Sounds LIke Trouble Q & A with Pamela Samuels Young and Dwayne Alexander Smith

 Introduction:

Dwayne Alexander Smith is the author of Forty Acres, which is in development at Netflix, with Jay-Z attached to produce. Pamela Samuels Young has been widely published across genres, and Netflix is also developing her work, having optioned the first two books in her Vernette Henderson series. Both authors received NAACP Image Awards, for Forty Acres and Anybody’s Daughter respectively.

AO:     What brought the two of you together?  

PSY & DAS:   We’d known each other for a few years after becoming familiar with each other’s work. We’d see each other at book events from time to time and eventually became friends. Our writing styles are pretty similar, and we had discussed the idea of collaborating on a novel. Dwayne came up with the idea for the first book in the series, Sounds Lika a Plan. He shared it with Pamela and suggested they write it together, and she was all in.

AO:     Not only are you both novelists but you also have other jobs. How do you balance this with your writing.

PSY & DAS:   Pamela retired from the practice of law a few years ago and has been writing full time since then. Dwyane is still a full-time writer, focusing primarily on screenwriting. We both love writing and are luckily enough to be able to do it full time.

AO:     A lot of trust is needed for authors who collaborate, how do the two of you work together not only on the plot but the characters?

PSY & DAS:   We work from a pretty detailed outline. So once the writing process begins, we know exactly where the story is headed. Dwayne wrote the first chapter from Jackson’s POV and sent it to Pamela, who wrote the next chapter from Mackenzie’s POV. We went back and forth with that process until the book was completed. We pretty much stuck to the outline. It was a relatively smooth process, with very few hiccups. Because our writing style is pretty similar and because we both like each other’s solo work, it was a relatively smooth process.

AO:     When I read  Sounds Like Trouble, it brought back memories of other detecting duos for example Dashiell Hammet’s Nick and Nora Charles, Laurie R. King's Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs to name a few. What makes them work so well as a duo and was it intentional that they had to be a male and a female when for example you have duos such as Sherlock Holmes and Watson, Poirot and Hastings.

PSY & DAS:   Thanks for that amazing compliment. From the start we felt that the dynamic between Jackson and Mackenzie would click. Actually, we saw our two protagonists more like Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in the TV show Moonlighting.  We wanted the same kind of humorous love / hate chemistry.

AO:     Are there any elements of yourselves in your main characters.

PSY & DAS:   We don’t like to admit it, but there are elements of Jackson that are very much like Dwyane and the same for Pamela and Mackenzie. Dwyane can be a little prima donna-like, and Pamela does have her uptight moments.

AO:     What sparked the idea for the current storyline featuring mobsters?

PSY & DAS:   Dwyane has a folder full of story ideas. He came up with the mobster’s storyline and when Pamela heard it, she was hooked. Dwyane is definitely the part of the duo who comes up with the outrageous car chases and action scenes.

AO:     How important is research and do you do a lot of research? In Sounds Like Trouble did you get to hang out with mobsters?

PSY & DAS:   Fortunately, we didn’t have to hang out with mobsters, LOL! We are both long-time fans of crime fiction. We just put our imaginations to work and went for it. We, of course, do research when there’s something we don’t have a lot of familiarity with. For instance, we researched what’s involved in picking a lock. We’ll also make sure the settings for our stories make sense. If we describe a building on a particular street, we make sure the architecture fits.

AO:     How difficult is it then to have storylines to ensure that they are realistic without going overboard.

PSY & DAS:   We work hard to present a realistic story, but as fiction writers, we do take some liberties when it’s necessary. For example, could the two PIs really sneak into a well-guarded cemetery where tons of famous people are buried? Maybe? We try to present each scenario in a way that the reader can at least accept it as a possibility.

AO:     How important is LA as a location in this series and did you consider setting it elsewhere.

