An Attitude of Gratitude

How do you decide who to acknowledge and who to dedicate a book to, and have you ever had an awkward moment in making an “in” or “out” decision?

by Paul D. Marks

Only the best doctors for me.

Before I get to today’s question:

I’ve been on forced hiatus for a couple of months now. I want to thank Cathy Ace for helping find replacement posters to fill my slots in that time and to also thank the various replacement posters. 

Towards the very end of October I wasn’t feeling well. Could barely stand up. Long story short, my wife and general practitioner “forced” me to go the ER. ER found cancer and said if I hadn’t come in when I did I probably would have been dead by the following weekend. Guess it’s a good thing I let Amy jam me into the car and down to the hospital.

I was in the hospital off and on for several weeks. It was torture in more ways than one. My body reacted strongly to the first dose of chemo. That is, the chemo worked—maybe too well. And threw off all of my other labs and numbers. It was and – to some extent—still is a mess. But I’m home—mostly—these days. With some return hospital visits scheduled. And following up with chemo and other treatments.

There’s a lot to deal with and I’m shorthanding this greatly. It’s going to be a long, tough road, but at least it finally looks like a little light at the end of the tunnel.

And I want to thank everyone who sent notes or commented/liked on my much rarer Facebook posts these days with updates.

Now to today’s question:

I tend to write often about things I know to one degree or another. So, in my first two Duke Rogers novels (set in the 1990s), White Heat and Broken Windows, I really just thank the folks at my publisher Down & Out Books. And I don’t think there were any acknowledgements in my stand-alone Vortex.

For my most recent novel, The Blues Don’t Care, that came out this past June, and which is set in the 1940s on the L.A. homefront during World War II, I had a few more acknowledgments. 

One of those was the actual city of L.A. itself. L.A. is such a part of me, such a part of who I am, for better or worse. And I definitely have a love-hate relationship with it. Although World War II was before my time, the city still had that Raymond Chandler ambience when I was a kid. It hadn’t turned to all steel and glass yet and the Powers That Be hadn’t destroyed the Bunker Hill neighborhood (which I would go exploring in) or much of the rest of its past. So I remember the city being that Chandler or John Fante city from back then. And that certainly informed The Blues Don’t Care. Click here to see an article I did on this for Sleuthsayers. 

And I love the movies and music from the 1930s and 40s. That helped greatly with research. As did books and the internet and all the other usual sources.

But the thing that helped me the most on this particular book was first person research with people who were there. My mom, a native Angelino, and her friends, also born here, helped greatly with memories of the war time period that you won’t necessarily find in books. Little tidbits that hopefully give the story a greater sense of verisimilitude. They were invaluable and were acknowledged.

Another first person source was my friend Clyde Williams (click here to see my piece on him over at SleuthSayers). Clyde and I became fast friends while working on a video that he was doing the voice over on. Clyde was a cowboy, a Viet Nam vet, served on an honor guard for President Kennedy. He was also an African-American artist whose work was exhibited at the famous Dunbar Hotel on Central Avenue in Los Angeles, where many famous black artists, musicians, politicians, etc., stayed when they couldn’t stay in white hotels. And though his time, too, was after World War II, he soaked up that ambience and history like a sponge. A good portion of Blues Don’t Care takes place at the Dunbar and Clyde’s insight was invaluable.

So these are the people I give acknowledgment to in this book. People who could particularly help with insight that maybe isn’t so easily found in the usual places.

There’s no particular formula for deciding who should get acknowledgments. It’s what seems right and fair.

And I must say that I am given acknowledgment in one of our fellow Criminal Minds, Jim Ziskin’s book Cast The First Stone. I was really glad to be able to help Jim out with some first-hand L.A, history. and it’s really a kick to be mentioned there. 

So that’s my take on it. I hope to be back more regularly in the future though there might be some occasions when medical issues keep me from posting. But hopefully not or at least not much.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

The Blues Don’t Care has been chosen by the terrific and well-respected crime magazine, Suspense, as The Best of 2020 Historical Fiction Novel. I’m grateful to the fans, staff and contributors of Suspense for this terrific honor, which came totally out of the blue. And, besides infusions of platelets, as you can imagine I needed an infusion of good news right now… 

And not only did Blues win a Best of 2020 Award from Suspense Magazine, but Coast to Coast: Noir, the third volume in our Coast to Coast crime stories series that I co-edit with Andrew McAleer, also won a Best of 2020 Award from Suspense Magazine in the Anthology category. So I’m thrilled about both of these awards:

And Blues Don’t Care was also on two other best of/favorites of 2020 lists:

DeathBecomesHer, Crime Fiction Lover: Top Five Books of 2020 

And

Aubrey Nye Hamilton, Happiness is a Warm Book:  Favorite Books of 2020

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Testing one, two, three. Is this thing on?

