Beat the Story

Six Things About Egypt

2010-08-13T16:08:00.000-05:00

In May, my wife and I spent 10 amazing days in Egypt. Egypt had been at the very top of my must-see list for as long as I could remember, and I wanted to case the country as a possible setting for a future novel or screenplay.

Six Things I’ll Steal From Egypt for a Future Novel or Screenplay:

(*) The hair-raising traffic in Cairo. It makes the traffic in Bangkok, which I always thought was pretty heavy and chaotic, look like a couple of horse-and-buggies rolling down an Amish farm road. (Speaking of hair-raising traffic: I’m pretty sure the closest I’ve ever come to a dramatic death was the high-speed headlights-off drafting-three-inches-from-the-van-in-front-of-you four-a.m. caravan race through the desert from Aswan to Abu Simbel, near the border with Sudan.)

(*) The evening call to prayer. From the mosques all over Cairo or Luxor or Aswan. In the soft light of dusk, the cries of the muezzin all around you is eerie and peaceful and beautiful.

(*) The snorkeling at Soma Bay in the Red Sea. In GUTSHOT STRAIGHT, the character of Gina goes snorkeling off the Caribbean coast of Panama. She’s pretty damn impressed, but only because she’s never been to the Red Sea. Coral, clarity, and cool marine life (octopi! deadly scorpion fish!) – spectacular.

(*) The Great Pyramid. I thought it would be a disappointment. How could it not be? It’s not a disappointment – it’s a mind-blower. It also blew my mind to think about some of my fellow tourists, from years past, who had stood right where I was standing and had their minds blown too: Herodotus, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Mark Twain.

(*) The Khan el Khalili bazaar in Egypt. My favorite souk was in Aswan, but the legendary Khan el Khalili will end up in a future novel or screenplay. The predatory vendors there have just unbelievable game. They’re able to switch at the speed of light from charm to flattery to reason to affront to humor to humorous charming affront, plus they’re better than most NBA power forwards at keeping you boxed in and unable to escape from their stalls.

(*) A felucca ride on the Nile at sunset in Aswan. The water slapping against the hull, the sail creaking in the cool breeze, the rocky cataracts flushing with color, little Nubian boys swimming out to sing songs for you. If I ever need to have two characters fall in love, I may have them do it on the Nile in Aswan.

Tour Wrap

2010-04-29T11:26:00.003-05:00

Under the heading of “Better Three Months Late Than Never,” I thought I’d better put the Gutshot Straight January world tour to bed.

After finishing up the Midwest leg of the tour, I flew out of Milwaukee and into Phoenix. This was late January, remember, and Phoenix – not, historically, one of my favorite cities – never felt so good. And I started to understand, at a much deeper level than I ever had before, one key reason for the post-war westward migration from Rust to Sun Belt.

I drove straight down to Tucson, where thanks to Priceline I spent the night at a luxe but spookily deserted mountain resort (no blood pouring from the elevators, but glassy-eyed children in 19th-century school uniforms did keep popping up freaking everywhere). The next day I dropped by Clues Unlimited to sign stock and chat with owner Chris Acevedo about books, dogs, and lovely Tucson (I definitely want to go back there).

After that, I turned around and motored back up to Phoenix, where I had a mid-day reading at the Velma Teague Library in Glendale. Lesa Holstine, a nationally-syndicated reviewer of crime and mystery fiction, runs the terrific reading series at the Velma Teague, and I had a great time there (as well as a excellent homestyle Mexican food at a restaurant across the street from the library).

From Glendale I drove across town to Scottsdale for an evening event at the legendary Poisoned Pen Bookstore. There was a nice turn-out, and the audience included fellow writer Jeffrey Siger, author of acclaimed thrillers set in Greece, and Sarah Spears, my former student, former dogsitter, current good friend, and I-hope-not-but-if-necessary my future high-powered criminal defense lawyer. Patrick Millikin was one hell of an excellent moderator, grilling my ass backwards and forwards with a series of thoughtful, penetrating, and funny questions. I answered them all with as much truth as I could muster.

From Phoenix (where, again, thanks to Priceline I stayed at a luxe but spookily-deserted desert resort), I flew to San Diego. I hit Mysterious Galaxy to sign stock and laugh pretty much non-stop at the very funny Linda Tonnesen. From there I drove up to Orange County, where my cousin Jim Harrigan (you remember him from this post) and his wife, Katy, hosted a party for me. I’d started my tour with family, in Austin, so it was great to end it that way. I’d been in the air when the Today Show aired the segment where John Searles picked Gutshot Straight as one of the winter’s best reads, but Jim had DVRed it for me so I got to see my book jacket’s national TV debut on the big screen. Jim had already gone seriously above and beyond in the generosity department, but this was the mother of all book parties – complete with a chocolate fountain and lots of saucy blonde California girls (see photo). I was pretty tired when I got to the party, but full of energy by the time I left, thanks to all the interesting people I got a chance to chat with. I won’t name them, at the risk of leaving someone out, but they provided me with enough material for another two or three books.

The Frozen Midwest

2010-03-03T15:34:00.000-06:00

After a relatively slow-paced interlude in Minneapolis, it was back to the tour’s typical whirlwind, Amazing-Race, Move-Your-Ass-Like-the-Armenian-Mob-Is-After-You pace. I flew into Milwaukee, rented a car, and drove two hours down to Chicago, where I did a few drop-in signings and then gunned across town to have lunch with Dana Litoff and Marcus Sakey. Dana is the freelance publicist I hired to supplement the efforts of the wonderful Joanne Minutillo at Morrow, and let me tell you it was money well-spent. Dana is savvy, tireless, and unfailingly upbeat, and she and Joanne made a killer team. Marcus, of course, is the award-winning author of four novels, including The Amateurs and The Blade Itself. He was generous enough to take time from his writing schedule to eat Thai food with us and share much-needed, much-appreciated advice about book marketing and publishing. His insight into the issue of sequels vs. standalone novels, for example, was particularly eye-opening (I generally find that the best advice provides answers to questions you never even thought to ask).

After lunch, I knocked out a few more drop-in signings in the Chicago area, then drove three hours to Madison, Wisconsin, for my appearance at Booked for Murder. It was, by a pretty long stretch, the smallest turn-out of the entire tour: one guy. But he was a very interesting one guy (I learned a lot of surprisingly cool stuff about embedded traffic sensors that I’m going to steal for a future project, bet on it) and BOOKSTORE OWNER Sara Barnes was a delightful host who provided chocolate cookies.

That infusion of sugar was necessary, because after the event I had to drive an hour and a half back to Milwaukee, where Priceline had hooked me up at the downtown Hyatt, on the site of which in 1912 an insane man tried to assassinate Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt was on his way to address a political rally, and his life was saved when the manuscript of his (characteristically lengthy) speech, in the pocket of his coat, stopped the assassin’s bullet. How’s that for the power of the written word?

