'Never give a character the easy way out'
Eric Jerome Dickey is the author of 12 novels. His latest, ''Chasing Destiny" (Dutton, $24.95), involves Billie, a tough motorcycle-riding heroine, and Destiny, the confused teenage daughter of a turbulent marriage.
Dickey, christened the ''chick lit king" by The New York Times, recently created two African-American superheroes for Marvel Comics. Originally from Memphis, he spoke from his home in Southern California.
Q: Can we get the ''chick lit king" question out of the way?
A: You know what's funny about that? They did the ''chick lit" thing on ''Drive Me Crazy," which is a male-driven crime novel. I mean, did they read the book?
Q: How did writing begin for you?
A: It's more of an evolution from doing a lot of different things. You're critiquing, dissecting your own work. Then hanging out with cats who were doing screenplays, small theater, stand-up comedy. You start writing jokes, you're becoming a storyteller. You're setting up stuff -- just like in stand-up comedy -- but in a book your punch line is the twist, the reversal of expectations.
Q: Were you drawn to a particular genre?
A: If I'd had my druthers I'd have been next to Walter Mosley writing crime fiction. But I've never done the same genre back to back. If you study storytelling or read all different kinds of books, you learn a lot, you expand, and all those things become part of you.
Q: Do you start with a plot or a character?
A: I'm sort of character-driven.
Q: Where did you come up with a character like Billie?
A: I don't know. Initially she was a nurse, but that didn't work; I was looking at 150 pages and I only liked the first 20. It took me five years to get there.
It's like stuff I remembered from comic books when I was 13, 14 years old. Whenever you have a hero, whatever he's up against has to be equal or greater. There's nothing dramatic in watching a man in a boat battle a drizzle. You have to bring on the hurricane.
Q: Are you consciously puncturing stereotypes of racial identity?
A: I try to stay fresh and stay away from the clichés as much as I can. Some characters may do some stereotypical stuff, but I try to give them depth and make them human.
Q: Do you have a reader in mind when you write?
A: When I'm working on it, I don't. It's all about the story.
Q: Do you feel stereotyped as a writer of popular fiction or erotica?
A: They don't know what to call it. It gets stuck in romance, maybe because women are reading it. Well, it doesn't have to be. I mean, ''Chasing Destiny" is more of a hate story than a love story.
Q: Did you enjoy the Marvel Comics project?
A: Loved it. I was really stressed out at first because you're stepping into a defined character: this mythological wind rider called Storm. But I'm writing about her when she's a kid. It was really important for me to show that she has a mother and a father, African and African-American, who love each other to death, and she comes from a middle-class existence; it's through tragedy she loses everything.
Q: What's the greatest compliment you've been paid as a writer?
A: It's really cool when I talk to the average reader and they [notice] all the itty-bitty stuff. I had someone come up to me and say, ''I just couldn't see Destiny doing that," and I said, ''Did you ever wake up in a hotel with 10 condoms on the floor?" One thing that runs through every novel I've written is you reap what you sow. I've never given a character the easy way out.
Q: You're merciless?
A: Isn't that the way life is?
Anna Mundow, a freelance journalist living in Central Massachusetts, is a correspondent for the Irish Times. She can be reached at ama1668@hotmail.com. 
