRR- What was the inspiration for your second book?
Romalotti- There was this kinky girl I used to date, but I won't go there…I really like Salad Days, but it's a pretty sterile read, or as user-friendly as I see myself being. I idealized a book that would be the perfect supplement for the 'dark and stormy night'. I wanted something dark, something almost horrific, but at the same time romantic. My favorite comment thus far on Rash is that it is at the same time romantic and disturbing. That's quite a compliment, I think that's a hard mix to fuse together. Such a statement comes from the final scene, and if you read it, you'll understand. Writing the characters in this book, especially Jobie Wallace, I've never had such an attachment with my characters. Those scenes were great fun. He is such a devilish little bastard…

MRR- Any more ideas brewing?
Romalotti- I've got a few. I have titles, premise, basic flow, all that for the next three books.

MRR- Details…
Romalotti- Rash will likely be as demented as I will get. Good or bad, I'm not sure! I am writing my third book now and it's an idea that I am very excited to write. Titles could always change, but as it stands it's called The Stickler. It deals with body modification, surreal dreams involving an entity that has a revelation to unravel in the real world, and obsessive/compulsive disorders all wrapped in one off-kilter story! Two ideas on the back burner are Blood of Stone and The Iron Vulture. Blood of Stone tells the story of Chasey from Rash and what happened to her in the events that followed, where she goes from her departure in the book. I can't give any details but I can say that it is probably my most creative and clever idea yet. I think that one has considerable potential. The Iron Vulture is a more humorous idea that is a side story for two Salad Days characters, Stanley and Thik. It would be a fun one to write, but the other two are definitely coming first. They're my best ideas yet.

MRR- Will you self-publish these as well?
Romalotti- I don't know. I suppose. I haven't thought that far ahead. They will be released somehow, I know that much. There's definitely the will, so the way will present itself in time.

MRR- You seem to like reusing the same characters, are there any characters from Salad Days in Rash?
Romalotti- Yes.

MRR- Which ones?
Romalotti- You'll have to read it!

MRR - Has anyone ever approached you about making a film of one of your books?
Romalotti - Yes, actually. Rash is being made into a script right now and location scouting is supposed to begin this summer. An independent company is working on it, so if you have any interest in acting in a low-budget movie, let it be known!

MRR- So you did a promotional tour with Salad Days in the summer of 2000, how did that go?
Romalotti- Very well, actually. I did the west coast for a month, and had to cancel the east coast dates due to lack of funds! Back to the grind again…I met some cool people on the west coast. It was a great experience, I hope to return again soon!

MRR- Lastly, I must ask about your presence in the Austin punk scene.
Romalotti- I have none! I'm pretty far removed personally. I know a few people in the scene, but I don't get out much at all. Spend too much time writing these books! There are some great bands in the scene now, and some from the past that no longer are with us. Lower Class Brats, Ignorance Park, Eastside Suicides, Hatchbacks, the Commies, and the Applicators are the bands I tend to see the most. Although I did see a reunion show of the Motards recently and it was a blast! That's the great thing about defunct bands, their reunions always bring out the crowds. Unfortunately, writers have to die to have a reception like that…

MRR - Well, thanks for the interview…
Romalotti - Thank you.

Hit List - First a little background…
Charles Romalotti - I'm a 32 year-old male living in Austin, Texas. I write novels. I have three published novels, in order they are Salad Days, Rash, and Talon. I've been able to release one every summer since Salad Days came out in 2000.

Hit List - Plans for a fourth summer in 2003?
Charles Romalotti - Actually, yes! It will be called The Stickler. It's the third and final book in this "street punk" series that started with Rash and Talon.

Hit List - What do you feel sets you apart from other writers?
Charles Romalotti - Within the genre I write, I would say that simply writing fiction from a "punk" angle is a little bit different because I do approach it conventionally like any other drama. Just happens to be about people in underground cultures. I feel that the characters I write are humans first, and their personal identity or interest could be anything. I don't feel it's a gimmick, they say "write what you know", and that's what I know.

Hit List - So from what I gather with your writing, you used to be in a punk band?
Charles Romalotti - Yeah, it was over a decade ago, and I learned a lot about life from that experience. Salad Days is definitely written from that point of view.

Hit List - Do you ever crave getting back into it?
Charles Romalotti - No, not at all. My last time on-stage, I vowed that that was it. Never again. I remember it was in February 1991. I feel that I have grown considerably since that time. I have become a lot more selfish about art, and thus it has become substantially better. The best thing about writing is that it's all you. It fails because of you, and it succeeds because of you. There is no compromise. And at the same time, no one else to blame if it goes nowhere. I prefer it that way. With my books, I have done everything from designing the cover, to writing it, to editing it. When I say that I became more selfish, it's more of saying that I started doing it entirely for myself. For instance, with Salad Days I set out to write the book that I felt was necessary, something that told the story of punk philosophy rather than punk style. It bothered me that every movie or story about being punk showed them as a bunch of drunk idiots, uneducated, insensitive, and basically intolerable people. Not that that's entirely off-base in a lot of cases, but the scene I grew up in during the 80s was a very different thing. And no story ever hit upon that correctly. So I decided to have my first novel be the psychological, emotional, and even in some cases (like my own) spiritual motives for an individual to choose to be "punk". I didn't want a book about clothes, style, and attitude so much as I wanted a book about integrity and conviction. I wrote the story that I personally wanted to read, that I wanted to own, and in this case I was not alone.

