To Be A Fly On The Brain, by Josh Stallings

Q: Which author(s) (living or dead) would you like to meet one-on-one to talk about the writing craft? What is it about their writing or life that most interests you?

A: My father, Tobias Jean, was a painter, a sculptor, a poet, a jeweler, and much more. He lived his life immersed in the river of creativity. Walking through a museum he never wanted me to read the cards beside a painting, the ones written by a curator giving the work’s context. 

“That,” he’d point at the painting, “Is the artist’s first statement in a conversation between them and you the viewer. The next line comes from you, what do you think about it on first glance. Later maybe you notice the deep powerful brush strokes, that is the next part of the conversation. This conversation between artist and viewer can last ten minutes or a lifetime.

I remember my father spotting Henry Moore’s sculpture Knife Edge. He gave it a smile of recognition, “There you are.” He had been in conversation with that work for many many years. He was fascinated with “the line” of a thing. He searched for a single simple line that could carry the weight of a object. One line with all the sensual power of a swan. Not a line that stood for a swan, but one that was a swan at its purest. His conversation with Knife Edge was more enriching than anything Henry Moore might have said about it, much less a curator.

I would give much to have another couple of nights with my father, drinking coffee and talking about the creative life. I wish I’d asked him more about what colors felt like to him. And how did he know when a piece was finished? I’d like to hear his laugh and riff about nothing important. Film editing, writing fiction, painting a dragon god, all come from the same place. But the tools used are very different.

Over the years I have become suspect of what we writers say about our work. It’s complicated to decipher our true motives for writing what we write or how we write it. 

Books are rich beasts. First there is the book we intended to write. Below that is the book we did write. And below that are the truths about ourselves that we never meant to tell anyone. When readers discover and point out pieces of me I was unaware I had exposed, I love it. It means I’m being honest down to a micro level.

Then there is discussing craft with writers. What we say in public about craft is tinted by marketing, what we want readers to think we think. This may be even how we remember it, but memory is massively subjective. Our brains are big old justifying machines. They tell us what ever it takes to help confirm that our world view is correct.  This creates two realities, what we say happens in our minds when we write and what really happens up stairs when we type. 

Rather than talking craft, I’d like to be a fly on James Crumley’s or William Shakespeare’s brain while they were creating… Wow, that sounded much less creepy in my head than it looks on the page. What I’m trying to say is I’d like to see how they solved story and literary problems without being confused by their explanations.

Things I would like to do with master writers: I’d love to go fly fishing with James Lee Burke. The way he describes a river makes me want to stand in it with him. That or tour Bayou Têche with Burke as my guide. He writes a swamp richly beautiful, I’d love to have him show me what inspires him to step out of a tense crime novel and take the reader for a drift on the water.  

“I was conceived in a Morris Minor on the Mexico side of the border traveling between Ensenada and Los Angeles.” Is an opening sentence I never imagined typing while talking about hanging with writers. But it is important back story. Before and after my birth my family lived for a time in an artist’s colony in Baja. I was too young to have memories of that time, but it lives large in my mythos. Many a grand time took place south of the border. Much of Out There Bad the second Moses book took place in Baja. For that personal reason I would love to travel through the US Mexico borderland with Don Winslow, Cormac McCarthy, and Gabino Iglesias. They each are amazing writers with very different takes on the border. Their books have helped me sort out my own feelings on the the messy land between two nations. Reading about a location, even one I know well, from multiple perspectives creates a three dimensional picture for me to draw from.

Stop the presses. I may be about to actually answer the question… 

Here goes: I’d love to spend time talking craft with David Mitchell. He writes incredibly complex multi-character multi-timeline novels. Utopia Avenue and The Bone Clocks being among my favorites. What I want to know is how the hell he knows the exact moment to end a chapter so that it feels both natural and acts like a cliffhanger but free of the feeling that I’m being manipulated. And then how does he return to a storyline at the very moment I’m wondering about it. What is his trick? Skill and talent I suspect. Does he plot it out on the world’s largest whiteboard or does he intuitively know where he needs to be. David Mitchell, if you read this and find yourself in Southern California, I’ll buy dinner if you explain how you do what you do. 