Heard any good books lately? What are your thoughts on audiobooks?

by Paul D. Marks

The answer to the first question is “no”. The reason is because I don’t listen to audio books, much as I sometimes wish I did. My mind wanders too much. But when I read a paper book I don’t have that problem. I also like the heft and tactile sensation of paper books and still prefer those to e-books as well. Though I do read e-books.

Since I basically commute from the bedroom or kitchen to my home office, a distance measured in seconds rather than hours, I don’t do much reading of any kind on my commute. But if I did—and if I had a self-driving car—I’d be reading a hardcopy book or one on the Kindle app. 

I don’t know why my mind wanders when simply listening, but it does. So, while I’ve tried to listen to audio books and have even completed some, mostly I don’t. I got The Girl on the Train in audio and kept losing my place so to speak. So I ended up buying the paper book and reading it with my eyes instead of my ears. And doing it that way, I got through the book and enjoyed it.

"The Girl on the Train" audiobook

I have stacks of TBR books all over the place and a virtual stack on the Kindle app. I have some audio books around that I try to listen to now and then, but as I said, I tend to lose focus. My wife Amy reads on audio a lot—or did, before working from home during Covid, when she commuted to work on the train. However her brain is wired vs. the way mine is allows her to concentrate on audio books and her mind doesn’t seem to wander. She really enjoys her audio books and I envy her ability to do so.

Also, like Susan said earlier in the week, she was taken aback by the readings of some of her books. I haven’t had that experience, but I have had actors read scripts I’ve worked on. And sometimes it’s great and other times it’s a horror show. In those cases, I think it also depends on the director. S/he can give input into how to play a scene or a whole script. And I remember one time when the director directed the actors to play something for laughs that wasn’t at all meant that way. It was a nightmare. So it does also depend on the presentation.

Janet Hutchings, of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Paul D. Marks
recording "Howling at the Moon"

In response to the second question, I think audio books are great for people who enjoy them. I have nothing against them, they’re just (mostly) not for me. And, from what Amy says, I do think the reader has a lot to do with one’s enjoyment of them. As long as people are “reading” books, I pretty much don’t care about the medium they get them on.

All that said, there is an audio recording for Ellery Queen of my story Ghosts of Bunker Hill, which won the Ellery Queen Readers’ Award for 2016. I’m not sure if it’s the best performance possible. The actor did as good a job as he could, but then he wasn’t a professional. Uh, it was me. Ellery Queen asked me to read the story for their Fiction Podcast Series. So if you want to hear Ghosts of Bunker Hill, read by the author, you can find it here: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/eqmm/episodes/2017-05-02T08_49_33-07_00 . 

I also recorded my first story for EQMM, Howling at the Moon, for their series and you can find that one here:  https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/eqmm/episodes/2016-02-01T06_56_00-08_00 . But please remember, I’m not an actor, so don’t throw tomatoes.

So, bottom line, books and reading—in any form—are gifts that we should treasure.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

Thanks to Steve Steinbock and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine for the review of The Blues Don’t Care in the current September/October 2020 issue just out. Four stars out of four. My first time getting reviewed in EQMM. A great honor!

And our own Cathy Ace’s The Corpse with the Crystal Skull is also reviewed in this issue.

You can find them here: https://www.elleryqueenmysterymagazine.com/current-issue/the-jury-box/

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All the News That Fits

Talk about newsletters.  Do you or do not have one? If you do, how often do you send it out? On what venue? How did you get your newsletter list? If not, why not and how do you contact your readers instead? Are there any authors whose newsletters you think are particularly good?

by Paul D. Marks

Some people swear by newsletters. They say that’s the best tool for marketing. And I think they are a good thing. I have one called PostMarks (clever, huh). And if you’d like to sign up for it you can do it here or at the end of this post or just go to my website: www.PaulDMarks.com. There’s other “fun” stuff at my website, too, like my weird encounter with Cary Grant, my encounter with Gene Kelly and the time I pulled a gun on the cops and lived to tell about it.

My newsletter logo.

