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.

2011: The Year Pulp Broke

Can't believe I've been keeping this blog for over six years now. Started out as a lark, when I received my first fiction book deal, and figured I had to be like all of the other cool kids and creat a blog to promote it. I named this blog after my first novel, the now out-of-print Secret Dead Men, and the name kind of stuck. At times, the name is pretty damn on point: weeks will go by without a post. There's really no mission here, other than me writing about my own crap or books I like or movies I've seen or events I think you might like. With the advent of Twitter, my blogging has really taken a blow. Links to news stories or bits of random brain matter that would have ended up here now end up on my Twitter feed in 140 character bursts. (And please do follow me there! I'm pretty active on Twitter. Maybe more than I should be...)

So does that mean Secret Dead Blog is... left for dead?

Hell no. I still like my blog. I want to use it more often, for things that don't fit into 140 character bursts. And to goad myself into blogging a bit more, I asked the mad genius behind Proletkult Graphik to create this blog's first professionally-designed banner. See above; isn't it a scuzzy thing of beauty? (Check out Proletkult's sample section; if you dig retro pulp stuff, I highly recommend these guys. Or, this guy, as it were.)

And 2011 will be a busy year for me. Quite possibly my busiest ever. I have no fewer than four books scheduled for release (my own trilogy for Mulholland Books, as well as Dark Revelations, my third collaboration with Anthony E. Zuiker), as well as an assortment of weird comic book projects and reprints and other things that defy categorization. But like always, I don't want Secret Dead Blog to be all about the shameless self-promotion. I want to talk more about other people's books. Books I dig. Books I want. Books I wish I wrote. Obscure writers. Crazy pieces of Philadelphia history. And whatever else strikes my fancy.

Hope you'll stick with me. And if you've been reading and enjoying Secret Dead Blog over the years, thank you. I'll try to keep up... well, whatever the hell it is I've been doing.

Fear and Lothian: The Return to Scotland

Sorry about the lack of updates. I've been scrambling to hit my deadlines to make sure the decks were clear for a return trip to Edinburgh... this time, with the Bride and Brood. (Last year I flew solo.) We leave today.

This isn't a work trip; it's a proper vacation, a sorely-needed chance to recharge my batteries after many months of non-stop work. Besides, a writer can't live in his/her basement. You have to go out and experience the world to have something to write about. (I'm dying to write a horror novel set in Edinburgh one of these days. Which I may or may not call MacCannibal.)

We'll be staying in close proximity to Allan Guthrie, whose new novel Slammer is just out in the UK (and will be out here in the US this fall), so you can expect some of his insanity to show up here on the blog. You remember what happened last time, don't you? And the time he lost his memory in Philadelphia?

The two of us will be doing a drop-in stock signing at Waterstones on Princes Street this coming Tuesday afternoon (March 24), so if you're anywhere in the Edinburgh area and want to say "yo" to this Philly boy, come on down.

Okay, so maybe this is kind of a work trip. Writers can't help it; life tends to be one massive research session for the next book/comic/screenplay. And the next one. And the one after that...

(Above photo from my last trip to Edinburgh. Not its best side, but I like it because it reminds me of Philadelphia.)

The Clown

People often ask me why I write such dark/weird stuff. And I've never had a really good answer... until now. Just stumbled across this photo of myself, at what? Maybe a year old, if that? I'm in my bedroom at 4738 Darrah Street, which was the middle room. And on the wall behind me is the clown my father painted.

This was no ordinary clown. If you click on the photo to see a bigger version, you might notice the shelf the clown is holding with arms that come right out of the fucking wall. Arms that could conceivably drop the shelf and reach down for that innocent toddler sitting there with a dazed expression on his face.

People, I grew up thinking those arms were going to come out of the fucking wall and grab me.

Look at me. I'm so scared, I don't even realize that I have some kind of wrapped gift in my hands. I'm not thinking about gifts or toys; I'm thinking about the clown. That the moment I turn my head even a few inches to the left is the moment it's going to come out of the fucking wall and grab me.

