Ask the Author: James Dalessandro
Answered Questions (11)
James Dalessandro
I don't know that there's a personal mystery - some crime, or great mysterious issue that would be worthy of a book. But as someone who finds interesting stories, there a few. I wrote about a group called Citizens Against Homicide ("Citizen Jane"), about an ordinary citizen who spent 13 years pursuing the man who murdered her aunt. She also founded a group called Citizens Against Homicide, and at the time of her death she was working on 500 cold case murders. Her partner in the organization, Jan Miller, has never found justice for her daughter Veronica who was murdered in Chico, California on June 28, 1984. It is described in detail in my book, but I"d sure like to write the sequel on how that case gets solved. It's yet to happen, sadly, but Jan and others will never give up.
James Dalessandro
Donald Trump was elected president. This is not a bad dream.
James Dalessandro
What a great question. I actually have to think about this one, since most of the fictional worlds I read about and write about are fictional situations rooted in real worlds. So I can't say "Gettysburg" to hear Lincoln speak, or Ford's Theater to put a beat down on John Wilkes Boothe before he shot the great man, or to Vienna in the last 1920's to strangle Hitler before anyone paid attention to him. Or Dallas in November of 1963 to warn Kenned. Those are too real, correct? How about the awful world of The Handmaid's Tale to join the under ground and help women escape the monsters abusing them - but that's too real, isn't it? I can't think of a fantasy world or sci fi world that really matters to me. I'm firmly rooted in this world. Even if I reverted to my childhood and said "Metropolis" and Superman's sidekick - I'd be doing the same things I'd be doing in the real world. Using whatever I could do to fight injustice. This question demands a lot of introspection, doesn't it? Good one.
James Dalessandro
Right now I am reading Stephen Ambrose's NOTHING LIKE IT IN THE WORD" - the story of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. I do history lectures for travel groups in San Francisco, and this is one I have done for years. And already I have learned a few things. I did not now that Abraham Lincoln was the premier railroad lawyer in Illinois and perhaps the entire country, when he won a legal case for the Rock Island Railroad that gave them tax exempt status as a public asset and utility. The invention that transformed the world was the steam engine - it was the dawn of the technological revolution. Before steam engine, everything moved by wind, water, or animal/human muscle. Steam engines liberated and united us - and the Transcontinental Railroad was the single most important and influential event in American history outside of war and independence. A building project that rivals the Great Wall of China. Ambrose is a meticulous researcher and good writer. Love the book, about 1/3rd through it.
James Dalessandro
That's easy. Nick and Nora Charles from The Thin Man. Asta the dog would make a nice "Best Couple and Pet." Dashiell Hammett wrote the smartest, snappiest dialogue of any fiction writer, he's the true master of the genre, and by creating Nora Charles, he gave us a woman who was ever bit the measure of his male characters.
James Dalessandro
By not believing in it. To me the issue is writer's procrastination. There are story impasses, where you need something tangible to elevate a chapter or a screenplay - I'm both a book writer and screenwriter. To me, that is research: finding something wonderful and real that helps flesh out a story.
James Dalessandro
As a kid? Listening to my father, the son of Italian immigrants, talk with our neighbors about their harrowing adventures in WWII. My father survived 4 years in the U.S. Navy, fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. He was a brawler, a race track aficionado, a boxer, a story teller. I was a voracious reader: first comic books, then Leon Uris - Exodus, Battle Cry - by 12. At 16, I was reading Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Right now, for me, it's history. We live in boring, dangerous times. I'm constantly finding great, untold stories, more than I'll ever be able to tell in the time I have left.
James Dalessandro
I'm doing television, it's the salvation of American drama, it revived the anti-hero. Film is dominated by shit, and the publishing industry is something I don't recognize. I like dark, complex, interwoven story lines with wild characters. I'm doing a mini-series on how rock n' roll changed America, and a series on Joseph Petrosino. Never heard of him, right? He was a New York shoeshine boy drafted into the NYPD, and over a 26 year career, nearly stopped the Mafia from gaining a stranglehold on the country. Theodore Roosevelt was his best friend and ally. History, I love history.
James Dalessandro
I'm one of those writers who also teaches, mostly screenwriting, though I have edited a lot of fiction manuscripts and magazine articles. Here's the big secret: read. Learn from the masters, the people who inspire you should also guide you. Master your craft - I see people writing books and screenplays who can't write a sentence. Forget the "write what you know' nonsense. Know what you write. See what others have done in a similar genre, and try to be different, to do what they didn't do. Hang out with crazy, creative people. I was on the morning news in San Francisco for my 1906 novel, and the host asked me the secret to a successful writing career. Assuming I had one. "A wife with a steady job" was my answer. Thy were howling when I left.
James Dalessandro
The freedom and creativity. The former can be a two edged sword: you're free to work when you choose, on what you choose. You're also free to procrastinate, to work on things that are not of the deadlines. The creativity part is wonderful. It's the ultimate fantasy, creating an entire world, changing the characters to fit your mood. And you get to hang out with a lot of creative and interesting people. When I was 22, I hitch hiked to California after seeing a documentary on the Beat poets. Two years later, I founded the Santa Cruz Poetry Festival, a huge event, and I was reading and conspiring with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ken Kesey, William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski: amazing stuff for a truck driver's son from Cleveland, Ohio. Now, I'm consumed with history, and love research great characters and events. I get paid to learn wonderful and interesting things. I guess it's obvious that I love this work and this life.
James Dalessandro
After I wrote Bohemian Heart, and it was very well received by reviewers, I wanted to continue to explore San Francisco history for its amazing stories. I discovered Glady Hansen's "Denial of Disaster" in which she described the lies and cover ups of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. The official death toll was 479, an abomination. More than 6,000 people died. The day before the earthquake, the entire city administration was about to be arrested on massive corruption charges, a plot that was hatched six months earlier in Theodore Roosevelt's office at the White House. Some of the men who were about to be arrested fought back at their enemies. They used the fire and chaos to paint themselves at the great heroes of the holocaust. Then you have Enrico Caruso singing at the Opera House five hours before the earthquake struck. You cannot invent this stuff. I believe in historical fiction, not historical fraud: I set out to destroy the "Official Story" as the real fraud.
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