The Dustbin of History

Yes, he’s back. Because the man’s a blog machine, because there are sentences here that will make Nancie-the-Gun-Tart shoot first and ask questions later, and because we can’t get enough of those Rod + Xena comments . . .  

 The Dustbin of History

By Rod "also answers to Rob" Pennington

 It can be tough when you find yourself on the short end of a massive cultural shift.  Back in the 1980’s I was making a nice living writing trashy mass market “men’s action” novels. I lovingly called them “Sex and violence and violent sex books.” They were basically romances novel for men. Trade the mysterious handsome stranger for an AK-47 and maybe a missile launcher or attack helicopter and you were all set.  In fact my last two books from that era were “work for hires” published by Harlequin with Dianne Moggy – now VP for Harlequin Europe -- as my editor.

They were easy to write, the money was okay and for some strange reason that totally defied logic, people bought them like crazy. Being a reformed hippie who had never fired a gun in his life, I made my share of stupid mistakes which caused the hard core, Soldier of Fortune types to lose their minds. Who   knew you couldn’t put a silencer on a revolver? I also learned, when I finally broke down and went to the target range, be careful where you put your thumb. When you fire an “automatic” handgun, that little bar thingy you slide back to feed in the first round comes back really, really fast.

Still, things were running along fine until that stupid, stupid, stupid President Reagan won the Cold War. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the mood in the country changed.

In the White House we moved from guy who could stare down the “Evil Empire” without blinking to a metrosexual with tears in his eyes who could “feel your pain.” We went from the “Gipper” to the   “Zipper”. The strong silent type guarding the front gate was replaced by guys “more in touch with their feelings.” Michael J. Fox was hot and Sylvester Stallone was starting to show wear. Big tough guys like me were only good for two things; sex and helping you move.  Overnight, the entire men’s action genre collapsed.  In its place was a new emerging dominating force, female mystery writers.

Talented women such as Sue Grafton, Sara Paretski, Patricia Cornwell, Janet Evanovich and others were discovering they didn’t have to write a cozy or formula romance story to get their novel published. There was now a market for tough ladies with smart mouths doing interesting things. When it came to incapacitating a bad guy, a kick in the nuts from a hundred and ten pound woman was just as effective as a Phillip Marlow right cross to the jaw. Plus as 'Frankie Figs' put it in the movie The Whole Nine Yards, “I can't think of nothing finer than a fine naked woman holding a gun.” No argument here.

In the 1990s, anyone with external sex organs (men) who weren’t already established had a tough time cracking the mystery field. Meanwhile, every major publisher and their editors – also predominately female -- were looking for the next female superstar and who can blame them? My mentor Sue Grafton and I were at a weeklong seminar at Antioch College in 1991 when she came up to me smiling. She had just gotten a fax from her agent. “H is for Homicide”, #1 NYT Hardback. “G is for Gumshoe”, #1 NYT Paperback and her agent had just closed a seven figure deal for the reprint right to her first 5 Alphabet  books.

Without this seismic shift in the popular fiction landscape it is unlikely The Lipstick Chronicles would even be here today. What would the world be like if Kinsey Millhone, Stephanie Plum, Kay Scarpetta, V.I. Warshawski and others hadn’t broken through the glass ceiling and paved the way for the current crop of talented women fiction writers? Would they all be writing “bodice rippers” instead of the wonderful stories we all spend a half hour with each night before going off to sleep?

For me, it worked out great. It knocked me out of my comfort zone and sent me down a path I likely wouldn’t have taken. I made embarrassing gobs of money trawling in the murky waters of Hollywood for a few years before I got sick of not seeing anything produced and drifted off to honest work.  Still, after nearly two decades of being MIA from mystery/suspense fiction I’m showing I may not be smart but I’m trainable.  The protagonist of my latest series is fine Southern lady with a sharp tongue and a nose for trouble who….      

Happy Weekend . . .

Rod

And guess who's coming back this Tuesday to guest-blog? Hint: she looks not unlike the redhead to the right. (The one in the white trenchcoat, not Fidel Castro.)

Comments

[Peg H]

Oh, you dirty rat! :D

Yes, an automatic's slide can certainly bite the hand that fires it. I've been lucky to not have had that particular experience but I've seen it happen on the range.

[Rod Pennington]

Peg H. - It is certainly a blow to the macho image to be dancing around sucking your thumb and crying like a school girl at the target range. My friend Jerry was really impressed. Especially since he had dragged me there was for the expressed purpose of meeting some of his ex-military friends. At least they learned a few new words.

And Tarts before you ask, yes, of course, I was the model for the tasteful and understated cover art. Subtle-R-Us.