The next day, I had a signing event at Mystery One in Milwaukee, a richly atmospheric bookstore that looks and feels like – I mean this in the best possible sense –a crime scene, or at least a place where homicide detectives would grill a shifty KA, or where criminals would gather to split up the take from a Brinks job. At Mystery One, it was both my honor and pleasure to chat with Jon Jordan of Crimespree Magazine (he would be the leader of the gang that took down the Brinks truck, and who then popped the other members of the gang – loose lips sink ships – when they showed up to split the take). Dave Biemann, a caporegime at the shop, was an excellent, cheerful source of local lore. I was also glad to get to spend some time with owner Richard Katz. Richard is a great guy, and I say that not only because Richard liked Gutshot Straight, but also because he was the first person I’d met outside Oklahoma who had a full and informed appreciation of the Oklahoma City Thunder. This was back in January, remember, which means Richard was on board the Durantula bandwagon well before most non-natives.

Did I mention that the windchill in Milwaukee was something like forty degrees below zero? Teddy Roosevelt was wearing a heavy winter coat when the assassin shot him, and that helped stop the bullet too. I’m not sure what lesson to draw from that.

Next: Sunny and Warm Thank God Arizona.

Minnesota Nice

2010-02-19T22:03:00.000-06:00

The best time to visit Minneapolis, I’d been warned, is not January. But despite the cold and the snow I still found the city to be an inviting place with a lot of character. Which also accurately describes the crime/mystery bookstore Once Upon a Crime. The owners of Once Upon a Crime, Pat Frovarp and Gary Schulze, were incredibly warm and generous hosts (Gary gave me a quick tour of his super-secret, high-security back room, which is filled with a fantastic collection of signed first editions), and my signing event, despite the weather, had a decent turnout. Among the attendees was a former MFA student of mine, Greg Burton, who is now doing some fascinating work with autistic kids; Jess Lourey, author of the very funny Murder by the Month series, who drove hours in a blinding snowstorm just to show support for a fellow writer; and the youngest audience member of the tour, Martha Sanchez, age 8 by the time you read this, who grasped more quickly and with a deeper understanding than anyone else on the entire tour the Snow White sources of Gutshot Straight. As for press coverage, the daily newspaper in town, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, sent both its managing editor, Rene Sanchez, AND travel editor, Kerri Westenberg, to cover my event. Not only that, the paper's editors put me up for three nights, fed me fantastic home-cooked meals, and let me launder clothes that were in serious need of it.

A quick aside: I know “Minnesota nice” is a stereotype, but a lot of the people I encountered in Minneapolis – car rental clerks, coffee shop baristas, etc. – did seem preternaturally NICE. By that I guess I mean polite, helpful, generous, solicitious, genuinely concerned with my well-being and safety (and not at all pushy when, for example, I declined the collision-damage waiver: “No problem!”). On the other hand, these same people also tended to be quite reserved – they were “nice” without being what those of use who have spent time in the American South would consider “friendly.” I thought this was kind of interesting, and if it shows up in a future novel of mine, you read it here first.

Next: Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee.

Midtown America

2010-02-15T11:38:00.000-06:00

My red-eye flight from Seattle to Newark was uneventful, if by “event” you mean any kind of sleep whatsoever. I was too tired to calculate how many, or few, hours of sleep I’d had over the past few days, but I did manage despite my grogginess to find the shuttle and make it to my hotel in Manhattan – the downtown Marriott, at less than half the lowest published rate via Priceline (I may need to dedicate my next book to Priceline, without which this tour would not have been possible).

After checking in, I took the subway to midtown, where any fatigue I might have been experiencing fell instantly away in the charming presence of two friends from college, Becky Westerlund Coletta and Katie Duffy Gallivan. They took me to lunch at an old-school steakhouse with a lunch menu straight out of Mad Men (crab cakes, filet mignon, creamed spinach), and we had a great time catching up. Becky, Katie, and I attended Loyola University in New Orleans, where we worked on the Maroon, the college newspaper. Those days (and long nights) at the Maroon were a blast, and I take the position that there’s no better way to become a better writer than to be surrounded by massively-talented friends who are as fiercely supportive as they are competitive.

I didn’t want lunch to end, but the business of selling books waits for no author. I spent the rest of the day with the brilliant, delightful, wonderful, did-I-mention-brilliant? editor of Gutshot Straight, Peggy Hageman. It was Peggy’s last week at William Morrow, so the afternoon was a lot more than just tinged on my part with sadness. Still, it was great to spend some time with Peggy as we trekked around Manhattan signing books. The highlight was a stop at the legendary Otto Penzler’s legendary The Mystery Bookshop. Gutshot Straight was one of their January selections, so there were a lot of books to sign. That gave me the opportunity for an enlightening chat with one of the Mystery Bookshop's ace staff members, Ian Kern (in photo, with Peggy).

After that, Peggy and I met a couple of people from Morrow for drinks: my new editor, Gabe Robinson, a fascinating guy who seems – excellent sign – much smarter than me; and my favorite marketing guru in the universe, Jean Marie Kelly. For the record – and it pains me to say this, because I’d prefer to take all the credit for myself – any success that Gutshot Straight happens to achieve in the marketplace is due primarily to the efforts and expertise of Jean Marie, publicist Joanne Minutillo (who didn’t join us for drinks because she had the good sense to be in Florida, not New York, on this Friday evening in January), Danielle Bartlett, and everyone else at HarperCollins/Morrow. Holy shit, they’ve been amazing – that’s all I’ll say because, like I said, it pains me to give credit where credit is due when that credit is not due me.

While in New York, I also had the pleasure of meeting up with Jay Neugeboren, my former professor and thesis adviser at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Jay taught me a few things about fiction writing. As in: just about everything. When I started the MFA program at UMass, I didn’t, for example, know what a third-person limited perspective was. Nor, until I took Jay’s workshop, did I truly understand the power and the glory of a well-structured declarative sentence. Jay also taught me the gospel importance of economy. I still have one old short story manuscript of mine (20 pages long) on which Jay wrote a single comment: “Great work. Cut seven pages and send it out.”

Next: The Frozen Midwest.

Coast to Coast

2010-02-10T10:45:00.000-06:00

Next up was one of the more challenging, Amazing Race-esque stretches of the Gutshot Straight book tour: from Oakland to Seattle for an event at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop, then right back to SEA-TAC for an overnight flight to Newark, followed by a day of drop-in signings at bookstores in Manhattan.

I left Oakland before dawn, in a slashing, driving rain. This did not bode well for the weather up in Seattle, but miraculously (for January in Seattle) the sun was shining and the sky a brilliant clear blue. I grabbed my Pricelined rental car (free upgrade approximately sixty percent of the time if you ask nicely) and headed downtown, where I had a fantastic time at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop. I already knew I’d like owner JB Dickey – in a newsletter review of Gutshot Straight he’d called me “the unholy spawn of Carl Hiaasen and Don Winslow” – but he was even more hilarious in person than I’d imagined. And the other bookseller on duty, Fran Fuller, was just as funny, albeit in a quieter, more evil (her term, not mine!) way.

It was at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop that I experienced one of my more memorable tour moments. A woman wandered in off the street and over to the desk where I was signing. I started telling her about my book, but it turned out she’d come in because she’d spotted a pigeon outside with an injured leg and was worried about it. After lengthy and involved negotiations with JB, she agreed to buy one of my books if JB agreed to call the city and have them rescue the pigeon with the injured leg. So it was win-win for everybody – me, JB, woman, pigeon! From then on my touring slogan has been: One book at a time, one bird at a time. (That’s the actual photo, at right, of JB on the phone to the city.)

