With the first hundred pages of the new novel done, I took a week off, mostly to travel and eat, as the week included Thanksgiving. Next comes a research trip.

Saturday I’ll drive to L.A. and visit the library and Angeles Temple and Echo Park. Also, I’ll try to figure out exactly where Tom Hickey and some of the other characters lived. And if all goes well, I’ll get recharged for the task of revising the first hundred pages before I send it to my editor to meet the end-of-the-year deadline.

So, I’m looking forward to Saturday, but not without a bit of trepidation on account of my last research trip to L.A.

Three years ago, I was writing a story for an anthology entitled Hollywood and Crime. Each story required a scene at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. To spark some memories and gather details, I prowled around Hollywood for a couple hours. Then my cell phone rang, and I learned that Olga had gone to the hospital that morning and died a few minutes ago.

I should’ve parked, walked to a motel and spent a couple days grieving before I drove home.

Instead, I kept driving. And, while making a right turn off Sunset onto a street I can’t remember, my Corolla got sideswiped by a big Buick driven by a Russian woman. I won’t go into the details but I’m reasonably sure the incident, which scraped along the side of the Corolla and didn’t even dent the Buick’s bumper, was part of an insurance scam. The woman was going about five mph when she hit me, but claimed whiplash or something. My insurance went up $50 per month for three years. The scrape on my car, should I ever get it fixed, will cost $700. That’s $2500 the trip cost me. The story paid $250.

I wonder, can I deduct the $2250 net loss on my tax return as a business expense.

Should anyone care to offer a prayer or good wishes for my Saturday research trip, please do.

I'm feeling rather noble, because I actually finished the first 100 pages of the new novel (for the title of which I'm still seeking inspiration) ahead of schedule. Now, December I'll devote to: research (including a couple days prowling around LA and groping my way through the LA library); revision of what I finished and rough outlining of the rest, so I can send it to my editor on schedule (end of the year); and catching up on all the stuff I didn't do while writing. Such is my life, fall behind, catch up (or almost catch up) and so on.

Since I'm not ready yet to put aside the topic of Olga, here's some rather heady stuff from my book Writing and the Spirit, which I hope will be available in paper within a few months but for now can be downloaded as a pdf from my website.

Consider Olga again:

Søren Kierkegaard contended that belief based on evidence isn’t faith at all, because faith is from a source other than our reasoning minds. Belief based on experienced is reason. And what God wants us to have is faith. In college, I changed my major from Philosophy to English because I found encountering new ideas more exciting than debating them. So I’ll take Kierkegaard’s words to heart because they feel true, and I’ll apply the idea of faith independent of experience to writing.

Consider Olga, while battling cancer, one Sunday in church explaining that faith is something we all have, but it often applies only to certain parts of our lives. We may have faith about our finances, that what we need will always arrive. We may have faith in our friends or family, that they’ll stick by us, no matter what.

Olga contended that we should recognize the faith we have, notice how it may run counter to the weight of our experience and observations, and consider the benefits of peace and security it gives us. God, she argued, wants us to extend that faith into other areas and to trust that he can and will heal us, even though evidence might run counter to such faith.

From which I’ll reason that God wants us writers to extend our faith into our vocations and trust that we have the necessary gifts and are on our way to becoming masterful writers no matter if every publisher on earth has insulted and rejected us, or though everyone in our critique group has said or implied we’re hopeless.

Such faith can be dangerous. If it seems to fail, say we pray for Olga and she doesn’t get healed, we may begin to doubt God or our own judgment. At these times it helps to return to Kierkegaard and remember that belief based on evidence isn’t faith at all, that faith comes from elsewhere, perhaps from the spirit. Even when it seems to fail, faith has enriched our experience.

And writing, like faith, should be judged by the value of the process, not by the results. So if we’ve worked on a novel for ten years, if the process has enriched us, who are we to gripe when no publisher wants it?

Faithful work is always going to enrich us, since exercising faith, even in one area such as writing, builds a stronger faith we can apply to other areas, such as public speaking. Or parenting, or healing. Because faith isn’t a mental quirk. Like Saint Paul tells us, it’s a substance.

Consider Olga

For a couple years I wrote a weekly column for the San Diego Reader. The nominal topic was people and their cars. Here’s one:



Lately even George Bush talks about conservation and cutting our reliance on middle east oil. So I’m convinced it’s time we ask ourselves if living more like Olga Savitsky wouldn’t be preferable to the way we’re living.



Olga’s a minimalist. Though plenty educated (holding a Master of City Planning degree) and able to follow a more lucrative career, she chooses to work only a few short days a week cleaning houses. She shares an apartment and pays less than $400 for rent and utilities, in a pleasant neighborhood near a commercial district. On most of her errands, she can walk. When she needs to drive, she uses her 1994 Toyota Tercel.

She tells me, “It’s not like a sacrifice. I just don’t need much. A person with a family needs more than I do. Usually what somebody needs depends upon their function. A corporate CEO, maybe he’s got to throw parties and he needs a bigger house. But I don’t throw parties, so what good is a big house to me? The only reason I’d want one is because the media tells me I ought to have one. We see all this stuff and the desire to have some gets aroused and commercials come on and convince us we need it all, and so on, until we’re beyond debt and into distress.”



