Work, Work, Work

I wrote three pages of the sequel to Bitter Water Blues today. Not a great amount, but I’m happy with the way the words came together. The story picks up seven months after the events of the first book, and I sort of have somewhat of an idea where it might be going.

Also, I just got a gig copy-editing the first novel in a new mystery series by an established author. It’s freelance, but the pay’s decent and the publisher might throw some more work my way. Looks like we’ll be able to buy some groceries in August after all.

Reason Number 5,690 Why I Am a Dick

My kids live in fear. They dread next spring, when all the TV networks make the big switch to HD. Why? Because I keep telling them I don’t care enough about television to buy a new set, or even to shell out thirty bucks for one of those converter boxes.

TV sucks ass. Now, you can go into an evangelical fury and tell me how something like The Wire is the exception to the rule, but you’d be wasting your time. I'm sure it's a wonderful show, well-written and brilliantly-acted. So what? The fact that a few programs are good enough to transcend the usual level of swill which makes up the other 99% of broadcast time isn’t enough to win me over. Shitty shows aren’t going to be any better in high-def.

Ooh, American Idol. Ooh, America’s Best Dog. Ooh, CSI Kalamazoo. Why does that kind of trash sell? Because it's what most people want. In too many cases, it's about all they can handle.

The only reason I even have a TV is to rent DVDs from Netflix…and most of those are older movies. I don’t even watch TV news. I listen to NPR and read newspapers and reports online. I don’t want the news to entertain me. I just want the fucking info.

My in-laws subscribe to the Dish Network. 35,000 channels and all they do is bitch that there’s nothing on. My father-in-law switches back and forth from the History Channel to the Weather Channel all day long. And they pay something like eighty bucks a month for the privilege. Now there’s a hell of a bargain.

But the girls will bat their eyes at me. Their chins will quiver. They’ll try to hit me with “We only want to watch PBS Kids.” Never mind the fact that PBS runs the same episode of any given children’s show three out of five days a week. Never mind the fact that my girls are only allowed to watch one hour of TV a day anyway.

I’ll stand my ground. I’ll be the bad guy. And then next spring I’ll drink the Kool-Aid with everybody else and shell out the money for a new TV.

But I’ll still be right, even if I am a dick. And that’s what counts.

I think.

Working Titles And Working Toward A Title

I hate coming up with titles. Every now and then, I begin with a title (“Pandora,” for example) and the story more or less flows from it. Sometimes the title I picked sucks and an early reader will suggest a better one (“Mrs. Viles” became “In the Ditch” thanks to James Patrick Kelly). More often, the title occurs to me as I’m working (Bitter Water Blues).

Now that I’m writing the sequel to Bitter Water Blues, I feel like it should have at least a working title. Why? Beats the hell out of me. Sandra Ruttan blogged a little about this just the other day. My working title for the novel has been Mean Green. I liked it when I first came up with it months ago. However, since this new book has become my main focus, I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with that title. It took me a few days to figure out why.

Let me slide some names past you: Evanovich, Grafton, Mosley, McDonald. I don’t want to get stuck writing books with what I call “theme titles.” Mosley’s "Easy Rawlins" series is brilliant, but what a drag it must be to always have to put a color in your title (except for Six Easy Pieces). I don’t read Evanovich, but what do her titles tell you about the books? Nothing. It’s just a label on a package. Know what I mean? Different sort of example, but you don’t get people going into bookstores and asking for Duma Key. Instead, they ask if you have “the new Stephen King.” It’s the same with “the new Janet Evanovich.” Or “the new Sue Grafton.”

It isn’t that I think my books will ever get so popular as to turn me into a brand-name. I just don’t want to be bound by theme titles. Bitter Water Blues. Mean Green. “Oh, he’s the new guy with the color titles.” Yeah, yeah, publishers want to reduce everything to marketable packages. But suppose Evanovich turned in her next Stephanie Plum and novel and said, “I’m sick of the numbers thing.” What will Grafton do once she finishes Z is for Zoophile? Retire?

Mysteries do have a tradition of titles that serve to unify a series.

Death of an IT Guy. Death of a Substitute Spanish Teacher.
Death in East Overshoe. Death in Hog Holler.
Uncle Bumpy and the Case of the Spurious Caviar. Uncle Bumpy and the Case of the Deadly Truffles.

Tradition. Okay, I get that. But the fact that something has become a tradition does not make it a good thing. I’m not even going to use Mean Green as a working title anymore because its presence forces me into a certain mind-frame (I must write toward this title). Writing is an organic process. At least, it is for me. Committing to a title before the novel is written forces it into a frame. Fuck that.

