What’s in a name?

How do you choose your titles? Put a bunch of words in a hat and pull them out at random? Use a title generator? Does your publisher do it? Do you find it easy or hard? Do you start with a working title, or just start writing? Has the title ever stayed the same? Is there a title you wish you could steal?

by Dietrich Kalteis

Sometimes the title comes to me before the story even takes shape, sometimes it comes from a scene or a line I’m writing, and often it changes long before I submit the story. 

A title has to grab the reader. Maybe you can’t judge a book by it, but a strong title will surely get somebody to pick it off a store shelf and have a look. 

Title ideas can come from just about anywhere, and there’s nothing hard about coming up with them, it’s more about knowing when I’ve got the right one. Some of my story ideas sit on the back burner long before I start writing them, and I sometimes think about them while still working on the last story. So, by the time I start that first draft, I’ve often got a working title. And it may not be perfect, but I keep it until something better comes along. The same goes for ideas for scenes and the names of characters.

I’m fortunate to have a creative family to bounce ideas off, and I always ask my wife and son what they think of my titles and other ideas I come up with. Sometimes the thumbs go up, and sometimes they go down, but it always helps. And sometimes they come up with something better – like when my wife came up with the title Poughkeepsie Shuffle, which replaced the working title I had at the time.

The titles for House of Blazes and Zero Avenue came as soon as I started thinking about the stories, and they just felt right. Triggerfish started with a different working title, which changed as the story took shape. The same thing happened on the one I’m working on now.

A couple of my favorite book titles started out with working titles. To Kill a Mockingbird was originally called Atticus. And Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls was originally called They Don’t Build Statues to Businessmen. A couple of good examples of why you want to get the title right.

Sometimes the name or a line from a song can make a perfect title. The Deadbeat Club came from a song by The B52's. It just suited the story. And I’ve been asked if my first one Ride the Lightning came from the Metallica album of the same name. It actually came from police slang, meaning to get tasered. And I understand the expression can also mean to fry in the electric chair.

The worst thing about coming up with the perfect title is doing a search and finding out that the perfect title has already been used. Although it gives you a sinking feeling, it might not be a big problem if the other book is in a completely different genre and hopefully printed a long time ago.

Coming up with a title is part of the creative process, and I wouldn’t want to rely on something like a title generator. I need to trust myself to come up with it and know when it’s right. The bottom line is that by the time the novel goes to my publisher, I have to feel 100% sure about every aspect of it.

And the last part of the question: Is there a title you wish you could steal? Here are a few from across the genres that really grabbed me: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, Death to Smoochy by Danny DeVito, Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. I could probably go on and fill several pages.

Work in progress

Share the earliest/a really early photo you have of yourself with us, and tell us what it means to you personally and – if it does – in terms of your writing.

by Dietrich Kalteis

I don’t have a suitable early photo on hand, but I have a few memories of wanting to be a writer. I loved reading from an early age and the images it created in my mind. And I loved spinning my own stories too. In my early teens I penned a first draft of a novel. I can’t remember much about it, just that I kept its handwritten loose-leaf pages in a shoe box, worked on it after school and on weekends. I finally gave up on it, but the idea of writing a novel stayed with me, and I always thought I’d write one someday.

"Everything is hard before it is easy." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Growing up, I pursued other ventures, taking time now and then  to pen a short story. At one point I started a draft of another novel, but the spark wasn’t there, and after getting a couple of rejection letters, I gave up on it. Finally, after years of hearing me say I wanted to write someday, my wife finally said, ‘If not now, when?’

"Dwell in possibility." —  Emily Dickinson

Those words stuck with me, and I worked out some story ideas and put pen to paper, drafting some short stories during any spare time I could find, mostly late at night. I got my hands on several books on grammar and brushed up on the proper English I’d learned back in school. I tried different approaches and genres, but what I wrote often ended up in the trash bin. That, or I’d rewrite what I’d written the day before, trying to get it to sound right.

