Attn: James Patterson –
Notes which perhaps explain why his novel remains unwritten. Barker had struggled with writer’s block but not really. You either worked hard at your craft or you didn’t.
He hadn’t. Now he found himself looking through one ancient file after another.
It’s not orgasm until the fat lady sings. An idea. A pornographic sports mystery series. Satyrical. Second person. For title, use that name Rob Strasser gave you: HOSEMASTER. Opening line: “You fucked her ’til smoke poured out of her ears.” No, that’s no good. Maybe, “She fucked you until smoke poured out of your ears.” Confuse the sexists.
Or “Fucked her until smoke billowed from her small pink ears. You hadn’t noticed her ears.” Yeah, he liked that better. Good springboard. But do you really want an F-bomb in the opening line?
Problem was Barker had never really felt confident using certain vernacular. He was sensitive to negative criticism. Hell, he was sensitive to positive criticism. But he used the word almost daily, but no worse than Showtime or HBO.
idea. Another vigilante fiction. Seems every time I turn around Mom is telling me another story about another contractor/financial adviser/door-to-door salesman/telemarketer who has approached her – Mom, that is – with another get-rich scheme, flim-flam, con game. Trying to take advantage of the elderly. $250 to trim the orange tree and he doesn’t do it. Paint jobs that wash away in the first good rain.
Thinking for a title, he could use The Carpenter. See, he does good honest work at a fair price by day, while at night – with his saws and nailgun – he fights crime. Think Jesus and Batman.
Title: The Cleaning Lady And The Millionairess. Idea. A guy goes to Florida and gets involved with two very different women.
title: The Pallbearer. Guy who serves as pallbearer for all his friends. Each time there’s a death, he gets the call. Structure the story around an actual funeral/burial. As the reader experiences the funeral/burial in the present tense, the narrator/pallbearer recalls other ceremonies and the men he’s put in graves. Stories about Mike Welch, Terry Sundby, et al. Ed Duffelmeyer’s skinny ear. Laughing like crazy when they buried Grandma Welch. He hadn’t gone to another funeral for forty years. And he wished it had been longer. Maybe a twist ending… the dirt falls onto the casket as the narrator turns out to get buried himself. Visit a real funeral home. Observe a real funeral/burial. Setting could be Key West Cemetery.
Title: Developing An Appreciation For Older Women. Opening line. I am developing an appreciation for older women. Setting: Florida. Soundtrack: Amazing Grace. Cool Water. Hero learns to lust for older ladies. And appeal perhaps to The Bridges Of Madison County audience. A romantic fiction coupled with autobiographical memoir. He didn’t really have one idea here. Some thoughts. Use the Florida material from previous trips. Tell tales re moving back into “mom’s house” pushing fifty. That’ll cramp your love life.
Although his mother had found a woman through the beauty parlor network. Which predates Match.com. Love letter to parents. Baby boomers, more and more losing their folks every day.
I could write this. I could. I really could.
If you fuck with me/one of us is history.
title: If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body, Would You Hold It Against Me? Maybe re-write In Broad Daylight
Title; The Dog Collector
If I Find You, Can I Have You?
Title: Things I Remember.
the intimacy of the blade. A title re knife fight?
genital jewelry
killer instinct
t-shirt: When it absolutely, positively, has to be killed overnight.
On a rooftop with a high-powered weapon
Story idea. a conversation. four guys. four P.O.V.’s. All dialogue. Guido’s theory of women.
Western short story idea. A rookie deputy goes up against a bad man and loses. End of story.
Andy The Dog: My Most Unforgettable Character
The Dog Who Did Not Speak. The story of a boy who grows up in a world where all the dogs talk (slowly?). All the other kids’ dogs talk. How the boy and his mute dog manage to handle their “handicap.” Chew on this.title? Opening line?
Title: No Velvet Paintings. (Based on a true story)
On his eleventh birthday, Elvis Presley got his first guitar, a gift from his mother. He had been praying for a shotgun. Years later, Elvis shot a television because Robert Goulet was on the screen, singing.
