Chew On This

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Submitted 3rd chapter of the noir series.

The chapters are sketches, later I'll assemble them for further development. That is, I wanna 'find' some interesting characters and situations to do something with.

Chapter 4 opens with a knife attack.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Finished reading START SCREAMING MURDER by Talmage Powell. Another noir adventure set in 1950s Tampa. Carny midgets are principal characters. One is a 3 foot tall beauty who looks like a child rather than a bowlegged squirt.

Started reading GETTING OFF by Lawrence Block, a beautiful woman picks up men, screws them, and murders them in their sleep afterwards.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Started reading THE THRILL KIDS by Vin Packer (female); the writing is awful and I deleted it from Kindle.

Started reading RED HEADS DIE SLOWLY by Gil Brewer, a Tampa noir writer of the 50s. A beautiful but evil blonde sets gullible guys up for murder convictions and death in the electric chair.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Looking at the premise thread I'm surprised no one knows what a premise is.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I read 100 pages or so of GETTING OFF by Lawrence Block, and shelved it.

Its one sex larded chapter after another with graphic depictions of underage sex tho the kids are teens. The pivotal character is 23 year old Barbie from Minnesota who tours America murdering people she seduces. Its terribly boring tho much of the action violates LIT standards.

The problem, it seems, is Barbie's teen years weren't traumatic, but fun. So you wonder where the steam is coming from. She runs into a guy she hasn't seen since she was 15, and is frustrated she cant lure him to bed so she can kill him. Lame.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Started writing FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA.

We cant pay our debts so the Congress leases many areas of America to China so they can recoup their losses from American bonds. The Chinese send over North Koreans to police these concessions. Within the concessions the Chinese create 100% employment; all work, and much of the work is agriculture, fishing, and hog production. American engineers fare better than folks with Gay Studies diplomas, who toil in rice paddies. Dissent? Hahahahaha.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Finished reading WITH A MADMAN BEHIND ME by Talmage Powell. Ed Rivers is a fat, ugly, older, balding Tampa private investigator. In this tale Ed tries to rescue a damsel in distress, and ends up, with her, at the bottom of Tampa Bay. Both are tied up, and Ed barely has time to free himself. The damsel dies. Then a rich woman hires him to find her missing foster son. Ed finds him, dead, then discovers that sonny and the dead girl were porn actors. Plenty of red herrings in this one, and the ending surprised me.

Powell is almost unknown today but back in the 60s he wrote for MISSION: Impossible and ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. He was a natural at tv scripts and action adventure writing, and reminds me of Raymond Chandler minus the marvelous descriptions and metaphors. Ed Rivers is at home with carnies, whores, winos, and the Ybor City peasants who roll cigars.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Finished reading THE GIRL'S PHONE DOESNT ANSWER by Talmage Powell. Ed River's war hero friend is jailed for murdering 3 people with a Samurai sword during an alcoholic blackout. Another 150 page lightning read. I failed to correctly guess the identity of the real killer....again. Powell did a great job of hiding killers under your nose. One more Ed Rivers novel to go.

Started reading THE BLONDE ON THE STREET CORNER by David Goodis. Its a depressing tale of 4 mama's boys and 4 old maids who find each other. 8 unhappy people without prospects during the 1930s. But the old maids have jobs, and the guys offer....I have no idea what they bring to the party. Goodis was famous for unhappy endings.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Over on my alt account the Green E story, and a story I sold to a slasher movie producer, score lowest of all. Speaks volumes about LIT readers. My stories that get close to Red H status are knocked down a peg each time they get within a whisker of the goal. But overall they move up the ladder with time.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLhREoVHTl0

I had forgotten that Jackie Gleason produced tons of records of old love songs, and even composed and arranged a few originals such as MELANCHOLY SERENADE above. He couldn't read a note of music or play any instrument, he simply had a mind full of lovely tunes and a flawless sense of how it needed to sound.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Finished reading CORPUS DELECTABLE by Talmage Powell. The last of the Ed Rivers series. Its a very clever incest story. Ultra rich grandma dies and granddaughter plus her father come to Tampa from South America to collect a fortune from the old lady. Granddaughter is the heir to 20 million bucks.

But then granny's secretary goes to see Ed Rivers and is murdered in his lobby. Her last word sounds like INCENSE to Ed, Way down the road Ed catches dad and daughter alone together in the Biblical sense of the word.

The story is fulla surprises.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

AH! MAKES SENSE!

