Sleazy is as Sleazy Does

Sleazy is as Sleazy does.

And little lambs eat ivy. Oops, wrong song.

It’s a funny thing about book reviews—especially when someone is turning a critical eye to your own work. Often, you realize that other people don’t always view your characters in the same light you do. An example:

Steve Moore just wrote a nicely-crafted critique of my hard-boiled mystery Shotgun Start for Book Pleasures dot com. He liked the book, for which I am grateful, and gave it a generally positive review and recommended it. All good. But he had an interesting take on my protagonist, Neal Egan, a former cop who is eking out a living as a golf hustler. Steve says: “Egan is a jerk, cad and misfit.” My immediate reaction: “A cad? A jerk? Is not.” The misfit part of the equation, I’ll concede. But a cad? Steve, this isn’t a Noel Coward play. You might as well have called him a bounder.

But then, I began to think about it. Neal was tossed from the police force because of anger management issues. He makes a living fleecing rich suckers out of their money on the lush country club and resort golf courses of the Albuquerque area. His P.I. partner is a serial adulterer. Now past his 40th birthday, he still drives a vintage muscle car and listens to headbanger music turned up to the bleeding ears range. He withholds evidence from the police. Estranged from his mother, he hasn’t talked to her for ten years.

He doesn’t call his mother regularly? Okay, maybe he is a bit of a cad.  A bounder even. But, I would say, Steve understood the changes I was trying to bring about in Neal’s life and outlook. He notes: One thing I will give him, though, is that he stays away from drugs, something hard to do in his sleazy life where drugs seem to be all around him. “Sleazy” refers more to his obsessions with drink and women—his roomie calls him Slick many times in the book and the name is appropriate.

Sleazy? Sleazy? Okay, I was willing to admit Neal is a cad, but sleazy? Does sometimes starting his day with a Negra Modelo, sharing a house with a beautiful bohemian painter of erotic art, occasionally sleeping with strangers and busting into a biker bar, handgun at the ready make his life sleazy? I think not.

A conversation with my wife revealed that she agrees with Steve about most of these observations about Neal. This made me think about context and frame of reference. As a teenager and college-age whelp, I was one of those kids your parents warned you about. I stayed out late, hung out at pool halls, learned how to French-inhale Marlboros and, had testosterone slapping through my arteries like the Rogue River funneling through a narrow slot in the rocks and would have pretty much slept with anyone of the female persuasion unwise enough to encourage me. My favorite pub featured a bartender nicknamed "Dirtbag" who earned his moniker on a daily basis. I also may have inhaled some marijuana, although Arkansas Bill asked me to deny it. Is it any wonder I drifted into a career as a disc-jockey and professional ne’er do well?

Carolyn, on the other hand, earned a 6.45 on the 4 point grade scale, treated her parents with respect, worked hard at part time jobs and flew through the University of Arizona with flying colors. After that she joined Volunteers In Service to America and helped improve the plight of poor people in Little Rock. I’m pretty sure she was overqualified for sainthood. From what I can gather, she also stayed away from boys like me.

Here’s the point. Because of the direction I steered at that stage of life, Neal’s lifestyle doesn’t seem sleazy to me in the least. In some ways, it mirrors my own experience. I too popped a top while watching Mr. Rogers in the morning. I, too, gambled on the golf course. (Mostly losing). I too, had consensual sex with people I hadn’t been properly introduced to. The people he hangs with are very much like the folks I chose to surround myself with. For Carolyn, (and apparently Steve) Neal and his gang (we’re not a gang, mijo, we’re a social club) were people you crossed to the other side of the street to avoid. That’s too bad. You probably would have enjoyed having a cad or bounder in your life.  

I’m not suggesting that writers should change their approach to characterization to cater to the predilections of the more innocent and naive among their potential readership. I do think we need to keep in mind that the impression your characters make on readers may not always be what you expected.

