Between Space Ships and Detectives - Guest Post by Erika Wurth

Between space-ships and detectives, I have to confess, I’m spaceship guy. As one of those nerds in high school who needed an escape through books, at first my jam was magic and horror and then it became science-fiction – big time. But as I got older, I ended up reading and eventually writing a lot of what could easily be called realism. I think that’s because as a native kid growing up on the outskirts of Denver with an alcoholic dad (white dad, sorry stereotype machines) and a Indian mom who stayed because she loved him – and because it wasn’t financially the most viable thing at the time to leave, the harsher, but often more poetic realities offered in traditional literary fiction spoke to me. All around me were the ghosts of the people I had grown up with: other natives who were all screwed up, white girls with mullets in love with men who did nothing but hurt them, cigarettes. Miles and miles of cigarettes. And eventually my father’s ghost. Though I didn’t know I would write about them, and him, at the time.

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Though I’ve come back around to fantasy and science-fiction, and though I suppose my fiction bears a more striking resemblance to literary realism than it does crime, or noir – I can’t deny that I’m in the crime family. My novel, Iinà (a Navajo/Dinè word for life) is about a man named Matthew who lives a life that is filled with crime, with grit, with everything noir without any of the glamour. Born to an alcoholic mom and an absent dad, he starts drinking before he hits puberty and ends up homeless by his teens. Picked up in the streets by a man in a gang who wants to clean him up and ultimately use him, Matthew finds hope in the worst of circumstances. When that collapses, he ends up back on the streets, ready to resume drinking himself to death. There has not been one moment in Matthew’s life that didn’t involve crime. Not one. Needless to say, despite all efforts by my agent, the New York publishing folks felt guilty – dirty – just reading about Matthew – and talked endlessly about how they just couldn’t deal with his darkness. Matthew couldn’t either. And I’m sure the plethora of inner-dialogue, the description over action didn’t help either. But the thing is, though nearly everyone’s compelled by an episode of SVU: Special Victim’s Unit, or a good old-fashioned cop or criminal drama, usually that stuff is written by and about and for white folks who want a cheap thrill that ends cleanly once the novel is done. Matthew doesn’t do that. He makes you sad, unhappy. And though I guess I didn’t realize it at the time, if you’re white, guilty. But don’t we have room for that? Not guilt, but sadness. Are we really going to spend our lives going from one cheap thrill to the next until it’s over? I’m not against cheap thrills per se – but, all cheap thrills makes one a dull, dull boy.

I remember my agent saying something to the effect of (as to the New York Presses and why they were rejecting it), “I know what they’re thinking. They’re thinking why would anyone spend twenty bucks in Barnes and Nobles to be sad. But to me, what’s beautiful is how it’s written, how good the story is.” See, that’s what I read for too. Bigger beauty. And the thing is, I’m not really interested in white guilt. I think white folks are way, way too used to going there when it comes to art by folks of color. But DUDES? It’s not always about you. And it’s my job to make you care. What it is about, is Matthew, and his story, his life of tragedy and crime. His sadness, his humor despite it, his big, beautiful epiphany right at the end of his life. And most of all, it’s about his humanity, something folks – especially native folks – who are in gangs, or homeless are so often denied. Folks who don’t have much of a choice (a word one publisher used, sounding pretty Trumpish) when it comes to living a life of crime. I just want him to be human. That’s what Matthew wants too. Just to be human. God, what a small, small thing.


Erika T. Wurth’s published works include a novel, Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend, a short story collection, Buckskin Cocaine, and two collections of poetry, Indian Trains and A Thousand Horses Out to Sea. A writer of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, she teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University and has been a guest writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Boulevard, Drunken Boat, The Writer’s Chronicle, South Dakota Review and The Writer's Chronicle. She is represented by Peter Steinberg. She is Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee and was raised outside of Denver.

Crime & Punk: It's OK To Push Back - Ian Truman

Ian Truman is taking over my Friday spot to talk a little bit about the connection between punk rock and the drive to create.

Ian Truman is the winner of the 2013 Expozine "Best Book", Ian Truman is a Montreal born writer of poetry and fiction. His latest novel, GRAND TRUNK AND SHEARER, is available from Down and Out books.

It's OK To Push Back

I never really went to the big arena concerts, places like the Bell Centre and such, and I kinda feel lucky about that now. I feel lucky I was introduced to “legitimate” punk pretty early.

See, I was bullied a lot back in high school and in many ways I was your typical 90’s geek: too tall, too skinny, no muscle on the bones, anime club a decade before anime was “normal.” I was the kid that was hiding in the library as much as I could and I have zero problem admitting it was because I liked it as much as because I needed a place to hide. 

Now I think it was maybe in my fifth year of high school and I was hanging out with this weird fucking metalhead, one of the few other loners we had at school, and when I mean weird, I mean that he used to listen to metal sure, but in reality, he was trying to make music with a grinder over a vacuum cleaner and some white noise in the background and some bass drum filled with cans and trash or something. THAT guy, you know?

In many ways he was probably the punkest guy I have ever met. He really, absolutely and truthfully did not give a fuck about what anyone would ever think of him. He didn’t care about tags of labels or punk, metal, grind of the very concept of music. He just did whatever came to his mind. He was also probably the smartest guy around and didn’t have one once of malice in him. I would swear to that. 

 So this kid, who by then had been kicked out of the school radio club for playing his music there, told me he was going to bring me to this place they called “L’X” one day.

“You’re gonna love it,” he said. 

I said, “OK,” simply. Because what the fuck did I know about anything? That was about to change.

So one day we pack ourselves in his tiny car. That thing was a fucking Pinto, if you remember those, the rest of you can google them. That thing was a goddamn pinto. He later sold it to some monster truck show that defined the tiny box or a car as “absolutely perfect.” Anyways. So we packed ourselves in that car and we lived about an hour away from Downtown. He brings us there and it’s in the heart of Quartier Latin and, I mean, it looked like a fucking wasteland. 

This wasn’t the “Quartier des Spectacles” of luxurious condos, SAT gallery and designer gyms. This was the fucking red light in all its glory. I think it was 98 maybe.  It was the Montreal of insanely high unemployment, mental-hospital deinstitutionalization, spiking homelessness, post-referendum-traumatic-stress and population flight. 

Half the buildings were abandoned, there were vacant lots everywhere, some village made out of planks and cardboard, FOUFS was across the street and a gathering of maybe 60 bikers in a parking lot in front of an downright corporate ice cream parlour (yes, I’m serious) You stopped counting the needles and just found a path around them. I remembered some guy on the second window of an 18^th-century row house selling contraband cigarettes up and down a bucked he pulled with yellow string. 

And L’X was right in there, about a hundred inside the red light district. It was some room in this fucking historic building, abandoned or it seemed abandoned, it definitely looked abandoned. But there was definitely something happening there. And the place, I mean, it was this magnificent stone building, six or seven stories high with all the tall windows and the metal sculptures over the main entrance. “La Patrie” had been sculpted in the stone. The kind of shit you’d put in a movie or the kind of shit you say in movies that took place in New-York. You know “the” building I’m talking about.