One of my readers un-favorited chapter X of a series the favorited chapter Y of the same story. So I assume he uses the favorite function as a bookmark.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Started reading DARK PASSAGE by David Goodis. A Federal court ruled that this book is the literary model for the old tv show THE FUGITIVE. So you know the story and plot. Hollywood made a Bogey & Bacall movie of it in the 40s.

Started reading BLACK DAHLIA by James Ellroy.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Wrote 300 words of Once Upon A Time, the descriptive epic PATIENTLEE's story inspired me to dream up.

It starts off with an MDs ramble along the Saint Augustine Road that connected Tallahassee with St. Augustine 200 miles away. The old MD is off to see an old Negro who lives in the country and was with him in a hurricane and yellow fever epidemic 50 years earlier. Its April and early morning.

Cherokee roses are blooming along the road, black berries vines fulla rattlesnakes are ripening, and the way is infested with birds and Negroes walking or riding to town to church.

The year is 1893.

 

[patientlee]

Submitted 3rd chapter of the noir series.

The chapters are sketches, later I'll assemble them for further development. That is, I wanna 'find' some interesting characters and situations to do something with.

Chapter 4 opens with a knife attack.

I think this answers my question from my comment on the chapter.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I think this answers my question from my comment on the chapter.

Yep. It needs to evolve into a war tween the local cracker mafia and the New York/Chicago families.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Read BLACK PUDDING by David Goodis. A man's beautiful wife and his criminal boss set him up for capture by the cops; he goes to prison for 9 years. The wife divorces him and marries the criminal boss.

The man does his time and moves from California to Philadelphia. The ex and her husband plus their gang go to Philadelphia to murder the man, who now lives in the basement of a condemned house with a disfigured opium addict. Her ex husband/pimp cut her face up with a meat cleaver.

Really cool end.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Spent the morning writing the first installment of a long story I call LANDSCAPE OF A DREAM. At the end of his life an old doctor makes a visit to the home of a former slave his father owned fifty or more years ago. They were comrades thru a yellow fever epidemic and hurricane during the late 1830s, when both were young men in their 20s.

I strive for authentic detail, and have spent decades collecting the info I need. Every bit of it has to be 'right on the money correct.' Or the story rings false.

The Cascades was a natural spring located at Tallahassee, and has no appearance in my story other than its the source of a creek that flows beside the railroad that is featured in the story. Hundreds of documents are mined to make the story. The female's costume indicates that the photo is contemporary to the time of the story, circa 1895.

Old newspapers document that The Cascades was a popular spot for cripples and depressed women to drown themselves.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Another pic of the Cascades. Modern. My 4th great grandfather built the railroad that passes beside The Cascade. That was back in the 1830s. He didn't operate it, just built it. Tallahassee didn't have the money for steam locomotives then, and used mules to pull the cars down the tracks.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Anuther old photo from circa 1910 of the Saint Augustine Road at Tallahassee. The 2nd photo was made circa 1900. The 3rd photo is the slave cottage my 4th great grandfather built for his city servants in Tallahassee. Built circa 1830. The 4th photo is of the slave cottage, front view

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Discovered a NEW noir writer named Day Keene, shit! I think he died 50 years ago. But he wrote well. DEATH ROW DOLL is about a poor hooker widow (baby daddy was in Korea and she was making ends meet with Shriners at the local hotel until she killed one for his money belt). Now she has 5 days until she meets Jesus. Baby Daddy gets shot in the ass and dies.

I suspect that pulp writers back then were paid a penny a word for every word they cut from 60,000. Their tales start, looking like a 1949 Buick Road Master fresh from Detroit, and end looking like a 1960 King Midget or Nash Metropolitan.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I lied. Day Keene wrote WTF crap. He started out writing well and lost his mind by chapter 7.

David Goodis did it too in his first novel NOT in his best books 15 years down the road.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Got hold of some scholarly material for writing writerly criticism. Its high proof stuff. Like if it makes sense and contains familiar navigation markers its prolly popular category fiction' if it makes no goddamned sense at all and written by negroes and homosexuals you had no idea existed its prolly literature.

 

[lovecraft68]

Got hold of some scholarly material for writing writerly criticism. Its high proof stuff. Like if it makes sense and contains familiar navigation markers its prolly popular category fiction' if it makes no goddamned sense at all and written by negroes and homosexuals you had no idea existed its prolly literature.

If it is not approved by Pilot it is should not even be in print.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

If it is not approved by Pilot it is should not even be in print.

I was thinking I could sneak it past him when he was checking out ML's ankles.