Take a Negative and Turn it into a Positive

What book did you not enjoy, but motivated you in your own writing?

by Paul D. Marks

I can’t think of a book that I didn’t enjoy that motivated me in my own writing. There’s been plenty of books that I haven’t enjoyed over the years and until recently I would plow my way through them to the bitter end. But I’m getting better about not doing that. I recently started a book by a Big-Name Author. Got a few chapters in and put it down. Slow. Way too much backstory. Etc. But did it motivate me? No. If anything it pisses me off that my books don’t get the Big-Name Author Treatment. But that’s another issue.

What has motivated me, more in the past than now, but still somewhat, is rejection. When I was starting out I was never happy when I got a rejection. (Yeah, let’s celebrate that rejection with a pizza and a beer!) But it lit a fire in my gut and made me want to do better – to show “them”! Because of that, I would work and re-work stories. I would read books on writing. Take classes. Figure out what to do and not to do – but maybe still break some rules along the way.

These days rejection doesn’t motivate me as much, though it still does make me want to do better. But what does motivate me is competing with myself to make each story (hopefully) better than the last. Each time I set out on the writing road I learn new things, new ways of doing things, and try to put them to use to make an arc in which my stories continue to improve.

For example, in my novel White Heat , P.I. Duke Rogers finds an old “friend” for a client. The client’s “friend,” an up and coming African-American actress, ends up dead – murdered. Duke knows his client did it. Feeling guilty and wanting to atone for his inadvertent part in her death, he is compelled to find the client/killer. He starts his mission by going to the dead actress’ family in South Central L.A. – and while there finds himself in the middle of the exploding “Rodney King” riots. But there’s also a B story threaded throughout White Heat that deals with a woman being stalked. I intended it to show that Duke had other things going on besides the main case he was working. And it was loosely tied into the main story near the end of the book when, because of learning about stalkers on that case, Duke applies what he learned to help catch the badguy in the main case.

Broken Windows, the sequel to White Heat, takes place a couple years later when the infamous, anti-illegal immigrant Proposition 187 was on the ballot in California. Duke is investigating the murder of an undocumented worker pro-bono for the maid who works for his neighbors and gets embroiled in a political web of intrigue, weaving in and out of the immigration issue. Broken Windows also has a B story – hopefully New and Improved over White Heat’s. This one about a disbarred and broke lawyer who places an ad in the paper saying he’ll do anything for money. And this story winds in and out of the main story until they come together at the end. I think the two stories in Broken Windows integrate better than in White Heat. So I learned something from the first one and was motivated to do better the next time out. And, at the moment I’m working on the third book in the series and you can believe that I’ll put what I’ve learned on the first two to work there.

I’m mostly open to criticism – even rejection – if it’s constructive criticism and makes sense to me. But sometimes I find it captious and ridiculous and that gets my back up. I had a screenplay that I was trying to get an agent for. I got a meeting with an agent at one of the Big Three agencies at that time. He read the script and had problems with it. For example, a character takes the train from Union Station in downtown L.A. Well, that was a turnoff to him “because no one takes trains anymore.” The whole point of the train was to contrast the old with the new, which was a theme of the story. He had other issues with it that were just as picky. That kind of stuff does make me crazy. But I went out and tried harder. And I did eventually get an agent at that agency, though not him, and that’s another crazy story in itself.

Rejection’s still not pleasant, but it’s something we all (or most of us) still deal with on occasion. The best I can do is take a negative and turn it into a positive.

So, no, can’t think of a book I didn’t enjoy that motivated me. But rejections, which I also didn’t and don’t enjoy, do. What about you?

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

The third story in my Ghosts of Bunker Hill series, Fade Out on Bunker Hill, appears in the March/April 2019 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. If you like the movie Sunset Boulevard, I think you'll enjoy this story. In bookstores and on newstands now:

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The Good Life, The Bad Life and the Writing Life

(Besides getting rich) how has the writing life changed you as a person?

by Paul D. Marks

Rich is the only way I’ve changed from the writing life. The Porsche. The yacht. The jet. The castle next to George Clooney’s on Lake Como. Am I leaving anything out? Oh wait, I jest.

