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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Walk a Mile in my Shoes, Just Don't Fall Down

Most male authors create male protagonists and women create female protagonists. Have you ever tried to write a main character of a different sex?

by Paul D. Marks

Yes. In fact, I just recently finished two short stories, both of which have female protagonists. Neither is published yet so I can’t turn you onto a place to read them.

But a little side trip before I get to those and other stories. For me the question is not so much have I written things with female protagonists, but whether we can put ourselves in the head of the other gender to be able to write them.

The proverbial “they” tell us to “write what you know,” but if we did only that we couldn’t write
about much since we all only have a limited frame of reference and personal experience. How could we write about an astronaut, a Frenchman (if we’re not French), a Wookiee*, if we haven’t had those experiences. How could we say “je suis Charlie” if we are not Charlie Hebdo? We use what knowledge we’ve gained from living our lives and from the people we know, and fill the rest in with imagination.

Trite as it sounds, we all have experiences as human beings. And, though men and women are different, there is a lot of crossover in our experiences and our shared humanity—how’s that for high-minded pretentiousness? Plus we have empathy for other people if we’re not psychopaths (I’m not naming names here...), including those who are not necessarily just like us. As the saying goes, we have to walk a mile in the other person’s shoes to see what their lives are like...which, in some cases—like writing about the opposite gender for a man—might be a bit of a problem if they’re wearing six inch spiked heels.

So for me it’s more about knowing your character than it is about just having a protagonist from the opposite sex per se. The main thing is to try to avoid stereotypes. But whatever gender, the questions are the same: what do they want, what are their desires, what choices do they make, and that is the character, not whether or not they wear red nail polish or drink beer and watch football.  Would you expect a guy like Rosie Greer, former defensive tackle for the LA Rams, part of the “Fearsome Foursome,” to do needlepoint? But he does. Oh, and he’s called Rosie.

*       *       *

Besides the two new stories with female protagonists, I have a couple of golden oldies that have women as their leads. One of them, Graceland, a humorous mystery, is about a female detective hired to find the missing King’s (Elvis Presley’s) body. The main character introduces herself this way: “My name is Van Jones, short for Vanessa.  My mother wanted to name me Priscilla, after the King's Queen.  My father wouldn't hear of it.  He wanted to call me Johnna after John Wayne.  My mother wouldn't hear of that.  They settled on Vanessa – I don't know why, probably 'cause neither liked it – and my father calls me Duke anyway.”

And taking a trip into the Way Way Back Machine. One time a producer optioned a screenplay of mine. He had the brilliant idea to change the male lead to a female and the female lead to a male.  So I went through the script and did that, but found I had to change very little besides the names and pronouns to make him happy. The upshot being that men and women are human beings and human beings often have similar emotions, motivations and manners of speaking. We are different, that’s for sure, generally men are less emotional, at least on the surface and/or express our emotions differently. Women tend to be more expressive, but not all women are the same, just like not all men are the same.  But we are also not as different as we think sometimes, so changing the script in just minor ways seemed to work.

Both new as yet unpublished stories, hot off the presses, have female leads, but are very different in tone. One is a satire, told in the first person by a woman who may or may not be guilty of the crime. And the other is set almost completely in a jury room, where the protagonist tries to sway the jury’s vote for her own personal reasons. I had fun writing both, but in different ways. And for both I had to research various external things such as fashions and trendy gourmet foods and car makes and models. I also had to imagine what it would be like to be a teenage girl, now the woman lead of my story, and think about what experiences and feelings would shape her personality—I had to put myself inside her head as best I could. Something I would also have to do if I was writing about that astronaut or Wookiee, neither of which I am.  I also had to research murder kits, not having had a lot of real-life experience with them other than to know that you must always include duct tape.

Whatever and whoever we’re writing, we do our research, we rely on our experience, and we try to walk a mile in the character’s shoes and hope we don’t fall down and break our necks.

                                               

*Yes, that’s how it’s spelled. No, I’m not a Star Wars nerd – I had to look it up.