How It's Done and Over Mastication

Inspired by recent posts from Michael Bracken and John Floyd, I wrote the following.

In his SleuthSayer's posting of 4/11/23, Michael Bracken said, "I don't often write about the genesis of my stories because I often don't know or don't remember much about how they came to be. My stories don't exist, and then they do."

Yep. Looking back – that's how I feel about most of my stories. How the hell did I come to write that story? I do remember the inspiration for some of my stories, but not a lot of them and now that I think about it, remembering the inspiration isn't important. Only the story matters.

I do remember being asked by an editor what inspired me to write a story which won an award and I could not remember the inspiration. Since I'm a fiction writer, I made up an inspiration. Faked it.

In John Floyd's SleuthSayer posting of 4/15/23, he wrote about writers ruining their books in the rewriting process, editing a book over and over, making it worse rather than better.

I can echo that. A writer friend once asked me to read his new novel. I did and liked it a lot. His agent, however, recommended changes and so did his editor. The writer made the changes after complaining to me about it. The book was published and when I read it, I saw how the editing, the over masticating of scenes, had taken all the spontaneous enthusiasm out of the book. It was flat and what was original was gone. It had become the agent and editor's idea of the book.

When my agent at the time recommend changes in my next book, I changed agents. The recommended changes were massive. Another reason I'm an independent (indie) writer. It's my art.

Having said all that – I've experienced this type of destructive meddling only a few times. Nearly all of the editors I've worked with have helped my writing.

Lots of lessons out there for writers. Beginning writers should follow SleuthSayers. I've been writing since the 1980s and I learn something new here all the time.

(I hope this is the correct logo)

That's all for now.

www.oneildenoux.com

Wasting time by watching stuff on the internet

What I learned from wasting my writing time by watching stuff on the internet:

Lions are mean. They kill for food primarily but will kill to prove they are king of the jungle (and the veldt).

Hyenas are gangsters, stealing prey from other predators, ganging up on other animals, even lions when the male lions aren't around.

Horses like cats. (I already knew that but watching them killed time).

Road runners can run up to 26 miles per hours in short spurts while coyotes can run up to 40 miles per hour for long distances. What the fuck? Shoulda known. Coyotes are canines. Don't wolf-pack run down their prey?

There are people who go into forests during the winter, struggle through the snow to build an LFC (little fuckin' cabin) from logs and mud and tree branches and stay in their little cabin for days, cooking fish they catch from half-frozen streams and animals they manage to kill. Animals who have been avoiding natural predators and trying to survive the frost only to have a bored human with a compound bow and arrow come along.

I learned from watching professional pokers play that I know nothing about poker and glad I don't play cards, even for no money.

The Bee Gees song Tragedy is as bad as I remember, while Stayin' Alive still rocks and K.C. and the Sunshine band takes me back to when life was just a playground for guys and gals in our twenties – young, good looking, our whole lives in front of us. So I daydream and my writing waits for me to come back. Is there a story in my daydream. Maybe, so it's not all a waste. Maybe.

Watching an LSU football game on TV with the sound muted while listening to the game on a Spanish language radio station (sportscasters who normally broadcast soccer – futbol – games) is a BLAST. Greatest commentators. Don't know what they are saying but their enthusiasm is electric.

Comedians from Scotland, Ireland and Australia are speaking English, I think.

Humans fall down a lot and many are recorded on house video cameras.

Puppies are cute, so are baby opossums, raccoons, squirrels – hell, most baby animals. But kittens are the cutest by far. Just my opinion.

Wasting time. We all do it. Writers writing on computers need to be cautious. It's so easy to waste time. Too easy.

I conclude with a reference to one of my favorite songs from Crosby, Stills & Nash, a song written by Graham Nash – Wasted on the Way.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWlEsta4xS8

That's all for now.

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www.oneildenoux.com

More Random Thoughts

PRIVATE EYE STORIES and NOVELS

When I was a real-life private eye, I worked a lot of insurance cases, some divorce work, but I was hired on a few homicide cases because I was a former homicide detective. My brother, a former NOPD detective who has been a PI for over thirty years, has worked some high-profile investigations involving white collar crime, corrupt politicians and missing person cases. Things were different in the 1940s and eraly 1950s where PIs worked a myriad of cases. From what my old NOPD detective friends told me, the quality of detective work in the first half of the twentieth century wasn’t that good. Many police detectives then were hard-nosed, fisticuff street cops put in suits to do follow-up work in a suit. Only a few were brainy, which is one of the traits of the fictional Private Eye.

I've kept this in mind in writing my 40s-50s private stories and novels.