DISTANT VOICES, INSTANT MEMORIES

My son, Rob just turned forty, two weeks before my sixty-third birthday. I spoke to him the other day, teasing him gently about the inexorable march of time. His response was good-natured, but still, I could hear in him the tone of disbelief that his youth was a distant dot in his rear view mirror and that middle-age was more than something to await, poke fun at and dread. It is, instead, his present reality. He has transformed from the straw-haired gamin-bodied boy of the fading photos in my album to a bald (a gift from his mother’s side of the family, I think), somewhat thick through the waist, hard-working globe-trotter of the first order. His job, coordinating webcasts for Intel studios sends him all over the world. Sometimes, it seems like he spends more time in airplanes than his apartment in Hillsboro. Recently, for the first time in his life and mine, he got a raise and moved into an income category I never attained in my forty-three years of broadcasting. This is a good thing, and I reminded him of the many times he slept on our couch and occupied our spare rooms during the student/multi-hair colored thrash rocker/between jobs phases of his life. “Buy a king-sized futon,” I advised him. “You never know when Carolyn and I will show up at your door.” He laughed, but I detected an uneasy quality to his guffaw.

Coincidentally, about a week before our conversation, I’d discovered an unlabeled flash drive in the glove box of the Prius. It moved to a counter in the living room for a few days and finally, I took it down and plugged it into my computer. When the menu came up with the contents, I remembered where I’d gotten it—a birthday gift from last year’s birthday from Rob.

When my son was nine or ten, a small portable cassette tape recorder became his toy of choice. At the time, I co-owned and operated a four-track recording studio and creative advertising concern with my friend Rick Huff. Rob spent quite a bit of time there and even voiced his first paying commercial, a cute testimonial for McDonalds that padded his Chuck E Cheese arcade game contingency fund by $25. Soon, he was “laying down tracks” of many of the events of his life.

The flash drive contained dubbed-to-digital snippets of Rob, in a quavery sing-song boy-soprano commenting on our day to day life in Albuquerque, spinning stories about imaginary super heroes and editorializing on the “weirdness” of his dad and his partner Rick. This last part is hard to deny—it’s a matter of record with dozens of eager-to-testify witnesses. He also invents and sings songs—about his pets, about school and makes the random joyful noises only a kid knows how to generate. There are also clips of the television shows he was watching, including running commentary and several minutes of me, co-hosting the local segments of the Jerry Lewis Telethon.

I’m not overly sentimental about the past (Who was it said nostalgia’s not what it used to be?), but hearing his voice (and the younger version of my own) put a lump in my throat the size of a ruby-red grapefruit and dampened my eyes. He was a great little kid, a difficult, but still quality teenager and young adult. Now he’s a middle-aged man I’m proud to call my son and my friend. The flash drive is a sobering reminder that I don’t see as much of him as I’d like to.

Thank you, Elizabeth Lyon. (I think.)

         

For ten years, until the end of 2010, I was an associate editor for Elizabeth Lyon’s Editing International.Under her guidance, I worked on 10-12 projects a year, learning to identify strengths of manuscripts as well as weaknesses and/or missing elements. I learned how to model ways to convert “information dumps” into bits of backstory woven into the tale and how to link that backstory and description to character development. I learned to demonstrate how to turn narrative into dialogue and how to inject conflict and subtext. I learned how to link description to action and point of view, and how to enhance character voice and author style . . .

During those ten years I edited for writers who disputed every word of my evaluations and for those who wrote to thank me for my suggestions and kept me updated on their progress toward publication. I edited for writers who probably still have my photo up on their dart boards, and for one or two who became friends.

By the end of that decade, I was pretty good at editing. And I was so tired of it I couldn’t wait to retire.

I came to think of it as having the job of carving the Thanksgiving turkey for a hungry group already gathered at the table. There was no time to admire the bird. I had to slice it apart and get it on the platter.

Other days I thought of editing as looking through a window at an awesome view for a moment, then focusing on the smudges and streaks on the glass, the cracks and chips, the fact that it was only a single pane and not insulated.

