You have to admire the Brits. If they have a successful crime
series, they don't automatically grow it
beyond one season (Midsomer,
excepted.) But the trouble with most crime series filmed, and also
successful crime series in print, is they go beyond their best before
date. And by this I mean, they start to run out of plots - healthy
original plots - and search madly for something, anything they haven't
done before, including things that have been done to death <sic>.
The following tropes drive me crazy.
1. The protagonist sleuth is the murder suspect.
By
far, this one has me fired up to throw things. Inevitably, every
long-running series has one episode where the Detective Inspector, the
PI or the well-respected amateur sleuth, becomes the prime suspect for a
murder well into the series. Into jail they go. They've done it with
Father Brown. They've done it with Don Matteo. Hinterland. You name
it. Whenever I see this happening, I grit my teeth. Why?
That
plot is boring, man. Obviously, they didn't do it. If they did, then
it is 'series over'. And it can't be series over, because there are
several episodes left, or a new season to download, and I can see that
right on the screen. So all we're doing is tediously waiting for the
sidekicks to get proof that our beloved protagonist didn't do it.
2. The protagonist and/or sidekick is held hostage.
This
is the second plot trope that has me screaming Italian curse words at
the screen. This month, it was Don Matteo and Rosewood. You can name
others. And again, this is boring. If they are all killed and don't get
out, end of show. But there are more episodes, so they obviously get
away. If we know the ending at the beginning, what's the pleasure in
watching?
3. The police officer protagonist is hated by his immediate superior.
One
of the reasons I like Endeavor is because Morse's boss Thursday is such
a good guy to young Morse. In so many shows, including the original
Morse, the detective superintendent or chief constable behaves like an
out-of-control teen, lambasting our hero with manic fury. He hates the
protagonist, for no good reason we can see. Or is it that he is so
insecure, he can't stand someone who makes him and his department look
good? How demeaning. By all that's holy, make this stop.
4. Young female sargeant has affair with older boss.
Okay,
we all learned in the 80s and 90s: you don't have an affair with your
boss. It's stupid. It's career-killing. It's also unethical, if he's
married or you're married. And yet, time after time we see this on the
screen. STILL. IN 2018.
I cringe, because it
perpetuates the ancient stereotype that young female police officers are
not serious about their jobs. They are slaves to their emotions. They
are willing to risk all for romance. Writers, DON'T take me back to
the seventies. Just don't.
5. The male Detective Inspector invites prime female suspect/witness to a romantic dinner.
Similar
to the 'affair with the boss' above, this scenario gives high-ranking
police officers I've talked to apoplexy. No police officer is that
idiotic.
Look, we all understand that tension is
ramped up if there is personal involvement. But come on, writers!
Don't make our extremely professional boys (and girls) in blue look
adolescent. It's insulting.
Just do the right thing. Tell us a damn good story. And wrap things up before you sink to these tropes.
Melodie Campbell writes seriously wild comedy. You can find her latest crime books (The Bootlegger's Goddaughter and The B-Team) at all the usual suspects. See this latest ad in Mystery Scene Magazine. www.melodiecampbell.com
Maybe I should have known something was waiting for me when
I was inspired to wear a button-down shirt and suspenders into my office. I was
having writer’s block on my novel and a bad feeling when I took a pass over to
the state police website in search of a story. Kassirer’s car had been found
abandoned in the parking lot next to the Troop-C police barracks in the West
End of Oneonta, five days after he was last seen by his family as he left his
father’s funeral in Irondequoit, three days after he’d been reported missing by
his employer, a drug rehab center in Brattleboro, Vermont, four days after he’d
texted them to let them know he would be in the next day.
A bad feeling, sure, but I had to know where it was going to
lead. I went into full detective mode. I called the Irondquoit police, who told
me that he had last been seen checking out of a Binghamton hotel on the morning
of Oct. 23, and that the last cell phone ping came from Oneonta, not far from
where his car was located, at just before 4:30 a.m.
Meaning he checked out of his hotel at 3:30 a.m. The mystery
deepened.
*
Out of curiosity, I did a Google Maps search of the area
where the cell phone ping had been picked up. I saw a small path that lead into
the ravine, near where his car was found. My heart sank. That’s where they’ll find him, I thought. I tried to ignore the
feeling. Friends and family pleaded on Facebook for him to come home. That
night, Ian and I drove out to Binghamton to buy Halloween supplies. I wondered
if he’d gone into the nearby river or wandered into the woods. He wouldn’t be
the first one. I lamented his disappearance and hoped he was okay.
*
The next day, a loose-lipped policeman in Massachusetts told
me that a friend had picked up a ping from his cell phone in Rochester later
that evening, meaning he got nearly 200 miles away from where his car was
found, back towards where he had been. The police had searched his apartment
and all they found in his room was a pile of blankets where a bed should be.
His roommate was out of town, but someone was feeding the cat.
We went to press that night with no sign of him. I went to
bed that night hoping that he would turn up in a hospital or rehab center, a
man who just needed to get away from it all for a few days. But I’ve been at
this business long enough to know that it’s so rarely the case.
*
My boss jokes, darkly, about my uncanny ability to read
between the lines of press releases, an understanding of crime and human
behavior honed from an adulthood of reading and writing mysteries. On Wednesday, as I was getting ready for the
Halloween parade, I got a call from Aga that his body had been located in “heavy
brush” down the hill behind where he had parked.
Just as I had suspected.
But how did he get there? And why? I’ve written here before
that being a journalist has all the questions of a private detective, with none
of the release that come with the solving of a case. I can make the calls, but
in the end, I have to just wait for the phone to ring and write down what is
said on the other end of the line.
The autopsy proved inconclusive, but that the death was not
being ruled “suspicious.” That means they don’t think he was murdered and there
were no indications of suicide. Toxicology reports and additional testing take time.
