F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 22

The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross Macdonald

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First things first, why is it called ‘The Zebra-Striped Hearse’? Yes, Archer does encounter the titular vehicle, but it’s hardly of crucial importance to the story, at best only tangential to the investigation.

So why name the whole book after it?

Of course the most simple and Occam’s Razor answer is that once MacDonald coined the phrase he really, really liked it. But it seems lazy to just stop there, so I’m going to push further. This is noticeably a novel about the generation gap. More than once our narrator reminds us that he’s a man in his forties; that the women he likes are in their forties. It’s quite clear that his attitudes to life are shaped by his age. But this is a book with a lot of young people, and this man in his forties can’t quite get a grip on them, they are a whole other – almost unfathomable – tribe to him. And that I think is what this zebra-striped hearse signifies. It’s an old hearse which has been bought by some beach bums who use it to drive up and down the Californian coastline, lugging their surfboards and occasionally sleeping in it. And to a man in his forties there’s a fundamental lack of respect in taking this vehicle which has a solemn importance, and using it for such a purpose, and even defacing it with zebra-stripes. It’s a sign – as if another sign were needed – that the young are a breed apart, and the older heads, including Archer, are only just managing to keep the world around them together.

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Archer is hired by a stern old major to investigate the new boyfriend/fiancé he sees as distinctly unsuitable and unworthy for his darling daughter, in what is, to be frank quite a disappointing mystery.

Firstly, it relies on the huge coincidence of the body of a man Archer is looking for being discovered and dug up the same day as Archer starts investigating his disappearance. Obviously such an old hand as Ross MacDonald knew that coincidences are best avoided in mystery stories, so this feels particularly sloppy.

Elsewhere, well of course it’s the convention in mysteries that characters don’t tell the whole truth even if they’re innocent, as that’s how you extend the story – but here we have a character who obscurants and ducks questions even though it would really be in his best interests to say just tell what he knows.

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So bizarrely, for such a master of the genre, we have a mystery which far from a mechanical masterpiece, is instead coughing and spluttering. From that point of view it’s a disappointment, but then this is a book which goes and contains paragraphs like this:

“I went inside the club, where the late afternoon crowd were enjoying themselves. If gamblers can be said to enjoy themselves. They wheedled cards or dice like sinners praying for heaven for one small mercy. They pulled convulsively at the handles of one-armed bandits, as if the machines were computers that would answer all their questions. Am I getting old? Have I failed? Am I immature? Does she love me? Why does he hate me? Hit me jackpot, flood me with life and liberty and happiness.”

And it is just so wonderful and sad and well observed and downbeat funny, that I know that even if MacDonald’s mystery setting skills can occasionally let him down – and here without any doubt they let him down – I’ll still keep reading and loving his work because – up there with Chandler – in MacDonald we have the crime author as astute poet.

Fancy some free short stories, my collection ‘Something Went Wrong & Other Strange Tales’ is available now!

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

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I don’t think I’ve ever read any Shirley Jackson before and right now that feels like I’ve shamefully missed out, as ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ is truly brilliant.

It’s deeply unsettling fairy tale of a story, which even though it’s simply told – or perhaps because it is so simply told – kept me constantly on edge. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot – as I knew virtually nothing of the plot in advance and I think that greatly benefitted my reading of it – but it’s a story of murder and fear and childhood and innocence lost, of maybe innocence never had. It’s a story of such cruelty, yet one that’s offset by moments of gaiety that are sweet and affecting. Yet those moments of lightness just – in a strange way – make the book even creepier.

I suppose the one thing it isn’t is a story of hope, it’s far too cynical for that. So maybe if it were any longer it could become wearying, but for me this is a sharply observed, disturbing piece of fiction which more than deserves its reputation.

Fancy some free dark fiction from yours truly? My short story collection ‘Something Went Wrong & Other Strange Tales’ is available now.

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How to write quickly – part 3

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I was asked a couple of questions in the last week.

The first about where you can get ideas from if you’re struggling for this.

And the second about how I know whether I have an idea good enough, or substantial enough, to sustain a book.

The first question I couldn’t offer much help with, as I never really struggle with ideas. I’m constantly being inspired and have more ideas than I could write in this lifetime. All I can suggest is to keep reading and try to think about how you would do the story differently. Same with any TV or films you watch, just absorb them and think of all the ways you would change the plot and have the characters do different things. Then when you have spun-off those characters into a whole other story, circle back and make them your own characters.

Or else try some automatic writing. Put pen to paper with as clear as head as you can, and then just start scribbling words and you never know where things will go. You don’t know where or when inspiration will strike, but you must be open to it.