Hit List - How long did it take to complete it once you developed the idea?
Charles Romalotti -Seven years. Got the idea in 1993. The reason for the amount of time was that I foolishly felt that it would be a quick and easy process, which when it comes to simply writing, it is an easy process. It's the editing that takes all the time and energy, which I knew nothing about at the time. I have since learned that editing is actually what I like the most. And I don't mean editing so much as grammar and punctuation, but more along the lines of flow and content. Of making each scene as ass-kicking as possible. I love seeing the basic ideas come alive and jump off the page.

Hit List - You released Salad Days yourself, correct?
Charles Romalotti - Yes. When I finished it, and had come up with the cover and was set to go, I contacted four literary agents. Two of them were interested in taking a deeper look, they liked the concept, but I didn't follow through with that because at the same time I was reading books on how to self-publish fiction. And I realized that I could probably promote this book better than a major publisher could since I knew it all from experience, so I just decided to fund it myself. Of course, I have no money, and there isn't any money in my family, so I had to work two full-time jobs to raise the money to do this. Keep in mind that during this time, I had no idea if this book would be a hit or fall flat on its face. But I believed in it, and after some people had read it, some friends and some who were giving testimonials for the book's eventual back cover, and they enjoyed it quite a bit, I felt confident enough to push myself to make this book happen. I put it out in the summer of 2000 and it sold immediately. I was blown away, I had to reprint within a few months, and then it really picked up with the sales. It still sells as well today as it did two years ago. I have only placed maybe three ads in three years, very few, it just sells by word-of-mouth.

Hit List - It's not always an easy book to track down, though.
Charles Romalotti - No, it's not. The pitfalls of DIY! It's in a few stores here and there, but mostly I depend on online sales. I got screwed by so many distributors that I just backed off a bit. Last Gasp carries my books, and AK Press has Salad Days, but mostly it's available at Amazon.com. They're very fair and have programs that focus specifically on self-published writers, which is great. They've sold a lot of copies for me, but then so have certain stores like Sound Exchange in Austin, Texas, and Lou's Records and the Black in San Diego, Powell's in Portland, Oregon, and Head Line Records in Hollywood, California. Lou's and Sound Exchange both have sold over 120 copies of Salad Days alone, which is phenomenal. But with my limited budget, I really can't branch out any further than I have it right now, not this year, at least.

Hit List - It's surprising that you've had such good sales with so few outlets.
Charles Romalotti - I have no doubt that with bigger distribution, Salad Days would be considerably more successful than it is now, and I've sold thousands of copies already. The number of copies I have sold, it shocks me sometimes when I really think of it. When I go to a major concert or to a professional sporting event and they give the attendance, I think, 'this is how many copies I've sold', and it really blows me away. It's wild to think that online sales make up only 7% of all book sales. There's a much larger world for me out there, but for now, this all works. I really like dealing directly with the people who read it. Independent publishing has its perks, and that's definitely one of them. A lot of them react very strongly. For some, it's had a profound impact on them.

Hit List - It's more of an emotional story than it appears at first glance.
Charles Romalotti - It is. It was emotional writing it. Its ending seems to cause a lot of introspection. I'm very proud to have created something like this. There are presently 45 customer reviews on Amazon.com, and they all seem to have a very strong opinion on it. For an indie book, it's very rare to get such intense feedback. It really has beaten the odds, coming from such a shoestring budget.

Hit List - What reason would you give for this? Luck? Good timing?
Charles Romalotti - I feel that people overlook the fact that punk will be remembered as a very strong counterculture in the years to come. Much like flappers and beatniks and hippies, punk has had quite a long shelf-life as such things go, and its influence on western culture is very obvious, in my opinion. As with any counterculture, there are those things that give voice to what made its people tick, so as to better understand the reasoning behind it. Fashion and music, yes, but literature as well. I am certain that in the coming years, there will be a great many more books on punk culture, even more than there are now. I know because I have heard from quite a few writers who are presently working on their own punk opus. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a punk novel stays around a while as a chronicle of what will someday be a bygone era. I think that for now, Salad Days filled a niche. Many more are on the way, from me, and others.

Hit List - So after Salad Days you released another book within a year? Don't you have a job?
Charles Romalotti - Still have my full-time job, yes! As it went, during the time in which I was raising the money to put Salad Days out, I was working pretty diligently on Rash. I had developed the idea a few years earlier, and it stewed in my head for a while. When I put Salad Days out, Rash was already partially written. In fact, I toured the west coast for 4 weeks with Salad Days, doing in-stores at punk record stores and indie bookstores, and I had Rash in the van, editing it on the road.

