I saw very little difference in writing for any market that would pay me. And, oh my, they were a disparate lot! I wrote true confessions, men’s adventures, Westerns, most anything. I even did the occasional picture shoot, one of which I remember all too clearly.
Alex Kylie was a former marine raider and a very good photographer who I had worked with before. He talked a lot about the war and how all the guys in his outfit were real war dogs, trained to kill. They landed first on the invasion beaches and wiped out anyone in their way. Most of them did not live through the war—for the obvious reason. The few survivors got their discharges like the rest of us. However, unlike the rest of us, their total indifference to matters of life and death made them quite different from the rest of the ex-GIs. So I should have been more wary and asked a few questions when Alex asked for help with a picture shoot.
We had worked together before, on mini-articles for this same agency. They bought picture sets, pics with some copy about them, which they sold to the numerous picture magazines then crowding the newsstands. The mags then expanded the set into a very short, illustrated article. I wrote the copy to go with the pics so the purchaser could amplify the whole package into an article.
On a typical picture shoot Alex would take the pics and I would write up some imaginary copy for the article. For example—meet Felicity, the fearless female, who bares her beautiful body for the lecherous eyes of The Beast.… You get the idea. Many times I would use his second Leica. He would set the openings and exposures so all I had to do was shoot and advance the film. With my art background I could frame a picture well enough that some of my shots were selected from the contact prints for use by the agency. The partnership worked well.
This one picture shoot, Alex had somehow managed to meet this retired Texan who was in New York, doing some work with a charity. It seems that he had a domesticated lion who wandered around with him. Somehow Alex talked him into doing the shoot for us. We would do the obvious—along with a girl, we had Beauty and the Beast. For this we had hired a model named Jet for the job—with our own money, which we paid to her agent, who kept a paternal eye on her.
We had rented a room in hot-bed hotel and we were all to meet there at two in the afternoon. We could only afford an hour of Jet’s time and we needed to make the most of it.
However, when I met the lion I had instant doubts about the wisdom of the entire matter. Her owner was an ancient leathery Texan complete with traditional five-gallon hat and deep drawl. The lion, on a short leash, was a half-grown female—who did not look happy.
We met in the hotel lobby and introductions were made. We were not introduced to the lioness, who sprawled beside Tex’s chair. We asked at the desk; Jet and her agent were already in the room. We headed for the elevator. Remember—the year was 1954 and the hotel was an old and crummy one, built in the days before electronic circuitry and push buttons. It had an ancient, decrepit, hand-operated elevator. The operator was black and frightened out of his mind when we entered with the lion. He was shivering, staring straight ahead as he worked the handle and the gate. The whole thing began to look like the setup for a racist, silent one-reeler film. “Five,” Alex said as we shuffled in, then turned back to Tex. The lion loped in and settled down with a thud, sprawling across the tiny elevator. The shivering operator closed the folding inner gate. I suddenly felt as terrified as the operator—as the lion’s tail flopped out through the folding brass grill. I couldn’t believe that Alex and Tex were still nattering away happily to each other, not looking at the lion. The operator, paralyzed with fear, was staring straight ahead, seeing nothing. I suddenly realized that when the elevator moved it would catch the lion’s tail between the elevator and the sill—and cut off the end of the beast’s tail. What would it be like in this tiny elevator if that happened…?
I had no time to think—I just reacted. I reached down and grabbed the end of the lion’s tail and, as gently as I could, pulled it out of the gate just as the elevator shook and started up.
The tail was soft and warm in my hand. I held it loosely, not daring to drop it. The lioness looked up at me with cold, hate-filled eyes, then growled deep in her throat. “Nice lion…” I said. I dare not let go. We rattled slowly upward while I waited for the teeth, claws from that beast of the jungle.… Time stretched, endlessly. Then we reached the fifth floor and the operator opened the inner and outer doors. I dropped the tail, the lion got to her feet, we got out. I was last of all, walking ever so slowly, staying as far away as I could from the queen of the jungle.
