WARNING: This is a cannabis and bourbon influenced blogpost… at midnight. I’m not hammered. I cannot write in that state. I’m comfortably numb and in good spirits. I appreciate the punks readers who reached out, into my going-darkness, asking if I was okay. It made me laugh. I said I’d be back in December and as a man of my word here I am, on November 30th approaching the midnight hour with so many thoughts I’d like to express. Here we go.
I wrote my ass off in November but you will get no spoilers.
I went into the month with a 30K bare bones strong beginning to my 1977 Hollywood crime drama. I read that shit and scrapped two chapters, 7500 words, making a major plot change. Since the NaNoWriMo goal is 50K in 30 days, I set my goal at 70K for that story.
It started very slowly. The election distracted me for the first week but after that mess was settled I unplugged from politics and dove head-first into seventies LA and Hollywood sleaze. I wrote like a fucking maniac. The story just came out, thousands of words every day. I far exceeded my challenge in two weeks. I now have an 88k-word sequel to Watching The Detectives. I’ll tell you about it downstream with no spoilers.
I wish I could explain how stories come to me. I don’t have the words. Sometimes ideas come in the most mundane manner. Years ago, an awkward conversation in a Tempe, AZ mom & pop coffee shop resulted in characters for Punks. Frank the busybody is modeled after an old man who regularly sat near the counter at the coffee shop just creepily watching patrons. He did no harm but the staff didn’t love him.
This will sound crazy. I have conversations between characters in my head… and I’m not even writing. I commute to my job writing scenes in my mind. I don’t write the words. I’m driving in the fucking big city and have been living in a highway construction zone for four years. I think the words, flesh out the scene in my mind and when I reach my destination I might write a few paragraphs to outline that scene for later writing. I have had major plot breakthroughs while grocery shopping. These stories live in my head.
This is why I joke that being a writer is a form of mental illness. It can be an immersive experience. I have an illness of living in other eras, and cities, with people I create from thin air, characters often based on people I know. It’s not normal but I roll with it.
Hang on a moment. I need ice. I bought one of those molds that makes golf ball-sized ice balls. I swear those balls make me drink more. I have a fresh Jim on the round rocks. Joe’s drinking buddy is my buddy. You probably know that already.
This NaNoWriMo challenge model was made for me. I enjoyed the last month of escapism. I needed a vacation from reality. Someday I’ll share that story with you so you can have the same escape to 1970’s LA.
I believe Sunset ‘77 is better than WTD because I have a solid supporting cast. I created characters I became immediately attached to. I wanted them in more scenes, resulting in a crime novel of scenes. The whole story is told through the voices of my characters. I love that but I also wonder if I went too far from narrative writing. After all, detective stories are synonymous with narrators.
I can’t believe I just typed synonymous correctly on the first try. I was expecting Grammarly to flag that shit and help me fix it.
One supporting character in particular, Jimmy Scarlett, a gay Hollywood gossip columnist for the LA Times saved my story. Before Jimmy, I was stuck, looking for a solution to a problem that vexed Kat Price - private investigator. Sometimes the best solution is to create a new character to save the day. Jimmy did more than that… and that’s all I can say about that. No spoilers.
Another great supporting player, and I could argue the co-main character is Vivian Moss. She is the daughter Kat Price Landry never had. Viv becomes her investigating protege. I could not put her in enough scenes. Jimmy and Viv are just two of several supporting characters I’m proud of.
Then there’s the villain. I have created my first fictional monster. I fucking hate him so much. A man so inhumane I questioned my own humanity. How can I produce a beast of such cruelty from thin air? I won’t even tell you his name because that alone is a fucked up twist. No spoilers.
Teasers are okay.
So, Sunset ‘77 is a complete first draft and it’s not bare bones. I filled it in, put some meat on the bones, and wrote good backstories for the supporting cast, bonds, friendships, and grudges made… but it’s still a first draft. I have a no-brainer saying I often use.
The first draft is never the best version of any story.
I even worked two storylines into Sunset ‘77 that can be used as sequels to launch a series of LA detective tales with a team of female detective protagonists. You’ve read a taste of that when Joe met Kat at her Sunset Private Investigators office on Sunset Strip.