[Nancie aka Gun Tart]

Oh yes, slide bites, scope eye and revolver burns are frequent occurrences at the range. Scope eye, caused by failing to leave adequate space between the scope and your face when firing the rifle, leaves a nasty half circle gash in the forehead requiring stitches in most cases. Revolver burns occur when the shooter wraps his hand around the cylinder and the hot gases expelled after the shot is fired can split the skin on your hand open, but we generally deal with a finger or thumb injury in these cases.
I'm off to work to pass out band aids.

[nancy martin]

I love hearing how the publishing biz evolves. Thanks for the history lesson, Rod. But I doubt we Tarts would be writing romance novels now. Chances are, we'd be pounding out vampires or weepy women's fiction.

[William Simon]

"Slide Bite" is, fortunately, one of those things that happens ONCE. Kind of like touching a hot iron when you're a child.

What's making me laugh is I was faithfully addicted to this genre at the time, and still have a lot of the books in the library room: Mack Bolan, Dirty Harry, The Destroyer, Warner Books 'Men of Action' series (The Hook, Ben Slayton-Treasury Agent, etc.), The Butcher, Able Team/Phoenix Force, Pinnacle's "Dracula" series (yes, the Count himself brought back to fight crime in our streets), Psycho Squad, and on and on and on. Popcorn for the mind; light, fluffy, easy way to kill an evening.

Single best source was a real honest-to-God newsstand close to where I lived that had an entire wall of paperbacks. Literally the whole wall was built out with wire racks, and everything changed once a week. Heaven, sheer heaven. Walked in one day, the books were reduced to a standing rack and more, uh, "adult" themed merchandise was being put up. Change in ownership, most likely.

Now, the entire genre is almost gone. Mack Bolan is still around, faithfully appearing every other month, but I stopped reading those decades back. Aside from those, I don't know of any series still around.

Men of Action have gone the way of the dinosaurs....

[William Simon]

By the by, Mr. P - you might enjoy this. I know I did...:)

http://www.amazon.com/Serial-Vigilantes-Paperback-Fiction-Encyclopedia/dp/0786441658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267364004&sr=1-1

[Rod Pennington]

I feel much better knowing that I was not the first and only idiot and it happened often enough to actually have a name. This is definitely a onetime brain burp moment. Fortunately it was .380 and not my friend’s 45.

It was great while it lasted and it was a nice way to hone skills while collecting a check instead of rejection letters. Going a bit further back, I guess that era was similar to the Golden Age of hardboiled pulp fiction.

[Karen in Ohio]

"Big tough guys like me were only good for two things; sex and helping you move."

Uh-huh. LOL

I must say that copyediting those men's action novels was a high point of my life, and an incredible revelation. First, learning that side of our next-door neighbor, and second, realizing that men--like my truck-driving little brother who was addicted to this kind of book, for instance--also enjoyed "romance" type reading. That was an eye opener. I already knew Rod was a smart aleck; these novels gave him the perfect outlet to express the snappy one-liners that he couldn't help himself from spouting. And they were great fun to read.

As for the sea change in women writing mysteries and crime novels, I'm not so sure about your premise, Rod. Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, PD James and women's lib had more to do with the surge than Ronald Reagan did. And don't forget all those women who, in order to break into that market, still had to use initials to do so, so both publishers and the buying public didn't automatically dismiss their books out of hand because the authors didn't have dangly bits between their legs.

[Kathy Sweeney]

I spent most of the '80s in school, so I didn't read much for fun, but these books look like a riot!

Thanks for another great blog, Rod - or may we call you Dick Stivers. Best name ever.

[Rod Pennington]

Kathy: I've been call "Dick" many times. However it usually has the prefix of "You".

[Rod Pennington]

Like grocery stores, it is all about shelf space and placement. When, as William noted, you walk in and see racks and racks of one genre and people elbowing each other for access that is a trend publishers ignore at their own peril.

If I were a fan/writer of “Chick Lit” I might start getting nervous that the boom and bust pattern is about to repeat itself. When you overhear people in the book room at the conference saying things like: “She’s the cupcake lady?” “No, she’s bagels.” And they are discussing this as if the difference between the two is on the same level as whether you are a Yankee or Red Sox fan; you may be reaching the saturation point.

[storyteller Mary]

Rod, you are such a tease . . . now everyone should be chomping at the bit to read _Fourth Awakening_, and when is _Gathering Darkness_ scheduled for publication??
I do love Penelope's smart-alec ways, and from Karen's comment, that part must be all you. The well-bred Southern lady manners are too wonderful also -- and that trick with the teeth! That could almost become a secret TLC weapon at some point. I love sneakiness!
One of the benefits of this retirement thing is more reading time. In my interview with Wayne Gronefeld in 1983, I said that much of my reading time was devoted to reading students' papers, which he reminded me of whenever I moaned about the hours of grading I had to do. "But, Mary, you said you LIKED reading all those papers." (Yeah -- I did, too, but I also wanted the job, and I hadn't counted on the extra work generated by six classes a day rather than five. For a while I thought it was just that more FH students actually do their work).
**BTW, I posted really late yesterday, so you might want to check yesterday's comments. . . or not . . . ;-)

[Harley]

slide bites, scope eye and revolver burns . . . see, this is why my hobbies don't involve long days at the shooting range. You don't see these kinds of injuries around knitting.

