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To affirm that
Lambda-Award winner Jeffrey Round writes quick-paced gay pulp fiction is not
to denigrate either the genre or this talented writer. It is merely to
recognize the character of his writing in which the central figures are gay
detectives or private investigators, where some of the other fictional
characters are also gay, and where some of the themes advanced by the
fiction pertain to gay issues. However, it is necessary to point out that
the gay quotient, while a central component, is not necessarily the driving
force. In the Bradford Fairfax novels (such as The P-Town Murders,
Death in Key West, or Vanished in Vallarta), the fact that
Fairfax is a handsome gay secret agent, upholder of justice, and sexy hunk
is crucial to some of the dramatic and satiric allure of the tales—as are
the gay ambience of Provincetown (Massachusetts), Key West, or Puerto
Vallarta, for instance, where the reader is apt to meet such camp characters
as a transvestite ghost; fluttery, a flamboyant female-impersonator named
Cinder Lindquist; lesbian café owner Big Ruby; cosmetically and surgically
enhanced Jarod Scythes; half-blood Cherokee Little Wing; blue-haired “twink”
Zach; the exotic Aztec Drag Queen Esmeralda; and various raunchy, romping
characters in gay resorts where pheromones permeate the settings and where
sex can be a thing of great acrobatic agility and virtuosity. Camp wit is
writ large in these tales, and though the permutations of plot can sometimes
seem inordinately high, the exaggerations can be put aside because of the
compelling ambience and dialogue. Moreover, the principal themes are always
connected to contemporary reality: sexual identity, drug use, desire,
relationships, love, generation gaps, political chicanery, and existential
authenticity.
The Dan Sharp mysteries
are less flamboyant and less camp in characterization, though the sense of
place and wit as large as ever. In The Jade Butterfly, that begins
with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest and massacre and moves swiftly to
Toronto and more briefly to Hamilton, Round creates a firm sense of place
with his quick evocation of the Forbidden City and the Square, Toronto’s gay
district, Leslieville, and the Bridle Path, and Hamilton (with its
“smoke-belching chimneys and flame-throwing up-thrust”). But what’s a
setting without a plot and interesting characters? In what is his third Dan
Sharp mystery (following Lake on the Mountain and Pumpkin Eater),
the gay private investigator (father of a teenage son out of a one-night
stand) finds himself hired by a mysterious but strikingly handsome young
Chinese man named Ren (who represents himself as a cultural ambassador for
trade and tourism) to find his long-lost sister, Ling, whom he believes
survived the Tiananmen massacre and is somewhere in Canada. Ren and Dan are
sexually attracted to each other, and this is where the personal and the
political, the sexual and the criminal get entangled. If Ling is alive, Ren
would like her to return the jade butterfly, a family heirloom. But before
you can remember the plot of The Maltese Falcon, Round raises the
ante, showing how Dan’s certitude of certain things gets shaken to the core.
The closer Dan gets to finding Ling, the more confused he becomes about the
brother, sister, politics, and his own self. Warned by his friend Donny that
relationships can be dangerous, Dan is forced to agree by a concatenation of
intense plot complications.
The way Round evokes Dan
Sharp in this page-turner is admirable in its psychological tremors,
representing the man’s self-doubt about his ability to be an effective
parent to a son going through his own issues of adolescence, as well as the
man’s painful acknowledgement that he may not know how to love another man.
Blending the private man with the single gay dad reality, the strong
detective with the emotionally vulnerable sufferer of chronic PTSD, Round
creates a very credible character, who is not simply a puppet on a writer’s
strings. Dan is, of course, is a sober character who is only occasionally
reckless; flamboyant ambiguity enters through Ren and Ling. And mystery
suspense builds and holds till the inevitable denouement where the reader
discovers how Dan has been unwittingly exploited by CSIS, the real
relationship between Ren and Ling, and the real significance of the jade
butterfly.
Introducing volume three in my Lambda-Award winning Dan Sharp mysteries, from Dundurn Books. I hope you pick up a copy or four from your fave independent bookstore. Please ask for it whenever you are in your local library, as well. Every little bit helps promote a starving writer. (Not too proud to ask!)
If you're just tuning in, the sequel to my Lambda Award winner, Lake On The Mountain, has just been published. Here are some recent links to articles about PUMPKIN EATER and my writing, for which I am grateful.
http://dailyxtra.com/canada/arts-and-entertainment/literary/darkness-and-light
http://www.stageandpage.com/pumpkin%20eater.htm#pumpkin
Readers often ask where I get my characters. The truth is, I don't know. While I may steal a visual from life once in a while--a nice head of a hair, a good jaw line--I don't use real people when it comes to personality. Nor are they all some version of me. If I made a list of what my character Dan Sharp and I have in common, it wouldn't be long. I am not a single dad, a private eye, or a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Nor did I ever sell my body for sex, though I have slept on a park bench.