Hit List - Rash is a very different story, for those unfamiliar.
Charles Romalotti - In every way. It's darker, it's very fast and intense, it's gruesome, and has an ending that catches you a little off guard. The only similarity is that it deals with underground culture, but a very different aspect than Salad Days. The characters in Rash would be the villains in a book like Salad Days. As I've always joked, if some stranger would walk up and tell me that they're like a character in Salad Days, I'd be flattered. If they told me they were like a character in Rash, I'd probably be smart to start running!

Hit List - You say that the characters from Rash would be villains in Salad Days, but the main character from Salad Days is in Rash.
Charles Romalotti - The connection in the stories is that Frank (Salad Days protagonist) lives in Austin in the present day and the story begins with him flying back to Kansas to attend his best friend's funeral. The whole book is a flashback on their lives together, and they happen to have been in the punk scene in the 80s. I thought it would be interesting to have Rash be the story of what happens while Frank goes back to Kansas, right outside his place of work. So Rash and Salad Days take place practically at the exact same time.

Hit List - Rash recently won an award?
Charles Romalotti - Yes. Every year in NYC in May there's the big Book Expo where all the book awards are given. Rash won one of the awards this year. Finalist for Best Horror of 2002 in Independent Publishing. I got a plaque for my wall and a lot of stickers to put on the books. And mentions here and there online and elsewhere.

Hit List - Has that pushed its sales?
Charles Romalotti - I can't really tell. It's gotten so many great reviews that it's earned a name for itself on its own. It, too, has done incredibly well. Not quite as well as Salad Days, maybe half the sales, but that still says a lot. I personally love Rash. It's such a dark and twisted story. Very unusual premise, too, in my opinion. The analogies are endless. It's the type of book that I would personally love to read. Lots of twists and some really gritty and macabre settings and atmosphere. I love that type of stuff. Books like Wasp Factory or Geek Love, or films like Se7en or Fight Club. Aside from my own interests, I felt that the next logical step for me, after finishing Salad Days would be to liberate myself as a writer by doing something totally different. So that I wouldn't pigeonhole myself. And Rash helped me achieve that.

Hit List - How would you describe your new book Talon?
Charles Romalotti - It's got the same grittiness as Rash, but the character development is a lot thicker, much more like Salad Days in that respect. It's kind of a fusion of the two. It has the heart of Salad Days and the twisted weirdness of Rash.

Hit List - Talon is a continuation of the same themes?
Charles Romalotti - Yes. In fact, it's loosely a continuation of the storyline of Rash. Features some of the same characters. For those who like Rash, Talon takes you in a direction that I feel is a bit unexpected. It broadens the horizon of the claustrophobic story of Rash. Gives the story some air to breathe. Word back on Talon is extremely positive.

Hit List - You wrote it in a matter of months, didn't you?
Charles Romalotti - I am getting better at all this. Skill is catching up to me! Finally, after ten years! These types of stories, the high-speed thriller types like Rash and Talon are very difficult to plot, to make an outline, but the writing is effortless. Speaking of outlines, I have two just waiting. My momentum is still peaking!

Hit List - The Stickler, as you mentioned, being one, I assume. What are you willing to spill about it?
Charles Romalotti - That it will tie the storylines of Rash and Talon together in ways that people could hardly expect at this point. What has been presented in the first two parts is not the whole picture, and once the whole thing comes together with The Stickler, readers will be pleasantly surprised. I have no doubt that The Stickler will end the series in great form.

Hit List - You said you have two outlines.
Charles Romalotti - After I finish this series, I am moving onto an idea that I have kicked around for quite a while. It's been my favorite, and if I can execute it as well as it plays in my head and on paper, it will likely be the story for which I will be remembered. It's called Blood of Stone. I've let a few friends read the outline, and they all had the same reaction, they were blown away. I have never heard of a story have this premise, and if the Bible is a true account, I will likely rot in hell for writing this!

Hit List - Are you a believer? While on the subject of "books", seems appropriate to ask!
Charles Romalotti - No, not at all. Now, that doesn't say that I'm not a deeply spiritual person, just not into the Christian belief. Blood of Stone deals with that belief, to an extent. It's a wonderful story, and I can't wait to jump into it.

Hit List - Any talks of your stories being turned into films?
Charles Romalotti - Talk, but little action. For instance, some filmmakers read Rash and loved it. They wrote up a script, but seem to have stumbled a bit with getting it going. I don't doubt that Rash would make a great film. But in time. I can easily see it happening, but I'm not holding my breath. I have a close friend that is slowly working on a script for Salad Days. She is certain that it could be big. I'm all about trying! We'll see what happens. Unless the project would have capacity to do a really good job of one of the stories, I'd rather not even approach it.

Hit List - Final words?
Charles Romalotti -Go out and buy my books! If your favorite bookstore doesn't have copies, then tell them to order them. Or you can get them directly from me/publisher. Cheaper and I'd even sign the copies!