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

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

Click here to: Subscribe to my Newsletter

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

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

Click here to: Subscribe to my Newsletter

The Publishing Times They Are A Changin’

What change in the publishing landscape over the past decade and a half has impacted you the most?

by Paul D. Marks

There’s a lot of things one could say here: social media, Netflix et al, because they take time from people reading. Smart phones and other things that have shortened our attention span and added to our need for things in short, fast, adrenalin-inducing bites. All of these have affected publishing, even if they’re not directly publishing. But if I had to pick one thing it would be Amazon—on several levels.

When Amazon started they were mainly a book seller. Then, if I remember correctly, they expanded into CDs and videos. Now, of course, they sell everything. You could probably buy a submarine on there if you wanted to. But they still sell books. And they’ve changed how books are published and sold.

And then there’s the Kindle (and like-minded devices). Instant gratification: you don’t even need a bookstore anymore. Other people do it too, Nook, Kobo, et al, but Amazon seems to have gotten the ball rolling. You can order any time of day or night and your book magically appears. And while I have a Kindle app on my tablet and do read books on it occasionally, I still prefer hardcover or paperback books. Call me Ishmael, uh, I mean call me old-fashioned. But in this coronavirus time of house arrest, er, sheltering in place it’s nice to know you can download a book that’s never been touched or breathed on by anyone else….

That said, these devices, along with being able to order books so easily on line and have them arrive in a couple of days, led the way to the demise of many brick and mortar bookstores, though I keep hearing that bookstores and paper books are making a comeback just like vinyl.

Amazon also made self-publishing a real thing and that has definitely changed the publishing landscape. Now there are more authors than you can throw a book at. And self-publishing has pluses and minuses, like most everything else. It’s given a lot more opportunity to a lot more people and it’s also opened up publishing to people who maybe should really be thinking of another line of work. I use it to self-publish single previously published stories. And it works pretty well.

Amazon also gives us an opportunity to push our books like never before. And to see “instant” ratings. To get reviews by customers and give them. Which can also be frustrating when we want to respond to a bad review, especially one that might not have anything to do with the actual content of a book, but we bite our tongues.

There are also the scammers who manage to find a way to manipulate the numbers and get their books at the top of the list. Or the sock puppeteers who post fake reviews to get more attention or take attention away from their rivals. But I think—I hope—these seem to be happening less and less.
As a writer, I think Amazon opened the floodgates to a huge variety of books that the old traditional publishing world would never have allowed through the gates. Some good, some bad, but overall better for writers and readers to have more choices. Also, older and more obscure books stay in print forever and are easier to get.

I know some people have complaints about Amazon and some are valid. But overall I think Amazon has been a boon to publishing, and especially to writers. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

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

"The Blues Don’t Care is a fun, atmospheric look at 1940s Los Angeles that almost perfectly captures the tone of all those old black and white gangster movies of the day. Bobby Saxon is such a fan of those films himself that he uses them as training films in his quest to make himself into a detective capable of solving a murder the police have little interest in solving for themselves. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it makes him crazily reckless. And that’s exactly why The Blues Don’t Care is so much fun. (Well, that and one other thing about Bobby you’re going to have to learn for yourself – trust me.)" —Sam Sattler, Book Chase

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

Click here to: Subscribe to my Newsletter

Character Incognito – Or: Revenge is a Dish Best Served…On Paper (if you don’t want to go to jail)

Do family and friends and their lives become fodder for your stories and, if so, do they ever recognize themselves and complain? 

by Paul D. Marks

Of course I use family, friends, frenemies, enemies, and virtually anyone else who crosses my path! Don’t we all. That’s not to say there’s a 1:1 relationship between a character and a real person. And most characters are composites of more than one person. But characters are definitely inspired by people I know, people I come across. 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. Most of the time people don’t recognize themselves and sometimes they think a character is based on them when it isn’t. People don’t see themselves even when it’s pretty blatant because they don’t see themselves the way you portray them, especially if you portray them in a less than flattering light. They are, of course, too wonderful for words so that evil villain could not possibly be based on them. Yes, I’m thinking of a real person right now. Someone who is barely disguised in something of mine, down to the exact words the character says. And this person read it. If they recognized themselves they never said anything to me. Of course, maybe they sent a hit team after me. I’m sleeping with one eye open.