I could have happily stayed a few more days in Seattle, just hanging out with JB and Fran, talking books, bacon, and brush-strokes (JB is a visual artist), but after a quick bowl of excellent clam chowder at Pike Place Market, I had to bounce back to the airport, drop off the rental car, coerce a couple of passing flight attendants to pose with my book, and then catch the Continental red-eye to Newark so I could make it to the pit stop ahead of the Male Beauty Queens and the Dyslexic Calf-Roping Sisters.

Next: New York City.

Back on the Bay

2010-02-03T16:04:00.000-06:00

Next stop for the Gutshot Straight world tour was the San Francisco Bay Area. My wife and I lived here for nine years when I was teaching at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga. The Bay Area felt like home the first time I saw it, and it still feels that way, particularly in January, when the winter rains turn everything a brilliant, beautiful green (in January Oklahoma City, where I live now, is – if I may venture an understatement – not green).

My first event was Sunday afternoon at Book Passage in Corte Madera, Marin County. I was running a little early, and needed a pair of replacement shoes (long story, but if you’ve read Gutshot Straight, I can tell you it’s exactly something that would happen to the character of Ted Boxman), so I followed the stern but alluring female voice of my GPS unit to a nearby mall. After I scored a pair of half-off Keens, I hit a nearby Barnes & Noble to sign stock. An attractive woman was browsing the New Mystery shelf, so I felt compelled to direct her to my book (right there next to Richard Castle’s latest! (see photo) and introduced myself as the author himself. I think she thought I may have been hitting on her, but she bought the book anyway.*

* Footnote if my wife is reading this: I was totally an equal-opportunity handseller of the book. While, yes, I did approach the occasional attractive female bookbuyer, I also pitched to grandmothers, grizzled (male) retired engineers, surly teen skateboarders, and one skittish guy I am almost certain is in the Witness Protection Program (but he bought a book!).

The event at Book Passage was a lot of fun. In attendance was my friend and former colleague Brenda Hillman, brilliant poet and all-around amazing human being. Norman Springer, another former colleague from Saint Mary’s, was kind enough to make the trip up from Stinson Beach for the event, and asked some of the most penetrating questions of the entire tour. A former student from Saint Mary’s showed up as well – Ryan Wilkins, who was a delight in class but always made me a little uncomfortable because I knew he was smarter than me. And Charlie “The Go” Nadler was there too. Charlie, in addition to his various nefarious activities, is a screenwriter who I’m going to be begging for a staff job on his hit TV show in about two years.

Monday, the event was in the Montclair section of Oakland, at a great little independent bookstore called A Great Good Place for Books. It’s an interestingly-shaped place, long and narrow, like a shotgun house in New Orleans (you can only see half the audience in the photo; the other half is camera right). This really felt like a homecoming. In attendance were the friends and colleagues who made it so difficult to leave the Bay Area: Carol Lashof, Glenna Breslin, Bob Gorsch, Ed Biglin, Sandy Grayson, Jan Doane, Michele “With One L” Brusseau, and Annie Bjork. I would be remiss if I didn’t single out one close friend and former colleague in particular, Rosemary Graham, the author of wonderful novels such as My Not-So-Terrible Time at the Hippie Hotel, Thou Shalt Not Dump the Skater Dude, and the forthcoming Stalker Girl. For a long time now Rosemary has been one of my primary sources for advice, support, and general good vibes. She is married to acclaimed, groundbreaking writer Kevin Griffin, so the Nobel Committee better right now put a future award aside for Rosemary and Kevin's daughter, Graham. Also at the event was fellow Morrow author Charlie Haas – no, not this Charlie Haas but this one – a terrific guy being whose novel The Enthusiast is terrifically funny, moving, and beautifully-written. And I better not forget to mention former student and current talented filmmaker Gus Guardado, who not only came to the event but also brought his lovely wife and an entire posse of friends with him. That is definitely the kind of support a writer likes to see.

A quick note on hotel accomodations in the Bay Area. I usually don’t stay anywhere that hasn’t received a 4.5 rating on Tripadvisor, with a minimum of 25 ratings, and even then I prefer if that’s corroborated by a couple of stars from Frommers or a mention on the Conde Nast Traveler Hot or Gold List. This time, though, I took a chance on a new place I knew nothing about. Well, The Bombay Lounge, a bed-and-breakfast in Oakland, is one of the most fantastic places I’ve ever stayed. Proprietor Thomas Cooney has mastered the art of genuinely warm hospitality, and his attention to detail is unparalleled. He's a bit eccentric – claiming, for example, that certain references in Gutshot Straight (e.g., a great aunt who appeared as a member of the Lollipop Guild in MGM's The Wizard of Oz) were stolen from his own life – but that just adds to his charm. Monsieur Newman, meanwhile, the concierge at the Bombay Lounge, is always available twenty-four seven – it's almost as if he's literally underfoot at times!

My final stop in the Bay Area was down south in San Mateo, where I had an event at M is for Mystery, a great independent mystery bookstore. Legendary Ed Kaufman was a terrific, engaging host, with great comic timing (he told me he’d read my book, then – pause, pause, “Shit, Ed! You’re killing me!” – FINALLY told me how much he’d liked it). In San Mateo I had the great pleasure of meeting mystery author John Billheimer and re-connecting with the inimitable Keith Raffel, author most recently of the best-seller Smasher. A former MFA student of mine, writer and reviewer Karen Vanushka, joined the three of us for a beer after the event, and I’m guessing she learned more about the publishing business, warts and all, than during two years of grad school.

Next: Seattle.

L.A. Confidential

2010-01-31T22:29:00.000-06:00

After Vegas, I flew into Burbank (travel tip for those, if any, who care: Burbank is a much easier airport to navigate than LAX).

My first stop was downtown Los Angeles. My cousin Jim Harrigan had very generously arranged for a book party at his company. It was a great, and unusual, experience, because I got to meet and chat with the kind of people – engineers, economists – you don’t usually find en masse at an event for a novelist. The folks at Jim’s company were fantastic – friendly, welcoming, fascinating. And best of all, they knew (maybe because they were engineers and economists) exactly how they wanted me to inscribe their books. So instead of me having to fall back on my standards – “Best wishes,” “Hope you enjoy this,” or, my favorite poker saying, “Never tap the aquarium!” – I was pleased to receive precisely-worded directions. There were elaborate greetings to wives and brothers-in-law, complicated and mysterious invocations, humorous inside-joke commentaries. One young woman named Dulce instructed me to write: “To Dulce, You are so sweet!” Which I did, and she seemed very much so.

