Noir fiction for the modern reader.

Once again, James Scott Bell has reeled me in to his topic du jour over at The Kill Zone. Today he waxed eloquent about the treacherous path from idea to story. Seems he had an idea for a full chapter some years ago, so he wrote it down. Then he set it aside as other projects commanded his attention. Eventually, though, he went back to it and extracted a novella from it. That brought to mind a similar experience of mine.

Approximately 25 years ago, a friend of mine said, “When I write my novel, I’m going to start off with this line: I moved into the Napoleon House on the day XXXXX died.” (I forget the guy’s name who died, but he was well-known around the Napoleon House in New Orleans) The line struck me as a good one. I loved the idea of tying a new-day-dawning event with someone’s death. I was well into my first novel at the time, but this line stayed with me.

Fast forward to 2009. I’m ready to start a new novel. I’m casting about for ideas. I know that, since I can’t really make up stories in advance, I’m going to have to wing it, as always, letting my characters tell the story while I merely write it down. That line, which had festered in the outer swamps of my memory, awaiting reclamation, finally showed itself and I jumped on it.

I changed it around a little, turning it into, “I got back to Key West on the day Aldo Ray died.”

Of course, I now had to add tens of thousands of additional words to complete that story, and I had no idea what those words would be, but the line got me going. I asked myself, “Who’s coming back to Key West, why is he coming back, and what’s the deal with Aldo Ray?” Ray was a movie actor from the 1950s, usually assigned to tough guy roles, so I took it from there and before you could say “Key West noir”, the book had taken flight.

Which brings me to the title.

I had actually completed the first draft without a title. I had absolutely no hints as to what this novel would be called. I was getting desperate and my title-idea well was virtually dry. Fortunately, I was playing professional poker at the time at Bellagio in Las Vegas and that would be my salvation.

In Las Vegas cardrooms, if a player wants a new deck, he/she requests it from the dealer. The dealer then calls out to the floorman for a setup, which is casino parlance for a little box containing two new decks of cards. One day, a player at my table made such a request and the dealer hollered out, “Setup on fourteen!”, since we were playing at table fourteen at the time. Something snapped inside me and I mentally transformed that to “Setup On Front Street“, and I had my title.

I’m just glad we weren’t sitting at table five or something. I’d probably still be searching.

Over at the Kill Zone today, James Scott Bell posted a very articulate blog about self-doubt among writers. According to Jim, virtually all writers are gripped with fear for most of their lives, 100% certain that they will be exposed as frauds or worse. Even the likes of Stephen King, Jim says, live in fear because they’ve set the bar so high with their previous successes, topping it often appears impossible.

Jim is himself an excellent writer with quite a few novels under his belt, along with the how-to book, Plot And Structure, which should be (IMO) required reading for all writers. So he’s not coming at this from left field. I’m sure he’s been plagued with doubt himself. And, like most of us, he gets over it after he writes each book, only to have it rear its head again as he sits down to write another one.

But when Stephen King or Dean Koontz start whining about self-doubt and how they’re just positive their lack of talent will be exposed, it’s real hard for me to gin up any sympathy, you know what I mean? And I certainly don’t get the touchy-feely “we’re all in this together” message that I’m supposed to be getting. Those guys, and others like them, sell millions and millions of books, they get huge advances, they sign movie deals worth a king’s ransom, and they crank out best-selling novels like Burger King cranks out Whoppers. Now, I know, they’re all worried about whether their next book will be any good, but who cares? They know deep down–and the rest of us know, too–that their next book is going to light up the charts just like all the rest of them did. All they have to do is click “send” and watch their latest novel shoot off to their eager publishers.

Real self-doubt, on the other hand, resides in those of us who have never been able to get the attention of even a single can’t-be-bothered literary agent or a mainstream publisher, those of us who wander unguided into the darkness of the self-publishing netherworld, those of us whose books can never seem to get off the ground, never take flight.

Real self-doubt resides in those of us who labor away at the computer, sweating out plot developments and dialogue just like Stephen King does, without being propped up by seven-figure advances, wondering if this will be the book that finally gets a little attention, gets a few readers.

