To Be or Not to Be Easy Rawlins or Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander

This week's 7 Criminal Minds question: What black character would you want to be for a day? 

by Paul D. Marks

Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins

As a sort of Part II to my last 7 Criminal Minds post (Easy Does It), in which we were asked to talk about “a source of inspiration you’ve derived from a black American author,” and where I talked about Walter Mosley and his characters Easy Rawlins and his psychopathic friend Mouse, in response to this week’s question, I would have to say that I’d want to be either Mouse or Easy for a day.

Part of me would rather be Mouse. He doesn’t care who he fucks up or what he does. But much as I like Mouse and his quick-draw instant retribution and justice, part of me would rather be Easy for a day…because it would be easier since, for the most part, he lives a normal middle class life.

Mouse is probably always looking over his shoulder, paranoid, waiting for someone to pop him. And while this happens to Easy sometimes and he gets into that frame of mind I think it’s less so for him and he lives a more normal life. He’s a property owner, he has kids and a house. He has friends. I’m not sure Mouse has many true friends. Some yes. But with a guy like Mouse are they friends or friends out of fear? Do they really respect him or do they just fear him? I think, on the other hand, Easy is actually respected and has friends who like him for himself.

Don Cheadle as Mouse

Yet, on the other hand, Mouse knows the streets. It would be hard to sneak up on him or get something by on him. Mouse is the guy you want backing you up and Easy goes to him when he needs fearless muscle.

Mouse

Mouse is (mostly) loyal and a good friend, but that doesn’t mean an insult, perceived or otherwise, won’t set him off to the point of almost killing you, or even going all the way in that regard.

Walter Mosley

Mosley says of Mouse at Crime Fiction Lover ( https://crimefictionlover.com/2013/06/interview-walter-mosley/ ) “I always describe Mouse as small with rodent features—a light coloured [sic], light eyed black man who would kill you without a moment’s hesitation. The contradiction of his appearance and potential is what makes him so scary.”

Don Cheadle as Mouse (center)

Easy was born in 1920. And I’ve often said, when asked what other time I’d like to be born in, that I’d want to be born in 1920, then I’d be twenty in 1940. Do my bit in World War II, hopefully survive, and come out into the mid and late forties noir world. Okay, I know it wasn’t so great on a lot of levels, but there is that swing music, those noir movies, and those hats and trenchcoats.

And who wouldn’t want to be played by Denzel Washington in the movies? Who wouldn’t want to be the good guy like Easy, who saves the day?

All that said, fuck it, I’d rather be Mouse.

Raymond 'Mouse' Alexander

~.~.~

And now for a little BSP:  I’m running a free promotion for people who subscribe to my newsletter. You can get a FREE e-copy of my novel Vortex. Just subscribe. And if you’re already a subscriber and want the novel contact me via my website or e-mail and I’ll send you the link for the download.

I'm also excited to announce that I've got a new book coming out in 2020: The Blues Don't Care. It's a little different for me. It's set in 1940s Los Angeles jazz scene during World War II. I hope you'll keep checking in for more news on this exciting new release.

***

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Easy Does It

Discuss a source of inspiration you’ve derived from a black American author. How has their work affected yours?

by Paul D. Marks

Many things and many people inspire me one way or another. But as a mystery/crime writer, I really enjoy Walter Mosley and his character Easy Rawlins. And as much as I like Easy, I might even like his sidekick Mouse more.

Pretty much anyone who knows me knows I have a thing for L.A., past and present. LA history. LA culture. And novels and movies set in the City of the Angels. Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress (1990), the first Easy Rawlins novel, hits all those bullet points and I was blown away when I first read it when it came out. And, much as I Iike Easy, I really like his psychopath friend, Mouse. Not someone you want to get on the wrong side of but certainly someone you’d want to have your back when the you-know-what hits the fan.

I like how Mosley weaves in the history of the times he’s writing in. He has the ability to drop you into the time period so you really get a feel for what it was like to live in that time and society. His keen observations on society and race are peppered throughout his stories. I also like that he focuses on the social issues of the times, while still keeping the fast pace and intrigue of a hard-boiled crime novel.