Olga wears jeans and T-shirts. “That’s all I own. They’re comfortable, they last. I just bought two new pairs of jeans for $16 each, and they’ll last two years. To me, the key to living well is living in a way that gives an opportunity for appreciating nature and friends and taking time for prayer and writing and helping people. And unless you inherit a pile of money, the way to live like that is to not want a lot of stuff. Most stuff is just clutter. But our culture feeds the desire to own or consume until what we think we need makes us greedy.



“The Bible says that we should work so we’ll have something to share with people in need. I can work for a few days a week cleaning houses and by not letting myself want a bunch of stuff, I can have money to give away. So I’m careful about what I buy, and I pick the things I do buy for durability and longevity. I need a car, so I buy a Toyota. If I needed a car that would break down, I could buy a Jaguar.

“And it isn’t only the desire for stuff that devours our time. It’s also that we try to buy security. People think they need to not only have lots of stuff, but to save or invest or buy some insurance so they’ll be sure they’ll always have lots of stuff. We need a bit more faith. I mean, I don’t have AAA or any kind of roadside service insurance because every time a car of mine has broken down, it’s been a block or so from my mechanic’s house. Except one time.



“The one time my car broke down in an inconvenient place, a guy stopped to help me, and he happened to be the handsomest man I ever saw. Maybe he was an angel. I don’t know. But it sure was fun breaking down.”


From Battle Hymn of the Republic:

"I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel, 'As you deal with my conviverous soul to you my grace shall deal.' Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel. His truth is marching on."

"Conviverous" refers to the degree we can live in accord with people of other races and cultures. 

All this reading about Azusa Street and Aimee Semple McPherson may be further warping my mind, or it may be allowing some clarity. 

The Azusa Street movement loosed an unparalleled world wide revival.  Aimee's ministry, regardless if we consider spiritual healing miraculous or physiological, was astonishing in its effects, particularly in refreshing the hearts, bodies and spirits of people who hadn't recovered from the traumas of WW I and the 1918 flu epidemic that killed more people than the war had.

And it's reasonable to argue that what propelled those movements was the acceptance and calling together, by William Seymour and Aimee Semple McPherson, of people of all races and classes.

And that helps give me the hope that yesterday's election marks the beginning of a revival and cleansing of our spirits, minds, and institutions.

Olga Savitsky prayed daily for such a revival.  Return for the next post to learn how she found the time and energy to carry on that way. 

I'm having problems. 

Oh, I'm making my deadlines. Ideas are coming. I'm solving problems when I need to. I've jotted capsule outlines for eighteen of probably fifty scenes.

The problem is, I've gotten so engaged with the world of the novel, I don't much care to live anywhere else. Which is discouraging, because I've got a wife and a six year old daughter, and a condo in Arizona I'm trying to sell, and a Dodge pickup I'm trying to sell, and a day job as president of Perelandra College. And a crucial election is coming next week. And somebody trashed the U.S. economy, which isn't helping me sell the Dodge or the condo.

Maybe all that put together is why I'm thinking about Olga, and why it seems to me that anybody who might read this blog any time in the near future would do well to consider Olga.

Beware, a digression (from Writing and the Spirit): The vows of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s order, are “poverty, chastity, obedience and wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.” The order also has lay members who take the same vow. In their case it means living modestly, reserving sex for marriage, following the guidance of a mentor, and serving the poor wherever and whenever feasible.

As artists, we’ll be lots healthier if we think of ourselves as having taken a vow to cheerfully accept poverty if that’s all the wealth we’re given (and to share the wealth if we get financially blessed); to be chaste in our artistic vision (not be seduced by the commercial or trendy); and to be obedient to the inspiration of the spirit that moves us. If we live in such ways, our art will be of service.

My first class in graduate school at the University of Iowa was with John Irving. I remember an admonition he gave about money. He suggested that serious fiction writers should take an attitude like poets do, conceding that they’re never going to make a living with their art and they need to support themselves some other way.

A couple years later, with The World According to Garp, Irving made a fortune. Which poses a problem for writers like me.

Sensible poets accept that writing poems alone won’t support them, since hardly any poets make a living that way. But more than a few fiction writers make heaps of money, so even the sensible among us may hope to cash in.

My friend Alan Russell and I were on a radio show with Tess Gerritsen, who turned from medicine to writing thrillers. Offstage, Alan asked Tess if she ever regretted giving up doctoring. She said, “Well, you can make more money writing.”

I choked on my gum.

Return to thinking of Olga: My friend Olga was a poet. This past week, while thinking about her, I've decided that asking myself What would Olga do? makes way more sense than asking that mind boggling question What would Jesus do? Because Olga was human, like me, only better at it.

The cliffhanger: For more about Olga, come back next time.

 

Installment 3: Beginning and Structuring a Novel

While staying a jump or two ahead of the one-page-a-day October pace I set (other work is killing about 40 hours a week), in my scene-to-scene brainstorming, I’m attempting to build a supporting cast I can feel compelled to write about, and which has some historical connections.

The story is set during Prohibition. Tom is a nightclub dance orchestra musician. The sister he’s raising is of the wayward sort, and I’m beginning to suspect she hangs out at some speakeasy. And one of my earliest and most consistent impressions of Pentecostal Christians, which the victim at least used to be, is that many of them lead double lives. Meaning the victim could well be involved in, or be suspected of being involved in, some underworld shenanigans.

