Revisiting Old Favorites

READING If time were no problem, what books (by other people!) would you read again a) from your childhood, b) from your young adult life and c) from the last five years. Why?

Jim

Childhood
This is a tough one. So many books that I loved as a child. My mother taught me to read early. Yes, four-year-old Jimmy was a whiz at reading Dick and Jane, Goofus and Gallant, and, of course, Abélard and Héloïse. Oh, wait. That was a little later. But the book I’d like to re-read isn’t actually a book. It’s a poem. “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes. Why? Because I loved the mood of the poem, dark and romantic; the repetition and rhythm, like a horse’s gallop; and the fact that my mother read it to me countless times as a bedtime story. If this opening stanza doesn’t grab you, check your pulse.

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
         Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.











Young Adulthood
P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster novels and stories. I’m not sure why I love the upperclass twit Bertie Wooster so much. A few things come to mind about him: his charming buffoonery and innocence; his plain thingness; his constant habit of finding himself engaged to domineering women he doesn’t want to marry; and his ageless, carefree existence as a self-described boulevardier. For me, Bertie provides a respite from a festering world of woe.

Jeeves, of course, is the perfect gentleman’s gentleman. He tolerates his master’s quirks and foibles with characteristic phlegm, appears to bend to his wishes while actually imposing his will on the feckless and clueless Bertram. Bertie and Jeeves make for a timeless pair. And Wodehouse’s precious prose is about the funniest stuff I’ve ever read.

Here’s a little known fact: I name my beloved cats after characters in the Wodehouse novels. There was Gus, Bingo, and Barmy (all passed on). Then Bobbie (after Bobbie Wickham) and Clementina (her younger cousin). We were told, by the way, that our cat Clementina was a female. Turned out to be a male, and his name has morphed to Tinker.

Bobbie

Tinker

Past Five Years 
I re-read Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific several years ago. What makes those stories so powerful for me is the juxtaposition of the everyday, humdrum life of the sailors and nurses against the backdrop of the looming battle for the Pacific. Life on the atoll feels unreal or on hold. Stateside mores are lost in this temporary way station. Normality cannot compete with the fear, loneliness, and empty time of a phony war in an beautiful and enchanting place. Nice American nurses from Little Rock fumble away their chastity to opportunistic officers and fall in love with mysterious Frenchmen. Nice American boys from Philadelphia fraternize with brown-skinned Polynesian girls they can never take home to Mother. Great airfields are built and spies monitor ship enemy movements, as battle plans take shape. Atabrine is everyone’s drink of choice.

If I have misremembered any details from these beloved books—which is entirely probable—I apologize. It only goes to show that it’s time for me to re-read them.

Fuel for the writer

by Dietrich Kalteis

If time were no problem, what books (by other people!) would you read again a) from your childhood, b) from your young adult life and c) from the last five years. Why?

I will always make time to reread a great book that I loved the first time around. And I vividly remember some of the books I read when I was a kid, recalling some of the strong images they evoked. Maybe I’ve outgrown the Franklin W. Dixon’s Hardy Boy novels, but back when I was a kid I couldn’t wait for the next adventure from Frank and Joe. Although I was somewhat disappointed when I found out years later that Franklin W. Dixon wasn’t a person, but a pseudonym for a collective of ghostwriters who wrote the series over the years. 

And I loved reading westerns back then, authors like Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. And I read my way through heaps of comics like Dell’s The Lone Ranger and Marvel’s Gunsmoke and Rawhide Kid. It was the silver age of the comic book, so like every other kid I always had my nose in the latest from DC Comics or Marvel. I had stacks of them, and we used to trade them when we were kids. I haven’t read a comic book in a long time, but I might reread some of the novels I loved back then, like The Call of the Wild, Howard Pyle’s tales of Robin Hood, or Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

Later, when I found myself in the halls of higher learning, I was influenced by what everyone else was reading — like Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King.  And I remember novels like Go ask Alice, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the novels by S.E. Hinton. Although my taste for westerns never faded, I got into those by Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry, and of course, the early Elmore Leonard westerns like Hombre or Gunsights. And then there were the teacher’s assigned novels which led to some of my all-time favorite books: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, Animal Farm, 1984 and The Lord of the Flies. All of which I have reread at some point. 

After my schooldays, I discovered other great voices like Bukowski, Kerouac, Hunter S, Thompson, and I read everything by these authors that I could get my hands on. I also got into the crime novels of Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins and Charles Willeford, and thrillers by Ian Fleming and Ken Follett. And I’ve never tired of reading and rereading them. And despite how much I read, there are plenty of books by authors I loved that have slipped by me over the years, and I’m still catching up on some by Robert B. Parker, George V. Higgins and Donald E. Westlake. The trouble with going back and rereading any book is that there are so many new novels coming out all the time, it comes down to a question of having the time to do it. 

Nowadays, I’ve been reading a lot more Canadian crime by authors like William Deverell, Marc Strange, John McFetridge, Owen Laukkanen and Sam Wiebe. And there are many other Canadian writers that are on my to-read list that I’m looking forward to checking out.

So, if an author has a voice that resonates with me, I search out everything he or she ever wrote, and any novel that I consider great will get reread at some point. Reading inspires me to write, and what I choose to read influences my own writing, so reading and rereading can be kind of like fuel for a writer — this one anyway.

Old Friends

If time were no problem, what books would you read again from your childhood, your young adulthood, and from the last five years. Why?