From downtown, I drove out to Thousand Oaks, California, where I had a signing event at Mysteries to Die For. The owner, Alan Chisholm, is a wonderful guy with a wonderful sense of humor. Only six or seven people showed up for the lunch-hour event, but what we lacked in quantity we made up for in menace, since the crowd included a man who may or may not have been a member of the Armenian mob featured so prominently in GUTSHOT STRAIGHT (see photo). After the event at Mysteries to Die For, I had a chance to catch up with one of my oldest friends in California, the irrepressible (believe me, people have tried) Sammy the Bull Silvas, who I first met in 1992 at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Sam is an excellent writer, a Springsteen fan, and an expert bow hunter. That’s pretty much all you need to know about him.

After Thousand Oaks, I continued my tour of the sprawling Southland by driving down, down, down to Cerritos, California, where a Borders bookseller by the name of Charles Ford had fallen in love with Gutshot Straight and was handselling it like crazy. It was great to meet the charming Charles in person, and I did my part by handselling a couple of my own books while I was there (“Hey! You! Come here! Put down that James Patterson novel and check this out!”). Then I drove back up, up, up to Glendale, where I was staying at the Hilton and where I chanced upon this plaque in a corridor (see photo).

The next day I hit Vroman’s in Pasadena for a drop-in signing (great store, great town), then had lunch at Chateau Marmont on Sunset with a famous friend who values his privacy. Not only is he perhaps the top screenwriter in Hollywood right now (sorry William Monahan!), he’s also an accomplished actor who, in only a single scene, completely stole Must Love Dogs from Diane Lane.

After that, it was time for a signing at The Mystery Bookstore in Westwood. Bobby was a great host. He’d made Gutshot Straight as the Discovery Book of the Month, so there were a whole lot of books to sign (“Best wishes!”). I also had the great privilege to sign the store’s vintage Sacramento jail register, which holds the signatures and pithy sayings of hundreds of crime and mystery writers from over the years. In Westwood, I was pleased to see an old OU student of mine, the delightful Mr. Chase Martin, who suffered through at least three of my courses (by choice – go figure). I also reunited with three members of my long-standing fantasy baseball league, Cory Marciel, Bryan Murphy, and Pete Schlecter. Remember those names, because while they might not be as brilliant at fantasy baseball as I am, they’re very talented writers and filmmakers who will be running Hollywood in a few years. It was a great pleasure to meet fellow Morrow author Tim Hallinan, author of terrific thrillers set in Southeast Asia. And the tour scored yet another celebrity appearance: my so-much-smarter-than-me-it’s-embarassing friend Katy Lim (photo), better known as banked-track roller-derby goddess Tae Kwan Ho of the L.A. Derby Dolls. But she didn’t come in uniform, so points off for that.

Next: The San Francisco Bay Area

What Happened in Vegas

2010-01-22T21:25:00.000-06:00

My next stop on the book tour was beautiful Las Vegas. And it was beautiful – mild January weather, crystal-clear air, the distant mountains in such sharp detailed relief if was like you could reach out and tap one.

The event was at the Clark County Public Library. Suzanne Scott at the library did a fantastic job getting out the word. There were notices and write-ups in the local papers (like this), plus I was interviewed on KNPR, the local NPR affiliate, by Ian Mylchreest (photo). I followed a segment on male prostitutes and won’t even bother to make a joke off that. The Clark County library uses a very nice theater space for writer visits, and the turnout was good. It was a diverse and interesting group, and probably the only place on the entire tour I won’t have to explain what “Gutshot Straight” means. I was particularly happy that my aunt, Janice Senseney, and cousin, Jack Senseney, were able to attend.

My friend Hank Stuever, author of the terrific book Tinsel, recently finished his own tour. Before I set out he advised me to “eat like crazy” while on the road. In Vegas, I tried to do that. I found a great deal on the Conde Nast Traveler deals site (truth.travel) – a three-course dinner at renowned Daniel Boulud at the Wynn for only, if I arrived before 7 p.m., $42. Now, no fooling, that’s more than I usually budget for an entire day of food, gas, and Sharpie signing pens, but I decided what the hell. The meal was surprisingly disappointing. It was, in the clipped, shrug-accompanied venacular of Hollywood, “Good not great.” It was only the third best meal I ate in Vegas, lagging behind the fish taco platter at Baja Fresh (tied with In & Out as my favorite fast-food place in the world) and the excellent salmon and spinach salad at Mon Ami Gabi, in the Paris Hotel and Casino, where I did my best to convince the delightfully smart-ass hostess, during the walk from door to table, to buy a copy of Gutshot Straight. I’m gonna win those steak knives if it kills me!

Next: Los Angeles.

Home Court Advantage

2010-01-18T11:45:00.000-06:00

It’s been a blur of shapes and colors these past six days – Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles, Corte Madera, San Francisco; airports and rental cars; on-ramps and parking lots; bookstores and bookstores – and I can’t believe it’s only been six days. It already feels like I’ve been on the road a month. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it’s been a hella fun six days/virtual month. I feel like my writer tanks are being pumped full to overflowing; I’ve already encountered, on the road, a cast of characters right out of my novel, many of whom will probably end up in the next one.

It all started on the home court, a reading and signing at Full Circle Books in Oklahoma City. Turnout was excellent, thanks to FC events coordinator Chris Mauldin and, in large part, to the (very) extended Berney family. I think almost every aunt, uncle, cousin, first-cousin once-removed, and girlfriend of first-cousin once-removed showed up. I won’t name them individually (I’m not sure the Internet has enough room), but I can tell you how deeply I appreciate their support. I will however single out a man I’ve submitted for consideration to the Brother-In-Law Hall of Fame, Rick Klingenberg, who among his many other fine qualities definitely knows how to thrown a party.

In addition to family members, there were plenty of civilians in Oklahoma City too. Among many others, it was great to finally meet Rod Lott of the Oklahoma Gazette, who also runs the terrific web site bookgasm. And it was great to see old friends from high school (and before) like Mary Downey Fitzpatrick, Laura Shaw Terlip, and Amy Anderson Sergent. I was honored by the presence of the tour’s first three bona-fide celebrities: former NBA star Grant Long, now an announcer with the Oklahoma City Thunder, and not one but count ‘em two stellar magicians, Joe Coover, star of the GUTSHOT STRAIGHT book trailer, who graciously entertained attendees with his close-up card and coin stylings, and J.P. Wilson, who puts on some impressive NBA halftime shows. I don’t know if Sue Hollenbeck counts as a celebrity, but she should. The Thunder was also well-represented by Debbie Williams and Jennifer Watson, two of the most delightful, and funniest, people I know. They will be keeping an eye on my lovely but dangerous wife while I’m on the road – thank you, thank you, and, yeah, good luck with that.

Next morning, very very early, I took the blue shuttle van to Will Rogers airport. If the smart, attractive, and well-dressed folks from HarperCollins/William Morrow are reading this (Hi!), they’ll be happy to know that I extracted sworn promises from both the shuttle driver and the one other bleary-eyed passenger to buy my book.

Next: Vegas.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

2010-01-11T17:01:00.000-06:00

The GUTSHOT STRAIGHT world tour started last week with a two-stop jaunt to Texas. I can’t speak for anyone else involved, but I had a total blast.

