I have the pleasure of hosting author Dana King, who answers the question:
ELF: Which author(s) has/have been the most influential to you and how or
why?
DK: The list of authors who have been most influential to my writing evolves
over time. I’m good with that. I think it shows growth. At least that’s my
story and I’m sticking to it.
Had you asked who my influences were fifteen or twenty years ago, I
would have given you a concise list:
Elmore Leonard.
Ed McBain.
Raymond Chandler.
Let’s see how that has changed.
I don’t know that I consider Leonard an influence anymore; he’s the
foundation. He’s rarely on my mind when sitting at the keyboard, but any time
someone brings his “Ten Rules for Writing” to mind I realize they are now so
ingrained I don’t even think about them. The Beloved Spouse™ had a tee-shirt
made for me to wear at conferences with “WWELD?” (What Would Elmore Leonard
Do?) embroidered on the left breast. Across my back the shirt reads “Leave out
the parts people tend to skip.”
So he’s gone well beyond being an “influence.” He’s practically a
mentor, even though we never met.
McBain’s example remains at the
forefront of my Penns River procedural novels, though he now shares the role
with Joseph Wambaugh. The Penns River books spend a lot of time with patrol
officers and no one ever wrote patrol officers better than Wambaugh. He also
loves to digress into side stories that show the bizarre everyday things street
cops encounter, which has made my PR books a lot more fun.
Chandler has dropped off the
list, to be replaced by Dashiell Hammett. I’m about halfway through a volume of
all of Hammett’s Continental Op stories, and his direct and unadorned style
appeals to me more all the time. Chandler was the master of simile, but he also
too often tried to shoehorn them in where they didn’t fit. There’s nothing in a
Hammett story that doesn’t belong.
I can now add two more to the
list.
George V. Higgins for his use of
dialog. Not only does his dialog read more like real speech than anyone else’s,
Higgins was a master at using dialog to move the action. Of particular interest
is how well he can skip an action scene, then have one or more characters
describe what happened to someone who wasn’t there. This is much more effective
than it sounds here, as it’s a way to tell the reader what happened without
saying exactly what happened. Each describing character may have an ax
to grind, or may be inherently unreliable. It’s left to the reader to sort out
which clues are useful and which aren’t.
Another author who comes to mind with
somewhat less influence is James Ellroy. What I picked up most from him is a
tendency to place dialog attributions before the dialog instead of after. This
allows the reader to know in advance who is speaking, and how they’re doing it.
(With clenched teeth, laughing, pretending to smile, etc.) Few things take me
out of a story faster than having to re-read something because I get to the end
of the comment and realize I thought someone else was saying it, or I didn’t
know the speaker’s expression or tone changed the context of what he said.
Getting that out of the way up front doesn’t just solve the problem; it
eliminates it.
Last but not least is Ken Bruen.
Trained as a poet, Bruen cares about how the words appear on the page, by which
I mean the physical spacing. I have picked up a little of that myself when I
need to provide a list, as it moves the reader’s eye more quickly down the page
and avoids a dense paragraph where one isn’t otherwise necessary.
This is not to say this list
won’t be different next year. That’s one of the things that keeps me writing. I
never know what’s over the next hill.
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Off the Books
by
Dana King
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Hard-boiled Private Investigator
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
Nick
Forte has lost his detective agency and makes ends meet doing background checks
and other paperwork. He pays for everything else through jobs he takes for cash
and without any written contract. What starts out as a simple investigation
into a traffic accident exposes Forte to people who have truly lost everything
and have no viable hope of reclaiming their lives. That doesn’t sit well with
Forte, leading him and his friend Goose Satterwhite to take action that ends
more violently than anyone expected.
“The
return of Chicago private detective Nick Forte, the tough protagonist of two
Shamus Award nominated novels, is well worth the wait. Nick’s latest escapade
Off The Books—the first in nearly six years—will surely earn additional praise
for the acclaimed series.”
-J.L
.Abramo, Shamus Award-winning author of Chasing Charlie Chan.
"Nick
Forte reminds me of Robert B. Parker's Spenser: a PI with a finely tuned sense
of justice who doesn't take anyone's s***. Any fan of hardboiled detective
fiction is in for a helluva ride."
--Chris
Rhatigan, former publisher of All Due Respect Books
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt:
I’m a professional snoop. People’s privacy went only as far
as the task at hand in my profession. I executed search warrants as a cop and
opened more drawers than an Ethan Allen quality control inspector since I went
private. Tonight I felt as if I was violating something sacred as I looked
through what passed for personal effects in that trailer. Beside each bunk were
two banker’s boxes that held what appeared to be all the earthly possessions of
the men (and women?) who lived here. Most were family photos. Children’s
drawings. Bibles and small statues of saints. A T-shirt or two. The random pair
of jeans. I had no idea how often supplies were replenished. Must have been
like Red Cross day in the POW camp this place kept reminding me of.
Bare bulbs suspended from the ceiling with reflectors above
them were the only light sources. No clocks. A small shrine to the Virgin Mary
occupied a corner of the kitchen.
What little fresh air I felt came through screened vents in
the ceiling. I pulled a bunk over so I could peek through and found vent covers
six inches above the opening. Air could pass through, but nothing else. Acrylic
shields swung up to cover the vent in cold weather.
I photographed it all. After saving about fifty images I
returned everything to where it had been and let myself out. Made sure the lock
was in the same position I found it. Walked back to my car with my head on a
swivel, alert to anything that might be a threat, or possibly useful when I
came back.
Buy links
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Off
the Books is Dana King’s sixth Nick Forte private investigator novel. Two of
the earlier books (A Small Sacrifice and The Man in the Window) received Shamus
Award nominations from the Private Eye Writers of America. Dana also writes the
Penns River series of police procedurals set in a small Western Pennsylvania
town, as well as one standalone novel, Wild Bill, which is not a Western. His
short fiction appears in numerous anthologies and web sites. He is a frequent
panelist at conferences and reads at Noirs at Bars from New York to North
Carolina.
Website
Blog: One Bite at a Time
Twitter
@DanaKingAuthor
Facebook
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