Here in the opening lines of Devil in a Blue Dress you have a great example of voice. We get a taste of the narrator’s (Easy Rawlins’) personality and we want to know more about him. Yes, we’re intrigued by the white man who walks into the room, but the real grabber is Easy’s reaction and the little tidbit of his history that we learn about. His character draws us in:

I was surprised to see a white man walk into Joppy's bar. It's not just that he was white but he wore an off-white linen suit and shirt with a Panama straw hat and bone shoes over flashing white silk socks. His skin was smooth and pale with just a few freckles. One lick of strawberry-blond hair escaped the band of his hat. He stopped in the doorway, filling it with his large frame, and surveyed the room with pale eyes.

I had spent five years with white men, and women, from Africa to Italy, through Paris, and into the Fatherland itself. I ate with them and slept with them, and I killed enough blue-eyed young men to know that they were just as afraid to die as I was.

In White Butterfly, set in 1956 Los Angeles, Mosley and Easy deal with a series of murders of black women that go unsolved until a white woman is murdered and then the LAPD comes to Easy for help. Mosley comments on a well-meaning white librarian and provides us with insight into the complex relationships and racial tensions of that time:

…I was unhappy because even though Stella was nice, she was still a white woman. A white woman from a place where there were only white Christians. To her Shakespeare was a god. I didn’t mind that, but what did she know about the folk tales and riddles and stories colored folks had been telling for centuries? What did she know about the language we spoke? I always heard her correcting children’s speech. “Not ‘I is,’ she’d say. “It’s ‘I am.’” And, of course, she was right. It’s just that little colored children listening to that proper white woman would never hear their own cadence in her words. They’d come to believe that they would have to abandon their own language and stories to become a part of her educated world. They would have to forfeit Waller for Mozart and Remus for Puck. They would enter a world where only white people spoke. And no matter how articulate Dickens and Voltaire were, those children wouldn’t have their own examples in the house of learning—the library.

In my writing, I write all kinds of characters, including, black men and women. Howard Hamm in Ghosts of Bunker Hill is a black P.I. There are several black characters in the Duke Rogers series (White Heat and Broken Windows), and also in my upcoming novel The Blues Don’t Care, set on the L.A. homefront during World War II. And you could say that at least in part they were inspired by Walter Mosley, Easy Rawlins and Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander.

~.~.~

And now for a little BSP:  I’m running a free promotion for people who subscribe to my newsletter. You can get a FREE e-copy of my novel Vortex. Just subscribe. And if you’re already a subscriber and want the novel contact me via my website or e-mail and I’ll send you the link for the download.

I'm also excited to announce that I've got a new book coming out in 2020: The Blues Don't Care. It's a little different for me. It's set in 1940s Los Angeles jazz scene during World War II. I hope you'll keep checking in for more news on this exciting new release.

***

Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website  www.PaulDMarks.com

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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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Deeper and Deeper

Paul here:

This week I’m thrilled to have Dennis Palumbo guest blog here. Dennis is a screenwriter (My Favorite Year, Welcome Back Kotter, and more), psychotherapist and the author of the Daniel Rinaldi series. His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Strand and elsewhere, and is collected in From Crime to Crime (Tallfellow Press).

Dr. Daniel Rinaldi is a psychologist and trauma expert, who consults with the Pittsburgh Police Department and specializes in treating the victims of violent crime. And that’s something he knows about personally: Rinaldi’s wife was murdered in a mugging and he was shot. He struggles with survivor’s guilt. Now he’s on a mission to help others deal with their traumas, while at the same time getting involved in cases and helping to solve the crimes.

Head Wounds is the fifth Rinaldi story, preceded by Mirror Image, Fever Dream, Night Terrors, Phantom Limb. For more info, visit www.dennispalumbo.com .

Take it away, Dennis.

***

This week’s question: What difference do you notice between the prose in crime novels that were written twenty years ago and current ones? Do you think the writing has gotten better? Are the subjects different?

by Dennis Palumbo

The question is a tricky one, because no one regards the prose of such authors as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell or Ross Macdonald more highly than I do. These brilliant stylists could craft starkly beautiful sentences while still retaining both the suspense and the mystery that their novels promise.

That said, there’s little question in my mind that, in general, today’s crime fiction has broadened in its subject matter and deepened in its exploration of those areas. As good as the above-mentioned authors were, both their own prejudices and the social or moral constraints of their respective eras prevented them from addressing (except in the most covert way) issues of sexual orientation, racism and child abuse.

