Whose Responsible This?

Conventional wisdom seems to be moving toward advising all aspiring authors to hire an editor, even before sending the book to an agent. I may not be wise, but I’m often unconventional: I think this is bullshit.

Whose book is it? Do you have a vision for it? If so, stick by it. If not, why are you showing it around? Is the editor supposed to provide that, too? What do you do when the editor differs about how something should go? Roll over? Look for another editor and go best two-of-three? Or stick to your guns, in which case you wasted your money on the editor.

This is not to say editors do not serve a valuable role, but it is best played after a relationship has been developed. Per-page editors may be good, and they may want the best for you and your book, but they cannot have the same investment you have. They edit your book, send the bill, and move onto the next author. That’s their job.

Editors also disagree. My first story submission went to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, a short story about a man who may, or may not, have killed his wife. We don’t know, as the story is told through him talking to what we learn at the end is the priest who accompanies him to the death chamber. Hitchcock declined, but I did receive a note: it needed another character, if just for a second, to provide context.

I added a couple of brief paragraphs where the narrator speaks with a guard and sent that one to Ellery Queen. (The Hitchcock editor did not invite a resubmission. I probably should have tried again, but I was a virgin.) Ellery Queen also passed. Told me to lose the guard, he wasn’t needed. What I lost was interest.

Have I never been helped by an editor? Au contraire. (I like to throw in the occasional bit of French for The Sole Heir, so she knows I pay attention.) My first two agents were enormously helpful as editors, mainly by teaching me what to look for and how to fix things myself. Pam Strickler sent me copious notes on how to tighten my prose and, in retrospect, leave out the parts people tend to skip at a micro level. Barbara Braun provided tips on story structure that help me keep god as far away from my machines as possible.

My success with a purely editorial editor was with Todd Robinson. I submitted a short story to the original Thuglit, and he returned it with notes about the ending, and said he’d look at it again if I wanted to resubmit. (I’m paraphrasing. This is Big Daddy Thug we’re talking about. I’m pretty sure “fuck” was in there a few times.) I thought it over, re-crafted the ending, resubmitted, and—boom!—I had my first sale, and a tee shirt I wear to this day. Todd also picked “Green Gables” for one of the anthologies, thus providing my first paycheck as a writer. (And people wonder why I worship at the Church of Thug.)

The difference, to me, is to show your best effort around, then get editorial assistance if needed. No offense is meant to my many editor friends. Their best assistance may come when an agent or publisher has told you they like the book, but it needs work, and then you’re not sure what to do. Give the editor specifics. (“I can resubmit, but I need to punch up the dialog.” Or, “I’ve been told the setting is weak. What can I do?”) Don’t just send them a book, allegedly your book, and say, “Fix this.” If all you’re getting are generic rejections, your writing may well need more than an editor.

But you’re a fledgling writer, adrift in a sea of uncertainty. Where to start? What do to? What do you want to write, and in what style? The answer is a lot easier than you think, and a lot harder than it sounds: read. All the time. Every spare moment, and make time to have those spare moments. That half an hour a day you spend watching television to wind down? Read instead. Which is more important today: weeding the garden or reading? That depends on which is more important to you, gardening or writing, if today’s schedule demands choosing one or the other? There is no wrong answer, but you can’t learn to write on your knees pulling things out of the dirt.

All good writers are good readers, and by that I don’t just mean copious readers. They know how to read. Don’t read to fall asleep on the beach. Read to learn how writers who are good or great at what you want to write get it done. Need help with dialog? Read Elmore Leonard and George V. Higgins. Want a more staccato, edgier writing style? James Ellroy. You’d like to be more poetic, yet not overly wordy? James Lee Burke or John Connolly. Not saying you have to write like them—you can’t, they’re geniuses—but pay attention to see how they get the effects you like and experiment with those techniques in your own fiction.

My dream was always to be a professional musician. I couldn’t make a living at it, and had to give it up. It broke my heart at the time, but the recovery was quick, because I knew I’d done everything I could. I’d wrung every last drop of talent out of myself, and it wasn’t enough. There’s honor in that; any shame would have come from less than a full effort.

That’s how writing is. You’re going to own whatever success you gain, though, to be sure, you’ll appreciate and acknowledge whatever help you had along the way. (Unless you’re a complete asshole, in which case get away from my blog.) Be prepared to own any failures as well. The way to do that is to be true to your vision of your work, and to give your best effort all the time. Your best effort. Don’t claim your well has run dry when you haven’t yet dug it deep enough. I can live with rejection. What I wouldn’t be able to live with is wondering if what I had written in the first place would have been good enough, when what I submitted was not.

Heaven’s Prisoners (Movie)

The Beloved Spouse and I watched Heaven’s Prisoners last night, a 1995 film starring Alec Baldwin as James Lee Burke’s protagonist Dave Robicheaux. Not a great movie, but a solid effort and well worth watching.