Yeah, I talk tough now, but then an editor will come along and change the title anyway.

So what do you think? Do you even care about book titles?

Finally!

Revision.
Re-revision.
Re-re-revision.
Re-re-re…well, you get the picture.

All that’s finally done. I just e-mailed Bitter Water Blues to an agent who requested the full manuscript. 83,000 words of nasty country noir. I spent the weekend doing rewrites and now Bitter Water Blues has a brand-new ending. I’m happy with it (though happy the ending is not).

Five years. That’s how long it took me to finish this novel. It’s my first and I wanted it to be just right. A well-known writer whom I respect told me to take my time. I sure as hell did that. It went through a lot of changes.

The adrenaline buzz is winding down and now my ass is starting to drag. My eyes are burning from staring at this damn monitor. I’m taking a couple of days off before getting back to work on the sequel, tentatively titled Mean Green. See, I’m warmed up now. No more second-guessing myself. The first draft of Mean Green should be ready before winter.

I don’t believe in luck, but wish me some anyway.

Deep Thoughts from Tough Guys: Make-That-Deadline-You-Lazy-Bastard Edition

“For the first time it came to me that we’re damned every bit as much by the things we don’t do as by the things we do.”

—Lew Griffin in Black Hornet, ©1996 by James Sallis.

Forgotten Books Friday

Gunsights by Elmore Leonard (1979)

Except for Lonesome Dove and Blood Meridian, I had not read a western since my freshman year of high school. Back then, I read a lot of Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey; not because I was a huge fan of the genre, but because westerns and the Bible were all the Jesus freaks with whom I lived would allow. Why were westerns acceptable? Beats me. Sometimes it’s best not to probe too deeply into the workings of twisted minds.

I was writing, too. I found an old manual typewriter at a yard sale. Five bucks. I had no money, got no allowance. So I asked Mr. and Mrs. Jesusfreak to buy it for me. They said, “We’ll pray about it.” I knew what that meant. They would pretend to clear it with God first, but in the end I’d have to crawl for it. So I crawled. Don’t ask for details. I got the typewriter, though, and my bottled-up anger ensured I always hit those sticky keys hard enough. Fifteen years old and already growing bitter about the things I had to do to learn my craft.

Since I was reading westerns, I tried my hand at writing one. My memory of the story is positive, though the details are sketchy. It was full of worn-out western tropes: a range war, the lone-wolf hero, the tough but vulnerable woman who falls in love with him and the evil railroad baron who wanted all the land and the girl. I was happy with it and started writing another.

Then Mrs. Jesusfreak read that first story. Before the day was over, she had burned the manuscript in the woodstove and confiscated my typewriter. What did I do wrong? I had used the word “virgin” when referring to a fresh snowfall. Mrs. J. declared the story “obscene” because of that. Obscene? Clichéd, sure, I'll confess to that. But obscene? Fuck.

Oh yeah, they also forbade me from reading more westerns. From then until I finally got to move out several months later, I was only allowed to read the Bible (they didn’t know that I spent every study hall in the high school library, finding shelter in books by Stephen King, Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft). For some reason, I never did get back into westerns. I’ve always liked western movies, but the novelists stayed off my radar.

Now jump ahead almost twenty-five years to this spring.

I watched the DVD of 3:10 to Yuma (the new version) and decided it was time I read some of Elmore Leonard’s westerns. On the surface, Gunsights is the story of a copper war in Arizona. It has plenty of action and works just fine on that level. Beneath that, though, it is about people who have been driven to a certain point and refuse to give up any more ground. It is also about two unlikely friends, by chance on opposite sides, who everyone expects to shoot it out any minute. The plot twists and twists again, just as in Leonard’s crime novels. Nothing is certain, right up to the last page. Fans of Get Shorty (1993) will enjoy seeing Bo Catlett’s namesake ancestor in action, too. I can’t say Gunsights ranks up there with Leonard’s best, but it’s gotten me interested in his other westerns. I’ll also have to check out some of the books that James Reasoner has been recommending.

As always, you can find links to the rest of this week's selections (and a master list of all books so far) at Patti Abbott's blog. This is, I think, the fourteenth week of Forgotten Books Friday.

Like a Cut Cat

I like revision. Always have.

I realize that makes me a weirdo, but there you go. Too many writers view the process as a necessary evil. It’s kind of like a root canal in that regard. You know you have to go through with it, but you also know it’s going to hurt like hell. That’s the wrong attitude.