Growing up in Sudbury, as Dan I and did, there was no small share of potential characters: boys whose fathers were alcoholics; a girl named Shirley who had a boy's haircut and wore dungarees and came to school looking alternately frightened and angry; another girl named Pelka, whose father emigrated from Yugoslavia and who drank battery acid to try to kill himself. I knew that world and mingled with it every day at school. I never thought any of them odd--merely interesting or dull, dangerous or friendly. Nor did I ever look down on any of them.
On the other hand, like Dan, there is a little of the sleuth in me. I recall Miss Kristakos, my grade three teacher, who had polio and limped, and who I secretly followed home one day to find out where she lived so I could surprise her with a drawing of Daisy Duck the next day. Or Rex, my best friend of two months, who had no father and whose mother was so poor all she could afford to serve when I came to lunch was Kraft Dinner, which I refused as politely as I could. Rex vanished as suddenly as he appeared. The adult me still wonders how I could trace him to learn how his life turned out, as would Dan.
While I'm not Dan, I admire him and like to spend time in his company. That's why I write about him. I've had an easier life than he has, and that's one of the reasons I admire him, because he upholds principles despite the difficulties they sometimes cause him. If I knew him, I would be proud to call him my friend. I hope he would say the same of me.
Ever wonder what it's like to be gay in other countries? It's not always so easy, as I discovered during several recent trips to Cuba. In North America and Europe, we take a lot for granted that other LGBT folk can only dream about. Here's my first-hand report from the streets of Havana, as published in the Xtra!: http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Finding_gay_Havana-13525.aspx
Many thanks to
Dundurn Books for the vote of confidence in backing my application for a
Writers' Reserve grant from the Ontario Arts Council, as well as for contracting
my third Dan Sharp mystery, The Jade Butterfly, even before it's finished. I
look forward to working with the folks at Dundurn again on this title, as well as on the second
book in the series, Pumpkin Eater, currently scheduled for a spring
2014 release. Stay calm and read on!
Every once in a while, a TV series grabs me by the throat.
Mostly, I give in rather than resist. But I expect a lot in return. Fans of the
show know that the BBC's Spooks can boast of some of the finest writing,
acting, and directing on TV. For ten seasons, the story followed the
professional and private lives of a group of MI5 operatives, with one man,
Harry Pearce, the head of counter-terrorism, at its core. The show enjoyed a healthy
following at home and abroad.
For seven years, the series got better with each season.
Season eight remained strong, even while veering slightly off course to
concentrate on CIA involvement in the UK. (The show was re-branded as MI-5
for American audiences, who seem to prefer things a bit more literal and a lot
more obvious. I give you the disastrous Little Britain USA and the
American Queer As Folk, if you need further proof.)
I was glad when series eight ended, though, hoping one
lesser year would not turn into two, and praying the American flirtation would
soon be over. In fact, far worse lay just ahead. One of the series' trademarks
is the sudden and unexpected endings that befall some of its more popular
characters. This, we are to believe, is what actually happens to spies. While
it was maddening to see them go, the leavings were usually spectacular in
dramatic terms.
The challenge, of course, was to fill those roles in a way
that the previous agents would not be missed too much. For eight years, they
hit the bulls-eye every time. Tom became Adam became Lucas; Zoe became Fiona
became Ros. And you held your breath, because it just got better. With Peter
Firth as Harry Pearce, the one holdout year after year, the series had casting
magic.
Then disaster struck. Someone at Kudos, the show's
producers, must have decided the show needed sprucing up. They hired a writing
duo whose process is best described as schizophrenic. Asked to describe the
process, the writers revealed their preference for a tag-team approach. Each
takes turns writing five pages before passing the script along to the other.
Even more revealing, at least to me, was their idolization of Joss Whedon, the
new king of Hollywood blockbusters. From subtle and layered, the show suddenly became
little more than an action cartoon.
The new writers seemed to think it great fun to take
liberties with the characters in ways that appalled and dismayed anyone who had
enjoyed the careful building of each agent's psychological profile and
background. The adage seemed to be, when in need of tension turn one of your
best characters into a villain. Preferably one who has not been set up in any
way to show such traits previously. The inept desecration and dispatching of
Lucas North's character as a terrorist infiltrator in season nine was not the
first nail in the show's coffin, but it would prove its most unpopular with
many.
