You Again

The topic of recurring characters has come up on Spenser's Sneakers. Robert Parker has called back supporting characters more and more often over the years, for example bringing Jesse Stone into the Spenser book Back Story and bringing Susan Silverman into the Sunny Randall book Blue Screen. While some readers enjoy the crossovers, others see them as yet more evidence Parker is running out of ideas.

Why do readers, myself included, object? I think it has to do with how established each protag is. Jesse or Sunny can be brought into a Spenser book without taking much of the spotlight away from
Spenser. Bring Spenser into a Jesse book, or Jesse into a Sunny book, and the older, established protag may steal pages that could better be used to build up the newer, lesser known protag on his/her own.

On another note, each time Parker calls on a character like Hawk, it's more difficult to give the same weight to each appearance. I want to believe Parker's world is a varied one where anything can happen. I can't believe this when the same people show up as often as they do.

Does anyone feel the same thrill of menace from Hawk or the same concern for April Kyle and Paul Giacomin now that they've appeared in at least three books each?

One of Parker's few character who's kept her unique presence is Candy Sloan, and she only because Parker killed her off. Even this can be viewed as a shortcut. How would Susan feel if the woman Spenser cheated with were still alive? How would Spenser feel if Susan's one indiscretion, Russell Costigan, hadn't been such a bad guy after all? Conveniently for Parker, we will never know.

Did I say that?

Contemporary Rhyme editor Richard Geyer has accepted "The Poem That Woke Me" and asked for an audio recording to include with the text. This August you may hear me on the Web reading a poem with the words "shat" and "pissed" in it.

Making Adjustments and a Movie List

I began the month of June writing five pages a day on my novel. I kept this pace for a little over a week before feeling as if I was in the middle of my basement just as a blackout hit. This past week I did a close read of Lee Child's Die Trying to improve my sense of plot. It helped, but while I was reading, I wasn't writing.

So yesterday I started over with a more immediate inciting event, this time going for one page a day. This should keep the intensity of each page up and give me the rest of the day for poetry and reading.

My writing pace may change as the plot solidifies. For now, it's small steps.

Meanwhile, Jon Jordan of Crime Spree Magazine asked for my top ten movies. I've never definitively ranked anything, but here's my list:

Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Empire Strikes Back

Chinatown

Superman II

Grosse Point Blank

Zero Effect

The Big Lebowski

Goldfinger

Lethal Weapon

Men In Black