Editing changed the way I responded not just to the manuscripts that came across my desk, but to every book I opened.

So, thank you Elizabeth Lyon, for making me aware of what makes characters feel real, what makes dialogue sound like conversation overheard, what makes a story satisfying, layered, rich, memorable.

Thank you for insisting that I demonstrate and model as I evaluated. Because of that, I internalized elements of novelcraft that previously I’d struggled to learn.

And—sigh—thank you for making me aware of all the reasons that a book might fall short. My search for missing elements and weak spots made me better able to see the flaws in my own projects.

Thanks to you, Elizabeth Lyon, I’m a better writer than I was when you first asked me to “take a look” at the mystery written by a client.

But, thanks to you, Elizabeth Lyon, I’ve grown impatient. If a book doesn’t hook me in the first few pages, I put it down. If an author writes away from a critical scene, summarizes a fight in narrative, gives me talking heads in a generic setting, or intrudes to explain something, then I close that book.

Thanks to you, Elizabeth Lyon, I’m so aware of the skeleton beneath the skin, of the muscle and meat and tendon, that it’s difficult for me to see the whole Thanksgiving turkey, to simply enjoy the experience.

Thanks, Elizabeth Lyon. You made me the reader I am today—picky, picky, picky, picky.

http://elizabethlyon.com/

My fantasy life becomes a book

There has been all kinds of speculation about why people write stories. But most would agree that it's a way for them to work through unresolved personal issues, gain perspective on the events of their lives and, in some cases, wreak revenge on people who have wronged them by using fictional characters as catharsis. I co-wrote The Hermit of Humbug Mountain because of a night of terror (all created by the overactive imagination of the precocious 9-year old me) spent wandering around lost on an Oregon Coastal headland. 

Shotgun Start, my hard-boiled detective novel set on the high desert of New Mexico, is, in part, the fulfillment of a life-long fantasy--to be skilled enough at a sport to compete at the highest levels. I have to confess, I have recurring dreams about soaring above the rim and over the hands of the athletic giants of the NBA. Mike Nettleton, the greatest six-foot tall, white, non-jumping power forward in the history of the game, that's me. At 62, I still fantasize about throwing a curve-ball that fools even the most accomplished hitters in major league baseball. A-Rod. Whiff. Ichiro?--sit down bud !!! And golf? I'm totally delusional. 

I've played the game since I was twelve years old, taken lessons from a dozen pros, all of whom, after taking a look at my swing would shake their heads and ask me if I'd considered taking up bowling. "At least you don't have to go look for the ball," one of them told me. As hard as I've worked at it and as much as I practice, I'm only a slightly-above average golfer. Depending, of course on your definition of average.

Creating the character of Neal Egan for Shotgun Start let me live vicariously, as the disgraced former cop hustles rich suckers on the tightly manicured fairways of the country clubs and resort courses of central New Mexico. Neal's talent is offset by the disaster that is his personal life and the danger he faces when his ex-wife's lover is shotgunned to death and the police believe he might be an accomplice. His inability to stay out of the investigation leads him into a world of murderous bikers, the methamphetamine trade, internet pornography and the Mexican Mafia. 


Here's a question for you. What is your longest held secret fantasy? What would you have liked to have done, that you never had the chance (or ability) to do? Would love to hear about it.

A Truce in the War on Drugs

     

 
 
