Never Take Our time Together For Granted

Here's a blog I was hoping I'd never have to write. Last December, Travis Heermann was in a very serious motorcycle accident, which left him in a coma. In that month's post I was going to share some thoughts about him but it sounded like I was writing a eulogy so I didn't. Now here we are.

I'm not sure when I first met Travis, ten years ago perhaps, when he showed up in our critique group. He was an exceptional writer, and like many with such talent and potential, didn't get the recognition he deserved. He was incredibly disciplined and always thoughtfully planned out his next big thing. Travis' favorite genre was high fantasy, heavy on the action and adventure. He enjoyed steampunk and most of his stories had a strong Japanese influence, reflecting his admiration of the people and the culture. In fact, he lived in Japan for a while and was conversant in the language. He also liked horror and the last major project he was working on was finding distribution for his award-winning, horror-comedy short film, Demon For Hire.

As we men get older, we find it more difficult to make friends. I considered Travis my friend. We didn't hang out that much but when we got together, our conversations were relaxed and understanding. There were topics we avoided--politics and religion, big surprise. We discussed the many facets of writing, the challenges of specific genres, and the business aspects of making a living as professional scribes. He and I worked as ghost writers for the same company. Since he liked writing action, he had an appreciation for weaponry and would on occasion, accompany me to the shooting range where we would spend a few hours blasting ammo.

He was good company, had a keen though restrained sense of humor, loved scotch and cooking--brisket and BBQ among his choice items to grill. He was an accomplished gear head and responsible for cinching tight the technical details for a podcast my critique group hosted for a while. The last time we hung out was at a Christmas party where he spent a good while showing off his new Ford 150 hybrid pickup truck. He and his wife Chanel (recently retired) had made plans to sell their home and vagabond in an Airstream trailer, in which he could work remotely and keep writing.

The following Thursday I was at a men's group in a local church. At the end of the meeting, the pastor asked us to pray for help in something in our lives. At the time, I felt blessed in that I couldn't think of anything in my life that needed prayer. Then when I got home, my girlfriend told me what had just happened to Travis. Now after four months of care, Travis has passed on.

I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil. 

JRR Tolkien

High Crimes and High Adventure

 Next month my newest novel comes out. Or more specifically, one that I co-wrote. My day job is as a ghost writer. Most of my projects are memoirs or business-type books. Occasionally I get hired to flesh out a novel and I've done about ten. They're all work-for-hire projects and the client gets the copyright and whatever profits they can manage from publication. Sometimes a client is so pleased by my work that I get asked to share author credit on the cover. 

Luther, Wyoming took a long, long time in getting published. The client, Tomas Alamilla, a Mexican restauranteur, brought a rough manuscript that he wanted me to polish into a Western novel. The genre demands high adventure, high stakes, and high crimes and Alamilla's concept included all these. A key plot twist was one of my favorite literary devices, a well-timed double-cross. As the writing progressed, I changed some of his other ideas like move the setting from Montana to Wyoming, flip the lead characters--Adam Sanchez became the protagonist and Sheriff Nelson Cook the secondary--and introduce a romantic angle to give the story more texture. I gave Sanchez backstory as a Comanchero, who are typecast in Westerns as impoverished and sadistic villains. I liked the story so much that I asked Alamilla when I completed the contract, that I'd like to work with him to get the story published, a hard nut to crack as Westerns are a very narrow niche. I solicited a couple of Western presses, including one in the UK (go figure) and got rejected by both. Along the way, I met Tiffany Schofield from Five Star Press and kept her in mind as I continued to work on the manuscript. For many novelists, a challenge is paring down the narrative. For me, it was beefing up the word count to meet Five Star's requirement, which added a lot more depth to the characters and replaced exposition with active scenes. One topic that I discuss with my clients is that of publication. Getting picked up by any press is a labor of love and an ordeal of frustration. The process can take years. Consequently, most go with self-publication or pursue an in with a small press. I started working on Luther, Wyoming, in 2012 and here we are, finally, nine years later. Covid pushed the original pub date back from last October.

One of my guiding precepts was to write a Western that hit all the tropes--shootouts, chases on horseback, bad hombres, saloons--while steering clear of the cliches. I studied Daniel Woodrell's Woe To Live On to get the period language right. I included details we seldom see in traditional Westerns like Indian scouts, Buffalo soldiers, Chinese help, cavalry wearing Prussian-style helmets, and a trip to San Francisco's Barbary Coast. 

