I've Been Everywhere, Man

Where is the best place you’ve ever vacationed? Has that setting made its way into any of your books?

by Paul D. Marks

Like the Johnny Cash song says, I’ve been everywhere, man. Well, okay, not everywhere but a lot of wheres. Some places I like better than others, some I’d rather forget, some I wish I could move back to, and some, well, y’know, if I told you I’d have to kill ya.

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In my prose writing, novels and short stories, it doesn’t appear that I’ve used much of my travels as locations, though I have in some cases. That’s probably because I consider myself a Los Angeles writer. So, even though “I’ve been everywhere, man,” much of what I write is set in L.A. (I have, however set some screenplays in more exotic locales but that’s for another time.) My novels White Heat and Vortex, and the five previously published stories in my collection LA Late @ Night are all L.A. stories, as are others. However, I do have some things that are set in other places: I’m currently working on a novel set in New York and another that starts in L.A., moves to DC and even England. And Deserted Cities of the Heart is coming out in Akashic’s St. Louis Noir on August 2nd and that’s set in, well, you guessed it, St. Louis. My story Poison Heart, in one of the Deadly Ink collections, is set at Morey’s Piers and Wildwood, New Jersey. A story that’s currently out for consideration is set in Atlanta, all places I’ve been. But it seems that the more exotic places I’ve been to haven’t made it into anything, probably because I write mystery-thrillers, but not international thrillers, at least not yet. And because, as I say, I largely consider myself an L.A. Writer.

L.A. City Hall

Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald did pretty good hangin’ around the L.A. area. As have James Ellroy and Walter Mosley. I’m not putting myself in their ranks, just saying that L.A. ain’t a bad place to hang your gat, I mean hat.

Famous Hollywood Landmark -- can be seen in LA Confidential

Some other places I’ve set stories are, Terminal Island, a former Japanese fishing village off the coast of San Pedro, so still sort of L.A., but when the story is set, during WWII, it was a very different place than L.A.  Howling at the Moon is set in Death Valley, and though that’s still in California and not all that far from L.A., it might as well be on the moon. Graceland is set in Memphis, at Elvis Presley’s home. Out of Time is set in Miami’s hip South Beach. Unfinished Business in Lynchburg, Virginia. I have several stories or parts of them set in Venice Beach, which again is part of L.A., but with a vibe of its own. And, as I say above, I’m currently working on novels set in DC, a place I love in many ways and can’t stand in others, and New York.

Dee Dee Ramone's grave

But I’d have to say the most exotic place I’ve set something is the Hollywood Forever Cemetery for the story Continental Tilt,  largely set in the heart of Hollywood, in the heart of L.A. Lots of famous people buried there, everyone from Dee Dee Ramone, of the Ramones, to Tyrone Power and Darla Hood (Our Gang/Little Rascals). Also Rudolph Valentino and Bugsy Siegel. Lotta ghosts there.

MGM’s motto, besides ars gratia artis, was “More stars than there are in heaven,” but Hollywood Forever has even more stars than MGM in its heyday, unfortunately they’re either six feet under or encased in marble above the ground. And I’m not sure they’re all in heaven…

The thing about Hollywood Forever is that during the summer months you, well, here’s a couple graphs from Continental Tilt to give you an idea. They’re separated from each other a bit in the story:

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

In the heart of Los Angeles, in the heart of Hollywood, a vampire movie played on a humongous silver screen. This wasn’t your usual movie venue, but the crowd of seven hundred loved it. Spread out on beach chairs and blankets, with bottles of wine and beer, Boba tea, doing wheatgrass shooters and eating catered Mexasian sushi, fusion food for the Millennial-iPod generation.

And a short time later:

Did I forget to mention that the movie theatre was the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in the heart of Hollyweird? That over the summer they show movies on the mausoleum wall, while people sit on their beach chairs and blankets—Beach Blanket Bloodshed—and munch their munchies amongst the graves of movie stars, rock stars and even mere mortals? The back wall of the cemetery, clearly visible from the field of graves the watchers watched the movies from, was appropriately the back wall of Paramount Studios.

Actually, I set two stories there, Continental Tilt and Endless Vacation. The latter is very different in tone (more downer) than the former.

In writing this, I was surprised to see how many places I’ve written about that aren’t set in L.A., and this isn’t even a complete list.

