Please
welcome M. E. Proctor to the blog today…
Could this be the beginning of a great
friendship?
The making of a novella …
By M.E. Proctor
I don’t
know how often I’ve heard these words: We
should do something together. Considering I’m neither into bank robbery,
quilting bees, or barn raising, the suggestion always has some relationship
with a writing project. It is also always comfortably vague and about as
binding as the clichéd “let’s do lunch one of these days”.
I’m not
sure why an innocuous social media chat on December 12, 2023, with writer
friend Russell Thayer turned into something completely different.
On that
cold December day, Russ typed: “Tom should go after Gunselle someday. Imagine
the interrogation scene!”
The
comment wasn’t completely out of the blue. Russ is the author of over twenty
short stories featuring the contract killer nicknamed “Gunselle”. She’s a hot
hit number. All the stories take place between the late 1930s and the early
1950s. Russ had a new one coming out and I had just placed a piece of retro noir
at The Yard Crime Blog. The coincidence was the spark that started our
conversation. My recurrent character (a dozen stories so far) is Tom Keegan, a
homicide detective in 1950 San Francisco.
As it
often happens in a chat, when both parties have time and like to talk craft, we
got into a fun back-and-forth. We threw a few plot ideas against the wall. What
if she’s hired to bump him off. What if they’re after the same killer…
It didn’t go any further that day. Or the
next. It didn’t go anywhere until January 30.
We must have both been unconsciously chewing on the idea
of bringing our two characters together, Ã
la CSI
meets NCIS,
because we picked up our chat right where we left it six weeks earlier.
Neither of us had ever written anything in collaboration.
How it would work, who would do what, was there a process, a kind of division
of labor … could we pull it off, would we fight over stuff, shout at each other
through email? We didn’t talk about any of that. All we knew was that we wanted
to write a story with our characters in the lead roles. What that story might
be, we had no idea. We
weren’t flying completely blind however. Russ had read my Keegan pieces and I knew
everything about Gunselle’s dangerous life. Our writing styles were different
but not jarringly so, and we were improvising in the same time period with a
strong flavor of classic crime fiction. If there were rough edges in the
writing, they could be polished off later once the story was laid out.
We
brainstormed a few ideas and decided to build the story around a political
assassination that would involve both characters, coming at it from their
respective angles. The detective investigating the case, in straight procedural
fashion, and the contract killer being embroiled in it sideways, yet not guilty
of the crime.
Russ sent
me a snippet of Gunselle being hired for a job she disliked—fixing somebody
else’s mess, i.e. the assassination—and a few days later, I sent him Tom’s
arrival at the crime scene, the ballroom of a luxury hotel. The suspect was a
musician in the jazz band hired for the event.
These simple
first steps turned out to have an enormous impact on the structure and the vibe
of the story.
It would
be told from a double point of view (POV). Each of us writing scenes from the
perspective of our protagonists. It felt natural and we never discussed that
choice or had any reason to revisit it later. It worked and we could write in
the particular voice of our characters, which took care of the differences in
our writing styles.
Everybody
knows that most of the research should be done before starting to write a story, it’s a lot more efficient, but we
were both eager to get something going. Now, with two scenes drafted, we had to
make sure we were historically correct on the when and the where.
It was a
stroke of luck to find out that 1951 was an election year. That November, San
Francisco re-elected the incumbent republican mayor. It put a time stamp on the
assassination and the identity of the victim: June, at a fundraiser for the
democratic mayoral candidate. The Palace Hotel is conveniently located
downtown, with a good size ballroom. An internet deep dive delivered
period-accurate floorplans. We were in business. We knew when, where and who,
but like our two lead actors, we were stumped by the motive. Why was Charles
Forrester shot? We wouldn’t find out for a while.
Writing a
story is like a treasure hunt. Every sentence, written on the fly, contains
potential clues. Here’s an example. The decision to make the killer a jazz
trumpeter gave the plot a definite slant. It also gave us the opportunity to
dig into the rich Bay Area music scene of the early 50s, the various clubs, the
talent on display, the racial tensions, the lure of the city at night, the
early involvement of the Mob in the drug trade. Russ had touched on the music
angle in some of his stories and brought all that background into the plot,
with great secondary characters. One of them, Maggie, became central to nailing
down the motive and the final resolution. Through Maggie, we also brought in
the war, only six years in the past, and its aftermath, how deeply it scarred many
characters in the story.
Very soon,
the project got bigger, a lot longer than a short story, maybe not a book, but
close.