Since we've been beating ideas back and forth for reducing the national debt and making the federal government operate within its means, how about we put an end to the war on drugs? This multi-billion dollar boondoggle has been underway since someone in the Nixon administration noticed that most of the anti-war protestors were dope smokers and continues to suck money and resources out of our country to this day.
     Let's face facts. You are never going to make any significant impact on drug use by trying to impede the supply. People have always used substances to alter their reality and always will. Sometimes the substances are food or caffeine, sometimes they are marijuana and methamphetamine. Even gambling is a form of escape from ordinary conciousness. Some would even argue cell phones have become a nationwide addiction. Certainly, they cause their share of traffic accidents.
     Now, before you write this off as a rant by some drug-ingesting overaged flower child, let me reassure you. One drink is a big party night for me. I no longer smoke marijuana, although I will admit it's part in my distant history. I don't smoke cigarettes, drive too fast, or eat magic mushrooms. I will admit to a skinny white-chocolate mocha three or four times a week. A party animal I'm not. 
     I also recognize that drugs and alcohol ruin many lives, fracturing families, causing horrible traffic accidents and sometimes leading people to commit acts of violence. But . . . 
     The only thing we accomplish by tightening the supply of drugs and arresting users is filling our prisons and jacking the prices of the drug to levels that make organized crime organizations more determined to find a way to get the substances to those willing to pay the freight. 
     Many states, Oregon and Washington included made it harder for small-time crank cookers to put their hands on large quantities of pseudo ephedrine which is used in the manufacture of speed. In succeeding, they froze out many biker gangs and the like who were producing meth in smaller quantities, but created a very lucrative opportunity for organized crime families to import the product in bulk from Mexico and sell it for escalated prices. When we sprayed paraquat on Mexican marijuana plantations, choking off the supply of the cheap, relatively mild weed many children of the sixties remember cashing in their pop bottle money to buy, they helped provide stimulus to the massive marijuana plantation of Northern California that grows more potent and much more expensive cannabis. 
     The other argument you hear against legalizing drugs goes like this. If it's legal, that's telling kids it's acceptable and young people who wouldn't otherwise try drugs will light up. This rationale has been dreamed up by people who either (a) don't have kids (b) don't spend much time around their kids or (c) don't remember what it was like being a kid. For the kids who do choose to use, the very illicit nature of the drug, the danger involved in using it, is part of the attraction. Being a kid is all about defying your parents and what better way than to risk jail with your behavior.  The more we can do to shift the depiction of drug users from glamorous outlaw to pathetic losers who need help, the better off we'll be.
     Here's a common sense approach. Lets legalize all heretofore illegal drugs. Pot, cocaine, heroin, methampetamine, whatever. Create government run stores that would sell regulated amounts of the product to registered users at a fair market price. Use any money generated, after you pay the store's employees and the people who make or grow the substances their cut, to create large-scale rehab programs. Have signage in the stores and run TV and internet ads reminding addicts that they can get into a rehab program instantly to quit their destructive habit. 
     What would this accomplish? First it would take the profit out of drugs and freeze out organized crime and the violence associated with it. Second, it would allow us to identify and treat people with drug issues. Third, the sucking sound of "The War on Drugs" billions circling down the drain would no longer be heard. Instead we'd move the balance sheet into the black and finance programs to rehabilitate drug users. 
    One caveat before I give you a chance to have your say. Despite being against jailing people for drug use, I am for being harsh on people's actions when under the influence of controlled substances. If you amp up on meth and run your car into someone and hurt or kill them, I'd be against you seeing the light of day ever again. If you rob a convenience store at gunpoint for the money to feed your habit, you should also go away for an extended stay behind bars (with a chance at rehab while in). If you abuse or neglect your kids because of your drug use, we should find them new families.
     Instead of hacking programs intended to help the poor and elderly, why don't we look at some common sense ideas for putting a dent in our national debt. I welcome your thoughts.





    

Mellowing Out

Max: Mom says we need to learn a new trick. We need to learn to mellow out.

Bubba: Yeah, Dad says the same thing, but he says we’ve got to chill.

Max: I don’t know if I can learn any more tricks. I already do roll over, jump, dance and drool on dad’s pillow.

Bubba: Mellowing out isn’t a trick, it’s a state of being.

Max: Like the beings Mom puts in salad.

Bubba: Beans. Those are beans. Black beans, white beans, garbanzo beans.

Max: And carrots. She puts carrots in the salad. I like carrots. And celery.

