There Will Be Blood (and Skeletons)

CBR.com has a ton of preview pages up from Dead of Night: Werewolf By Night #3 (with art by the truly demented Mico Suayan... check out the wreckage around the airplane) and Cable #12 (with art by the truly awesome Jamie McKelvie... check out the cute skeletons in the downed space station). Both are on sale next Wednesday.

Blip Me Off

I've just set up an account at Blip.fm, which from what I gather is kind of like Twitter, only with music. Who knows how much time I'll devote to this, but music was a huge part of my life growing up (still is now, on the listening end), so I figured I'd give it a try. Expect lots of blasts from the past.

Backflash #1

Can you guess the author/title of this vintage paperback just from the back cover copy? Leave your guesses in the comments section. (Hurry before Bill Crider nails it.)

You Ask, Secret Dead Blog Answers!

In the previous post on John D. MacDonald, Ryan K. Lindsay asks:

Duane, did you go through a period of "learning" to write, and if so, what sort of stuff did you write that didn't see publication?

Yes. In fact, I'm still going through it now.

I don't believe a writer should ever think he/she is finishing "learning" how to write. I hope I'm still pushing myself right up until the moment I stop, clutch at my chest, and face-plant into my keyboard. (Or whatever writing device I'm using decades from now. Maybe it'll be an Apple iBrain Implant, and I'll face-plant through a holographic screen. Which would be quite funny to watch, were I not dying.)

That said, I certainly went through a long period of learning how to be a professional writer—that is to say, good enough to have editors pay me for my writing.

With nonfiction, I went pro in the summer of 1991, when I was paid for my first short (250 word) piece in Philadelphia Magazine. I was 19 years old, and I'd been working at my college newspaper for about two years. I'm not saying I was hot shit back then—far from it—but by that point I knew how to write a lede and follow it up with a bunch of readable sentences. A short while later I wrote my first department (about 2,500 words), and away I went. I graduated in 1993, and worked as an editor and/or writer for magazines and newspapers until 2008.

My years in journalism were excellent training. There's nothing better than having an editor slash away at your work with a red pen. You learn how easy it is to waste words. You're able to spot your own cliches. And you really think hard about word choice, especially when an editor circles a line and writes, in angry red letters: SOMETHING BETTER. (Many of my fiction writing heroes are former journalists, including James M. Cain, Michael Connelly, and Laura Lippman.)

The road to professional fiction writer was another story. If I had to pin it down, I'd say my training period lasted from about 1984 (when I started writing short horror stories in eighth grade) until the summer of 2004, when St. Martin's bought The Wheelman. I had published short stories before that (in small press mags and webzines), but I wasn't paid much, if at all.

What did I write over those 20 years?

I wrote a lot of horror stories with twist endings. I wrote a series of novellas about undead teenagers that almost became a novel... but spiralled out of control. I wrote a novella called Caroline about ghosts and automobile crashes and monsters. I started a novel about shapeshifters; started another one about a pryomaniac. I wrote 20,000 words of a novel about a vigilante journalist that just sputtered and died. I wrote about 30,000 words of a private eye novel that sputtered and died; later I salvaged the first few chapters which became "Hilly Palmer's Last Case" (published at Plots With Guns, and later, the Year's Best Crime and Mystery Stories). I wrote 10,000 words of a novel about a flooded graveyard. I wrote another 10,000 words of a novel about an exorcist for hire. Both sputtered and died.

My big problem, of course, was that I didn't know how to fucking finish anything longer than a novella or short story. I'd come up with another idea, some bright new shiny toy, and off I'd go, chasing that. If fiction had such a thing as deadbeat dad laws, I would have been on the Ten Most Wanted list.

Then in the summer of 1998 I sat down to write what would become Secret Dead Men. I told myself: You're going to finish this no matter what. Even if it sucks. Even if it falls apart. If it starts to sputter, slap the defib paddles on its chest and shock it back to life. If a new idea comes prancing along, IGNORE IT. Finish. Finish no matter what.

So I gave myself a nightly goal of 1,000 words, and I finished it. And while the first draft needed a lot of work, it was nowhere near as bad as I thought it might be.

That was a huge breakthrough. Since then, I have let another stories and novels die, but not because I didn't know how to finish them. I finished a novel once, and I knew I could do it again. No, instead, I let them die because I thought they deserved to die.

That's what I'm trying to learn now—spotting those viable ideas. I'm blessed with a fevered imagination; I have more ideas than I can possibly write. (I labor under the delusion that I'll get around to all of them someday.) But now I have to be careful about how I spent my writing time—it's what I do for a living now. I can't afford to spent three or four months pursuing something that will lead me straight into a brick wall. (Screenwriter John August has a great post about choosing projects over at his blog.)