From Terry Shames

I was just having a conversation last night with my husband about The Magic Mountain and how much I would love to read it again. The first time I read it, I galloped forward, propelled by the story, and at times impatient with the density of Thomas Mann’s prose. It’s one of the few books I ever read that at the end I suddenly understood more in retrospect than I got from the parts of the story as I read. It’s a breathtaking, stunning book about the ferment of intellect in the years before World War I. It’s ironic, tense, and intellectually satisfying. To reread it would take not just time but effort.

I read Pride and Prejudice every few years. It’s so amusing and the language so rich! I have reread Sense and Sensibility and Emma, too, all for their wonderful wit. I would like to reread Mansfield Park, the darkest of Austen’s books.

I don’t care to reread books from my childhood. I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on a Raggedy Ann book and zipping through it, if for no other reason than to recall why I loved it, but I have no need to revisit childhood with so many rich books I could read from other times. As a child I read the Nancy Drew books obsessively. I read The Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion at least five times, and have no need to visit it again.

I have reread some classics and been disappointed: The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Angle of Repose, to name a few. All the writers of these books wrote other books I still love, but those didn’t hold up well. I’d like to reread War and Peace to find out if I still think the War part is amazing and the peace part boring. I’d also like to know if I could bear to read all the way to the end. The first time I read it, I was done with it before Tolstoy was. I’d like to reread Absolom, Absolom!, The Sound and the Fury, and The Wild Palms to find out if I still think they are brilliant. I probably ought to dip back into Hemingway to find out if I still think he’s a blowhard and boring (I know, sue me!).

I plan to reread Derek Walcott’s breathtaking full-length poem, Omeros from beginning to end. I dip into parts of it occasionally and it transports me.

My bookshelves are lined with books that I haven’t yet read, and I am increasingly unwilling to finish a book that isn’t compelling. I also have shelves of books that I think I’ll reread someday. And then there are books that I probably will never read, or reread. In the latter case, I keep them because they are old friends. I like to know they are with me—and you never know, I may someday be in restless mood, unable to find just the right book to appeal, and suddenly know that Loon Lake or Crossing to Safety, or V, or The Name of the Rose, or The Way We Live Now, or Outerbridge Reach is just the ticket to take me to another world.

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/

www.PaulDMarks.com

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Sounding my own...by Cathy Ace

QUESTION: "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?"

I would tell myself to get involved in the face-to-face and online community BEFORE the publication of my first book, and to more heavily promote my work, especially when a new book has been published. 

Today, therefore, I hope you'll bear with me while I celebrate the publication in the UK of the fourth in the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries series - THE CASE OF THE UNSUITABLE SUITOR. This is the twelfth novel I've had published, and you'd think I'd be getting used to it by now, but I'm not; it's still the most exciting, terrifying experience you can imagine - and then some!

Here's the blurb: "When the village's prodigal son, Huw Hughes, returns and sets his cap at Annie Parker, village publican Tudor begs Annie's colleagues at the WISE Enquiries Agency to unearth the truth behind Huw having been widowed three times.

With Christine enjoying a break at her family's Irish estate - where she and the brooding Alexander face a surprisingly dangerous case of theft - Mavis and Carol have to work with dowager duchess Althea Twyst to ensure their unsuspecting friend Annie's safety...and possibly the lives of more villagers."

It was published on September 29th in the UK, from where you can purchase it now, with FREE delivery! CLICK HERE FOR THE BOOK DEPOSITORY

It can be pre-ordered ahead of its USA publication at amazon.com: CLICK HERE FOR AMAZON.COM

It can be pre-ordered ahead of its Canadian publication at amazon.ca: CLICK HERE FOR AMAZON.CA

I hope you'll consider purchasing it...and, if its price-point is beyond your reach, how about asking your local library to purchase it instead? Thank you, Cathy

Cathy Ace is the Bony Blithe Award-winning author of The Cait Morgan Mysteries and The WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries.  You can find out more about Cathy, her work and her characters at her website, where you can also sign up for her newsletter with news, updates and special offers: http://cathyace.com/ 

Dear Susan, Circa 2008

Q: 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?"

- from Susan

1.     The laundry can wait. So can Facebook and closet reorganizations and TV reruns. Make a commitment to your professional goal of finishing the first book and honor it, and yourself.

2.     Trust your instincts. You may have been to one or a few writers’ workshops, picked up a lot of advice, taken a lot of notes on the do’s and don’t’s of writing. But, as helpful as they may be, they are given earnestly by writers who aren’t writing your book. I am not suggesting you ignore them, just saying that you need to weigh general advice against the powerful drive that got you writing in the first place. 

3.     Don’t make mountains out of molehills. Yes, writing a good query letter is important, but too many beginning writers obsess about what is really a business letter, not unlike many you may already have written. I know, it’s your soul you’re offering that agent or editor and that’s different. But it is a business letter ultimately. Follow the guidelines you will have heard everywhere, make your case, and put it in the mail (or email) box.

4.     Dress for success. No, not clothes, but that manuscript. Spend time – a lot of time – making it as perfect as you can. No sloppy writing, no big errors. Don’t decide to send it to an agent or editor in a half-baked form with the notion you’ll fix it later once they’ve bought it or you. Guess what? They won’t look twice. Would you show up for a job interview in cut off jeans and a dirty tee shirt?

5.      Believe in yourself, but don’t be arrogant. You believe in what you’re doing, you share it in part of whole with a writing group or a single reader, you have a faculty member read 10 or 20 pages at a writers’ conference. You’re brave enough and you think you have something good. Excellent attitude. But that doesn’t mean you should toss aside any feedback that doesn’t say you have written a New York Times bestseller. Listen without defensiveness.

6.     When you write “THE END,” reward yourself. That’s no small accomplishment!