Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Esperanza is coming...

As I was walking down Washington Avenue in Brooklyn, on my way to buy a cup of coffee, my cell rang. It was Kate Duffy from Kensington Books. She told me that everyone at Kensington loved Hunting The Innocent and she made me a final offer and I accepted. They felt that they didn't have anything like it and planned to push it big time. A three-book deal. In a flash I went, from struggling fiction writer to published author, and it was surreal.

Editor Sulay Hernandez had believed in me and my book, and worked her butt off to make it all happen. Now I was to begin a new chapter in my career. If everything went well, and readers embraced Hunting The Innocent the same way Kensington had, my series character Nicholas Esperanza, would hopefully have a very long, literary life...

Friday, January 06, 2006

HARDCASES

My pops loved tough guys: Muni, Bogart, Mitchum, Bronson, Caan, Eastwood, McQueen, and Connery, just to name a few. Men whose faces were history maps of hard living and hard lovin'. Stoic men who could say it all with a searing glare and a smooth swagger. Actors you believed kicked ass on screen, and off (many did) as well. Hard cases who could pimp slap a thug and say, "You're gonna take it and your gonna like it." Stars who appeared as comfortable brandishing a gun as bedding a broad. They were larger than life. Just like the characters they played. McQueen did his own dangerous stunts. Mitchum was known for plenty of public brawls after becoming a movie star. Caan counted among his friends many a made guy.

I was raised on these iconic movie tough guys, and easily understood why Pop found them to be kindred spirits. If you saw Francisco "Paco" Rodriguez, you'd think so what? He's a short guy with a pot belly. But he was as tough as the hardboiled heroes he so admired. He feared nothing. When a thug waved a loaded gun in my father's face, he didn't even flinch when he snatched it away from him. I heard my grandpa was no joke either. A bit of a gangster and a ruthless disciplinarian. My uncle carried a gun. My skinny brother Gil was so tough, he'd be playing stickball in the street, get hit by a car, dust himself off and get back to the game. So I understood what tough guys were all about. In the movies and real life. Didn't matter if they were short or tall, slim or fat: it was about presence. Confidence. Fearlessness. They commanded respect. Had lived, fought and loved, and regretted nothing. Said what was on their mind and didn't take shit from nobody. Minds as quick as their fists. These actor's my father loved embodied the hard cases they portrayed on screen.

Let's see...Now...It's '06...And we have Tom Cruise! Matt Damon! Ben Aflleck! Orlando Bloom! Dudes, who if you put them in a dress, could easily pass for a chick and wouldn't need any make- up. I believed Matt Damon as the world's deadliest secret agent, as much as I believe President Bush actually reads intelligence reports and understands them. The toughest thing Tom Cruise ever did was berate Brooke Shields and scowl at Matt Laurer.

Too much androgeny goin' in Hollywood. Actresses and actors are virtually physically interchangeable. In the movies, like the rest of America, bland is the word. Wallmart rules. Times Square is a shopping mall. Hollywood stars are as exotic as a vanilla milkshake. I have nightmares that Ben Affleck will soon star in the remake of The Big Sleep. I hope that this trend will change one day. That filmmakers and casting directors and studios will stop passing off marshmallow soft pretty boys as hard cases. In the meantime, I'll fire up the DVD player and lose myself in movies like Thief, in which James Caan, says, "I am the last guy in the world you wanna fuck with."

And when Jimmy says a line like that, you believe it.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Hardboiled City

I love crime fiction. Or hardboiled fiction. Or noir. Whatever you choose to call it. People often ask me why I like to tell grim tales steeped in blood and shadows? Why do I have such a morbid fascination with seedy characters, vicious acts of violence and edgy sex? Of course, like many crime fiction writers, I was influenced by the work of Chandler, Hammet, Goodis, Woolrich and others. Movies from The Asphalt Jungle to The Godfather to Taxi Driver shaped me as a screenwriter and filmmaker.

The day I decided to become a writer, was the day I saw David Mamet's American Buffalo starring Al Pacino. The story of three petty criminals planning a robbery was filled with the kind of stylistic language I'd never heard in a play before. Staccato street rhythms and profanity that Mamet turned into pure theatrical poetry. I wanted to write about those kinds of characters and in that kind of language.

Truth is, my biggest influence as a crime fiction writer is real life. I'm a product of the 70's and the 80's, back when the streets of New York where not only mean, they were sometimes deadly. Before Sheriff Giuliani. Before Starbucks and Applebee’s. When it was hardboiled city. A time when you’d walk up the stairs of a Time Square subway station and you’d often step over fresh puddles of blood. A time when you’d be riding the "A" train and would most likely encounter a gang of thugs, who would beat, rob and terrorize passengers. Just for the fun of it. It was a time when Hell's Kitchen crackled with danger during humid summer nights and the sounds of gunshots was a common city soundtrack. When the real Mayor was John Gotti. Back in those days, you always had to look over your shoulder and be ready; 'cause violence erupted at any time. For a crime fiction writer, it was both scary and exhilarating.

As a writer, I love research. Not just on the Internet or going to the library, but the real thing. Of course, since I was in my twenties back then, tough and a little crazy, I eagerly spent plenty a night hanging out with and interviewing gang members, dope dealers, stick-up kids, hookers, peepshow girls and pimps. The criminal minded love to talk, to boast, to school you on the rules of the street. Who's the toughest thug, the craziest pimp, and what was the best way to increase profits on crack sales? The language, the rhythm of the street is different from the norm. More honest, coarser, and in many ways, it was like Mamet so succinctly portrayed it: urban poetry. Crime fiction writers, good writers of every generation who manage to truly capture the street vernacular of their time, know that it will make their prose sing.

I’m not saying every crime writer needs to hang out with criminals and soak up seedy environments, but it personally helps me find the authenticity I want to capture, explore and express. For me, one of the most exciting parts of crime fiction writing is the research. Whenever I manage to talk to and hang out with the kind of shady characters I love to portray, there’s an excitement that overtakes me and eventually inspires me to sit down in front of the computer screen and lose myself in the dark dreams of hardboiled city.


Sunday, January 01, 2006

GHOSTS




New Year. Makes me think of ghosts. Ghosts of the dead. Ghosts of relationships. Some haunt you, others guide you. While the general focus of the New Year is the celebrations, the resolutions, the future, I see it more as a time of reflection. Of ghosts of the past. Who and what affected me, transformed me, inspired me? Decisions I regret. Things I wish I could've done better. Difficult circumstances I had no power to change but managed to emerge stronger, maybe even a little wiser. So the clock strikes twelve and I listen to the ghosts whispering in my ear, reminding me of where and who I've been. Yesterday suddenly makes tommorow seem a lot clearer.