“The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.” — Philip Roth   

It didn’t dawn on me then that the many hours and all those pages that ended up in the scrap bin were important, allowing me to gain the chops and find my voice. Back then I thought I either had the talent or I didn’t. Lucky of me, it wasn’t hard to put time into something that I enjoyed doing. And when I finally felt confident that I had a short story worth submitting, I sent it out, and seeing that first short story in print sure had a way of boosting my confidence, letting me know I was on the right track. The other thing I learned was to not let all that proper grammar get in the way of the rhythm of what I was writing. 

So, I kept on writing short stories and submitting them to various publications. Some of those publications have sadly vanished, but others are still there, and I owe a big thanks to publications like Defenestration, Lowestroft Cronicle, Bête Noire, SN Review, Verdad Magazine, Foundling Review, Poor Mojo's Almanac, Oddville Press and Dew on the Kudzu and several others who published my stories.

One of the shorts I worked on was a piece of dialog between an insurance investigator and a woman who faked a claim, and when I reread it the next day, I thought it had a rhythm to it. It didn’t end up in the scrap bin, and I expanded and merged it with a couple of other ideas. And I had the early stages of Ride the Lightning, and after I worked through a couple of drafts, I submitted it to ECW Press. When I got that letter of acceptance … well, let’s just say not much beats that feeling.

Mostly I write novels now — my sixth is called Poughkeepsie Shuffle, and it will be out in early September, published by ECW Press. I still enjoy writing short stories, and I’m pleased to have one included in the anthology Vancouver Noir. Published by Akashic Books and edited by Sam Wiebe, it’s due out early in November.

Escape artist

Society seems to be more divided than ever, with strong feelings on every side of every issue, and very little middle ground. How do you deal with putting your views out there? Have you ever had to deal with a flame war?

by Dietrich Kalteis

I don’t regularly pick up a newspaper or turn on a newscast, at best I skim the news, a headline here and there. There’s little about it I need to know, most of it’s fear-based and often depressing. So at best, I’ve got a passing knowledge of current events, so I usually haven’t got much to offer about the issues of the day. Nothing wrong with a healthy discussion among friends, but sometimes talking about what’s making headlines can seem like striking a match and lighting a fuse — especially in a public forum. 

I write fiction, I make stuff up. When I stumble on a news gem that interests me — especially if there’s some dark humor attached — it might spark a story idea in my head. The kind of news that might get me thinking, “Well, what if this happened.” A number of my short stories and novels were influenced by actual events that I stumbled on. Ride the Lightning came about after I read on an article a few years back about the number of grow-ops in this province, how pot was the biggest cash crop, worth billions annually, rivaling softwood lumber. And not a tax dollar was being collected while talks of legalization continued. The spark for Triggerfish came after I read an article about a captured narco sub used by a cartel to transport cocaine from South America. Authorities established that the sub, which was constructed in the Amazon, could travel two thousand miles virtually undetected, and that got me thinking …

As a story takes shape in my head, so do the characters, and I like to let them loose and allow them to express their own views, which don’t have to line up with my own. I don’t step in and inject my own viewpoints.

There’s a natural seclusion that comes with writing a novel, which can take a year or longer, so I spend a lot of time working on my own. When I’m not writing, I like to spend time with family and friends, and there’s so much more to talk about than what’s making headlines. And of course, I sometimes add comments on social media sites, the perfect place not to get into heated discussions on hot-button issues of the day.

Some of my favorite authors were reclusive, greats like Lee Harper and J.D. Salinger. Some like Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy still are. While others are outspoken. At times Hunter S. Thompson came off half-mad in those dark glasses and golf hat, behaving like he’d been imbibing in something stronger than the office coffee, and often while wielding a firearm. But he wrote with passion and fury and had a great sense of humor. And if he was around today, he’d likely have a hell of a viewpoint to share on some of those hot-button issues.

I’m not reclusive and I don’t consider myself outspoken, so maybe it’s just the polite Canadian thing, but I tend to keep my two cents to myself, especially on public forums. One thing’s for sure, life’s far too short for flame wars. 