In many ways, you could say L’X was Montreal’s CBGB’S.

So, there it was, next door over with a simple stroke of paint over a metallic door: “L’X” and that was it. The reason I’m bringing this up is because I respect a lot of artists who keep talking about those “matinées” at CBGC and how it shaped their lives and L’X was that place for me. It was the place where I had that one pure moment of revelation you really fucking need to make is as an artist. 

You see, I feel lucky about not going through the typical “Arena” concert because my friend had taken me straight to the heart of the fucking beast. That place was full of hope and desolation and fear and pain but the trash and sweat and anger mixed with this brand-new fucking notion of freedom. That tiny, fucking weird fucking metalhead had taken me right to the heart of punk rock. 

For such a legendary venue, I’m still amazed it hasn’t flooded the world of Montreal culture and writing. I don’t know if I was the first one to really write about it or it or not but it should definitely take its righteous place in the city’s cultural history.  

I mean, you had to go down some concrete stairs and then you reached the main door just inside and the room opened up in front of you. You walked down another set of stairs to the dance floor and there were metal railings all around everything and the obvious graffiti on the walls. The toilets were downright gnarly, that went without saying.

There seemed to be people sleeping down the corridor to some other part of the building, I swear, I saw some of them, there were fucking catacombs under there, it was like there was a system of tunnels below the venue that was below the fucking building that lead all over the city and the electricity was still working down there and you couldn’t figure out why. There was this one light bulb that was still dangling from the ceiling that looked like it had been there for decades and the wires running nowhere into a wall. 

You’d want to make that shit up and you couldn’t do it.

In the main room there was a third set of stairs leading up with a fucking mezzanine going all around the stage. And the stage was small and shitty and most bands would barely fit there. You’d fit fifty people in the room and it looked full but I’ve seen shows where they crammed probably a hundred and fifty.

The first show I went there had about 30 kids, maybe. It was far from full but it was absolutely mind blowing to me and I didn’t’ know what to expect.

The 30 kids in there were pushing against the stage like their life depended on it. The band started playing and I can’t remember who it was and it doesn’t matter. What mattered is I was this skinny, geeky kid getting shit on all week at school, hiding in the library or the anime club and I was smart, sure, but the grades weren’t there and I didn’t fucking know what to do with anything, with myself or my fucking life. 

 I had been writing on my own probably since third grade but I never dared to show it to anyone. I was creating in silence with no desire (or in fact, guts) to get it out in the world. No matter what you’d think about it, it takes guts to be a writer. It takes guts to say, “here, I wrote 300 pages and it’s worth your limited reading time.”

Punk gave me that guts and it happened in one second. 

The sound was fucking loud and it was horrible and heavy and noisy and shitty in every way you could imagine. You kinda just focused on the stomping of the drums. People started slamming into each other, punching and pushing each other and for the first time in my life it was OK to push back. In fact, it was expected of me. I was fucking invited to. A bunch of losers, loners and other misfit kids free to be “someone” in the second sub-basement of an abandoned building in the middle of “no-future” and a fucking recession but it was OK to push back. That meant a fucking lot.

And maybe I’m mature enough now to say that “being allowed to push back” is probably the most basic, common, most important emotion at the heart of punk. Before all the politics and the aesthetics and the noise and social critique, before all the branches and the Krishna-cores or straight edge vegans and the grind-core-pop-punk-concept-bands or post-emo-neo-crust bullshit there was this : “It’s OK to push back.” 

On paper it sounds like absolute garbage, right? It sounds so fucking basic it’s got to be a joke, right? In real life it was absolutely everything to me. 

Without that there would be no Ian Truman, no art of mine, no music, no politics, no drive, no anger, no desire or novels or poetry or books. Nothing. I wouldn’t have seen New-Orleans because of it or any other city because of it. I wouldn’t be writing this blog post or any other post at all. In fact I have little doubt I’d be dead. 

I spent about half my life in Quartier Latin, now. I’ve studied there. I work there. The building is still standing and I think about it every time I walk in front of it. You can’t forget something like that. I’m sure the aging punks in NYC still have that pinch when they walk in front of CBGB’s. I get the same feeling with L’X.

The building’s still abandoned. There’s asbestos or some shit in there. I know for a fact the room is still down there, probably untouched. I could bust the door and walk down and find the water damaged stage and the posters on the walls of bands as soft as the fucking Weakerthans, or as heavy as Snapcase and Shutdown. 

My point, I guess, is that kids need places like that in the world. It creates passion, it creates artists. They need that place to be absolutely, marvellously fucking horrible at whatever they’re trying to do. No one’s that good right off the bat. Absolutely no one.  You need to fail a lot and you need a place where you get to fail a lot.  L’X was that place for me. 

And so, sixteen years later, fucking seventeen years later, the building remains unused, wounded with asbestos, too expensive to fix or sell or too expensive to do anything with. As about a dozen glimmering condo towers have risen right next to it, it stands as a testament of what was and how much you can do with very little.

If you dare to write about it every once in a while.

Everybody Let's Get Stoned

Guest Post by Jeri Westerson

Holly's note: Welcome to the my first guest post of 2016. It's rather appropriate that it's Jeri Westerson, author of the Crispin Guest medieval mysteries (and several other novels as well) since she's been kind of a mentor to me in my own career. Her latest Guest book comes out on February 1 from Severn House buy you can buy now on Amazon.

I'll let Jeri take it from here.

Medievally speaking, we aren’t talking about what Bob Dylan expected, or, to be more literal, getting a good stoning for some infraction. I am, however, talking about an actual stone, the “Stone of Destiny” to be exact, that features in my newest Crispin Guest Medieval Mystery, THE SILENCE OF STONES.

What is the Stone and why is it important to my medieval tale of murder and mayhem? It happened in the later part of the 13th century. In the time of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace (yes, that William Wallace, but the less said about the movie “Braveheart” the better), when all the heirs to the Scottish throne seemed to die off one after the other. At one time there were fourteen claimants, but the two that had the best or at least loudest claims, were Robert the Bruce and John Baliol.

So they turned to Kind Edward I of England. He was known as Edward Longshanks because he was very tall. Later, he was to be known as “Hammer of the Scots” and not in a good way. They figured Edward was a king and a gracious knight and he could be relied upon to arbitrate. Edward said, “Sure I’ll arbitrate. But if I do this for you, you name me Overlord of Scotland.”

They kind of rolled their eyes, said sure, whatevs. Then the Scots ended up choosing John Baliol anyway.

Edward just wouldn’t seem to go away. He’s like the last guy to leave the party even when the hosts are starting to clean up. So he asked the Scots to provide troops for his war with France and they’re like, “Are you still here?” They’re so pissed off, in fact, that they allied themselves with France.

Now Edward is pissed off. And in 1296 he invaded Scotland and that’s when he captures the Stone of Destiny.

Just what the heck is the Stone of Destiny? The Stone of Scone? Jacob’s Pillow?