In Austin, my wife and I experienced pharmaceutical-grade hospitality from our hosts, Steve and Sue Ellen Harrigan. Steve is one of my favorite writers (and not just because he’s my cousin), the acclaimed, best-selling author of, most recently, GATES OF THE ALAMO and CHALLENGER PARK. More importantly, he is a hardcore barbecue afficiando, so we ate not only too well but wisely. For example, before taking us to Lockhart, Texas (a small hill country town that is to barbecue what Florence is to Renaissance art), Steve prepared us with an introductory lunch at the Salt Lick outside Austin – a place he described as “world-class entry-level.”

But even better than the barbecue was getting to meet so many great people in Austin. There was Gregory Curtis, writer and longtime editor of Texas Monthly. He also happens to be a magician, and gave Joe Coover’s performance in the video book trailer a hearty thumbs-up. I also had the great good fortune to meet novelist Elizabeth Crook, who is hilarious and smart and what my great-grandmother would have called “a pistol.” And novelist James Magnuson, who directs the prestigious Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, and who talks about balancing the demands of literary vs. genre writing better than anyone I’ve met. And writer Lawrence Wright, who needs no introduction for his non-fiction, but also beat GUTSHOT STRAIGHT to Panama and wrote a dementedly funny novel a few years ago, GOD’S FAVORITE, about Manuel Noriega and the papal Nunciate.

Who else? Shit! Too many! I’ve just realized I’m going to have to leave out a bunch of wonderful people. But I have to mention Mary Lowry whose warm good spirit is contagious, and who loved the exact things about my novel that I hoped people would love. Or, wait a second – maybe she just craftily figured out what those things were and SAID she loved them, which might make me like her even more.

Janice Langlinais could not have been more terrific handling the event at the Barnes & Noble Arboretum. And my old friend, p.r. queen Lisa Lawrence, whipped up more pre-event publicity in Austin than any debut novelist could hope for. Lisa, Christine Heiger, and I have known each other since junior high, when we were all St. Eugene. I’d forgotten that the school nichname was the Eagles, but Christine remembered. Christine, on the other hand, had forgotten what “sketching” was. I remembered what it was (grabbing the back bumper of a moving car when the streets were iced over and zipping along behind it), but I’d forgotten what it was called; Lisa remembered that.

Film producer Fred Miller showed up too. I worked with Fred a year or so ago on a feature project and it was one of the best collaborative experiences I’ve ever had. Fred mentioned to me, after meeting my wife, that I sure had “married up.” That captures two of the things I like best about Fred: (1) He’s funny and (2) He’s usually right.

And I would be remiss not to mention Bobby Zirkel and Robert Reyna, friends of Steve Harrigan’s from, respectively, high school and fifth grade. Robert rode a slow bus up from San Antonio for the reading, so he gets a special award for effort (way) above and beyond.

On to Houston and Murder By The Book, which is now officially one of my favorite all-time bookstores. David Thompson and McKenna Jordan were great hosts (David also runs the acclaimed Busted Flush Press, by the way), and Kinley Paisley made sure the proceedings ran like clockwork. Despite the frigid temperatures and, as David remarked wryly, “some little football game going on tonight” (UT playing for the national championship), we still had a decent turn-out. Several members of the audience asked excellent questions about the book and were a delight to chat with after the presentation (I wish I’d thought to write down their names).

At Murder by the Book I also had the opportunity to catch up with, or meet for the first time, various members of the extended Berney family. Robert Sharp was kind enough to drag along to the event two of my first cousins once removed, college students Sissy and Robbie Sharp, who were a lot of fun to hang out with. As was, as always, another first cousin once-removed, James Harrigan, who I’m glad isn’t a writer because he would be way, way funnier than I am. He dragged along his friend Kate, who has some great ideas for a new fashion line, and who promised me – you read it here, which makes it binding – ten percent of all future profits.

I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide

2009-12-30T18:01:00.000-06:00

GUTSHOT STRAIGHT goes on sale next Tuesday and I hit the road the day after: 18 cities in 25 days (full book tour schedule here). By the standards of any self-respecting indie band living out of a 1988 Ford Econoline van, it’s not that brutal of a schedule, but I won’t have the redemptive power of rock and roll to sustain me. Or roadies. On the other hand, neither will I be living out of a 1988 Ford Econoline van, so I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll return home of sound mind and body.

Truth be told, I’m really looking forward to this book tour. I mean, how many other professions let you drop everything for a few weeks to go see old friends, meet lots (I hope) of new ones, and find out for yourself just how cold Minneapolis gets in January?

So if you're in the neighborhood – redwood forest to gulfstream waters and all points in between – stop by and say hi, because I'd love the company.

Here, to mark the occasion of my first book tour, are three of my most memorable tour-band experiences as a college journalist:

(*) A friend told me about this new band he was certain I’d like. I thought "R.E.M." was a stupid name for a band, but I agreed to go see them play. We got to the club early, wandered around, and happened upon the tour bus. It was an old Greyhound, and the destination sign in front – where you’d normally see something like “Topeka” or “Springfield” – said NOBODY YOU KNOW. Pete Buck, R.E.M.’s guitarist, came out of the bus, chatted with us for a minute, then gave us a six-pack of beer.

(*) I’d learned early that if you wanted to score a press badge to a concert, you needed to go after the opening act, not the headliner. Tom Petty would never give some punk college reporter an interview, but Maria McKee of Lone Justice might. And she did. We discussed our mutual passion for Bruce Springsteen, and then Lone Justice went on and played a scorching set. A very attractive girl in the crowd, just on the other side of the metal barrier from me, pointed to my press badge, winked, and asked what it would take to get one of those. I was so totally cluelss that I replied, I’m sorry to kid you not: “Oh, you need to be with a newspaper.”

(*) I was hanging around backstage, waiting to interview an opening act I forget who, when two roadies carried what I first thought was a mannequin wearing sunglasses down the hallway and up onto the stage. Turned out it was not a mannequin – it was Joey Ramone. The roadies propped him in place by wrapping his hands around the microphone stand. He swayed dangerously but did not topple. The drummer clicked off the count for the first song and Joey managed to come alive, somehow, right on cue. He and the band delivered a ferocious performance.

Sleight of Hand

2009-12-11T12:32:00.000-06:00

I hate it when writers who write about writing resort to forced, labored, pretentious analogies to illuminate the mysteries of the craft. Whenever I read something like, “Writing, when you think about it, is as delicate and sacred a process as butter-churning,” I picture that poor bastard of a simile shackled at the ankles and marching across a rice field in southern Louisiana, a fat guard on a horse poking him (the simile) along with the barrel of a 16-gauge shotgun.

So I won’t, as a way to introduce the Gutshot Straight video book trailer, tell you that writing, when you think about it, is a lot like magic – an alchemical concoction of timing, misdirection, and scantily-clad female assistants.

Instead I will just tell you that here’s the Gutshot Straight video book trailer. It was produced (for somewhat less than James Cameron spent on Avatar) by my buddy Joe Coover. Joe is a talented filmmaker and an award-winning close-up magician. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, close-up magic is the art of the art. It’s not flashy, and it’s a tough play in a thousand-seat Vegas showroom, but good close-up is magic at its most pure, most challenging, most impressive.