Real self-doubt resides in those of us who are denied real membership in the elitist Mystery Writers of America and other such organizations who sneer at self-published authors, who claim our work is merely part of a giant “slush pile”, who arrogantly claim we’re contributing to a mountain of “crap” that has been made possible by the recent ease of self-publishing.

Real self-doubt resides in those of us who really do wonder, given all the above roadblocks thrown in our path, if we can write after all. And the question plagues us, is it all worth it if our only destiny is to be crushed under someone else’s train that has already left the station.

Put a bestselling author in those circumstances and let’s see what happens to his/her self-doubt. Want to bet it would feel a lot more real?

I drifted into The Kill Zone today and read John Gilstrap’s post on the future of big publisher advances to authors. The consensus was that the days of six and seven-figure advances are numbered. John went on to say that advances will probably shrink right down the line, to the point where only the biggest of the big authors will be able to make a living writing fiction.

Dana King added a comment likening the situation to that of professional musicians, where only those at the top can really make a living.

Having been a professional musician for thirty years (now retired to become a writer), I see the analogy to full-time writing. During those decades, though, I never held another job, not even once, and yet I remained the “midlist author” version of the music world: a journeyman musician.

Through those years, I made a good living, never large but never in squalor, either. I played in concert venues in front of tens of thousands of people and in smoky bars for no one at all. I played in recording sessions in state-of-the-art Nashville facilities and in makeshift home studios. I played on TV and I played while the TV was on. But I always worked. I might add, a lot of my fellow players could make the same claim. I was by no means a glaring exception.

John Gilstrap also said this, later in his post: Self publishing will become the solution for some, I suppose, but I continue to believe that the only writers who have even a remote chance for success via self publishing are those who have already established their names via traditional means. There’s just too much noise out there for newbies to have a real shot. Here I must respectfully disagree.

It only seems that way because yes, there is a lot of noise, but traditionally-successful writers do not have a lock on the self-publishing business. Not by any stretch. On January 7, 2011, Robin Sullivan did a guest spot on Joe Konrath’s blog, where she unleashed these astounding figures:

These are DECEMBER sales figures for some indie authors. In other words, they account for only 31 days of sales. Are you ready to be blown away?

Blake Crouch – 2500+
Nathan Lowell – 2500+
Beth Orsoff – 2500+
Sandra Edwards – 2500+
Vianka Van Bokkem - 2500+
Maria Hooley – 2500+
C.S. Marks – 2500+
Lee Goldberg – 2500+
Lexi Revellian – 4000+
Zoe Winters – 4000+
Aaron Patterson – 4000+
Bella Andre – 5000+
Imogen Rose – 5000+
Ellen Fisher – 5000+
Tina Folsom – 5000+
Terri Reid – 5000+
David Dalglish – 5000+
Scott Nicholson – 10,000+
J.A. Konrath 10,000+
Victorine Lieske – 10,000+
L.J. Sellers – 10,000+
Michael R. Sullivan – 10,000+
H.P. Mallory – 20,000+
Selena Kitt – 20,000+
Stephen Leather – 40,000+
Amanda Hocking – 100,000+

For a more detailed breakdown, visit Derek J. Canyon’s bloghttp://derekjcanyon.blogspot.com/2011/01/keys-to-epublishing-success.html. This was compiled by him, and Robin Sullivan.

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Now, of those names on that list, only six had ever had a traditional publishing deal as of the date of that posting. Six. I don’t know about you, but up until a few months ago, I had never heard of most of those names. I still don’t know some of them. And yet, look at the figures.

Traditionally-published authors, I think, look at the world of self-publishing through a very different prism than the purely indie author who has never had a legacy deal. The trad guys, who, like myself, used to sneer at self-publishing as a place where people go when they’re not “good enough” to get published and where they pay to put out their own crap, are slowly beginning to see self-publishing as a beckoning candle in the darkness of the uncertain future. They look into it and they see that they are going to have to do all the work previously done by their publisher and they become intimidated by the very scope of it all. Soon they figure they have no shot, and hope, like the rest of the New York world, that self-publishing will self-immolate or otherwise go away.