I had a column in a small paper called PostMarks some time back so I stole my newsletter title from myself. But you know what they say, great artists steal, bad artists only borrow. I guess I’ll have to sue myself. Why not, it seems to be the national pastime these days.

I don’t send it out on any regular schedule. I do try to send it out about 4 to 6 times a year on average, particularly when I have something noteworthy to mention, like a new book or short story coming out. But I don’t send it out for every little thing that comes up like a new interview or guest post (like my recent post at CrimeReads).

I try to make the newsletter interesting and fun and more than just selling and BSP. It contains various sections. There’s a greeting, with a little news. Then a Current News section that talks about any new books or stories I might have coming up (or out). Sometimes it might mention interviews I’ve done or that are coming up as well. But then we get to the fun stuff. There’s a section on La La Land (Los Angeles). Anyone who follows me on Facebook knows I post a lot of pictures and articles about L.A. and in my newsletter I talk about various aspects of L.A. history. Often the topics are tied into L.A. locations in a novel or story of mine, so there’s sometimes that link. But sometimes they’re not related to my work. L.A. history is fun. In one of the recent newsletters, before The Blues Don’t Care came out, I talked about the gambling ships that used to lay off the Los Angeles coastline, just outside the 3 mile legal limit because some of the action in Blues takes place on one of those ships. From the feedback I got people found that fun and interesting.

An excerpt from my newsletter

Then, there’s often a section called Noirville, which can deal with noir aspects of my writing or just noir in general, maybe a little talk about a film noir that I like. In one of the recent newsletters I talk about the Nat King Cole song The Blues Don’t Care, from which I borrowed the title of the book and ask the question “can a song be noir”? There’s also a What’s Next section, which should be obvious as to what it’s about. And the penultimate section is usually Dog Tails where I talk about whatever critters (not necessarily just dogs) we have at the time and post pictures of them. And then The End of the Line, a farewell. Of course, there’s also ways to get my books, links to Amazon and also to my social media. So it’s a full deal. Doing the newsletter can be a little labor intensive, but it’s also fun.
Here’s a link to one of my recent newsletters if you’re interested: June 2020 PostMarks.

Dog Tails :-) 

The venue I use is MailChimp. There might be other places out there. I’m not really familiar with all of them. And I don’t really remember why we chose to go with MailChimp. Maybe ’cause my wife likes the chimp logo. And I do like MailChimp. It’s fairly simple to use and it’s free if your list is under 2,000 people.

As to how I got the list of names, there’s various ways. When I meet someone I often ask if they’d like to sign up for it, I mention it when I’m speaking. And in the days when we did live events (remember those days?) I bring a clipboard with my newsletter signup sheet. I’ll just ask people if it’s okay for me to sign them up. And I let them know I won’t bother them too often, just a few times a year. No one wants to be bombarded with 20 emails a month.

I also recently added a popup to my website so that if people subscribe to my newsletter they can download a free copy of my novella Vortex. Unfortunately, it hasn’t really increased my subscriptions, but it was worth a try.

One of the questions above is, “If not, why not and how do you contact your readers instead?” Well, even though I do a newsletter it’s not the only way I stay in touch, of course. I have my website. I blog here and at SleuthSayers. I get interviewed in print or on radio or podcasts. I do events, though these days they’re all virtual on Zoom or Skype, etc. I did the book launch for The Blues Don’t Care on Facebook, and it was more successful than I’d imagined. There’s a whole host of ways to contact people and stay in touch and get the word out, including: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a host of others, but you have to limit yourself or all you’ll be doing is social media.

So, like with anything, newsletters have their pluses and minuses, but overall I think they’re a good way to stay in touch with friends and fans (I have 3.2 of the latter).

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

I want to thank Living My Best Book Life for this great review of The Blues Don’t Care. Here’s an excerpt and a link to the full review.

“𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐬 𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞 by @pauldmarks is a mysterious historical fiction set in the WWII time period. It tackles topics like corruption, racism, and many others that we are still facing today. I was taken aback by Paul D. Marks's talented writing style. This story is powerful and Paul did a wonderful job developing his main character, Bobby Saxon...