One quick aside: if you’re the Bulgarian judge on the panel, please award Joe extra points for difficulty because the custom playing cards I provided him with cost somewhat less than James Cameron spent on Avatar and Joe informs me (in his genial, non-complaining way) that they were the toughest cards he’s ever had to work with.

Bad Beats

2009-12-04T17:06:00.000-06:00

A few nights ago I attended an author reading at Full Circle Books, the venerable and excellent indie bookstore here in Oklahoma City. The author was Hank Stuever, a Pulitzer-nominated journalist from the Washington Post whose new non-fiction book, TINSEL – about Christmas in the heart of 21st-century America (Frisco, Texas!) – is getting great reviews and making year-end best-of lists. Hank is an incredibly funny, elegant, and insightful writer, and he’s just as engaging in front of an audience as he is on the page (at one point he led the crowd in a rousing version of the B.C. Clark Christmas jingle, which if you’re not from Oklahoma don’t even ask).

Hank and I go way back. We both went to McGuiness High School, we both went to Loyola University in New Orleans, we both worked on the college newspaper and at the Oklahoma Gazette. And yet, until his reading, we’d never actually met, since I’d just graduated or moved on a year earlier by the time Hank arrived on the scene. It’s a pretty good B-movie thriller set-up, but unfortunately our first meeting was uneventful, if pleasant. Turns out Hank has not been stalking me across the decades, I have not been trying to sabotage his career progress at every step, and we’re not actually the same person split in half by a temporal anomaly during the Reagan administration. So it goes.

Anyway, after Hank read from TINSEL, he fielded questions from the crowd. One woman asked if Hank had ever hit a low point during the reporting and writing of the book. Hank’s eyes lit up and he started answering almost before the woman finished her question. He told a hilariously harrowing and detailed story about how at one point he’d been so demoralized that he calculated how long it would take him to pay back his advance if he abandoned the project. The anecdote ended with him passing out while having blood drawn, then waking up weeping.

I was not surprised in the least by how quickly, and with what dark relish, Hank answered the question about his lowest point. I’ve heard that professional poker players tend to remember their big wins far less vividly than they do their most painful moments – the “bad beats” when the guy across the table hits an inside straight on the river and wipes out your set of kings – and I think it’s probably the same with most professional writers.

Is this healthy? Wouldn’t it be more useful if a writer were able to immediately forget his or her dark nights of the soul? Maybe. Or maybe that psychological scar tissue protects you in the next bare-knuckle fight: you know you survived this before, so you figure – against all evidence to contrary, at the moment – that you’ll survive it again.

The scar tissue helps me. Plus, like Hank, I can never afford to give back the money I’ve already been paid, so I’ve got no other option but to stop weeping and keep writing.

Gutshot Straight's Second Review

2009-11-16T15:51:00.000-06:00

The Booklist review for GUTSHOT STRAIGHT just came out and it’s starred. All I can say is: Wow. (Well, what I actually said, upon reading this review, was a string of jubilantly grateful profanity punctuated at the end by “Wow.”)

My wife, when she read this review, looked at me skeptically and said, “You wrote this, didn’t you? How did you pull this off?”

I promised her and I promise you I have not (yet) figured out a way to write my own reviews and get them published. So I’m beyond honored to be even mentioned in the same breath as Elmore Leonard, and I’m deeply indebted to the reviewer, a gentleman by the name of Thomas Gaughan, who if he ever makes it to my neck of the woods I’ll make sure lives like a barbarian king.

Here, with a few spoilers excised, is the review:

“Charles ‘Shake’ Bouchon leaves prison intending to go straight. But, within hours, lovely, lethal Lexy Ilandryan, head of LA’s Armenian mob and Shake’s one-time lover, has him running an ‘errand’ for her. The task seems simple: drive a car to Las Vegas and turn it over to Dick Moby, a 400-pound sadist who runs a strip club. Moby will give him a briefcase that he is to return to Lexy. Shake needs the three large Lexy hands him, but he quickly learns that nothing is as it seems…Virtually every character is memorable, and the chemistry between Shake and Gina [the young woman stuffed in the car’s trunk]…is brilliant. The plot turns are constant, and the dialogue is sharp. The bad guys are wonderfully scary, and the locales—Las Vegas and Panama—are vividly drawn. The estimable Elmore Leonard might be very pleased to call Gutshot Straight his own.”

Riding Along - Part 2

2009-11-12T16:35:00.000-06:00

From my recent ride-along with a patrol unit from the Will Rogers Division of the Oklahoma City Police Department (read the first installment here), Big Difference #2 between TV cop shows and real life:

Good Cop/Bad Cop

In screenplays and novels, you’ll often see law enforcement characters employ the Good Cop/Bad tag-team approach when questioning a suspect or witness. One cop character offers the carrot (“You’re a good guy, just talk to us and I’ll make sure the D.A. knocks down that felony charge”), the other cop character swings the stick (“You’re scum of the earth, if you don’t talk to us I’ll drop you out of this window”).

Good Cop/Bad Cop can be a great narrative device if approached in a fresh way (one of the best versions of all time is in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL). In real life, though, the dynamic can be a lot more complex. On the south side of Oklahoma City, for example, patrol officers work without partners. So it’s usually the same cop who has to both turn the screws AND offer a shoulder to cry on, which is no easy trick to pull convincingly off.

And that’s not all. Good Cop/Bad Cop doesn’t even begin to describe the range of personas a single patrol officer has to artfully employ in a single evening – or even a single sentence. A much more accurate term might be Good Cop/Bad Cop/Bored Cop/Funny Cop/Win-Win Negotiator Cop/Impartial Referee Cop/Friendly But Understandably Impatient Cop/You Show Me Respect, I’ll Show You Respect Cop/Fascinated by Your Elaborate Life Story Cop/Don’t Fuck with Me or We’ll Both Be Saddened By the Consequences Cop. And so on.

Gutshot Straight's First Review

2009-11-05T18:01:00.000-06:00

The first, pre-publication review of GUTSHOT STRAIGHT came out this week, in the Nov. 2 issue of Publishers Weekly, and it was an excellent one.

Not only did I score a great pull-quote just in time to make the cover of the book – “(A) fast-moving caper novel, which smoothly blends humor, action, and romantic frisson” – the reviewer also demanded a sequel – “Shake (the main character) is a quick-thinking fellow with dreams of owning a restaurant, but if fate is kind, he’ll return for the same kinds of adventures as those Berney recounts in this engaging debut.”

OK, maybe the reviewer didn’t exactly “demand” a sequel, but the Homeric invocation of Fate has to count for something, right?

Tess Gerritson makes a pretty good case that pre-pub reviews are critical when it comes to the career of a first-time novelist, so you can imagine my deep, jelly-legged relief when I read the PW review.

Here’s a link to the actual review (it's about halfway down the page), in case you’re not brimming over with trust for a guy who lies for a living.

Riding Along – Part 1

2009-10-30T00:30:00.000-05:00

I’m currently researching a new project. Last week, thanks to the generous cooperation of the Oklahoma City Police Department, I spent an evening shift with a patrol unit from the Will Rogers Division on the south side of the city. I probably don’t need to tell you that there’s not a huge correspondence between most TV cop shows and real life. Big Difference #1: the Straight Answer.