In Genesis 28, Jacob travels to Bethel, gets tired, grabs a stone, and uses it as a pillow—as one does—and dreams of a Stairway to Heaven. And it is this Stone that is taken into Egypt by Jacob’s sons. The pharaoh’s daughter, named Scota, where people believed the name of Scotland derived—except it didn’t because it comes from Latin, Scoti which means the “Gaelic regions”—supposedly took the stone into Spain, and then it ended up, somehow in Ireland where Irish kings were crowned. It seemed to be the thing to do to sit on the stone and be crowned. In Ireland, the stone was supposed to groan if you had the right to be king when you sat on it, and stay silent if you didn’t. That would mean a lot of instances where no one was king—until the smart guy hid someone in the bushes to groan at the appropriate time. And if that were the case, then he deserves to be king!

In the 6th century, Fergus Mor Mac Earca, King of the Picts, brought it to Scotland. Cinaed Mac Ailpin, 1st King of the Scots, left it at Scone (pronounced “scoon”) Abbey.

It’s grey sandstone, 27 inches long, 17 inches wide, and 11 inches high. With iron rings embedded on either side.

It’s stolen in my book THE SILENCE OF STONES, but it WAS never stolen…until young Scottish nationalists stole it in 1950. In 1996 Prime Minister John Major returned it to Scotland to appease the Scottish Independence movement. So now the stone lives in Edinburgh Castle with the proviso that it come back to England when a new monarch needs to be crowned. 

By the way, tests done on the stone in 1996 proved that the stone’s provenance was around Scone Abbey. So much for Bethel and Egypt and Spain. 

HOWEVER…did the monks of Scone Abbey really give Edward the real Stone of Destiny or did they pull a fast one? Rumor had it that they hid the Stone and gave Edward a lid to a cesspit, with rings and all. Even Edward wasn't sure and he returned to Scone to demand an answer--but everyone said that, yes, that is the real stone. So is it the REAL stone of destiny? Is the real stone still hidden somewhere in the abbey? No one will ever likely know.

All this talk of the Stone naturally leads us to the Coronation Chair that sits in Westminster Abbey. 

Now this is not a throne. This chair was strictly created for the purpose of crowning the monarch of England. Edward originally commissioned a bronze chair and it was always designed to house the Stone of Destiny beneath the seat as a symbol of England’s supremacy over Scotland. But the bronze chair was going to be too expensive so he settled for wood.

It is believed Edward II, Edward III and Richard II (the king who reigns in the Crispin books) were crowned sitting in this chair, but we aren’t certain. The first monarch we are sure of that sat in the Coronation Chair was Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV.

There are exceptions as to who sat in the chair for their crown. None of these did so:

• Edward V (one of the princes in the Tower). Richard III already took the throne before his nephew could be crowned.

• Lady Jane Grey was only pronounced Queen and that only lasted 9 days.

• Mary I, Bloody Mary, Henry VIII’s daughter. She sat in the chair but took another for the actual crowning.

• Mary II. She ruled with her husband William of Orange, so she let him have the chair and they made another one just for her.

• Edward VIII abdicated to marry Wallace Simpson before he could be crowned.

Even Oliver Cromwell used the chair to become Lord Protector after the English Civil War.

Symbols. They can hold people together or divide them. The Stone in the Coronation Chair was designed to cleave England and Scotland together but really only served to divide. The medieval world was chock full of symbols of royalty and nobility, of the divine and the humble. Castles, cathedrals, crowns, badges of office. Crispin’s sword is the symbol not only of his past but—yes—of virility, an important aspect of the medieval man’s place in society. It’s the symbols that fascinate us about this period. That’s what draws us back again and again. And it’s what I hope draws you to the Crispin books.

***

You can find out more about Jeri, her books, see a series book trailer, use book discussion guides, and see some keen maps by going to Jeri’s website at JeriWesterson.com. 

Blade of Dishonor

By Thomas Pluck
Guest Post

I like action movies. Or I used to. A lot of the newer ones don't have the feel of the "classics," which for me began with First Blood. Based on the novel by David Morrell, it tells the tale of a Vietnam Vet trying to get home when a sheriff inadvertently starts a war with him. It is a character-driven novel, as most action tales are. What defines us better than our actions? It's difficult to be an unreliable narrator when you have little internal monologue. You can mask the motives for your actions, but as Andrew Vachss says, "behavior is the truth."

Look at Parker, the hardboiled favorite. From paragraph one, he's moving, like a shark. Someone offers him a ride, and Parker tells him to go to hell. On the way to a meet, someone blocks his way, Parker chops his throat and kills him. We know him from what he does; his job defines him.

Action defines character.

Thomas Pluck

That doesn't mean that without action you don't have character, but there is no reason to eschew action if you enjoy character-driven novels. And that was my mantra when writing BLADE OF DISHONOR, an action thriller hatched from an idea created with David Cranmer of Beat to a Pulp.

An MMA fighter. A treasured sword. And a ninja clan that had to have it. That is what we began with. What I ended up with was a young fighter named Reeves whose temper ended his career and sent him to war. When he comes home, he finds the last of his family, his grandfather, barely hanging on in a town devastated by the recession, and his old enemy in charge of things.

Grandpa Butch is a World War II vet who runs a pawn shop and Army surplus store. Reeves grew up in that iron playground, but there was one toy he couldn't touch: a Japanese sword that Butch brought home from the war, and would never talk about.

I did some research about Japanese swords after World War 2. Everyone knows a vet who has one, usually an officer's sword. But the most treasured Japanese blade of all, the Honjo Masamune, went missing in 1945. It was forged by Japan's most revered swordsmith, Masamune, and was passed down by the Tokugawa clan to the reigning shogun. But after the fires went out in Tokyo, a soldier took it home. And it has never been seen since.

That was a story I couldn't resist. I began the story in Minnesota, because I know the area and the people, and adventures need space to roam around in. A little more reading and I learned that the Devil's Brigade, the 1st Special Service Force, trained not far from there. They are the Nazi hunter commandos that Tarantino based Inglorious Basterds on, and their real stories have never been told. They would sent scouts into camps of SS soldiers on the Vosges line and slit the throats of every tenth man. And leave a sticker on his helmet that read "Das Dicke Ende Kommt Noch!" … the worst is yet to come.

If I'd made that up, it would be dismissed as hyperbole. And you're damn right the Devils are in the book. To me, a good thriller doesn't just make your heart race, you learn something. Hidden parts of history, or disturbing actions by terrorists or governments. Or in this book's case, all three. Did you know about Unit 731? You will.

You need big characters to make through big events. So I wrote big. Butch Sloane, the wheelchair-bound WW2 vet, based on my great-uncles who fought in the war. 'Rage Cage' Reeves, a hot-headed smartmouth based on all the MMA fighters I've sparred and slugged it out with at the gym. Tara, the hot-rodding ambulance driver, based on a number of fiery women in my life. And Miyamoto, the last samurai of a secretive brotherhood, fighting his sworn enemy: the yakuza assassins of the Black Dragon society, which pulp fanatics might recognize from novels set in the '30s, when Japan invaded China.