Reality check: These are fantasy ideas. In the real world, I am lucky enough to count some amazing writers as true friends. When we get together we share what we’re working on at that moment. Talk about our struggles, stumbles, and successes. Hearing another writer’s struggles I feel less alone in my own. Having friends to share this journey with is one of the great gifts of a life spent writing.

“Don’t wait for the muse, just write, because you are the muse, and the only way the muse shows up is if you show up.” - Joe R. Lansdale, The Donut Legion 

Summer reads

Out of all the books available to read and limited time, what influences your choices? What books have you read this summer and which would you rate as your top recommendation?

by Dietrich

When I open a new book I want to be engaged by page one. The genre doesn’t matter as much as the quality of the writing. There are so many good books, both written by authors I’m familiar with and those I haven’t read before. So this year I’ve made more time for reading, and although I don’t have an absolute favorite, here are the standouts that I’ve read so far. 

I’ve been catching up on Richard Stark’s Parker novels. Topping the four I’ve read this year is The Sour Lemon Score, one that came out in 1970. It’s number twelve in the series, in Stark’s typical clipped style, about a bank heist that goes right until one of the four partners gets greedy and starts bumping off his partners. The trouble is he doesn’t shoot Parker first.

Then there was Charlie 316 by our very own Frank Zafiro, co-authored by Colin Conway. Without putting some spoilers out there, I’ll just say if you like a convincing cop story that jumps from the opening, with some twists you won’t see coming, then give this one a read.

I’d been anticipating the release of Don Winslow’s The Border, the conclusion of the epic cartel trilogy. I can’t say enough about this series, and this book is awesome, making Winslow one of my favorite authors writing today.

Also high on my list is the new one by James Ellroy. This Storm is part two of the second L.A. Quartet, and it takes readers back to the early forties: a story of crime, debauchery and some fast and loose history, told in Ellroy’s jazzy, excellent style.

Chance by Kem Nunn focuses on Dr. Eldon Chance as he gets more than professionally involved with a corrupt cop’s wife. Chance is no match when confronted by the cop, that is until he befriends D, a street-wise character skilled in the art of the blade. From there it’s a bumpy, often hilarious, ride to the end. Highly recommended.

The Year of the Flood is Margaret Atwood’s view into the near future. A relevant and powerful tale that looks at environmental collapse and a hope for a future. A great imagination and matching writing skills, by one of the greats.

Dirty Who? by Jerry Kennealy is another well-told cop story. Set in 1970 San Francisco, it’s about Inspector Johnny O’Rorke who bends a few rules after he’s assigned to investigate the disappearance of several gay men and to help find locations for an upcoming film that will star Frank Sinatra. It’s a convincing and well-told story by another former cop and private investigator.

The Jealous Kind by James Lee Burke is about a teen coming of age in 1952 Houston and focuses on classes, pride and loyalty. I’ve long been a fan of Burke’s Robichaux and Purcell stories, and in this one, the second in the Holland family saga, Burke’s words are as powerful as ever and conger some great images of a bygone time.

Another great story I read as part of a collection is The Birds by Daphne Du Maurier. Originally published in 1952, it's a classic and hasn't lost any of its edge and certainly stands the test of time. Masterful writing.

Overnight $uccess

If you knew anything you wrote would be published and successful, what would you write?

By Dietrich Kalteis

Doing what you love is anybody’s best shot at success. And I love sitting at my desk and making stuff up. And I don’t think any of us can predict what’s going to be a best-seller. I know if I tried to write what I guessed would sell, rather than writing what I loved to write about, it would be crap.

Okay, it sounds corny, but it’s the best thing in the world to get to do what I love every day, and that’s success in it itself. And if money follows, then that’s even better. Who’d turn it down? 

For most of us, it’s more of a slow grind than instant success. So, anytime I need a shot of perseverance, I recall that J.K. Rowlings was turned down a dozen times on the road to becoming the first author billionaire, Stephen King’s first novel Carrie was rejected thirty times, and Elmore Leonard’s The Big Bounce was bounced back over eighty times. The New York Times ran an article about him some years ago, the headline: Writer discovered after 23 novels. 