I’m at the tail end of the revision phase with Bitter Water Blues right now. The trick is to tweak sentences, find words that work better than some you used, trim the fat and make sure the continuity is smooth without letting the novel feel too polished and slick. Raw, but not too raw.

Kill your darlings.

There’s the hardest part. One scene in particular was a favorite of mine, but it did not fit the novel. Bitter Water Blues is told in close third-person, with three major and a couple of minor P.O.V. characters. The scene that ended up going featured the husband of one of the main characters, and it was his only P.O.V. scene in the entire manuscript. Also, the wife had already been changed so much as the book took shape that the scene no longer fit their relationship. As much as I loved the scene, I knew it was a drag on the novel. So I deleted it with no regrets.

The man called Tribe was kind enough to run a version of this scene (under the title “Cat Crimes”) on Flashing in the Gutters back in September 2006. I found the file this morning and opened it. Rereading the piece, I have to say I still like it but I know cutting it from BWB was the right decision. No harm in posting it here, though. Some of you will recognize this, but hey, it’s summer: time for reruns.

***

After fifteen minutes of careful scrubbing with damp paper towels, Jim Philbrick gave up trying to clean all the cat shit off his brand-new Kameleon 8-in-1 Universal Remote Control. It came off the housing easily, but the mushy ochre mess oozed into the tiny spaces around each button and there was no way in hell it was coming out. Jim slid open the door and chucked the remote out into the backyard. It hit the chain link fence around the basketball court but didn’t break. Jim threw the dirty paper towel, too, but it just fluttered onto the deck.

“Cocksuckingmotherfuckingnogoodgoddamnsonofabitchingcat.”

Jim stomped back inside. The doily was still on the coffee table. He’d set the remote’s signal to match his TV, VCR, DVD player and cable box and left it on the doily. Now the remote was lying out on the grass and the doily was caked with cat shit. At least the cat got something of Laurie’s this time. Forget the eighty-five bucks the remote cost him. The money didn’t matter so much. It was the goddamn principle of the thing.

He’d bought the remote on his way home from the office because he was tired of using four different devices. It took him half the morning to get the damned thing programmed right. When he’d finished, he’d set it down on the coffee table just long enough to get himself a sandwich and a glass of iced tea before settling down on the couch for serious channel-surfing. Just long enough for Jasmine to stroll in and squat on the new toy.

Laurie’s stack of Cat Fancy magazines sat on one side of the doily and a couple of her mystery novels were on the other. Laurie’s favorite things in life were cats and mysteries. Most of all, she loved cat mysteries. She had all of Rita Mae Brown’s books, “co-written” with a cat named Sneaky-Pie. She had all of Lillian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who… series, books with asinine titles like The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare or The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern. In hardcover.

Jim had an idea for a new book in the series: The Cat Who Took a Dump on the Brand-New Universal Remote that Cost Me $79.99 Plus Tax at the Radio Shack. It wouldn’t be a whodunit. Laurie only had one cat –and she’d settled for only one because Jim was allergic—a fat Persian named Jasmine.

Jasmine. Even the name pissed him off. Jim believed that all animals, for better or worse, had personalities. Like some people Jim knew, Jasmine was a sneaky, rotten little asshole. When Laurie was home, the cat walked around like it owned the place, giving Jim the look. She had a flat, arrogant face and her eyes showed contempt for every living thing except Jim’s wife. The cat would sit purring in Laurie’s lap and look across the room to Jim as if saying, “You got a problem?”

Times like now, when Laurie was at some committee luncheon or off banging her realtor boyfriend at one of his empty listings, Jasmine slunk from room to room, avoiding Jim and shitting on any of his possessions left lying about. Laurie refused to believe her precious Persian would do it, even when confronted with the reeking evidence. She always said, “It’s your own fault, Jim. You upset Jasmine so.”

His hatred of her gave Jasmine some kind of feline anxiety disorder and disturbed her bowels? Jim wanted to disturb her bowels with a baseball bat. He looked for the cat now, getting down on the floor to peek under the sofa, the chairs, end tables. Nothing. The boys kept their bedroom doors closed, so she wouldn’t be upstairs. He tore through his and Laurie’s room. There she was, hiding in the closet on a stack of spare blankets. Even when he had her cornered, Jasmine gave him that look, the I-can-shit-on-your-stuff look, the I-don’t-care-who-knows-I’m-fucking-around-on-you look.

Smiling at Jasmine, Jim reached for the strongbox on the top shelf. He’d come up with a new title for his book: The Cat Who Ate a Fucking Bullet.

©2004 by Patrick Shawn Bagley