So when I say this book is about an MMA fighter caught in a battle between ninja and samurai over a stolen Japanese sword… I mean it's a character-driven novel.

The Complete Omnibus edition for Amazon Kindle

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Available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and at your local bookstore through IndieBound soon!

Or try Part 1 for 99 cents FREE TODAY:

Part 1: The War Comes Home (US)

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Guest Post: STEEL HEART

Guest Post from Thomas Pluck

Thanks to Steve Weddle for letting me grab the wheel today. I don't normally read blogs about writing, but I read this one. Because the writers at DSD don't serve up BS.

That is what my collection, Steel Heart: 10 Tales of Crime and Suspense, is about. That's what "steel heart" means. Having a heart of steel, to stand up and say it like it is. There is a lot of "unflinching" fiction out there. I write some of it myself. But when I describe mine, I say it also has heart. Some consider that a weakness, that the "true" stories must pay homage to the god of nihilism, that the one cold truth is that man is wolf to man. If that were true, we'd be all nibbling baby McNuggets like the cannibals in a Cormac McCarthy novel. And I love the books of Mr. 'mac Mac. But their brutality is strengthened by the glimmers of humanity he puts in there. Llewelyn Moss's troubles begin when he gives a dying man water. In The Road, the father cannot see the good left on earth, but his son can, and carries the fire for him.

That's heart. There is evil in the world; I prefer fiction that acknowledges it and explores the decisions that send people down that left hand path, telling themselves that what lies at the end of their road is worth the bloody shortcuts and the trodding upon of fallen comrades. Evil is not the mystery we wish to think it is; it is a collection of choices and the excuses we make for them.

Steel Heart collects ten of my most popular stories. Two starring Jay Desmarteaux, an ex-con who served 25 years for his own collection of bad choices, who still fights to decide what path he will take today. Another with Denny the Dent, the hulking manchild who lives in a Newark junkyard and metes out his own brand of street justice. A Vietnam Vet trying to connect with his son before it is too late. And a wise-cracking P.I. who takes on the biggest mystery of them all.

Each character finds themselves making a decision that will weigh heavy on their heart. In the afterlife of Egyptian mythology, your heart is weighed against a goddess's feather to decide if you are worthy of rebirth or deserving of annihilation. In these stories, the answer may seem clear, but it is never easy. For me, a story lingers like gunsmoke when it makes you consider such a choice yourself. Wondering whether it will leave you with a heart of steel, or just a heavy, steel heart.

Steel Heart: 10 Tales of Crime and Suspense is available from all the usual e-book retailers:

Kobo, through Watchung Booksellers

Amazon for Kindle

Barnes & Noble for Nook

Smashwords, in many formats, including to read online.

Character Evolution

Guest Post from Jim Winter

I am a middle-aged college student. That probably means nothing to you unless you read my blog and listen to me bitch about the profs sucking up all my primo writing time. But one of the classes I’m taking this semester is physical anthropology, which is the study of evolution. And it’s of evolution I wish to speak today.

Yeah, that was a long-winded way to get to character evolution, but here we are. Specifically, how do series characters evolve before we ever see them in their debut books. For Nick Kepler, it was a long, drawn-out process. The first anyone saw of him was in the original Plots WithGuns where he’s doing a sort of back-and-forth describing why he’s walking along a deserted stretch of highway at 3 AM in a light rain and how he got there. 

That character looks nothing like the one in the outline to Northcoast Shakedown ($2.99 on Amazon, Nook, and Smashwords, not to mention a whole bunch o’ other readers.)  But then he looks nothing like the poor schmuck who is stalked by his client in “Valentine’s Day,” and definitely not the guy who, in a moment of fear, starts boffing his married secretary in Second Hand Goods.

How much of this is the character? And how much is the writer? I’d have to say it’s about 50/50. In the beginning, I had no clue who this guy was. By the time I finished “A Walk in the Rain,” I knew Nick Kepler was, in 2001, 33, played in a bar band that did classic rock covers, and had a friend named Lenny who stole cars for a living. By the end of Second Hand Goods, his life is a lot more complicated.

But I’ve seen this sort of thing before. When Stephen King wrote the first story about Salem’s Lot, there was nothing about the Marsten House or any clue that there was anything more special about the place except for a bizarre spot in the woods where some evil stuff took place around the time Nathaniel Greene was cracking British skulls in that part of New England. One novel and a bad miniseries later, we get a vampire novel that has as much in common with Twilight as the Rolling Stones have in common with the Spice Girls.

A lot of times, the short stories authors create are little more than rough drafts of a character they opted to share with the public. Sometimes the author gets lucky, as I have, and can keep the storyline consistent. Other times, you have to accept the fact that the author had no clue what he or she was doing.

Amazon | Nook | Smashwords

Jim Winter programs web sites by day, attends college and writes nasty tales by night. Born in Cleveland, he lives in Cincinnati with his wife Nita and stepson AJ.  Find out what he is up to at http://www.jamesrwinter.net

Write Noir in 4 Simple Steps

By Anonymous-9

Step One

In solitude, organize your writing area. If you don't write on computer, lay out two pens, just in case. A pad of lined paper is helpful.

Step Two

Set fire to the area. Let the room get good and scorched before you douse it. Smoldering embers in a few places are okay—there's nothing like the threat of combustion and smell of smoke to inspire a noirist.

Step Three

Sift through the ashes of your possessions and grab whatever material is still left to write on. If the computer and pens are destroyed, open a vein and write with your own blood on the sooty wall—blood and grime contribute mightily to noir. Anything you write at this stage will be brilliant because it contains the four five essential elements of the genre: loss, pain, desperation and truth about human nature. Let's not forget a glimpse of mortality.

Step Four

If—unlike lions of the genre such as James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson—you are unable to reduce your life to ashes for the sake of art, all is not lost. But you must find a way to reach this state mentally before picking up a writing instrument. Bring devastation and lost hope front-of-mind and feel them so sharply that they drive away everything but truth. Particularly destructive to the noir oeuvre are shreds of level-headedness, dignity and esteem. Reckless abandon is a bonus.

Follow these 4 simple steps and any writer, no matter how new to the genre, is assured of creating memorable noir. Go do it. May your words burn bright.

Almost Published Blues

By Anonymous-9

A couple of days ago I had a near-death experience on the freeway. I was driving west on the 91 in Los Angeles County, when a giant dump truck blew a tire in front of me. The thing went off like a bomb, and as debris and swaths of rubber whipped toward me, I thought, "Noooo! I can't die before my novel is published!"  I guess that lets you know where my mind's at these days.

HARD BITE, THE NOVEL is my first full-length noir, and will be published by Blasted Heath this fall. I'm already hand-over-fist on the sequel, since I have a 2-book deal with BH. The time counting down to drop date is so excruciatingly slow I don't think gestating a real human could be this trying. I want to be busy cutting a trailer, but I can't cut a trailer until I have a book cover. I won't have a book cover until JT Lindroos gets around to rendering it. Could I get a cover designed faster from somebody else? You bet, but it wouldn't be a Lindroos cover. He's been in the biz for decades and designs for Edgar award-winning books. So I'll wait for Lindroos, thank you. Even though it's killing me.

