Mystery Writing

Remembering Richard S. Prather

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The appreciations for my friend Richard S.  Prather are coming in from all corners. Check out what J. Kingston Pierce, Ed Gorman, James Reasoner, Bill Crider, and Steve Lewis have to say.

Author  Stephen  Marlowe contributes an entertaining essay today on Ed’s blog about what it was like collaborating with Prather on a Shell Scott/Chester Drum novel, an idea cooked up by their mutual agent.

[…]Until then, we had never met. We developed the plot as
we went along, mostly by long-distance phone call. There were telegrams
too, including one that went something like "Body of Hartsell Committee
lawyer found in Rock Creek Park" that must have startled the Western
Union operator.

[…]Well, we finished that first draft by writing alternate chapters, as
those of you who read the book may remember, Scott narrating chapter 1,
Drum chapter 2, and so on–to a total of more than eight hundred
pages–enough for three Gold Medal books. Drastic measures had to be
taken.

Ever been out to the Coast? Dick asked me by phone. Nope, I
hadn’t. Well, said Dick, come on out and we’ll help each other cut.
How? I said. There was a silence. Maybe, I suggested half-heartedly, I
cut your deathless prose and you cut mine. Maybe, Dick said. Come on
out.

So a couple of days later I flew out of Idlewild for LA, and
was met at the airport by Dick Prather and his wife, Tina, in a snazzy
pale blue Caddy.

    "It’s yours while you’re here," Tina said.

    "Huh?"

"Well, you see, we’ll work together at the house but we figured you’d
like some privacy, so we booked you a room at a seaside motel."

    "So the car is all yours while you’re here," Dick explained.

The Prathers were like that–private people but the best hosts I’d ever known.

Sad News

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I’ve just learned that my friend Richard S. Prather, author of the Shell Scott novels, died peacefully in his sleep last night at his home  in Sedona, AZ.  I spoke to him  a week or so before I left for Europe and he was thrilled about Hard Case Crime re-publication of  THE  PEDDLER.  I’m so glad the reprint happened for him before he passed away.

Barbara…gone too soon

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My friend Barbara Seranella passed away today. She was 50 years old and  had been in ill health for some time. I knew her for years and admired her talent, her humor, her tenacity, and her kindness. I will particularly remember a long night playing poker with her in El Paso…she beat us all. I wish she could have beaten this, too.

This Is More Like It

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The 2007 Edgar nominees were announced today and, for the first time in years, the TV episodic category wasn’t dominated by LAW AND ORDER (and it’s spin-offs). Instead, the nominees  this year truly reflect the diversity of mystery shows on TV:

The Closer – "Blue Blood", Teleplay by James Duff & Mike Berchem (Turner Network Television)
Dexter – "Crocodile", Teleplay by Clyde Phillips (Showtime)
House – "Clueless", Teleplay by Thomas L. Moran (Fox/NBC Universal)
Life on Mars – Episode 1, Teleplay by Matthew Graham (BBC America)
Monk – "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink", Teleplay by Hy Conrad (USA Network/NBC Universal)

The committee seems to  have been swayed by character over procedure this  year, since none of the  pure procedurals (CSI, CRIMINAL MINDS, etc) were nominated. But I think it’s an impressive bunch of nominees.

The TV movie and mini-series category is equally impressive and clearly indicates  just how few mystery-themed TV movies and miniseries are being done on the big broadcast networks…but that the genre is thriving elsewhere:

Conviction, Teleplay by Bill Gallagher (BBC America)
Cracker: A New Terror, Teleplay by Jimmy McGovern (BBC America)
Messiah: The Harrowing, Teleplay by Terry Cafolla (BBC America)
Secret Smile, Teleplay by Kate Brooke, based on the book by Nicci French (BBC America)
The
Wire, Season 4, Teleplays by Ed Burns, Kia Corthron, Dennis Lehane,
David Mills, Eric Overmyer, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David
Simon & William F. Zorzi (Home Box Office)

Proofs as Proof

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Novelist John Connolly just got the page proofs for his new book THE UNQUIET:

It’s always interesting to receive the proofs, as it’s the first time
that I get to see the book as it will look to the public, i.e. typeset,
and no longer simply my manuscript. At that point, a transformation
occurs in the way I view it. It is not just something that I rustled up
on my computer. It’s a book, and I judge it in a different way. I
notice elements that perhaps I did not recognise before. I become more
conscious of themes running through it, and I become aware, for want of
a better word, of the ‘feel’ of the book.