Jet and her agent were waiting in the room, crowding it even more. No one noticed that I was shaking, soaked with sweat, clutching the wall, staying as far from the lion as the tiny room would permit. I could not believe what had just happened. I numbly went ahead with the shoot.
The theme for “Beauty and the Beast” required them to be in bed together—at least that was required by the kind of magazine that would be buying our picture set. Alex pulled the covers back and, with a lot of gentle pushing and Tex tugging on the leash, the lion was finally prodded into lying on the bed. She wasn’t happy—if the constant twitching of the end of her tail meant anything. I stayed against the far wall. Jet stripped and slowly, with understandable trepidation, got into the bed. She was beautiful—radiantly so, with perfect, round breasts and dark nipples. She was also very stupid, which helped when doing this kind of thing. We turned the lights up and Alex started shooting, while I adjusted the baby spots we had brought up to the room earlier. The lion rumbled deep in her throat. Jet stretched and turned. The cameras clicked. Jet arched her back and the lion rolled over and dropped her paw onto Jet’s magnificent, deep cleavage.
There was silence. Then Jet spoke in a worried nasal monotone. “This lion has its hand on my breast.” Alex clicked off some shots. “That’s all right,” he reassured her. “It’s a female lion.” Jet thought about that for a while and relaxed. “That’s all right then,” she said.
With our model reassured, and the lion still being amiable, we finished the shoot. I paid Jet’s agent, then went to the lobby. I took the stairs, as did Tex and the lion. We all said our good-byes.
I was in luck. There was a little bar just off the lobby. Alex joined me and I pushed a whisky over to him. “That went okay,” he said, then drank. “Sure had a great bust.” I nodded agreement, drinking deep. “And no trouble from the lion.” “No trouble,” I agreed, still feeling the round, smooth weight of that tail. “No trouble at all.” I don’t think that I’m a coward—but I thought a lot about destiny then, and never worked with Alex again.
In addition to doing these picture sets I found myself writing more and more confessions. I was very good with true confessions, mainly since they paid a nickel a word—while the pulps were a penny, two cents at most. The confession magazines also liked their stories long. Ten thousand words translated into five hundred dollars. When you consider that my pulp editor’s job earned seventy-five dollars a week, the lure of the freelance life became mighty attractive. My old friend Hubert Pritchard was then in medical school, and furnished me with many a true story that turned into plot. I specialized in medical true confessions.
Then there were the men’s magazines, dozens of them, with stories of men’s adventures that were about as true as my true female confessions. I was doing okay; between editing and writing commercial fiction, otherwise known as junk, I was staying alive. Happily to meet, fall in love—and marry. Joan Merkler was a petite and gorgeous professional dancer, as well as being a talented and experienced dress designer. I must take a moment to tell you about Joan. Simply—she was the best thing that ever happened to me. I wasn’t certain about love or marriage in my life—she was. With infinite patience she gave me all her freedom and affection until the happy day when I realized this, finally appreciated it. Marriage was fun. We worked hard all day: she was a dress designer at that time while I was editing and freelancing. How we partied then, many times all night! Be assured that the art scene
in New York in the late ’40s and early ’50s was very, very nice. We didn’t have much money—but we did manage to have a very good time. Such a good time, I must add, that Joan stuck by me through a good bit of thin and, eventually as my fortunes improved, through a lot more thick.
Losing Joan was the most terrible catastrophe that ever occurred to me. With tears and the heaviest of hearts I must report that she died in April 2002 of lung cancer. She was just seventy-two. I will always miss her radiant presence. We were together for fifty years. We could have used fifty years more.
But this is now the 1950s and that terrible day is fifty years in the future. Let us settle for now with the golden past.
Someone once bemoaned the end of the pulp magazines, because with their demise there was no place left to be bad in. Meaning that there were no markets remaining that paid tiny sums for indifferent writing. Nonsense!