I’ve often wondered why more of Burke’s books haven’t been made into movies. This is the second I’ve seen (along with In the Electric Mist, with Tommy Lee Jones), and both came off well. Louisiana is a great setting for the kinds of stories Burke tells, mysterious more than mysteries, and the scenery and lifestyle are photogenic. New Orleans is just down the road, and The Big Easy is always good for a great scene or two.

I’d not read the book, but had meant to see the movie for some time. Baldwin is good as Robicheaux, though his accent slips occasionally. In his late thirties when the film was made, he’s almost too young to have done what Robicheaux has done by that point in his life (Army, NOLA cop, notorious homicide detective now off the force), but uses that to his advantage. He’s not a grizzled drunk with a hard-on. Baldwin’s Robicheaux wants what’s right, and will push the envelope beyond what’s rational to get it. Every bad thing in the movie happens because he can’t leave well enough alone, but his initial motives are pure. He has no way of knowing when he starts he would have done well not to push things, and it goes badly for him. Once the ball is in motion, he can’t help himself, and he’s more than capable of giving as good as he gets.

The screenplay was written by Scott Frank, who also did the first successful adaptation of an Elmore Leonard crime story with Get Shorty. (Hombre and the original Three-Ten to Yuma both pre-date it and were, of course, superb adaptation of Westerns.) Not having read the book, but well aware of Burke’s work, I saw many of the things that made Get Shorty successful in Heaven’s Prisoners. Frank keeps as much of the original dialog as he can, which adds considerably to the flavor, as both Burke and Leonard have their own distinctive styles with speech. (No, as I said, I have not read the book, but I know how Burke writes dialog. Work with me.) He’s also more concerned about remaining true to the tone of the book than with replicating the plot. Robicheaux’s friend, Clete Purcel, is missing from the film, though there is a scene that could only have been written for Clete in the book, his movie role filled by a DEA agent. Clete is problematic for screenwriters, as his presence in Robicheaux’s life often overwhelms his importance to the plot. (He is also missing from In the Electric Mist.)

Heaven’s Prisoners is not a great film, though it is the kind of movie American studios make too rarely these days: a crime film not filled with car chases and shoot-outs that gets you to the end with a satisfied feeling of knowing your time has not been wasted. (It should be pointed out the two main action sequences and both well done and compelling.) Watching inspired me to go to the local library and pick up a copy for comparison purposes. It also fired up my writing impulses, left mostly dormant for the summer, as it reminded me why I wanted to write in the first place: so I could write stories like that.

December's Best Reads

My reading year ended with a bang.

Mischief, Ed McBain – A good, old-school, everyone gets into the act 87th Precinct story, featuring the Deaf Man. Meyer and Hawes get the mystery of abandoned Alzheimer’s patients, Parker and Kling have to work the killings of graffiti artists, and Carella and Brown have to figure out what the hell the Deaf Man is up to. All the stories end with less than perfect resolutions, and McBain is in fine form as the narrator.

Somebody Owes Me Money, Donald Westlake –The Hunter, played for laughs. Chester Conway gets a tip on a horse and winds, then shows up to collect a few minutes after his bookie gets clipped. The bookie’s widow, his sister, two crime factions, and the cops all think Chet’s involved when all he wants is his $930. He’s going to get it, though. Laugh out loud funny in spots, especially when Chet is laid up and all the other players pass though his bedroom to advance their agendas. Great fun.

Swan Peak, James Lee Burke – His flowing descriptions seem better suited for the lush vegetation of Louisiana than to the sometimes stark beauty of Montana, but Dave Robicheaux always delivers. Clete’s more involved here than usual as a vacation goes sour when he accidentally camps on restricted property. Local law, the feds, organized crime, and a Texas escapee and his pursuer complicate things right up to the ending that doesn’t end quite how you expect.

Shakedown, Charlie Stella – A New York bookie quits the business three months before his old boss turns state’s evidence. Multiple plot lines interweave, and no one does anything out-of-character stupid just to advance the plot; it all makes sense when the decisions are made, no matter how badly things turn out. The mobsters are unapologetically, not caricatures, and the dialog is dead on.

Why I Don't Watch Cop Shows

I haven’t watched a TV cop show since The Wire went off the air, except for a random viewing of Numb3rs when The Sole Heir is visiting. This excerpt from James Lee Burke’s In the Moon of Red Ponies explains why better than I could.

Most television cop shows make use of the following story line: A likeable individual is raped or assaulted, or a hardworking family loses one of its members to a serial killer, or a blue-collar stiff with a juvenile felony on his record gets jammed on a bad beef and is about to be sent to the pen. What happens? A half-dozen uniforms and five detectives with shields hanging from their necks show up at the crime scene and invest the entirety of their lives in seeing justice done. Every law officer in the script, male and female, seems to have an IQ of 180 and the altruism of St. Francis of Assisi. They verbally joust with the rich and powerful, walk into corporate board meetings where they hook up CEOs, and are immune to the invective flung at them by an unappreciative citizenry.

