Mystery Writing

When It All Comes Together

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I came up with my story for Bob Randisi’s new anthology at the oddest time and the oddest place. I was getting a haircut, tuning out the incessant yammering of the lady cutting my hair, when all the pieces that had been swirling around in my head finally clicked together — my experience in traffic school the other day, a newspaper article I clipped six months ago, a scene from a story I never wrote, a bit I saw on Court TV some time back, and my curiosity about the life of  a guy I see on public access TV. Suddenly, in about two minutes, I had my story. Today I am off with a notepad and a digital camera to do some "location sc0uting" for the story, I’ll do some googling for some facts I need,  and then I’ll start writing it. I want to get it done before I start writing the third MONK book next week.

UPDATE: I got back around noon, copied my photos to my hard-drive, then spent an hour or so on Google, looking up facts on different subjects. I also emailed an "expert" in a particular field for some additional background info. I’ve just finished up a one-page, bullet-point outline for myself — not that I’ll necessarily stick to it, but so I have a road-map in case I have to set the story aside for some reason over the next few days to work on something else.

Now it’s time to procrastinate — which is why I’m updating this post — and then start writing.

When Did You Know?

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When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Joe Konrath poses that question on his blog today. I’ve known almost all my life what I wanted to be.  Not too long ago, my Mom found a paper I wrote in fourth grade where I said I loved writing stories and that I wanted to be a writer.  I posted one of those early stories here on my blog…along with one of my daughter’s  written at the same age.

When I was ten or eleven, I was already pecking novels out on my Mom’s old typewriters. The first one was a futuristic tale about a cop born in an underwater sperm bank. I don’t know why the bank was underwater, or how deposits were made, but I thought it was very cool. I followed that up with a series of books about  gentleman thief Brian Lockwood,  aka "The Perfect Sinner,’ a thinly disguised rip-off of Simon Templar, aka "The Saint." I sold these stories for a dime to my friends and even managed to make a dollar or two. In fact, I think my royalties per book were better then than they are now.

I continued writing novels all through my teenage years.  Some of my other unpublished masterpieces featured hapless detective named Kevin Dangler. I remember my Uncle Burl being quite amused by that one. He even wrote a story about Kevin Dangler one summer when we were fishing at Loon Lake. Only Dangler wasn’t a detective in his tale. He was the lead singer of a rock group called Kevin Dangler & The Scrotums. Being a packrat, I still have most of those novels today in boxes in my garage (some were destroyed in flooding a few years back).

By the time I was 17, I was writing articles for The Contra Costa Times and other Bay Area newspapers and applying to colleges.  I didn’t get a book published, but my detective stories got me into UCLA’s School of Communications. My grades weren’t wonderful, so I knew I had to kick ass on my application essay. I wrote it first person as a hard-boiled detective story in Kevin Dangler’s voice. The committee, at first, had doubts that I actually wrote it myself — until they reviewed articles I’d written for the Times, including one that used the same device as my essay.

I sold my first non-fiction book, UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS, while I was a freshman in college and my first novel, .357 VIGILANTE, shortly thereafter (thanks to Lew Perdue).  And so here I am, at 43, doing exactly what I was doing when I was seven or eight. I haven’t really changed. It’s cool…and kind of weird, too.

Shell Scott

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Ed Gorman posted a nice piece about my friend Richard S. Prather’s Shell Scott books on his blog today.

I loved Prather because he was always fun. I was naive about his right-wing
politics so they never got in my way, I just liked the hilarious situations
chicks always led the willing Shell into. One of my all-time favorite scenes is
Shell in a hot air balloon flying above the nudist camp he’s just escaped from.
His attire consists of his holster and gun.

The Shell Scott books are dated but still as laugh-out-loud funny as they were forty years ago. In his heyday, Richard was one of the best selling authors in the world, with tens of millions of copies of his book in print.

I spoke to Richard a couple of days ago — he’d just signed a contract with Hard Case Crime to reprint one of his early, not-Scott books.  So pretty soon a whole new generation will discover just how good a writer Richard Prather is.

New Years Resolutions for Writers

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Novelist Joe Konrath posts his Professi0nal Writer Resolutions for the new year. They work for me, too.