I was in a very famous LA eatery and bar, Barney’s Beanery, when two guys got into a fight. You can bet that made it into a story. And sometimes I might ‘borrow’ a story someone’s told me and use it. I had a friend who worked in Hollywood who told me that her boss was on the phone with a certain big name movie star and, when the boss inadvertently called him by a shortened version of his name, he hung up on him. That became the inspiration for Joseph – don’t call him Joe – Hartman, the producer that Duke works for in Broken Windows. So be careful what you tell me. If I like it I might use it. (This story is modified to protect the innocent…and guilty.)

But 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.

Some of my favorite stories are revenge stories, The Count of Monte Cristo being the prime example. In it, Edmond Dantes exacts revenge on those who’ve wronged him in very clever ways, hoisting them on their own petards (whatever the fuck a petard is – just kidding, I know).

Once upon a time there was a fellow, let’s call him John Doe. He was a total asshole, though I didn’t know it when we first entered a business arrangement. He totally flaked on me and he made it into a screenplay I was working on at the time. And he didn’t come off very nice. And I didn’t change a thing about him except his name. So I enjoy petarding people in my work.

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. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but that novel was accepted for publication at a major house. Then a new editorial staff was brought in and like a new broom sweeps clean, my book was swept out with the bathwater. And because it was a satire and the humor was topical it was too late to get it to another publisher. Lesson learned: don’t use topical humor.

And let’s not forget the places, objects, clothes, cars, etc. that I’ve borrowed/stolen. I’ll set scenes inside a friend’s house, only now it’s not their house but the house of one of my characters. Duke Rogers, the private detective and main character in White Heat and Broken Windows, lives in a house that’s very much based on the house of a friend of mine, though with some authorial remodeling. And Jack Lassen, the main character in my story Windward lives in an old 50s bomb shelter. I actually had a friend who lived in one. The one my friend lived in was in someone’s backyard. Jack Lassen’s is under his office in Venice and much larger and nicer. Still, the idea came from my friend’s very cramped, but unique, living quarters. Then there’s the black over orange classic Firebird that Duke drives in White Heat. It was my dream car for many years (well, that and a Porsche Targa). So, one day Amy and I are visiting a friend in Arizona. I’m telling him about that car, my dream car. And it’s like that scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen pulls Marshall McLuhan from behind a sign in a theater lobby. My friend says, “Come with me.” We walk back to his garage. He opens the door and sitting in there is a classic orange and black Firebird. In this case the story came first, but it was one weird coincidence.

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 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:

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

Click here to: Subscribe to my Newsletter

Character Archetypes: The Comfort Food of Writing

Which crime fiction archetype do you find truly essential to the genre? Which would you like to see retired for a while? 

Note: Instead of a Jungian interpretation, I'm going for something crime fiction related, e.g. introspective gumshoes, screaming police superiors, alcoholic ex-investigators, reluctant detectives, that sort of thing. 

by Paul D. Marks

Which crime fiction archetype is essential?

Archetypes are a funny thing. On the one hand they’re familiar. They allow us to get into a story quickly and relate to the characters. We know them, without having to be told a lot about them, at least initially. You know, the dreaded info dump. It’s like comfort food only comfort characters. So that’s a good thing. On the other hand, archetypes can become hackneyed and clichéd. And therefore lifeless and dull. Predictable. So it’s a fine razor’s edge (my favorite book btw) that one has to walk to keep that from happening.

