38 JUSt
OUt
march 4.20Û5
California dreaming
His mother may write about denizens of the dark,
but gay author Christopher Rice has seen the Light
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by
C hristopher M c Q uain
n Light Before Day, the third novel By
Advocate columnist Christopher Rice, a
jaded twentysomething tries to transform
his life of drinking, drugging, casual sex,
family tragedy and chronically dissatisfying
reportage for a fluffy gay magazine into some­
thing more stable and meaningful.
The protagonist, Adam Murphy, is drawn
into a labyrinthine mystery involving kidnap­
ping, murder and suicide—crimes emanating
from the intersecting underworlds of underage
sexual exploitation and crystal
meth manufacture and distrib­
ution. With the aid of a cur­
mudgeonly true-crime novelist,
he becomes a world-weary
sleuth of the Philip Marlowe
variety, following a twisted
path that leads him from the
cniisy streets, clubs and bath­
houses of West Hollywtxxl to
the ostentatious mansion of a
failed dot-commers kept boy
to the ragged niral environs
that provide an isolation ideal
for covert, explosively danger­
ous meth labs.
After 2001s A Density of
Souls and 2003 s The Snow
Garden— which focused on the
rivalries, jealousies and insecurities of, respec­
tively, high school and college milieus— Light
Before Day marks a coming of age in Rice’s
work. As in a good film noir or detective
novel, all the characters have mixed motives
and checkered pasts, and the juicy, hard-boiled
tone likely will satisfy fans of the dark, existen­
tial Jim Thompson/James M. Cain strain of
L.A. crime fiction.
On the eve of Light Before Day’s publication,
Rice (son of Interview with the Vampire author
Anne Rice) spoke to Just Out about the process
of writing the novel, his newly domesticated
life and how California gets under one’s skin.
I
Christopher McQuain: To what extent
was Light Before Day inspired by real events?
Christopher Rice: It was initially inspired
by a number of missing persons posters 1 saw
around, and a friend’s offhand comment that
young gay guys go missing all the time from
West Hollywood. As for the meth lab explo­
sions, 1 knew that I was going to end up writing
about gay men and crystal meth, and once 1
began to research the drug in depth, I learned
of the horrors meth had brought to rural Cali­
fornia. I wanted to concoct a story that bridged
the two. And sexual exploitation of minors, or
more specifically the stereotype of the gay man
as child molester, is something I have wanted
to explore since my first novel—the damaging
effects this stereotype has on all gay men.
CM: How autobiographical is the Adam
Murphy character? Have you
personally dealt with any of
his issues?
CR: I had destructive and
painful experiences with alco­
hol and drugs, but 1 didn’t feel
they were interesting or unique
enough to make a good book....
Adam Murphy [is] my alter ego,
with a heavy emphasis on alter.
There’s a lot of my pain in him,
but he’s fun to write because he
and I are not exactly the same.
CM: Is your own life more
domesticated than the hedonis­
tic, partygoing lives of these
characters?
CR: It’s considerably more
domesticated than it used to be. I found the
perfect Jewish husband—actually, he found
me—and he’s about to make me buy a dog. He
climbs on ladders to fix things while 1 wring
my hands below and beg him to be careful.
The truth is I was never very gcxxl at the hedo­
nistic, partygoing lifestyle even when I was try­
ing to be. It was always quite loud, which rarely
gave me an opportunity to talk endlessly about
myself. Today, Brian has to work hard to get
me to leave the house.
CM: With the plot hinging on metham­
phetamine production, child abduction,
molestation and pornography, did your
research ever lead to in-too-deep, Pete
Townshend-like situations?
CR: It never even occurred to me to
research child pornography to the extent that 1
would actually look at it; 1 don’t think I could
ever do it. The horror for me was in trying to
imagine it, and even then, 1 left most of those
details off the page so the reader can imagine it
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