[Rod Pennington]

Mary: Smart ass is pretty much my default mode. Having a quick mind with a broken filtration system and even quicker tongue (relax Xena) I feast on those sour, humorless politically correct droids that are sitting around waiting to be offended. One of the things I like the most about all the Tart’s books are nothing is sugar coated. Real and raw is FUN! If you can’t have a laugh at life and at yourself then you seem to be missing the entire point of why we’re all here.

[Rod Pennington]

Harley: Considering your mental state as reflected by your attitude towards packing school lunches, improving your small arms proficiency may not be wise anyway.

[marie]

Rod, did I see a Bazooka(s) on that cover?
Nah...gotta get that sleep outa my eyes. Ya know what I'm saying.....

[Nancy Cohen]

Hey, now they're looking for female thriller writers. Everything cycles around in this business.

[Rod Pennington]

Hey Nancy! She was on the panel I moderated at Sleuthfest. If you aren’t familiar with her “Bad Hair Day” series, shame on you. Not only is she a great novelist she had a marketing handout that was nothing short of fantastic.

[xena]

NTCTS (not to change the subject)
Rod dearest, the Tiki Titi Bar called and said you forgot your glasses yesterday. Please E Bang Bang your address and she'll mail them back to you. She mentioned it was great doing research with you.
XOXOXena

[Rod Pennington]

Now that Xena is up and about, here is a hilarious story about one of my books. A bawdy female friend wanted me to sign her book which I did and she immediately tossed it in her purse without reading it. Her husband – on of those humorless droids I referred to earlier – read the inscription before her and let’s just say he was less than amused. “Dear Joann. Thanks for the memories, see page 49.”

Page 49 “He pulled her panties to her ankles before continuing his journey downward. As his serpentine tongue…”

You get the idea. I thought it was side splitting. So did Joann. Humm. Come to think of it we didn’t see much of them after that. Go figure.

[xena]

Yes I am up and have been up for quite a long time. I'm guessing you were not singing in the choir this morning.
Nice blog Rod! You are so much deeper than people give you credit for. "Be careful where you put your thumb" has been one of my mottoes for years. That and "Don't bleed on the costumes".
Now about big tough guys like you being only good for two things. Are you telling me that there are more than two things?
I also think you are spot on, as William says, about tough ladies with smart mouths.
I had chipped my front tooth in a car wreck in 1972 and had it bonded. Needless to say I have been very careful what I put in my mouth ever since.
And I do do interesting things. Can you think of anyone who could costume 1000 Homosexuals and live to tell about it?
I have been told I am extremely talented. I was after all one of the women with internal sex organs in the touring show for years.
Another question... what is a bodice ripper? Tony Curtiss?
As a costumer I recommend seam rippers but only when necessary and not on female impersonators if you can help it. Same goes for steaming a gown while they are in it.
We are both just a plethora of knowledge this morning aren't we.

[Laura (in PA)]

If the books are half as fun as the blogs, I need to get my hands on them stat. And I loved your description of whimpering with your thumb in your mouth at the range.

[Karen in Ohio]

Xena's unintentionally funny line:

"Nice blog Rod! You are so much deeper than people give you credit for."

LOL!

[Lil Gluckstern]

Loved your blog. Some females who write romantic suspense still incorporate hunky males; we have a secret yen for smart, and tough, you know. Today's heroes are more refined-thinking of Robert Crais' Joe Pike. Maybe it's more evolution, and women who still buy more books than men.

[Harley]

Rod, as if anyone could doubt your, uh, depth, after seeing that "Able Team; Death Hunt" cover . . .

So, are you implying that I could shoot an unarmed sandwich? Is that your concern?

[Rod Pennington]

Karen: With Xena how can you be sure it was unintentional? I was flattered.

[Karen in Ohio]

As you should be. ;-)

[Rod Pennington]

Harley: I was more worried about you getting cocky about your skill level and reaching for your 44 to open a stubborn jar of Mayo. In a perfect world there are numerous things deserving to be on the receiving end of a full clip. Fortunately, as adults, we prefer our present life of quiet desperation to Super Max.

FYI: my “Sex and helping you move” comment refers to “Free Range” males. Domesticated one like me can open the mayo, take out the thrash, kill spiders and do kick ass foot massages.

[Rod Pennington]

Harley: I was more worried about you getting cocky about your skill level and reaching for your 44 to open a stubborn jar of Mayo. In a perfect world there are numerous things deserving to be on the receiving end of a full clip. Fortunately, as adults, we prefer our present life of quiet desperation to Super Max.

