The Tall Blonde with the Hot Boiler

I decided to publish my first private eye short story, The Tall Blonde with the Hot Boiler, on Amazon for Kindle. This story was originally published in "Black Mask" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Jan. 2011, so if I knew you back then, you may have already heard about it.  I'm trying to make my older work available as I build my author "brand."  If you like the story, please leave a review on Amazon or use your social media to help me spread the word.

This was my first short story about wino, pacifist, private eye Frank Swiver.  A blonde, somewhat the worse for wear, hires Frank to find her stolen car (hot boiler).  Frank doesn't know why she'd want to pay him big money for something the police could likely do better than he, for free, but he likes her money, and he likes the blonde, so he takes the case.  When he finds the car he also finds something in the trunk that makes him realize he's in to more than just grand theft auto.  

Amazon author page: 

 

Goldfish

I treated myself to a hard-bound copy of Everyman's Library's Collected Stories of Raymond Chandler late last year, and I've read the first ten in the collection—again.  Sure, I've read most of them before in Trouble Is My Business, (also a recent purchase), The Simple Art of Murder, and an obscure little paperback my wife found for me called Killer in the Rain.  Those three books contain twenty of Chandler's stories.  The P.I.s have various names, Mallory, John Dalmas, Carmady, Sam Delaguerra, et al.  They're mostly prototype Phillip Marlowes.  Some are first person narrators, but just as many stories are in third.  

There are some gems, but even the biggest Raymond Chandler fan (like me) would tell you there are some stinkers in there too.  For example, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot," "Smart-Aleck Kill," and "Guns at Cyrano's" are vague, hard to understand, over-written, and have convoluted, specious plots.   

Other stories, such as "Killer in the Rain" are wonderful looks into how a writer developed his characters and plots over the years, from short stories into novels.  "Killer" features many of the basic characters of The Big Sleep, like the pornographer, H.H. Steiner, who became A.G. Geiger in the novel, the psycho-nymph Carmen Dravec, who became Carmen Sternwood, and Guy Slade who morphed into Eddie Mars.

Finally, there are stories like "Goldfish," some 15,000 words, like many of Chandler's stories, too long for today's mystery magazines, with great original scenes, hard-boiled bloodbaths, and a perfect noir finish.  If you haven't read it… do yourself a favor.        

Revisions

I finished the first draft of my second novel in Nov., and put it aside to ferment for a month.  Then I took it out and read through it as quickly as possible.  This is not so quick for me—I’m a slow reader, and besides, it was the holiday season.  But I read through it, doing no editing, only flagging pages that might need an edit.  This went well.  I’ve covered 177 pages so far, and I've only forgotten what I intended on one of the edit flags.  

The main purpose in reading the manuscript “in one sitting,” was to revise for structure changes.  I enjoy my own work, but I tried to be critical.  I found two things that I thought came under the category of structural edits.  One was a scene that needed to be moved.  It was good stuff, and provides the detective with clues or confirmation of something he suspected, but I had it in a spot where it slowed down the action.  I moved it to the right spot.

 

The other was challenging.  At the Bouchercon this fall in Cleveland, I attended a panel of folks who set their fiction in the good old noir days—the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s--and one of the panelists, Sally Wright, straddles the ‘60s and ‘40s with WWII memories in her Ben Reese novels.  She said something to the effect of “War memories come in nightmares.”   

Well, I had a long flashback sequence of my heroes, Frank, the P.I., Max, his one-eyed attorney, and Amanda, their mutual love interest, during the Spanish Civil War.  I decided to re-write the first half of it as one of Frank’s recurring Spanish Civil War nightmares. 

 

I didn’t change too much to accomplish this.  I wondered if I needed a special dream voice, or weird colors, or something ethereal to make it a dream, but it was a nightmare based on Frank's real memory, and I told it straight.  

Of course, I’ll probably have to wait until the next read through to know for sure if this worked.  But I like it. 

A Baker's Dozen Favorite Books

Ack!  I forgot to list The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene, which now makes this a Baker's Dozen.

In no particular order:

For Whom the Bell Tolls—Ernest Hemingway

To Kill a Mockingbird—Harper Lee

The Big Sleep—Raymond Chandler

The Long Goodbye—Raymond Chandler

The Maltese Falcon—Dashiell Hammett

Mildred Pierce—James M. Cain

The Postman Always Rings Twice—James M. Cain

The Stranger—Albert Camus

Dubliners—James Joyce

The Great Gatsby—F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bright Lights, Big City—Jay McInernay

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—Hunter S. Thompson

Flitcraft Parable

The Spitbucket blog focuses on my writing, so I didn’t mention earlier that I started attending some classes this fall at Johns Hopkins.  I’m in a non-degree program called “Osher,” mainly for retired folks who have days free and like to discuss and share ideas on literature, the arts, humanities, philosophy and the like.  

I was in a very good “Great Books” program, in which we read Best American Short Stories of the 20^th Century, the Updike-edited anthology.  This is a real treasure and I was fascinated to see week after week how some of these fun, powerful, rich stories affected folks who were not English lit students per se, just average albeit perceptive readers.  

At the end of the session, one of the gals invited us all over for lunch and drinks, and asked everyone to bring a short reading to share.  Interesting mish-mash of choices.  One fellow read a humorous Erskine Caldwell piece, two women brought the same poetry book, (in Hebrew!)

I brought “The Flitcraft Parable” (http://www.fallingbeam.org/beam.htm ) an excerpt from Dashiell Hammett’s novel, The Maltese Falcon.  I gave it my best dramatic reading, enjoying myself, but not expecting too much enthusiasm.  But I’m really happy to say it was a great hit.  The Flitcraft Parable stands on its own, and goes over well with people hearing it for the first time—which amazes me because I’ve read it time and again, and I’m not sure I understand it.  Or maybe I understand Flitcraft, but haven’t figured out why it’s in The Maltese Falcon, and what it means to Sam Spade.  These are questions I think about when I write.  

Anyhow, I had a great time sharing Hammett with my new old friends, and seeing how a great P.I. writer elicited their reactions.