Secret Dead Guest Post! Russel D McLean's "McGenre"

Welcome to the Secret Dead Blog, Tartan Edition.

You will notice I am not Duane Swierczynski. Why? Because a) I have an accent you’re probably straining to understand even on the screen and b) my name is much easier to spell. Although people do insist on adding an extra L.

My name is Russel D McLean. I am a Scotsman. A crime writer. A general miscreant. And I am here today as part of a two week blog tour to promote my latest novel to hit the US, The Lost Sister; a dark, violent PI novel in the vein of Ross McDonald and Lawrence Block but set in modern-day Scotland.

Of course, tours like this get dull if I spend every shilling myself, so what I’m doing is talking every day about different topics to do with the writing of the books or crime fiction in general. I figured given the fact that Duane straddles so many genres at once, I’d talk a little about genre today.

There are two questions I get asked most often at events.

The first is, “Why do your characters swear?”

The second is, “Why do you write crime fiction?”

People seem surprised, you know, that I do this. My primary school teacher showed up at a recent event with her eyebrows raised that I was writing such mean novels. After all, I was the quiet kid. But then if you know your clichés, it’s the quiet ones you gotta watch out for.

But it is, in its way, a good question. Especially given that I wanted to be the next Philip K Dick, except without going through the drug problems and that eventual breakdown/revelation/enlightenment thing .

Usually at this point I get interrupted: “So why don’t you write SF?”

My glib response is simple (and maybe true): I was shite. Truly, utterly completely. I loved the genre with a passion, but my voice was utterly unsuited to writing SF. I couldn’t balance the fantastic and the mundane. My tone was all over the place.

But, of course, I was in my teens at this point. Of course I was appalling. With  very few exceptions, most people can’t write truthfully in their teens. There’s too much conflict in you. If you’re still figuring out who you are, how can you figure out who your characters are?

In my early twenties, I guess I got better at it. The last SF novel I wrote – with the appalling title of The Many Faces of Alexander Harvey  – started to get some traction. But not enough to land a deal. So I figured I needed a new approach.

I still wrote some pulpy shorts but on the whole I was beginning to realise that I was less interested in the SF side of the stories than I was in the distinctly human aspect.

Dark motivations were beginning to appeal. Much of this had to do with my reblooming affair with crime fiction. Thanks to my dad’s influence, I was turning more and to crime novels. The darker they were, the better, of course.  I was eating up Ellroy, Block, Leonard, McDonald…

And then I decided to try my hand at a couple of crime fiction stories. My first attempt – later published online under a pseudonym (I have three at the last count, all since retired) – was pretty derivative, as many of these things are, but I could sense something in it. I mean, I was passionate about the characters and what happened to them. I was getting a true kick out of it, not worrying about the plausibility of the more fantastical elements, just letting the story tell itself.

It would take me a few years, of course, to actually get a handle on how to write crime stories that were my own. My style would change, naturally, but the thrill of the crime story would remain. And I’ve spent a long time trying to work out why.

In the last few years that I’ve realised what it is about crime that works for me as a reader and as a writer. The genre is huge; a church that encompasses all kinds of faiths. From the simple puzzle mystery to the most tragic of dramas and everything in between. And while popular opinion may occasionally limit the genre (and claim anything outside of expectations to be “literary”) I think that the basic remit of crime fiction as a genre is so encompassing as to be near enough limitless.

All we need, after all, at the heart of the story is an act that transgresses societal norms. After that, any approach is fair game. We can find out whodunit or whydunit. We can recoil in horror. We can restore order or we can chart chaos. We can do almost anything.

But what I love, what pulls me back again and again, is the emotional and psychological impact of crime and transgressive acts upon people. The victims, the perpetrators, the appointed (self and societal) investigators, almost everyone in the cast is affected by this one act and then you have a dramatic domino effect that you can explore throughout your story. Of course, it all sounds incredibly worthy and “literary” doesn’t it?

But that’s the joy of crime fiction. It can, if you let it, do all that stuff literary fiction claims hold to… and still grip with a story that really moves, and characters who are undergoing real and fascinating changes.

At the same time, it can, if you want it to, be pure escapism. You can read it purely on a surface level and, to quote crime genre expert Ali Karim, watch the baddies get biffed (and, if you’re reading noir, often the good guys too).

It’s the ultimate genre. The least constrained. The one that – as writers such as my most gracious host prove time and again – can be moulded so that it looks like something else entirely. Is, to use an example, Expiration Date a crime novel or an SF novel? You ask me, it’s both and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be. Because, bloody hell, it’s a good story.

So I guess that’s the long answer to the question I get asked second most often (behind the swearing one). But in the end, it’s not about genre for me, but about whether the story is any good. And I hope, in the case of The Lost Sister, readers agree with me on the fact that no matter the genre, it’s still a damn fine story.