Elvis wanted a shotgun for his birthday and he got a guitar instead. Well, y’all know the rest. How about a story about, what if he’d got what he wished for? What if young Elvis got the gun? I see Elvis killed in a shoot-out at a roadblock after a botched convenience store hold-up.
Short story opening line. This started out to be a suicide note.
I am going bad one day at a time.
I was fifty years old when I finally realized the chances of me being one in a million were a million to one.
I have been crazed.
Short story idea. Title: THE LAST SUPPER. Convicted killer awaiting execution tries to decide what to have for his final meal on earth. Each menu item, or course, has a story behind it.
I’d rather be anyplace but here.
Epigram goes like this…. In William Manchester’s The Glory And The Dream he reports a 1954 survey which reported the overwhelming choice of most Americans for dinner, price no object: fruit cup, vegetable soup, steak, french fries and apple pie ala mode. Which is French for, “with vanilla ice cream.”
Movies to see. Call film critic. Maybe Callahan. Have viewing party? Any good movies on video about death row, preferably including the final 24 hours before execution. A film noir deal done in 1954, starring William Bendix, would be good.
Final line: I think I’ll go with the…. or
I think I’ll go with the oysters Rockefeller, Caesar salad, steak tartare, and so forth, blah, blah, study some cook books.
Suppose an impudent Chateau Benoit ’84 would be out of the question.
Try the final line a few different ways.
Study cook books for the other guys, too. One of whom could be modeled after Wm. Bendix.
Maybe I want to think about a movie from ’54, one I saw when I was a kid, which maybe warped my mind, like those movies Bob Dole is talking about today
Book to read: Among The Lowest of The Dead – David Von Drehle
The people on death row, almost without exception, come from violent families.
Their victims seem to be always with the condemned killers. Roommates in solitary confinement.
There is a forlorn sense of futility and sadness everywhere on death row and nothing good comes out of there alive.
Only 5% of all death row inmates are ever actually executed.
They are so pale, so very pale, ghostly white. They never go out into the sunlight.
Before they came to death row, they were very mean people for the most part, but put a man for six or ten or even fifteen years in a box the size of a studio condominium’s bathroom.
And they tend to calm down some until truly they seem pretty harmless.
Dad and I, we don’t talk on the phone.
Short story or novelette idea. The Last Fare. A cabby goes to work knowing each fare may be his last. He may not live to see the end of his shift. Structure: Clocks in. Gasses up cab and starts picking up fares. First fare is explosive. We continue to pick up fares all night. Until the last fare. When the cabby dies. Who kills him? Maybe the cabby takes the killer out with him.Who are the other fares? What are their stories? Write it so it’s easy to film.
“This would be a good place to dump a body.” Vigilante fiction. The real estate agent from hell meets her final client.
Somebody is killing the poets of Portland. A poet kills other poets in order to win Slam.
Short story idea. The Sunday newspaper page one to the end.
Short story idea. How I thought my life would be. See Atwood’s Happy Endings.
Short story idea. The history, mention everybody.
title? Change Your Clothes. Premise: a couple having a conversation in Meryl’s kitchen. Not rewarding nor easy. Three good things in a row is all I am asking. Honolulu was good. Then the puppy dies, my jeep explodes and the river is rising cause it’s always raining. Which eventually makes my girl friend fantasize about me getting a room and a high-paying job in the city. Far away from her.
Title? Dress For Work. Premise: acting like a writer. Work in Wolf Haven and feeling like a caged wolf most of the time myself.
The dog growled. “I’ll give you ‘grrrr’,” I growled back.
I dress up when I’m alone. A lesson I learned from Katherine Dunn. Wear the hero’s outfit when you write his story.
Title? Scare Male. Another in the vigilante justice series. Angry white male revenge tales against mythopoetic boogiemen starring Brute Gangrich. Premise: killing the old lady who works at the post office.
Small rural village in the West. I applied for a part time job at the local post office. They won’t give you medical coverage but you can’t get hired without a drug test. Ain’t that the government for you.