Also, the victim is a black fellow married to a white woman. The Ku Klux Klan was on the rise in the 1920s and had begun to make their presence known in LA. So Tom needs to investigate the Klan’s possible involvement, even though readers would have just cause to lynch me if at the end they learned these most obvious suspects did the murder. Still, Tom’s duty as a tough guy detective is to stick his nose into some Klan business and get it punched, or carved like Jake’s in Chinatown.

And the Angeles Temple needs to play a role in all this intrigue. After all, the victim was a Sister Aimee devotee, and was found hanging in the park across the street from Aimee’s temple.

So this week, my toughest and most critical job is to find the most effective ways (that will lead to the most gripping scenes, conflicts and character developments) to send Tom out snooping into the secrets of these three sinister or potentially sinister (in the case of the church) organizations or cultures.

Another challenge I’ll need to tackle before long is deciding whether to create other suspects or to consider the bootlegging underworld, the Klan, a mega-church, and the kingpins of the LAPD (who are covering up the murder) enough. How about William Randolph Hearst and his infamous newspaper empire? Shouldn’t I rekindle their infamy, I wonder.

And here’s one more puzzle. Why is Tom Hickey willing to risk his life to learn who killed somebody he hasn’t seen in years, when he has no claim to a professional stake in any of this? He’s not yet a cop or PI. 

I know why he should be willing to take some chances. The problem is, he doesn’t know what I know yet, and I’m not sure how far along in the story he should begin to learn it.

All this stuff is making my head spin.

I'm only two days late. Not bad, considering (if you'd like to know considering what, shoot me an email).

I got the gumption, started writing, and even set tentative deadlines and a plan to meet them. I intend to write a page a day through October (while I'm learning who the characters are and making notes on the rest of the novel) and two pages a day through November. So by December, I'll have 90 pages that no doubt will turn into 100 or more once I fill in some of the blanks I'm leaving until after I visit the setting and read more about the era. 

Maybe some of my gumption came from reading about Aimee Semple McPherson. I'm astonished by her charisma, ambition, and fervent devotion to her ministry in conflict with an apparently desperate need to be adored. 

My novel isn't about Sister Aimee, but I see her and her Angeles Temple functioning as a sort of backdrop. The murderer and the victim, as well as some informants Tom Hickey finds, have belonged to the congregation. I'm inclined to place the action during the 1927 inquest into Sister Aimee's 1926 disappearance, which she called a kidnapping, but which news hounds and investigators thought more likely a romantic fling. 

Although Sister Aimee is tangential to the story, I'm hoping to discover enough about her to allow Tom or his mentor Leo insights into the source of her astonishing power to draw and hold followers and to build a worldwide church out of nothing.

Once again I'm way late posting. So it goes (if that phrase seems familiar, you probably read Slaughterhouse Five).

I'm beginning a new novel, and it occurs to me that folks might get a kick or even something practical out of reading a weekly (ideally) log of a fellow who's completed 14 novels (published 6) as he wades, runs, staggers, soars, and grovels through the obstacle course he hopes will lead to his 14th (7th).

I don't have a title yet. Or a real outline. I believe in outlines. I just rarely use them, being the impatient sort. What I have is a about 500 words of summary, which I wrote as a kind of organized brainstorming and to send to my editor at Poisoned Pen Press. The summary gives the crime that starts the story in motion. An early morning walker finds a black fellow hanging from a tree, apparently lynched, in a park in Los Angeles in 1926 or so. The summary gives the reason the detective, Tom Hickey, gets involved with the case even though he hasn't yet become a detective. It gives some of the clues Tom will follow, some obstacles he'll need to overcome, and the solution to the mystery.

I sent it to my editor. She gave it thumbs up. I gave her a tentative time line, 100 pages by the end of 2008, the whole novel by mid-summer 2009. She gave me a publishing date, Spring 2009.

 

So I'm ready to type page 1, though I wish I had a title. An friend once told me she never started a short story unless she had a title. That's wise, I think, because a good title can offer focus, which may be the primary ingredient of compelling fiction. But I'm impatient. 

I'm feeling the story should open with the fellow hanging from the tree. I wonder if that image would make a good cover. Knowing I'd  feel more confident if I knew what park he was hanging in, I emailed a friend who lives in LA, gave a few details, and asked what would be the most likely park. He kindly replied.

So I'm ready to go, except I need to boost my gumption. It takes gumption to start a new novel, even after you've written a few.

9-30-08

Pam and I like to go to church Friday evenings, in part to recover from the week, and because our church is less crowded, calmer than on Sundays. But lately, since my son Cody attends on Sundays, I’ve been returning to hang out with him.

Occasionally, the pastor tosses in something new on Sunday, but most of the message is the same as Friday’s. Which has led to a solution of a problem of mine. The problem is, when I listen to a sermon or a lecture or a poem or song or whatever, a line or idea grabs me and I follow it, and often get lost and miss the next part of whatever.

What I’ve discovered is, knowing I’ll be listening twice allows my mind to work in two different ways. On Fridays, I’m like a dutiful student, filling in the blanks on the outline, taking in the message for what it is, not what my wandering mind will make of it. On Sundays, I trip out and let lines or ideas in the message take me wherever, which usually leads to my scribbling notes about stories or other projects of mine.

Which in turn leads to a general principle I’ll try applying elsewhere. Do it twice, once studiously, once tripping out. My neighbor Ellen would call this using the left brain once, and the right brain once.