The second question I can probably offer more useful advice on, particularly as it feeds back into the subject of writing fast.

Simply put, there is no better way to road-test an idea to see if it works than writing it.

If you’re dipping into your novel at a stately place, you can leap ahead to future chapters, spend time reworking earlier parts before you finish and put any narrative problems you might fear ahead safely onto the back-burner. Actually, in my describing of it, this sounds a lovely way to work and if I had my own Caribbean island, maybe that’s exactly what I’d do.

However, if you’re trying to get out a few books a year, that isn’t really an option. Instead you get one you’re excited about, pin it on the target board ahead and charge at it as hard and as quickly as you can. Absolutely there will be problems in the idea, but if you’re writing about an hour a day – a thousand words a day or whatever – then you will soon hit those problems and you will soon be forced to overcome them. But if you’re exited enough about your idea then of course you’ll overcome them, you’ll think through them, work around them, steamroll them.

Try it, what’s the worst than can happen?

If after three days or a week of writing you hit a wall and realise you’ve written all you want to write about that idea, then you probably don’t have a novel there. It’s probably a short story, in which case write it as a short story.

If after two weeks you hit the wall, then maybe what you have is a novella.

While if you get to the end of a month and you estimate you’ve got something like 40,000/50,000 words, then of course a lot of what’s there is salvageable. Maybe take a step back and then charge at it afresh, as obviously you have something good there.

Keep writing and keep writing fast and you will soon weed out the insubstantial ideas from the good ones. You will soon know what is going to work at a book length, a novella length, a short story length.

You just have to keep writing!

I have a collection of short stories available for FREE. Click here to get your copy of ‘Something Went Wrong & Other Strange Tales’

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Bad Penny Blues by Cathi Unsworth

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It’s a curious thing that Jack the Stripper is the most prolific, uncaught serial killer in Twentieth Century British history and yet is largely forgotten, even by us Brits. Talk to most Britains about Jack the Stripper and they’ll think you have a lisp. One can only imagine that the soubriquet the press gave him was so close to THE serial killer that he just gets lost in the myth of the other Jack – an echo of Whitechapel in The Swinging Sixties

Not that he’s totally forgotten, of course, here Cathi Unsworth takes on the case in a really, classy piece of British literary crime fiction. She goes full David Peace and James Ellroy on the case, taking the murders and weaving into them all kinds of other skulduggery and nastiness which – of course – stretches across every strata of society. One half of the narrative focuses on the policeman who discovers the first victim and then rises to the level where he’s investigating the others; this alternates with the story of a young British dress designer who has psychic visions of the murders. It allows Unsworth to have the best of both images of 60’s London: hard goings-on under the harsh lights of Soho, and the bright young things shining up the national (and international) firmament.

The first hundred pages or so are brilliant and as close to perfect as you’re going to get, but the book itself has a few niggling flaws: the tension lags in the middle, but perhaps more importantly Unsworth never finds a way to make the two halves of her narrative intersect – which really needs to happen. But qualms aside, this is a fantastically written, beautifully evocative snapshot of a long-ago London that wasn’t quite as swinging as we all imagine it.

 

Fancy some free short stories by yours truly. My collection ‘Something Went Wrong & Other Strange Tales’ is available for free now!

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The Richard Burton Diaries

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To review this, I’ve dipped into the vast resource that is the F.R. Jameson diaries. They’ll probably be available to buy sometime around 2050.

December 26th, 2016

I received a brand new paperback edition of THE RICHARD BURTON DIARIES from my lovely wife yesterday. I’m greatly looking forward to them. Obviously. I’ll dip in and out as the mood takes me, but I’m sure I’ll get through it fairly quickly.

January 20th, 2017

The only reason the 1940 diary, which opens the book. is there because is clearly because it’s available.  Its tone is little more than “Played rugby. Went to cinema to see ‘The Oklahoma Kid’ – it was good.” It has no literary value whatsoever and can be skipped easily.

If you’re planning to read this book, go straight to the 1965 section which finds Burton lost in thrall to Taylor. Certainly, there’s a ‘Whicker’s World’ outsider peering into opulence quality to it, but it’s a fascinating insight into THE tabloid romance of the Twentieth Century.

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March 29th, 2017

I’m making slow progress on this as I’m still only at 1968, but when I am getting chance to dip into it I’m enjoying it immensely.

I found myself at a loose end looking around at articles about Rich and Liz online and there is a strange disconnect between articles and the diaries I’m reading. This article for instance portrays a glamorous over-sexed couple, with Burton having bisexual affairs while married to Taylor, including one with her ex-husband, Eddie Fisher. The diary portrays a somewhat sad couple, one locked in a routine of drinking too much, arguing, apologising in the morning and starting the whole routine again. There doesn’t seem any hint of an affair, just too much booze. The scenery around them may be spectacular, but the lives in front of that scenery seem desperately commonplace.