…I was captivated from the very start. This author tackled so many subjects that few care to bring up. The detail of the story gave me an insight on all the injustices in the 1940's. I appreciated the heart of the story; a person chasing their dream and never looking back. Bobby Saxon is a well-developed character that was able to learn, grow, and hone in on his craft. There is a main secret of Bobby's that I didn't see coming. This is such a fascinating historical fiction that I thoroughly enjoyed!”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CC3_3gxAZq6/
                           

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I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours

Lately, some authors on social media are saying that it’s time authors shared details about their book contracts and income to break open the financial secrecy inherent in this business. Do you agree or disagree with this idea?

by Paul D. Marks

That’s an interesting question. And since I was just going over a contract yesterday it’s definitely timely. As I was going over the contract I was thinking, hmm, I wonder if this jibes with other people’s contracts. Do they have the same terms? Better? Worse?

Of course, if I go there, if I want to see their contracts then they would want to see mine. And do I really want them seeing mine? Whether my terms are better or worse than someone else’s, do I want them to know my personal business?

When I was a kid—and maybe it’s still a thing today—people would gauchely ask how much someone made. And the usual response was “we’re comfortable.” The reason people gave that response, I think, was to deflect from the real and specific answer to that question. People don’t like talking about their finances.

I know that Louise Penny and John Grisham make a HELL of a lot more money than I do as a writer. But I don’t know exactly how much more and I don’t really care to know. I also don’t know the other details of their contracts, but I can certainly imagine they have better terms than I do in a variety of ways.

Louise Penny

If someone has a better deal maybe I’d be envious (and isn’t envy one of the seven deadly sins?). But it’s up to me or my representatives to negotiate the best deal I can. What if we knew John Doe’s terms? Does that mean we would or should get the same as him? Maybe Doe sells better, maybe he’s been around longer, maybe he has better reviews, awards, whatever? This isn’t like working at McDonald’s where you start at minimum wage and work your way up a pretty standard set of rate increases. There’s no standard formula. Plus a small indie publishing company certainly can’t compete with Random House. So, if you’re with magazine or book publisher A, who pays X dollars, but they’re a big publisher, and I’m with small publisher B, who pays Y dollars, how can I expect the same remuneration?

John Grisham

I think one of the reasons people want this is maybe to standardize contracts. But I don’t see how we can standardize rates. In Hollywood, if one is a member of the WGA, there is a rate structure, scale. But once you reach a certain level you work above the minimums. Do you think a William Goldman (before he died) or a Robert Towne make the same as a novice or journeyman screenwriter? Should they? I’m also not sure how it could practically be applied to fiction writing. Let’s take short stories, Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock pay by the word, other magazines have a standard set fee and still others don’t pay anything at all. Or you might get a contributor’s copy and maybe royalties, assuming the book makes money, which often isn’t the case. Some small book publishers don’t give advances. Many of them are hanging on by a thread. So what good would it do to see their contracts? If you don’t like a publisher’s offer go somewhere else. And you can always hope for a better deal down the road with your current publisher or another one.

William Goldman

Would I like to make more money from my writing? Of course. That said, we all have different goals. Sometimes there’s things that are more important than actual money amounts, like being with a publisher that can get you exposure or will promote your work more (which hopefully in turn would mean more royalties). Sometimes we might be willing to sacrifice money for that extra reach. Or you might want more up-front money where another writer may not care as much about that as something else. We’re all different and want different things, so to compare contracts is like comparing the proverbial apples and oranges. And again will only create envy. There’s a Law & Order episode where (and I’m trying to remember the details but it’s been a while so I’m making up these numbers but you’ll get the idea) the cops are investigating a murder (so what else is new?). They’re talking to various people in a company about how much each received as a bonus. And each one thinks they maxed out. The guy who got 500K thinks he got the top deal and so does the guy who got 50 or 90K (whatever it was). But if they knew the truth that would only create tension in the company and then there’d likely be more dead bodies for the cops to investigate 😉. So nobody shares that info. The same would happen with authors. Well, maybe not more dead bodies (except hopefully on the page) but more tension.

I’ve given people general advice about certain things to look for in contracts and rights they might want to retain and things along those lines. But I never tell people about my contract specifics. And I don’t want to know theirs. There are places to find variations on standard contracts and I suggest you look them up. See what contracts look like. See what you can negotiate in or out of a publisher’s standard contract. There are some things they’ll give you and some they won’t. So you have to compromise, you have to decide which hill/s you’re willing to die on. If the terms are too onerous go to another publisher. But you need to take responsibility and do some homework and make the best deal you can. Even Brian Epstein didn’t get the Beatles the best contract in the early days and somehow they seemed to do okay in the long run.