The pure indies, though, see it quite differently. They see their chance to have a novel out there, being read by people other than family and friends. Sure, it’s going to take a lot of work to promote it, but they don’t care. They’re tired of querying agents who are so arrogant, they never even bother to respond with a rejection notice. They’re tired of publishers unctuously telling them they only accept “agented manuscripts”. And they’re really tired of having every door slammed in their faces when they know they have novels better than a lot of the “agented manuscripts” that grind their way through the New York mill. Rather than figuring they have no shot, they see their opportunity like an approaching brass ring, and they’re willing to do what it takes to get their books in front of readers.

Last year, I wrote that there was a brave new world coming. Well, it’s here.

Over on the Kill Zone blogspot today, John Gilstrap posted a provocative piece about his latest novel, which centers around the Iraq War. One of his characters, it seems, refers to the enemy as “Hadjis”, a term commonly used among GIs on the field of battle. John’s editor took a dim view of the word, thinking it would be “offensive” to some group or another, claiming it was like using the word “Kraut” or “Nip” during World War II.

Well, you see where we are here. The PC Gestapo has reached right into John’s novel and is threatening to, I don’t know, call him a racist or something for using this word, which by the way, is now apparently referred to as “the h-word”.

I take great offense at someone telling a writer what words he/she can or cannot write. If the words are technically incorrect, or if they’re overused, or some other traditional objection applies, I have no problem. But to axe a word simply because it might “offend” somebody is BS. Or rather, let me say, bullshit.

In my humble opinion, the more people who are offended by a writer’s output, the better. You can tell he’s done his job if he can get that kind of reaction from people. These are people who probably have no business reading anything in the first place, since they apparently reach for the smelling salts at the merest hint of “offensive” language.

The only people who can truly judge a writer are the readers. If they don’t like what they read, they won’t read that writer again. It’s that simple. But believe me, a lot more goes into that judgment than whether or not the readers are “offended”.

Anybody out there familiar with the controversy surrounding Rhett Butler’s use of the word “damn” in Gone With The Wind? It was thought, in 1939, to herald the end of civilization, so many upright (or is it uptight) people were “offended” by its inclusion in the novel and the movie. If they’d thought about it, they probably would’ve assigned it the label of “the d-word”.

This deal with John’s use of the word “Hadjis” is basically a variation on the same theme that is currently propelling the heated differences swirling around the violence in serial-killer novels. There are people out there who want to censor what is being imagined and written during the creative process, and they will never relent. We’ll always be on defense, but we have to keep fighting them off or else we’ll move into an era of censorship, strict oversight, penalties, and God knows what other restrictions on our freedom.

When a writer caves in to these PC terror tactics, we all lose a little something. We lose it for the silliest of reasons, namely that someone out there–maybe even just one person–won’t be “offended”. That is true BS (excuse me, bullshit!).

I think any writer should be free to use whatever words he/she feels are appropriate.

If someone is “offended”, that’s their problem. Get it? Their problem.

If someone wants to write about spics, wops, niggers, micks, chinks, limeys, kikes, fags, towelheads, wetbacks, japs, or any other “sensitive” group, go ahead. Provided, of course, that it fits the story, is not gratuitous, is not overused, or any of the other common-sense criteria that writers follow. I might also add, these criteria don’t just apply to “offensive” words, they apply to everything in the novel. Characters’ names, use of certain punctuation, syntax, all the tools available to a writer should follow these common-sense guidelines. The work should live or die in the marketplace, not in the twisted imagination of some PC fuhrer.

The notion that something might “offend” someone is not a reason to refrain from anything in writing. I also believe that “offense” is not the real driving force behind these “sensitive” complaints. I believe there’s a down-and-dirty effort out there to clamp down on creativity, and ultimately on every aspect of our lives.

As I mentioned above, we’ve got an h-word now. This will fit in quite nicely with the b-word, the n-word, the c-word, and so on. Eventually, you know, you’re going to run out of letters to connote these words. Then the PCers will have to move to maybe the Greek alphabet and we’ll all be running around talking about the gamma-word and the omicron-word.

But when you run out of Greek letters, where do you go from there? Cyrillic script?