And check out the clown's face. This is no jolly entertainer. This is a crazy man on a drug/booze bender who decided to slap on some facepaint and scare the living crap out of whomever he encountered.

I know my Dad meant well. Instead of buying some lame kiddie furnishings, he took the time to create this one-of-a-kind image on the wall of his first-born son's bedroom. Maybe he thought it would be funny. Maybe he thought the clown would become my imaginary playmate. Or, maybe he dropped one too many tabs of LSD in Vietnam.

Still, I suppose I do owe my career to my Dad and that clown. Because at the heart of everything I write, beneath the plot and characters and dialogue and rest of that fancy nonsense, down at the most primal level, there is only this:

There are clowns.

And they have arms that can come out of the fucking walls and grab you.

A Quantum of Free Time

Over a week without a post? Lame, I know. But I've been hit with a couple of deadlines at the same time, and most days, the thought of slapping a few extra words into this little white rectangle seemed about as appealing as crawling across a few extra inches of broken glass. I mean, it's no big deal, I'm already bleeding... but there's no pressing need, either.

Ever since I became a full-time freelance comic book writer/novelist/whatever, I've tried to hit a daily goal, and it is this: five comic script pages and at least one thousand words of a novel/fiction. The daily emails, proofreading, corrections, edits, Q&As... that's all extra. At the core of my writing day are those five script pages, and those thousand words (which is about four pages of double-spaced typed text).

I figured if I could keep that up, I'd be on fire. Five script pages x four days = twenty pages, which is just two pages shy of a full comic script. And one thousand words a day x 30 days x 2 months = first draft of a decent-sized short novel (60,000 words).

So do I hit my daily goal? Well...

I've found that my fancy "daily goal" plan doesn't factor in what I call the "recharging my batteries" factor. When on deadline, I can write like a demon for a few days, back to back. I might crank out as many as 10 script pages, or 2 or 3,000 words of fiction. But if I try to push it that an extra day, my brain refuses to give me anything useable.

And that's the problem: I'm still a creature of deadlines. I do work ahead, and I do manage to hit my daily more often than not. But my brain really doesn't kick into high gear until the clock is ticking. Which works... until I experience something like the last two weeks, when there were several clocks ticking all at once -- each slightly out of phase with each other -- and the noise made me want to leap from a church bell tower. Scripts aren't due a week at a time; sometimes, I need to produce two in a given week. When this happens, there is no time for recharging batteries. There is no try; there is only do.

All I can say is: thank God I love the doing.

Still Secret, Still Dead

Hey, look at that. A new header for this blog, which is only about... oh, three years overdue. Truth is, I had no idea you could load your own jpeg image onto a blogger blog until last week. So here we go. Me experimenting.

The photo is from the early 1970s. Shown is my childhood home in Philly; 4738 Darrah Street to be exact. Parked out front is my mother's black Dodge. I don't remember the exact year or make. Maybe someone out there can identify it by sight? I just remember sitting in the backseat, tumbling around without a booster or even a seat belt. It was the early 1970s. That's how we rolled.

This is where I lived from birth (1972) until the fall of 1989, when I moved to La Salle University's campus. Sure, I came back summers, and then for a few months after graduation, but I always count September '89 as the time I left home. My parents finally sold this house in 2002. A short while later, 4738 Darrah was occupied by drug dealers, who were the target of a statewide heroin bust (which I've blogged about before).

Somehow, it seemed appropriate as a header photo. That's where it all began, for better or worse.

Still more blog changes to come, but nothing radical. I promise.

"You've Really Gotta Pulverize That Thing"

Frank Bascombe has a cool Q&A with Richard Price over at Ain't It Cool News. Price talks about Lush Life, his screenplays, adaptations, and this little interesting bit about autobiographical details in fiction:

I feel like whatever you write is autobiographical, even if every character is a different race or speaks a different language- it’s all you. Because every time your character hits a crossroads, they make a choice that you’re making for them. And that is predicated on your values and what you’ve experienced in life.