On Writing — Reader’s Expectations: To Meet Them Or Not Meet Them

Authors live and die by the reviews. I have been blessed by the attention over the years.  And I thank the highly educated, overworked and often underpaid reviewers who help keep writers afloat.  In my couple of decades I have never argued with or complained about a review. I don’t intend to do that now. But a very recent book review of the second in my new novella series about a forensic accountant touches, perhaps inadvertently, on the topic of authors writing in a different style and or a different genre — meaning he or she is likely not to meet the expectations of a reader familiar with writers most popular or previously accepted work.

This happens to many writers. Some never leave the pattern of their original success. From the readers’ point of view, I understand. It is much like one of those moments when you  expected a Coke and were shocked, even disgusted at the taste of iced tea, though under normal circumstances you like iced tea as well. It was the shock of the unexpected.

 So I’d like to clarify my soon-to-be released novella, The Black Tortoise. For those who followed the more popular Shanahan series, the Peter Strand series is entirely different.  Shanahan is an older man,  former Army sergeant, who came to terms with life and with who he is a long time ago.  The stories are standard book-length and often quirky. They take the tough P.I. approach. The Shanahans are more likely to have violence and, by sheer length, accommodate a more complicated plot.  Peter Stand, introduced in The Blue Dragon, is a young Chinese American, dealing with personal identity as he attempts to solve much more conventional mysteries (almost cozies, puzzles to challenge the reader to find the murder before the book ends) in a quick-easy-to-read style. The Strand series is part of Orca Publishers “Rapid Reads” program designed for the reader who wants a quick read on the flight from Phoenix to New York. Or for a younger reader who identifies with a protagonist still coming to terms with himself and the world around him.

Now, in my world, I can enjoy American Psycho and “Midsomer Murders,” but I would hate to have to watch one when I was expecting the other.

My first real brush with this phenomenon as a writer was when Good To the Last Kiss was released by London’s Severn House.  Compared to the Shanahans, this is a dark book indeed. People I knew and loved, not to mention most critics, didn't want to talk about it.   It hasn’t sold well. Yet I consider it to be my best. I suspect it never got to the readers who might have liked it because my previous books kept me off their radar. On the other hand, this is my problem. I’m not the only one who has to deal with this kind of thing. Writers are finding ways to keep from being completely pigeon-holed. Another book, also one of my favorites, is Mascara: Death In The Tenderloin, a transgender mystery. It was also too different.  Most publishers shy away from books by authors who venture too from the expected.  As have other stubborn writers, I published it myself.  I’ve not gotten rich, but I’m so happy I wrote what my soul was telling me to write because part of being a genuine writer is taking that risk.

Please, read the Shanahans. Perhaps there is a reason why many consider these books the best of what I do (did).  But if you are adventurous, consider reading some of my non-Shanahan work as well.

The inspiration for this post was a negative review from a highly respected source.  The fact is every word in that review was correct, which is why I found it worth comment because it also pointed out the expectation game. While I am working on a new P.I. set in Palm Springs, and a little more in the Shanahan tradition, I’m also working on other mysteries that wander pretty far outside the box.

                                                                                                

Commentary — Reading, Writing And Reality

When I was a kid, sometime after first grade, my best friend and I used to go down to his basement where he had a box of presidents. Thirty-four of them at the time.  Each, from Washington to Eisenhower, was rendered realistically in white plastic and stood no more than six inches high.  He also had a bunch of model cars — maybe more than a dozen conveniently in proportion to our presidents. We’d each choose our gang as you might choose a softball team among friends and neighbors. We’d choose automobiles the same way. And then we’d engage in some sort of adventure, careening under chairs and behind boxes as if we were writing and directing a film. Of the presidents, I chose Franklin Pierce first. He was my main character for no other reason than I thought he was the best looking of the lot. My friend chose Jefferson. My friend may have had more profound reasoning. Pierce was not one of the best, historically. I also chose a Lincoln for my main car (my father always drove a Ford) and for my friend, whose father drove a Plymouth) a Chrysler Imperial. Hours would pass as some sort of drama would unfold. What possible scenarios were created escapes me now.