Of course, the sermon, song, lecture or whatever needs to be thoughtful enough to engage us twice. Ed Noble’s sermons (under Archives at www.journeycom.org) have worked well for me.

If I’d discovered this principle while in college, I could’ve been a dutiful student in class while taping the lecture, tripped out at home while listening to the tape, become a Fullbright scholar, and then run for President.

When I was fifteen, at about nine on Christmas night, my mom heard a gargly noise. My dad had gone to work early that day, got off a couple hours to watch us open presents and eat too much, gone back to work, come home and turned in. What my mom heard was him dying.

The next school year, my junior year, had just begun when I came to find my mom on the floor of her bedroom. She acted drunk, but I'd never known her to get the least tipsy. I called our doctor, who felt sure she had taken too many of the sleeping pills he prescribed following my dad's death. I went in and counted the pills in the bottle. Only one was missing. The doctor summoned an ambulance.

She had spinal meningitis. The doctors expected her to die. But she was tough. She got transferred to an isolation ward at County Hospital. She stayed there for months, leaving me alone in a three bedroom house.

My best friend, Eric Curtis, moved in. Eric was also fatherless. His mom (a ringer for Cynthia Moon of The Venus Deal and The Angel Gang, by pure coincidence), was nuts, often acting paranoid, and volitile to the degree that nobody could live in peace in her home, or maybe in her neighborhood.

Yet Eric was saner than anyone I knew. He was handsome, athletic and lightly freckled, with a ready smile and a bouncy step. And he was wise. We spent lots of evenings reading and discussing books such as Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian, and Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. We frequented the downtown San Diego library, checking out new books and sampling jazz records in the listening room. We often spent days at the beach and weekends driving hundreds of miles to San Francisco or Las Vegas and back.

Then my mom came home. Eric went back to Sylvia, his mother. Soon Christmas season arrived, and Eric and I hung out at our friend Sunday's house. Her parents had a record of Handel's Messiah. Eric listened spellbound. At school, he might fly down a hallway, arms out like wings, crooning "For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, hallelujah . . ."

On a night that might've been New Year's Eve (and would be if this were fiction), Eric and I were on a seacliff outside the gate of the Fort Rosecrans military cemetary where his dad lay. He looked and sounded solemn and heavy. He said, "Ken, I see a big change coming for me. I don't know what, but it'll be huge."

In January, our friend Kenny's parents got divorced. Kenny decided we (Kenny, Eric, our friend Billy, and I) should celebrate with champagne. We decided to go to a basketball game at a neighboring high school and watch a girl I adored performing her songleader routine. But the game was sold out. Kenny got mad (at his parents, I guess), and socked the gym door window, shattered it.

Security people came running. Kenny bolted. They all chased him.

Eric, Billy and I could've gotten away. But Eric said to me, "Get Billy out of here."

I said, "Sure, and you're coming too."

He shook his head and planted his feet. "I need to take my punishment. You're Billy's big brother now. Get going."

So Billy and I ran.

Kenny and Eric got charged with being under the influence on a school ground. The school board expelled them. The whole school, including our vice-principal Mrs. Bole, knew Billy and I were with them. She could've expelled us, but she believed in people, not policy.

Eric thought his expulsion was the big change. He was called to grow up. And he applied himself to the calling. He took a fulltime job as a flunky at a car dealership. He enrolled in night school. And he started giving stuff away, mostly to friends. He gave me some of his prize jazz records, his favorite sweater, and his beach blanket. Later Sylvia would tell me he even gave away his treasured popcorn pan.

On the evening of Friday, February 15, Eric and I were again on the seacliffs near Fort Rosecrans when he said, "Ken, getting expelled wasn't the big change. It was nothing compared to what's coming."

We made plans for Sunday. Eric, Kenny, Billy and I would drive to Laguna Beach where a sidewalk art show was happening.

I didn't see Eric on Saturday. That night, Billy stayed at my house. Sunday morning, I phoned Kenny, who was going to drive to Laguna Beach in his mom's VW. Kenny said two other guys, Mike and Eddie, wanted to go on a trip, but were lobbying to go to the Indio Date Festival, in the desert not far from Palm Springs.

I enjoy the desert in winter, but riding in a VW carrying six of us didn't appeal to me, especially since Mike was a giant. After consulting Billy, I asked Kenny to phone when they were ready to leave. By then, Billy and I would decide.

But Kenny didn't call. Later, he told me Eric said, "Don't call them. I don't want them on this trip."

If I'd ever known Eric to act mean to anyone, or talk behind anyone's back, I wouldn't suspect he was worried for us. But Eric never acted mean.

On the way home, with Mike driving, as they descended the two lane Viejas grade in the vicinity of today's casino, a car veered into their lane. Kenny's mom's VW careened off the road and down a bank onto a plateau.

Neither Kenny, Mike, nor Eddie got injured. Only Eric. He was riding shotgun. In those days we didn't use seat belts. He flew from the car. His head smashed into the only boulder on the plateau.

Ever since, I've been on a quest to discover why Eric knew what was to come. About a year after Eric's death, the quest led to Christ. And I turned onto the road I've been on ever since.