Now let's get to the edit.  "Hard Man" and literary badass Allan Guthrie saw something in my manuscript and said he'd get back to me with changes. Allan wears many literary hats. He's not just a principal at Blasted Heath e-publishers, he's also a seasoned literary agent, a crime writer, and an Edgar nominee for his noir thriller KISS HER GOODBYE. Hoo boy was I ready for Allan to have at it! Every word of critique would be burned into my brain for reference and comparison. All my nasty mistakes and misfires were ready to get their butts whooped but good. I was ready to take my crit "like a man" and kill all my darlings, as Falkner said—whatever it took to whip that manuscript into shape.

Finally the day came. I opened the doc.x with Allan's Track Changes notations and... he found about twenty typos. One scene was too abrupt and needed padding. Another scene was briefly queried. That's it. My dreams of a Guthrie-punched manuscript that would forever cast golden guiding light on my career in crime writing fled faster than Chandler at a dry book signing.

Truth is, I pretty much beat my book to death before I sent it out for a second time, after extensive re-plotting and a rewrite.  15,000 words that I loved with all my heart (pronounced dull and boring by beta readers more objective and level-headed than I) were chopped out of the 50,000-word manuscript and replaced with 12,000 words of action and surprise. It took four years, but when it went out, it was ready. I could have self-published a whole year ago but I wouldn't have had JT Lindroos, or Blasted Heath, or Allan Guthrie. I figured the wait was worth it.

I started writing noir short stories in 2007 and the turning point was winning Spinetingler's Best Short Story on the Web competition in 2009. That encouragement, made possible by Brian Lindenmuth and Sandra Rutton who are guardian angels to crime writers in my opinion, inspired me to arrange life and work around writing. It's been an investment of five years to transform HARD BITE the short story into HARD BITE, THE NOVEL.

As I simmer and stew with the impatience of waiting for five years of work to be realized over at Blasted Heath, I ask myself if I'm willing to invest five more. Will another five years deliver the success and satisfaction I'm dreaming of? Will I ever see any money? I push those questions aside in favor of, "What else would you rather be doing?" And the answer is, "Nothing. I just wish I were writing more."

Conclusion: If what I wish I were doing is what I'm already doing, then the time is well spent. If that dump truck had taken me out on the freeway, then I'd still have steered my life as far as I could in the direction I wanted to go, with the time that I had. That's as much as any writer can do, I think.

Patience is a virtue.

The Good, the Bad, and the Serial Killer

While Dave White is out on paternity leave (congrats), we're fortunate to have Anonymous-9 taking over for a bit. (By the way, check out the Anonymous-9 novel HARD BITE.)

Guest Post by Anonymous-9

We lost a writer, a humorist, a thinker, and a perennial student of the human condition on June 25th, 2012. David J. Kane was a Holocaust survivor who, as soon as he was able, decided the glass of life was more than half full and he was going to drink every precious drop of it. Once WW2 was over, David was rarely seen without a smile and a quip on his lips. He had a tremor in both hands that lingered from severe starvation and hardship, but he had a strong mind that superseded any physical limitations. David once told me a story about his experience at the hands of a brutal serial murderer in Buchenwald concentration camp. The story illustrates his deep knowledge of human duality; how good and bad, dark and light, can reside in the same human being. As a crime writer, the story astounds me...

It was 1944. David was a boy of 15, starved to skin and bone. Otto was a brutalizer of women, a cold-blooded killer and a danger to society. He was tried, convicted, and incarcerated alongside Jews in Buchenwald. The Nazis saw fit to place a few Jewish children with him, so they could serve his needs. David was one of those children. What the Nazis didn't know was that Otto, although murderously dangerous with adult women, liked children. He had no impulse to kill or abuse them, and he liked to hear them sing. David was tasked to wake Otto in the mornings with his clear, sweet voice, singing songs in Polish. Otto would even sneak food occasionally, and feed the children a few extra noodles.

One day, David and another boy were sent to the kitchen to peel apples, locked in alone all day. There was no bathroom, and after many long hours, and not knowing what else to do, they relieved themselves in a corner. When discovered, David was ordered to a death camp to be gassed. He was to leave in just a few days.

When Otto found out he was going to lose David he devised a plan. He knew that if the Nazis thought he was torturing this child and making his life miserable, they would likely not bother to send him away. Otto got a pillow and handed it to David saying, "Put this pillow down the back of your pants. I'm going to beat on the pillow with a stick and you scream like hell while I'm doing it." Positioning David by an open window so the sound was sure to carry, Otto whipped the pillow mercilessly as David yelled and screamed—it sounded as though he were being thrashed to death. Throughout the camp, Nazis heard the beating and sure enough, they didn't bother shipping David off to die.

Anonymous-9

Everyone inside the camp was set free on April 11th, 1945 by American soldiers who broke in by driving a tank through the barbed wire fence. It is not known what happened to Otto.

David lived long and well to the age of 82, and his story lives on. HOW TO SURVIVE ANYTHING by David and Yetta Kane is available on Amazon.

Series Characters: Guest Post from Hilary Davidson

By Hilary Davidson

First, thanks to my friend Steve Weddle for letting me loose on DSD today. I promised him I wouldn’t break anything, but that was only to get him to stop hovering. You know how he is.

Actually, you do know how he is, by which I mean kind and generous to fellow writers. He asked me to stop by because my second novel, THE NEXT ONE TO FALL, came out a couple of weeks ago. It’s the follow-up to THE DAMAGE DONE, and it picks up three months after the first book ends. Both novels feature Lily Moore, travel writer and accidental sleuth. I’m on tour now, and one question that keeps coming up at events is about how hard it was for me to pick up from where I’d left off, especially since THE DAMAGE DONE read like a standalone and left Lily in a very dark place at the end.

The truth is, I always intended to write several books about Lily. A big part of the reason why is that I couldn’t imagine putting Lily through the hell she goes through in THE DAMAGE DONE without following up with her later. At the beginning of THE NEXT ONE TO FALL, she’s still shell-shocked and grieving deeply. Her best friend, Jesse, has conned her into coming to Peru with him — since they both work in travel, it’s a business trip for them — and she’s sleepwalking through it, dragging her ghosts after her. At Machu Picchu, she can’t appreciate the beauty of the stone city without thinking about death. When they find a dying woman at the bottom of an Inca staircase, it’s as if the dark thoughts in Lily’s head have taken on a physical form. But later, as she hunts for the woman’s traveling companion, and discovers a trail of dead and missing women behind him, she becomes determined to get justice.

Writing the second book with Lily forced me to confront an ongoing debate about series characters and whether or not they should change. At my first Thrillerfest in 2009, Lee Child made an argument for writing a protagonist who never changes, one who goes from book to book as essentially the same person. He said that readers, when they love a character, just want to see more of that character, not an evolution that changes him.

At the time, I couldn’t have disagreed more. I love series characters who evolve over the course of several books, as Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch does, and as Spenser in Robert B. Parker’s early novels did. When I think of a character who remains the same from book to book, I think of Nancy Drew.

