Why Crime Fiction?

Why did you decide to become a writer and in particular a writer of crime fiction?

by Paul D. Marks

To make lots and lots of money and be famous and see my name and picture plastered on billboards and the sides of busses and go visiting on Fallon and Kimmel. That’s why.

But, I’m not getting rich and the only place my picture is plastered is in the post office. So time to

delve into the whys and wherefores and open up that whole Pandora’s Box of psychopathology that makes me, uh, me. And that made me want to become a writer of crime fiction. But we won’t delve too deep. You never know what you might find down in the depths.

So, besides the riches and fame, what prompted me to write crime fiction: I write it so I can kill people...on the page that I can't kill in real life...........

Related to that is the desire to see justice served as it so often isn’t in real life. That said, in much of what I write there are no neat bow-tied endings. And even when parts of the stories are tied up other parts are left open-ended. Kind of like life. So, justice is often served on some level, but maybe not neatly and maybe not legal justice, but some kind of street justice. Unless it’s a totally noir tale where there truly might not be justice, at least not in terms of how we normally think of it.

Writing crime fiction also gives me a way to comment on things that I want to comment on. Also to explore different points of view about those things, via various characters, including those that might not necessarily jibe with my own thoughts. Kind of like when you did debates in school and you had to take the other side of the issue, whether you agreed with it or not.

And, as RM said in a post from a while back, “With crime fiction I get to write about people in trouble, not just criminals and victims, but the people who happen to be police officers as well.” It's so true, and crime fiction is about so much more than whodunit. It's about all the people affected by the crime. As such, it gives us a vehicle to explore the human condition (now that sounds pretty hifalutin) but in a structured story with a plot that keeps us interested (hopefully) and moving forward.

But ultimately I want to entertain. I’ve talked about this before, and I don’t want to beat on a dead Sturges, but the Preston Sturges movie Sullivan’s Travels makes the point very well about entertaining. It’s the story of a film director who makes movies like Ants in Your Plants of 1939. But he thinks it’s light and silly junk. He wants to make the ponderous message movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou. But through his adventures he learns that what people really want is to laugh – and to be entertained.

Now, there’s not generally a lot of yucks in crime fiction, though there are some exceptions. But the best crime fiction is entertaining first. Sam Goldwyn famously might have said, if I want to send a message I’ll call Western Union. Which is not to say that crime writing can’t have a message, just to say that it shouldn’t hit you over the head. The best writing makes you think, but it doesn’t tell you what to think. A crime writer can illuminate aspects of society, good and bad, without being preachy or moralistic. My novel White Heat deals with race and racism in the form of a fast-paced, intense mystery thriller. And while I hope I make some points about those subjects, my first goal is to entertain. The sequel to White Heat, which may actually see the light of day one of these days, does the same thing about another pressing issue of life today – immigration.

And, of course, I enjoy reading crime fiction and watching crime-related movies. As I’ve stated here before, I’m a “movie guy,” and I came to a lot of crime fiction via the movies. Anyone who knows me knows I love film noir and in that genre there are few heroes, at least of the conventional variety. I’ve done a lot of different types of writing, mainstream, humorous/satire, screenplays of various genres. But crime writing/fiction and noir allow me to explore what good and evil are and where the boundaries between them are sometimes blurred.

So there you have it, now I can stuff the bats back into the belfry and close the lid to Pandora’s Box.

Why do you write crime fiction?

***

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Sic transit gloria mundi

Which would you choose? Fame or fortune?

by Paul D. Marks

How 'bout we go 50-50 on this one.

Seems a lot of people want to be famous these days…but not for doing much worthy of fame: Paris Hilton, a whole family tree of Kardashians, the bling ring. I address this issue to some degree in my novella Vortex and Broken Windows, the upcoming sequel to White Heat. But before I get to them:

Sure I want to be famous. And I want to be rich. But I’d like to be those things for doing something worthwhile…and that can be entertaining people. Because as John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) learned in Preston Sturges’s “Sullivan’s Travels” that’s what people really want.

I keep telling my wife that I’m semi-semi famous, though my goal is to be semi-famous. The truth is I’m probably more like semi-semi-semi to the 10th degree famous. But the goal is still to be semi-famous. I don’t think I could ever be as famous as the Real Housewives of Here, There and Everywhere for doing nothing or even less than zero to paraphrase a great novel, or Snooki for tanning and Mike the Situation for adoring his own body. But if I can take people away from their world and their worries for a few hours, I’m good. Even if it’s into a much darker world of noir and mystery, at least it’s away from their day to day problems.

