PRIVATE EYE STORIES and NOVELS
When I was a real-life private eye, I worked a lot of insurance cases, some divorce work, but I was hired on a few homicide cases because I was a former homicide detective. My brother, a former NOPD detective who has been a PI for over thirty years, has worked some high-profile investigations involving white collar crime, corrupt politicians and missing person cases. Things were different in the 1940s and eraly 1950s where PIs worked a myriad of cases. From what my old NOPD detective friends told me, the quality of detective work in the first half of the twentieth century wasn’t that good. Many police detectives then were hard-nosed, fisticuff street cops put in suits to do follow-up work in a suit. Only a few were brainy, which is one of the traits of the fictional Private Eye.
I've kept this in mind in writing my 40s-50s private stories and novels.
NEW ORLEANS
As for New Orleans, she is so complex, different from any other American city, more European. She is not big and there’s nothing easy about her. Many, MANY writers get her wrong. I blame editors and publishers of the big houses for much of this. I had a number of editors prod me to write more touristy books about the city (Murder at Mardi Gras, Death in the Above-ground Cemeteries, Killings at Jazz Funerals), rather than more accurate depictions of New Orleans.
Screenwriters are worse. Cliché after cliché. No one here speaks with a southern accent unless they migrated here. I speak with a Brooklynese flat-A accent. Mardi Gras is only a small part of the city and the French Quarter is small as well (although the Quarter is the heart of the city). My only character who lives in the Quarter is PI Lucien Caye and he lives on the edge, in the run down lower Quarter of te 1940s.
EROTICA
I started writing erotica when I began writing short stories in the late 1980s. It paid better than regular fiction, unless one was fortunate enough to sell a story to a big magazine. Writing erotica taught me to write short, descriptive pieces without any fluff. It was just scene after scene. Sex sells and the billions of humans on this planet came into existence because of sex. I’ve heard of only one virgin birth.
PRIVATE EYE NOVELS WITH SOME EROTIC ELEMENTS
Most of my novels have a love stories and the characters get intimate. Covers have been titillating over the years.
SELF PROMOTING
I'm a pain in the ass. I dislike promoting myself on social networks, although I have to. There's nothing wrong with a writer promoting their work. It's the only way to get word out sometimes. I'm just not good at it.
Couple days ago I received an offer to be interviewed on an international English Literature site. I replied I might be interested. They came back with it would cost me $50 to be interviewed on their site. I have never paid to be interviewed. Have any of you?
I declined.
I thought I'd posted this earlier but cannot find it on SleuthSayers, so here are more quotes from actor/stand-up Comic Dimetri Martin (I like this guy). He jokes about putting up flyers in coffee shops:
Random Thoughts in return: Once you realize that screenwriters rarely get ANYTHING in the South right (with the exception of Billy Bob Thornton, who knows whereof he speaks), it's easier to bear. Of course, I also blame some of the stereotyping with the casting director - much as I love him, Michael Caine does one of the worst Southern accents in the world, and I watched Steel Magnolias trying to figure out where they thought these women were from.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, I love New Orleans the same way I love Venice - with the same mad passionate love of a 16 year old who's ready to run off and ruin her life with that guy (and we all know the kind). I know it would never work out, but God I love visiting there.
And I miss the old pulp covers on paperbacks. All paperbacks. Even the John Carter of Mars series (which had about as much erotica as a phone book) had half-clothed women all over them.
Personally, I've interviewed many fellow writers on my blog in the past. I would never dream of expecting payment. But then again I am a writer myself. Your background is the real deal. Congratulations on your successes past and present.
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