Writing every day is my best shot at standing out in a crowded field. And that need to write is an in-the-blood kind of thing. Being able to stay focused and positive helps, so does not thinking about success or the lack of it. And almost as important is reading and being inspired and influenced by great books.

And speaking of great books, since the Holidays are rushing up, I’ve listed some of the crime novels that I’ve read over the past year which stood out. As I’m writing this I just finished my friend Sam Wiebe’s second novel Invisible Dead, and I can tell you the guy writes like a champ. Then there’s Black Orchid Blues by Persia Walker, a bright and funny book. The Force by Don Winslow had to be the best-paced novel I read all year, and Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen had to be the funniest. Also very funny and well done (and Canadian) are No Fury Like That by Lisa de Nikolits or One Brother Shy by Terry Fallis. 

I reread a couple of crime classics that stand the test of time, ones that I’d highly recommend: Miami Blues, from 1984, and New Hope for the Dead by Charles Willeford, published 1985, and The Moonshine War by Elmore Leonard, published 1969. As much as I enjoyed Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels, I started his Jesse Stone novels and I loved Trouble in Paradise, the second in the series, published in 1999.

All the best to everyone over the Holidays.

Closing thoughts on opening lines

by Dietrich Kalteis

As a writer, what do you make of readers who flip to the end and see what happens last first?

Flipping to the end of a novel to find out how it ends is like reaching under the Christmas tree when no one’s around and unwrapping a present, getting a sneak-peek, then rewrapping it, and trying to act surprised Christmas morning. To me, that just ruins the moment. 

The ending to a good novel is the wrap up of everything that came before. At times the author may hint at several possibilities to a story’s ending, or throw some last minute twists and surprises to keep the reader from predicting the ending. Maybe for some people, novels should come with spoiler alert stickers. 

William Goldman said, “The key to all story end­ings is to give the audi­ence what it wants, but not in the way it expects.”

While the ending to a good story is like the punchline to a good joke, I’m more interested in the first few pages of a book — the opening. If it doesn’t grab me, I may not read much more before putting the book down. If it doesn’t grab me, I won’t keep turning pages to see what the ending holds in store.

There’s a lot of promise in a strong opening, and it’s hard to imagine putting a book down that starts like this:

Some years later, on a tugboat in the Gulf of Mexico, Joe Coughlin’s feet were placed in a tub of cement. Twelve gunmen stood waiting until they got far enough out to sea to throw him overboard, while Joe listened to the engine chug and watched the water churn white at the stern.

— Dennis Lehane, Live by Night

As Roy Dillon stumbled out of the shop his face was a sickish green, and each breath he drew was an incredible agony. A hard blow in the guts can do that to a man, and Dillon had gotten a hard one. Not with a fist, which would have been bad enough, but from the butt-end of a heavy club.

— Charles Willeford, Miami Blue

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. — James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss

Dennis Lenahan the high diver would tell people that if you put a fifty-cent piece on the floor and looked down at it, that's what the tank looked like from the top of that eighty-foot steel ladder. — Elmore Leonard, Tishomingo Blues

Great opening lines are real grabbers, but a great book is a combination of all the story elements that have to work together to keep me turning the pages. It’s the writer’s voice, the pace, plot, conflict, setting, and the characters and their dialog. And when it’s all working together, it’s like magic. I recently finished The Force by Don Winslow and it was like that for me, the story just fired on all cylinders. Another one I just read that was hard to put down was Trouble in Paradise, Robert B. Parker’s second Jesse Stone novel, and one of his best.

While I love to discover authors I’ve never read before, the greats are always worth revisiting because they just did everything so well. And although I already know the story’s outcome, I like to reread classics by Hemingway, Steinbeck and Salinger from time to time — those rare authors who mastered every aspect of a great story, from the opening line to the final scene. And there are great crime writers who I’ve read more than once — authors like Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, James Crumley, and Charles Willeford.

So, if a novel can be this great adventure, with a killer opening, interesting characters and dialog, with exciting and unexpected twists, and told in a voice that resonates, why flip to the last few pages to see how it ends?