The federal agents who wander into the script are even more impressive. They have tanned skin, little-boy haircuts, and the anatomies of California surfers. Their psychoanalytical knowledge of the criminal mind is stunning. Without hesitation, they conclude for the viewer that serial rapists possess violent tendencies toward women and people who plant bombs on planes are antisocial.

But my thoughts on the subject are cheap in design and substance. It’s easy to be facile about law enforcement. The truth is the good guys are understaffed, overworked, underfunded, and outgunned. Most of the time the bad guys win, or if they do take a fall, it’s because a wrecking ball swings into their lives for reasons that have nothing to do with jurisprudence. If you have ever been the victim of a violent crime, or if you have been threatened by deviates or sadists—and by the latter I mean wakened by anonymous calls in the middle of the night, surveilled by people you’ve never seen before, forced to take public transportation because you’re afraid to start your car in the morning—then you know what I’m about to say is an absolute fact: You’re on your own.

Law enforcement agencies don’t prevent crimes. With good luck, they solve a few of them. In the meantime, if violent and dangerous people intend to do you injury, your own thoughts become your worst enemies. The morning might start with sunshine and birdsong, but by noon it’s usually filled with gargoyles.

Are You Going to Believe Me, or Your Private Eyes?

I’ve been lucky over the past few weeks to have read three books that reminded me why I got interested in crime fiction and writing in the first place: first person private investigator stories.

Libby Fischer Hellmann’s Easy Innocence takes the attitudes of an affluent suburb and shows consequences not often considered. Her detective, Georgia Davis, avoids the pitfalls of many female protagonists. She is not a man in a skirt, ready and willing to kick ass as necessary; neither is she dependent on either a big, strong man or divine intervention to get her out of tough spots. Best of all, she’s smart enough to know the difference and act accordingly.

The Silent Hour, by Michael Koryta, is a cold-case story. Lincoln Perry has many of the characteristics of a stereotypical PI—former cop who left under a cloud, bends and breaks his own rules, trouble maintaining relationships—though Koryta never lets him fall off that edge. His problems are the problems anyone in his situation could have, and he’s anything but omnipotent. Perry takes a beating and keeps on ticking, learning about himself as the books progress.

Declan Hughes’s detective, Ed Loy, takes beatings that make what Perry endures seem like air kisses from a friendly but distant aunt. In All the Dead Voices, Ed inadvertently finds himself cleaning up leftovers from the Irish Troubles, caught between republican terror groups, drug gangs, and government agencies whose interests do not include what most would call a classic sense of justice.

What all three have in common—aside from tight plots and uniformly exceptional writing—is what makes the PI series the highest form of crime fiction; they’re primarily character studies of the hero. (Or heroine, in Georgia’s case.) A good series—as all of these are—works even better, allowing the character to evolve. Attitudes change, as do relationships. Physical and emotional trauma accumulates. The character may grow emotionally, or become embittered. What he deems worthy of description, and how it is described, matures.

For all the talk of the decline of PI fiction, the quantity of expert practitioners isn’t hurting. James Lee Burke and Robert Crais still have hop on their fastballs after twenty years. (Burke’s Dave Robicheaux is actually a cop, but the length of leash he is provided in New Iberia and his personal journey through the series make his stories read more like PI fiction than police procedurals.) Relative newcomers like Sean Chercover and Reed Farrell Coleman prove the talent pool is deep as ever. Dennis Lehane’s upcoming Kenzie-Gennaro novel is much anticipated.

The fictional PI can look into things the average cop never touches. Could Ross Macdonald have explored the rotting foundations of crumbling families with a cop, or did Lew Archer have to be a PI? A cop concerns himself with who and what; why is nice, but is primarily important as a way to get to what, or to help to convince a jury as to who. His caseload is too great to do otherwise. Private eyes are paid to find out why, which often compels some worthy introspection. Cops are about closing cases; PIs are about closure.

PI stories are also better suited for ambivalent endings. A cop’s job is to catch the bad guy. The PI can appreciate the bittersweet nature of all cases, balancing the satisfaction of solving the mystery with the knowledge of his pre-ordained failure: no matter what he discovers, things can never be put right. The dead are still gone. The cop can catch the killer and exact a measure of justice; the PI may be brought in to clean up the mess that doesn’t quite meet the necessary standard of illegality.

It’s no surprise so many of the “genre” writers who receive acclaim from the “literary” community come from detective fiction. Chandler, Hammett, Macdonald, and Burke are all accepted as great writers, not subject to the backhanded acclaim of “great genre writer.” No one thought Lehane presumptuous when The Given Day looked into issues well beyond crime; he’d been doing it for years. Gone, Baby, Gone is as thought-provoking a book as one is likely to read.

Declan Hughes may be the foremost advocate of the virtues of detective fiction, not just in his novels, but in his public statements. If I had a transcript of his comments from Bouchercon 2008, I would have printed them here and saved you the trouble of reading my interpretation; his is clearer and more impassioned. Few books—of any genre, or of no genre—are more likely to make you wonder, “What would I do here?” or, more hauntingly, “What would I have done differently?” When done well, what more can anyone ask from a book?