 

NEW ORLEANS

As for New Orleans, she is so complex, different from any other American city, more European. She is not big and there’s nothing easy about her. Many, MANY writers get her wrong. I blame editors and publishers of the big houses for much of this. I had a number of editors prod me to write more touristy books about the city (Murder at Mardi Gras, Death in the Above-ground Cemeteries, Killings at Jazz Funerals), rather than more accurate depictions of New Orleans.

 

Screenwriters are worse. Cliché after cliché. No one here speaks with a southern accent unless they migrated here. I speak with a Brooklynese flat-A accent. Mardi Gras is only a small part of the city and the French Quarter is small as well (although the Quarter is the heart of the city). My only character who lives in the Quarter is PI Lucien Caye and he lives on the edge, in the run down lower Quarter of te 1940s.

 

EROTICA

I started writing erotica when I began writing short stories in the late 1980s. It paid better than regular fiction, unless one was fortunate enough to sell a story to a big magazine. Writing erotica taught me to write short, descriptive pieces without any fluff. It was just scene after scene. Sex sells and the billions of humans on this planet came into existence because of sex. I’ve heard of only one virgin birth.

PRIVATE EYE NOVELS WITH SOME EROTIC ELEMENTS

Most of my novels have a love stories and the characters get intimate. Covers have been titillating over the years.

SELF PROMOTING

I'm a pain in the ass. I dislike promoting myself on social networks, although I have to. There's nothing wrong with a writer promoting their work. It's the only way to get word out sometimes. I'm just not good at it.

Couple days ago I received an offer to be interviewed on an international English Literature site. I replied I might be interested. They came back with it would cost me $50 to be interviewed on their site. I have never paid to be interviewed. Have any of you?

I declined.

I thought I'd posted this earlier but cannot find it on SleuthSayers, so here are more quotes from actor/stand-up Comic Dimetri Martin (I like this guy). He jokes about putting up flyers in coffee shops:

So, you want to learn how to play the saxophone?

I can stop you

call immediately

Babysitter Available

experienced

cheap

young

good at keeping secrets

Spacious. Clean. Cheap

Apartment

Available

never

good luck, Dipshit

That's all for now.

www.oneildenoux.com

 

Good Hair Styles

Still getting the occasional email criticizing me about my December 16, 2022, article in "Hair Styles" article in SleuthSayers, so I thought I'd give equal time to some pretty cool hairstyles of movie stars from the era.

Adele Jergens

Anita Eckberg

Ann Sheridan

Julie Adams

Elaine Stewart

Ella Raines

Gloria DeHaven

Hazel Brooks

Lana Turner

Ava Gardner

Gene Tierney

Loretta Young

Veronica Lake

Pier Angeli

Thanks all for now –

Illusions

After watching a number of 'the making of' and 'behind the scenes' videos on YouTube, I realized I was allowing the illusion, the magic of some movies, to fade into ... reality. I don't need to know how a screen performer had chronic halitosis, false teeth, a toupee (although many are so easy to spot I don't know how I missed it). Don't need to know how crude a performer was on the set, or how certain special effects were done. I always thought they filmed the Mount Rushmore scenes in NORTH BY NORTHWEST at Mount Rushmore. It was a set.

I like a movie to draw me into its world. Science Fiction movies and mysteries lose a lot of their wonder when I know how the sausage was made.

A little-appreciated movie filmed in New Orleans, PANIC IN THE STREETS with Richard Widmark and the wonderful Jack Palance, featured gritty realism and excellent acting. No sets. The way to do it. It's great going back to Royal Street, Magazine Street and Jackson Square in 1950.

It's different with novels and short stories because that's what I write. How a writer crafted their story or put together a novel is interesting. If you build a building, you wanna know how others build their buildings. This is a lot of what we do here at SleuthSayers.

But I feel differently about movies. When I watch a movie with my wife, she always seems to figure out what's going to happen or who did it in a murder mystery. I don't for a couple reasons. First, I like to let the director and screenwriter take me there. Second, I think like a cop when I watch mysteries. I'm a homicide detective and most movies do not show the reality of a murder investigation. Some do but most don't.

Back to short stories and novels, where the CGI takes place in the reader's mind. I have my own vision of DUNE, and none of the movies have matched it. The latest is by far the best and there are looks in it I never envisioned. I don't want to know how director Denis Villeneuve pulled it off. I just let it flow over me.

I don't try to figure things out in a novel. I rather let the writer take me there. That's just the way I read. I find it funny when someone reads one of my books and tells me they figured out who did it in the first thirty pages because I rarely know who did it until I'm near the end. Lately, I don't even know how the book's going to end at all.

That's all for now.

www.oneildenoux.com

Random Thoughts

The next book or story I'm going to write will not be in the first person or second person or third person. I'm going to write it in the fifth person where each sentence begins with –

I heard from this guy who told someone ...