By hindsight, it was quite fortuitous that I started my career by being a graphic artist. There is no illusion in commercial art; you work for hire. When I first started drawing comics I illustrated far too many romance comics—because these were the only kind of scripts going for a newcomer at the time. I was very happy to go on to adventure, war—and science fiction—even if I had to write the scripts myself. To earn a buck I would take on any kind of assignment. I illustrated magazines, designed book jackets, did scratchboard jewelry ad designs, whatever the editor wanted I would draw; that’s the name of the game.
When I launched my writing career I was as liberal with topics as I had been with art. I was a writing gun for hire. I sold first to the comic books, a market I knew well since I had been drawing the things for years. Then I met a writer who sold articles to the men’s magazines and he tutored me in their needs. This is the craft of writing: knowing the market and writing just what the market wants. It’s a win-win situation. You have discovered what certain editors and readers want. You have satisfied that need and earned a few bucks in the process. There is certainly no shame involved. To put it simply: writers write.
But how is this done? First you must face the truth that writing is a conscious craft. Yes, the good old subconscious works and inspiration helps. But as a wise man said, “Writing is 1 percent inspiration—and 99 percent perspiration.” It is very hard work.
So how to begin a genre career? First, analyze the stories and articles and find out what makes them tick. Try not to be snide or superior. There is an art to writing—but there is also the craft. No one can teach you the art. Good teachers can help guide you. But in the end we are all alone—and must learn for ourselves.
The craft is easier. You can get tips from books on writing, from analysis—and best of all from practitioners in the field. I’ll be ever grateful to Jackson Burke, who explained the simple formula for men’s adventures to me. We met a bit later in Mexico. I was there for the cheap living that enabled me to write. He was there for the same reason—plus the fact that Acapulco gold was a dollar a kilo. When not stoned, he lived on men’s adventures. There is always a formula in the category markets. Articles in men’s magazines usually ran about two thousand words. They were written in a very specific manner. “A very simple formula,” Burke explained. “You open with a cliffhanger. Maybe literally one, such as a climber reached the top of a terrible climb.” Below me was a thousand-foot drop. To the left and right sheer ice without a handhold. I was stretching upward to the limits of my strength, clutching the small projecting knob of rock. And I could feel it crumbling.…
This is called the establisher. As soon as the hero is in extremis there is the flashback:
How did I get into this terrible position?
Now the build, which explains what happened, how through a series of circumstances the protagonist finally reaches the cliff where he is hanging on by one fingernail. Then the justifier gives him an unexpected chance at salvation, he wins by guts and ingenuity, and he is off the cliff. All in twenty-five hundred words. Type “THE END,” send it round the editors. Top markets like Argosy paid up to five hundred dollars for one of these. Salvage markets—the dregs who bought most anything—paid seventy-five dollars, more than enough to live very well for a couple of weeks in Mexico.
That’s the formula, the craft. The readers expected it and the editors bought it. The art, in any kind of writing, is in the authorial skill that must disguise the fact that you, the author, already know what is going to happen, but must never reveal that knowledge to the reader. The art is also the skill in writing, the talent that keeps the reader turning the pages.
I have written and sold such diverse items as men’s adventures, Westerns, a small biography of Lena Horne, and detective stories, each with its specific needs. That’s the secret of genre writing: study your market.
Then there are the true confessions. They are always written in the first person to maintain the illusion that there is actual truth behind each revelation, each confession. When of course there is not. It is best to think of these fictions as moral lessons. No matter how tortuous the plotting and complex the situation, in the end justice must triumph. Good and right must prevail and a moral lesson must be taught. And the reader must get involved with the protagonist’s troubles. The more realistic they are, the more response there will be. When I did get it right I had up to fifty letters from satisfied readers.
