Interview with Lono Waiwaiole, Part II

This is the second part of an interview with mystery writer Lono Waiwaiole. The first part appeared yesterday on Make Mine Mystery. If you missed it, you can catch it here. Lono's latest book, Dark Paradise, tells


I took part in a panel at Bouchercon where everybody but me said you couldn't have a hardboiled/noir novel set in Hawaii. It needed to be in a rust-belt setting, Is that possible or is Dark Paradise an aberration in that respect?

If your vision of Hawai`i can be reflected in tourist posters, I think you can advance the idea that noir fiction cannot be supported very well by the Hawaiian environment. The deeper your understanding of the place is, however, the better you can support the view you advanced on your panel. If you look at the major works of fiction that have come out of Hawai`i, you will see a lot of darkness--the place has the kind of dramatic tension below the surface which typically attracts novelists.

That's looking at the argument through the lens of society. If you look at it in terms of setting, I can say the same thing. A tropical paradise is brilliant color and lush flora on the surface, but the primary action one level down from that is decay and rot in which countless creepy creatures flourish.

You were right and the rest of your panel was wrong. Dark Paradise is an aberration so far, but only because not many writers have decided to mine those depths so far. There is most definitely a there there.

The most compelling characters in Dark Paradise are Geronimo, an adulterous cop with a gambling problem (he's the good guy) and a teenager named Nalani who becomes an effective player because of the abuse she's suffered from her father. The big question in this reader's mind is, "Will Nalani be all right?" Even at the end, we're not sure. What do you think? Can you say without giving the ending away?

The answer to that question is the same as the answer to this one: Will the Hawaiian Islands be all right? I hope so in both cases. Certainly both have the potential to go either way.

Sonnyboy, the drug dealer, is like a rock star to the locals. Is he based on anybody you know?

Yes and no. He's like a lot of smiling warriors I have met from Polynesia, essentially good-natured but quite capable of beating your brains out (and actually inclined to do so for entertainment from time to time). To totally beat down the Hawaiians, you have to go through all the Sonnys. I tried to suggest in this book that doing so would be difficult.

How did you develop your ear for Hawaiian pidgin and dialect living in Portland?

This is one of many reasons this book could not have been written before I moved to Hilo. I had been exposed to these sounds and rhythms by encountering some of the many Hawaiians living in the Portland area, but I didn't have it down until I was immersed in it for a couple of years. (Assuming I have it down now, of course.)

I did some word counts and found 1.4 variations of the f word per page, which works out to 434 instances. Comment?

My comment on this score is the same as the one above. The incidence of the f word reflects my reading of the language spoken by these characters. Some writers try to minimize the appearance of some words, but I let my characters speak however they speak. It costs me some readers, I know, but I prefer that to having my characters turn on me for unwarranted censorship.

Coming tomorrow

I interview Lono Waiwaiole on Make Mine Mystery in the first of a two-part interview Then, on Thursday, come back here for the second part.


In his varied career, Lono Waiwaiole has been an editor, sports information director and professional poker player. He currently teaches english and social studies in Gaston Oregon and writes hard-boiled, noir mysteries.

Lono's debut novel, Wiley's Lament, was named a finalist for the 2003 Oregon Book Awards for fiction and an Anthony award for best first novel of 2003. It was followed by Wiley's Shuffle (2004) and Wiley's Refrain (2005). The three books feature a tough, cynical poker player named Wiley. The first two books are set in Portland, Oregon and the third is set part in Portland and part on the Big Island of Hawai'i. The Wiley books are known for being as noir as they come. The body counts are high.

In 2009 Lono stepped away from the Wiley series with Dark Paradise (Dennis McMillan Publications.) Dark Paradise is set on the Big Island. It is a modern day crime story whose roots lie deep in the imperialism and "internal colonialism" practiced by the United States on this island culture. The body counts are just as high.



Part I tomorrow on Make Mine Mystery.
Part II, here on Thursday.

Smoke and Fire.