That's a joke from stand-up comic/actor Demetri Martin so he gets credit for it. I do think it would be cool and a helluva challenge. Demetri Martin is the same guy who wants to go to a beach frequented by guys with metal detectors. He'll go early in the morning and bury objects with the inscription, "Get a life."

What happened to Frank Yerby's literary estate?

When I was a kid, my father read a lot of Frank Yerby paperbacks – The Foxes of Harrow, The Vixens, The Golden Hawk, Benton's Bow, The Saracen Blade, Jarrett's Jade and others. By the time I was out of college and reading what I wanted to read, instead of what was assigned, I didn't get around to Yerby. I should have. His books are out of print today. Amazon and EBay sells old hardbacks and paperbacks but there are no eBooks or audiobooks and no new editions of his works. My public library (an excellent library) does not carry any Yerby books. The Foxes of Harrow may be obtained via interlibrary loan.

Frank Yerby left the U.S. in 1952, in protest against racial discrimination, living in France then Spain. His ancestry was African, Native American and White. He died in 1991.

Frank Yerby

That's all for now.

www.oneildenoux.com 

Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude: the appearance of being true or real. The appearance.

It's what writers strive do in fiction. Harlan Ellison once said, "I want it to seem real ... to hold up the mirror of life and turn it slightly so you can see things from a new angle."

Create credible characters for readers to follow, to like, to hate, to worry about.

Give the reader fictional hyper-realism. Magic-realism. Hell, anything to show it, to elicit emotion in the reader. Fiction is liberating. It allows us to make up stuff, create people, create worlds, re-create our cities the way we want them to OR show the way they are through eyes with a different vision.

It's easy to screw this up by not paying attention to the details of life, by not showing those details, by taking the lazy way out – such as writing "it was sunny outside" instead of showing sunlight reflecting off a store's window. Pay attention. Observe life and take notes and give it back to the reader with the mirror tilted.

Crime fiction is realistic. The big problem I have, especially with movies, is characters acting illogically (better described as stupidly). I know people make mistakes and do screwy things, but leaving a machine gun on the ground and running off with a revolver with only two shots left in it isn't logical. Why didn't they take the bag of food? They haven't eaten in weeks. Why didn't they take a moment to fill up their canteen? Why don't they call the police right away?

Good ficiton is no easy to write. A writer just needs to give the appearance.

I've quoted Harlan before but I love this one: "I'm a professional liar, folks. I write fiction for a living. I make up weird crap and people pay me for it."

Other tidbits:

Did you know Mike Nesmith of The Monkees wrote "Different Drum" (recorded by The Stone Poneys featuring Linda Ronstadt)?

Did you know Barry, Robin & Maurice Gibb (The Bee Gees) wrote "Islands in the Stream" (recorded by Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton)?

Did you know Sony Curtis of The Crickets (of Buddy Holly and the Crickets) wrote "I Fought The Law" (recorded by The Bobby Fuller Four)?

Pretty sure we all know Neil Diamond wrote The Monkees hits "I'm a Believer" and "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You."

That's all for now.

Novel Writing

Just watched the movie LAST CALL (Showtime Networks, 2002), a story of the last few weeks in the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. It featured the always brilliant Jeremy Irons as F. Scott and a surprisingly excellent performance by Neve Campbell as Francis Kroll, the young secretary he hired, to assist him as he struggled to write. It is based on the memoir of Francis Kroll.

A scene in the movie struck me. Fitzgerald dictates THE LAST TYCOON to Kroll who takes it down in shorthand. When Fitzgerald finishes a scene, Kroll eagerly asks, “Then what?” Fitzgerald answers, “I haven’t a clue.”

It struck me because I’ve been writing my novels like that. I haven't a clue what comes next but it comes to me.

When I wrote my first novels, I always had the plot laid out in detail. I don’t do that anymore. I start with a character in a scene and follow the character though the scene and keep following from scene to scene.

My latest novel HARDSCRABBLE PRIVATE EYE starts with a double-crossed private eye left handcuffed in a cavern in the Amazon by a femme fatale. After more double-crosses, the femme fatale rescues him, leaves him again and I follow him to New Orleans where he works a series of cases before the femme fatale returns.

The PI is hardscrabbled, the story hardscrabbled and I wrote it hardscrabbled and it came out a lot better than anticipated.

We all know there are many ways to write a story. I find creating real characters, putting them in motion and following along is an arduous way to write and so rewarding when it all comes together.

A writer I respect, Roger Bull (formerly of New Orleans and now of Fairhope, Alabama) likes the many twists and turns, making the reader feel as though he was a hamster on a wheel, so many spins and twists until the satisfying conclusion.

Twists? Because I didn’t know where I was going. I just followed and wrote what happened.

That's all folks.