Here are a couple of blurbs that my fellow mystery writers were kind enough to provide:

"Luther, Wyoming is a like a crack Louis L'Amour western infused with Quentin Tarantino steroids. You're in for a ride with Adam Sanchez, man of the law -- and other priorities as needed."

- Mark Steven, author of the Alison Coil Mystery Series, including The Melancholy Howl

"The frontier town of Luther, Wyoming, is a hardscrabble dot on the prairie map where the bad guys are clearly and always bad, and the good guys are sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Tomas Alamilla and Mario Acevedo have created realistic characters for an action-packed story filled with tense gunfights, barroom brawls, explosive jail breaks, and deadly ambushes. Adam Sanchez is the lone stranger who rides into town with a broken hear from a love destroyed by bigotry. He teams up with an old friend, Sheriff Cook who served with Sanchez in the War Between the States. Together the men take on a gang of outlaws terrorizing the town. Sanchez risks his life for his friend and his love, and he must test not only his sharpshooting skills but also his courage.

Before the final bullet has been fired, Sanchez struggles with the meaning of friendship and loyalty, the temptation of honest men and their guilt for succumbing to that temptation and the uneasy balance between justice and vengeance."

- Manuel Ramos is the award-winning author of the Luis Montez and Gus Corral crime fiction.

Sunset Boulevard

This post will be short because it's end of semester and I'm in the midst of grading. I still have a pile of papers to read between now and Monday evening 11:59 when grades are due to the Registrar's Office. In between, this Saturday and Sunday, I will be joining fellow faculty members as we send our graduates out into the world -- to their joy.

But I want to speak in praise of the TCM project that brings classic films to movie theaters. The movies are in theaters for only two days. This month the movie was Sunset Boulevard.

On Wednesday, knowing the 2 o'clock matinee would be my only chance to see it, I jumped up from my desk and headed for the multiplex in the mall.

I arrived too late to hear the narrator -- face-down in the swimming pool -- identify himself as the person who was about to tell us how he ended up there. What can I say? I was counting on ten minutes of coming attractions, and I stopped for popcorn. But I was there when the flashback began.

The longer I watched, the more I regretted missing the swimming pool scene. Seeing this classic black and white film on the big screen was a revelation. As many times as I had seen the movie, there were some things that simply didn't register until I was completely focused, sitting there in the dark, both watching and listening.

Joe Gillis (William Holden), the narrator and the dead man in the pool, is an unsuccessful writer. I knew that, but somehow I had never really listened closely to what he says about that in the opening scenes of the movie. The conversation he has with his agent before he dumps him. The look on his face as he listens to a studio reader (Nancy Olson) rip the movie script he is pitching apart -- unaware that he is the person who wrote it. The decision that he should give up, admit defeat, and go back to the newspaper in his hometown where he will be greeted by smirks. Maybe the first time I saw the movie, I was not yet writing. Maybe after I became a writer, I simply nodded and stopped listening. But on the big screen, Joe Gillis trying to evade the repo men who are trying to take his car was  a reminder about the benefits of having a "day job".

If he hadn't been broke, Joe Gillis would never have taken a job as a script doctor for Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), the silent movie queen. He wouldn't have become her reluctant live-in lover while escaping in the evening to collaborate with the studio reader (who knows he is capable of much better work than the script he pitched). There is so much in this movie about being a writer that I'm sure I will use a clip the next time I'm asked to speak about the writing life.

There is also a marvelous scene when Gloria Swanson takes her live-in script doctor shopping for new clothes. And the scene when they visit the studio where she once reigned. And the scene that anyone who has seen the movie remembers when Swanson comes down the stairs with newsreel  cameras rolling. What I hadn't noticed on the small screen was the expressions on the faces of the reporters who clear a path for her.

Watching this movie in a theater as it was intended makes me wonder if: (a) I should mortgage my house and build a home theater, and (b) what it would be like to see my own characters come to life on the big screen. Not that I wouldn't be happy with a made-for-television movie. I think. Maybe not. Sunset Boulevard also offers some thought-provoking commentary about movies and movie-making.