I was gonna wait for the book cover, but fuck it. Have a quick taste of His Ellis-ness:
This summer, Warren Ellis’ first novel, Crooked Little Vein debuts from William Morrow. The book follows a burned-out private detective that is put on the trail of the U.S. Constitution… no, not that one – the real one. Hired for this by a corrupt Presidential aide, Michael McGill sets out on a cross-country scavenger hunt that reveals a surreal underbelly and threatens to make him a part of it. McGill is joined by a surreal and socialable college student named Trix who serves both as his assistant and encouraging voice as he descends to his ultimate destination.
[…]
Newsarama: What inspired you to write about such lurid activities as you have in Crooked Little Vein?
WE: It’s all out there, Chris. This is what the internet trades in every day. These activities are the stuff of normal life and leisure for millions of people. It may be colorful, but it’s certainly real. I invented very, very little in Crooked Little Vein. Even the macroherpetophiles; I found them back in the early days of the web, when I was writing professionally about the internet for a British computer magazine.
[…]
NRAMA: That said, what’s the secret to writing material that is far out of bounds from most people’s experiences and still making it accessible to them without watering down your intentions?
WE: Not hyping it, I think. The protagonist, Mike McGill, is our eyes into the world of the book, and most of the time he’s really not sure what’s happening to him, which I think is a useful representation of a reader immersing themselves in the book. But he’s low-key. He doesn’t run around waving his hands and shrieking. It’s all presented matter-of-factly, with some humor, and Mike’s there just trying to cope. It keeps the material grounded. And when I vary the tone, and things get substantially scarier halfway through, I think that helps carry the reader through.
(via warren ellis, newsarama)