The Straight Answer
Script dialogue, by necessity, tends to be short and snappy. When a cop asks a witness or suspect a question, the cop usually gets a straight answer. Even if the answer is a lie, or purposefully evasive, it’s directly so. For example:

PATROL OFFICER: Did you see a red pickup turn the corner?
WITNESS: Hell, yeah, almost ran my ass over/No, I didn’t see no red truck/What’s a corner?

In real life, I discovered, answers are rarely straight. In fact, they can be not straight in often epic, Faulknerian ways. For example:

PATROL OFFICER: Did you see a red pickup?
WITNESS: About six months ago she found it behind the couch and I told her stay away, that friend of hers, ain’t her baby, ain’t her baby, she took that baby, he got a notarized piece of paper up in Ponca City says so but he don’t want to be no bad guy so he come down let her see it even though his mama says don’t you do it, she gonna take that baby, she lives with her and watched the baby while she was at work, but you don’t keep a baby from its mama, that ain’t right, once a bitch always a bitch what I say, so his girlfriend drove him down and the friend dropped her off while he was in the bathroom then she took off with her, or the guy she met at the bar, she was sleeping with him right in front of his eyes, all that time, and they shot at me, yes they did, cause I checked them for ID and they come back just before closing and shot me in the head and two .38 slugs in the belly, I was in intensive care for four months and she’s the one you ought to be talking to, or him, or the other two, or the other ex-girlfriend. You know what I’m saying?

The warp-speed, charged-emotion blur of indirect pronouns (It? Her? Him? Them? Huh?) is more disorienting than pepper spray. If I put a block of dialogue like that in a script, a producer would say, “Love it!” and then send an intern to make sure my death looked like an accident.

But on the south side of Oklahoma City, a real-life patrol officer just calmly absorbs this un-straight answer, keeps asking questions, and doesn’t even blink when the witness hikes up his shirt to display oozing .38 belly wounds.

Next: Big Difference #2.

Adequate Sex

2009-10-20T18:05:00.000-05:00

My copy editor for GUTSHOT STRAIGHT is a woman named Maureen Sugden, who is smart, hilarious, and ruthless. Every single thing I deserved to be busted on, she busted me on. And she did this busting in such an artful, good-cop/bad-cop way that while I felt ashamed of my mistakes, I also felt immense relief that Maureen had protected me from them, and from myself.

My favorite exchange with her concerned a sexual encounter between two of the characters in my novel. The original sentence read:

“The first time was over, for both of them, in about fifteen minutes. It was nice but unspectacular, rushed and awkward, like a handshake with someone you don’t know if you should be hugging instead. Or vice versa.”

Not bad, if I do say so myself. What fault could a copy editor possibly find with such a deeply-felt, beautifully-crafted passage? Well, this is what Maureen wrote in the margin:

“This kind of goes beyond the scope of my job as a copy editor, but…in some people’s worlds fifteen minutes wouldn’t be considered ‘rushed.’ I just looked up the stats, and apparently what rates as an ‘adequate’ act of intercourse lasts from 3 to 7 minutes. I’m worried you might make a lot of men feel really bad.”

Leaving aside the whole issue of whether or not 3 to 7 minutes really does or should rate as an adequate act of sexual intercourse (comments welcome!), I’d like to focus instead on what a masterful piece of persuasive writing Maureen’s argument is.

First, she opens with a disarming admission that she shouldn’t be saying this, then she says it anyway, now that I’ve been effectively disarmed. Bam!

Second, she clearly and precisely states her thesis. “In some people’s worlds fifteen minutes wouldn’t be considered ‘rushed.’” The quotes around “rushed” have the subtle but powerful effect of putting me on the defensive. Did I choose the wrong word? Is the problem here “me”? She is a professional copy editor, after all…

Third, not only does Maureen use a concrete statistical example to support her thesis, she frames it in such a way (“I just looked up the stats…”) that keeps her from sounding like a pedantic, know-it-all egghead who already knew-it-all. Plus, I start to feel grateful for – and indebted because of – all these extra, off-the-clock favors she’s doing on my behalf.

Fourth, now that Maureen has softened me up, she goes for the kill. “I’m worried you might make a lot of men feel really bad.” This is a masterpiece of a closing argument. Is Maureen appealing to my good heart? Of course not. When it comes to human nature, there’s a play with much better odds. So Maureen appeals to the part of me that wants to sell books, a lot of books, enough books so I can buy a split-level beach house on the shores of Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii, where I can kayak out every morning past the spinner dolphins and snorkel off the Captain Cook monument.

Fifth and finally, note how Maureen makes it personal in that last sentence. It’s not “the line from the book” that might make a lot of men feel really bad, it’s “you.” This is a nuanced but important distinction. By making this about “me,” Maureen encourages me to feel both magnanimous *and* happily smug about my own (implied) sexual stamina. And, bonus, I’ll get a beach house out of it too!

So I made the change in about a second. I’m sure Maureen is happy in her current profession, but I also think she’d make a damn good mob boss.

State of the State Fair

2009-10-07T22:12:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I attended (i.e., was forced by my wife to attend) the Oklahoma State Fair for the first time since I was a kid. Here are a few impressions:

Carnies
The carnie ride operators didn’t seem quite as toothless, seedy, and doped-up as I remember. Nor did they seem to take the same demonic delight in their jobs. Consider, for example, the Salto Trampolino, which uses a trampoline and long bungee cords to fling small children high in the air. When one small child began to scream in terror, the new breed of carnie did not, to my surprise, grin demonically and try to fling the child even higher. Go figure.

The handwritten sign outside the Salto Trampolino said this: “Come and fly 26 feet!” Then someone had added beneath that, as if to make sure there was no confusion: “In the air!” Then yet another someone, judging by the handwriting, had added beneath that, in really tiny letters: “You can go lower.”

Fashion
The Oklahoma State Fair may, as the promotional materials state, draw a diverse crowd from across the region, but an awful lot of fairgoers seemed to favor:

Sleeveless T-shirts.

Shirts in various shimmering metallic colors (copper, gold, nickel).

Baseball caps cocked askew in more unique and different ways than you’d ever think a baseball cap could be cocked askew.

Flames as a design motif (on pants, on shirts, on askew baseball caps, and even on backpacks holding portable oxygen tanks).

Food
A lot of people in Oklahoma City talk about “fair food” with a sort of drooling, glazed-eye reverence. If you express mild skepticism that “fair food” is anything to get worked up about, they will confront you with the exclamatory fact that “The corn dogs are made with real cake batter!” Followed by a smug look that seems to say: End. Of. Argument. Which I guess it is.

Food I tried: a pretty damn good bratwurst with real sauerkraut and onions ($6).

Food I admit I was kind of tempted to try but did not: the roast beef sundae.

Food you’d have to put a gun to my head to try, and even then: a combo platter that included deep-fried macaroni and cheese (on a stick), deep-fried mashed potatoes, deep-fried manicotti, cheese ravioli, plus (naturally) seasoned sour cream as a dipping sauce.

Food whose enduring popularity remains an enigma to me: Indian tacos.

