EVOLUTION
When you tell someone you are a writer, the invariable first question asked is “What do you write?” This is so they can determine if your genre is of interest to them at which point they can proceed to ask for the titles and where they can be purchased. What you write, to them at that moment, is more significant than anything.
But how does a writer come to that particular genre? Perhaps a teenage kid in the mid to late 1970s, having already read Tolkein and started watching Star Wars got immersed in sci-fi or fantasy and those genres were imprinted. For most of us, the process is one of evolution. First, there is the awareness of writing. Perhaps it’s not thought of as literature. The stuff teachers make you read is literature. The stuff you want to read, well, that’s just writing.
By reading and watching television and movies, then experiencing other art forms, the field within one wishes to write emerges, as the Wizard from behind the curtain. There is then the understanding of one’s own talent and where the skill sets are best suited.
I started as a youth writing derivative short stories based on things I had read or watched from whatever fields I encountered. This continued into my teenage years. In college, my major was in creative writing and film-making. Screenwriting was a primary form. The visual sense was a requirement along with the development of story and character. Fiction became merely a tool.
It was at that time I started to dabble in poetry. Most of it was doggerel. Iambic pentameter with an ABAB rhyme scheme. Simplistic both stylistically and well as symbolically. Just find the words that rhymed and you were good. It wasn’t until I found an anthology that had an elaborate section on prosody that I became more experimental in nature. Some of my work from 1987-1994 still has some bite to it, a sense of exploration beyond the elementary. Nevertheless, I recognize the effort in most cases was greater than the results.
Crime fiction caught my attention and I focused on two neo-noir hardboiled contemporary pieces which largely taught me how to develop my instincts. Here I was approaching 50 and finally getting a handle on my own voice. Sometimes it takes a while. (After all, we are talking about EVOLUTION.)
By now, those who know me know that I have been working on historical crime fiction for the past ten years and have felt firmly ensconced within that genre. Even after six published books, I am further developing. The sense of research and how it fits within the story, almost guides it along. The development of a main character the likes of which I could not have considered twenty years ago. The themes that resonate from me to the mid-1940s. The stories themselves and what they tell us beyond a simple tale of crime and deduction.
So, if I tell you I’m a writer and you ask what I write, I WILL tell you “Historical Crime Fiction.” And IF you have the time, I can tell you so much more.