Last weekend, I went with a dozen friends, most of them writers, to Art and Helene Burnett's place in Bremond, Texas, about forty miles from College Station. Art Burnett, is an avid gun collector and firearms historian. He had prepared a hands-on demonstration of some antique weapons along with some discussion of their history. The guns included a replica of a fifteenth century matchlock, some flintlocks, a caplock, and various old West shotguns, carbines, and revolvers. After the lecture and demonstrations, the day concluded with a pumpkin shoot where we all dispatched an army of squash to the great pumpkin patch in the sky. Check out the Great Pumpkin Shoot on his website

We fired them all. Here are pictures of me firing a .45 Winchester 1874 rifle, a .45 Colt single action revolver, and a 12 guage double-barreled shotgun, a copy of a Greener manufactured in England in the 1870s.


Winchester 1874 .45 long Colt










Colt single action, .45 ACP












Copy of a Greener 12 guage shotgun.











We shot a Sharps 1874 model .45-70, ths same gun Tom Selleck used in Quigly Down Under. and a modern .45-70 bolt action. The difference between the two is that the Sharps fired a black powder cartridge and the modern one loaded hotter. I though the Sharps had a recoil, but the modern one nearly took my shoulder off, but talk about pumpkin stopping. This is why squash fear me.

Sharps 1874, .45-70

Nothing compared to firing that matchlock. It was about 2/3 replica of a British model and fired a .50 musket ball. You load it by pouring black powder down the muzzle, wrapping a lead ball in paper and ramming it home. Then you fill the firing pan with powder and attach a match to the mechanism. The match is a slow-burning fuse with an ember on the end. Here's a video of me with the matchlock. Talk about noise, smoke and fire. It's like grabbing a dragon by the tail.




Firing the matchlock

If you're a writer of any genre and need some authoritative information on weapons, modern or historical, contact Art Burnett at HomeplaceEnt@aol.com. And if you want a great learning experience, sign up for one of his events.

Some Friday Humor

The New Yorker has a great satire on book promotion. Check it out here.

Father Damien Sainthood

Fr. Damien will be elevated to sainthood this week, an event that has everybody in Hawaii excited. You can read the reactions here. Nobody is celebrating more than the remaining residents of Kalaupapa, the infamous leper colony of Molokai.

The history of leprosy and the policy of quarantine that brought Damien to Hawaii is sad and tragic. A recent book by John Tayman documents that horrible experiment in social engineering.

The Colony begins with a man and his family in a desperate flight for freedom that led to a military standoff in the mountains of Kauai. The man's crime? He had leprosy. Leprosy, now known as Hansen's Disease, reached the islands in the 1860s and the government responded in Biblical fashion: anyone suffering from the disease was pronounced "utterly unclean" and exiled to a peninsula on the island of Molokai.

The peninsula, Kalaupapa, was bounded at one end by sea cliffs so high and steep that goats fell off. It jutted out like an overturned flat iron into seas so rough that ships couldn't land. Instead, the exiles were rowed close to shore and tossed overboard with their belongings and forced to swim to the rocks. When they got there, they were greeted with the chilling words, "In this place there is no law." They had been tracked by bounty hunters, taken from their families, and forced to this place where all manner of crime and brutality awaited them. The colony had little food and little medical care.

Talk about injustice! Most were not contagious and many did not have the disease. A case of psoriasis was enough to send a man, woman or child into banishment. It was the longest and deadliest instance of medical segregation in American history. There are a lot of villains in the story, not the least of which are the doctors, public health officials and government servants who carried out and enforced the practice. Mostly the story is about the eventual triumph of the human spirit over ignorance and prejudice.

The elevation of Fr. Damien to sainthood is a fitting way to close this chapter.

Blow up doll

From Hard Ticket To Hawaii, 1987.

When the chips are down, go for that four-barrel bazooka, hit the clown with your jeep to send him flying and blow him out of the sky. Who writes this stuff?

The snake is gone!

Hard Ticket To Hawaii, 1987

This might be the worst movie ever set in Hawaii. Why?
Let me count the ways:
1.The dialogue is as wooden as a totem pole and not as interesting.
2. The main characters: I can't tell these blondes apart, except that one wears blue and one wears white.
3. The snake is really a hand puppet because there are no snakes in Hawaii. They couldn't even bring one in to film a realistic
scene.
4. Is that a woman in that stocking mask?
5. Wait until you see the next clip.