I know exactly how he feels. I just finished going through the proofs for DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE LAST WORD and I felt as if I was reading someone else’s book. It didn’t seem to have any connection to the "file" I emailed to my editor months ago. I was reading it fresh and I was surprised by some of obvious themes that ran that ran through the book…themes I wasn’t even consciously aware of as I was writing it. 

When I read the proofs, I find myself seeing the prose, the characters, and the plot differently than I did in the midst of working on the book. But most of all, reading THE LAST WORD, I was aware of a pace and rythmn to the story that I definitely didn’t feel while I was writing it in bits and pieces, at different times and in different places (L.A., Germany, Palm Springs… and at my desk, on airplanes, in hotel rooms, in waiting rooms, in my car, etc.)

The term "proofs" has a double-meaning to me. Holding the proofs, I have evidence to convince myself that what I wrote is actually a book…it’s the first time the story feels like a book to me instead of work.

Interview with Richard Prather

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Linda Pendleton, widow of EXECUTIONER author Don Pendleton, has posted a lengthy interview with my friend Richard S. Prather on her website.  Here’s an excerpt about his  unpublished 1000-page Shell Scott manuscript THE DEATH GODS:

It’s packed in a box in my closet, and is the completed but still
somewhat messy original yellow-page manuscript that I started writing more than
a decade ago.  It turned out to be the longest Shell Scott mystery I’ve
ever written, which, if eventually published, would be #41 in the series.
And it hasn’t been published because it has never been submitted to any
publisher for publication.

Why not?  Well, for a lot of reasons that make sense to me, and
may—or may not—make sense to you, Linda.  We’ll see.

For one thing, the author’s creative work (the fun part) is
finished, but the boring stuff remains to be done.  Some of those
marked-up pages need to be fixed, some fussed with to smooth out rough spots,
before they’re all retyped or (these days) printed on 20-pound bond, or even
converted to computer-readable format on something like a Word for Windows
disk, whatever that is.  Mainly, the whole manuscript needs to be checked
and updated because it took me so lo-ong to get from page 1 to The End.   

After fairly speedily, and without significant interruption, writing 43
so-called “first drafts” (so-called because, as previously mentioned, I never wrote
a “second draft”), on this one–#44 overall and #41 in the Shell Scott
series—there were two long interruptions.  I twice, for reasons
there’s no need to go into here, had to stop work entirely on the manuscript
before it was finished…stopped the first time for nearly three years, and the
second time for longer than that.  Add it all together, including recent
years “on the shelf,” and that’s a lo-ong time.

During those years we’ve moved from the old Millennium into the new, and
the world has changed.  Not just automobile models and computers and new
same-old politicians and a “new” war or two, but us, you and me.  And I’ve
changed (as Damon Runyon used to say) more than somewhat.  Part of that
change is:  I no longer give a hoot whether The Death Gods is
published or not.   

I no longer need my name on another book to make me feel like
(harking back to childhood) “I’m gonna be a writer,”
I’ve been there/done that—43 times.

[…]The bottom line is, I’m content to let those
1000+ pages rest unmolested in their box in the closet, while I sit here in my
kitchen-library reading lots of books written by other people, and listening to
the tweeting of happy birds optimistically screeching outside, where I scattered
birdseed in payment for their songs.  And there’s no cut-off point for
them where there “ain’t no more,” not in this
house.  I’ve got lots of birdseed, and I can’t eat it all
myself.   

(Thanks to Roddy Reta and Mystery*File for the heads-up)

Literary Cannibalism

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Here’s a new twist on the fanfic debate:   an article in the Daily Telegraph implies that  Thomas Harris stole from Hannibal Lector fanfic for his novel HANNIBAL RISING. The article quotes some fanfic passages and compares them to passages in Harris’ new novel.

Trawling through the Lecter fanfic, one comes on other tantalising parallelisms. Six years ago, for example, ‘Leeker17’, on www.typhoidandswans.com
posted a narrative which uncannily forecasts the opening chapters of
Hannibal Rising in its detailed description of how the hero’s parents
and sister met their ends in 1944. So close is it that one might fancy
that Leeker17 had some privileged connection with Harris. Or that
Harris himself, under a nom-de-web, may be the ‘leaker’. Or, like
Blythebee, Leeker17 may just have struck lucky.