Far away and four times a thousand and one nights ago, this tale appeared in Criminal Brief. Dial in a little Rimsky-Korsakov and read on.
The Power of Prepositions
by Leigh Lundin
Aladdin was getting along in years and found that he was unable to pitch a tent as he had done in his youth. Smart as well as lucky, Aladdin still had his magic lamp and, frugal with his wishes, he had one wish left.
He rubbed his lamp and the génie appeared. Aladdin begged him, “My camel can no longer thread the needle. Can you cure my erectile impotence?”
Genie said, “I can whisk away your problem.” With that, he rubbed his hands, evoking a puff of billowing blue smoke. Genie said, “I’ve dealt you a powerful spell, but at your age, you’ll be able to invoke it only once a year.”
“How do I use it?” asked Aladdin.
“All you have to do is say ‘one, two, three,’ and it shall rise for as long as you wish, but only once a year.”
Aladdin asked, “What happens when I’m exhausted and I no longer want to continue?”
Genie replied, “All you or your lady has to say is ‘one, two, three, four,’ and it will fade like a Sahara sunset. But be warned: the spell will not work again for another year.”
Aladdin galloped home, eager to try out his new powers of the flesh. That evening, Aladdin bathed away the dust of the desert and scented himself with oil of exotic myrrh. He climbed into bed where his resigned wife lay turned away, about to slip into Scheherazadic dreams.
Aladdin took a deep breath and said, “One, two, three.” Instantly, he became more aroused than he ever had in youth, a magnificent happenstance of tree-trunk proportions.
His wife, hearing Aladdin’s words, rolled back toward him and said, “What did you say ‘one, two, three,’ for?”
And that, dear readers, is why you should not end a sentence with a preposition.
I have several speaking gigs of one type or another coming up. And I’m looking forward to them. That said, it’s said that one of the greatest fears Americans have is speaking in public. I don’t really get nervous or uptight about speaking. But if I have to read a selection from my works then the palpitations begin. I don’t know why reading causes me so much anxiety, when just speaking doesn’t. I could speak to a group of 500 people and not be nervous, but if I read to a group of ten I would be. You’d think it would be just the opposite since when you’re reading you don’t have to come with answers on the fly. As the saying goes, go figure.
Newhall Library panel: Ellison Cooper, Carlene O'Neill (moderator, standing),
Patty Smiley, Connie di Marco, Paul D. Marks, Paddy Hirsch
I recently did a well-attended panel at the Old Town Newhall Library, that even included a dinner, with a moderator and four author-panelists. The moderator kept things moving, asking questions and everyone on the panel was fun and interesting and didn’t hog time, which sometimes happens. I sold more books than I usually do at these types of things. I was also recently on two panels at Bouchercon. I always feel lucky to get on panels at conventions since everyone is vying for those spots.
Coming up are several different kinds of gigs: One is another library event at the Studio City Library, a trivia night (https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/trivia-night-mystery-lovers-0) where a group of eight authors rotate tables with library patrons and try to answer trivia questions. I did this event last year and it was a lot of fun. Then another library event at the Agua Dulce Library (https://www.friendsacton-aguadulcelibrary.org/ )where I’ll be with one other writer, Connie di Marco. And instead of each of us just getting up and talking about ourselves, giving our this is the “wonder of me” speeches, we’ve decided to talk about each other, ask each other questions, and liven it up a little.
After that is Men of Mystery (https://www.menofmystery.org/ ), which is as their brochure proclaims, “the grandest gathering of gentlemen in the genre,” and which usually gets a huge crowd. Everyone has to stand up and tell a little about themselves. Last time I told about the time I pulled a gun on the LAPD and lived to tell about it. Afterwards a couple of law enforcement officers came up to talk to me about that... I wonder what I can do to top that?
Next up is The Palos Verdes Woman’s Club (http://pvwomansclub.org/home/fundraising-and-events/), which usually gets a few hundred people. I’ll be one of five authors there. I’ll have to speak about myself a little, which is always awkward. Fun, but awk.
And rounding out this bunch of events is a speaking gig at the Southern California Writers Association (http://ocwriter.com/). I’ll be talking about incorporating screenwriting techniques into the writing of short stories and novels.
I’ve also done a bunch of radio interviews lately to help promote the release of Broken Windows. It’s always fun doing these, whether in-studio or on the phone.
Each event is a little different, so the question is, how do I prepare for these events? For some, there really is no preparing, you just have to wing it. But sometimes, since I tend to even forget the names of my characters, I might give a quick glance to some cheat sheets I’ve made up over the years. It’s always embarrassing when someone asks you a question about this or that character or story and you have that deer in the headlights look, trying to figure out who the hell that is and what story they were in—and what it was about. For events where I’m actually giving a talk, I prepare notes on the subject of the talk. I can wing much of it, of course, but it always helps to have a plan and something to help keep you on track.
I always enjoy these events and it’s part of being a writer. A good part in that you get to interact with readers instead of hiding away in our writing caves. And I’m looking forward to all of these upcoming events. Hope to see some of you there.
What are your thoughts on preparing for events?
~.~.~
And now for the usual BSP:
I’m honored and thrilled – more than I can say – that my story Windward appears in The Best American Mystery Stories of 2018, edited by Louise Penny and Otto Penzler, which just came out this week. I wrote a blog on that on SleuthSayers if you want to check it out: https://www.sleuthsayers.org/2018/10/the-impossible-dream.html .
I’m doubly thrilled to say that Windward won the Macavity Award at Bouchercon a few weeks ago. Wow! And thank you to everyone who voted for it.
And I’m even more thrilled by the great reviews that Broken Windows has been receiving. Here’s a small sampling:
"Although it’s set in 1994, it’s eerie how timely this story is. There’s an undeniable feeling of unease that threads through the narrative, which virtually oozes with the grit, glitz, and attitude of L.A. in the ‘90s. I’m an ecstatic new fan of Duke’s."
