This month, Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome guest blogger Robert Lane. Robert is the author of the Jake Travis mysteries. His second Jake Travis novel, Cooler Than Blood, will be released on February 24, 2015. Foreword Clarion Reviews praised Cooler Than Blood as "...gripping and highly enjoyable...," and Kirkus Reviews described it as "A solid, entertaining mystery." Robert was our featured writer on December 4, 2014.
I was pumped. Finally made the commitment.
I was attending Eckerd College’s Writers in Paradise week-long workshop and
conference in St. Petersburg. Why not? It was close to home and I was a writer,
right?
Quick disclaimer: For reasons not worth delving into, prior
to my decision to become a writer, I’d just completed a long streak (decades?) of
limited fiction reading. My fiction reading during that tenure had been
reserved for a few favorite and revered authors. Meanwhile, the biography pages
I read easily surpassed five digits. I also devoured tomes of war books. War
is, after all, as Thomas Hardy said, “rattling good reading.” I had kilo-pounds
of books to support his observation. To this day, the word “Stalingrad” makes
me shiver.
Now the conference.You know the
drill. The attendees, twelve of us, each turned in a first twenty-five pages.
The morning arrived to critique my first twenty-five. I felt pretty good about
the opening of my magnum opus, as I’d already received unsolicited positive
feedback. The class batted me around with the standard faire. The conversation,
however, soon became dominated by the workshop leader (a successful author whom
I admired) and another attendee. They obviously knew each other and were both mystery
writers.
“Who does he (meaning me) remind
you of?” she inquired of her co-conspirator.
“Raymond Chandler,” he chirped in.
“I agree. He’s going for that
style. Maybe a little too much.” Hello, I’m right here.
I nodded.
But what I kept inside was this: Who the eff is Raymond Chandler?
I jotted the name down. I’d have
to look into his fellow who, apparently, was ripping me off.
Then this. “And his dialogue,”
she plowed ahead. “Sounds a lot like Elmore Leonard.” Did I detect an accusatory tone? “Is that what you’re going for?”
I nodded again in agreement. The
door was to my left. I could be on the beach drinking in five minutes. Screw
this stuff.
“I concur,” the other attendee
assented. “A lot like Elmore.”
Elmore Leonard or Leonard Elmore? Like two first names? Gotta look him
up as well. Sesame Street. That will be my mental reminder of that cat’s name.
And Bernstein, you know, "West Side Story." He was a Leonard.
I felt properly admonished. I
pinky swore not to copy the style of others—whoever
they were—and to search for my own voice. I slithered out of the room, the appropriate posture, I thought,
for someone who had been unveiled. Fraud-city
here, folks. Really took me to the mat, didn’t you?
During the next twelve months, I
made up lost time like the USS Enterprise flashing into warp speed. I studied
mystery writers and wrote a brief bio on each one: 75 and counting. I devoured
RC and became intimate with Elmore. Tore their stuff apart like an osprey
eating a fish. Read biographies and articles on those boys as well as their
best works. Pretty good writers. But the world knows that.
Can’t say they influenced me one
way or the other.
Can say this: I’m comfortable in
my voice. Think my style is something you’ve heard? I’d be shocked if parallels
can’t be drawn with any particular writer and someone else. The only thing new
in the world, Harry Truman proffered, is the history you don’t know.
I learned a lot at Writers in
Paradise. Highly recommend it. It’s an excellent conference, and I drank in the
air and hastily scribbled every spoken word into my notebook. (They had passed
out little engraved notepads. What good are those? I filled legal pads.)
I really don’t know if there’s a
lesson here for I’m not one to dwell on such things. But try this on.
Be yourself.
Be confident.
Aggressive.
Be joyful.
And if someone
says you sound like someone else? That person,
dead or alive, sounds like you.
For more information, visit Robert's website at www.robertlanebooks.com.
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