My castle is right next door to George Clooney's house 😉

For me the question is more like what I would have been like if I hadn’t embarked on the writing life. In a word, Crazy! Though some may think that’s the case anyway. What I do know is that when I’ve had to have a “day job” of the 9-5 variety I’ve hated it. So luckily I’ve had to do that very little and not in a long time. Got into arguments with the boss. And once, when I had a day job I got proposed to – or should I say someone laid a proposal on me. To marry a friend of theirs from Lebanon so she could become a citizen. They offered money and no strings attached. I turned them down but maybe that would have made me rich. Nah. In fact, it probably would have landed me in jail and then I could have written a best-selling memoir about my life of crime.

One of my many Porsches 😉

And luckily most of my “day jobs” have been at writing/script doctoring. Though even there I got into arguments with the boss, producers, directors, whoever. One even threatened to send his friends in the Mossad after me, as I may have mentioned previously. But I guess it was a better day job than some.

If I hadn’t been a writer I’m not sure what I would have done. Lawyer maybe. A different gig in the film biz. Go to work in the family biz. And maybe it all would have given me stuff to write about but I’ve had plenty of adventures to write about anyway.

I’m really not sure how much I’ve changed as a person since becoming a writer since I’ve always been a writer to one degree or another. Amy, the wife, says maybe I’ve become more empathetic, but I think I’ve always been that way and she never knew me as not a writer. She also says, if I’d become incredibly wealthy by going into the lucrative sticky note business like I’d planned, I’d be a spoiled, out of touch asshole. Having to sacrifice for art builds character. And maybe when I was young/younger I was somewhat of an asshole, but an empathetic one. I’ve mellowed, but that could be age as much as being a writer. And I’m still not all that mellow, ask said wife.

The Egg and I, where Bouchercon was held in Albany, NY

One thing the writing life has changed is that I travel to places I might not have gone to. When there’s a convention, like Bouchercon, in a city we wouldn’t necessarily have gone to, like Albany or Raleigh, it gives us a chance to see those places. And what we generally do is book 2-3 extra days after the convention so we can see the city. When I was nominated for the Shamus and found out the awards ceremony, which is usually held in conjunction with Bouchercon, was in Albany I turned to said wife and said, “Albany!?” Because it’s not a place I ever thought I would go…or want to go. But go we did, attending Bouchercon and the Shamus ceremony. And then taking a little time to explore the area, which we ended up liking. It’s sort of like a quaint New England town, even though it’s the capital of the state with the busiest city in the world – or one of them.

Quaint neighborhood in Albany, NY

And, as Cathy mentioned, there’s less time for pleasure reading. In fact, I get asked to blurb so much that I have next to no time to read for pleasure. And to that end, I’ve put up on Café Noir, my personal blog page (http://pauldmarks.blogspot.com/), and have been telling people that I’m instituting a (long) moratorium on blurbing. I’m also putting a moratorium on judging awards. I enjoy it, but it’s really time consuming, especially because I try to read every word of every story.

So, as they say, the more things (me) change, the more they stay the same. And the bottom line is it hasn’t helped my hair grow back. What about you – how has the writing life changed you as a person?

***

And now for the usual BSP.

I’m happy to say that my short story “Bunker Hill Blues” is in the current Sept./Oct. issue of Ellery Queen that hit newsstands Tuesday of this week. It’s the sequel to the 2016 Ellery Queen Readers Poll winner and current Macavity Award nominee “Ghosts of Bunker Hill”. And I’m surprised and thrilled to say that I made the cover of the issue – my first time as a 'cover boy'! Hope you’ll want to check it out. Available at all the usual places.

My story “Blood Moon” appears in “Day of the Dark, Stories of the Eclipse” from Wildside Press, edited by Kaye George. Stories about the eclipse – just in time for the real eclipse on August 21st. Twenty-four stories in all. Available on Amazon.