"Duke and company practically beg for their own TV show."
"This electrifying novel will jolt your sensibilities, stir your conscience and give every reader plenty of ammunition for the next mixed group where the I [immigration] -word is spoken!"
As a bookaholic from my early childhood, I can assure you that I have read my way through shelves, yards, perhaps miles of books. (That is not a complaint.) And I have no problem with that. I've also gorged on music, movies, television shows, and every other entertainment that is made available to me. Some of this is because I'm greedy, and some of this is because reading is so much easier than writing:
"Will you be writing a novel?" "If denied every other form of physical gratification." - Pursewarden, in Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell
Good old Lineaments of Desire. Seriously, if you've never read The Alexandria Quartet, check it out. It rivals Roshomon as far as technique, complications, and amazing reveals. And it definitely has atmosphere. I'm not sure that Durrell's Alexandria still exists, but I'd love to see if it does.
BTW, Alexandria, Egypt is also the hometown of the poet C. P. Cavafy. He's best known for Ithaka, and Waiting for the Barbarians. (The latter has spawned eponymous novels, songs, paintings, an opera, and an upcoming movie. Seriously good. And timely.) My personal favorite Cavafy poem is The God Abandons Antony:
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.
Anyway, along the line I have noticed that my tastes have changed. Thank God. For one thing, when I get totally bored by a novel, or it's really, really bad, instead of plowing through I quit reading it. (With non-fiction, I apply my grad school skills and gut the boring ones because knowledge / information doesn't always come in a nice candy coating.) Even when I was reading novels for the Edgars, there were two books that I just gave up on. One I called "Fifty Shades of Green" because all the sex took place out in the wilderness. (Presumably a statement of some kind, but I started laughing about page 15 - for all the wrong reasons - and didn't stop until I tossed it onto the pile and reached for the next book.) And another book that was absolute torture porn. The first 10 pages gave me nightmares, so I stopped.
This is not to say that there's no place for trash. I still think that an evening of Plan 9 From Outer Space can be very fulfilling, as well as almost any Joan Crawford movie. And if you've got Bette Davis fighting with Mary Astor or Miriam Hopkins, I'm front row seating.
And there are some things that are like a train wreck. You just can't take your eyes off of them: Ancient Aliens. Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision (did you know that Venus is actually a comet? Ha!). Pink Flamingos. Richard Wallace's Jack the Ripper, Light Hearted Friend (did you know that Lewis Carroll was actually Jack the Ripper? Ha!)
And I would not have survived grad school without a stack of really cheesy romance novels for mental popcorn.
A couple of summers back I went through a fit of nostalgia and re-read a bunch of books from my tween/teen years. Some held up. Marjorie Morningstar is pretty damn good; so are The Once and Future King (which I still know almost by heart), Ship of Fools, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, etc.
But a lot didn't hold up, mostly the books I'd read for the sex, like Frank Yerby novels, because, in the 60s, it was him, Harold Robbins, or Ian Fleming for an educational experience. (Harlequin romances barely went beyond a kiss in those days.) Besides, my mother read Yerby, my father read Fleming, and I simply snuck off with their copies when they weren't looking. (Even as a teenager I couldn't stand Harold Robbins.)
BTW, teenaged Eve was so glad to find Robert Heinlein. Tunnel in the Sky, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and many more. It was my first exposure to strong, intelligent women, and got me ready for Emma Peel.
My two favorite Heinlein quotes are both from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:
TANSTAAFL and "Is no rape on Luna. Men won't permit."
And not, I might add, by curtailing women's freedom to dress, work, walk, jog, speak, behave, and live any way she damn well pleased.
Still, be careful giving in to nostalgia: sometimes it bites.
Back when Netflix first came out I watched a bunch of 1960s movies that I loved when I first saw them, and while there were a lot of great, great, great movies made back then, there were also some that made my jaw drop. I liked this crap?
Billy Jack: I'm embarrassed to say how much I enjoyed it back in 1971, even though even then I knew that the dialog was really bad. And that they'd all have ended up shot to death in real life. I mean, this is after Kent State, folks. Idealism was long gone.
And Blow Up turned out to be a big wad of nothing. I still think it's main reason for success was that it was the first time that a major actress - Vanessa Redgrave - showed her bare breasts on screen. But then, I've found I can't stand any of Antonioni's films. If I'm going to do slow-burning moody atmospherics, give me Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock any day, or Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris or Andrei Rublev.
Five Easy Pieces. Jack Nicholson in youthful full form. I loved the scene with him playing the piano on the back of a pick-up truck, and the restaurant, searching for toast, both then and now. But you know something? The rest of the movie sucked swamp water. The women were all basically sexual fungibles, with no intelligence or purpose other than to cling to a man like a limpet. And Nicholson's character was about as much fun as a razor blade. In fact, Bobby Dupea was the exact [male] embodiment of the description Jack Nicholson's character gives of Michelle Pfeiffer's character in Wolf twenty-four years later:
"You know, I think I understand what you're like now. You're very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you're beautiful, but you want them to be interested in you because you're you. The problem is, aside from all that beauty, you're not very interesting. You're rude, you're hostile, you're sullen, you're withdrawn. I know you want someone to look past all that at the real person underneath but the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you're beautiful. Ironic, isn't it? In an odd way you're your own problem."
(There's a lot of it about.)