Do not sneer. Category fiction exists because people enjoy reading it and pay good cash for the privilege. A bit of advice for those of you who want to write. You are not Graham Greene. Not yet. Begin by finding some corner of the literary marketplace for which you have some sympathy. Analyze the whys and hows of this particular branch of fiction—then try your hand at writing it. If you have any drop of residual talent you should be able to sell what you write—because for every salable writer there are ninety-nine others who will never make the grade.
I was earning a living but I was getting a little tired of turning out commercial prose. My constant love was always science fiction. I wrote pulp fiction to stay alive. The same reason that after the war I had worked on a hydraulic press in a pliers factory—or packed boxes for Macy’s. To stay alive and eat. But my heart and soul were in SF. There was not much money in it—but I labored hard at my short stories and felt the thrill of accomplishment when they sold. It was a creative field and, for the first time, I could exercise my writing skills to produce something of worthwhile value. And I had a novel working away in the back of my mind, a real novel, a science fiction novel, something to be proud of.
But how on earth was I to get the time to sit down and write a work of fiction thousands of words long? There was no way I could squeeze it in between commercial assignments while surrounded by the busy life in New York with the phone ringing and friends dropping by at all hours. It would be impossible, but I had to do it. But how?
Joan and I were both getting fed up with the New York scene for plenty of reasons. And there was one idea that we had considered. Move to Mexico.
6
Life is a process of change. When our son, Todd, was born in 1955, Joan had to quit her dress designing job. A loving, lovely, feminine and maternal person, she felt that family should come before work at that time. Life was still fun, but not completely without its problems. New York City was hot, dirty, damp, and miserable that summer of 1955. The tar in the streets was so soft that your shoes stuck to it. Without our air conditioner, life would have been intolerable. I was grinding away at a men’s adventure titled “I Went Down with My Ship,” theoretically written by Captain Matson Wilner, when Joan returned from a visit to the pediatrician with the baby.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“The baby? Todd couldn’t be better.”
“Then why are you scowling?”
“The doctor said that with this heat wave and all the pollution, tramps, and dog crap and broken glass in the park, it would be best not to take him out of the house. He thinks that we should keep him indoors with the air-conditioning.”
“That’s no way
to live!”
“Tell me about it.”
This was not the first time that we had this conversation; we were going over familiar ground. Things were beginning to pile up; one little bother after another. The Spanish have a word for this: molestias. Small things that trouble or annoy you. Each one not important by itself—but put enough of them together and they begin to grind you down. This grinding was well started when Joan returned from her visit to the pediatrician.
The one-bedroom apartment—with a tiny study—had been more than large enough when we were both going out to work every day. Now I was freelancing at home, Joan was home all day as well—and the baby was omnipresent in his crib. And it was a bitch of a summer, torrid and humid as only New York, and the Everglades, can be. We rarely seemed to get out anymore; what with the fuss about the babysitter and all the rest. And the grandparents dropped by far too often. They couldn’t be blamed for wanting to see their grandson—but it was just one more molestia.
“We could move out of town to the suburbs, where things are cleaner, maybe cooler,” I said brightly. “Get out of Manhattan.”
“Where—Queens? Near your parents?”
I shuddered. “Or to Long Beach—near yours?”
Only silence followed that. I pulled the first page of “I Went Down with My Ship” from the typewriter and scowled at it. I was writing a lot of men’s adventures at the time, fake-true fiction disguised as fact. I could see an endless procession of these potboilers stretching out into the future. What I wanted to do was write more science fiction, someday even start on the great SF novel that was still simmering away in the back of my head. I needed time, space, privacy, no phone calls. I wasn’t going to get that in New York—even in the suburbs.
“Let’s go to Mexico,” I said.
“Is it possible?”
This was not as impulsive as it sounds. We had talked about this before, but always in an abstract way. I had been stationed on the border for most of the war, in Laredo, Texas. I had spent all my passes in Mexico and thought it was the best place I had ever been. It was a warm country, an interesting country—and incredibly cheap. And, best of all, it was hooked to the States by roads. We could drive there.
Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison! Page 8