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Changing Projects in Midstream

Craft: Have you ever stopped abruptly and taken up a different project and never gone back to the old one?

by Paul D. Marks

Before I get to this week’s question, a little BSP. I’m thrilled to announce that my short story, “Ghosts of Bunker Hill,” was voted #1 in the 2016 Ellery Queen Readers Poll. In fact, I’m blown away. I want to thank everyone who voted for it! And I’m tempted to give Sally Field a run for her money and say, “You like me, you really like me,” or at least my story 😉. If you’d like to read it (and maybe consider it for other awards) you can read it free on my website: http://pauldmarks.com/stories/ 

***

And now to the question at hand:

Yes. The battlefield of writerdom or is that writer-dumb is littered with the debris of the war of words. Ideas are so much easier to come by than a finished property. So sometimes you think an idea is worth pursuing and begin working on it only to find that it doesn’t build up a full head of steam, at least not enough of one to get it to the finish point. Or sometimes you’re in the middle of a spec project and another idea comes along that you spark to even more. And sometimes a paid gig comes along and that takes precedence over anything. There are a million reasons why one might abandon a project before it’s done. But mostly I never consider it abandoned forever. Pretty much everything is there to be gone back to at some time…if you live long enough.

Maybe it’s easier for “outliners” than “pantsters” to know if they’ll make the slog through to the end of a project. After all, if they do a fairly complete outline they’ll know how the story is going to go and pretty much whether or not it will work and has the legs to make it to the finish line. But us pansters don’t know the whole story ahead of time. We work it as we go so we might sometimes find that it doesn’t work as well as we thought when we came up with the idea.

So, the answer to the question is yes, I’ve dropped projects in the middle for a variety of reasons. Sometimes I’ve just lost the inspiration. Sometimes something wasn’t working. Or another idea came along that I was more hot to trot about. Or a paying gig.

One early novel that’s been abandoned for ages had actually been picked up by a major publisher. Then that publishing house did a clean sweep of its editorial department and my novel was swept out with them. I might have taken it to another publisher after that, except it was a satire and a lot of the humor in it was dated and I just never got around to tweaking it because so many other things came up in the meantime. But I still think about it and it’s in my head to go back to it someday, so it isn’t really dead…I hope. Sometimes things were abandoned because of the “great minds think alike” theory or at least steal alike. I had a couple of screenplays that were making the rounds and eventually similar stories were produced. Now it may be that great minds think alike, but in the two cases I’m particularly thinking of it seems to me that my scripts had been to the producers who eventually did the similar projects. Coincidence? Maybe. But someday I might pull them out of mothballs and see what I can do with them.

Another thing is I have some screenplays that were optioned over and over but ultimately didn’t make it to the silver screen. They’re sort of abandoned, but one of these days I might just turn them into novels. So maybe they’re not abandoned after all.

It’s hard to give up on a project. It’s like giving up on a child who’s an underachiever. Hopefully that child will ultimately achieve the things you hoped they’d achieve and ditto for the story that you abandoned. Maybe you’ll go back to it in time and make it work. On the other hand if your child turns out to be a serial killer you might just want to abandon him forever, same with a story that’s not behaving.

Going back to a story that you’ve left happens often. Even after a story is done and sent out. If it’s rejected it might sit for some time but eventually I might go back to it and try to give it some CPR.

Few stories are truly worth abandoning altogether. But that doesn’t mean my computer isn’t littered with stories started and not completed for the reasons stated above. It’s just that sometimes other things take precedence for those reasons and I just don’t have time to go back to an earlier story. And sometimes they just run out of steam, both on the page and in my head [no comments, please 😏 ].

So, while I might have moved on from a particular project here and there, ultimately there are really no abandoned projects, at least for me.

***

And now for the usual BSP:

Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea is available at Amazon.com and Down & Out Books.

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Dreams of Bunker Hill and John Lennon

Do you have writing tics? Words you over-use, things every single last character in a book does, moves you love to make . . .? Do you edit them out or embrace them?

by Paul D. Marks

Since we pretty much had this same question last August (you can see my responses here: Writing Tics: The ‘Comfort Food’ of Writing http://7criminalminds.blogspot.com/2016/08/writing-tics-comfort-food-of-writing.html), and I don’t think I have much new to add, I’ll let that answer stand. Instead I thought I’d talk about a couple of things close to me: John Lennon and Bunker Hill. Both in the context of writing or at least my writing. I usually try to stick to pretty close to the week’s question, so I hope nobody minds.


John Lennon

Yesterday, December 8th, was the 36th anniversary of John Lennon’s assassination. As I’d mentioned here last time, my first paid writing assignment was for a piece about him on the one-year anniversary of his death for one of the LA papers. I’m not going to comment so much here about the tragedy of his death, but about how he and his three partners in crime inspired me to want to be a writer.