But back to books. I reread a couple of Yerby novels, and, while I still can't help but like The Devil's Laughter (we all have our guilty pleasures), I nominate An Odor of Sanctity as one of the Top Ten Worst Books of all time. Set in the time of the Crusader Kingdoms of Outremer, every single scrap of dialog is thees and thous, until certes, when I didst reach XXIV, I didst no longer giveth the rear end of a yon black rat. Not only that, but the hero, the girlishly fair but apparently extremely well-endowed Alaric, like James Bond, suffers from the Dick of Death: he can't keep it in his pants, any woman he marries dies, and half the women he has sex with die as well. And plot? What plot? From Goodreads, Jackson Burnett writes:
"At one point, Alaric gets on his horse to ride to Cordoba to rescue his one-of-many true loves. Along the way, his horse stops, refuses to go forward, and turns to take Alaric off on a side story to fix an unresolved plot problem. When the hero's horse makes the calls on a novel's narrative arc, you know you are in trouble."
But I will give it credit: it's still [marginally] better than:
The Playboy Sheikh's Virgin Stable-Girl - no, I haven't read it, but, thanks to Smart Bitches/Trashy Books, I don't have to, and you don't either - what a hilarious review!
The Lair of the White Worm - author, Bram Stoker. BTW, Ken Russell made a movie of it in 1988 starring Hugh Grant. I wonder if he's managed to buy up all the prints of it yet?
I'm guilty of this one. I'll say it right up front.
Janice Law and O'Neil De Noux got me thinking serious thoughts, which is always risky for a comedy writer.
I
make a living as an author. But not a particularly good one.
Probably, I could make the same working full time at Starbucks. As
authors in these times, we don't expect to make a good living from our
fiction. It's a noble goal, but not a realistic one for the average
well-publisher author with a large traditional publisher.
This isn't a new observation. F. Scott Fitzgerald said something similar about his time: The book publishing industry makes horse racing seem like a sure thing.
So if we can't expect big bucks from all this angst of writing fiction, what do we expect?
When The Goddaughter
came out, there was quite a fanfare. I was with a large publisher that
agreed to pay for refreshments. Eighty-five people overflowed the
place for the launch. Local newspaper and television brought cameras.
This doesn't happen in mega-city Toronto. But in Hamilton, a city of
500,000 where my book was set, I got some splashy coverage.
Those
eighty-five people included some of my closest friends and cousins. I
was delighted to see them support me. We sold out of books quickly.
I've
had another twelve books published since then. I've won ten awards. I
am still fortunate to get people to my launches. But the mix has
changed. The people who come to my launches now are fans, not relatives
and friends. With a few exceptions (and those are friends I treasure.)
Back
when I first started writing - when big shoulders were a really cool
thing - I expected my friends and extended family to be my biggest
supporters. I've been fortunate. My immediate family has been
terrific.
But expecting your friends and extended family to celebrate your success in continual ways is a road to disappointment.
I've
come to realize this: if you work, say, in a bank and get a massive,
very difficult project done, there are no parades. Your friends and
family don't have a party for you. They don't insist on reading the
report. Your paycheck is your award.
Yet as an
author, I have expected that sort of response from my non-writer
friends. I expect them to buy my books. (First mistake: all your
friends will expect to be given your books for free. For them, it's a
test of friendship.) I expect them to show up to support me at my big
events if I am in their town. Maybe not every time. Is once a year too
much?
It's been a lesson. I have people in my circle who
have never been to a single one of my author readings or launches.
I've given my books to relatives who are absolutely delighted to receive
a signed copy - but they never actually read the book.
Worse
- I've done the most masochistic thing an author can do. I've casually
searched friends' bookshelves for my books. Not there. (Note to new
authors: NEVER ask someone if they have read your book. You are bound
to be disappointed. This is because, if they read it and liked it, they
will tell you without prompting. If they read it and didn't like it,
you don't want to know. If they didn't read it...ditto.)
Yet
along this perilous, exhilarating and sometimes heartbreaking journey,
I've made a discovery. Your closest friends may let you down. I no
longer see my closest friend from ten years ago. I write crime
and fantasy. She let me know that she thought that unworthy.
People like her will find excuses not to go to your events. I don't know why. It could be a form of envy.
But
the best thing? Some people you least suspect will be become your best
supporters. This came as a complete surprise to me. A few friends -
maybe not the ones you were closest to - will rise to the occasion and
support you in every way they can. I treasure them.
To
wrap: Most authors need approval. We're doing creative work that
involves a lot of risk to the ego. There is no greater gift you can
give an author-friend than full support for their books. Be with us at
our events. Talk enthusiastically about our books to other people. We
will never forget it, and you.
Do we expect too much from those around us? Is it because we don't usually get a constant paycheck? What do you think?
“It is through that broken window that we see the world…”
–Alice Walker
A while back I did a tour of some of the locations in White Heat. Now, since it’s Hot Off the Presses—it came out yesterday from Down & Out Books—it’s the Broken Windows Tour of L.A. One of the things I really enjoy is writing about Los Angeles in the context of a mystery-thriller. In Broken Windows, P.I. Duke Rogers and his very unPC sidekick, Jack, are on the hunt for the killer of an undocumented worker.
Briefly, a little about Broken Windows: While the storm rages over California’s infamous 1994 anti-illegal alien Proposition 187, a young woman climbs to the top of the famous Hollywood sign—and jumps to her death. An undocumented day laborer is murdered. And a disbarred and desperate lawyer in Venice Beach places an ad in a local paper that says: “Will Do Anything For Money.”—Private Investigator Duke Rogers, and his very unPC partner, Jack, must figure out what ties together these seemingly unrelated incidents. Their mission catapults them through a labyrinth of murder, intrigue and corruption of church, state and business that hovers around the immigration debate. And that turmoil is not unlike what’s roiling the country today—in fact it might be seen as a precursor to it.
Hope you'll give it a read. And Reviews would be greatly appreciated...especially if they're good ones :-) .
Realtors say the most important thing is Location Location Location. I wouldn’t go that far in terms of writing. But location is important. So, hop on the bus for a handful of the many SoCal locations in Broken Windows:
View from behind the Hollywood sign (1)
The Hollywood Sign:
The story opens with a young woman climbing to the top of the Hollywood Sign.