Poster by Mark Stevenson

My friend was also involved in sports and though he would pick me first to be on his team in neighborhood basketball games even though we all knew I’d still be there for the last pick. (I was that bad.) I eventually disengaged when it came to athletic competitions.  Even so, our fictional adventures continued.  We would go down to the crick (a very small creek) with crawdads and frogs and, with a few additional friends, recreate the adventures of Robin Hood.  My friend was Robin and I was either Friar Tuck or Little John because this happened during my prolonged chubby phase — a phase that has come back to haunt me in my golden years. I preferred Little John.  I wasn’t all that religious, even then.  We would use stripped branches from fallen trees as staffs and dowel rods (for a nickel from the local hardware) as swords. There were also woody, willowy weeds that with some kitchen yarn could be used as a bow and, broken in the right place, as arrows. Our dramas were improvisational but could last from noon to nightfall. I’m sure there were kids our age all over the country doing some version of this.

My chubby phase also contributed to the next step in creating alternate worlds. In the mid-grades of elementary school, my friend and I participated in the annual talent show by writing our own Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton skits.  Even without Alice and Trixie, the performances were a huge success. Our classmates preferred our often slapstick comedy to the accordion players and tap dancers.  We wrote the skits, rehearsed them. and improvised during performances. I was Ralph because of my previously referenced girth and my friend did a spectacularly goofy Norton, especially considering he was also excellent as Robin Hood.

My good friend and I eventually went in separate directions. Initially sports won out for him.  There was nothing he wasn’t good at. Football in his younger years, and later as a successful photographer and father.  I kicked about — the Army and jobs in communications mostly – but never really gave up imaginary worlds and the desire to share them. I acted a bit in community and small theater while holding down sometimes fascinating day jobs.  I wrote plays.  One, “Death In Bloom,” saw the stage. I helped start an alternative newspaper, which is still going 25 years later and, at forty, began writing mysteries. It took awhile, but I found something that enabled me to invest serious energy in made-up stories.

The best part about being a novelist is I can engage in my adventure while at a desk, in the shower, or putting together the evening meal. At any time, or any place I can enter my world, and when I grow tired of it I can leave it — most of the time. The worst thing is that my nature has grown a bit anti-social. With the exception of my brothers and a few close friends, meeting with other people is anxiety producing.  I absolutely hate the telephone.  I have a thousand reasons, but mostly because of its untimely, unknowing, persistent rudeness, interrupting my fictional world or my adult make-believe.

What has happened, of course, is that I’ve become even more selfish in perhaps the true meaning of the word. What many around me do not understand is that now, at this stage of my obsession, I’m always writing. If I’m up walking around, if I’m shaving, if I’m watching TV…. I might be in the midst of committing a murder or finally solving it. It’s not just happening when I sit in front of my computer. In fact, if I’m typing, I’m probably just emptying my head of what I’ve already created.

Anyway, next month, Ed Norton, AKA Robin Hood, AKA Thomas Jefferson is coming to visit. I have seen him since sixth grade, but not often at all and certainly not recently. We’ve both entered our seventh decade of life, he probably with grandchildren, perhaps great grand children and me with a few now dusty books as offspring. I’m not complaining.  Actually I’m in the middle of three novellas. I go to sleep lately, looking for a way to save the life of my protagonist’s best friend in one of my books. I suspect I did the same thing down at the crick a few dozen years ago.  Or, more likely, visa versa.

Commentary — All In A Day’s Walk

I used to spend a lot of my time wandering the streets of San Francisco.  My pattern was to pick up the thread of whatever I was writing, plant it firmly in my subconscious and develop it as I walked. My meanderings took me sometimes up and down the nearly secret stairways, short cuts from one neighborhood to another, and often through one of the many parks, where I’d eventually sit and transfer any thoughts about mystery into a small notebook.   Then, I would find my way to the nearest market to pick up dinner.

I always took my camera. San Francisco is endlessly photographable; but one of my favorite things to find was what the street artists had done since I last traveled those parts.  You could and can find their work almost anywhere in the city, but the Mission and Haight Street were genuine goldmines.

When my walk was done, I’d settle into my small, dusty apartment, have dinner, some wine, watch a film and sleep. In the morning I would take out the notebook.  If I had been lucky, the next few pages of my mystery would begin to flow.   When the muse had given its all, I would start the afternoon walk all over again, loving every minute of it.

I’ve put together a slide show of some of the street artists’ work. Some of the images are gone now, many of them painted over by newer exciting images — the way of the world for artists — and writers.