Bubba: (Sighing) Mr. Attention Span. Okay, try to concentrate. (She flops to the floor) See, this is being mellow. Notice that I’m calm and quiet.

Max: Quiet. Sure, I get it. That’s what Mom wants us to be so she can write.

Bubba: And so we don’t have to go to the timeout place.

Max: You mean Dad’s office in the basement. He’s got a nice sofa and soft pillows and sometimes he eats snacks and drops stuff on the floor and after a while he lets us out.

Bubba: And then we run up and jump on Mom’s lap and tell her we’re sorry.

Max: But you’re really not because in a few minutes you’re sitting on the back of the loveseat and barking at anything that moves on the street.

Bubba: Oh, like you’re perfect. Every time that cat comes into our yard you yap your head off and keep going even after I stop. And don’t get me started about the day you chased the fly up and down the stairs.

Max: It was a big fly. It had a wingspan like an eagle.

Bubba: Eagle, schmeagle, it was a fly. A housefly. A baby housefly.

Max: Okay . . . well . . . so . . . but that fly had big teeth. You just didn’t see them. Besides, it’s my job to chase stuff that gets in here ‘cause I’m younger and faster and I have to protect Mom and Dad because they have opposable thumbs and credit cards and they buy the dog cookies.

Bubba: Well, I’m older and slower and it’s my job to bark at stuff on the street so it goes away and doesn’t get in here in the first place. I can’t mellow out and protect the house, too.

Max: Right, ‘cause if you were mellow you’d sound about as mean as Dad when he tells me to get off his pillow. You’d be all like, “Yo, dog on the street, don’t mean to bother you, dude, but you’re blocking my view. Would you mind shaking a leg instead of your tail?”

Bubba: I’m an intelligent female dog. I’ve never said “dude” in my life.

Max: (Sticking out his tongue) Wrong, you just did. Guess you’re not that intelligent after all.

Bubba: (Snarling) Oh, go chase a fly.

Max: (Sprawling on the bed) Later, dudette, right now I’m chilling out.

Back-to-school sales, fresh starts, plot twists, and promises

I’ve never been one to rise early to hit the opening minutes of a pre-Christmas sale. In fact, I’ve never been one to get up late—or any time—to get a bargain on holiday gifts for friends and family.

It’s not that we don’t exchange gifts—although lately we’re more inclined to give to charity instead of to each other—but because all the twinkling lights, shiny ornaments, and seasonal music remind me of wishes unfulfilled and dreams that never came true.

I was never good at holidays. Perhaps if I’d read more realistic books things might have been different. But there was a wide chasm between reality and those fictional descriptions of love and happiness, making the best of things, genuinely encouraging each other’s success, and building enduring togetherness. Too grounded in the way I wanted things to be, I did little to bridge that chasm, and now the memory of it overshadows the season.

Back-to-school sales, however, draw me in like a bass to a wiggling lure. I love to riffle the pages of blank notebooks, touch pens as yet untried, inhale the smell of new pencils, erasers, and glue sticks. I love the slick stacks of rulers and index cards and notebook dividers with colored tabs. I love to zip and unzip backpacks and imagine what will go into the pockets. I love new shoes and shirts and jeans. I love to see kids with fresh haircuts and eyes wide with a mix of fear and excitement and confidence.

But most of all, I love the sense of promise.

Like the pages in those new notebooks, the days of the school year ahead are blank pages on which students will write. There are possibilities and opportunities, tests to be aced and scholarships to be won.

And there are human dramas that, like a mystery with a plot twist in the middle, could change direction and have an ending other than the one we might expect. Struggling students could, this year, make connections. Shy kids could come out of the shadows at the back of the room. A bench warmer could win the big game. The girl who always painted sets for the drama club could get the starring role.

A back-to-school sale energizes me and makes me think about the possibilities in my own life. It makes me eager to plow into new writing projects and finish old ones.

And, to make sure that feeling comes home with me and lingers, I always buy a fresh notebook, a new pen, and a pack of pencils.