PSY & DAS:   Location is very important for us. Local readers love reading about places they recognize. Hence, we give a great deal of thought to where the scenes take place. We want to make sure our LA-based readers can visualize the scene as they’re reading because they’ve visited that exact location. We’re both from L.A. and know the city well, so we never considered another location. That’s not to say we won’t take the story to another location at some point.

AO:     The book touches on themes of justice, loyalty, and morality when working for criminals. Was there a deliberate message that you were trying to convey about the characters' moral compasses, especially given the "offer they can't refuse”?

PSY & DAS:   We weren’t necessarily trying to make a moral statement. Instead, we wanted to create a story with lots of drama, action and conflict, where the stakes our main characters faced were constantly being raised. If that also encompasses a moral or social issue, so be it.

AO:     There is a lot of banter between your two main characters. How easy or difficult has it been to make sure that their relationship does not overwhelm the story.

PSY & DAS:   The banter was both easy and fun to write. That’s because if you eavesdropped on a conversation between Dwayne and Pamela, it might be much the same as the banter between Jackson and Mackenzie. We never feared their relationship would take over the story. Our major focus was always on the plot and making sure it engaged the reader from chapter to chapter.

AO:     Now that you have written two books in the series is there anything in hindsight you wish you could change about both your characters?

PSY & DAS:   No, not really. We were pretty happy with how we crafted our characters.

 AO:     A lot of action takes place.  Which is more important to you character or plot?

PSY & DAS:   Definitely plot! We both write commercial fiction and love a fast-paced, engaging mystery. That doesn’t mean we don’t want well-developed characters. But our primary focus is on our plot.

AO:     There are two types of crime writers those who meticulously plan before writing and those who jump straight in and find the story along the way. Which do you do?

PSY & DAS:   We are definitely meticulous plotters. Dwayne prepared a very detailed chapter-by-chapter outline of Sounds Like Trouble. Then we discussed it and made a few changes. Along the way, the story changed, but because we wrote this book together, it was crucial to have a well-developed outline from the start.

AO:     One could call this series a cross-genre book as it has not only elements of a thriller but that of a mystery and humour.  Was this intentional?

PSY & DAS:   Yes, all of that was intentional. The interplay between Jackson and Mackenzie was intended to be funny, since they have such different personalities. We had a lot of fun with those chapters. We also wanted to keep the reader guessing. If there’s one thing we both equally hate, it’s a predictable ending.

AO:     I believe that if you would like a good grounding in social history and social policy that one should read a crime novel.  How important was it for you to weave important topics into your books?

PSY & DAS:   While we also think that’s important, we didn’t necessarily start out planning to make any social statements. But when the opportunity presents itself, we’ll take it. For example, in the next book in the series, we’ll be delving into AI and the impact of social media on our lives.

AO:     What next for Jackson Jones and Mackenzie Cunningham.

PSY & DAS:   We truly enjoy breathing life into Mackenzie and Jackson and dreaming up adventures for them. We plan to write many more books in this series and are currently drafting the third book in the series.       

Sounds Like Trouble by Pamela Samuels Young and Dwayne Alexander Smith (Faber & Faber) £9.99 (Out Now)

Three mobsters. Two detectives. A deadly race against time. Jackson Jones and Mackenzie Cunningham – two of the best private investigators in the business – are presented with a case they aren’t allowed to refuse. The heads of L.A.’s three major crime families have tasked them with finding sensitive information hidden by a man in critical condition before he flatlines. Or else.  The pair can’t agree on how to furnish the office of their new joint venture, Safe and Sound Investigations, let alone the nature of their feelings for each other. But with a masked man on their tail, they are going to have to stick together if they are going to have any chance of solving the case.

More information about the authors can be found on their websites - www.pamelasamuelsyoung.com and Dwayne Alexander Smith

Dwayne Alexander Smith can also be found on Instagram @theamazin and on Facebook

Pamela Samuels Young can also be found on  X and Instagram @AuthorPSY and on Facebook

Guy Bolton on Hollywood Scandals

My first novel The Pictures centres on a studio fixer hired to cover-up the apparent suicide of one of the producers of The Wizard of Oz. So when people ask me about it usually they want to know if it’s based on a true story.