I've lived with and hung out with dozens of people who attempted to piece together beliefs from myriad sources, different religions and philosophies and scientific theories. I too, have tried to create some conglomerate faith of my own. But along the way, I've become convinced that only a deluded or arrogant human would imagine his small mind capable of rummaging through the stacks of sources and objectively fashioning out of his favorites anything that approaches cosmic truth.

Accepting that Biblical faith has tenets I misunderstand and others I find baffling, mysterious, or troubling, makes me at least feel a bit more humble than I would otherwise be. And I'd bet humility is the beginning of wisdom. At least it assures me that what my senses can perceive isn't all that's going on in the world. And that assurance gives me plenty to write about.

In Midheaven, Jodi, a high school senior chooses God over the drugs and parties but soon learns that faith doesn't keep her from making tragic choices.

The Venus Deal revolves around the crimes and punishment of a of spiritualist cult leader.

In The Loud Adios, Tom Hickey discovers Nazis attempting to empower their imperialist desires with black magic.

Wendy Rose, in The Angel Gang, wouldn't survive if not for her guardian angels.

The Bible helps Tom and Clifford Hickey squeeze a pastor for the truth about a murder, in The Do-Re-Mi.

In The Vagabond Virgins, Alvaro Hickey's romantic and mystical nature sends him on a search for the Virgin Mary or a convincing fake who appears in Baja California lobbying for the overthrow of the Mexican government.

About six years ago, my wife and I founded Perelandra College. So far, it’s an online set up with MA degree programs in Creative Writing and Counseling. A couple months ago, after plenty labor and expense, the college became accredited

My friend Alan warned me several years ago that this college might be so much work it would cut into my writing. Of course, I realized he could be right, but my hope and intention was to be more involved in the creation than in the running of the school.

Fast forward. I’m running the school, and finding that after decades of trying to build my writing career to a point where I could concentrate my efforts on novels, I’m needing to step back into what’s essentially a day job that shoves my novel writing down on the priority list to somewhere between yard work and healthy eating.

That’s okay. Deranged as Donigan may consider me, I feel that God has assigned this chore. Such assignments are worth doing well.

But something bothers me, which may be of interest to someone. Because thoughts about the college, how to tell the world what we have to offer and how to make the business part of it function more efficiently, how to cut costs and treat the staff and faculty with respect and concern, how to expand and improve our curriculum, all that consumes so much, there’s precious little time to engage with or even notice thoughts that may come from my spirit.

Which alerts me all the more to our need to shut down, maybe part of each day, or a longer part of each week, or an even longer part of each month, and open ourselves to ideas, revelations, to stuff that has not a whit of practical application.

Maybe I’ll get a week in September.

A few weeks ago, I downloaded to my I-pod a Janis Joplin song with the refrain “Looks like everybody in this whole round world is down on me.”

I could identify. My wife was acting disgusted, my elder daughter wouldn’t return phone calls, I had recently suffered through a bombast of abuse and accusations from somebody connected to Perelandra College, of which I’m a founder and currently President.

Long ago, I had noticed that what people appear to fault me for isn’t doing stuff, but not doing stuff. So, my dilemma has been, do I work myself into the grave trying to do what folks want me to do, or do what I consider most important and put up with their anger and active or passive abuse?

Now, last week, a publisher of my books let’s me know the sales numbers are disappointing. And, after a few days stewing about that, the answer to the whole issue comes clear.

Money. It’s all about money (keep in mind that this is a rant, not a close, objective study of all nuances).

Okay, to claim ditching high school upset the vice-principal because of money might be a stretch, but it’s a fact that schools get docked money for students’ unexcused absences.

And my wife wouldn’t contend I didn’t do enough around the house if I could afford to hire a gardener and maid to do it. And my ex-wife’s disposition might’ve brightened might’ve if I’d provided better. And I believe on reason my daughter wouldn’t call me back is she didn’t want another reminder about the money she owed me, which I needed. And it’s certain the person at Perelandra College would’ve sung a different tune if I had raised lots more money or more rapidly built the school into a thriving business.

Okay, I should’ve known from reading Jane Austen, if not before, that our world, or at least the part with which I’m familiar, is essentially a commercial enterprise. Okay, I’m slow. But now, with the root cause of the dilemma identified, a thorny question remains: how does somebody who wants to create stuff cope with this state of affairs.

One answer is to get somebody to support you along your artistic way. But, though I’ve learned through friends of problems with this answer, I’ll decline to comment and instead stick to the plight of those of us who need to support ourselves and perhaps others.

Though I’ve wandered in this brier patch for lots of years, looking for a way out, all I can see are two paths.

One of them, putting art above commerce, generally leads to poverty (which in turn means if anyone depends upon you, you’d best expect disdain or downright anger). Even if you only create part-time while working a full-time day job, the creative process has a jealous habit of demanding most of our passion, which then can’t be spent on our day job, our investments, or our families or friends.

The other path, turning our creativity to commercial ends, which in the case of us writers means writing what editors and publishers think people want to read, can bring us prosperity (and with it, perhaps, the affection of those who prosper because of us), but only if our talent, our timing, and luck (or providence) work in our accord. And even if the long-shot pays off, if we’re creating what other people want, then we’re not creating what we believe in, which can turn a joyful process into dull labor.

Some of us attempt to trudge through the briars, to make our own path, and find way to create on our own terms while attending to commercial realities. But most of us we get lost and disappear.

