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| Warren Moore |
“I’m Making a Career of Evil”: Writing a Heavy Metal Crime
Novel
Blame it on Blue Ӧyster
Cult and Jim Thompson. Blame it on Motӧrhead
and James M. Cain. Or Glenn Danzig and Harlan Ellison. Loud, fast music. Doomed
narrators. A soundtrack for the ride on the Hot Rails to Hell.
I was driving around Lexington, Kentucky, one night in 1990
or 91, maybe running errands, maybe running from a Master’s thesis I didn’t
know I’d never finish – it could have been either or it could have been both,
and I don’t remember anyway. I had been reading private eye fiction, and
wandered from there to full-on noir, the old stuff, the Cain, McCoy, and Thompson.
It left a bitter taste in my head, but I wanted more. I was between bands; I
had put three years into a jangle-pop band when Lexington was supposed to be
the next “next Athens”, but it had finally collapsed, and I wanted to play Loud
and Fast. I was a longhair, but I was no fucking hippie. I was dreaming on
darker trips – straight-edged lifestyle, but pumping the crazy into my ears
like I was poisoning Hamlet’s dad.
A friend of mine had given me a tape of a bunch of tracks by
the Misfits -- horror-punk. Metallica’s Garage
Days Re-Revisited had been out for a while, but I had come to the Misfits
by backtracking after discovering Glenn Danzig’s solo work. I didn’t listen to
much Metallica – it wasn’t dangerous enough – the slackjawed kids at the arcade
listened to that shit. Motӧrhead and the Misfits? That
could still scare people. That was still over the top. And that intensity and
loss of control was what I enjoyed. So I was rolling down Nicholasville Road,
in a Chrysler LeBaron, and I was 25 and listening to the Misfits. “Die, Die My Darling” came
on.
And I saw a scene in my head, a scene backlit by the
headlamps of the oncoming traffic, a scene that I could imagine Cain writing if
he were still around, or Thompson writing to scare an advance out of an editor.
I cut through a parking lot, turned around, and went back to my apartment. The
computer was in the living room; I sat down, got out of my own way, and wrote
four pages – maybe a thousand words.
I had a man, a woman, and a dead body, and I didn’t know how
they had gotten there, but I knew I had to figure it out, and I knew it was
going to be called “Die, Die, My Darling.” Until the next day in the university
library, where I discovered that the Misfits had lifted the title from a
grade-B horror movie, as they often did. So I had to find something else, and
eventually I would.
The characters came from the clubs I had played and the ones
I hadn’t, in Lexington and back home in Cincinnati, where I was watching
better-looking bands doing the human jukebox bit and blasting their sound
through the pheromone fog of the girls at the edge of the stage. And yeah, you
do music because you love music, but sooner or later, you also do it because
you think a girl might like it and want you, and if you’ve been an outsider
like I was for a lot of years, the prospect can be intoxicating. But what if
you wanted – or were wanted by -- the wrong girl?
Click. I had a structure that would get me to the scene I
had written. I stole time at school, and after, when I was back in Cincinnati
at the magazine. I’d put on headphones and fire up the Loud and Fast until I
found Kenny’s voice, and I’d write a few pages or a chapter in a day. Somewhere
along the way, I got my last scene, and I wrote it, and then I wrote the story
that would get me from my man (now named Kenny) and my woman (now named Jean)
and the dead body to that last scene. And it had turned into a book, and the
book was loud and fast.
And I want to share it with you.
You can find BROKEN GLASS WALTZES right here.
Warren Moore is an English professor at Newberry College, in Newberry, SC. Broken Glass Waltzes is his first novel, and he has published short fiction in Low Orbit, Collage, and The American Culture. Along
the way, he has been a journalist, a DJ, a tire and battery salesman, a magazine editor, a stand-up comic, the janitor at a convenience store, and a drummer in a wide variety of unsuccessful bands. He live iin Newberry with his wife and daughter, and blogs under the name “Professor Mondo” at http://profmondo.wordpress.com.
You can find BROKEN GLASS WALTZES right here.
Warren Moore is an English professor at Newberry College, in Newberry, SC. Broken Glass Waltzes is his first novel, and he has published short fiction in Low Orbit, Collage, and The American Culture. Along
the way, he has been a journalist, a DJ, a tire and battery salesman, a magazine editor, a stand-up comic, the janitor at a convenience store, and a drummer in a wide variety of unsuccessful bands. He live iin Newberry with his wife and daughter, and blogs under the name “Professor Mondo” at http://profmondo.wordpress.com.
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A few weeks ago police were called to our local Cracker Barrel Restaurant. One woman reported that a man in a white van had aggressively flirted with her while she was on her way to work, offering her a ride and suggesting that she get into his white van. She made up a diplomatic lie to fend him off and refused the ride.
She thought nothing of it until another worker at the restaurant reported that a man driving a white van had grabbed her and tried to hustle her into his white van in the parking lot.
The police were called and the Louisville media ran the story. In the next two days there were two more reports from parking lots in Louisville, one right next to a Cracker Barrel there.
As my wife and I were driving to Louisville, we noted the high number of white vans on the road and remembered that we used to have one ourselves. My hair was not salt and pepper then, but it is now and I remarked that if we still had it, someone might consider me a suspect.
Days went by and there were no arrests. Bardstown is a small tourist/college town with a small police force. The police chief was quoted in the paper as saying that he didn't realize how many "scruffy" men with salt and pepper hair and driving white vans there were--until he started looking for one.
The story began to take on the paranoia of the-monsters-are-due-on-maple-street. The Louisville media ran it every day, one time showing a man with a van who fit the description--who said that he ran a respectable business with his van and because he was middle aged and a bit overweight, with salt and pepper hair, people were giving him unwarranted attention.
He said that every time he drove up to McDonalds carry-out, the girl behind the glass wanted to phone the police.
No arrests were made until about a week later when police arrested the woman who made the original complaint of a physical assault. Police said that they ran all of the video footage and what she said had happened could not have happened.
Furthermore, they discovered that she had given both her employer and the police a false name and that, under her real name, she had several outstanding warrants.
http://www.wdrb.com/story/20647302/police-second-white-van-incident-at-bardstown-cracker-barrel-didnt-happen
Cheers!