Twenty years ago, most readers expected little more than action, suspense and a cluster of red herrings in their mystery stories. It was also fairly customary to treat characters who strayed outside conventional norms (in terms of gender, race, moral dictates, substance use, etc.) in somewhat stereotypic fashion. They were still presented, even if occasionally with sympathy, as the “other.”

Moreover, the point of most crime fiction of decades past, even at the hands of such famous masters of the form, was to solve the mystery and reveal the killer. The whodunit still reigned supreme.

But times change, and so has crime fiction. From Richard Price to Gillian Flynn to Megan Abbott, the themes---and even the very goals---of these novels have expanded. Today’s crime fiction addresses and explores a much wider and more inclusive variety of characters and situations, from sexual identity to immigration to child abuse. These issues are now frequently tackled head on, and with a more empathetic and knowledgeable approach. Such “outlier” issues---and characters---are no longer the exception to the norm; they are the norm.

As a therapist, I can’t help but think that some of these narrative shifts in tone, theme and characterization are due to a more mature understanding on the readers’ part of the complexity of the human condition. Moreover, as psychological terms and disorders are more commonly (though often erroneously) talked about, readers expect today’s authors to have a more frank, thoughtful view of life today.

(I could make the argument, for example, that Gone Girl is as much a sly, snarky commentary of the state of contemporary marriage as it is a crime novel. It was as if Phillip Roth or John Cheever had turned their talents to psychological suspense.)

In my own novels, featuring psychologist and trauma expert Daniel Rinaldi, the narrative itself is usually informed by the emotional issues (often birthed by the trauma of violence, abuse, etc.) of the characters. As a consultant to the Pittsburgh Police, and in his role treating victims of violent crime, my protagonist’s clinical acumen can help shed some light on what might be going on. (Except those times when he’s wrong.)

The point is, I believe my readers expect that the psychological underpinnings of character, motive and general plot conform to what most of us understand as how real humans behave in the real world. 

Maybe, twenty or thirty years ago, most readers didn’t expect a crime novel to take such a deep dive into character, nor expect the narrative context to reflect so accurately the current state of affairs, either personally or politically. But nowadays, crafting a mystery (even a cozy) without at least a glancing nod at the realities of contemporary life seems antiquated, almost deliberately opaque.

I’m reminded of a comment made about the work of P.G. Wodehouse: as wonderful as he was, he wrote as though neither Freud nor Marx had ever existed.

I think the same sentiment holds true for today’s authors. We live in a rapidly-changing, media-drenched world whose mores and behavioral expectations are in turmoil; a time of global pandemics, terrorism, economic inequality, gender fluidity, sexual predation, and other social and political concerns. For crime fiction to stay relevant, I believe it has to, at least tangentially, acknowledge these issues.

Which, I’m happy to report, it appears to be doing. The best of today’s mystery fiction authors, from Dennis Lehane to Tana French, Scott Turow to Denise Mina, George Pelicanos to Louise Penny, deliver prose that is both beautifully crafted and cannily relevant to the times.

Of course, there will always be readers who enjoy the simple pleasures of earlier mystery fiction, whether the comfortable world of Agatha Christie or that of tough-guy Mickey Spillane.

But, if today’s best-seller lists are anything to go by, crime fiction is continuing to evolve and change, as is the society it inevitably mirrors.

Besides, as the author John Fowles soberly reminds us, “All pasts are like poems; you can derive a thousand things, but you can’t live in them.”

***

Thanks, Dennis. And be sure to check out Dennis’s books and find out more about him, and them, at his website (above).

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

Broken Windows releases on September 10th and is available for pre-order now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Down & Out Books.

Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website www.PaulDMarks.com

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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.

A Totally Unbiased Review of White Heat ;-)

Write your own review of YOUR last book.

by Paul D. Marks

Well, who better to review my book than me. Because no one can be more objective, neutral, fair, honest, trustworthy, impartial, disinterested, unprejudiced (if you want more adjectives than this I’m gonna have to hit the thesaurus) than me? But, as the saying goes, If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when? I guess the answer to the question of when is now:

And, taking a little liberty here, but not Cinderella liberty, instead of reviewing my last novel to come out, Vortex, I’m going to review my first, White Heat…because it’s being re-released in May by a new publisher (Down & Out) as a precursor to its sequel coming out in the fall. And besides, I have pictures of the new cover so I want to share them

So here goes:

In Paul D. Marks’ explosive new thriller White Heat P.I. Duke Rogers finds himself in a racially charged situation. The case might have to wait... The immediate problem: getting out of South Central Los Angeles in one piece – during the 1992 “Rodney King” riots – and that’s just the beginning of his problems. White Heat begins where the Rodney King Riots leave off.