Before I wanted to be a prose writer, The Beatles inspired me to want to be a song writer and rock star. (I don’t think I was alone in this…) When my brothers and I were kids we cut out cardboard “electric” guitars and sang along to records. When I got a little older I wanted a real guitar and eventually got one and then focused on the bass. (Hey, it was good enough for Paul McCartney.) And I was in some bands in high school. (See the very professional card we had made up for one of those bands.)

Then, one day I was talking to a counselor and he asked me something like what I wanted to be. I said “I want to be the Beatles.” I didn’t mean it literally, but I did mean that I wanted to be the best in my field. Hey, dream big, shoot for the stars, right? But I knew that I didn’t have the talent to really make it in rock. Of course, you say, neither do a lot of the people who have made it…but that’s another story. So where to then?

Besides rock ‘n’ roll, I’ve always loved movies. And that was something I thought I might actually be able to succeed at in the writing arena. So I gave it a shot. And did have some success as a rewriter/script doctor, though frustrated by the lack of screen credits. And worked at that for many years. But there’s something exasperating about Hollywood and that is, among other things, too many chefs spoiling the stew. Too many people at too many different levels giving input on screenplays and not necessarily making them better – ask me about it some time. So at some point I decided to try my hand at prose writing. I’d always done it to some extent but not as a primary form of writing. Though, even when I went to USC grad school in cinema I took an advanced story writing class from T. Coraghessan Boyle. So my interests always lay there too.

I learned a lot from him and his class, but I also learned a lot about writing and structure from screenwriting. So I started writing short stories and even a novel. And I placed that novel with a major publisher. Boy, was I excited! And guess what it was about – a screenwriter trying to make it in Hollywood. And aside from a little murder thrown in for fun pretty much everything in it was true. All the absurdities and farce. It was a satire. So everything’s humming along fine and then the whole editorial staff at the publisher gets let go…and my novel gets swept out the door with them. And because a lot of the humor in it was topical it would have needed a rewrite before sending it out again. Something I didn’t have the time or maybe the desire to do then. So back to the drawing board, though one day I might bring it out of retirement and polish it up and give it another shot.

But eventually I did start placing short stories here and there and returned to novels. And though I’m still striving to get where I want to be, I’m having fun and getting some recognition and getting to do what I want. Sometimes I bitch that things aren’t always what I’d like them to be, but overall I know I have it pretty good.

So the Beatles inspired me to want to do something creative and not have a 9-5 job, something that would have strangled me and did on the rare occasions when I had to do it. And whenever I hear a Beatles song it brings back memories of my early days as a writer and writing that John Lennon article where I found I had a voice and things I wanted to share. And I feel like I owe the Beatles for that creative inspiration that got me started on this path. Would life have been easier if I didn’t have this need to write? Probably. But it would also be a hell of a lot less interesting.

How about you? What has your journey been like?

***

Bunker Hill – Los Angeles
(not that ‘other’ one on the East Coast near where the shot heard round the world happened)

My story Ghosts of Bunker Hill is now out in the current/December issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. It’s a little bit different; I think you might enjoy it.

That said, Bunker Hill was L.A.’s first wealthy residential neighborhood, right near downtown. It was filled with glorious Victorian mansions and other cool buildings. If you’re into film noir you’ve “been” to Bunker Hill. Many times. Lots of film noirs – as well as movies in other genres – were shot there (Criss Cross, Cry Danger, Kiss Me Deadly, The Brasher Doubloon, Backfire, the Judy Garland version of A Star is Born, and many others).

But in the late 60s it was all torn down and redeveloped. They even flattened the hills and demolished or moved many of the gorgeous Victorian houses (as you’ll see in the story). If you’ve been to the Music Center you’ve “been” to Bunker Hill. It’s where John Fante lived when he wrote Ask the Dust (and other books like Dreams from Bunker Hill), which is largely set there. But it got run down after WWI and became housing for poor people and the Powers That Be wanted to build up downtown, so off with its head, so to speak.

I love the old Bunker Hill and was lucky enough to explore it with a friend before it was totally razed. We did our own little archaeological expedition of several of the houses and I even “borrowed” the top of a newel post from the long and winding interior stairway in one of those houses (see pic). A true relic of L.A.’s past. It’s a prized possession.