As for being rich, I’d settle for a house on each coast (that includes the West Coast, the East Coast, the Gulf Coast and the Amalfi Coast), a private plane, a yacht, a decommissioned missile silo for a very private writer’s retreat. And an endless supply of pizza and M&Ms – peanut only and no blue ones – they’re unnatural looking, how much blue food is there? – and hey, if Van Halen can do it, so can I.

Other than that I don’t really have much to say on whether I’d rather be rich or famous. It would be nice to be both. But I do have some thoughts on our fame-obsessed culture and address these issues in my writing.

In Vortex, a noir thriller, Zach Tanner is an Afghan war vet. Before and during the war he and his buddies have big plans to get rich and famous quick. Maybe by not quite doing the right thing. Being wounded in the war has given Zach time to think about it and he has a change of heart. Here’s a couple excerpts from Vortex:

It sounds corny, but I did want to be somebody. Didn’t really care how I got there either and maybe that was my problem. Maybe I should have cared. Back then I didn’t really care about much, fucked around and just wanted to be famous—rich and famous. And I thought if I could get my hands on some money that could help me on the road to fame.

Fuck, everybody I knew wanted to be famous. Everybody but those wanna-bes like George who were actually studying and heading somewhere. Some people have a road paved with gold. Others have a dirt-road, lined with ruts and potholes and IEDs, and they’re lucky if they can reach the next milestone before getting waxed. I had every advantage a person could hope for, but I couldn’t have gotten into UCLA or USC if my life depended on it. I was just lazy, especially when it came to studying. Nah, I wanted a faster road and a furious rod.

And from another part of Vortex:

Jess was still where I was before I deployed, still wanting the bling, but I’d moved on. Being a soldier, being in a war and being wounded changed me. She was just where I’d left her. Still wanting the brass ring but not wanting to do much to get it. The problem is, no matter how much you have, it’s never enough.

In Broken Windows, Duke, the P.I. from White Heat, who solved a case and got his “fifteen” minutes

of fame doing so, says:

Ever since my seven minutes of fame with Teddie Matson’s case, I had every two bit producer who needed the goods on his wife or girlfriend or boyfriend, or all three, or had to know what the competition at the other studios were up to, wanting me to work for them. I had no end of cases to work. A lot of Hollywood riff-raff; the fact that they might be worth a hundred million dollars didn’t make them any less riff or raff. I was making good money for a change. And I hated every minute of it.

So many people in our society want to be famous these days. They don’t realize they’re making a bargain with the Devil when they ask for that. When they do realize it it’s too late. But most famous people aren’t famous for doing anything important. I didn’t want to be one of them. And fame is a double-edged sword. Sometimes it opens doors, but you also can’t be anonymous. Some people ask for it—movie stars, then resent the price that goes with it. I hadn’t asked for it. But maybe it was part of my penance.

I think there’s a recurring theme going on here, so that hits on how I feel about fame and fortune.

I’ve met many famous people in one capacity or another. Some were nice, some not so nice. Fame doesn’t guarantee you’ll be a good person or happy or even prosperous. And when I think of fame I’m reminded of this line, paraphrased from the Jose Ferrer version of “Moulin Rouge”:

One should never meet a person whose work one admires. What they do is always so much better than what they are.

I hope if I ever do get beyond semi-semi-semi to the 10th degree famous that I will still be humble and share my M&Ms with the little people who helped me get where I am. (It’s a joke – okay, you people who take things too seriously.)

To me, fame without purpose is pointless and fortune without respect for others is meaningless.

***

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If You Want to Send a Message – Call Western Union

Tell us which conferences are your favorites and why you like to attend them.

by Paul D. Marks

Well, since I’ve pretty much answered this week’s question before, let me put up a link to the previous post on that: http://7criminalminds.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-egg-and-i.html . Everything’s pretty much the same as I talk about there, except that I’ve been to an additional Bouchercon in Raleigh, which was great fun. And, we loved the local food.

So instead, I’d like to answer the question from two weeks ago instead. That question was:

Is there a message in your book that you want readers to grasp?

Well, there’s messages and there’s messages. Sam Goldwyn—the G in M-G-M/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer— is famously rumored to have said “Pictures are entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union” or, depending on where you find it, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.”

That said, of course there’s some themes and/or underlying messages that come across in my work.  And though my novels are noir-thriller-mysteries there’s usually something of an underlying theme. And some of those themes I’ve revisited in several projects.