I’ve been thinking about Graham Greene, a favorite novelist of mine. He broke his fictions into two categories: the novels, and the entertainments. I’m going to review and think more about them, but in my recollection, I don’t buy the labels, because the novels entertain me better than do the entertainments.

More on this later, provided I don’t disappear.

Journalism can pay off, even for those of us who merely dabble in it. An assignment from the San Diego Reader to write a feature about Mother Teresa’s Tijuana seminary fed me ideas that played into both The Vagabond Virgins and The Little People.

Lately, the San Diego Union Tribune asked me to review a new book by Stephen L. Carter. This was Mr. Carter’s third book. My review, of Palace Council can be found at: www.kenkuhlken.net. Go to articles and click the link.

This was the third novel by Mr. Carter, a Yale professor of law and author of several non-fiction books. Because I enjoyed and admired Palace Council, I read the other two, and found myself most enchanted by the first, Emperor of Ocean Park.

Since I imagine other novelists are no happier than I’ve been when people have commented that they believe my first novel was my best, I’ll pause to explain. The other Carter novels are easily as gripping, deftly plotted and well-written. But Emperor has something I’ve found so little of in contemporary fiction, it makes this book a treasure.

Emperor of Ocean Park features, as the main character and narrator, a bright, thoughtful person, wise and experienced in the ways of the world, who is also a Christian, and who is humble enough to recognize his flaws and hang-ups and understand his need for wise counsel. At the moment I can’t recall another novel except The Brothers Karamazov (perhaps the greatest novel ever written), in which a Christian advisor is employed to such consistently graceful effect.

Those elements make the book rare. But much else in the book is wonderful. Like Mr. Carter’s other novels, Emperor has plenty of suspense, a variety of vivid, unique and credible characters, and a wealth of insights into the lives and attitudes of the east coast power elite, especially those belonging to the “darker nation,” Mr. Carter’s term for African Americans.

For readers who have missed his novels so far, I suggest beginning at the beginning, with Emperor of Ocean Park. When you get to the next books, you’ll be happy to find characters you already know and about whom you’ll be glad to keep reading.

The other day, while watching Denzel Washington’s film The Great Debaters, I flashed back to my days as a wanderer. After a semester of college, I and a couple friends headed out to see the world.

Our first stop was New Orleans for Mardi Gras, where I first encountered white only drinking fountains and men, women and colored restrooms.

We ran out of money in New Orleans. I had washed dishes and bussed at a coffee shop, so when I saw a help wanted sign in a window, I walked in and asked to be hired. A boss came from out back. He looked sympathetic as he said, “We only hire colored kitchen help.” I said, “Why’s that? I mean I’m willing to work as hard as anybody.” He said, “Look, we only pay a quarter an hour.” Minimum wage at the time was $1.25.

I’d heard of such cruelty and far worse. And since other people have witnessed more racial injustice than I have, I’ll defer to their accounts. Anyone who hasn’t seen The Great Debaters should do so, and The Great Santini, a couple films I found especially moving.

But what I’m getting around to addressing is the Christian church.

After a few months wandering, I came home with a sense that the world was so hard and unjust, I wasn’t wise enough to even know how to make it right even if I somehow found the power to do so.

Not long after my return, I was again working in a coffee shop. A waitress named Helga invited my friend Cliff and I to a Billy Graham crusade. What I saw was a powerful and wise man, and somebody who loved people and wanted to help them live right.

So I asked Christ to become my guide and savior. And I went to some churches. But what I found struck me as more like New Orleans than like Billy Graham. I found people who spoke and acted as if the world was just peachy, as if racism, wars, nuclear weapons, all kinds of prejudice and inequity were at best none of our Christian business, at worst stuff we needed to defend.

My friend Don Merritt was adopted. His adopted father was a businessman and regular churchgoer. He and Don didn’t get along. So Don ran off and joined the army. When he returned, he entered college in his hometown someplace in Arkansas. By this time, the civil rights movement was heating up. Don got involved, and participated in a march in which he was the only white student who came from that town. After the march, a friend let him in on a plot. Some local businessmen had paid some thugs to rough him up or worse. One of the conspirators was his churchgoing dad.

Don lit out for the territories. Now he’s a fine novelist. You can find him at: http://doniganmerritt.typepad.com

Here’s my point. All that was way in the past, sure. But the problem with churches hasn’t changed. The churches I have attended over the past fifteen years since I got over my church-phobia don’t preach racism or advocate bombing Iran. The teaching pastor of my current church is a wise and compassionate fellow who advocates tolerance and compassion toward everybody.

But the other day, outside the church, a kid handed me an election flyer about a guy running for some office and whose main platform was keeping out immigrants. And if I had to bet, I’d take the side that the majority of the folks in that church would agree with this candidate, at least on the immigration issue.

If I had the authority, I would require that candidate to have to spend an August working in the fields of the Imperial Valley before he’s allowed to advocate giving the people willing to pick our crops and work in our kitchens a worse deal than they’ve already got.

Most Christian churches may not advocate injustice, but they and most Christian media at least allow, by refusing to advocate for justice, their congregations, readers and viewers to perpetuate lies. And lies aren’t about to set anybody free.

If it’s not clear how this ties into Christian noir, ask me to clear it up.

Ross McDonald is one of my favorite crime writers.

On the covers of some McDonald books is a quote from a review: “Ross McDonald doesn’t write about crime. He writes about sin.”