Duke finds an old “friend” for a client. The client’s “friend,” an up and coming African-American actress, ends up dead. Duke knows his client did it. Feeling guilty, he wants to find the client/killer. He starts his mission by going to the dead actress’ family in South Central L.A. While there the riots ignite. 

While Duke tracks down the killer he must also deal with the racism of his partner, Jack, and from Warren, the murder victim’s brother, who is a mirror image of Jack in that department. He must also confront his own possible latent racism – even as he’s in an interracial relationship with the dead woman’s sister.

The novel looks at race and racism from everyone involved, black and white, and no one gets off unscathed.

If there’s a criticism to be had it’s that the subplot of the woman who hires Duke to scare off her stalker could be better integrated into the main plot. But a little birdie spy told me that that issue is taken care of and the subplot is much more integral to the main story in Broken Windows, the sequel to White Heat coming out in Fall 2018, and which follows a similar plot structure, 

Here’s what others have said about White Heat:

“...taut crime yarn set in 1992 against the turmoil of the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of the police officers charged with assaulting motorist Rodney King.... the author ably evokes the chaos that erupted after the Rodney King verdict.”
—Publishers Weekly

“WHITE HEAT is a riveting read of mystery, much recommended.”
—Midwest Book Review

“[WHITE HEAT] really caught early 90s LA, in all its sordid glory. And had me turning pages late into the night. I think WH is up there with the best of the LA novels, but has an air of authenticity that many lack.”
—Woody Haut, journalist, author of Neon Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction; Pulp Culture: Hardboiled Fiction & the Cold War; Heartbreak and Vine: The Fate of Hardboiled Writers in Hollywood

The original White Heat cover

“Expect the unexpected...in an action-walloping award-winner of harrowing twists and turns...”
—Gordon Hauptfleisch, Seattle Post Intelligencer and BlogCritics.org

“A gripping tale of prejudice and deceit, set against the tumultuous backdrop of the 1992 L.A. riots. White Heat is all the title promises it to be.” 
—Darrell James, award-winning author of Nazareth Child and Sonora Crossing

“Written in a staccato, noir style as intense as the 1992 LA riots, WHITE HEAT is a stunning debut novel by LA native Paul Marks. It grabs you with the intensity of the riots and keeps the anxiety and tension pushing full-throttle right up to the bittersweet ending. Heat is a hard-hitting, noir detective thriller, that also deals with tough issues like racism, the “diversity” of racism, and the human condition.”
—Andrew McAleer, best-selling author of 101 Habits of Highly Successful Novelists and Fatal Deeds 

“I fell in love with Duke, Jack, and Rita. I also loved Teddie, even though we never met her alive.”
—Elizabeth Barone, ElizabethBarone.net

“This book is packed with action, suspense, a dab of humor at times, and basically all the ingredients needed for a great read. I highly recommend it and look forward to the next installment of Duke Rogers.”
—R.J. Parker True Crime Author and Amazon Top 500 Reviewer

“...Marks had me reliving those moments of fear – his details and descriptions made me feel like I was back in LA and it was all happening again... This book comes at a time when racial tensions are once again high in this country – so a reminder of just how terribly things can explode is always welcome.”
—Kat Yares, Amazon Vine Voice

“…Set at the time of the 1992 Rodney King riots, the novel provides a fictitious focus that serves as a metaphor for the social turmoil of the times. Marks writes fearlessly about his characters, and he also writes fearlessly about prejudice, rage and injustice….  Every page is on fire.”
—Jon P. Bloch, Kindle Book Review