Charles Willeford's Turnaround

I love the story of how Charles Willeford wrote his first novel, High Priest of California, recounted by Lou Stathis in his introduction to the 1987 Re/Search edition. Seems that a roommate was tired of hearing Willeford always talk about writing a novel rather than actually writing the novel. "Aw, you ain't never gonna do it," said the friend, "so just shut up." Willeford realized: "I had no choice after that. I had to start writing."

At the time, Willeford was stationed at the Hamilton Air Force Base about 30 miles north of San Francisco. So on weekends, Willeford would travel down to the city in his power blue Buick convertible and take a room at the Powell Hotel, right at the base of the famous cable car turnaround on Powell Street. He'd divide his time between writing and fun. "Being thirty years old, "Willeford said, "with a blue convertible, a blue uniform, and blue eyes, I was just having the time of my life." More important, Willeford finished the novel. It was only 35,000, but that's exactly the right length for a book like High Priest. (Incidentally, James M. Cain's immortal The Postman Always Rings Twice was also 35,000 words.)

I visited San Francisco last summer, and spent a bit of time down at the cable car turnaround, having no idea that Willeford had written his first novel just a few steps away. For some reason I'm fascinated by the places writers write, as well as where they hung out and where specific novels were created. I know logically that it's the person and not the place... but I can't shake the feeling that some of that writerly vibe tends to linger there.

(Hey, I could have worse hobbies.)

Anyway, I've been keeping this quiet little Tumblr thing called (appropriately enough) Secret Dead Tumblr, where I simply post photos along these lines. I've focused on my favorites: David Goodis, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Chandler, Fredric Brown, Cain, Willeford, etc. Need to add a Hammett post, come to think of it.

But if you have any tips on where a notable writer worked/lived/played, I'm all ears.

Remembering Holly (1995-2011)

Secret Dead Blog lost a treasured member of its team today: Holly, our 16-year-old black domestic shorthaired cat.

Holly (named for Buddy Holly) has been around since the beginning. I brought her home on Sunday, March 19, 1995, the same week I was promoted to the position of staff writer at Philadelphia Magazine. So for as long as I've been earning a living as a writer, Holly's been by my side. She used to curl up around my neck as I'd write short stories and magazine pieces, sometimes wrapping herself around my computer monitor, just to make sure I stayed focused and on task. She'd knock over the wastebasket in the bathroom whenever my attention would drift. She'd steal my ties from the rack (as if to say, Someday, kid, you're going to have a job where you won't need to wear a tie). She'd growl and hiss at any human females who happened to visit my home. (You ain't got time for the dames. Write, damn it!) She even tried to dismember the human female who would eventually become my wife; this initial skirmish turned into a years-long battle of the wills that settled into an uneasy truce... then, finally, grudging mutual respect. Eventually, Holly accepted the Human Female Who Became My Wife as part of the Secret Dead Blog team, and even tolerated it when I and the human female produced two children. But inside, Holly knew her true place; her claws were sunk deep into the operation.

Holly would curl up into a little furry, purring black ball as I wrote Secret Dead Men in Brooklyn back in the late 90s. (She never said as much, but I think she appreciated her cameo appearance in that novel). She was there when I worked on The Wheelman in Philadelphia, as well as every other novel since. I used to joke with the Human Female Who Became My Wife that Holly was my "office manager." But now I realize that it's true. Holly was a constant in my creative landscape. No matter what other cool things she could have been doing, like hunting or killing or destroying... she chose to spend most of her time with my dumb ass, keeping me company as I hit my daily word count. And now that she's gone, the office doesn't feel the same without her.

She was a great cat. The perfect writer's cat, in fact. A born killer down to the marrow of her bones, but patient and sweet, too. You would have loved her. Unless you were a Human Female, in which case she would have probably tried to kill you.

In Case You're Wondering... No, the Thrill Never Does Get Old

Just a short while ago the UPS man dropped off a box containing ARCs of my next novel, Fun & Games, out this June from Mulholland Books. I cut open the box with a knife (the kitchen scissors were in the dishwasher). Carefully, I opened the flaps and just stared at them, nestled around plastic air bubble pouches, like 10 babies in synthetic afterbirth. I couldn't even bring myself to touch them, at first. The Bride was the first to reach in and pick one up. After I knew it was safe, I did, too. I checked the front, and the spine, and then the back. (Yeah, this sounds paranoid, but this happened to me once, and the I've never quite gotten over it...) Everything seemed to be in order. It was a real book, with all of its fingers and toes.

Or at least, it's just about ready to become a real book. ARC readers will find typos and such that we've caught, and I've fine-tuned a little bit here and there. But it's really amazing to hold the damned thing in my hands in bound form.

Like I said, this never, ever gets old.