At the moment, after midnight on December 1st, the plan is to let Sunset ‘77 simmer on the back burner for a while, come back to it later for another pass, and decide when it’s worthy of publication.
That’s not all the writing I did this month. I’m actually more excited about this other story, no spoilers, only teasers.
After completing my WTD crime sequel mission last week, way ahead of schedule, I opened up Sacred Heart. I blogged about my other crime novel weeks ago. I’m in the middle of a serious rewrite, sixteen chapters in and I’m fully engaged.
LA is in my rearview mirror. My head is now in crime-ridden NYC.
I cleaned up the politics a little bit but decided that Sacred Heart needs the political backdrop to make the story credible. I can’t scrub it clean of content that might offend people on either side of the fence and remain true to the story I wrote in 2020. As a writer, I can’t be untrue to myself. Does that make sense?
What is so cool about this vigilante story rewrite is the new factors I could bring into my story I had not considered four years ago. This is a near-future tale, 2035, with all the tech toys and tools we have today. That is a huge departure from my Boomer writing of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s with no cellphones or internet. Life was so much simpler back then.
Back in 2020, when I wrote Sacred Heart, we were just learning about Artificial Intelligence. We did not know the potential of drone technology. The surveillance state was something discussed in civil liberties circles with scholars wringing their hands… but it wasn’t yet a reality. Facial recognition software is here and it’s not going away.
In the past week, rewriting about the near future with these new tech-angles has been fun. As much as I love writing in the past, the years we have nostalgia for, imagining the possible shit show of our future is intellectually stimulating in an entirely different way.
Just for the record… we were heading for a shit show regardless of who won. It’s just a different portion of the population will see shit while the other half enjoys the show.
That last line is a perfect example of how I try to straddle the political divide in my writing. I believe Sacred Heart is likely to be my next novel published online. If the political turmoil I create in that story offends readers… it’s on them.
Don’t be a snowflake.
While all this crime writing is going on I’ve had this urge to continue with my Punks saga. I feel like I owe you Venice Readers something for sticking with me during my time of transition. I have not yet found a new home. Wattpad is… meh. I have seventeen chapters of WTD up… with fewer than 200 total views.
(Exhales)
That’s pathetic. I don’t know how readers find stories on Wattpad other than book covers and tags but they’re not finding my first story published there. The drop-off after a few chapters makes me wonder… is my first crime novel that fucking bad?
(Exhales)
Maybe it’s not bad but it’s just not that good.
So my search for a new home for my fiction continues but that doesn’t mean I can’t hook you up with some Punks writing using the same method I employed to deliver the final chapters of Venice, direct links.
Here’s the thing, if I do this you might be reading a future chapter of an upcoming Punks series. It would be one of those short stories that fit within my long series. I do that often. Teenage Joe helping Betty win the Senior Class Presidency is a good example. How about Punk Rock Penny? Joe and the Young Punks take Tina’s young cousin to her first day of high school in a limo. That’s what my Punks writing is; many short stories linked together in an epic tale. Every Postcard is a short story about Joe’s journey.
This is what I’m thinking.
Very late in Punks, after Tina flies to Los Angeles, collects her Venice VIP rewards, and fucks Joe’s brains out to win him back… she has one unpleasant obstacle to overcome. Tina agreed to go back to Providence with Joe for Christmas and face his sisters who have a very low opinion of her after she hurt their brother years ago… especially Jackie, the new queen of the Theroux family.
I mentioned her dreaded holiday trip to Rhode Island in Punks but never wrote the actual scenes and story of her facing the Christmas music. It just happened in the background and I moved on with the relationship tale.
I now realize that was a missed opportunity on my part. Tina having to grovel for Jackie would be delicious for Joe, right? He relishes those awkward moments. I need to write that drama.
So, I’m thinking in the next few weeks I’ll write one chapter of Awkward Holiday Terror as a Christmas card to you Venice readers. It might not be perfect. You will be seeing a true first draft story, unpolished.
I’ll send an email blast with my late 1990s Punks holiday story link when it’s ready. In the meantime, I might drop some blog posts here. I won’t email blast those. You can check in if you wish… or not.