It was only when I was in the middle of writing THE NEXT ONE TO FALL that I started to reconsider that position. There are so many obvious ways in which Lily changes over the course of that book that I had to stop to consider what hadn’t changed about her. I also wanted to parse out the temporary changes — grief, at the start of the new book, has made her listless and passive, which is entirely unlike the Lily in the first book… and quite unlike the one in the rest of THE NEXT ONE TO FALL, who starts to come back to life as she goes after justice for the dead and missing female victims.

I realized that many of the changes aren’t so much to Lily’s character as to her perspective. When Lily encounters the sister of one of victim, who is hunting for her missing sister in Peru, it breaks her heart on one level, because it reminds her of her own search for her sister. At the same time, this woman drives Lily mad because of her stubbornness and her reckless behavior — not entirely unlike Lily’s own in THE DAMAGE DONE.

In so many ways, Lily is the same. She’s still a woman haunted by her family history, one who has classic Hollywood movies running up against verses by Edgar Allan Poe in her head, one who uses modern technology to listen to Frank Sinatra songs, one who just can’t let things go. The bad-girl side that was suppressed in the first book comes out in the second, but it was always there, lurking beneath her smooth veneer before it cracked. Even her desire for justice, which gets ever more powerful in THE NEXT ONE TO FALL, contains an echo from the first book: Lily didn’t find justice then, so she’s damned sure she’ll get it now.

--------------

Get your own copy of THE NEXT ONE TO FALL

Zack Taylor is back

Dale T. Phillips is today's guest. The tournament chess player and former JEOPARDY contestant is an indie author who lives in New England and has studied with Stephen King.


So I hear there's some new guy on the block. Name of Zack Taylor. Wasn't there a U.S. president with that name?

Long ago, yeah. This guy ain't no president, though. I hear he did a little hard time.

What for?

Busted up a Fed that leaned on him too hard. He wasn't dirty, but they thought he knew something. He was a bodyguard for some mob guy. But get this-- he doesn't like guns.

A bodyguard without a gun? 

Yeah, some kind of martial arts expert. Didn't last too long in that job, though. Been a drifter, bouncer, that kind of thing.

What's his story?

Had some trouble in his past, never got over it, never settled down. Then someone killed his friend. Bad mistake. Everyone thought it was suicide but this guy. He left everything behind and went up to Maine to find out what happened.

Did he?

Hell yeah, but he tore everything up doing it. Guy's like a bull in a china shop. Got the crap beat out of him, almost got killed a few times, ran into some bikers, a real mess. Just keeps going until he gets answers, doesn't care who he pisses off. Even breaks the law to find out what he needs to.

Sounds dangerous.

Yeah, you never know when he's going off the rails. Funny thing, most of the time I hear he's a nice enough guy, even if he is a bit of a smartass. Reads a lot, keeps to himself. Get him mad, though, and watch out.

What's he like when he's drunk?

Heard he don't drink. Almost boozed himself to death when he was young, so he never touches it.

So where is he now?

Stayed in Maine. Even got himself a new girlfriend up there. I guess she's got him into some trouble again, though. Some cousin of hers accused of murder. Whole town thinks she's guilty.

Somebody better watch out.

You can say that again...

***

Hey there. I'm Dale T. Phillips, and those two guys were talking about the protagonist of my new mystery series. Last year, Zack Taylor made his debut in "A Memory of Grief," and is now back in "A Fall From Grace," now having the official launch. Both were released by Briona Glen Publishing, a small startup publisher. The third book in the series, "A Shadow on the Wall." is due out later this year.

Since I'm a big fan of John D. MacDonald's, this series was influenced by his work, especially the Travis McGee series. McGee was not a professional lawman, but a man with certain skills who helped out people troubled by dangerous predators. In the evolution of my own book's character and the place, a series came to be. It's got a tough-guy aura, so fans of Robert B. Parker's Spenser should enjoy it as well. Writing pros who've read the series like it, and the response has been terrific.

But why no guns? Well, I've read too many books where the hero gets into bad trouble, and whips out a gun for an instant solution. Life's a little more complex than that, and I wanted a protagonist that would have to think and fight his way out of trouble. And he does that. A lot. More interesting to write, too.

Maine's a different kind of place (Stephen King has proven that) and there are a lot of stories to tell. After spending too much time in places like Miami and Vegas, Zack comes to like the laid-back lifestyle, but even in Vacationland, he keeps finding trouble.

I've published over 20 stories, including mystery and crime tales in Crime & Suspense, Big Pulp, Short.Story-Me! and Over My Dead Body. I've collected five of them into an ebook (Crooked Paths) out on Smashwords.

Being an independent means we have to find readers the hard way. I'm inviting you to sample the work first, which you can do on Amazon and Smashwords, links below. You can also hear chapter 1 of "A Memory of Grief," which I've recorded as an audio file and is available on my website: www.daletphillips.com

Lots more information on the site as well, with a link to my other works and writing blog, and an article on Stephen King I wrote-- I had him for a writing teacher, back in Maine. I've got special pages on the site for writers, with recommended reading, good links, and other writers of note. Drop on by.

A Memory of Grief
Amazon    Barnes and Noble
Smashwords ebook in all formats (no e-reader required, PDF and browser also available):
     
A Fall From Grace
Amazon         Smashwords
         

Always Be Connecting

By Johannes Climacus

Who are you trying to sell your book to? If you think you’re trying to sell your book to your “readers” then you’re a damned moron.

You wrote your book and now you're sending it out to People In The Industry. Good on ya, mate. Here’s a test to see who you want to buy the damn thing. Look in the email. Yeah, up there above where it says “Subject Line.” See where it says “TO:”? That’s who you want to buy the thing. Probably. Unless that person is trying to sell it to someone else. And, of course, unless that one is trying to sell it to someone else and so on. But you have to sell it to that one person. Let your editor sell it to the sales force and the sales force sell it to the buyer for the bookstore and the salesperson at the bookstore show it to someone in the store who goes home and orders it off Amazon. You don't need to worry about that. You just have to sell it to the one person in your "TO:" field up there. 


If you’re trying to land an agent or an editor, you pretty much need to do two things. One: write a decent book. Presuming you’ve already done that, you’ll need to do one other thing: make them want to buy the book. That’s it. A two-step process. 


Now, what makes people want to buy the book? Look, there’s a shitload of good books out there. Sure, you like to think that the cream will float to the top, but you know what else floats? A big old turd. You want your floating cream separated from everyone else’s floating turd. You have to connect with the buyer, whatever you’re selling.


I was in sales for a long fucking time. That Gary Ross guy says ABC stands for “always be closing.” Well, that guy's a moron. Stands for “always be connecting.” You connect, you sell. Simple as that. When I was selling crap, one minute I’d be a huge Vince Ferragamo fan. That afternoon, nobody could hold the jock of Kenny Stabler. The hell did I care? My job was 1. to sell widgets and 2. get from one end of the day to the other without getting blackout drunk. And the key to selling was and always will be connecting. (Someday I'll tell you the story of running into the woman playing Vanessa in 'Corvette Summer.' I think she took a liking to me, but I lost track of her.)