Hang on tight for a white knuckle read!
Paul D. Marks' debut novel White Heat couldn't be better titled, since it burns like a phosphorous bomb, illuminating the mean streets of Los Angeles at a time when they were at their meanest, rawest and most incendiary: during the 1992 riots that tore the city apart after the Rodney King beating verdict. Those of us who lived through that time remember the wounds all too well, and, like the characters in this staggeringly-assured first novel, remain conflicted as to who should actually be blamed for inflicting them. What may be even more remarkable than Marks' evocation of one of LA's most challenging moments is his creation of that rarest of avises, a wholly original P.I. protagonist, in the form of Marion "Duke" Rogers, a former Navy SEAL who struggles to maintain his honor despite a near-crippling guilt complex. If that weren't enough, the author manages to propel his flawed hero into his dangerous, duty-bound quest through one of the most ingenious motives I can remember reading. White Heat is a tough, tersely-written book featuring tough, complicated, and not always lovable characters who might push many readers to the very edge of their comfort zone. But it's honest and it's real, and doesn't it doesn't pander to its audience by providing pat or phony answers to the many complex issues it raises. 
—M2

Well, it’s my book. What am I gonna do, trash it? 😉

White Heat is available for pre-order now:

Amazon
Down & Out Books

The new White Heat cover from Down & Out Books
Coming out in May 2018

***

And now for the usual BSP:

I’m happy to say that my story “There’s An Alligator in My Purse” has been selected for the 2018 Bouchercon anthology, Sunny Places, Shady People, edited by Greg Herren. It's more off the wall than what I usually do, but I had a hell of a good time doing it.

Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website www.PaulDMarks.com

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Yesterday and Today

If you could talk to the person you were when you were writing your first-published novel, what insights and guidance would you give yourself about the writing life?

by Paul D. Marks

Younger Paul

Younger Paul: Hey, Paul, how ya doin’? You look different than I remember you.

Older Paul: Really, how so?

Well, less hair for one thing.

Yeah, tell me about it. Anything else? Anything good, like do I look smarter?

Hmm, not really, dude. Maybe a little more wrinkled. Do you think you’re any smarter?

I hope so. I hope I learned something in all these years.


Oh yeah, what’d you learn?

Older and Wiser Paul

I learned to get in less fights.

Oh yeah, less fights with who?

With everyone – from the producer who threatened to send his pals in the Mossad after me to burly construction workers.

You learn anything about writing? Or the writing life.

I learned that you have to be patient. I wanted to be an overnight success. And that happens, but it happens to very few people. Most overnight successes have been slogging around for years.

So what should I write about?

Don’t follow fads. The writing world changes quickly. Don’t write a vampire book when vampire books are all the rage. You might get in on it but more likely you’ll be late. Be ahead of the curve, not behind it. Make your own curve. Write what you want. Though I think I pretty much always did that, at least in terms of prose writing.

Think long-term: The first novel I completed was accepted for publication at a major publisher. It was a satire on a screenwriter trying to make it in Hollywood. Eventually, the whole editorial staff at that publisher was swept out and as a new broom sweeps clean my book was swept out with them. And since the humor was topical it was pretty dated even after only a couple of years so it couldn’t really go to another publisher. The lesson: don’t write things that are so topical that their shelf life is shorter than yogurt left on the counter on a steaming, hot day. Remember what George S. Kaufman said, satire is what closes Saturday night.

Any other pearls of wisdom?

And when I wrote that book the NY publishing scene was still more like the Old Club publishing business, where people actually read and relished books and good writing. Today it’s more like Hollywood. More commercial. More big name and blockbuster oriented. And, like Hollywood, they’re looking for High Concept stories. On the other hand, there’s a lot of smaller, indie publishers out there these days who aren’t quite so constrained in what they’re looking for—though they do have their constraints too. So my advice to my younger self on this would be to remember that, whatever you’re writing, the number one goal is to entertain. As Sam Goldwyn is reputed to have said, If you want to send a message call Western Union. That’s not to say you can’t have something to say in your stories, just say it an entertaining way.

I would tell myself not to go kicking and screaming onto social media, but to take it in stride. It’s actually worked out pretty well for me. And along those lines, be nice to people. Pay it forward. A lot of people have been nice to me and I’ve tried to do the same. No more screaming matches—or worse—as with the producer who threatened to send his pals in the Mossad after me.

Contemplating the Future

Don’t listen to everyone’s silly advice. New fads come along and some producers/editors/agents—what have you—fall for them. For example, they’ll insist you have eight beats to a scene or follow the Hero’s Journey or whatever the fad of the day is. Write a good, tight story, but write your story your way. That’s not to say it should be all over the place, but you don’t have to follow every new fad.

Don’t rewrite for everyone. Just because an editor or agent says you need to do X or Y doesn’t necessarily mean to do it. Of course, not doing might mean they’ll tell you to take a hike. But doing it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll buy the property either. So do what works for you. And don’t let anyone change your voice! Some will try to do that. Resist.

