Same Theme Different Lyrics

 

If you write in an alternate non-mystery genre, which one—and why? If you don’t, which genre would you most like to write in, and what attracts you to it?

 

For readers unfamiliar with my writing, I am known for crime fiction, although I’ve written flash, historical, horror and literary fiction. What readers don’t know is I started out as a poet. My first publication was a poem entitled “Pagan’s Creed” in USC’s Vanguard Magazine in 1989.

 

Since these genres mean different things to readers, I’ll offer brief definitions and touchstones before I discuss my writing.

 

Flash fiction is a story under 200 words.

 

Historical is pre-1960, which also defines eligibility for the Agatha Award.

 

Horror, for me, leans into unheimlich, which means uncanny or unsettling in German. It’s a sensation associated with Kafka, and I enjoy it Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, Horacio Quiroga’s Jungle Tales, and anything by Yōko Ogawa.

 

Literary fiction is a slice of life, where conflicts are often quiet seismic tremblors of revelation. Examples are legion, but I point to anything by Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, and a personal favorite, Dino Buzzati’s The Tartar Steppe.

 

Poetry is, to me, lyrical, rhythmic, and compressed. Too many poets to list, but I return to Neruda, Mallarmé, and Rimbaud.

 

My Why

 

Poetry taught me distillation, to compress imagery and language, and render what is absolutely essential. I apply this technique to both dialogue and exposition. Essence is important, especially in writing mysteries because if you throw too much information at readers, they don’t know what it is important for clues. I equate information overload to a form of gaslighting or a writer too in love with their own voice.

 

When you read me, you will see I use many poetic techniques, such as alliteration, assonance and consonance. I edit for the Chandler Curse aka the promiscuous overuse of similes and metaphors, but both are present in my writing.

 

Believe it or not, poetry helps with dialogue, in that characters can establish a rhythmic exchange, a call and response. As for the lyrical, I’ve been told I have a gift for a turn of phrase, but I don’t consciously do it. The irony in all this talk about poetry is that I am profoundly hard of hearing. I have to do a lot of work to hear and understand people. Then again, it should be no surprise that most writers are keen observers and amateur psychologists.

 

My Gallery

 

Flash fiction. Winner of the inaugural ZOUCH Lit Bit Contest 2011, my “Dead of Night” is one sentence of 111 words:

 

Because it’s cold, travel’s by train, traveling over haggard steel, over wooden ties across the unarmed country, traveling through starless nights and forward days, moving from arrival to confirmation, moving from the uncertainty of doubt to the finality of a telegram, arriving calmly without disturbance, sliding into place at the platform silently under steam, sliding next to the obscene graffiti on the yellow-brick walls at the station when nobody can see or know, where the first-class ticket is taken, the hat tipped and the door blinks brightly open so I can come out as I had come in when I was cold, for I am one of the war dead home.

 

 

Poetry. I wrote this prose poem EXILE, after my father’s third heart attack.

 

Historical. I try to evoke an era with small details and nuanced allusions.

Like every other place in the country, winter visited Los Angeles in December. If the temperature dipped to sixty degrees, people shivered in the sunlight and if it dropped to fifty or lower and drizzled, people forgot how to drive in the rain. On this dark winter morning, the streets were wet, and everybody was cold and moody about something, whether it was not enough green in the bank, enough love at home, or enough of everything else because the country was at war.

The piece of paper between the blade and glass was red, a homicide, and a victim nobody cared about. It was a signal to make the phone call. I went inside the joint, my back to 9th and Figueroa.

I closed the accordion door, put my copy of the Times down on the small shelf below the phone. I read the motto in the upper left corner, while I fished for coins. ALL THE NEWS ALL THE TIME described the city and its people. Nobody had time for a comma. I gave the operator the exchange and she named the price.

Agatha-nominated and Macavity Award winning short story, “Elysian Fields” in California Schemin’: The Bouchercon 2020 Anthology.

Horror. I’ve written several horror short stories. A fun one was “Zombees” in which I wrote about a species of parasitical fly named Apocephalus borealis that turns bees into ‘zombees.’

 

Literary. I strive for economy with elegance, which is to say the most with the least words. To paraphrase Jean Luc Godard, Imagery or Tone in my writing is a truth told in 24 frames-per-second.

 

Sheldon decided enough was enough and that it was time to call on the address. He put the suitcase in the car.

As he drove up Roosevelt Highway, a large cloud shaped like a horse raced his Chrysler. A breeze whooshed in as a continuous stream down the left side of the car and on the right, sage and brush undulated in a blur of browns and some green. Seagulls wheeled and cried in the air.

Novel, The Good Man. Company Files 1.

 

Words are my trade, and I try not to think about genre too much. Sure, there are rules within any genre, but they are there to set the reader’s expectations. Whatever the genre, these rules are a code of conduct, but I’d like to think every writer strives to tell the best story possible, and do it with integrity and imagination.

 

Whatever I write are often variations on a recurring theme and the words are different lyrics.