In the show's final two seasons, cheap tricks and shock
tactics abound: improbable plot turnarounds, an over-reliance on technology,
and action spat out at machine-gun speed. Tellingly, characters are relegated
to stating the obvious to one another to keep the story rolling: "Hey,
Tariq, better answer that phone. It might be the bad guy calling." Because
we might not be able to figure it out, otherwise, right?
Where previously plot resolutions came from character,
suddenly they were the result of "new" technology that sounds sketchy at best
and unbelievable at worst. Realistic threats are ditched in favour of dime
store hobgoblins, like fake bio-toxins and imaginary ethno-genetic bombs. Even
the erstwhile Peter Firth, as director Harry Pearce, the only actor to make it
through all ten seasons, looks unconvinced by much of what he has to say.
Never before has such a great series gone so thoroughly and
regrettably down in flames. It would be akin to putting the sequel to A
Streetcar Named Desire in the hands of Sacha Baron Cohen. Who would do such
a thing?
Kudos and BBC, you have a lot to answer for.
-----
Jeffrey Round is a writer of contemporary fiction, equally
at home in different genres. His first two books, A Cage of Bones and The P-town Murders, were
listed on AfterElton's Top 100 Gay Books. His most
recent Dundurn title is Lake
On The Mountain, a literary-thriller and first in the Dan Sharp
Mystery series. He is author of the Bradford Fairfax comic mystery series, whose
style he describes as "a cross between Oscar Wilde and Agatha Christie." He is
also a film/stage director, television producer, and songwriter. Jeffrey’s
Blog, A Writer's Half-Life, has been syndicated online. Visit his
website: www.jeffreyround.com.
Thanks to all who attended my High Tea Garden Party and
Anti-Launch for Lake On The Mountain this weekend. I'm grateful for your
support and for making it such a fun afternoon. Loved all those gloves and
hats, ladies and gentlemen! Special thanks to Brenda Rantala-Sykes for coming all the way from
Sudbury just to cut the crusts off sandwiches ;) and of course to Master of
Ceremonies David Tronetti for his inimitable contribution. You rock!
It was my week to hang out with some very
Cool Canuck Chicks. First up was Luba Goy, one of our national icons, whose Luba
Simply Luba was on at the Berkeley Theatre. Her one-woman show gave us an
afternoon of laughs and joy, Luba-style, as La Goy traced her roots from a
German work camp, where she was born and where her parents had been
incarcerated, all the way across the waves to Canada. Touching and true. And it
didn't hurt to tipple a glass or five with Luba and friends afterwards at the Distillery
District.
Next I had the great pleasure to hang out
with Farzana Doctor, author of Six Meters
of Pavement, currently
short-listed for a Lambda Award. We got together mid-week at the 40th
anniversary party of Dundurn Books in the Arts and Letters Club. The Farz and I
yucked it up in front of the camera and, amid all the frippery, managed to
carry on some pretty feisty conversations about the Recently Single status
we've both acquired. If we both go on to gain a Bit Notorious status as well,
it won't bother us one bit.
Finally,
my week was complete with a long-awaited visit from Canada's reigning Queen of
Crime, Gail Bowen, on tour with hubby and long-time companion (44 years!), Ted,
while promoting Kaleidoscope, Gail's thirteenth Joanne
Kilbourn mystery from M&S. Always the gallant host, Ted stirred and shook a
bucketful of martinis, while Gail and I yacked on (and on) about the current
state of Canadian publishing, and then some. Not only is she one of the great
mystery authors, she's also a terrific gal to know and hang out with!
This month I signed a contract with Dundurn
to publish Pumpkin Eater, the sequel to Lake On The Mountain, my
first Dan Sharp mystery. I love working with the folks at Dundurn. They're a
great group of dedicated professionals.
I'm also currently a quarter of the way
through a third book, The Jade Butterfly, which opens in Tiananmen
Square the night of the massacre. Jump forward 20 years, when Dan is challenged
to find a woman who disappeared in the fighting, landing him squarely on his
own gritty Toronto turf. If you think you know Toronto, follow Dan around for a
bit. You don't know Toronto! Even I'm a little shocked by some of the places he
ends up.
Although I've been longing to get back to
more traditional literary writing, I really enjoy writing in this breezy, jaded
voice. Judging from the readers' notes I'm getting, I can tell others like it
too. I think of these books as my "dark" mysteries, as opposed to the lighter
Bradford Fairfax mysteries where mostly all's well that ends well. There's more
to come in that series too, as I've got two more books just waiting to reach
the starting gate.
When that happens, you'll be the first to
hear about it. After me, of course.