A library in your pocket

If you had just finished your first novel in 2018, given all the changes that have happened in the publishing world, which path would you choose to publication and why?

by Dietrich Kalteis

My first novel Ride the Lightning was signed in 2013 and published a year later, so I’m still fairly new to the game in that sense, but I’ve been writing stories since the days of Wite-Out. And I remember getting plenty of ink on my fingers from self-correction ribbons before that first Mac came into my life. It was a Mac IIcx, and I was in heaven. Gone were the days of retyping entire chapters and cutting and pasting just to get a presentable page. That baby packed 80 MB of RAM, a floppy drive and without the monitor on top, it weighed just under fourteen pounds. In recent years I’ve seen more digital and less print, and at times I feel like I’ve got an analog mind in a digital world, but I try to keep up with what’s changing and going on.

Things have sure gained some pace since Gutenberg cranked up that first printing press in the fifteenth century, leading to flexography, to lithography, to digital printing, and to e-books. And technology just keeps evolving and moving faster all the time. High volume laser and inkjet printers are quick and cost-effective, even on short runs; and changes can be made on subsequent runs without tossing out film and plates, saving publishers and authors time and money. And epub is even quicker and cheaper than that.

Aside from ink on paper, books can be had in an assortment of digital formats from epub, pdf, odt, Mobipocket. Playable on formats like Kindle, iBooks, Nook and Kobo. All of which make a nice compliment to the hardbacks and paperbacks, giving readers choices of how they read. I like to read printed books at home, but e-readers sure are handy when traveling. Rather than lugging books in a suitcase, an e-reader fits in a pocket, and at 2 gigs it can hold up to eleven hundred novels, practically a library of books. And there are audiobooks for when you’re driving or doing something that doesn’t allow you to read on your own.

How books are sold has also changed dramatically in recent years. Along with the independent and chain stores there are on-line options like Amazon, Wondery, Blackwells, Book Depository, iTunes, Google Play and so on. And most publishers have on-line shopping options on their websites.

If I just finished my first novel this year, I’d do things the same way and go the route of traditional publishing. Self-publishing is an alternate way to go, particularly in the digital format. And there are an expanding number of online resources like Smashwords and CreateSpace which can help with self-publishing and distributing indie ebooks. 

Beyond books, newspapers are archived digitally and many can be easily accessed online, giving writers a mountain of research information they can sift through at the click of a mouse. There are online resources like Google, Infoplease, the Internet Public Library, Refdesk, Wikipedia, the Library of Congress, Merriam-Webster Online, Snopes, and more. The internet and all it has to offer sure comes in handy when researching for a story. 

How I come up with story ideas hasn’t changed much, but how I do the research and how I input my stories sure has. Does anyone even remember the correction ribbon and Wite-Out? So, while I wouldn’t choose a different path to getting published, I have to look up from my desk once in a while and keep up with what’s going on in the industry.

Why a writer?

by Dietrich Kalteis

I missed out on the question why I became an author a couple weeks ago, and since this week’s a free for all, here’s my chance.

Being a writer had been a dream since I was a teenager and penned a draft of a novel in longhand. That one never got past the shoebox of handwritten looseleaf pages stuffed under the bed, and it took quite a bit more time for me to get a novel published and to take myself seriously as an author. I’d talked about it off and on for years, but real life kept getting in the way. It was my wife who encouraged me to actually do it.

There’s been a love for books and stories since before I could read, starting with the brothers Grimm. When I started to read it was The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. As I grew, I moved on to swashbucklers and westerns. And I loved the classics by Hemingway, Steinbeck and Salinger. I don’t know how many times I’ve read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and To Kill a Mockingbird. Eventually, I got got my first taste of mysteries with the Hardy Boys. 

I do read other genres. I love the books by Patti Smith, and Hunter S. Thompson, and the beat writing of Jack Kerouac. So, I’m kind of all over the map, except to say I love reading a strong voice.