Off-Speed – Random Thoughts On Baseball, Loyalty And Nostalgia

I don’t spend much time on sports.  My weakness is baseball. All the years I lived in Indianapolis, probably because I could get WGN on TV, I became a Cubs fan. Frustrated not only by their failures, but also by the owners willingness to sell off some of their best players as the team began to threaten to break from their bad reputation. This was a team that had Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg, Shawon Dunston, Andre Dawson and such star pitchers as Greg Maddox and the infuriating Rick Sutcliffe, who had the pitching pace of a turtle. They also had the incredible Lee Smith as a closer.

Lee Smith

I liked the Cubs enough to make them a staple in my Shanahan mystery series. They were constantly on TV at Delaney’s bar on Tenth Street in Indianapolis and continued to dominate the place when Shanahan’s pal, Harry bought the bar. Shanahan often sat at the bar with a bottle of “The Champagne of Bottled Beer” and a shot of J.W. Dant Bourbon with crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd in the background. I watched a lot of games too.

I have to confess that I lost touch with Cubs, mostly because I moved to San Francisco and got caught up with Giants, but also the Cubs weren’t the Cubs I knew anyway. I hate the lack of loyalty, or perhaps continuity, when players don’t play out their career with one team.  One thinks of Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra, Stan Musial and Ted Williams. I could never come to terms with Greg Maddox playing for Atlanta.

Ryne Sandberg

This year I rooted for the Giants when they were the wild card and were pitted against the Cubs. But now that this is decided, it’s time to make a nostalgic move and root for the Cubs in the World Series. Maybe I’ll haul out my first Shanahan book, TheStone Veil, published in 1989, when the Cubs also had a great team, but just couldn’t pull it all together.

Memories From Third Grade

I had a tough childhood. No kindergarten for me. First grade. Cold turkey.   No practice napping. No half-day classes to get used to what it’s like to be inside the big house.

My first grade teacher was Miss Hoover, a pretty young lady who served graham crackers and milk and begged for silence.  My second grade teacher was Mrs. Sparks, a no-nonsense high-breasted woman who was not particularly electric. She wore printed cotton dresses and looked through eyeglasses that had Coke bottle lenses. She could have been my grandmother’s sister. She was sane and diligently, if not enthusiastically, went about the boring daily business of math and spelling.

Miss Miller was a round, low-breasted woman who always wore a black cotton dress, perhaps the same one every day.  Her black hair was pinched into a tight, little a bun.  Like Mrs. Sparks and unlike Miss Hoover, Miss Miller never smiled.  She kept a yardstick or pointer in her right hand and a Bible in her left. She used them both.  She was a dark presence. Armed and dangerous.

Now I’ve talked with Catholic kids and heard story after story about those ferocious nuns.  Sorry, they couldn’t have lasted 30 seconds in the ring with Miss Miller. Sure the standard crack on the knuckles.  Yes, the ear was not only there for listening, it was also a handle by which Miss Miller could extract you from the classroom.  That’s just the physical stuff. There was a lot more to Miss Miller than the mere threat of, or actual, physical violence.

Every morning, after the pledge of allegiance and a prayer as long as a three-act play in the original Greek, she would read us something from the black book, usually something harsh and bitter showing the vengeful side of God’s nature.  I’ll admit that’s when I began to develop a dim view of the Creator. That and what he did to Moses put me off.  Of course I said nothing at the time. She had a Stalinesque hold on the third-graders. The smart-aleck seeds of my personality had not yet bloomed. The unfortunate thing is that most folks can read my face.

The Bible reading was followed by a moral tale.  One of those stories told to us 64 years ago survives to this day, albeit in tattered form.  I was eight at the time. Seems as if a frail little boy committed a sin, stealing perhaps.  He was caught and found guilty.  He was to be paddled (another weapon in Miss Miller’s arsenal).  “But he was so small and so weak,” Miss Miller said. “Surely there must be a better alternative.”  She looked around the classroom.  No one spoke. “All was lost, it seemed,” continued Miss Miller, “until one boy, a big, strapping child, raised his hand and volunteered to take the beating.” Miss Miller may have actually smiled, having conveyed what in her mind was an important moral lesson.

I think the reason I remember this story is that it never made sense to me. I’ve been trying to figure this out since I was eight. There seemed to be, even then, a simpler solution.

At 3:15 — the end of the day in Miss Miller’s third grade class, she would stand at the door as we all filed through and left for home.

That afternoon, as usual and being the polite child my parents taught me to be, I said to her: “Goodbye, Miss Miller, see you tomorrow.”

Without blinking, she replied, “If there is a tomorrow.”