These days connecting is super-damn easy. You floating turds don’t know how easy it is. I’d have to scope out a site, look in the parking lot for the guy’s car and bumper stickers, talk to some nudge of a secretary. Take people to lunch. Talk to them. All the while I'm trying to memorize the names of his kids while he's throwing back a couple martinis on my account and I'm drinking perri-flippin-aye and sweating through a 10-year-old wool suit. All you people have to do is hit the internet. Google. Facebook.


I’ll show you how to do this.


Let’s say you’re sending your book out to an agent or an editor. Pick one or two, maybe three tops. Before you send your precious jewel off, track down the MyFace page of your target. Oh, she likes Bob Marley songs? Well, damn, Einstein, go grab a Marley quote and slap it up on your wall. Stay away from the pot references, though. Just to be safe.  


Now let’s look at your next target. Books. Authors. Run through the list of authors this person likes. Maybe people this author represents. Then track those authors down on MyFace. Send a few of them friend requests. Most authors on MyFace are so competitive that they're just trying to get to 5,000 friends so they can do the old “I’m too popular and must create a FAN PAGE!!” Help them and yourself out at the same time. Friend that jackhole. Then when the editor or agent sees your names together, that’s gotta help. Or just say you like MURDER BY LANTERNLIGHT or whatever crap book your target also likes.


The key is to make connections. Like what your target likes. Unless you’re submitting to a Nickelback fan. Nickelback sucks.


You have to remember, the world is full of books that are just like yours. Oh, I'm sure you're convinced you have a precious flower unlike anyone else's. You know what you share with every other writer out there? The same thought. All writers think their book is the cream and not the turd. They believe in it. Why? Maybe because their friends told them so. Maybe they're in one of those writing groups in which everyone says nice things hoping to have their own works loved. Or maybe it turns out your book really is good. (Hell, I don't know. I haven't read your book. I'm too busy suing Jeremy Thomasson for the crap job he did on my ebook covers.)


So if you want your book to stand out from big pile of slush floating around out there, make a connection with your target. If the editor or agent likes you, they might give your book just a wee bit more attention.


Think about the times you've picked up a book because the author is from your hometown. Or has your first name. Or seemed like your kind of person on that local talk show. You connect with authors, don't you? You'll read the next Lee Child before you know what the plot is, won't you? Stand in line for the next Stephen King? As a reader, you're relying on connecting to these authors. Make sure you use this to your advantage. Connect with the agents and editors. You think Vince Ferragamo got to be the greatest California QB in the 70s without working his butt off? Or Stabler? Oh, you're from San Diego? I meant Dan Fouts. Go Bolts.

Friday Guest Post: FEAR (by Thomas Kaufman)

(not by) Russel D McLean

Continuing a small, hand-picked guest run here on Fridays at DSD, please welcome another of the pantheon of PI writers to the stage. Thomas Kaufman came to my attention a couple years back with his debut, DRINK THE TEA which introduced the world to Willis Gidney, a crook turned investigator with a cool story behind his name and a natty patter that endears him not just to other characters but to readers as well. In fact, readers were taken enough with Gidney that he's returned in a second novel, STEAL THE SHOW.

Kaufman's not just a talented author, though. Oh, no, he's also an Emmy award winner for his work as a cameraman and director. His work on TV cop documentaries must have helped him to at least some degree on his new career as a crime writer who was nominated by the ITW for best first crime novel. If you want to know more, I'd say go check out the man's website. But make sure you come back and see why today he's decided to talk to Do Some Damage about The Fear...

FEAR

By Thomas Kaufman

Russel, thanks for letting me guest blog, and also for leaving space in the driveway.

If I may, I'd like to begin today's guest blog with a question for the writers:

What scares the shit out of you?

And let's forget about phobias for a moment, okay? That means no bats, spiders, snakes, vampires, werewolves, tsunamis, or the taxman.

No, I'm talking about something universal, a fear so pervasive that would send chills down the spine of any artist.

A recent study found that most people find their biggest fear is public speaking. Number one! Scarier than death, right? As Seinfeld put it, at a funeral most people would rather be in the casket than give the eulogy.

But why? What makes public speaking so scary? I think it goes to the heart of our biggest fear, which we experience with any kind of performance – including writing a book.
Okay, ready? The biggest fear we have is (drum roll please)

People Will laugh at Me

When you examine the fears of a writer (or any artist, for that matter), you might think the worst someone could do is hate what you do. Or react indifferently. But laughter? Ouch.

This is something we're hard-wired to react to. Example: a person walks past a group of people, maybe three of four, and they spontaneously laugh as that person goes by. Now, it could be someone in the group just told a punch line, but a part of us may think they're laughing at us.

I'm telling you, it's everywhere.

And I think we writers are a bit more susceptible to this kind of fear than most folks, for the simple reason that we put ourselves out there. Let's face it, it takes some ego to write a story and then place it where virtually anyone can read it. The safe thing? Put your manuscript in the desk drawer. That way, no one can criticize it or deride what you've done.

But then there's not much point to writing in the first place. We want the work out there, and we want people to like it. So we're taking this chance.

What we must remember is that the people we respect won't laugh. They may love what we do; they may hate it; but they'll at least see that we've done our best, given it our best shot. Maybe they have helpful criticism. Maybe they're over the moon and plan to tell everyone they meet about your book. But laugh at you? Not bloody likely.

The other thing is that, when you look at the people who got laughed at, you'll see that rejection didn't stop them. So someone laughs. So what? You're still here, doing what you want to do.

When Brian Epstein decided to go to the major recording labels in England, they all rejected the Beatles. This bears repeating: Every single record label in England rejected the Beatles.

When George Lucas pitched STAR WARS, he was turned down by every major Hollywood studio. Did he fold his tent and steal away?

Now, if you happen to be writing something you yourself think is schlock, if it's just a pot-boiler that doesn't interest you, that's a different matter. But if your writing has meaning for you, something that you enjoy, if it 's like the books you like to read, then so what if someone laughs? You weren't writing to please them specifically. And not everyone is going to understand, or even like, what you've written.

But if you still fear the laughter of those who read your stuff, there is one cure-all: self-confidence, the knowledge that what you're writing is good. And that kind of confidence comes with age. So if someone laughs, let 'em. You'll still be here.

Friday Guest Post: PRETTY BOY FLAWED (by Lawrence Block)

(not by) Russel D McLean

I remember my dad giving me a book. This was when I was first getting into crime fiction. The book he handed to me was called 8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE. "You'll love it," he said. "Its part of a whole series about a detective in New York." I was, admittedly, a little skeptical, already beginning to realise how certain crime novels could start to blend into each other. Then he said: "But while the crime's intriguing, really the whole series is about New York itself. And alcoholism." I was intrigued enough to look. And I was glad I did, because the Matthew Scudder books have been a huge influence on my own work and I remain, to this day, a fervent fan of the works of one Mr Lawrence Block.

