Ah, The SHAME of it All
It seems propitious writing memories of my fifth novel SHAME on this day, as I just returned from my mailbox with a note from my carrier Barbara.
She wrote, “I have come to your door six times to tell you how WONDERFUL the book is. Every single page. Best I have read ever. I told everyone. Barbara.”
Barbara is an exuberant African-American woman (when I first asked her name she said, “I am Barbara – beautiful Barbara”) who loves to read and makes no bones about telling what she likes or dislikes. She was very disappointed with the last James Patterson novel (which she bought hardcover), and told me, “I’m thinking of writing him a note telling him how bad that book was.” Barbara also tells me if something in my own writing doesn’t suit her. She was positively peeved at my ending in EXPOSURE. I admitted to her that I changed the last chapter at the urging of my editor, and told her how I originally wrote it. Barbara was much happier with my original ending and said that if the book continues on into future printings I should amend it back to how it was. I am sure if I did as she urged it would open quite a kettle of worms.
I am grateful for Barbara doing some time traveling and hunting down my backlist of novels. And it pleases me how Barbara and many others liked SHAME so much, though at the same time I must confess that it was my book from hell. Before setting out to write it I outlined the novel, but fudged on the ending. I won’t ever do that again. While I think it is fine to write a novel without knowing every stop in the road map, I am one who needs a final destination. All sorts of complications arose while working on this book. When I realized I would never complete it within the contracted time period, I had to call my editor at Simon & Schuster and give him the bad news. This wasn’t the first time Bob Mecoy had heard such a confession. He didn’t give me too much of a trip to the woodshed, but said, “I’ll let you be late, but when you turn in the book it better be damn good.”
When I turned in the book seven months late I was holding my breath. Several days after receiving it Bob emailed me. “It’s damn good,” he wrote, and I was able to heave a sigh of relief.
I never wanted to write a book about a serial murderer. My novels are not about violence, though they sometimes contain violent scenes. I am an avid reader and my favorite novels are usually those where the character is different at the end of the book than he was in the beginning. There is some crucible that changes the protagonist. In my own books I like the main character to experience some kind of redemption. In SHAME I decided I wanted my protagonist to be the son of a serial murderer. Such an individual, I decided, would be a pariah of the community though on no account of his own. If your father was an infamous serial murderer, it stood to reason that his bloody hands would stain you and leave all sorts of marks.
The problem with envisioning such a character was that I thought the most likely thing this individual would do was to run away from his past. By starting a new life, his early history would be full of lies and omissions. It also made sense to me that this individual would be a wallflower, because the last thing he would want to do is stand out.
Because of trying to be true to my character, I found I had painted myself into a corner. My protagonist couldn’t crack wise, couldn’t even be dramatic. That meant I had to bring in other characters to enhance the story and play off of his muted qualities. Instead of one central protagonist, I had three equally important characters. I portrayed a true crime writer, sort of an Ann Rule character, and a transgender female impersonator.
The triumvirate worked for me, but it meant that much more work and research. I thought the transgender character would play off well against my son of a serial murderer. One was “in the closet,” and one was way out of it. The transgender character would have had to come to terms with what he/she was, while my son of a serial murderer would need to do that.
In usual writer fashion I set about researching the world of gender-benders. I found an article written by a psychologist that rebutted the notion that being transgender and cross-dressing was deviate behavior, pointing out that there is a long history of such behavior in societies around the world. I wrote to this psychologist, and was referred to a number of texts. After doing my reading I learned that in some Native American tribes there was a special place for transgenders, and that they were respected (some were even taken as “wives” by well-known chiefs). In one email to this psychologist I admitted that I knew nothing about the world of drag queens, and that to my knowledge I had never met one. To my surprise the psychologist wrote back and said, “Well, now you have made the acquaintance of one.” All this time I thought I had been communicating with a woman, but it was actually to a man who sometimes dressed as a woman. This psychologist encouraged me to go out in drag. I said that I had done many things for my writing, but that was one area I was not going to venture. I doubt whether anyone in the San Diego area would have enjoyed the sight of a 6’ 7” 260 pound hairy male walking around in a dress.
As part of my research I interviewed one of the premiere female impersonators in San Diego. I made arrangements to meet this individual through a friend of a friend of a friend (it started with a lesbian writer, and I was passed on from there). At any rate, the drag performer asked me to meet him/her (some transgenders prefer to be identified as females even though they are anatomically male) at midnight at a gay coffee shop in Hillcrest. It was with some trepidation that I set out for my meeting. I was probably more nervous going to meet that drag queen than I had been in going to the scenes of homicides. At any rate, that interview and subsequent talks went very well, and I hope it allowed me enough understanding to do a creditable job with the character I had envisioned.
One other story comes to mind during the writing of SHAME. I remember meeting with Lieutenant Jerry Lipscomb of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. The Lieutenant was very nice about answering all my questions, and during the course of our interview I asked him if the Sheriff’s Department had jurisdiction over the wealthy community of Rancho Santa Fe (San Diego County has both the San Diego Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department, each having jurisdiction over certain areas), as I was planning to set a homicide there. Lieutenant Lipscomb said that Rancho Santa Fe was indeed their territory, but then added, “We never get called out there.”
The next day I was watching the evening news. The big story was the mass suicide that was being referred to as “Heaven’s Gate.” And where do you think all those suicides occurred? Yes, they happened in Rancho Santa Fe. And who do you think I saw being interviewed, a bank of microphones in front of him, flashes going off everywhere? It was Lieutenant Lipscomb addressing the media from Rancho Santa Fe.
Truth always is stranger than fiction.
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