The answer is complex. Yes, and no, I say.

“Was the producer of The Wizard of Oz found dead at his home?” No. “Is Jonathan Craine a real Detective?” Afraid not.  “Was there a Hollywood star called Gale Goodwin?” Sorry, I made her up.

At this point my disappointed audience might make one last plea: “Were there even any scandals and cover-ups in Hollywood at the time?”

Oh yes, more than one. So many you wouldn’t even believe me if I told you.

Indeed, as I began researching my novel I quickly realised that the truth, as the adage goes, was stranger than fiction. Sure, there were rumours and gossip about movie stars then as there is now: Clark Gable had an illegitimate lovechild; Errol Flynn was accused of statutory rape; Spencer Tracy was an alcoholic; Judy Garland was addicted to prescription drugs. But the starting point for my plot was actually MGM megastar Jean Harlow and her producer husband Paul Bern, both of whom died under mysterious circumstances in the early thirties. 

On paper, theirs was an unlikely partnership. Harlow was a wild-child who happened to be one of the most successful movie stars of her generation. Bern was introverted writer-producer twenty years her senior. So when the newly married Paul Bern was discovered naked in his bedroom, shot in the head by a .38 calibre pistol besides a questionable suicide note, naturally the movie studio was desperate to protect their star.

Studio police were on the scene before even the LAPD. MGM’s Head of Publicity (the inspiration for my Russell Peterson) released press stories that painted Jean Harlow as a victim of a troubled marriage. Of course, the District Attorney chosen to handle the inquest happened to have close ties to MGM Chief Louis B. Mayer – he was an important donator to the DA’s re-election campaign. Not only did the District Attorney rule that Paul Bern’s death was suicide, he even went so far as stating that Paul Bern suffered from impotence, giving motive to him killing himself and helping to whitewash anything that might threaten Harlow’s image.

A few years later Jean Harlow herself was dead; gossip columnists speculated that Harlow had died of alcoholism, maybe even a botched abortion or venereal disease. In the end, the official line was that she died from kidney failure. She was 26 years old.

Rumours around Harlow and Bern’s premature deaths persist to this day. Delving deeper, I discovered that our studio-friendly District Attorney was later indicted for bribery and perjury and in a twist of fate took his own life with a pistol to the head. But what the case really highlighted to me was the obscene influence the studios at the time had on the press and judicial system. It was the first of many examples.

One of the saddest scandals I came across was the rape of a 20- year-old dancer by an MGM sales executive in 1937, a tragic tale detailed in Vanity Fair by David Stenn and later turned into a documentary Girl 27. Dancer and bit-part actress Patricia Douglas filed a landmark lawsuit against MGM when she claimed she was raped at an MGM sales convention. The tabloids soon discovered that the “sales convention” was actually a lavish Wild West themed party MGM put on for its national sales teams. After all, MGM was celebrating their success and survival in the depression, coming out as the only major studio to make profits year-on-year.

For the studio, an accusation of rape against its staff was bad enough. But as the story began to make headlines nationwide, the real fear lay in the public’s perception of MGM as a the home of wholesome family entertainment in the face of reports that it was throwing depraved parties filled with free liquor and underage girls.

The studio used its press influence to launch a smear campaign against Patricia Douglas, going as far as hiring private investigators to follow her and dig up dirt. Inevitably, the DA (still the same friend from the Paul Bern inquest), sympathetic to MGM’s situation, used his position to block action against the rapist. Douglas’ case fell apart.

In The Pictures, I have my own studio party and my own sad turn of events. But nothing would ever match up to what happened to Patricia Douglas. She soon fled  Hollywood and spent most of her life alone. In interviews shortly before she died she admitted she never truly recovered from the ordeal.

