On Dec. 1, Arkansas writer Eli Cranor was named the winner of the Peter Lovesey First Crime Novel contest for his manuscript "Don't Know Tough."
The novel, which is set in Arkansas and tells the story of a troubled high school football player, his coach and a murder, will be published in 2022 by Soho Press.
Cranor was born in Forrest City. When he was 4, he and his family moved to Russellville.
He knows about football. He scored his first touchdown when he was 9, was a quarterback at Ouachita Baptist University after a redshirt year at Florida Atlantic University and played for a year as a professional for the Carlstad Crusaders of the Superserien league in Sweden.
Cranor, 32, returned to Arkansas and coached high school football in Clarksville, Arkadelphia and Morrilton for five years. He lives in Russellville with his wife, Mallory, and their two children and teaches English at the Russellville School District's Secondary Learning Center.
His writing has appeared in the Oxford American, Missouri Review, Greensboro Review and this newspaper, among other outlets.
The Lovesey prize is the namesake of acclaimed British mystery writer Peter Lovesey whose first novel, "Wobble to Death," was published in 1970.
"It really packs a punch," Lovesey says of Cranor's manuscript. "At the heart of the book is the pull of loyalties -- the football team, the family and religion. The characters involved in all the stresses and strains are well drawn and convincing. It's tough reading, but the humanity shines through."
In this interview, which has been edited for clarity and length, Cranor talks about the origins of "Don't Know Tough," writing 1 million words, football and following the Larry Brown model of literary success.
Is there a comparison between football and writing? Do you get the same kind of joy from writing something you're pleased with as making a big play on the field?
They are both tough in different ways. Writing is so lonely. This has been a journey with some peaks, but a lot of rejection. Even when you do get the ball rolling, the response might be awesome, but it's not like football. It's not so immediate or raw.
That's the biggest difference. Being willing and able to do the work for the sake of doing the work. Sports and especially football in the South are so much about the outcome. With writing, it's more about the process.
When did you start writing?
Johnny Wink is an English professor at Ouachita and he taught a creative writing class. Here I am, a senior, an English major and quarterback of the football team and I'm in this creative writing class and I caught the bug so hot and heavy. I was writing more than what was required for class. After practice, I would print out a story -- and it was mainly short stories at that time -- and I would slide it under his office door.
He really spoiled me. He loved everything I wrote, even early on when it really [stank]. He would find the one good line out of 2,000 words and highlight it. And he would say things like, "You're going to make it." That's what you need. To this day, Johnny reads everything I write. He's got the best eye for the small things.
When I got out [of coaching], I needed something to go after, a hill to climb, so I turned back to writing. I'd always been writing a little bit -- coaches used to give me [grief] because we'd be on a two-hour bus ride and I'd be writing on the bus -- but I really decided to go after it like football.
How often do you write?
The schedule I worked out is from 5 in the morning until the kids get up I would just write, and when the kids went down, from about 8 until 10. So it's about four hours a day, and I still stick to that.
One of my earliest influences was the Mississippi writer Larry Brown. He said, "If you're willing to hurt enough, you can have it." It took him, I think, seven years, 200 short stories and seven manuscripts [before he got published]. I was going to follow his model and write a ton of short stories and get recognized by somebody from New York.
I'm also a huge Ray Bradbury fan, and Bradbury said you're not a writer until you've written 1 million words. I guess it's the football side of me, but I took that as a challenge and kept up with the words. I kept a tally.
"Don't Know Tough" started as a short story, right?
It was during my prep period, which lined up with lunch, so I had this nice long break where I would try to sneak some words in. I wrote that whole story during that break. It came out like a wave. It's first-person, told from the boy's point of view, and it was this voice that I could hear.
I was so excited. A coach came in and I read him that story, in its rawest form, and when I finished he was like, "Eli, you've really got something there," and that's when I knew. About a year later it won a prize and it was featured in the Missouri Review and was the first runner-up for its audio prize that year.
It started to grow legs, and somewhere in there, I decided to turn it into a book.
How did the Lovesey contest come about?
I got to know two Mississippi writers, Ace Atkins and William Boyle, and they read it and flipped over it. William was familiar with [publisher] Soho and asked if I'd thought about a contest. I hadn't. I was still following that Larry Brown method. He pointed me to the contest, and I sent it to them and didn't think about it again. In October I got an email from the editor that said it was one of the finalists and it was being sent to Peter Lovesey. I thought, "Man, there is no way this British dude is picking my book for this contest." Maybe that was a self-defense mechanism. I'd already had so much rejection that I didn't think it would happen.
Less than a week later I get the call that he picked "Don't Know Tough." It's been a whirlwind.
How have things changed since winning?
Now that I have a contract in hand, it's a whole lot easier to get agents. I ended up having four agents to choose from. I went with Alexa Stark. What they say is that if you get your foot in the door, it's best to do a book a year. I've got nine manuscripts, at least seven of those need to stay in the drawer forever, but I do have one that I will be sending her before the end of the year.