The old lady can’t do arithmetic and her reading ain’t so good, but she was the only person over the age of 11 in town who could pass the drug test. Killing her seemed redundant. She moved like somebody who’d been dead two weeks.
Titles?: IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. BIRD LOVER or WHEN THE SIREN BLOWS
Barker and The Black Gang are walking back from the post office. Women puts the moves on Barker. He visits with her. Have sex. The neighbor sees this and tries to blackmail Barker into having sex with her. He won’t. She tries to set Barker up by leaving a clue, an addressed piece of mail perhaps, so the other woman’s husband will take Barker down. Doesn’t quite work out the way she plans.
opening line:
The boys were arguing over whose turn it was to buy cigarettes. Rufus offers to provide twenty pop cans as his contribution to the purchase price of a pack.
story idea: A MAN’S BODY. Head to toe. Go over all parts of the body from toe to head, describing the scars, the aches and pains, the anthropology of an old man’s body and how he earned these “badges” of life experience. For example, my right thumb and football at Allegheny. Scars on my ankle and wrist from Bronco crash. MRI Guy: “So, basically, what you are telling me is, you’ve used your body like an amusement park.” Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you.
HOT: MY DOG AND ME. Hot Monogamy.
Part 1: Setting The Mood. “To get me in the mood for sex, I would like you to…” take me out for dinner and a movie. Or, take a shower, be nice, warm and friendly, give me a hug, tell me how much you love me, let me know you’re soon to be in the mood for sex, make a special appointment for sex, relax together in a comfortable zone, I enjoy incense and candles, Chris Isaak music, your sexy nighties are nice, share some smoke, maybe a strong uninhibiting drink together, perhaps a ‘pornographic’ video, trade back massages…
“To get myself in the mood for lovemaking, I can…” spend time by myself to relax and unwind, think positive thoughts about my partner, take a hot shower, look forward to it,
Part 2: Growing Arousal. “To arouse me to the point of orgasm, I would like you to…” kiss me and lick me all over my body, fellate me until my dick is hard,
Part 3: Orgasm. “As I approach orgasm, I would like you to…” roll over on your back, so I can thrust in and out of your mouth. Then, in the missionary position, lift your legs high, so I can thrust vigorously in and out of your vagina.
“When I am actually experiencing orgasm, I want you to..” lie still, hold my buttocks, moan repeatedly and scream loudly, “My God! You’re the best ever!”
“If I am interested in having more than one orgasm, I want you to…” alert the media.
Part 4: Afterplay. “After making love…” I often have the urge to nap, it’s a male thing. You should sigh contently, tell me again how much you love me. Hold each other for a couple of minutes. Maybe read.
Title: Raising Money. A writer who produces this literary magazine using his credit cards. Mag is a critical success and a financial failure. Analogy of raising the puppy and then he dies. Might include latest Honolulu trip. Writer was in Hawaii giving a workshop about becoming your own hero. Writer wants to kill himself. Decides to get a new puppy instead.
Opening line: Sometimes my life is like a country and western song. Well went dry so the bank took over our ranch, my pickup exploded and now the puppy is dead. His name was Money.
Title:ONE WINTER IT SNOWED SHIT.
A non-fictive short story about Jack’s winter of 1993. DUI. Treatment. Break up with Hiawatha. Car crash. NH winter. Loss of dog. Father’s illness. Reunion with Hiawatha.
I read the news today. “Oh, Bruce, I chortled.”
Title: IN PURSUIT OF WOMEN. A 3500-word piece about WOMEN and a lifetime spent on chasing them.
title: The Year I Was A Poet. Story about a guy who starts going to slams and open readings. Really all a big joke, but then he starts getting laid by poetry groupies. Story ends when he wins a large prestigious grant.
Title: Heavy Medal. A Congressional Medal Of Honor winner goes crazy with guilt. He killed the real hero, got all the credit himself. Tortured all these years, can’t kill himself, doesn’t have the guts. Suicide would be the easy way out. Could confess, but then he’d be a murderer, spend the rest of his life in prison. He’s famous, and fame these days is better than talent.
Gotta be something here. Gotta be.