The Hollywood Sign beckoned her like a magnet—or like a moth to a flame. The sign glowed golden in the magic hour sun—that time of day around sunrise and sunset when the light falls soft and warm and cinematographers love to shoot. Like so many others, Susan Karubian had come here seeking fame and fortune, hoping to make her mark on the world. Oh hell, she had come to be a star like all the others. And she would do it, just not quite in the heady way she’d anticipated.
When a friend and I hiked up to the sign before the fence was put around it,
so you could actually get to the sign
The Santa Monica Pier:
Duke, looking for a little R&R, takes his new dog, Molly, to the pier:
The Santa Monica Pier used to be one of my favorite places to go to while away time, do some thinking on cases when things weren’t breaking right. I still liked it, but not as much as before. They’d remodeled it, turning it into a mini Disneyland, new rides, new chain restaurants. Just another mini-mall-amusement-park, but with a saltwater view, with kitschy chain restaurants featuring Cowabunga Burgers and a food court, for crying out loud. And a lot more people. Tourists. Families with their kids. Freaks of all kinds. Still, the air was clean. And I thought Molly should get a taste of it.
A view from Santa Monica pier of Santa Monica looking north (2)
At the pier, he runs into Marisol, whose brother Carlos, an undocumented immigrant, has been murdered. Later, Duke takes on the case of trying to find out who killed Carlos and why.
We headed back down the pier. In the distance a woman with coal black hair sat on a bench staring out to sea, her back to me. The wind pitched her hair over her face; she swept it away with a backhand. Something seemed familiar about her. When we got closer I saw that it was Marisol. She didn’t see us and I debated whether to approach her. “Days like this are my favorite time at the beach,” I said. She turned around, looking up at me through a tangle of hair. It looked like she had been crying…
Venice and the Venice Beach Boardwalk:
The bad part of Venice is where Eric, a disbarred lawyer, lives in a not so nice place compared to what he had been used to:
He opened a window, could smell the briny ocean air and hear the waves booming in the distance. This was Venice, California—crammed onto the SoCal shore between tony Santa Monica and haughty Marina del Rey—but not the Venice of the tourists and beach people. And this certainly wasn’t what Abbot Kinney had envisioned when he wanted to recreate Italy’s Venice in Southern California, complete with canals and gondoliers. No, Kinney must be rolling over in his grave these days. This was the other side of Venice. No canals here. No bathing beauties. Unless cockroaches had beauties in their midst, maybe to another cockroach. Miss Cockroach of 1994. Would she want world peace too? Or just a crumb of leftover bread?
Venice Beach (3)
Eric puts an ad in the paper. At first we’re not sure how he ties into the main story of Duke trying to find Carlos’ killer…
And he [Eric] opened the L.A. Weekly underground paper. Today was the day his ad was due out. He scanned a few pages until he came to it: “Contact Eric,” it said, and gave his phone number. So far the phone hadn’t rung, but it was early. Breakfast time. He figured he’d sit by the phone today and hope for the best. If something didn’t come along, he wouldn’t even be able to pay the rent on this hell hole. He looked at the phone, willing it to ring. When it didn’t, his eyes shifted back to his ad, to the headline: “$$$ Will do anything for money. $$$”.
At one point, Duke also finds himself down in Venice:
When Abbott Kinney founded Venice, California, south of Santa Monica, in the early nineteen hundreds, he had big dreams for it. Modeled after Venice, Italy, complete with canals and gondoliers, it was supposed to be a place of high-minded culture. Maybe it was, a hundred years ago. I don’t think so. And certainly not today. Now it was divided between the Hollywood Haves, who filled many of the little, but exceptionally expensive homes along the canals, and the low-rent people a few blocks away, whose homes were the gangs they belonged to more than the houses they lived in. Los Angeles Schizoid Dream.
Man on Venice Boardwalk (4)
The Café Noir:
A down on its heels bar on Sunset Boulevard, where Duke hangs out sometimes:
I opened the Café Noir’s door, a flood of velvet blackness enveloping me as I entered. The transition from daylight, even overcast daylight, to the Noir’s dimness made me close my eyes for a few seconds. Nat King Cole’s “The Blues Don’t Care” sinuously threaded its way from the jukebox. The bartender nodded. I nodded back. I settled in a corner at the far end of the bar, hoping no one I knew would join me. It wasn’t crowded at this hour, but you never knew. And right now I just wanted to get lost in a drink and the shadows, in the music and the anonymity of a dark corner.
The Cafe Noir
Smuggler’s Gulch:
In the 1990s, Smuggler’s Gulch near San Diego was just what its name implies, a major smuggling point for people coming over the border. Jack and Duke have a “meet” there that goes bad and later Duke returns to the “scene of the crime,” so to speak:
I figured Jack wouldn’t be back and I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep so I packed Molly in the Jeep and hit the freeways. Southern California’s become one long rush hour for the most part, but at that time of night, traffic moved at a good clip. We drove south, toward the border. Landed back at Smuggler’s Gulch. Rocky Point. I surveyed the area with night-vision binoculars, making sure no cops, Border Patrol, or even some of Miguel’s friends were there. I knew Jack had hidden the body well, but you can’t be too careful. When I knew the coast was clear, we walked to the rock. I sat there with Molly on the same spot where I’d been shot. She’d been getting stronger by the day and I thought she might enjoy getting out of the house.
Smuggler's Gulch / Tijuana River Valley,
San Diego, CA (5)
***
So, there’s a mini tour of just some of the L.A. and SoCal locations in Broken Windows. Hope you might want to check the book out—it’s available now.