Be true to yourself. You can’t please everyone and there’s no guarantee that if you rewrite something they’ll be interested anyway. So don’t rewrite unless you’re getting paid or if you think it needs work.

So what’s your bottom line?

As RM said earlier in the week, “I guess it would be folly to try to change who I was, because who I was is who I am, and the road I travelled had to be travelled.”

The thing is, if we had done things differently we might not be the writers we are or even the people we are today, so we wouldn’t be writing the things we write. I've had a lot of adversity of one kind and another and haven't particularly enjoyed it, but without it I don't know if I'd be able to write what I write. So, I guess the bottom line is we are who we are because of the sum of our experiences.
So, be open to advice, but be true to yourself.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Yeah, it’s probably not a good idea to kill off the dog in a story.

Thank you for joining me, Older Paul.

Thank you, Younger Paul.

You’re welcome, Older and Wiser Paul.

***

And now for the usual BSP:

Please check out the interview Laura Brennan, writer, producer and consultant, did with me for her podcast, where we talk about everything from Raymond Chandler and John Fante to the time I pulled a gun on the LAPD and lived to tell about it. Find it here: http://destinationmystery.com/episode-52-paul-d-marks/

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The Times They Are A-Changin’

The world is changing faster than you can write - technologically, politically, environmentally etc. How do roll with the changes in your fiction?

by Paul D. Marks

I don’t really think about it. We’re just immersed in those things so they make their way into what we write by osmosis. As long as we’re not living in a cave these changes just become part of our daily lives and thus our writing.

However, It’s true that the world is changing faster than we can write. Between the time we write something and the time it comes out that snazzy (anachronistic word choice) new cell phone we mention is already an outdated brick. But there’s not a lot we can do about it. Ditto for the rest of technology and politics. So you just have to go with what’s current at the time and hope for the best. Or you can try to be generic in your writing as to technology or politics, but I think if you do that you miss something that gives it a sense of verisimilitude.

As far as environmentally goes, unless the place you’re writing about ends up falling into the ocean or getting covered in volcanic rock, most places don’t change all that quickly. Now, if you’re talking a cityscape, those can change via development, and somewhat quickly. But usually you can see what’s coming in that arena. However, you can also choose to just go with it as it is at the time of writing. For example, I’m working on a story now and a couple scenes are set on a specific corner in L.A. That corner is being leveled to make way for new development that, by the time the story sees the light of day, may exist in the form of new buildings. My scenes take place at a construction site on this corner. As I say, that site maybe no longer be under construction but might be a building or partial building when the story comes out. But I’ve chosen to go with the site as it is now. Besides, how many people will know what this particular corner looks like at any particular moment while they’re reading my story?

The harder thing, in my opinion, is not what’s changing today, but writing something set in the past, especially the recent past. We’ve all been there in our lives so it’s easy to spot that smart phone in the 1980s before smart phones existed, except for Dick Tracy, who had one in the 1940s in the form his wrist radio.

My novel Broken Windows, the soon-to-be sequel to White Heat, is set in 1994 and in writing it I had to make sure that I had the right version of Windows for the characters’ computers (3.1 – remember how cool that was?), the correct songs, and other things common to that era. But also to make sure that I didn’t transpose things that we’ve become accustomed to since that time into that era. Believe it or not, that actually takes some thinking and sometimes some research – trying to remember what was appropriate to that fairly recent time and get it right.

Long before White Heat, I did a satirical novel about a screenwriter trying to make it in Hollywood. While almost everything he goes through is real (happened to one extent or another), the story was very much part of the time in which it was written, the 1980s. The humor was very topical to that time – remember Jessica Hahn? See what I mean. That gave it a very short shelf life. And that novel actually got picked up by a major publisher. Then that publisher’s editorial staff was swept out and replaced by a new editorial staff. As a new broom sweeps clean, my novel was swept out with them. But because the humor in it was so topical and timely it was never picked up by another publisher. I still like the story and one of these days I plan to rework it but sans any topical humor.

So I think the key is just to roll with it, go with the flow. Write what you want, try not to be anachronistic but also try not to create sci-fi with things that don’t exist unless that’s something you’re doing on purpose. Just write a good story and send it out in the world to stand on its own two fonts.