This strikes me as both true and important, and here’s why:

Crime is done by people for a variety of reasons that usually appear, at least in crime fiction, obvious and understandable once the crime is solved.

Sin is something based in the natures of us all, and is to me a far more intriguing mystery than “whodunit” or why he done it.

When we confront in stories the issue of sin, we also may be prompted to grapple with questions such as who we are and why all of us are capable of committing hideous crimes.

Mystery readers are drawn to books that detail how crimes are solved. Many of them choose as their favorite books those that show what life-circumstances turn a person into a victim or a criminal. Most mystery writers set out to please these readers.

But some of us readers who enjoy being gripped by the tension and the puzzles crime fiction offers also hope to encounter issues that will provide us with something to think about even after we finish the book.

I don’t see how any story that could legitimately be described as Christian noir could fail to shed light on, and require introspection about, the issue of sin.

To my shame, it’s been more than two weeks since I’ve posted a new entry here. I’ll try to not let that happen again.

During those two weeks, something happened which I think began germinating long ago with some Christians (I for one) making decisions based on the “need” for money. And since this happening could well have concluded with a murder or two, I consider it the stuff of Christian noir. Perhaps I’ll write about it sometime after the smoke clears.

For now, though, I want to clarify why noir fiction is valuable (for some of us necessary) reading.

Sara Vogan was a lovely woman, spirited and bright, whom I counted as one of my closest friends from my time in the U of Iowa Writers Workshop. After Iowa, when I was teaching at California State U, Chico, and Sara was living in San Francisco, I spent several weekends hanging out with her. We both loved blues, and spent good times at the S.F. Blues Festival.

Sara had a big heart, and was vulnerable to depression. And she never had enough money, a fact that conspired with other stuff to prompt or deepen her spells of depression.

She had sold film rights to her novel In Shelly’s Leg to Diane Keaton. Each year she received a small option and promises, which kept her from either taking or keeping good university teaching jobs. Her reason, or rationale, for turning them down or quitting them was location. She wanted to continue to live in San Francisco, which she considered an artistic and vital place.

But she couldn’t afford to live there, at least without poverty driving the depression deeper into her heart. She fought the depression with liquor and pills.

My friend Vicki called and told me that Sara had died. I don’t know if it was suicide or accidental overdose, but it was pills and liquor.

When I got off the phone with Vicki, I picked up a book, hoping to distract from my sorrow. The book was Charles Willeford’s Pickup. The main character is an alcoholic artist who refuses to leave San Francisco. That decision, among others, begins his descent toward perdition. I read it in one long night (which I never do), and came away feeling as if I understood Sara in ways I otherwise wouldn’t have.

I live in San Diego, and I know plenty folks who, like Sara, are in danger of getting killed by obsession with trying to live in such a “desirable place.” I told one of them just yesterday, Look, I love you, like I loved Sara, so get the hell out of here.

If I hadn’t read Pickup, I wouldn’t have understood. And maybe I wouldn’t have written The Do-Re-Mi.

Lot’s of readers insist that stories ought to have happy endings. At the risk of appearing maudlin, I’ll suggest that happy endings rarely teach us much. And to proceed through this treacherous world and help others do so, we’d best learn all we can. Such as the lesson of Bakker and Falwell, which I’ll write about one of these days, maybe soon.

Not that I agree with the philosopher Pascal that we should avoid stories with happy endings, but we also need doses of grim reality as warnings about what to avoid, and we learn best while being held captive by a great story.

Maybe I shouldn’t presume people know the term noir. And since the term has been used to describe a variety different sorts of literature and film, I’ll try to give a coherent if simplified definition .

In a pure sense, noir presents a dark attitude toward both the world the story inhabits (in film this may appear as dark or drab colors) and toward the human condition (represented by a characters whose bad choices lead to perdition or ruin.) A few favorites of mine: James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, Jim Thomson’s The Grifters, Charles Willeford’s Pickup, and Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mister Ripley.

Detective stories from the ‘30s and ‘40s and more recent ones that evolved out of the hardboiled tradition are often labeled noir, as they share a world view with the above, only instead of the protagonist being the tragic character, the protagonist is the detective who heroically though futilely attempts to bring at least a morsel of justice to a corrupt and perilous world. Some favorites of mine are Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Ross MacDonald’s The Underground Man, Touch of Evil, by Robert Wade and William Miller, and the film Chinatown.

One remarkable aspect of No Country for Old Men (see my earlier blogging on the film) is that it combines the two kinds of noir described above, with Josh Brolin’s character finding a bag of money and making a tragic choice and Tommy Lee Jones’ character fulfilling the noir detective role.

When I was moderating the noir panel at the Left Coast Crime conference in Denver, a person in the audience asked something like, “Doesn’t all the slicing of noir up into sub-genres like sci-fi noir, east coast noir, future noir, cowboy noir or whatever dilute the essence of what noir is?”

That question stuck with me. I wondered if defining stories as Christian noir was snatching some of the guts out something vital. Co-opting art, like marketers do.

Here’s the answer that came to me. Christian noir, in my mind, is not a sub-genre, because ‘Christian’ in this context isn’t part of a compound noun. It’s an adjective. It’s describing an attitude or thematic stance taken by certain stories that can also legitimately be called ‘noir.’ In fact, I prefer to think of ‘noir’ as an adjective, a description rather than a thing. And adjectives are both useful and inevitable.