Peter Anthony Holder interviewed me for the Stuph File. It’s short, 10 minutes. You might enjoy it. It’s episode 0471 at the link below. And check out the Stuph File too:
Photo attributions: (1) Hollywood sign photo by Caleb George (https://unsplash.com/seemoris), Unsplash.com: https://unsplash.com/photos/5NslKuaHTJo (2) A view from Santa Monica pier of Santa Monica looking north photo by Korvenna (3) Venice Beach, photo by InSapphoWeTrust from Los Angeles, California, USA (4) Man on Venice Boardwalk, photo by Sean Stratton seanstratton - ttps://unsplash.com/photos/dEEMyIa4zPc (5) Smuggler's Gulch / Tijuana River Valley, San Diego, CA, USA, photo by Roman Eugeniusz, https://www.panoramio.com/photo/127934179
When Brian Thornton described one project for which he wrote an average of 1,425 words/day (“La Joie de l’Écriture,” my heart palpitated with anxiety. That’s almost 2.5 times greater than my production rate during the best year for which I have records.
In 2009 I wrote 216,310 words, an average of 593 words/day. In 2017, my worst recorded year, I produced only 130,600 words, an average of 387 words/day. Neither average comes close to Brian’s assertion that “most of the working writers” he knows “cite a thousand words per day as a healthy goal.” My writing production isn’t healthy; it’s anemic.
That’s because I’m a slacker, never producing near as many words on any given day as I know I’m capable of producing. I allow myself to get sidetracked—by research, by other story ideas, by Twitter tweets, by Facebook posts, by blog posts, by new online forms of solitaire—and I look up later to discover I’ve only produced a paragraph or two.
And yet, I wrote 75 short stories in 2009 and 32 in 2017, so even my least productive year resulted in a significant number of completed works.
SKEWED NUMBERS
Maybe the way I track word counts skews my numbers. I don’t track words as I produce them; I only count the words in completed, submission-ready manuscripts.
In any given year I produce an ungodly number of partial manuscripts, stories I’ll finish one of these days, if I live long enough.
I set the stories aside for a variety of reasons. Some are beginnings without endings. Some are story doughnuts, missing the all-important middle that gets readers from beginning to end. Some are rough outlines. Some are stories beyond my current ability to write. Many, though, are stories without markets. For example, I continue generating story ideas for confessions, even though the last two confession magazines ceased publication more than a year ago.
SETTING GOALS
As a short-story writer (and, likely, as with any other kind of writer), what matters most are finished manuscripts, so I’ve never set writing goals that involve number of words or number of pages or amount of time spent at the keyboard.
My annual goals, ever since setting them many years ago, are 52 acceptances and 52 new stories each year, or an average of one of each per week. Reprints carry the same weight as originals when counting acceptances, so the six reprints I placed a few weeks ago brought my total acceptances for the year to 32, which put me exactly on schedule as I write this. My production of new stories this year to date totals a paltry 13.
I have several stories near completion, but even were I to complete them all before month end, I would remain behind schedule. There are several reasons for the reduction in output, some of them, perhaps, the subjects of future posts, but the net result is that I am unlikely to meet my writing goals this year.
As a prolific slacker, I don’t chide myself for failing to meet my productivity goals nor do I allow myself to slip into a woe-is-me funk that further erodes my productivity. Instead, I do my best to deal with the things that sap my creativity or keep me away from the keyboard. Then, like now, when I am at the keyboard, I spend a little less time playing solitaire and a little more time stringing words together.
I may never join the ranks of the thousand-words-a-day working writers Brian cited—heck, this post won’t even reach a thousand words!—but I’ve found that my slacker’s approach allows me to produce an ever-growing body of work.
So, no matter how you set your goals—by the word, by the page, by the manuscript, or by the length of time at the keyboard—realize that you may not always meet those goals.
Whether you do or you don’t, the most important thing you can do is to keep pressing forward. As my youngest son recently said, you don’t fail until you quit.
Released at the end of August,Blood Work (Down & Out Books), edited by Rick Ollerman, celebrates the life of Mystery Writers of America Raven Award-winning Gary Shulze, long-time owner of the legendary Once Upon A Crime bookstore in Minneapolis. Gary left an indelible mark on the crime fiction community across the world before he passed away in 2016 due to complications from leukemia. The anthology includes my story “Backlit.” If you’ll be at Bouchercon in St. Petersburg this week, stop in on “This Ain’t Your Mama’s Orange Juice—Writing Pulp,” a panel in which I’ll join Frank De Blase, Kate Pilarcik, and moderator Steven Torres. We’ll start squeezing oranges at 4:00 p.m., Saturday, September 8. And I’ll be speaking about “Short Stories: From Concept to Sale, How This Form Can Satisfy,” at the noon MWA-Southwest luncheon, September 15, at Carraba’s, 1399 South Voss, Houston, Texas.
One of the time-worn chestnuts about getting ideas is "write what you know," and many people point out that staying on familiar ground will limit you. Obviously, it depends on what you know. It certainly didn't hurt Tom Clancy, did it? Or maybe Xaviera Hollander. If you have the right experience, you're golden.
The shared experiences some people think are mundane will be fresh if you put YOUR slant on them. And if they're shared experiences, you already touch a shared nerve that will affect many readers.
Everyone has a first job, first day of school, first date, first heartbreak and dozens of other rites of passage. One of the great literary themes is loss of innocence, which fills a lot of the high school literature reading list. "The Girl in the Red Bandanna," which I published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine last spring, revisits a summer job I only held for one night.
I've played guitar since the mid-sixties and one of my favorite stories was inspired by seeing the
Muddy Waters Blues Band when I was still heavily into the Monkees and Paul Revere & The Raiders. My musical world changed that night, but the story has had over 20 rejections and I've run out of places to send it. Oh, well...
Most of my titles are also song titles because Woody Guthrie, my wannabe rock & roller PI, came from meeting a classmate at my high school reunion. She was now a full-time session musician in Detroit. Blood On the Tracks, Woody's first adventure, was a long time coming, but he now appears in four novels and a few short stories, all of which take their names from songs.