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Cornered

What's the worst corner you've ever written yourself into and how did you get out again?

by Paul D. Marks

Before I get to my response to the question, I want to congratulate Art and Catriona on their Anthony nominations in the Short Story and Best Paperback Original categories, respectively. And, uh, there’s another Criminal Mind nominated in the Short Story category as well: Me! So I guess Art and I will have to duke it out :)

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I never really think that I’m writing myself into a corner. I just write and if something doesn’t work I make a right turn, a left turn or a u turn and keep moving on. And, as a pantster, there’s always dead ends that you come up against.

I try to let my characters lead me and follow where they go. And mostly they go in directions that I like, but every once in a while you want to grab them by the neck and say “What the hell are you doing?”
On occasion I’ve run into a wall that was too hard to go through, so you have to do an about face and try something different.


My story Continental Tilt started out as one thing and ended up pretty much something else altogether. So when I hit the wall in the early drafts, how did I get out: I revamped the story completely. Continental Tilt partially takes place at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, just over the wall from Paramount Studios. The title was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s quote “If you took the country and stood it on edge, all the loose nuts would roll to California.” So add to that the fact that you have this cemetery in Hollywood where lots of movie and rock stars are buried, everyone from Tyrone Power to Iron Eyes Cody, Harry Cohn, Bugsy Siegel (fyi: I grew up across the street from his brother and his family), Rudolph Valentino, Ann Savage of classic B noir Detour fame, Darla and Alfalfa, from Our Gang/Little Rascals, Marion Davies, and Mel Blanc, and that in the summer they show movies on the mausoleum wall, while the audience sit on graves, sipping wine and eating brie or whatever the chic food du jour is, and you have a great genesis for a story idea. (How’s that for one long, run-on sentence?) A humorous/satirical mystery that, when I’d read from it at various events, would have people rolling on the floor. But it started out as something else:

Here’s how it started out – okay, get ready.

The original title was The Mystery of the Bi-Lateral Chinese Church of Dee Dee Ramone. A mouthful, I know. It started as a story sort of inspired by the Ramones’ song Chinese Rock (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJh0I9j5UKA). But I can’t really do the bizarre idea justice here. If I had to give the elevator log line I doubt I could. But it was a mystery story and part of it was set...in the Hollywood Forever cemetery, where Dee Dee is buried and where there’s a bronze memorial statue or cenotaph to his bandmate Johnny.

And, while I Iiked the idea I began getting worried that the whole concept was too esoteric, unless one was a hardcore Ramones fan. So I guess you could consider that I’d written myself into a corner. And now it was time to get out. Time for a new idea. So, keeping the Hollywood Forever concept, since that is one bizarro cemetery and too good to pass up, and after some tweaking, it morphed into Continental Tilt. But I did give a hat tip to Dee Dee and Johnny in that story as a way of giving a nod to the original concept that started it all.

And, of course, things like this happen all the time. A story starts off as one thing and heads in a different direction. Or you think X is the main character and then decide Y is and the story goes off on a whole new path. Another thing that happens, and this one quite often, is that I might start off a story in first person and end up in third or vice versa. Sometimes it just doesn’t work one way or another but you change the POV and it’s magic.

Another time I hit a wall was when working on a script. I don’t know if you’d call it writers block, since I don’t much get writer’s block, but I had a good concept going and a draft that just didn’t work. I tried all of my usual tricks to get past it: taking some time off, driving up the coast listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival and other bands at full blast. Having a drink or two. Nothing helped. Finally, I packed up the car, drove down to Palm Desert (near Palm Springs) by myself. I spent my days hanging out by the pool, reading, or going out to eat. At night I worked on the script. And then I did the old standby trick with index cards, something I’m normally too lazy to do and this was pre-computer days, so I had to do the cards manually. But I put every scene on color-coded index cards and shuffled them around and around. And eventually it all came together. And that script ended up getting optioned several times, though never produced (my perpetual plight).

I think there’s lots of ways to get out of a corner you’ve backed yourself into. But next time I think I’ll just blow it up with some C4 or Bangalore torpedoes and plow over the rubble to the next corner.

***

And congratulations to Art on his Agatha win! This guy’s on a streak. Very happy for you, Art.

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Hope to you see at the California Crime Writers Conference
(http://ccwconference.org/ ). June 6th and 7th. I’ll be on the Thrills and Chills (Crafting the Thriller and Suspense Novel) panel, Saturday at 10:30am, along with Laurie Stevens (M), Doug Lyle, Diana Gould and Craig Buck.

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