WRITING MY NOVELLA: OBSERVATIONS, NOTES AND WHAT I'VE LEARNED

I learned many things about the book writing process, namely it should have taken me less time.

I just submitted my completed manuscript for the FIGHT CARD novella 'Union of the Snakes' to Paul Bishop for editing. It will be out later this year (perhaps Fall) and I will keep everyone updated with details regarding its release. That said, I want to share eighteen observations that I made about my writing process, specifically for this project.

1. It should have taken me less time. Far less time.

2. The reason why it may have taken me so long is that I'm an awesome procrastinator. I've elevated the pastime to an Olympic-level sport.

3. YouTube, Facebook and whatever cheesy reality show that happened to be on television was my chief antagonist during the novella writing process. If I actually liked Twitter, THAT would be my enemy, too.

4. Working at a newspaper all day doesn't help the creative process. Many nights, I came home devoid of the will to put theoretical pen to paper.

5. You can conceive, write and complete a novella on weekends in a chain coffee shop. Yes, I'm THAT guy.

6. I've come to respect my fellow writers who knock out their e-books - one after another - and make it look effortless. I bow to you all.

7. If you can pardon the cliche, I just tried to write the book that I, myself, would want to read.

8. The more I write, the absolute less I read. In fact, I try not to read much of anything while I'm writing. Quite simply, I don't want another scribe's voice in my head.

9. UNION OF THE SNAKES was written entirely in the cloud. Sure, a local copy was saved on my main laptop, but whenever I switched computers, it was waiting for me, no matter where I was. My primary service was SKYDRIVE with a backup on Google Drive and Dropbox. On days when I didn't feel like lugging out the laptop, the writing was done using the same services on my iPad and a GREAT app called IA Writer.

The one, the only Fred MacMurray

10. Nothing gets me in the mood to write more than an old film noir. If Bogie's in it, all the better. If it's Fred MacMurray, I'm in Nirvana.

11. To prepare for this FIGHT CARD novella, I must've watched about 100 film-noirs, neo-noirs and just your all-around basic hard-boiled crime classics -- all on a loop. Truth be told, I got something from each and every one of them.

12. Sometimes I found research to be a fun and necessary distraction. My story is set in various locales in 1954 - namely Hollywood and Chicago - so I really wanted to ensure that I had a strong sense of historical context.

13. Thank God, I don't outline. The journey would have been way less fun if I really knew where it was all going.

14. Music, above all, really is a chief muse of mine. Especially music of the era I'm writing. Jazz, jump blues and onion ballads really fed this beast.A Spotify playlist for 'Union of the Snakes' was my main inspiration.

15. As someone who has embraced to hard-boiled/noir genre, I've come to love first person narrative. In fact, I have a newfound respect for it.

16. I'll be honest... Every now and then, tense tripped me up if I wasn't on my toes. I found my character saying things he couldn't possibly say.

17. As I was writing, I came to the realization that if you're not matriculating on more than one form of social media, you might as well be placing stamps on a hand-written query letter. The pimping of your book comes long before you write 'THE END.'

18. Hemingway was right: "The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck."

Tweet

Read More

PULP/NOIR: DAN TURNER HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE AND AUDIO TREATS

You tend to find some gems while poking around the web in the wee small hours. While hunting on YouTube for a NOIR documentary, all sorts of goodies come up -- namely some full-length gems like "Detour," "Borderline" " Cape Fear" and "While the City Sleeps." I've created a Noir playlist (a work in progress) so enthusiasts can enjoy. These are perfectly watchable on a smartphone or tab. Enjoy.

One YouTube discovery simply that simply blew me away was an audio reading of a. short story that centers on Hollywood detective Dan Turner written by prolific scribe Robert Leslie Bellem. I looked Bellem up and to say he was prolific is an understatement. He penned over 3000 pulps with Turner starring in at least 300 during the heyday of men's magazines.

When most of the pulps folded, Bellem went on to an equally prolific TV writing career for such shows as "The Lone Ranger," "The Adventures of Superman (1950s version)," "Perry Mason" and "77 Sunset Strip."

But his first person prose as Turner virtually sings on the page and this audio reading (by the gravel-voiced Steve Black) is a stupendous example. Personally, I wish Black made more of these.


Here are links to Part Two and Part Three. Certainly worth a listen. For more on Bellem click HERE and HERE.

Finally, if you like your pulp and noir in audio form, I've also stumbled across a wonderful streaming radio station called AUDIO NOIR that plays hundreds of pulps and detective stories that were heard on the radio back in the day. It supports most audio platforms. Here's the link.

Tweet

Read More

THE BARE BACKS OF VINTAGE PULP

... Clearly a thing of beauty. A tip of the hat to Bish at Bish's Beat where a plethora of pulp pleasures preside and prevail.

Tweet

Read More

PULP PLEASURES: ART IMITATES LIFE

Am I crazy or is the beauty in the beret Lauren Bacall? Gorgeous... More pulpy delights at Bish's Beat.

Tweet

Read More

PULP MAGAZINES WHERE HAVE YOU GONE?

If they were still around, how many of us would be churning out tales for the pulps?

The inexpensive fiction magazines were published from around 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, a half an inch thick, and 128 pages long. Pulps were printed on cheap paper with ragged, untrimmed edges.

They coined their name from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. Those printed on better paper were called "glossies" or "slicks." In their first decades, they were most often priced at around a dime while competing slicks were 25 cents apiece.

Although many respected writers wrote for pulps (Elmore Leonard, Philip K. Dick and Tennessee Williams) the magazines are best remembered for their scandalous and exploitative stories and sensational cover art.

Adventure stories catered to its overt male audience and featured glamour photography and lurid tales of adventure that featured wartime feats of daring, exotic travel or conflict with wild animals.

As for the inside, it was all very un-PC and filled with typically fictionalized or over-embellished stories of war, survival, crime, safari, and the Old West.

The adventure mags are generally considered the last of the true pulp magazines and had reached their circulation peaks long after the genre-fiction pulps had begun to fade. These magazines were also colloquially called "armpit slicks", "men's sweat magazines" or "the sweats", especially by people in the magazine publishing or distribution trades.

Enjoy the slideshow (which I did not make).

Read More

ASK THE DUST - VINTAGE PULPY COVER

How deliciously vintage is this pulpy cover for John fante's "Ask teh Dust," a true favorite of mine.

The under-appreciated Fante's second outing chronicles the adventures of the writer's alter ego, Arturo Bandini, a struggling young writer who tackles Los Angeles in the late 1930s. He gets it right and sets it down in his Chianti-steak-and-potatoes style, with prose both simple and rich.

Fante was born in Colorado in 1909 and began writing in 1929. He published numerous short stories, novels and screenplays in the following decades. "Ask the Dust" is a coming-of-age novel set in the City of Angels and was first published in 1939.

Says Charles Bukowski in the preface:

On his first encounter with Fante's work...

"Then one day I pulled a book down and opened it, and there it was. I stood for a moment, reading. Then like a man who had found gold in the city dump, I carried the book to a table. The lines rolled easily across the page, there was a flow. Each line had its own energy and was followed by another like it. The very substance of each line gave the page a form, a feeling of something carved into it. And here, at last, was a man who was not afraid of emotion. The humour and the pain were intermixed with a superb simplicity ... that book was a wild and enormous miracle to me."

John Fante died in 1983.

The book was made into a halfway-decent film starring a miscast Colin Farrell and the hot as hell Salma Hayek

Read More