I think I'm getting better at this, but like I said at the top of this post—I'm still learning.

Legends of the Underwood #8: John D. MacDonald

I was involved in the desperate business of trying to wrest a living out of free-lance fiction for magazines... During those first four months of effort, I wrote about 800,000 words of unsalable manuscript, all in short-story form. This is the equivalent of ten average novels. Had I done a novel a year, it would have taken me ten years to acquire the precision and facility I acquired in four months.

—John D. MacDonald in The House Guests (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1965)

(Eighth in a series.)

Legends of the Underwood #7: Lawrence Block

I have on occasion written books in as little as three days; I've written a couple that took only seven or eight days that are probably as good as anything I've done. I can't argue that I made a mistake writing those books as rapidly as I did. nor am I at all inclined to attempt to do that sort of thing now.

—Lawrence Block, in Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print (Writer's Digest Books, 1979)

(Seventh in a series. Photo by Laurie Roberts.)

Swierczy Annotates: Punisher MAX #66

Yes, I completely dropped the ball on my Iron Fist annotations. I'm hoping to get back to those soon... but in the meantime, let me give you some page-by-page thoughts on the first issue of my current Punisher arc, "Six Hours to Kill."

(Obligatory Spoiler Warning: This annotation might give away some plot points. So read the issue first. Seriously. It'll make this so much cooler.)

Page 1
Splash recap page.
I wasn't sure Axel Alonso (my editor) would go for this, to be honest. But I wanted a mood-setter, as well as something to bring non-Punisher readers up to speed quick. Luckily, Axel agreed, and it became a running feature for the rest of the arc.

Page 3, Panel 5
Frank Castle takes out a guard.
I once accidentally elbowed the Bride in the mouth. Don't look at me that way—it was totally an accident. We were watching TV, and I sat up just as she was leaning down and... pow. This was before we were even married, just dating for maybe a few months—if that. To make matters worse, we were at her mother's house. One minute the woman's washing her hair, the next minute she sees her daughter come rushing into the bathroom, blood dripping from her mouth. Yeah. You can imagine the rest. So to this day I'm extra-cautious when moving my limbs around any of my loved ones, and one of my worst fears is accidentally elbowing someone in the face again. However, you can see that the Punisher has no such fears.

Page 5
Frank shoots the guards.
When it comes to exploding heads, Michel Lacombe has no peers.

Page 6, Panel 6
Frank kills a fleeing guard.
Another one of my bodily fears: tripping and accidentally slamming my eye on the sharp corner of a desk. (An absurd number of my fears find their way into my novels/comics.)

Page 7
Frank walks through the kiddie jail.
For years, there really was a jail for children situated on Philly's Ben Franklin Parkway—which is known to all Rocky fans as the tree-lined, manicured road to the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum. Technically name was the "Youth Study Center," but I always thought the Parkway was a strange place for such a facility. I tucked this fact away, knowing it would come in handy for a story someday.

Page 8, Panel 1
Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
I think the guy in the lower right hand corner is me. (Thanks, Michel.)

Page 8, Panel 4
Frank meets Louis.
Two things about this panel. One: the guy in the gas mask (Louis) was a tip of the hat to Dead Man's Shoes, an excellent revenge movie that Axel recommended to me when we first started kicking around story ideas. Two: I love the little detail Michel included that implies Frank keeps a bunch of extra skull t-shirts in a special compartment in his battle van.

Page 11
The Lizard Kings' Lair.
I based this location on the offices of Red Tettemer, an ad agency located at the top of Philly's iconic PNB Building. Back when I was editor of the Philadelphia City Paper, we had an editorial retreat at Red Tettemer, and I tucked away as many details as I could, knowing I had to use this location in a story someday. (As Alfred Bester once said, writers are magpies.) Anyway, it's a gorgeous space.

Page 12
Frank wakes up.
I'm a huge, huge HUGE fan of those classic Punisher scenes where Frank Castle is strapped to a table and about to be tortured. Of course I had to include such a scene in my own story.

Pages 14-15
Louis gives Frank the lowdown.
In my novels I tend to base at least one loser-ish character on myself. It's no coincidence that "Louis" is my middle name.