So Bunker Hill and its ghosts were the inspiration for the story. It’s a fascinating place and I’m hooked on it. I’ll be writing more about it at SleuthSayers (www.SleuthSayers.org), the other blog I write for, on Tuesday, December 20th, if you’re into it too.

***

And now for the usual BSP:

Also, I’ll be interviewed on Writer’s Block Radio on December 15th at 7pm PST. Hope you can check it out. Find it here: www.latalkradio.com/content/writers-block 

And I have a couple of appearances in January.

Cerritos Library, where I’ll be moderating a panel:
Saturday, January 28 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
18025 Bloomfield Avenue, Cerritos, CA  90703

Santa Clarita: The Old Town Newhall Library
Saturday, January 14, 2017, from 10:00 AM-3:00 PM.
24500 Main St, Santa Clarita, CA  91321

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Summer's Almost Gone

Summer's almost done! How did you spend your summer vacation? Or did you even take one?

by Paul D. Marks


What I’d like to do here is quote from Casablanca, where Rick (Bogart) is talking to his former girlfriend, Yvonne (Madeleine Lebeau):

Yvonne: Where were you last night?Rick: That's so long ago, I don't remember.
Yvonne: Will I see you tonight?
Rick: I never make plans that far ahead. ₸

And even though summer’s not really over, whatever happened already seems so long ago that I barely remember it. And what I do remember, well, I hope this won’t be too much of a downer:

A few weeks ago we almost got evacuated—again (this was our 3rd close call, and we’ve actually had to leave twice) because of one of So Cal’s ubiquitous fires. Luckily it didn’t come to that this time. I think we were just on the border of the mandatory evac area. That didn’t stop it from being a very tense few days. I work at home and Amy stayed home from work in case we did have to get out. Watching a traffic jam of horse trailers removing horses from our area really brought home how close it was.

No sooner did that situation settle down than my dad fell and ended up in the ER. While there they discovered that he had a heart valve that needed replacing. After 17 days in the hospital he’s back home recuperating slowly in a sort of two-steps-forward-one-step back routine. Though lately it seems more like five steps back.

On the good news front, Amy got to go home to see her family. But I stayed here to tend to business and take care of the critters. So, I didn’t go anywhere this summer, which is fine with me. Mostly, I got to hang with the dogs and Amy (not putting them all in the same category ;) ). And get some writing done (not enough—it’s never enough!).

From Amy's vacation

And there were some good things on the writing front. I sold my first story to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and got the news that Ghosts of Bunker Hill will be in the December issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, the last issue of Ellery Queen’s 75th year anniversary celebration. And both of those are reason for celebration in our house!

But summers aren’t like the summers when I was a kid when all you had to do was head down the California Incline to the beach. No worries. No bills to pay. No appointments to keep or places to be. Not much Responsibility with a capital R. Just Sun, Sea, Sand and Surfer Girls. In fact, I met my first real girlfriend at the beach on one of those lazy summer days. A California Girl on a California Beach. Like the Beach Boys sang in Surfer Girl:

We could ride the surf together
While our love would grow
In my Woody I would take you everywhere I go*

California Incline

All I needed was a Woody, which I never managed to get – and when I met her I wasn’t quite old enough to drive yet. Though at one point I did have a Ford station wagon with fake wood on the side. Does that count?

And now that summer’s almost gone, a few lines about that from the Doors:

Summer's almost gone 
Summer's almost gone 
Almost gone 
Yeah, it's almost gone 
Where will we be 
When the summer's gone?**

Where will we be when summer’s gone? Well, we were supposed to be at Bouchercon in New Orleans. Unfortunately due to the usual circumstances beyond our control it looks like we’re going to have to bow out of that, which is a major bummer!

So maybe next summer will be better but for now I’m looking forward to autumn and winter, such as it is in SoCal. And maybe we’ll get enough rain to fill the creek again. Now that would be something!

***

Check out my story Deserted Cities of the Heart in the recently released St. Louis Noir.

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₸ Written by: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch, Murray Burnett, Joan Alison, Casey Robinson

* “Surfer Girl,” written by Brian Wilson. Performed by the Beach Boys.

** “Summer’s Almost Gone,” written by Jim Morrison. Performed by the Doors.