Just negotiate the best contract you can, whether you do it yourself or have a lawyer or agent do it. And contracts are about more than just money. They’re about certain rights that you might want to retain, as well as other things. So ultimately I don’t want my personal details revealed nor do I want to know yours.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

“While The Blues Don't Care is a complex, sometimes brutal, story, it also has its glimmers of beauty and joy. Those glimpses come from Bobby's passion for music, and his awe when he sees celebrities such as Clark Gable and Billie Holiday. Wander into Bobby Saxon's world in Paul D. Marks' latest book. It's a world you won't easily forget.”
—Lesa’s Book Critiques

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Who's Hiding Behind Your Characters?

Do you ever base characters on real people? Famous or people you know in your real life. And, if so, how do you deal with that?

by Paul D. Marks

This is sort of a two part question. First there’s the question of basing characters on people that you know. Then there’s the question of basing them on celebrities or historical figures. I do both.

A lot of my characters are based on people I know —including on myself. I think there’s a little piece of me in all of them. Or sometimes a bigger piece. But when I do base them on people I know or who I’ve come across they’re usually composites of multiple people. So far no one’s come up to me —probably because the people I know don’t read my books, just kidding —and wanted to bop me on the head for a portrayal. Most people see the good and the heroic in a character in themselves. They don’t see the bad.

Villains are often based on people I’ve come across one way or another. At least certain traits of theirs. But I don’t want to make them exactly like the real person for obvious reasons.

Just released 6/1/20

In my just released novel The Blues Don’t Care, the main character, Bobby, is loosely inspired by a real person. But that person didn’t become a detective in any way, at least to my knowledge. There are other characters in the book also inspired by real people. Tony Leach, the gangster who runs the gambling ship off the L.A. coast, is sort of a combination of infamous L.A. gangster Mickey Cohen and Tony Cornero, the guy who ran the real gambling ships off the coast. But probably a little kinder and gentler than either, though still a gangster under his fancy suits. Cary Grant’s real name was Archie Leach and the gangster’s last name was chosen because of that, so he has a little of Cary in there too. (See my website for my close encounter with Cary Grant.) Bobby’s tough guy pal, Sam Wilde, is based on some people I knew, though I knew them in contemporary times but set their character traits in the 1940s of the story. And there’s a character in The Blues Don’t Care, Mary Cooper, named after a girl I knew a long, long time ago. I’m sure she hasn’t thought of me in ages. But she crosses my mind every once in a while and since she’s a benign character in a small part I used her name. Others in that story are also composites of real people.

In Broken Windows, the second in my Duke Rogers series after White Heat, there’s a producer character named Joseph Hartman who, if you call him Joe the thunder will reign down. He is definitely patterned after a real person —or at least that affectation is patterned on a real producer. Though I think when I’ve mentioned him before I conflated him with another famous person who hung up on someone for calling them by their first name.

I sometimes pepper real people into a story because it hopefully gives the reader a sense of verisimilitude (one of my favorite words) —a sense that the world the characters inhabit is a real world with people they know and landmarks they might have heard of. But you have to use the people in small cameos and not show them in a bad light unless there’s something demonstrably provable that they did that you want to include. They might get only cameo parts but it gives the story a feeling of being set in the real world. For example, in Blues Don’t Care Bobby runs across Gable at the zigzag moderne Sunset Tower Hotel and Louis B. Mayer at the Coconut Grove, as well as others in various situations. The book is, after all, set in Los Angeles and seeing movie stars from time to time is part of the L.A. experience:

Someone bumped into Bobby.
“Excuse me,” the man said in a familiar voice.
Bobby was too flustered to respond to Clark Gable, as the King of Hollywood walked past. Bobby went to the front desk.
“May I help you?” the clerk asked.
“I’d like to see Tony Leach.” The words stumbled out. Bobby hoped his nervousness didn’t show. He’d heard that Leach lived here. Bugsy Siegel too, as well as several movie stars off and on. Infamous gossip columnist Hedda Hopper had said so.
“Can you just call up and tell him Bobby Saxon, from the ship’s band, is here.”
“You play in a band on his ship? I’m afraid he’s too busy for—”

And in Broken Windows, Duke, the main character, goes to a producer’s house above Sunset Boulevard. He finds two Jags in the driveway and expensive art in the house. The character who lives in the house is the Joseph Hartman character mentioned above. But in real life the producer who lived there was another person. And in real life, though he lived in the lap of luxury he wanted me to work for free.

And then there was the time that I based a character on another producer—a major ass—in a script I was rewriting…for him. He never made the connection. And I’m not telling what it was.