For me the noir anti-hero, who’s been kicked to the gutter and comes back for more, is one of the essential crime fiction archetypes. I think it’s something that most people can relate to on some level – we’ve all been down, though hopefully not to the extent of a noir protagonist. And I think this is one of the things that draws people to crime fiction in the first place – we want to root for the underdog (even if we know s/he’s doomed as is the case with most true noir “heroes”). We want to believe that people can be redeemed and can come back from the lowest point and fight for justice, even if they never achieve that justice. It’s the human struggle that we all understand.

David Goodis and Jim Thompson are two of my favorite noir writers. Okay, neither is very original or out of the box, but good is good (and Goodis is Goodis). And both often write about people on the skids, who often don’t stop skidding and even if they do they never really get back to a place of normalcy. Even Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins is someone who’s constantly fighting to maintain his place in the world. In Nightmare Alley, by William Lindsay Gresham, Stanton Carlisle truly falls from grace (if he ever really attainted it) and the ending of the book is much more noir than the movie. And so many more.

***

Which would I like to see retired?  

I can think of a few but the main one that bugs the $^%@&*# out of me is the investigator that magically pulls rabbits out of hats. They bombard us with red herrings and then out of nowhere they have some clue so obscure that Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, J. Edgar Hoover and the dataminers at Facebook couldn’t find it in a Google search (and, as we know, they know everything about everyone and everything) and – voila! – crime solved. I’m not sure if this is really an archetype or not, but it drives me nuts.

Along with the above and often in the same corporeal body is the busy-body amateur who’s always there when someone’s murdered! If you’re a neighbor or friend of this person, you better get all your affairs in order ’cause you’re probably not long for this world. I mean …come on… how can one person run into so many crimes in such a small space? Or if not a small space everywhere they go.

Jessica Fletcher comes to mind. Everywhere she goes: dead bodies. She’s the Typhoid Mary of Murder. One can understand this in the case of a cop or a P.I. as they deal with crime and criminals on a regular basis. But she’s neither. She’s a middle-aged, middle class (maybe upper class) woman in a small town, and a writer to boot (how many dead bodies have you come across in your writing career or any career if you’re not in law enforcement or a first responder?). I’m surprised there’s anyone left in Cabot Cove at all. Maybe she kills them so she has something to write about for her books ;-) . – And don’t get on my case about her, I’m just kiddin’ around. The show is fine. She’s fine. You’re fine…just as long as you’re not in the same state as her.

But, all that said, I think a writer can make any archetype work if they make the character fresh and don’t rely on trite character ticks. I used to teach a class on screenwriting and would tell my class that “character” is not smoking a stogie or picking their nose with a .38 (as a producer once put it to me), it’s their actions and the choices they make. So go ahead and have your character wear a deer stalker hat, but let them do something that grabs our attention and makes us say ‘wow’ that’s original.

What are the archetypes you think are essential and which should be retired?

###

And now for the usual BSP:

My Shamus-winning novel, White Heat, is being reissued in May by Down & Out Books. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon.  Release date is May 21, 2018:

Check out my website: www.PaulDMarks.com

Click here to: Subscribe to my Newsletter

~.~.~.~

...And now for even more blatant BSP:

There’s still time to nominate for the Anthony Awards if you haven’t already voted. Ballots are due by April 30, 2018.

I have four stories eligible for Best Short Story and one book for the Best Anthology category:

“Windward” – Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea (and as a note: this story has been selected by Louise Penny and Otto Penzler for The Best American Mysteries of 2018).

“Bunker Hill Blues” – from the Sept./Oct. 2017 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine – now available to read on my web page: http://pauldmarks.com/stories.The others you gotta buy – but, hey, support mystery publishers.

“Blood Moon” – from the Day of the Dark anthology, Wildside Press, Kaye George, editor

“Twelve Angry Days” – from the May/June 2017 Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea – for Best Anthology. Edited by Andrew McAleer and me. From Down & Out Books.

Hopefully you’ll have time to check out my stories, as well as others. Thanks!

***