Drugs. Unruly stars. Debauched parties. The influence of studios on press and the justice system. The consistent and unashamed exploitation of women. I could go on. The Golden Age of Hollywood was founded on a bedrock of sin and corruption.

But perhaps what’s most interesting is that these key plot-points and themes are as relevant now as they have always been. In many ways, the scandals of 1930s Hollywood were no different to anything you might read in the paper today.

THE PICTURES by Guy Bolton is published by PointBlank, hardback £14.99

The Pictures a noir thriller, is set in Hollywood in 1939.  World-weary Jonathan Craine is a detective at the LAPD who has spent his entire career as a studio ‘fixer', covering up crimes of the studio players to protect the billion-dollar industry that built Los Angeles. When one of the producers of The Wizard of Oz is found dead under suspicious circumstances, Craine must make sure the incident passes without scandal and that the deceased's widow, the beautiful starlet Gale Goodwin, comes through the ordeal with her reputation unscathed.  But against his better instincts, Craine finds himself increasingly drawn to Gale. And when a series of unsavoury truths begin to surface, Craine finds himself at the centre of a conspiracy involving a Chicago crime syndicate, a prostitution racket and a set of stolen pictures that could hold the key to unravelling the mystery.

You can find him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @gpbolton

James Ellroy: Visions of Noir

‘James Ellroy: Visions of Noir’ 1-3 July 2015, will be held at the University of Liverpool and sponsored by the School of English. This conference will examine Ellroy’s influence on the genre, his inspirations as a writer and his achievements in forging an idiosyncratic and unique style. We seek to foster an interdisciplinary approach in order to explore subjects such as Ellroy’s reinterpretation of the history of Los Angeles and the United States, as well as the connections between genre fiction and cinema through film noir. Our keynote speaker is journalist and critic Woody Haut, who has written on how Ellroy’s work has led to a reassessment of crime fiction as ‘at its most subversive not when it retreats into the confines of the genre, but when it stretches its narrative boundaries and rules regarding subject, style and plot.’ His works include Neon Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction (1999) and Pulp Culture: Hardboiled Fiction and the Cold War (2014).

Panels at the conference may include, but are not restricted to:

• Historical Crime Fiction: Ellroy’s manipulation of history, comparisons to other authors such as Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal
• True Crime:  the writer’s place in solving crimes; Ellroy’s relationship with police and true crime writers
• Mapping Los Angeles:  The history and geography of Ellroy’s LA
• Pulp and Porn: The voyeurism of tabloids and film in Ellroy’s work
• Film Noir: Ellroy’s adaptation of film and film’s adaptation of Ellroy
• Femme fatales: Exploring the genre’s gender lines
• Ellroy and after: Ellroy’s influence on a younger generation of crime writers

Please send proposals of 400 words to Dr Steven Powell (s.p.powell@liv.ac.uk) and Dr Diana Powell (diana.powell@liv.ac.uk) by 30 April 2015. The abstract should include a title, name and affiliation of the speaker, and a contact email address. Postgraduate students and independent scholars are welcome. Papers will be a maximum of 20 minutes in length. Proposals for suggested panels are also welcome. We plan to publish a selection of papers after the conference.

Conference Webpage: https://www.liv.ac.uk/english/our-events/ellroy/

Time traveling tricks of the trade for writers of historic mysteries by Kim Cooper

Bio: Kim Cooper is the creator of 1947project, the crime-a-day time travel blog that spawned Esotouric's popular crime bus tours, including Pasadena Confidential and the Real Black Dahlia. With husband Richard Schave, Kim curates the Salons of LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association.  When the third generation Angeleno isn't combing old newspapers for forgotten scandals, she is a passionate advocate for historic preservation of signage, vernacular architecture and writer's homes. Kim was for many years the editrix of Scram, a journal of unpopular culture. Her books include "Fall in Love For Life," "Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth," "Lost in the Grooves" and an oral history of the cult band Neutral Milk Hotel. The Kept Girl is her first novel.