My wife insists that Hell is really middle school. WE all have nightmares about it except the kids whose voices never changed, never had a growth spurt, or never went through puberty. Judy Blume is one of many writers who turned the angst into a gold mine. My own Postcards of the Hanging grew out of a scandal that rocked my school senior year.
Bel Kaufman had a huge bestseller recounting a first year of teaching in Up the Down Staircase, and Braithwaite fared nearly as well with To Sir With Love. My own Run Straight Down comes from my teaching, too, but has a little darker perspective.
Several of my friends (well, two. I don't have many) ask when I'm going to write a story revolving around theater. Well, Linda Barnes wrote an amateur sleuth series featuring Michael Sprague as an actor who solved mysteries. She gave the series up because, as she pointed out, if people got killed in every production Sprague joined, eventually nobody would cast the guy anymore. Barnes and I both grew up in Southern Michigan, moved to New England, and taught English and theater. She's younger and taller than I am, and much nicer. She also went back to theater for her standalone The Perfect Ghost a few years ago. If you have any familiarity with Hamlet, you might check it out.
Three days ago, I finished a first draft of my first attempt to use theater as a background for a story. I only had to look up one detail that I no longer remembered after several years. It was fun to write, too, a refreshing break from my usual rock and blues.
My favorite poster from when I was directing...
Everybody knows something nobody else does. And maybe it's so obvious we don't even know we know it.
Now for the BSP. John Floyd and I both have stories in the newest issue of Mystery Weekly, now available at your favorite website.
by Melodie Campbell (Bad Girl...in which we admit that praise comes with a nasty side dish)
"the Canadian literary heir to Donald Westlake" EQMM, Sept-Oct 2018 issue
How the HELL will I ever live up to this?
A while back, I was on a panel where the moderator asked the question,
"Does it get harder or easier, with each successive book?"
"Easier," said one cozy writer, a woman I respect and know well. "Because I know what I'm doing now."
I stared at her in surprise.
"Harder. Definitely harder," said my pal Linwood Barclay, sitting beside me.
I sat back with relief. The why was easy. I answered that.
"Harder
for two reasons," I said. "First, you've already used up a lot of good
ideas. I've written 40 short stories and 18 novels. That's nearly 60
plot ideas. It gets harder to be original."
Linwood nodded along with me.
"Second,
you've already established a reputation with your previous books. If
they were funny, people expect the next one to be even funnier. It gets
harder and harder to meet people's expectations."
"The bar is higher with each book," said Linwood.
This
conversation came back to me this week, when I got a very nice surprise
(thanks, Barb Goffman, for pointing me to it!) Ellery Queen Mystery
Magazine reviewed my latest book, and called me "the Canadian literary
heir to Donald Westlake."
At first, I was ecstatic, and
so very very grateful. Donald Westlake was a huge influence on me. I
still think his book where everyone on the heist team spoke a different
language to be one of the zaniest plots of all time. To be considered
in his class is a wonderful thing.
And then, the doubts
started. I'm now looking at my work in progress with different eyes.
Is this plot fresh? Is it as clever as I thought it was? Am I still
writing funny?
Would Donald Westlake fans like it?
Or am I the world's worst imposter?
So
many authors on Sleuthsayers are award-winning. All of you will, I'm
sure, relate to this a little bit. Was that award win a one-off? Okay,
so you have more than one award. Were those stories exceptions? You
haven't won an award in two years. Have you lost it?
Will I ever write anything as good as that last book?
I'm
dealing hugely with imposter syndrome right now. It's a blasted roller
coaster. I know I should be spreading that EQMM quote far and wide,
on Facebook, Twitter, blog posts, etc. Possibly, I should be buying
ads. And at the same time, I'm stalling in my WIP, with the feeling of
'never good enough.'
Luckily, the publisher deadline will
keep me honest. I work pretty well under pressure. Next week, for
sure, I'll get back to the book.
This week, I'll smile in public and suffer a little in silence.
What
about you, authors? Do you find imposter syndrome creeps into your
life at times when you should be celebrating? Tell us below.
We all do various forms of research for our art, our writing. And we all make sacrifices for it. Some are big, some are little. There’s the standard research in books and on the net. Then there’s first-hand research, going to a particular location, talking to people who might have been involved in a certain event, or maybe taking on certain experiences ourselves, etc.
I’ve hung out in dive bars and other dives (including SCUBA dives). And spent years doing things that would make your hair curl and mine, too…if I had any, all so I could have a life and some life experience to eventually write about. Well, maybe I didn’t think of it as research at the time, but in retrospect it came in handy for things I wrote later on. And I’ve turned down invitations to go places, anything from a movie to parties, with friends so I could write—and have lost friends over it. Ah, the sacrifice.
But here I want to focus on a handful of things that I think are kind of funny in retrospect. At least these are a few of the ones that are light enough and that I’m willing and comfortable enough to talk about at this time, but they’re really only the tip of that sacrificial iceberg.
The Den of Nazis: Okay, maybe Nazis aren’t fun, but here goes: In ye olden days, before the
internet, I was doing research for a project set in the near past. I needed info about the daily life and costs of items and such from the 1930s, 40s, etc. Time-Life had a book series called This Fabulous Century. Each volume covered a decade and had that types of info in them. I had a few of the volumes but not the whole set—how I managed that I’m not sure. Anyway, I wanted to get the rest of the set so I saw an ad from someone selling it. I responded and they gave me their address in a middling L.A. neighborhood, not great, not horrible. I drove down one afternoon. Nice old brick or other classic-type apartment buildings, like something Philip Marlowe would be comfortable in. I go to the people’s apartment. A young woman answers the door and lets me in. I walk into this beautiful old living room with fancy crown molding and gorgeous original wooden floors and the biggest motherfucking Nazi swastika flag hanging on the wall that you can imagine. It took up the whole wall. Now, maybe they were just into humungous historical flags…or maybe something else. The rest of the place was filled with all kinds of other Nazi stuff too. Now I’m wondering if the books were just a scam. Will I get out alive? Her boyfriend comes to me “You want the Time-Life books?”—Yeah, and I want to get out of here in one piece. I also didn’t want the whole set of books as I had some, and, long story short, I bought the ones I needed, the people were actually nice and we didn’t talk politics. I left but it left an impression on me.
