August Hanrahan is Dead. Long Live August Hanrahan

Not long after my short story “Pandora” appeared in Thrilling Detective, I began taking a fresh look at it and wondering if it could be expanded upon. I was mostly pleased with the story as written, but felt there might be more to it. So I sat down and started diddling with the thing. After a couple of days, the realization crept up and kicked me in the nards: I’d begun turning “Pandora” into a novel.

For those of you who haven’t read the original story (you bastards!), August Hanrahan was a private investigator until he lost his license for interfering with a police investigation (and inadvertently causing the deaths of two people). His left hand was also maimed during that final case and can no longer play guitar. He’s embittered, angry and prone to violence. A couple of old hippies convince August to search for a missing child, goading him into it by mentioning his murdered nephew. Wind him up and off he goes…

Now. Here’s the problem.

I hate August’s name.

Sure, I came up with it, but I’ve come to hate that fucking name. It sounds like I tried too hard to give him a unique moniker, something along the lines of Elvis Cole, Derek Strange, Harry Bosch, Easy Rawlins, etc. I like those characters, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that August sounds gimmicky.

Before he was called August, the character’s name was Gideon “Giddy” Cross. Yeah, I know that’s even worse. I was going to keep it though, until I discovered it had been the name of an obscure comic book character from the ‘70s. But Gideon Cross wasn’t the character’s original name, either.

The character who later became Gideon Cross and then August Hanrahan began life in a story called “The Western Gate,” which was published in issue #53 of The Iconoclast (1998). He wasn’t a detective then, but crime was a central element. The character’s name at the time?

Harris Tilton.

The idea was that he hated the name Harris (and hated being called Harry almost as much), so he always insisted that people call him Tilt. I’ve mulled it over for a while now, and I’ve decided to reinstate the character’s original name. Does it matter to anyone but me? Probably not. But writing Pandora-the-novel feels much more natural in Tilt’s voice than it did in August’s…even though the voice is essentially the same. “It’s all in your head…it’s all in your head…”

So I’ll leave you with a treat (depending on your idea of a “treat”). What follows is the opening page of “The Western Gate,” the very first Tilt story, as published in The Iconoclast eleven years ago. Warts and all. The title, by the way, is taken from Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “Luke Havergal.”

From THE WESTERN GATE:

My father sits there smoking a Lucky Strike, watching Rollo State Penitentiary and the eight grid-patterned streets of Rollo, Wyoming getting smaller in the passenger’s-side mirror. When finally there is nothing behind us but mountaintops and nothing ahead but rolling pasture and the arrow-straight macadam, he looks at me and says, “Thanks.” His first word to me since I picked him up outside the gate. Hell, his first word to me in my whole life as far as I can remember. I’d never even gotten a letter from him until about three months ago.

He’s clean-shaven with a fresh haircut to match. His hair’s mostly gray and his skin’s surprisingly tan for a guy who’s spent twenty-three of the last thirty years in prison. Other than the hair, a few wrinkles and a small fish hook-shaped scar below his left earlobe, he looks just like me. No wonder my mother couldn’t stand the sight of me. She saw in me the man who’d left her, seventeen years old and eight months pregnant, in the middle of the night; the man who’d run off to the west for God knows what reason, only to end up killing some stranger in Wyoming. She saw in me the man who drove her to the bottle, to Jesus, and back to the bottle. Walter Tilton. What could she do with a baby who was the spitting image of Walter Tilton but dump him on her older sister and crawl deeper into booze and religion.

“Harris,” Dad says. We’ve been traveling about two hours now. “Harris, I got to make a piss stop.”

“Nobody calls me Harris.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I hate it.”

“It’s your name, the one your mother liked best for a boy.”

“It’s a faggoty name. Sounds like a character off Mawsterpiece Theater.”

“So what do people call you? Harry?”

“Tilt. Just Tilt.”

“Izzat what your Aunt Polly and Uncle Ray call you?”

Ray’s still snoring in the backseat, too overwhelmed by the idea of being out from under Aunt Polly’s thumb to take in any of the sights.

“Uncle Ray calls me Tilt,” I say, pulling onto the shoulder. “Polly usually just refers to me as You or That Boy.”

Dad snorts, gets out of the car to do his business by the trunk.

Hitting the Wall

This is where I am right now. Stuck here staring at this wall. I was working on the new novel, making decent progress until the middle of last week. Everything I've written since Thursday is crap and I'm not getting anywhere. The only thing I can think to do is just keep hitting the damn wall until one of us breaks. A couple of editors have kindly asked me to write short stories for them, but I don't know if I can afford that much distraction.

Pass me that sledgehammer...

Oh, and swing on over to the blog of kick-ass crime writer and all-around nice guy Declan Burke to wish him a happy 40th.

How'd You Like a Punch in the Mouth?

I finally got back to work on the new novel, chalking up about 1,400 words this afternoon. That’s not much, but it felt good anyway. So what’s this sucker about? I'll tell you as soon as I figure it out. All I’ll say for now is that August gets punched in the mouth by the end of the opening paragraph. As far as he's concerned, things go downhill from there.

A Mind of Winter

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
--from “The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens (1923)


It’s cold this morning: -10°F. Small icicles form in my mustache just walking to the barn and back. The Jeep doesn’t want to start, and I can’t say I blame it. The hard-packed snow in the dooryard squeaks under my boots. Even with heavy gloves on, my fingertips start to go numb. The dog does his best to get around on three legs—not due to any injury, but because he is alternately keeping his right and left hind foot off the ground. Normally happy to make his rounds of the yard and the forest fringe, this morning he does his business as quick as possible and runs straight back to the porch.

In other words, it’s a damn fine day to stay inside and write. That won’t make me feel any warmer, though. The new novel takes place during winter.

Get Some Thrills

The new issue of Thrilling Detective is up and running with new fiction by Stephen D. Rogers, Kieran Shea, Mark Troy and me. “Pandora” marks the debut of my series character, ex-PI August Hanrahan. Check it out and—if you get a chance—drop a comment here to let me know what you think. Be sure to read the other stories, too. Stephen, Kieran and Mark are writers to be reckoned with. Thrilling Detective is one of the best e-zines out there and it’s, well, a thrill to see my work published there. August is in good company.