"HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS STORY" Chris LeTray

How I Came to Write This Story:

Chris La Tray



"Vampires are Pussies"

in Noir at the Bar





It's all about being in the right place

at the right time. Last Fall I was

scheduled to be in St. Louis, and

it just happened to coincide with a

Noir at the Bar episode slated to

occur while I was in the vicinity.

So I dropped Jed Ayres a note to see if I could get on the bill. I could hear

 the heavy sigh in his return email when he said, "Yeah, I guess. If we can't get

anyone better." Apparently they couldn't, and I was on the flyer.*



Fast forward a couple months and all of us N@B readers were invited to contribute

a story to a print anthology that was being compiled to benefit Subterranean Books,

the shop just down the street from where we'd rocked the house. The idea was to use

the story we had read at our reading, or something else, whatever we wanted.



The story I'd read, "Buster Lee and the Chucklehead Who Wouldn't Stay Down,"

had just come out in Crimefactory's special Kung Fu Factory edition,

so I wanted to do something a little different. So here’s the overwritten

backstory of where my story came from.



I’ve only recently returned to doing any kind of fiction writing.

Two summers ago I’d taken a couple writing workshops, all around the time

I first started reading a lot of crime fiction for the first time.

I was also reading some great crime/espionage graphic novels;

stuff like Ed Brubaker’s Criminal and Incognitoseries,

Greg Rucka’s Queen and Country, and a great little story by Beau Smith

called Cobb: Off the Leash. All of this reading and writing inspired me to

take a shot at Nanowrimo that Fall; I wrote a mess of a novel that I realized

has sort of an Urban Fantasy vibe to it. Since that genre usually makes

my skin crawl.

I shelved it because I wasn't sure I wanted to pursue it any deeper,

nor did I know what kind of market there is for what I was trying to pull off.

It is a superhero story, with the main character being enlisted as the "official"

superhero of the US government. His "hero" name is US Idol, and he hates it.

I’d read one other superhero novel and didn’t like it at all, and wondered

if one could even work.



Then I read Christopher Farnsworth's Blood Oath, a novel where the setting

is kinda/sorta like what I envisioned, about a vampire who is basically

the President's secret weapon (the follow-up, which came out this year,

is actually called The President's Vampire)(coincidentally, I’d only picked the book

 up after getting a recommendation from Beau Smith to do so). The book kicked my ass

all over the place, and suddenly my superhero story seemed more viable. It made me

realize that something akin to an urban fantasy didn't have to be painted with the

“hot-chick-in-leather-on-a-motorcycle-and-a-katana-on-her-back-who-has-a-werevampire-

lover” brush. It could be fun, and gritty, and cool. I’d wanted to take the things

I love in crime and espionage and adventure and horror-type stories and throw them

all in one big hopper, the probe set high to near overflowing, and here was a guy

pulling it off in grand fashion. I was inspired. So I started playing around with

my idea again.



I'd considered serializing the novel online, and still might . . .

but when the opportunity to write a story for N@B came up, I thought I'd take a stab

 at something featuring US Idol. I wrote it and submitted it to Jed along

with another, more "typical" crime story. Jed was game to use either one, and

I chose the Idol yarn. It's quite a bit different from the other stories in the collection, but I'm happy with it and grateful to Jed, and Scott Phillips, for not only putting the anthology together but also for letting me participate in N@B. It's been a lot of fun. Hopefully people will survive the other tales in the book sane enough to appreciate my little yarn at the very back of the thing.



* This isn't exactly how this went down. I offered to pay for a slot.

Jed said, "Hey, ten bucks is ten bucks...." and I was in.



Chris has generously offered to provide an e copy of NOIR AT THE BAR to a commenter

who correctly identifies the city where that bar is.



All correct responder's names will be thrown into a hat. 



Bio: Chris La Tray is a rocker, a writer, and a wannabe adventurer.

His nonfiction writing has appeared in the Missoula Independent, 

Vintage Guitar magazine, and World Explorer