Mobbed Up: I had a spec script I was trying to push that dealt with a delicate issue, which I won’t go into here. And there was a nightclub in L.A. at the time that catered to a certain type of clientele that were in my story. So I made an appointment to go talk to the owners as I thought maybe they’d like to finance a movie. In those days I’d talk to anyone or try anything to hawk my stuff—see my Cary Grant and Gene Kelly stories on my website: https://pauldmarks.com/cary-grant-gene-kelly/ , and those are just a couple of my more fun stories. Anyway, I went to the club for my appointment and was led into the back offices where I met Murray: The Gangster. Straight out of Central Casting, gray pin-striped suit, carnation, Brooklyn accent. Well, Murray was interested but he needed to talk to his partners (hmm, who could they be, Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Siegel—well, no, ’cause they were goners by then—though I did grow up across the street from Bugsy’s brother and his family, but that’s another story…) Long story short, nothing came of it in terms of getting financing for a movie, but my then-writing partner took to calling me Murray and on occasion I used that and another last name as a pseudonym.
Stolen Identity – before it was even a term: I was working for a small newspaper. The editor called me and asked if I had called NASA to request press credentials to attend a Space Shuttle landing. He continued, saying NASA had called him to verify if someone from our paper had faxed them to request press credentials for the landing…using my name. Talk about your “Oh shit!” moments.
What? No. I covered local stories, movie reviews and entertainment, not space shuttle landings. I was alarmed. Was someone impersonating me? Had they stolen my identity? Were they terrorists? What the hell was going on? I called the FBI and talked to an agent with the lowest, deepest voice I’d ever heard, lower than I ever imagined possible. He didn’t seem concerned. But I couldn’t let it go. So, I did some of the best detective work of my career…I called Ma Bell and had them trace the fax number where the credential request came from to a local Kinko’s. Then my Mata Hari (Amy) called Kinko’s pretending to be the secretary to a Colonel Severin. They gave her the name and phone number of the imposter who’d sent the credential request. Then I called NASA and told them about the ruse and gave them the information we had tracked down. Hey, they should have given us medals for this, but they also seemed kind of blasé about the whole thing. But if this had been post-911, I’m sure they would have had a different attitude and a different ending…or maybe not. Who knows? At least I didn’t end up at Guantanamera, I mean Guantanamo.
The Mossad: I was working on a script for a producer (who was also an actor, more on this later). The woman who hooked us up warned me about him ahead of time—I should have heeded the warning. He was a pain in the ass to put it ever so mildly. One time in our previous house where the houses were closer together than where we are now, I was screaming at said producer on the phone. Amy was home and since I didn’t want her to think I was the lone psycho on that call I put it on speaker so she could also hear him screaming at me. I was also concerned that our neighbors would think I was yelling at her as the houses were close, but luckily no cops were called. To say my relationship with this guy was contentious would be the understatement of the century. But we worked together for a while…until things got so bad that one day he threatened to send his friends in the Mossad after me. Quaking in my boots, I couldn’t sleep for years, waiting for the stealthy Mossad operatives, who I’m sure had nothing better to do than to come after me. And, as for the actor part, well, since he is an actor I see him in things now and then and it makes it hard to watch them. On occasion I’ve turned them off. And I’m still looking over my shoulder every day…
The Bondage House: Aside from working for other people on their properties or rewrites I was always trying to find money to do a film of my own. To that end, someone I knew said, Hey, I know a producer and maybe he’d want to invest in your project. This is someone whose work I knew and you might know his movies too. So we went to this guy’s house in the hills and it was a really cool house, kind of like a huge Spanish-Mediterranean castle. But on the inside it was more like a Spanish-Mediterranean dungeon. You walked in the front door and there were very sexily and scantily clad mannequins chained to the wrought iron staircase and anything else you could attach a chain to. There were dressed in leather bustiers and wearing high heels. For some reason I can’t remember anymore, my friend and I got the tour of the house and the chained mannequins were everywhere. This was another one where I wondered if we’d get out unscathed, but we did. And, of course, he didn’t want to invest in my film—he wanted me to invest in his. Ah, Hollywood.
The Joan Crawford House: Or should I say museum? Someone wanted me to meet this guy—I can’t remember his name anymore—who had been Joan Crawford’s publicist before she died. She/my friend thought maybe he could help me raise some money—like I said, always looking for money. I wish we had Go Fund Me back then… Anyway, we go to this guy’s house, a nice, Spanish style house in Bev Hills (my favorite architecture by the way), though not nearly as big as the bondage house, and you walk in the door—no, no bondage gear this time—but the house was totally decked out in everything Crawford. He had several of her dresses displayed, every little thing she’d ever touched it seemed like, cigarette lighters and shoes. It was a total museum and homage to Joan Crawford. If her ghost wasn’t haunting that place I don’t know where it would be. And no, he didn’t end up investing either.
There were also other pleasant experiences like a trip to New Orleans and other places for research and other things. And then the Top Secret things that I’m not ready to talk about. But good, bad and indifferent, we all make sacrifices for our writing. What are some of yours?
***
Broken Windows – Sequel to my #Shamus-winning White Heat drops 9/10/18. A labyrinth of murder, intrigue and corruption of church and state that hovers around the immigration debate. #writers #mystery #amreading #thriller #novels
