I've been lurking here for a while now and thought I should
finally introduce myself. My name is B.J. West, and I've
recently served as editor and contributor to an anthology of
hard-boiled detective fiction called "Fog City
Nocturne."
"Fog City" started as a writing experiment, in which the
members of a San Francisco writing group got together over
cocktails and jointly created a private detective character
named Nick Chambers. We set his birth date and detailed a
basic dossier of his past, his psychological makeup, and his
overall situation as he began working as a detective in San
Francisco shortly after the end of WWII. Then, with the
foundation laid down, we each went our separate ways to write
our individual stories about Nick. We had two unbreakable
ground rules:
#1: Thou shalt not kill Nick. But you can beat him to within
an inch of death. Don't permanently injure or cripple him
either, we need him for more stories.
#2: Likewise, when your story is finished, Nick's situation
shouldn't be markedly different in any permanent way than it
was when the story began. He can (and should) significantly
change the lives of people around him for good or ill, but he
can't personally benefit from a "big win" unless you take it
away from him again before you are done.
The resulting stories were, in my less-than-humble opinion,
fantastic. And since one of the members of our group was
something of a ringer -- in that he owns his own publishing
company -- he tapped me to flog the authors through a series
of rewrites to get them polished enough for public
consumption.
I'm not operating under any illusions here. I know this is
one step shy of vanity press. I understand that the skill
level of our writers varies wildly, from published
professional to rank beginner. But taken as a whole, I think
we've come up with a collection of stories that not only pay
homage to the masters of classic detective fiction, but has
also created a fresh, original character that puts a
distinctly post-modern spin on the private dick
boilerplate.
If any of you are curious, "Fog City Nocturne" is available
from Apocryphile Press, through Amazon.com or nearly any
other online bookseller. I'd love to hear what the members of
RARA-AVIS think of our boy. Don't pull any punches either.
I'm not fishing for strokes here. We are considering putting
out a second anthology. The more feedback we get, the better
the new batch of stories will be!
We are also currently halfway through production on a short
film adaptation of "The Smiling Man," one of the stories from
the book, which should be available on DVD early next year. I
know that's off topic, but if folks are interested, I can
point you at more info.
Thanks for your indulgence, Beej
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 04 Nov 2006 EST