Exhibits
The 4-H section of the Creative Arts building was my favorite. In addition to prize watermelons, it included student-made educational displays such as:

Wild About Peanut Nutrition!

What Do We Do With the Trash?

Why Do Horses Do That?

That last one was pretty fascinating. It answered questions that I, as a city dweller, had never even thought to ask, such as: “Why do horses squeal and strike?” “Why do horses chew wood and bite themselves?”

Conclusion
The fair lacks a lot of the grimy, seedy, pungent, dangerous character I used to love when I was a kid. I haven’t seen any official statistics, but I’d imagine you’re a lot less likely, nowadays, to be kidnapped, food poisoned, or crushed in the wheels of a midway ride.

Still, though, the fair’s not a mall yet. It’s still more than a little bit grimy, seedy, pungent, and dangerous, and for that I’m grateful.

Gun Crazy

2009-09-28T12:27:00.000-05:00

I was lucky to grow up during, and luckier to survive, the tail end of an era when parents were less cautious about a child’s physical safety. No bike helmets, for example, and lots of unsupervised play time in storm drains and at abandoned construction sites (“Go outside and find something to do. Be home by dark”).

Emotional danger wasn’t even on the radar, at least not when it came to culturally-sanctioned violence. I’m pretty sure my parents never worried that I’d grow up to become a mass murderer just because I, like every other boy in the neighborhood, owned a lot of toy guns.

I owned a LOT of toy guns. Silver Colt .45 revolvers that used paper-strip caps; small snub-nose black .38 revolvers that used plastic-ring caps (louder and more reliable than the paper strips, but without that great acrid gunpowder smell); hunting, sniper, and Winchester repeating rifles; M-16s; even a green plastic replica of a tripod-mounted, belt-fed .50 caliber machine gun.

Needless to say (at least I hope it is), I did not grow up to be a mass murderer. In fact, because my father liked to fish, not hunt, I grew up without ever firing a real gun.

Which is kind of weird, because during the course of my work day I find myself writing fairly often about guns, and people with guns, and people grabbing for guns just before we CUT TO: EXT. THE BAR – NIGHT and there are people out there with even more guns.

So recently I had an idea that it might be interesting or illuminating or whatever to fire a gun for real and not just in my imagination. So I called the local gun shop and booked a lesson. My wife, who is up for just about anything, insisted on coming along.

(Some of you might be thinking, at this point, “What a pussy – he needs a lesson?” Maybe I am, but at least I’m a pussy – spoiler alert – who didn’t accidently blow off his foot, hand, or other critical appendage.)

The gun shop (or “Shooting Sports Outlet”) was massive. There was a labyrinthine sprawl of gun cases made of glass and expensive-looking hardwood, plus an indoor pistol range, an indoor rifle range, a classroom, an area for accessories and apparel, and a café. The one design element that really leapt out at me, as it were, was the encyclopedic assortment of stuffed animals and stuffed animal heads. There were beasts and birds, predators and prey, the familiar and the exotic, including an African antelope of some sort with long, curving, beautifully-banded horns that looked like the legs of a coffee table you might see at Pier One. It reminded me a little, all this inter-species mingling, of the painting PEACEABLE KINGDOM, except that the monkey crouched atop the rifle case here had a kind of crazed, bared-teeth, brain-eating expression on its face you definitely would not want to confront without a high-caliber weapon of some sort, I don’t care how peaceable the kingdom is supposed to be.

Anyway, the gun lesson was excellent. The instructor was articulate, knowledgeable, and patient. A lot of what he had to say about responsible gun-handling was refreshingly direct: “Assume a gun is always loaded.” “Never point a gun at something unless you’re prepared to shoot it.” When I asked him what did actors on TV and in movies do with guns that really bugged him, he chuckled softly and shook his head in a way I took to mean, “Everything.” I pressed him – not too hard, since he, like all the salesman at the SSO, wore an automatic handgun in a holster on his hip – and he finally offered that “tea-cupping” was the one thing that bugged him most when he watched TV and movies. This occurs when the left hand of the gun-wielder (if he or she is right-handed) is cupped BENEATH the handle of the gun, instead of wrapped AROUND the trigger hand.

My wife and I handled – gingerly – the Glock 19 we’d rented for the morning and learned, among other things, how not to tea-cup, the proper way to rack a slide (it’s easier to push the gun down than pull the slide up) and the difference between “magazine” and “clip.”

After that, we put on protective eye- and ear-ware and entered the pistol range. Our paper target was a blue silhouette of a man’s head and torso that was referred to around the SSO as “Mr. Smurf.” I loaded the magazine, inserted the magazine into the Glock, racked the slide, took my position (squared off, feet shoulder-length apart), sighted down the barrel, and squeezed the trigger.

My first surprise – which shouldn’t have been one, if I’d stopped to think about the chemistry of it – was that there was an actual explosion when I fired the gun. There was a way-louder-than-I-expected BANG and a white-orange flame-flash, the climax of a miniature little Michael Bay rolling-fireball action set-piece right there in front of my face. I realized that I’d never truly appreciated how not-gentle firing a gun is, how violent and elemental and kind of scary/kind of thrilling is the interaction between firing pin, primer, gunpowder, and bullet. I realized, I guess, that as a writer I’d always treated guns a bit too lightly, never giving them the full respect they deserve.

My second surprise – which shouldn’t have been one either – was how much better my wife shot than me. I wasn’t terrible, but I kept anticipating the miniature Michael Bay rolling-fireball explosion and jerking the barrel of the Glock a hair to the left. My wife, on the other hand, calmly riddled Mr. Smurf like you wouldn’t believe, to such a degree that the instructor offered to show her an advanced-level shooting stance. Believe me when I tell you I have not heard the end of this, and don’t ever expect to.

None of the insights I drew from my day at the gun range were that revealing or original (Kind of scary/kind of thrilling? That’s it? Are you serious?). But field research can work in mysterious ways. That first trigger pull, the sharp metallic way-louder-than-I-expected BANG in a long, narrow concrete space, the smell of gunpowder and heat and grease, all that snapped me back in time to a moment long ago that I’d completely forgotten about, one of maybe three times in my life I’d been truly terrified out of my wits and fairly certain I was about to die. I’m not sure if I’ll ever use that memory, but I am definitely glad – as a writer, at least – to have it handy now.

Little Did He Know...

2009-09-21T15:17:00.000-05:00

As a fiction writer/screenwriter, I spend much of my day making stuff up (my wife uses a less polite, more colorful metaphor for this activity). But as someone who started out as a journalist, I also recognize the importance of field research and reporting – sometimes the best stuff you just can’t make up.

In that spirit, this blog will include discussions about the art, craft, and business of writing, but it will also require me to get off my ass, out of the house, and into the the wide world. You don’t need yet another dipshit snarking about some guy's reaction to some other guy's reaction to something that he read on the Internet, right? You need a dipshit (me) who at least occasionally gets off his ass and writes about interesting people, places, and things he himself has actually met, been to, and had (for example) thrown at him. My hope is that this approach will make this blog more enjoyable to follow. Because I totally agree that a writer should write from experience, but only if he or she is willing have some.