The character of Warren in White Heat is based on a friend of mine, though someone who isn’t as angry as Warren.

Duke Rogers series

So, yes, I base characters on people I know or have come across. Which is a good way to have more realistic, well defined characters ’cause you have real life experience in how someone acts.

Everyone I come across is fodder, the way they look, the way they talk. Their character, etc. Not just people I know, but people I may cross paths with for only a few seconds or a few hours. A clerk, someone on a street corner. Someone in a bar. It’s like we costume our characters, disguise them and send them out into the world incognito.

The first novel I wrote, about a screenwriter trying to make it in Hollywood, was basically a roman a clef. All the characters were based on people I knew, some very well known, others obscure and struggling, including little ol’ me.

So, not only do I base characters on family and friends, but on people I dislike, too, enemies. And isn’t that fun? We get our little revenges against people who’ve wronged us and, as long as we disguise them somewhat, we get away with it. What’s better than that? Sometimes just naming the bad guy after someone can be a satisfying way to get back at someone who wronged us.

So, yes, everything, everyone, is fodder. So be nice or reach a gruesome death…at least on paper.
What about you? Tell us about how you base characters on people you know.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

The Blues Don't Care is getting some great reviews:

"It’s the first entry in what promises to be an entertaining and thoughtful series --- mysteries that not only have the requisite twists, turns, surprises and reveals, but also offer a penetrating look into our ubiquitous all-too-human flaws: greed, corruption, fear of the “other” and, especially, racism."
—Jack Kramer, BookReporter.com

"This is a beautifully noirish book, set firmly in the dark days of wartime and offering a sharp insight into the life and times of Los Angeles, 1940s style. Yes, it’s a mystery thriller, but The Blues Don’t Care is so much more than that, with historic detail, chutzpah, a cast of hugely entertaining characters, a really unusual protagonist and, best of all, a cracking soundtrack too."
—DeathBecomesHer, CrimeFictionLover.com

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A Tip of the Fedora

The next book you write will be published, under whatever name you choose (yours, or a nom de plume). What will you write? Why?

by Paul D. Marks

The question is very prescient as the next book is already written and will be published on June 1st. It’s already available for pre-order (see end of this piece or click here). So, can I go for a walk with Buster now? No. I guess I better finish the post then. So, as to the why:

The Blues Don’t Care is a little different for me in that it’s set in Los Angeles during the 1940s in the heat of World War II. I’ve written things set in the past before—White Heat and Broken Windows (set in the 1990s) and even some stories set in the 1940s. There’s also a new unpublished but accounted for story set in the 60s. But Blues is my first full-length novel set in what for some might seem like ancient times—the war ended three quarters of a century ago.

But, of course, I wasn’t there, though playing army or war with the neighborhood kids I was there in spirit. And I guess I have a fascination for the era. I think that mostly comes from the music and movies from that time, as well as the general history. So maybe it’s not so far-fetched that I’d want to write a mystery-thriller set during that time.

And, as many people know I have a fascination with L.A. and its history. One of the aspects that fascinates me is the nightlife on Central Avenue, at that time, the heart of black life in L.A. It was a time when African-Americans weren’t allowed to stay in most hotels so black entertainers and dignitaries stayed at the Dunbar Hotel on Central. And next door to the Dunbar was the Club Alabam, the most famous of the many clubs on Central.

The Dunbar Hotel

In The Blues Don’t Care, one of young piano player Bobby Saxon’s greatest desires is to get a gig with the house band at the Alabam, but in order to do so he must first solve the murder one of the band members is accused of. If he gets the gig he’ll be the only white member in the band. And that’s just the beginning of his problems.

Duke Ellington

Let me tell you, doing the research for the music of that time was torture. Having to listen to the likes of Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. Having to watch old movies to get the flavor of the time. Torture. Pure torture. (For those who are humor-impaired, I’m joking here.) Not everything was great back then, that’s for sure. But there is that music and those movies.

I would want it published under my own name because my pen name Art Vandelay is in litigation with George Costanza through my lawyer Jackie Chiles. And Robert Galbraith was already taken.

So, put on your bobby sox, your fedora and your zoot suit and time travel back to the L.A. of the 1940s with Bobby Saxon, at least for a little while.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

Coming June 1st from Down & Out Books - The Blues Don't Care:

 “Paul D. Marks finds new gold in 40s’ L.A. noir while exploring prejudices in race, culture, and sexual identity. He is one helluva writer.”
                                                               —Michael Sears, author of the Jason Stafford series

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