  • I will keep my website updated
  • I will start a blog
  • I will schedule bookstore signings, and while at the bookstore I’ll meet and
    greet the customers rather than sit dejected in the corner
  • I will send out a newsletter, emphasizing what I have to offer rather than
    what I have for sale, and I won’t send out more than four a year
  • I will learn to speak in public, even if I think I already know how
  • I will make selling my books my responsibility, not my publisher’s
  • I will stay in touch with my fans
  • I will contact local libraries, and tell them I’m available for speaking
    engagements
  • I will attend as many writing conferences as I can afford
  • I will spend a large portion of my advance on self-promotion
  • I will help out other writers
  • I will not get jealous, will never compare myself to my peers, and will
    cleanse my soul of envy
  • I will be accessible, amiable, and enthusiastic
  • I will do one thing every day to self-promote
  • I will always remember where I came from

Of course, not all of these resolutions really apply to Joe. He keeps his site and blog update, can speak well in public, and attends every writing conference held from here to Tehran. He forgot the big resolution though…

Write.

Sex Sex Sex

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Sex_1Novelist Tess Gerritsen talks about the difficulties of writing sex. She offers a lot of great advice, but the bottom line is:

Ask yourself, as a writer, what your love scene is supposed to accomplish. If
it’s just to show that your hero is a normal guy having sex, that’s about as
interesting as watching him eat bologna sandwiches. No, the best sex scenes are
those that accomplish something far more profound. They offer us a deeper
understanding of character, or show us emotional awakening or healing.

I agree with her. She was brave enough to share an example from one of her books to prove her point, so I will, too. This one comes from MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE:

I guess
something I learned from “Mannix” was true. Being a private eye really is an
aphrodisiac to women. Carol had never attacked me like that before.

I’m afraid the surprise and excitement were too much, because I came in about three minutes. But I
don’t think Carol minded; it calmed me down and allowed me to concentrate real
hard on getting her off. And believe me, it took my complete attention.
Pleasing a woman, especially Carol, isn’t easy and with me, at least, there’s a
lot of potential for embarrassment and humiliation.

She rewarded me for all
my hard work with a nice, squealing, writhing orgasm that nearly broke my nose
on her pubic bone, but I didn’t mind. I even jumped in, literally, to enjoy the
last few squeals of it with her.

It was so dark, and things happened so fast, she never saw my cuts and bruises, so she mistook my
occasional groans of pain for pleasure.

Carol fell right to sleep afterwards.

Between the sex, the pain, and the things on my mind, I didn’t get as much sleep as I would have
liked. But I get laid so rarely, I’m willing to sacrifice just about anything
for it, especially sleep, when I usually dream about having sex anyway.

While the scene is explicit, more by implication than actual description,  it’s not about the choreography or body parts. It’s about attitude and character — or, at least, I hope it is. To me, that’s how you get around the pitfalls of writing the sex scene, unless the point of the scene is to arouse the reader.

By the way, I’ve written my share of awful sex scenes. I honed my "craft" in college. My girlfriend was an editorial assistant at Playgirl and she got me a gig writing sexually-explicit  "Letters to the Editor" for the grand sum of $25-a-letter (Gasp! You didn’t know they were fake? You probably think Penthouse letters are real, too).  I actually had a lot of fun writing them (often in class, which got me some strange looks from the people around me)  and it helped me learn to write in different voices for different characters. Plus the letters got my girlfriend all excited, but that’s another story…

Blog Suicide?

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A few days ago, author Sandra Scoppettone  blogged about her editor, Joe Blades, leaving Ballantine and her anxieties about it.  This prompted an anonymous commenter to warn her that her very candid blog posts could be damaging to her career. Sandra angrily fired back. Soon, the ugly little argument spilled over to  other   blogs. Now Galleycat has picked up on the catfight, so-to-speak, and it will mushroom from there…

Unfortunately, it illustrates that even someone who’s been in the
business as long as Scoppettone has (and whose influence on two
different genres continues to be felt) can sometimes let things go all
too haywire. And it further illustrates the power of blogging in the
publishing world — because you never know who’ll be out there reading,
passing judgment, and jumping to conclusions.