FYI: my “Sex and helping you move” comment refers only to “Free Range” males. Domesticated one like me can open the mayo, take out the thrash, kill spiders and provide a kick ass foot massage.

[storyteller Mary]

Rod, how very Vonnegut-like here, and I concur: "If you can’t have a laugh at life and at yourself then you seem to be missing the entire point of why we’re all here."
I could not figure out the "she" who was on a panel with you . . .
(of course, I'm in post-storytelling-high crash mode right now . . .

[storyteller Mary]

Wait, I think I have a guess -- from St. Louis??

[storyteller Mary]

Susan?

(BTW, I don't kill the spiders, just take them outside -- showing respect for Grandmother Spider . . .)

[storyteller Mary]

M??

[xena]

Open the mayo, take out the thrash, kill spiders and provide a kick ass foot massage.

All at the same time no doubt. Oh a man of many special talents yourself are you now Rod.

[Rita Scott]

"Subtle Rod"?? yeah, right (snicker>>snort< In 1971, I found a fantastic sale on Franchi shotguns. We went to the store & the kid behind the counter sold us the one with all the fancy engraving for the same price as the plain one. Oh yeah, ex#1 was so proud of that gun! We get home and he's spouting about how a Franchi has a faster action than any other shotgun. It sure did! First time he dry fired the slide got his thumb! He's dancing around, holding his bleeding thumb, yelling at me to wipe the blood off the gun before it ate thru the bluing. I couldn't help myself, was ROFLMAO!!

[Rod Pennington]

Mary: here's two clues.

#1 The post directly in front of the one that has you baffled was from mystery writer Nancy Cohen.

The first two words of the next post by me were "Hey Nancy!"

#2 The next big clue, type "bad hair day mystery" into a Google search.

No misdirections or red herrings.

[Harley]

If shooting jars of mayo, marinara sauce, or applesauce would do the trick, I'd be packing. Ever since breaking my wrist, opening jars is a real bitch.

Mary, are you asking the identity of Tuesday's guest blogger? If so, you're on the right track.

[storyteller Mary]

Thanks, Harley. I think I'll "say no more" for now . . .to be fair since I have a home court advantage (St. Peters is just a suburb of St. Louis), but I'm so excited!!!!
Rod, thanks for all the hints, I needed them (and a short nap) --
#3 to the library on-line catalog to reserve _Permed to Death_
I have my own perm story to share someday -- my students at Hanley Jr. High gave me the designation "nappiest hair" and wondered why I had left the shop standing after that debacle . . .

[storyteller Mary]

Harley, they make jar opener devices that install under your top cabinets and help open jars . . . though I still think a hunky neighbor could be more fun . . .

[Pauletta (an', no, I don' know where the Gooch Bros. are right now)]

So are you guys talkin' dirty or somethin'? An' the rest of us, we're not supposed to notice? 'Cuz I'm startinn'a' think all the yazz about 'mayonnaise' and 'opening jars' is, like, a whaddyacallit? A metamphora.

[Rod Pennington]

Never eat the sandwiches at Pauletta's house. Especially if it has mayo on it.

[Rita Scott]

Harley, just put Bob's condoms on your fingers. That should give you a 'ribbed' grip to open those jars!

[Karen in Ohio]

I'm excited, too, since I've never 'met' her!

[Rita Scott]

Harley! I just checked the tv listings and The Favor starring Harley Jane Kozak is on!!!

[storyteller Mary]

Karen, next time you come to St. Louis, let's work on that . . .
BTW, I just opened AARP Magazine, and there's an article on Sue Grafton -- I love coincidence.
The day I found the first tree frog in my house (no name, since it was a warm November day and he happily hopped away once I let him out), I wondered what kind of frog, went to the mailbox, and on page 2 of MO. Conservationist was a photo of Eastern Gray Tree Frog. Now that's service!!!

[Karen in Ohio]

You're on, Mary.

And I read that same article this morning! I cannot imagine the sheer perseverance it would take to write 26 books. She only has five to go. I'm pulling for her!

[storyteller Mary]

I'd be worried, very worried, about continuity. Even in the very short 10-20 minute stories I tell, I have been known to make a married character suddenly a bachelor or resurrect a dead mother at the end of a story . . . thank goodness for helpful listeners in the early stages!

[Rita Scott]

Mary, kids are not too polite yet, they'll let you know!

[storyteller Mary]

Actually, my students were very careful, but polite, critics and always willing to help me improve stories. My ESL students even helped me with La Llorona . . . "Mis hijos, mis hiiiiiiiiijooooooos!"

[Laraine]

Rod, thank you for this post for many reasons, but most especially for the image of Harley taking a .45 to a sack lunch . . . priceless.