Retro Musings

As I have just recently put the finishing touches on The Doomsday Gizmo, I feel this is one of my favorite stories and am going to have good time writing subsequent yarns about this detective agency.( I'd reveal the name, but every time I think about the story, the time period it is in, I am filled with paranoia)

Again, this series of novelletes will be in a fictitious local that resembles the desert in Nevada just outside of Las Vegas. Except, that there will be no Vegas instead there will be a city quite similar to it and most likely more over the top in the kitsch of its 50's and 60's heyday. I like fictitious places and alternate time lines because you can fudge a little bit when it comes to retro pieces. In this story, my fifties is essentially the Hardy Boys, Homer Price and Tom Swift on steroids. It is full of pulpy thrills and dastardly villains and just a dollop of noir but not too much.

Again, I have found another sweet spot in the same way I found Huey Dusk. I think I have plenty of stories left in me about the protagonist of this series(name withheld because in the spirit of the story I am too paranoid).

I am also just grooving on the prose style. It is a perfection of my cinematic, purple hardboiled prose that is a perfect fit for this tale.

More About Scandalous Silence

Just thought I would check in. I am having a blast writing this latest Huey story. It is morphing into something that is bigger than I imagined. This one is a little different than the others because it deals with the effects your actions have on other people and in this case children. It is very appropriate since Huey in his own way is a champion of children. Only in this case, he finds himself not only being the savior of a child, but also one of the root causes of that child's predicament.

Yet More About The Golden Age Of Pulp

Back when I was a movie geek, there was  a distinction between low budget and I guess schlock. Alot of people would confuse the two. I was a fan of schlock and was well schooled in the purveyors of such cinema.

I am finding that there  is the same confusion in writing about pulp. And maybe it is because over time many variations of the genre have been created.

Since I have gone back to the source, I have come to the conclusion that the only true pulp is that of the Golden Age. The era of G Men, Masked Avengers, Space Opera, Far East Adventures and Yellow Peril. To me right now there is no substitute.

Don't get me wrong, I love all the other stuff, like Goodis and Thompson. But that is literature compared to the earlier pulps. I would even lump Spillane in with that class.

Real Pulp's mission is to entertain in a fantastic way. As a result, the plots should be very over the top, and in some cases ridiculous. There should be good and evil on display and the distinctions between the two should be crystal clear. So, not a whole lot of noir. The prose should be dramatic and to use one of my favorite terms, very "purple".   As expressed by Lester Dent, you need to capture the sounds, smells and scenery in vivid detail.  But, while you are doing that, you have to keep things fairly clean.

I am enjoying my stay in Pulp Land and plan to be here awhile.

Scandalous Silence

As I said yesterday, this is the title of my new Huey story. I have to say I 'm a dog with a bone... and it's a cotton candy flavored one. Why would I not think I would have a blast writing about Huey again? The words flow and they taste like honey fresh from the hive. I am just loving the language of this piece. It's an aural pleasure. You know have a great story when you wile away the hours reading what you have written, over and over again.

Reunion With The Clown

Yesterday I started writing Scandalous Silence, my latest Huey Dusk story. Honestly,  I figured on taking a long break from writing about my favorite funster. But, unexpected opportunities truncated the vacation. And I'm glad they did. I'm surprised, but at the same time thrilled with how much fun it is writing about Huey again. I've written about him so much that he now talks to me-- which is a reversal of what I usually feel about my characters in that it is usually me who talks to them and tells them what to do. This time the pugnacious punchinello has arrested creative control and is directing this story. OK, I'll stop with the pretentiousness and alliteration.

Sometimes it is good to take a break. Writing my previous two stories gave me lots of perspective on pulp and noir. This perspective has definitely been baked into this story. More specifically, I like the prose. It's the usual spareness as with the other Huey tales, but at the same time it's a little more loose and zesty and naturally incorporates the Spillane voice that I try imitate for Huey. But it's not just imitation. I feel I have added my own gumball, cotton candied toughness that is appropriate for the mean circus streets Dusk walks.

Doc Savage

Along with a  renewed interest in paperback books, I am also discovering  good old Doc Savage by Kenneth Robeson aka Lester Dent . I loved Doc Savage even though some the covers from the seventies editions were creppy-- especially the art for the book "Hex" which has Doc holding a bloody dagger. Ahh the memories!

Doc Savage is as pulpy as you can get and the prose is so purple it is bruised. I am becoming such a fan of purple prose the same way John Waters is a fan of bad taste. I look forward to reporting more about Doc Savage as I read more.

The Long Haul

While I am enjoying reading over the draft of my current story, I'm realizing I have a long way to go. I am sure if I wanted to, I could clean this draft up a little, send it in for final editing and submit it as another novella. But that's not what I want to do. It's time to stretch myself-- and by stretch myself I mean it is time to turn what I have written into a novel. This entails thinking more about the piece and seeing all the avenues I can explore when telling this tale. I also, in the second draft, want to apply something I heard last night at my writer's group: don't just describe something, live it. That's what I want to do in this story, live it. I think the more I live this narrative, the more credible it becomes to the reader; and the more I can amplify it.