Wednesday, November 24, 2010

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS BOOK: James Reasoner

James Reasoner.



Most of my books have had fairly commonplace origins. Sometimes I was writing in a series with established characters, where I knew what sort of plots were acceptable. Occasionally I’ve even taken over a series in the middle of an ongoing storyline. Other times an editor would get in touch with me and say, “Write me a book about the Gold Rush” (RIVERS OF GOLD) or “Write me a book about a family of doctors during the Civil War” (THE HEALER’S ROAD). So in quite a few cases during my career, that initial spark of creativity came from someone else.

Not so DUST DEVILS. I know how the idea came to me and where I was when it happened. I was driving down to Brownwood, Texas -- don’t ask me why, that part I don’t recall – and listening to an oldies station on the radio. A song by Bobby Goldsboro, “Summer (The First Time)” came on. If you’ve never heard this song, it’s about a young man’s initiation into the glories and mysteries of sex by an older woman. It’s not a song that’s a particular favorite of mine, and I’d heard it many times before, but for some reason that day I asked myself if you couldn’t write a book based on that concept . . . only it would be one of those books where nothing, absolutely nothing, was what it seemed to be at first.

From there I started building a plot around that idea, only instead of a novel I decided to write it as a screenplay. I’m not sure why, except I had it in my head in those days that I wanted to write a screenplay and I thought this could be a very visual story. I got about forty pages into the script before I realized I wasn’t really comfortable with what I was doing and decided to turn it into a novel instead. That’s why the whole book is very lean and visually-oriented: it started life as a screenplay.

While I was writing those opening scenes, I worried that the story might start out too stereotypical, that the readers would just assume they knew where the plot was going. But I knew if they would just stick with it until the first big twist, the predictability of those early scenes would work in my favor and make the direction in which the story veered off even more surprising. I didn’t stop there, of course. I kept more surprises in reserve for later on in the book.

But where it all started was a boring drive to Brownwood and a Bobby Goldsboro song, and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable books I’ve ever written.

**********************

Spur Award nominee James Reasoner is one of the most prolific and in—demand Western writers working today, with more than 200 books to his credit, both under his own name and under various pen-names. In the mystery field he is best known for the novel Dust Devils and Texas Wind, which has achieved legendary status as a collectible paperback. For several years early in his career, he wrote the Mike Shayne novellas in MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE under the famous pseudonym Brett Halliday. Under his own name in recent years he has written a ten-book series of historical novels set during the Civil War and several historical novels about World War II. He lives in Texas with his wife, award-winning mystery novelist Livia J. Washburn

If you have a book coming out you would like to write a piece about, feel free to email me.


12 comments:

David Cranmer said...

DUST DEVILS is one of the most enjoyable reads of that past few years.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Heartily concur.

Anonymous said...

Patti - Thanks for hosting James!

James - I absolutely love music, so hearing that you were inspired by a song is really interesting to me. You painted a clear picture, too, of how the idea came to you. Thank you for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Great story. At least you weren't listening to "Honey"!

Jeff M.

Anonymous said...

This is a marvelous expression of the creative process, the power of a song or something seen or a memory to inspire a story. It is also an expression of the artistry that lies in James Reasoner's heart.

Dorte H said...

Great idea to take a cliché and turn it into something quite unexpected!

(Patti, you must keep up this feature; not that anything is wrong with any of your own posts, it´s just that I don´t know the first thing about films or music ;D)

George said...

After reading James Reasoner's account, I've moved DUST DEVILS to the top of my Read Real Soon stack.

michael said...

In an era when some readers have a page limit (read fifty or eighty pages) and if not interested stop reading and go to the next book and other readers (like me) prefer to read the sample of a book before buying, I share your concern about the risk you took in the structure. Will readers be patient enough to let you tell the story?

I hope for writers everywhere they do and your book is a success.

pattinase (abbott) said...

I am so thrilled with how wonderfully these pieces are being received and prepared. I have a whole bunch more lined up.
DUST DEVILS is absolutely terrific, George.

Ron Scheer said...

Thanks so much for asking James to talk about the origins of this book. I had almost exactly the same question as I read it. The way it builds and surprises as it goes along makes it a very entertaining read. I'm usually reviewing old, old books over at my blog, but I sure made an exception in this case.

James Reasoner said...

Thanks for all the comments, folks. I really appreciate them. And Jeff, I've been trying all day to figure out how to write a noir novel based on Goldsboro's "Honey". One of these days . . . !

Charles Gramlich said...

I love this book so it's cool to find out some of the "making of Dust Devils."