Page 17
The Mayor hears the news.
Since the Marvel editorial budget doesn't include travel expenses for its writers and/or artists, I snapped a bunch of photos for Michel Lacombe to use as reference. The shot in panel one was taken by the Bride as we were stopped at a red light near 13th and Market. (By then, she'd clearly forgiven me for the elbow in the face incident.) Also: KYW is the real all-news radio station in town, but "The Glitz" is a made-up nightclub. I had the name of a real nightclub, but apparently featuring real places of business is a Marvel no-no. (Sorry, unamed nightclub!)

Page 20
Frank receives his assignment.
The idea to have Louis wear the Punisher's t-shirt was all Michel's. Absolutely brilliant.

Page 21, Panel 4
Frank leaves the warehouse.
That's a real warehouse near Delaware Avenue you see there. The same joint makes a cameo appearance in issue #1 of Dead of Night: Werewolf By Night, also set (in the beginning, at least) in Philadelphia. I liked the idea that these two MAX universe characters would have something in common... even if it's just a broken-down building somewhere in the City of Brotherly Love.

One more note: The idea from this arc sprang, in part, from an online piece I read about the so-called "Golden Hour," which refers to the 60 minutes immediately following severe trauma. If you receive serious medical care within that first hour, the theory goes, your odds of survival are greatly increased. I thought: what if Frank Castle were given a golden hour? What would he do with it? Later, after I realized that my run on Punisher would start with issue #66, I changed it to six hours. And away we went...

A Punishing Week

I meant to link to Steven Wells' Philadelphia Weekly piece on The Punisher coming to Philly a few days ago (um, when it appeared), but deadlines and a nasty case of Fanboy Flu have been dogging me all week. Anyway, it's a very fun piece, even if it does make me sound a bit like an over-sized lunatic. (Who feeds his kids breakfast every morning.) I've never been described as almost as pretty as a horse before... thanks, Mr. Wells!

And speaking of Frank Castle, the first seven pages of Punisher: Frank Castle MAX #67 are up at CBR.com, featuring some nice finger-popping action by Michel Lacombe, as well as a Russian valet cursing in broken English.

Tough Guys Finnish First

Here's a sweet little promo poster for a new crime paperback line debuting in Finland next month. And the first out of the gate, I'm proud to report, is my own Keikkakuski (a.k.a. The Wheelman). Series editor Juri Nummelin has been working on this line for a few years now, and it's great that it's finally seeing the light of day. The publisher is Arktinen Banaani, which primarily deals in funnybooks and graphic novels.

Also coming soon: Allan Guthrie's Edgar-nominated Viimeinen Suudelma (Kiss Her Goodbye) and Kevin Wignall's Edgar-nominated Kuka on Conrad Hirst? (Who Killed Conrad Hirst?). My own novel, of course, was not nominated for an Edgar, but shhhhhh. Don't tell anybody in Finland.

Enter the Javits

Above is the view from my hotel room, just a block and change from the Jacob Javits Center, where New York Comic Con is about to begin. It's actually going to begin for me in about an hour, when I'll be part of a signing at Jim Hanley's Universe (4 West 33rd Street) with C.B. Cebulski, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Gabriele Dell'Otto, Stefano Caselli, Jonathan Hickman and Glen Brunswick. Not sure I'll be doing much posting here, but you can follow late-breaking updates (and pics) over at my Twitter page (twitter.com/swierczy). And if you happen to be here for NYCC, definitely stop me and say hello.

More Comics Than Nature Intended

Through some disturbance in the time-space continuum, there are four Marvel comics out today with the name "Swierczynski" on them. I'd love to say that it's some kind of savvy pre-New York Comic Con marketing blitz... but I'd be lying. It's just one of those scheduling things.

So what've we got? Well, there's...

Immortal Iron Fist #22. This is the opening of the new arc, "Escape from the Eighth City," in which Danny and the other Immortal Weapons find themselves in a never-ending Kung Fu battle in something quite like Hell. Travel Foreman's crew of martial arts monsters will scare the shit out of you.

Cable #11. The first installment of a two-parter, with the amazing Jamie McKelvie as guest artist. Ariel Olivetti provides a kick-ass set of bookends. (Very much looking forward to meeting both Jamie and Ariel this weekend at NYCC.)

X-Men: The Times and Life of Lucas Bishop #1: The first chapter ("Born to Die") in a three-issue mini-series about our favorite mutant anti-hero cop. (Sample art above by Larry Stroman, who blew me away with every page.)

Dead of Night: Werewolf By Night #2: The next installment of Jack Russell's bloody, bloody locked room mystery. You haven't seen gore until you've seen it drawn by Mico Suayan.

All told, that's $13.96 (plus tax) out of your wallet, so I know it's not exactly spare change. So big thanks to everyone who picks up my stuff on a regular basis. My wife and kids thank you, too.