There’s something about the suspense in a good crime novel or thriller. And a great voice to take me on a journey, painting scenes of times gone by, and places I may never see, not to mention things I would never do. While I’ve mentioned them before, greats like Elmore Leonard, Charles Willeford, George V Higgins and James Crumley have been both an influence and an inspiration — a kind of a benchmark for me, something to reach for in my own writing.

I started writing short stories and a few screenplays, trying different approaches and genres to see where I fit. Early on, if I was happy with what I wrote that day, I usually hated it when I reread it the next morning. I sent some stories out and some were published and that was very encouraging. After several screenplays and a number of short stories, I wrote a piece that was a scene of dialog, and when I reread it the following morning I didn’t hate it. It was about an insurance investigator checking into a scamming housewife, trying to cheat the company he worked for. And I expanded on the idea, and although it changed quite a bit, that was the beginning of Ride the Lightning, my first novel. 

Aside from the suspense and pace, I love a sense of levity in a crime story. Often it appears in dialog or in a particular character’s dumbness. But it’s great when it’s done right alongside the natural tension in that kind of book.

Since I’m influenced and inspired by what I read, I want to mention some that I’ve read over the past few weeks that I think are worth passing on to anybody looking for a good book: Emily Schultz’s Men Walking on Water, George Pelecanos’ Drama City, The Drop by Dennis Lehane, Tough Guys Don’t Dance by Norman Mailer, Sideswipe by Charles Willeford, Sam Wiebe’s Invisible Dead and William Deverell’s Sing a Worried Song.

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?

So what if?

by Dietrich Kalteis

What sources do you draw on for ideas for your stories?

Ideas can spring from just about anywhere: memories, headlines, newscasts, personal experience, what happened to the neighbor, dreams, song lyrics. They can be imagined or borrowed, and when I find something interesting I often find myself thinking, “so what if?” And it starts me writing a single scene. And from that, it leads to the next scene. 

The idea for my first novel Ride the Lightning came from a bit of dialog I wrote for another short story. Two characters talking and it just grew from that. For the next one, The Deadbeat Club, I came across an article about the thousands of grow-ops here in British Columbia that contribute to forty percent of all the pot in this country. From that I came up with a pot grower up in Whistler who grows a killer strain and just tries to stay off the radar when a couple of rival gangs come up from Vancouver to squeeze him out. The idea for Triggerfish came from a program I watched about these high-tech narco subs being built by drug cartels in secret locations in the jungles of the Amazon — subs that can travel two thousand miles virtually undetected. I checked the distance from Mexico to Canada, and I had the starting point for my story. House of Blazes started out as a screenplay I wrote about a dozen years ago, set during the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. It was a time of lawlessness, corruption and debauchery, the perfect setting for a crime novel. As I started writing and sifting through piles of research, I found a recent article about 11 million dollars worth of gold coins a couple discovered on a property they own not too far from San Francisco. The gold had been minted in San Francisco around the time of my story, and experts still can’t explain how it got there. It fit perfectly into my story and expanded it from the original screenplay.

When I come up with the spark of an idea I have to be totally jazzed about it since it’s going to take the better part of a year before I’ve got a novel to send out. And that spark is usually just for a single scene and maybe an undeveloped character or two, and everything just builds from there. I don’t know where the story will go at that point since I don’t plot out my stories. As I keep writing other scenes come to mind and the characters develop and usually by the second draft the whole thing starts taking shape.

It’s interesting to find out how some of the greats came up with ideas for their stories. For instance, Mark Twain based a character on a childhood friend and came up with Huckleberry Finn. John Steinbeck wanted to tell about the hard times people had to endure when he wrote Grapes of Wrath. After a classmate got jumped by a gang on the way home from school, fifteen-year-old S.E. Hinton started writing The Outsiders. And Jules Verne was flipping through a newspaper one day when he spotted an ad offering a chance to travel the globe in just eight days.

I keep an idea file for scraps to be used for future stories. Some of them I’ll use, and some I probably never will, but one thing’s for sure, there never seems to be a shortage of ideas out there that can get one thinking, “so what if?”