During the
two months it took to complete a solid first draft (I’m writing this in
mid-April, we’re in the final polishing stage, and the word count sits at
50,000), we had a couple of mini-debates, all of them civil and considerate.
One of them was about who would enter the scene first.
Homicide cops
always get there after the fact, it’s the nature of the job. We decided to start
with Gunselle and put her at the scene, at the very beginning, before the shots
ring out. That was the story hook. She was hired for the hit and somebody beat
her to it. She’s pocketed the down payment. For doing nothing. As a
professional, it sticks in her craw.
Another
discussion was about the key scene where we bring our two characters together.
Up to that moment, they’d both been going through their moves separately, with
only a glancing accidental contact that showed mutual interest. Yes, this is
where it gets sexy … Who would write that hot scene, in whose POV? We briefly
considered writing it twice, in a “he says, she says” tango, but it proved
clunky. I wrote the initial scene, from Tom’s voice, then Russ took it and
turned it around. It worked a lot better that way, Gunselle initiated the event
and was the more active character.
Those were
the only scenes that required a decision on who does what. The rest flowed
naturally. After writing separate scenes for a couple of weeks, we built a
master document that we carried all through to the end, highlighting changes,
giving each other a go at adjusting things. Our different writing styles became
apparent. Russ writes snappy action scenes and I tend to be atmospheric. Using
the master document, we started blending things. He added bite to my stuff and
I added background.
As the
story evolved, the beginning needed continuous revisions. It’s the inevitable
result of not having an outline, of letting the story be told by the characters
to be taken wherever it wants to go. Somebody will throw a curve ball once in a
while and provoke a scramble. It keeps things fresh and exciting.
Mid-way
through the process, having a timeline became critical. The characters were all
in motion and the investigation picked up speed. A detailed timeline helped us
figure out the ending. None of what happens in the last act was in the cards from
the start.
We’re now
done with the novella, except for minor tweaking, and as I look back on the
collaboration, I wouldn’t change a thing in the way we proceeded. The time
taken in considering options, writing them and discarding parts of them, might
appear to be a waste but was crucial in coming up with the best solution.
Multiple iterations, trial and error. It happens the same way when writers work
individually (unless they’re rigorous plotters). The fun of the collaboration
is having your partner put something on the table that you would not have come
up with on your own.
And, in
closing, the personalities have to match … that is the secret sauce. Unfortunately,
there’s no readily available recipe for that.
The title
of the novella is “Bop City Nocturne”. Will there be more? When will it be
published? To be continued …
What
Russell says …
Martine asked
me to slide in with a comment or two. When I first brought up the idea of Gunselle
and Keegan appearing in a story together, it was in a joking way, but it did
seem appropriate. Both characters move through the hilly streets of San
Francisco at the same time. They might have stood on the same ground at some
point, one with a pistol in her hand, then the other, later, with a notebook
and a furrowed brow under his fedora.
I knew
Martine liked to do the research, as do I, and though I was joking a little
when I suggested the idea, I was hoping she would say yes. And I’m glad she
did, because this project, whether it ever comes to print, has been a joy from
beginning to end. No struggles, except for me keeping up with my partner, who
is an extremely fast worker. Our styles are a little different. She writes
longer scenes, full of detail and observation. I like mine short and jazzy,
with lots of humor. I write a little differently now that I’ve watched
Martine’s process, and we’ve both had fun working with each other’s characters.
May I add that there is some natural sexual tension between these two Bop City toughies?
And though they ply their trade on opposite sides of the law, and live by their
own rules, they manage to find common ground as they pursue the villains.
As Martine
says, perhaps this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Cut to:
Gunselle and Tom walking into the mist.
Read a
Gunselle story here: Par
for the Course
(Urban Pigs Press).
Read a Tom
Keegan story here: Footwork (Mystery Tribune). He also takes
the lead in A
Redhead and a Green Car in the great “Motel” Anthology from Cowboy Jamboree.
M. E. Proctor
©2024
M.E.
Proctor’s short story collection Family
and Other Ailments is available in all the usual places. She’s currently
working on a contemporary PI series. The first book, Love You Till Tuesday, comes out from Shotgun Honey in 2024. Her
short fiction has appeared in Vautrin, Bristol Noir, Mystery Tribune, Reckon
Review, Black Cat Weekly, and Thriller Magazine among others. She’s a Derringer nominee. Website: www.shawmystery.com
Russell
Thayer’s stories have been published in magazines such as Bristol Noir, Apocalypse
Confidential, and Shotgun Honey.
A “Gunselle” collection is in the works. Find him on Twitter @RussellThayer10.
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