***

And now for the usual BSP.

My short story “Ghosts of Bunker Hill,” from the December 2016 Ellery Queen is nominated for a Macavity Award. If you’d like to read it, and the stories of all the nominated authors, please check them out at the links below. If you like my story I hope you’ll want to vote for it. And thank you to everyone who voted for it and got it this far:

Lawrence Block, “Autumn at the Automat”: http://amzn.to/2vsnyBP
Craig Faustus Buck, “Blank Shot”: http://tinyurl.com/BlankShot-Buck
Greg Herren, “Survivor’s Guilt”: https://gregwritesblog.com/2017/07/21/cant-stop-the-world/
Paul D. Marks, “Ghosts of Bunker Hill” http://pauldmarks.com/Ghosts-of-Bunker-Hill
Joyce Carol Oates, “The Crawl Space”: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N6INC6I
Art Taylor, “Parallel Play”: http://www.arttaylorwriter.com/books/6715-2/

If you want to read a great article on the Macavity nominees, check out Greg Herren's blog: https://gregwritesblog.com/2017/07/24/beatnik-beach/

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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Truth, Justice and the Crime Writing Way!

What prompted you to become a writer of crime fiction?

by Paul D. Marks

Uh, time to delve into 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, 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 earlier in the week, “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.

White Heat on Amazon

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.

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?

***

And now for some refreshingly new BSP:

My story Twelve Angry Days is coming out in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magaine, on sale at newsstands starting April 25th. Or click here to buy online.

And I’m thrilled to announce that my short story, “Ghosts of Bunker Hill,” was voted #1 in the 2016 Ellery Queen Readers Poll. 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/

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No books, please - I'm writing

Do you avoid reading mysteries when you're writing them?

Are you kidding? I'd never have any time to read them! I'm on the second first draft of the year, which means I've been writing since Christmas and I've read fifteen crime novels in that time  . . . because I had to.

I had to read some because I said I'd blurb them if I liked them.
I read, liked, and blurbed:

• Judy Penz Sheluk's Skeletons in The Attic because what's not to love about a book with a dead-or-alive hook and an old house that's getting gussied up too.
• Susan Spann's The Ninja's Daughter: which I might not have, because I'm Rumsfeldian in what I don't know about Japanese history. Boy oh boy, I'm glad I did. I can still smell the food.
• Tammy Kaehler's Red Flags which I absolutely would have because when I had to read Simon Woods' Aidy Westlake motor-racing books  I found out I loved this theme. And I loved this book.
• Cynthia Kuhn's The Semester of Our Discontent. An accurate enough portrayal of academic life to give me flashbacks to the bad old days of working in a university, but worth it.

Others I had to read because I was moderating the authors on a panel:

• Nancy West Smart But Dead Best. Title. Ever. And a masterclass on putting hard stuff (genetics) in a lighthearted story.
• Terry Shames The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake. I would have read this anyway; I've read every word Terry has written but this way I got to call it working.
• Triss Stein Brooklyn Graves. As above. Every word. And Triss's description of the next book sent me straight to the dealers' room.
• Carla Buckley The Good Goodbye. You know how you love Lisa Scottoline and Joy Fielding and yet somehow you manage not to have read an author who writes those books and does it so well you kind of hate her? That.

Or I had to because I was interviewing the author:

• Ann Cleeves Silent Voices
• Ann Cleeves The Moth Catcher
• Ann Cleeves (re-read) four of the Shetland novels.

Guess who I was interviewing.

Yet others I had to read because we were all on the Mary Higgins Clark shortlist together and ...well, I had to:

• Frances Brody A Woman Unknown
• Hallie Ephron Night Night, Sleep Tight
• Susanna Calkins Masque of a Murderer
• Lori Rader Day Little Pretty Things

And the rest I had to read I had to read because I'm breathing: Robert Galbraith Career of Evil,
Karin Slaughter Pretty Girls, and Harlan Coben Fool Me Once.

That leaves just one:- Charlaine Harris's Night Shift. I had to read it because what's the point of having it in your mitts two days before it's even published (because you bought it at Malice) if you don't show off on the plane home?

The woman in the seat beside me didn't care but one of the cabin crew was filled with envy. That's all I ask. I think Night Shift might be my book of the year so far. I'm in deep denial that this third installment is truly the end, though.

What have you read so far in 2016 that's made a big impression?