We are delighted to welcome crime novelist Gray Basnight as our guest blogger today.
Gray's first mystery in the "Donna Prima" series is The Cop with the Pink Pistol (Ransom Note Press, March 2012 Trade Paperback and eBook editions).
Today Gray tells us about his experience in getting his book published. And if he had to summarize it all in just a few words: "Every writer needs a good editor."
— ◊ —
We all learn and grow from our mistakes. So do writers. I made an error in judgment when creating the central character in my debut novel. Resolving it was an edifying experience on both the writing process and working with a professional editor.
When I decided to try to my hand at mystery fiction, I knew I had to absorb as much of the genre as I could. But rather than pursue the present, I rebelliously opted for the past. That's not what the "how to" books advise. And it's certainly not what agents suggest. But nonetheless, that's what I did. I had read all of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond as a teenager and thought there couldn't possibly be anything better in the genre. So I decided to revisit them for guidance.
Photo provided courtesy of
Gray Basnight
One of the great attractions of Conan Doyle's stories, I rediscovered, is the city of London. The infinite universe of that metropolis with its teeming cast of winners and losers was itself a central character working in tandem with Holmes and Watson. Realizing that, I knew my central character needed to be a product of my setting, which would be London's contemporary corollary—New York City. And being a New Yorker, I instantly understood several facts:
1. My New York City must be cast in all its skevoid glory as well as being the hip mother of all cities.
2. My detective must be a product of the city's historic diverse ethnicity.
3. My plot pacing must be steeped in the energy of the city—fast, to the point of being a multi-tasking layer of frenzy, all of it conveying a sense of urgency while seeming simultaneously odd.
It naturally followed that Detective Donna Prima would be a product of that setting. She would embody some essential aspect of the metropolis. Over a period of weeks, she evolved into Brooklyn native, Italian-American, Roman Catholic, NYPD Detective Maria-Donatella Prima who, in defiance of the rules, packs a pink pistol on her left ankle and has no use for Estée Lauder and even less use for Cole Haan pumps.
Additionally, I thought of her as a new kind of sleuth. She would be a blend of old and new worlds. In this case, old means both the old country, as in 19th Century Europe—and—Humphrey Bogartesque; new means both unique and modern, as in—"would you please take that Bluetooth out of your ear and put down your Blackberry while I'm questioning you about the dead body in the next room."
But core background and mannerisms aren't everything and I sensed that some vital dimension to her personality was missing. While contemplating that, I was walking my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel (named Taxi) around my Chelsea neighborhood, when several lurid visuals seemed to speak out to me with a thematic message. The male mannequins in a shop window were dressed in summer shorts designed to do for the wearer what the codpiece did for Henry VIII. There was an illuminated ad at the local subway entrance for something called Californication, another for something named Hung, and a third for the latest cinematic episode of Sex in the City. At the time, I was re-reading and still contemplating Goldfinger when it seemed the ghosts of Ian Fleming, Marshall McLuhan and Sigmund Freud were all sending signals.
Finally—duh—I got it.
The graven images of advertising were talking to me like a perfect muse descended via deus ex machina. It's not the economy; it's the sex—dummy! Sex sells. From the moment Madison Avenue first stood a runway model in front of the latest Ford, it's been nothing but ever more explicit and socially acceptable (sort of) sexual imagery ever since. I was struck by how obvious it was: I must endow my lady detective with James Bond's libido. I will make her the sexual aggressor. It will be brilliant. It will epitomize the latest chapter in women's assertiveness. It will be new and hip. The thirty-something crowd will get it. The twenty-something crowd will love it. And most importantly—it will sell better than Harry Potter.
Thus, Detective Donna Prima seduced my male protagonist in the first scene, indeed in the first 500 words.
That's when the difficulty began. Literary agents who handle the genre couldn't get past the opening scene, which puzzled me. Don't they understand that young adult readers will immediately grasp the point? After all, young women don't seem to judge anyone on a sexual basis these days, a trend that's picked up speed in recent years but has certainly steadily progressed since Hawthorne penned A Scarlet Letter. They'll appreciate her assertiveness, the stand-her-ground personality, and most importantly—her refusal to wait for men to make all the fun first moves.
I will not belabor about the list of rejections, except to note the reaction of one female literary agent whose curt note adequately summarized many: "Sir, women don't think like this."
Ahem.
Well, that agent was not only not a New Yorker, she wasn't even on the West Coast. She was somewhere in between, so naturally—she—would never understand how clever and commercially strategic I was thinking. Unfortunately for her, she did not read much beyond the first few pages. Fortunately for me, the editors at Ransom Note Press read the entire manuscript. That resulted in a series of e-mail exchanges simultaneously expressing interest in the novel, but disabusing me of my self-anointed cleverness. The result was essentially what happened to Alex in A Clockwork Orange—I de-libidinized my central character. The difference is that it went much better (and easier) for me and Donna than it did for Alex.
In the end, I learned a few important lessons that the "how to" books repeat ad nauseum. But like so many other lessons in life worth learning—it's the actual experience that drives the meaning more effectively than mere cognitive knowledge of the rule.
Here's the take home for me:
1. Writers really do need good editors.
2. There really are boundaries in genre fiction.
3. Female protagonists in genre fiction really do want romance in one form or another on one level or another.
In the end, I got a terrific editor. And Donna Prima got romance.
Moreover, she may even have received something bigger than romance. I won't tip my hand on a sequel. But during Donna Prima's adventures, the "love" word was mentioned only in passing, and even then only in the title of a classic rock song (in this case by the Dave Clark Five). Yet that may possibly have been enough.
— ◊ —
Gray Basnight was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia where he spent his childhood and teen years on two much loved activities: reading and participating in theatre productions. After studying English and Theatre at a small college in North Carolina and George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Gray planned to become a theatre professor. Instead, he chose a life-enhancing pilgrimage to New York City to experience the actor’s struggle for a "couple of years." Thirty years later, many of them spent in traditional broadcasting, Gray decided to pursue a new career as a novelist.
To learn more about Gray and this thoughts about writing, visit his website at GrayBasnight.com.
— ◊ —
About The Cop with the Pink Pistol:
She doesn't do jiggle. She isn't into shoes or jewelry. She doesn't wear makeup (or, as she calls it, war paint). NYPD Homicide Detective Donna Prima's sole concession to modern womanhood is the pink .38 she wears strapped to her ankle. Not that she has much opportunity to use it, having been demoted to desk duty for a serious infraction of NYPD regulations.
On a routine burglary follow-up in Greenwich Village, Donna meets soap-opera actor Conner Anderson (Crawford on the top-rated Vampire Love Nest), who alerts her to some strange goings-on in a liquor store across the street. Sick of being chained to her desk, Donna decides to investigate. Meanwhile, the Feds need her help on a cold murder case as they investigate a theft from a nuclear power plant.
But would-be detective Conner Anderson wants to come along for the ride. And Donna, an Italian-American from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, can't deny the mutual chemistry she feels with this Southern WASP from Tupelo, Mississippi. Will taking on Conner as a civilian partner be the start of something beautiful or the biggest mistake of Donna's life?