June 28th, 2017

Mrs Jameson is getting annoyed at seeing Richard Burton’s face on the book’s cover. About three or four times a month, I tuck into the diaries and the good lady wife has now told me that she’s bored of seeing this particular book in my hands and wishes I would read it faster. I wish I was reading it faster too, but there’s just so much good stuff here. That’s with me realising that there’s so much potentially good stuff missing (making of ‘Where Eagles Dare’, for instance).

Sept 3rd, 2017

I spoke to my friend, James, who hasn’t read the diaries, but has read the Melvyn Bragg biography of Burton which quotes extensively from them. He said he went completely off Elizabeth Taylor when he read the quoted entry about Richard Burton discovering her in the bathroom bleeding out of her posterior. As chance would have it, I’ve just read that entry myself and what struck me about it was how tender Burton is, how racked with worry, how much he loves her. James’s sole takeaway from it is that it’s forever ruined Elizabeth Taylor to him as a sex goddess. James has issues.

Sept 17th, 2017

My new short story collection, CONFINED SPACES is out today and incredibly features a story – ‘The Movie Star in her Ivory Tower’ which is based on my reading of these diaries. So even though I haven’t finished it yet, I have managed to write, edit, have professionally edited, proof and publish a work of fiction based on it. Hmm, maybe Mrs Jameson has a point.

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Oct 30th, 2017

Still reading the diaries and still annoying Mrs Jameson. Tonight, she called it ‘Richard bloody Burton’s bloody Diaries.”

Dec 8th, 2017

The flaw of these diaries as opposed to a proper biography is that there are no entries for the stuff you’d really like to read about. The juicy bits, as it were. So, we pick up after Taylor and Burton are together, and as such there’s nothing from what it was like in the midst of that scandal. The pages tail off again before they get divorced, pick up around the time of the second marriage but disappear before the end of it and are then only intermittent from that point on. I can appreciate that at those stressful times, Burton may not have had the focus or time to put pen to paper, but it’s really frustrating for a reader.

Jan 2nd, 2018

Just found a couple of weeks of entries where every day has the same one-word recap – “Booze”. I think we can call that a cry for help.

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Jan 28th, 2018

Mrs Jameson danced a jig of joy today as I have finally finished THE RICHARD BURTON DIARIES. She won’t have to look on his face on the cover anymore.

I’m a lot more reflective on finishing, as I think I’m going to miss Rich. Yes, the diaries are patchy and sometimes frustrating, but at their best are brilliantly written and insightful. I must try and get hold of a biography of him.

I see on Amazon that Donald Spoto’s biography of Taylor is cheap. Now if I want scandal that seems the place to go. Maybe ‘The Movie Star in her Ivory Tower will have a sequel yet…

 

My diaries aren’t available yet, but if you fancy some free FRJ short stories, there’s a whole collection available here.

FREE TODAY – Foliage by F.R. Jameson

My short story, FOLIAGE is available for FREE on Kindle today (and on Kindle Unlimited all the time), if you’d like to read it just click here and enjoy!

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It was the first thing I published as an indie author and so has a special place in my heart. Back in the day I wrote a quite lovely introduction to it, which is also worth reading.

If you do get chance to read it and write a quick review, I would be most grateful. Reviews mean a great deal to us indie authors after all.

Here’s the link again.

Me, Taking Stock, in February 2018

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I’m taking a break from writing about writing quickly this week. Both because I want to marshal my thoughts, and also because this regular Friday slot was originally supposed to be to update what I was up to week in, week out. I’m happy it’s morphed into what I’ve learned over the last year, and glad I don’t have to think of an update every single week – after all. if I’m a third of the way through a novel one Friday, I’m probably at the very most going to be halfway through it the following Friday. Updating fractions isn’t fun for anyone.

But it’s good for me to take stock every couple of weeks and let people know where I am, so here goes.

As you’ll know, ‘Death at Seaside’ is now published, and ‘Diana Christmas’ is now unveiled. I still have the proofs to go through for Miss Christmas, and hope to have advance review copies out soon. I’ll be offering them to my mailing list, so if you would be interested just sign up here. In addition to the chance to read my new novel ahead of everyone else, you’ll get a free collection of short stories out of it.