Time to go to the movies again

It's fun to make lists. Here are some movies lists. What does this have to do with writing? Movies have scripts, don't they?

1. Movies I’ve watched many times and will watch again.

• AMADEUS (1984)
• ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930)
• BATTLEGROUND (1949)
• BLOW-UP (1967)
• BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)
• CASABLANCA (1943)
• THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951)

• DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID (1982)
• THE DEPARTED (1984)
• DR. ZHIVAGO (2006)
• FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966)
• FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)
• FUNERAL IN BERLIN (1967)
• THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947)

• THE GODFATHER (1972)
• THE GODFATHER PART II (1974)
• I MARRIED A WITCH (1942)
• THE IPRESS FILE (1965)
• JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959)
• LAURA (1944)
• LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)

• THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)
• THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1975)
• MY FAVORITE YEAR (1982)
• THE PRODUCERS (1967)
• REBECCA (1940)
• ROMEO AND JULIET (1968)
• SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)

• THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994)
• SHINDLER’S LIST (1993)
• THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1965)
• THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951)
• THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942)
• VERTIGO (1958)
• YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974)

• ZULU (1964)

This list is incomplete as I keep remembering good movies.

2. Movies I’ve seen once and will never watch again.

• AUSTRALIA (2008)
• AVATAR (2009)
• THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)
• A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1972)



Laura

• CRASH (2004)
• LOVE STORY (1970)
• THE DEERHUNTER (1979)
• FATAL ATTRACTION (1987)
• GANGS OF NEW YORK (2002)
• MRS. DOUBTFIRE (1993)
• SAW (2004)
• THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2008)
• WHAT DREAMS MAY COME (1998)
• Every superhero movies I’ve seen except
• THE PHANTOM 1996)

3. Movies I’ve fallen asleep while watching and won’t try again.

• All of the LORD OF THE RINGS movies.
• The HARRY POTTER movies my daughter was able to drag me to

4. Movies I’ve walked out of to get a cup of coffee and waited for my wife to finish watching and join me at the coffee shop

• THE CONSTANT GARDENER (2005)
• THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996)
• SOLARIS (2002)

That's all for now.

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Historical Mystery Revisited

With the release of my latest book, I thought it might be time to revisit my first SleuthSayers article – Writing the Historical Mystery. Since the article aired in September 2016, I have had five historical mystery novels and fifteen historical mystery short stories published.

Accuracy vs. Fiction

Joseph Pulitzer wrote on his newsroom wall – “Accuracy, Accuracy, Accuracy.” Excellent advise for journalists but fiction writers are not journalists and we do not write history books. Historical accuracy is important in the historical mystery but is it more important than your story? I say no.

When we write historical fiction we are writing FICTION. I have a degree in European and Asian History and have had historical articles published in academic journals.

In writing academic historical articles, I strive to be as accurate as humanly possible. Nearly all history graduate students take a class in HISTORIOGRAPHY, the study of historical writing. They know unless you are an eye-witness to an historical event – and that’s one person’s subjective observation – then you must rely on first hand accounts of other contemporary witnesses or second hand accounts complied by other historians. So why worry if you get a minor detail wrong in your historical fiction as I did when I had a character wearing a Banlon shirt several years before Banlon was introduced? Oh, yes. Someone caught me and I had to miss recess that day. Same thing happened when I put a Parker T-ball jotter in a private eye's hand a few years before Parker distributed the pen. Wrong. An easy fix.

Historians in critically-acclaimed history books also get things wrong. Ever read history books of the Napoleonic Wars? British Historians and French Historians paint nearly opposite histories of the same period. It’s almost funny.

Back to my first statement - when we write historical fiction we are writing FICTION – I have fudged on historical accuracy to write a better story because, in my opinion, historical fiction is like someone’s name. John Smith is a SMITH, part of the SMITH family, not the JOHN family. Historical Fiction is FICTION and fiction outranks history, otherwise you’re writing a history book.

“ … fairness is not the historical novelist’s first duty,” the great historical fiction writer Bernard Cornwell pens in his notes at the end of Sword Song (2008). He is correct, of course. The duty of an historical novelist is to entertain, to elicit emotion in the reader and if mistakes of fact are made (from errors in research, by omission or by design), well, it happens.

Fiction writers make up stuff. We make up characters and events, sometimes with an historical backdrop.

Artistic license was taken when I wrote my latest, Hardscrabble Private Eye. I'm not a reporter, I'm a fiction writer.

A novel set in 1935 New Orleans. A tale of buried treasures. Diamonds. Rubies. Emeralds. A priceless stolen book. A tale of treachery with alluring femme fatales, gangsters, Mafiosi, gunfights, tommy guns peppering the night and a private eye harscrabbled in the middle.

That's all for now.