So I’ll carry on, and throw out a tentative definition of this descriptive compound adjective Christian noir. I’ll call it applicable to stories that feature characters who consider themselves Christian, who are developed in more complexity than just being good or bad, and who by their own inclination, or weakness, or by their inability to effectively contend with events and/or circumstances, descend into a situation that approximates hell, and who at least have a chance for redemption.

Yesterday was Easter. Pam convinced me to spend a good part of the afternoon watching No Country for Old Men. I wasn’t hard to convince, since the Coen brothers are favorites of mine and most of the films I have watched over the last few years featured talking animals or vegetables. Our Zoe is five.

I’m going to write my take on the film while attempting to leave out any specifics that would ruin the suspense for those who haven’t yet seen it.

Now, I’m no film or literary critic. Still, I’ll argue that from my angle the only way to interpret the film is to think of it as what I’ve taken the liberty to refer to as Christian noir.

Consider, though the movie is essentially realistic, the bad guy is not human. He’s too evil and/or not well enough developed (intentionally, I believe). He is a dark spirit, or as the sheriff says, a ghost.

And consider, two sheriffs from different towns talk about the incomprehensible wickedness that has overcome at least their part of the world during the past twenty years or so (the ‘60s and ‘70s). The bad guy, in my view, is the incarnation of that wickedness. (Or in evangelical Christian terms, Satan loosed upon the world in the last days).

The sheriff, while talking about his career, explains that he used to believe God would show up by the time he reached the age he is now. But, he says, God hasn’t show up. I’m presuming the sheriff is referring to the Christian version of God, because given his appearance and what we know of his background, that seems his most likely heritage.

So, he may still be waiting for God to show or he may have given up. Then, in the final scene, he tells of a dream he had last night. The dream is a cowboy’s vision of heaven.

The message the film sends me is, not only Texas, but the whole world has proven to be no country for old men, or for any who have grasped the truth, that we haven’t the power or insight to stop the tide of evil. Our only hope, or salvation, is in God showing up and giving us a dream.

I'm moderating a panel on noir at the Left Coast Crime conference in Denver. The question got asked, "Is redemption possible in noir stories?"

That redemption is possible has to be a given in anything that could be called Christian noir. The term "noir" implies realism. In reality as seen by the Christians I've known, redemption is not only possible but largely what life's about.

A favorite story of mine, Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation" presents the main character Ruby Turpin as such a despicably smug, self-congratulatory bigot that when a girl in a doctor's office calls her a warthog from hell and physically attacks her, we can't help but cheer. Yet we cheer again when Ruby gets redeemed., because her redemption is perfectly fitting.

If pressed for a label, I'd be tempted to call many of O'Connor's stories Southern Gothic Christian Noir. Anyone who hasn't read her should race to the bookstore or library and get started.

"All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal." - Flannery O'Connor

Here’s a brief definition of noir fiction, from Wikepedia.

"Noir fiction is the name sometimes given to a mode of crime fiction regarded as a subset of the hardboiled style. According to noir aficionado George Tuttle,

'In this sub-genre, the protagonist is usually not a detective, but instead either a victim, a suspect, or a perpetrator. He is someone tied directly to the crime, not an outsider called to solve or fix the situation. Other common characteristics...are the emphasis on sexual relationships and the use of sex to advance the plot and the self-destructive qualities of the lead characters. This type of fiction also has the lean, direct writing style and the gritty realism commonly associated with hardboiled fiction.'"

To me, the central element of noir is “the self-destructive qualities of the lead characters,” because they are what drive the plot and create the questions that, when answered, become a story’s messages.

I suspect all of us humans have self-destructive qualities, and as we learn how to see them, we can at least moderate their effects on our lives and on the lives of others. 

A Christian friend mentioned recently, in an email, that he didn't read much fiction. Since I imagine he reads plenty of non-fiction I replied, "That's not okay. I was just at a conference with Gay Talese and Philip Yancey, (who both write exclusively non-fiction) and when they named their favorite authors, the ones who held the most truth, all of them were fiction writers." Fiction has lots to offer besides entertainment, which is one reason I'm dismayed that most Christian fiction of the CBA variety is, if not trivial, then at least not very courageous, unique, or grounded in any kind of reality. And meanwhile, mainstream publishers shy from Christian content for fear of offending readers who believe that anyone who takes the Christian faith at all seriously is at best a crank, and more likely a nitwit.

What is Christian Noir?

It’s been almost a year since I posted here. I got busy, and the subject I’d meant to write about didn’t stir my passions enough to draw me back. So, the other day I changed the concept and title to something that started my mind churning when my novel The Do-Re-Mi got called “the first hardboiled Christian mystery.”

The whole story of this blog and its title goes back some years, to when I sent a manuscript to a Christian agent, and got the following reply. “I’d be happy to represent you and I would try to sell this book, but I don’t think I can. It’s too Christian for the secular market and has too much sex for the Christian market.”

I said, “Huh? There’s no sex in it.”

He said, “The character thinks about sex.”

I said, “But what he thinks isn’t very graphic, and besides, Christians I know think about sex a lot.”

He said, “Not in Christian books, they don’t.”

So, I have wondered for years, where does somebody publish books that present Christian characters like the ones I know, who can be delusional, tormented, misguided, doubtful, horny, and sometimes even downright wicked.

If anyone can send me an answer to that, please do.