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Thank you, Shots Ezine, for the opportunity to drop by on my February blog tour for "The Kept Girl," a novel of 1929 starring the young Raymond Chandler, his devoted secretary and the real-life cop who is a likely model for Philip Marlowe.

With this post, I'd like to shine a light on a digital search tool that had a profound impact on my writing of "The Kept Girl" and that I think more writers of period mysteries should know about. Properly used, it's like having a phone line that goes directly back into the past, where long-dead writers can offer editorial advice.

When working on a period novel set in Los Angeles in the 1920s, there are numerous useful tools that can be tapped, many of them freely available online.  Archival photographs and film clips illuminate the physical environment, the fashions, signage and transit options. Scans of old menus reveal food prices and popular dishes.  Vintage newspapers spell out the facts of the sensational fraud and wrongful death case that was at the core of my fact-based fictional plot, along with basic facts like daily weather reports. Census records give a precise breakdown of the demographics in a neighborhood. Historic maps show various routes my characters might take, decades before freeways simplified movement around the region.

I used each of these tools and more besides, and they all contributed to the three-dimensional image of the historic city that I drew on while writing this book. But while I appreciated being able to access these research aids online, and enjoyed the speed of digital searching over the old mode of scrolling through microfilm or requesting boxes of archival material from busy librarians, all of these aids could conceivably have been consulted by a writer working in 1980 or earlier.

But there was one tool that truly is born of the digital age, and it's an incredibly powerful one. That tool is Google's Ngram Viewer. A phrase-usage graphing tool drawing on more than five million books scanned by the search engine's now-stalled project to digitize every book ever published, it was released on the web in December 2010.

With the Ngram Viewer, it is possible to "hear" the voices of the early 20^th century, or any era, simply by throwing appropriate search terms into the database and seeing what it spits out.  When writing dialogue, I'd sometimes find myself uncertain how a person in 1929 would phrase something.  I knew what I needed Raymond Chandler to say — but how would he say it?

By narrowing my search to the window of English language books published between 1925-1935, I could consult numerous examples of sentences by contemporary writers using the terms I was trying to chose between, and view a graphing chart showing if one term was much more commonly used than another. 

For example, when I wanted one character to tell another than he believed talking with cult priestess Ruth Rizzio might have driven his brother crazy, I initially wrote that she "drove him around the bend." which sounded good to my 21^st century ear.  But a check of Ngram revealed that in 1929, this phrase was purely geographical, so I replaced it with "turn cuckoo." Just a small thing, but one that made the voice of the character and the era ring more true.

And when Raymond Chandler first encounters May Blackburn, the leader of the cult, my initial description had him noting that she had "body language" similar to that of a successful businessman.  But something about the phrasing struck me as modern, and on throwing it into an Ngram search, I confirmed that prior to 1970, the phrase would have been meaningless. I cropped out the anachronism and breathed "thank you" to the engineers who developed this clever, useful tool and to generations of dead writers whose work answers questions they could never have imagined anyone asking. 

"The Kept Girl" is a modern novel, written on a MacBook Pro using the Scrivener software program, sourced from ProQuest newspaper archives and cinematic b-roll footage hosted by Archive.org, designed using the LuaTeX typesetting program, printed on a digital press and available as an e-book for the Kindle. But it is also, thanks to Ngram and a lot of hard work, a proper period piece, deeply steeped in the voice of that fascinating jazz age era.  I like to think that if, through some wormhole in time, a copy found itself on a shelf in Dawson's Bookshop in 1929, a Los Angeles reader could pick it up and feel quite at home in the city portrayed within its pages.

You also can also win a copy of the book

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More information about The Kept Girl can be found on the website at http://www.thekeptgirl.com and on Facebook

#keptgirlbt