One of those recurring themes is people out of time. And I don’t mean in a sci-fi way. But “dinosaurs,” people that time has passed by one way or another and who would be better living in an earlier era. While Jack, the sidekick in White Heat, is in some ways a modern man, he also has some very unPC attitudes that might have served him better in previous eras. I was a little concerned about him before the book came out, but people seem to really like him. He says things that other people think but are afraid to say. On the other hand, he always does the right thing, even when he’s saying the wrong thing. And, as I say, more people have told me they like him than I ever could have imagined, people from all walks of life and backgrounds. Another character who’s living in the wrong era is Tom Holland in the story Angels Flight. He’s something of an old-fashioned cop, not quite ready to partner up with a black, female woman from the mayor’s office and her unusual crime-solving techniques.

Another theme I seem to go back to a lot is that of broken dreams, people whose aspirations are greater than their achievements.  Along with this is the theme of Los Angeles as the last stop on the West Coast before everything tumbles into the Pacific—after all, Route 66 ends right about where the Santa Monica Pier is. And L.A. is both a theme and character in my writing in the sense that it is the last stop for many. In the short story Free Fall Rick comes to L.A., finding himself at the end of Route 66, hoping for a new start on life…and he gets it. In fact, he gets much more than he bargained for when he meets Gloria, who asks a favor of him that causes him to go into a tailspinning free fall.

In another story, Endless Vacation, a young woman comes to L.A. with stars in her eyes, expecting to find the streets of Hollywood paved with gold. Instead she finds that Hollywood is the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, paved with heroin instead of gold.

Howling at the Moon is a story about honoring the past and paying attention to tradition. It’s also about a returning war vet who reconnects with his American Indian roots in a dangerous way.

But with all that, my number one goal in all of these, and others, is to entertain. To bring the reader on a roller coaster ride that’s thrilling and fun. And I have to go back to Sam Goldwyn’s line about Western Union. At the very least, messages shouldn’t be heavy handed. And the prime purpose for your story should be to entertain. Which brings me to the great Preston Sturges movie Sullivan’s Travels, with Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake. McCrea plays a movie director who makes trifles like Ants in Your Plants of 1939, but he wants to make a serious, ponderous movie called Oh Brother Where Art Thou that the studio is against. He sets out to see what life is like for the down and out, getting much more than he bargained for. But ultimately what he finds is that those who are really down and out don’t want stories about that, they want to laugh—to be entertained. And that’s our number one job to entertain.

When I was judging for a short story award a while back I read every story word for word to the end because I wanted to be fair to the writers. But there was one exception. And why did I stop reading that one a few pages in: because it was nothing but a preachy didactic political diatribe. What happened to the story, what happened to the characters? This was just the author ranting on in the voice of the character or narrator. It brought the story to a dead halt and I halted with it.

So if we’re going to have a “message,” keep it low. Let the characters be who they are and not some cardboard fill in for your rants. And most of all be entertaining.

And that’s my 9 cents (increased for inflation) on the subject.

###

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Fiction is the Lie

Was there a point before you were published when you thought of giving up? If so, how did you get over it and keep going?

By Paul D. Marks

I still think of giving up, but I don’t do it.

Part of the reason we’re writers is ‘cause we’re persistent. Lots of people want to be writers, give up to easily or just don’t’ find time to do it. It’s a passion – it’s not like a hobby that you give up when you don’t have the time. And it’s a passion that you have to do every day like eating.

You write because you have to. Yes, it’s nice to get published. And even paid. But if that’s why one writes you’re in the wrong biz.

It’s kind of like “Ol’ Man River,” tired of livin’, but scared of dyin’. But the river keeps rolling along. As do we. Because there’s nothing else we can possibly do. Sure we might have families, other jobs, other obligations, but we find the time to write because it’s in our blood and in our bones.


We write because we have something to say, some interpretation of life that we want to share. Or maybe we just want to entertain. In “Sullivan’s Travels,” the classic Preston Sturges film, Joel McCrea plays a movie director who makes silly trifles like “Ants in Your Plants of 1939”. But he wants to make a serious film about people struggling, “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou”. Not knowing anything about the downtrodden he has the studio
costume department outfit him like a hobo and he takes off, entourage not far behind. To cut to the chase, so to speak, and through a series of misadventures he finds himself on a real chain gang. And there, watching the prisoners laugh at a Mickey Mouse cartoon he realizes that people just want to laugh and be entertained. And I think that’s what we want to do, entertain. It can be serious entertainment or light entertainment. But ultimately that is the bottom line – we are entertainers.


And how do I get over those doubts about continuing, I wake up the next day, sit at the typewriter (in the “early” days) and type. And if it really is in your blood you just get over it. Just like you do after you break up with the “love of your life.” Sure, h/she’s the one that got away. And you still think about her on occasion. But it’s yesterday. Today is working on that new chapter or character or funny bit or whatever. You just do it.

All of this because ultimately, as Camus said, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”