Which brings me to today's guest post. I'm in Harrogate just now, living it up with the UK crime brigade, and so I thought I'd try and arrange a guest post. I didn't in a million years reckon that I'd be able to bag one of my favourite eye-writers to do it. But somehow, ladies and gentlemen, we have managed to procure for you a true legend of the crime writing world to do some damage this Friday. Of course, the man himself has admitted this post is not without its flaws, but I guess you're just going to have to read on to see what he means. So, ladies and gentlemen, without any further pre-amble (as I write this I'm late for my lift to Harrogate), I give you, Mr Lawrence Block:

PRETTY BOY FLAWED

By Lawrence Block

Critics and reviewers like to point out that the characters I write about have flaws. It’s not hard to see what they’re getting at. Matthew Scudder, the narrator and protagonist of seventeen novels to date, begins as a good two-fisted drinker, and by the fifth book he’s in the grip of full-blown alcoholism.

He sobers up, and not a moment too soon, but not getting plastered doesn’t make him a plaster saint. He’s had a few girlfriends over the years, though I have to say I was bemused when one reviewer spoke disparagingly of Scudder’s womanizing. Now that’s a hard enough word to use in any circumstances without sounding like a perfect twit, but I was appalled to hear it applied to Scudder. If I had to guess, I’d say that the lad who wrote those lines hasn’t been getting much.

Still, it’s true that the man cheated on his call girl girlfriend, Elaine, with his winsome widowed client, Lisa. Then he married the one and went on seeing the other. That’s a pretty serious flaw. And it seems to me there was something else, but what was it?

Oh, right. His best friend is a career criminal. And sometimes, when the law doesn’t appear to work as he thinks it should, he’s not above taking it into his own hands. A couple of times he’s killed people, and it hasn’t always been in self-defense, or in the heat of battle.

Or consider Bernie Rhodenbarr. He’s a nice enough fellow, literate and personable. Old ladies and dogs take to him, and he runs a secondhand bookstore, for heaven’s sake, and he’s even got a stubtailed cat named Raffles. You’d be glad to have him over for dinner, but afterward you’d count your spoons.

Because, see, the habit he can’t seem to break is one of letting himself into other people’s houses and stealing their things. He knows a lot about art and collectibles, and part of his knowledge includes where to sell it without having to furnish proof of ownership. He’s a burglar, for God’s sake, and he’s been one for ten books already, and if that’s not a flaw, what is?

Well, how about killing strangers for a living? That’s what Keller does. He’s been in four books so far, and the body count is really getting up there. Aside from that, he’s a pretty decent fellow, a sort of Urban Lonely Guy of assassins.

He winds up being a guilty pleasure for a lot of readers, who like him more than they think they should. Women in particular are crazy about Keller, and are ready to take him by the arm and pick out drapes, and names for their kids. Some of them try telling themselves that he only kills people who deserve it, but that’s not true at all. Hey, he’d kill you if somebody paid him to. (Well, not you, but that other lady over there. He’d never kill you.)

So it’s not as though I’m arguing that my protagonists are perfect beings, that they’ve built up enough good karma in countless reincarnations to be subsumed into the next world and absorbed into the infinite goodness of the universe. I don’t rule it out, but it strikes me as unlikely.

But does that make them flawed?

I’ll tell you, I don’t much care for that word. It suggests that they’d be much better off without these flaws, and we’d be better off ourselves for knowing them. Why, if only they managed to overcome these flaws, then they’d be perfect. And wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Matt’s already come a long ways, now that he’s given up the drink and made an honest woman of Elaine. And he hasn’t been catting around on her lately, or if he has he’s kept it to himself, so at least we don’t have to know about it. Now if only he could stop hanging out with that reprobate Mick Ballou. . .

And Keller. Why, all he has to do is fine another way to make a living. He’s a stamp collector, so why doesn’t he give up homicide for hire and set up shop as a dealer in rare stamps? It may seem like a tame life in comparison to his old profession, but there ought to be enough drama and excitement in the life of a professional philatelist to keep readers turning those pages.

And Bernie. He keeps telling us he knows stealing stuff is reprehensible and he yearns to give it up. Well, duh, what are you waiting for, Bern? Give it up! Run the bookstore. Go straight home after work instead of boozing it up at the Bum Rap with your pal Carolyn. And who knows, if you can set a good example by giving up burglary, maybe she’ll see the error of her ways and give up being a lesbian. I mean, the two of you could get married, you could have kids, you could move to Armonk and run the book business over the Internet. You’ll love it in the suburbs. All that fresh air, all those healthy people—you know what? It wouldn’t surprise me if Raffles the cat grows his tail back. Who’s to say it couldn’t happen?

Oh, I exaggerate, do I? After the publication of Bernie’s fourth adventure, The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza, I got a copy in the mail from a disgruntled reader. “This is my last Burglar book,” the accompanying note advised me. “I find it unacceptable that, after four books, a presumably intelligent hero would not have grown enough to renounce his criminal ways and reform.”

Now I’m not generally quick to take umbrage, but there was an abundance of umbrage there for the taking, and I helped myself to a double armful of the stuff. “You mucking foron,” I wrote, approximately. “Either way it’s your last Burglar book, because if Bernie reforms the series is done.”

And who on earth wants to read about a perfect person? I haven’t come across too many in real life, but they turn up all too often in fiction, always doing the right thing, always taking the right path, always putting the needs of others ahead of their own. Empty suits is what they are, empty suits of armor. And untarnished in the bargain.

I don’t want to read about them. And I certainly don’t want to write about them, and couldn’t if I did. Because I wouldn’t know how.

But I still don’t like that word.

Flawed.

It makes my peeps sound defective. Like they’re somehow less than. Like there’s something wrong with them. Like they need fixing.

The hell with that.

Fortunately, there’s a better word. I had to get away from readers and writers to find it. So I went up to West Forty-seventh Street and walked amongst jewelers, and there I learned what the call the wee imperfection within a gemstone.

They call it an inclusion.

An inclusion! Isn’t that better? Isn’t it, like, tons better? Damn right it is. My characters don’t have flaws or blemishes or defects. They have inclusions.

They’re not missing anything. No, they’ve got something extra, something that puts them a step ahead of those flawless perfect nobody-home cardboard heroes.

They’ve got inclusions They’ve got what the other guys have, and more. Something additional. Something included.

Makes me proud of them, looking at ’em that way. Makes me want to sit down right now and start writing something about one of them. I’m not sure which one I’ll pick, and I might strike out in a new direction and embark on an adventure with a brand-new character. But if I do, I know one thing about him from the jump.

He’ll be a man with inclusions.

_

Lawrence Block’s most recent book is A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF, a novel about Matthew Scudder, Man of Inclusions. In September Hard Case Crime will bring out as its first-ever hardcover original GETTING OFF, a novel of sex and violence, by Lawrence Block writing as Jill Emerson. Its heroine is an endearing young woman whose mission in life is to pick up men, go home with them, enjoy great and fulfilling sex with them…and then kill them. Some might say she has issues. LB says she’s got inclusions, and he loves her just the way she is.