The blog skirmish brings up an interesting issue — how honest should you be on your blog? I have to admit I cringed a bit at some of Sandra’s posts, and at my friend Paul Guyot’s surprising candor about the ups-and-downs of his pilot experience, and at my cousin regularly trashing her employer. Sure, it makes good reading and can be cathartic for the author  — but is it self-destructive? I don’t know. I just know I don’t want to find out for myself.

I’ve been very careful here not to talk about the shows I am working on (except to hype them when they air), or the executives and producers I am working with (or hope to work with), or authors/writers I work and socialize with (unless it is to hype their latest work).  I  rarely name individual producers, writers, editors or executives. I talk in general terms, for the most part, or about personal experiences that are safely in the past. 

I’m clearly not shy about expressing my opinion — but I’m careful about it. I don’t hesitate to criticize fanfiction, self-publishing scams, the RWA, or people searching the Internet for Lindsay Lohan’s nipples  — those are safe. But, for example,  you won’t see me trashing a producer, a studio, a network, or a major publishing company.

I think some bloggers forget that they aren’t writing a private diary — it’s like a column in a newspaper. You have no idea who is reading it or how your words are being passed around. Blogging is fun, but my career is far more important.

Abandonment Issues

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Galleycat reports that editor Joe Blades is leaving Ballantine — and publishing.

Why? Though Blades hadn’t responded to email queries as of this writing, burnout
seems to be the biggest issue, according to a recent post by
one of his authors. Though Blades isn’t certain what his next move will be,
it won’t have anything to do with the publishing world.

Blades was especially known for editing mystery and crime fiction, and his
author list included Anne Perry, Sandra Scoppettone, Terrill Lee Lankford,
Rochelle Krich, Mary Logue, Gillian Roberts and William Bernhardt. It remains to
be seen how many of these folks will be kept on by Random House, but Blades will
be meeting with various RH brass to discuss which editors get custody of which
authors.

It’s very scary when your editor, often your biggest champion at the publishing house, leaves. When one of my editors left, on the eve of publication of my non-fiction book,  any interest in  me or the book within the company just vanished… the book was orphaned. There was no effort made by the sales force to sell the book or by the PR department to promote it.  Sandra Scoppettone, one of Blades’ authors, is worried this might happen to her:

What worries me is the new book, Too Darn Hot, which will be published in June. 
Even if a new contract hadn’t come my way, this editor would’ve still been on
top of things and moved the book as much as possible.  As the book is finished
and there’s nothing for a new editor to do on it, it’ll lie there like a lox. 
Unless there’s a new contract and then it’ll be different.  At the moment my
book is an orphan.

 

I don’t blame her. I’d be worried, too. On the other hand, losing an editor doesn’t always mean doom for his list of  authors.  I’ve been extraordinarily lucky at Penguin/Putnam/NAL on the DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MONK books. I’m on my third editor so far  (the first was downsized out of a job, the other left for a richer offer) and they’ve all been wonderful… supportive, enthusiastic, and totally committed to the books.

Hijinks on The High Seas

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No, I’m not talking about yet another revival of THE LOVE BOAT.

HIJINKS ON THE HIGH SEAS is  a mystery-writing cruise on March 24-27th to Mexico put together by Joan Hansen, the wonder woman behind the wonderful MEN OF MYSTERY event (and she’s the winner of this year’s prestigious Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America).  Speakers hosting on-board seminars include yours truly, my brother Tod, and Matt Witten among others. For more information, call  (562)
595-6905. Call Now! That’s (562)
595-6905. Operators are standing by! (562)
595-6905.

 

Winslow is Hot Hot Hot

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Author Don Winslow’s latest novel THE WINTER OF FRANKIE MACHINE hasn’t even been published yet, but Variety reports that Robert DeNiro is already attached to star in the movie version for Paramount Pictures.

De Niro would play a Mafia hit man who has given up the game to become the
proprietor of a bait shop. When he finds out that he’s been targeted for a hit,
he gets back in the business.

Winslow’s work made the rounds in New York recently, sparking the interest of
Tribeca. De Niro and Rosenthal committed to the adaptation and, with the help of
CAA, shopped it around to studios.

If the package comes together and a movie gets made, it would bring De Niro
back to a type of character that helped make him famous. He has said he wouldn’t
return to the Mafia world in film but then "Frankie Machine" came along.