If
an author picks up and uses something from ‘his’ fanfic is he
plagiarising, collaborating, or merely playing games? One thing’s
certain. Harris won’t tell us.

(Thanks to Sarah Weinman for the heads-up!)

Parker is Prolific

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There are a couple of interesting things about Robert B. Parker’s latest Amazon blog post. For one, he’s openly soliciting people to buy the movie option on his Sunny Randall novels (and offers the name and address of his agents)…which I find extraordinary for an author of his experience and success in both the publishing and TV business.

But the really amazing thing about his post is what it reveals about how prolific he is. His last Spenser came out in November. He has a Jesse Stone novel coming out in February, a young adult novel in April, a Sunny Randall in June, and  Spenser in October. I figure he must be writing a book at least every eight to twelve weeks. That’s an amazing output…especially for a  bestselling author in his late 60s (or is he in his 70s?) who really doesn’t need to work that hard any more.

Change is Good

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My brother Tod and I were talking the other day about certain authors we know who burst onto the scene with a great book and have been replicating that same novel ever since with ever-worsening results.  It’s a dangerous rut for writers to get into, as bestselling author Tess Gerritsen points out.

Selling a book is just the first step in your career as a writer.  Look
at all the first-time novelists who later vanished from the publishing
world.  They discovered a very painful truth: to make a career in this
field, you’ll have to do a lot more than just sell one book[…]

If the books you’re writing aren’t finding an
audience, maybe it’s time to write a different kind of book.  In my
case, I first moved from romance to thrillers.  I loved writing
romance, but I just couldn’t write fast enough to make a living at it.
Writing for Harlequin was fun and satisfying, and I loved the genre,
but when each book was only earning out around $12,000, I knew I’d
never send my kids to college on my earnings as a writer.  As it turned
out, I had a great idea for a medical thriller (HARVEST), which was my
debut novel on the New York Times list.

But four books later, I could see that my medical thriller sales
were flat, and even starting to decline.  By then I had a crime
thriller in mind, one that I couldn’t wait to write.  With THE SURGEON,
I launched the Jane Rizzoli series.  And my sales have increased since
then.

If Harlan Coben had stuck with his Myron Bolitar books instead of shifting to standalone thrillers, would he be the international success that he is now? And if Michael Connelly, Ed McBain, Robert B. Parker, Richard Stark, Laura Lippman, Lawrence Block and Robert Crais hadn’t stepped away from their long-running series to write other books (and other series), would their writing have remained as fresh? I don’ t think so. I believe one of the reasons they’ve been so successful is because they’ve branched out into other areas  (of course, there’s always folks like Sue Grafton, Lee Child, Barry Eisler, and Ian Rankin who do just fine without leaving the confines of their series).

It’s why I’m glad I had the opportunity the last couple of years to alternate between writing the DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MONK books…they are two very different kinds of writing, even though they are both mystery series. DM is written in third person and is essentially a drama. MONK is written in first person and is primarily a comedy. 

Shifting between genres is also one of the pleasures of screenwriting. I’ve written, for instance, about lifeguards (Baywatch), private detectives (Spenser For Hire, Monk), werewolves (She Wolf of London), clever dolphins (Flipper), cops (Hunter), FBI agents (Missing), cross-dressing comics (Dame Edna), and just this week I wrote a pilot about urban street racing.

I like to think that the challenge of writing in different genres, characters and voices — and doing so in books and TV — keeps me and my writing fresh.

(updated 1.1.07)

Momentum

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I haven’t conquered my jet-lag yet, but I’m not letting it bother me. Now that I am back in L.A.,  and it’s a "holiday" week of sorts, I don’t have to go into any office besides the one in my home so it doesn’t really make any difference what time I get up or go to bed. With that new attitude, and nothing to do but write, things are going much better with my script.

It’s amazing to me that, no matter how much experience I have at this, I still have the same insecurities and have to keep re-learning the same lessons… one of which is that writing goes better when you can generate some momentum.

I have been doing nothing but writing the last few days, rather than in  fits-and-starts like last week, so it’s no surprise than I am much happier and doing better work. The importance of momentum isn’t a new discovery for me…but it seems like I have to keep reminding myself  every time I start a writing project.