In actual writing news, I am now in the middle of the follow up to ‘Diana Christmas’. A book which likewise takes place in the British film industry of the 1960s, but (largely) centres around different characters. ‘Shared universe’ is a big-buzz phrase in films right now, and this will most definitely be a series of books in a shared universe – although I’m not planning a future volume where all the characters come together and fight an alien invasion.

On top of that, I am working on a new short story for another collection I should have out in the middle of the year.

So busy, busy, busy. Sometimes I stop and think of all the writing I have to do this year and it does scare me. Am I going to manage to get through it? Are these plans in any way practical? But I long ago realised that you don’t get anything good down in life without being at least a little scared.

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Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell

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Taken purely as a character, Modesty Blaise is flipping great. An international adventurer, she’s enigmatic, endlessly resourceful, a physical match for anybody and effortlessly in charge of every room she enters. With beauty as well, she is the Bond girl who never was, the one who would completely emasculate Bond. Absolutely as a character she is great, I just wish I liked the book around her more.

It’s amusing enough, but it’s nowhere near as gripping as it should be. The action passages are curiously unexciting, it’s various locales feel like painted back-drops and most of its characters struggle to raise their head above caricature. Clearly very much part of the spy trend of the 1960s, O’Donnell’s prose owes a lot to Fleming, but Fleming understood that to make this kind of thing work – you need a sharpened razor just visible below the exotic glamour.

I’ve never read any of O’Donnell’s comic strips or seen the film, but I have watched the trailer and don’t think I really want to. And given trailers are supposed to encourage you to watch this film, this one really counts as a miss.

 

Fancy a FREE collection of my short stories? There’s one available here.

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Coming Soon – Diana Christmas by F.R. Jameson

If you’ve downloaded and read my novella, Death at the Seaside, you’ll have seen that at the end of it there’s an extract from my new forthcoming novel, ‘Diana Christmas’.

If you haven’t downloaded ‘Death at the Seaside’ yet, then it’s only 99p/99c and on Kindle Unlimited, so if you get chance please do. Just click here and you’ll be taken to the Amazon page.

Suffice to say I am not only really excited by ‘Death at the Seaside’ but also really excited by ‘Diana Christmas’, the first novel I’ve completed in quite some time.

I’ll no doubt be talking more about it in a couple of weeks, but for now here’s the cover (which I’m pleased as punch with) and in the meantime I hope you really enjoy Death at the Seaside.

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Free Today!!! – Death at the Seaside by F.R. Jameson

My new novella, ‘Death at the Seaside’ is published today and is FREE on Amazon this weekend. Just click here and you’ll be taken straight to it.

Here’s my introduction.

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I first wrote ‘Death at the Seaside’ in 2002.

Back then I was watching a lot of ‘The Sopranos’, and quite clearly was inspired by an overweight man with criminal tendencies and an eye for the ladies. Although in my head the protagonist, Larry Castle looks a lot more like Ray Winstone than James Gandolfini.

Once finished though, I couldn’t figure out what to do with it and so it sat in a box for a long while.

Then in 2008, right after ‘The Wannabes’ first came out, I decided to rewrite it.

I can remember when I read it back then being quite disappointed by it, my skills as a writer had improved in the meantime and it now seemed shapeless and amateurish. But I charged into it and reshaped and rewrote pretty much the whole thing. Including one memorable afternoon, where I was out to meet friends in Regents Park, I got there early and sat and wrote in the bright sunshine for a couple of hours of bliss.

But back then there still weren’t a lot of avenues for a novella, particularly as I didn’t really have a publishing contract. So even though the story was in a much better state, back into the box it went.

It stayed with me though, always lurking at the back of my mind as something I really needed to finish.

“What’s it about?” I hear you ask.

Well, here’s a little synopsis:

Larry Castle has gone to the seaside for a relaxing break, to maybe pick up a girl or two before his gorgeous film star mistress joins him. But a chance encounter leaves Castle reeling. There’s a possibility someone knows his darkest secret. And if that’s the case, then Castle is going to have to do something about it. No matter what it costs him.

It’s a dark tale, but even if I say so myself, it’s a damn good tale and I knew it would be a shame if it were never published.

Now though the landscape had changed dramatically, I have embraced the life of an indie author and my imagination is all which limits publishing opportunities.

As such I pulled out the manuscript from its box once more, and visited Larry Castle once again. To be honest I was expecting to be disappointed, but instead I found myself enjoying the story, gripped by the story – even surprised by some of the nuances. Of course, it needed some work, and I did rewrite chunks of it last year, but finally I have it finished and I’m really proud of it.

So here it is, sixteen years after I started it, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you – at long last – ‘Death at the Seaside’.

 

Once again, it is completely FREE on Amazon this weekend. Just click here.