Every few years, I fall in love with a city. Last time it was New Orleans. It wasn't love at first sight, though. I had to go back a second time to be sure. Despite Katrina's lingering devastation, it was an amazing place. The time before, it was Paris--all that splendour. So it makes sense that a cross between the two would do it for me.
Havana did.
The city's contradictions defy you at every turn: vibrant and laid-back, squalid and beautiful, rundown yet visually awesome, poor but very, very safe. Fascinating, is how I describe it.
It helps to have some Spanish at your command, as well as a reliable companion. I had both. At the airport, I met an Australian surfer. I'll call him Charlie Dingo. Charlie has a nose for adventure. He's what's known in the vernacular as a "chick magnet." Despite our disparate backgrounds, we clicked. It was like having an instant friend, only with no history. Thanks to Charlie, I met some very fun Cubans. Thanks to me, Charlie knew what they were saying. Together, it guaranteed a great time.
I like my hotels clean, spacious and quiet. El Paseo Habana in Vedado offers that and more. It's a 15-minute walk from La Rampa, a lively cultural area, and a leisurely hour from Habana Vieja, the city's main tourist destination. If you're looking for a beach, however, don't stay there. It's considerably farther from Playas del Este.
Unlike me, Charlie is not a hotel guy. He wanted una experiencia verdad--the real thing. So we set out to find him a casa particular, the new capitalist trend for Cuban families with a spare room to rent. Basically, they're government sanctioned B&Bs.
In my experience, Cubans are not naturally friendly and out-going. They're reserved, like Canadians. It's only as we went from casa to casa that we got to meet some locals. An offer of coffee here, an invitation for rum later on--and suddenly you have a social life in Havana. It can be very rewarding.
Walking is the best way to see the city. There's also a good $5 double-decker bus tour, but it's pretty fast and you won't catch much of the English commentary--grammatically correct, but spoken at breakneck speed. Just enjoy the sights then go back later and visit whatever looked interesting.
Mastering the currency might prove difficult. It bewildered me. First, there's the CUP, or moneda nacional. It's the only legitimate currency. No one wants it. The alternative is the convertible peso, or CUC. If someone seems to be asking for "cook", that's what they're talking about. It's also called "divisa", which makes it really confusing. That and the fact that the two currencies are vastly different in value.
Visitors make the mistake of thinking there are two price listings for everything and that locals pay less. Not true. If the price is listed in CUP, anyone can pay in CUP or CUC. If you pay in CUC, however, you're paying more. When the price is in CUC, there's no choice: everyone must pay in CUC. But does it really matter whether you're paying thirty cents or a dollar-twenty for a beer? Charlie might disagree, but then Australians drink a lot of beer.
As racist as it sounds, many Cubans will try to cheat you. It's a national pastime and done without malice. Ask the price first and always count your change. I've even been short-changed in the CADECAs, or Casas de Cambio, while exchanging money. On the other hand, you can always bargain for things. Charlie was better at it than me, so I let him do the "no entiendo" thing and waited to see how far he got before I entered the game to nail the price.
One of the things that may surprise you is how literate Cubans are. On Calle Obispo, Old Havana's famed market street, I came across five bookstores, as well as a gigantic used-book stall. At first I put it down to a lack of cable TV, but after visiting several Cuban homes I realized this wasn't the case. What they don't have is Internet. WiFi is all but non-existent, so everyone reads. If you're desperate, some hotels offer on-line access for up to $10 CUC per hour. It's slow, so don't expect to spend all your time checking Facebook.
Nightlife can vary. During the week, clubs tend to close around midnight, though you can always find something happening on the street, legal or otherwise. (Charlie was always good for that.) The police tend to harass the locals rather than the tourists when anything untoward happens, but keep your wits about you.
There are plenty of nightclubs. Some are fancier than others. Nearly everyone gets dressed up, however, and Cubans really know how to dance. As for music, you'd be just as entertained by stopping to listen to a free concert (you'll hear them, especially on weekends) as you would by paying to go to a jazz club. The free concerts are very impressive. In another country, some of these people would be top dollar talent.
There is almost no visible LGBT culture, and Cubans are both sexist and macho in their manner and speech. On the other hand, once you get to know them, they will happily trot out their cell phones and show you pictures of their friends and ask you to guess which of the beautiful girls are real and which not. Again, it can be confusing.
There's one big LGBT party every weekend, but it moves around to avoid being busted. Both film director Pedro Almadovar and designer Jean Paul Gaultier have been netted in raids at gay gatherings. (Presumably, they survived.) You might meet someone on the Playas del Este to tell you where to find these events, or sometimes at Cine Yara on La Rampa. I'm not a beach person so I didn't venture that far. Besides, I didn't go to Havana to spend all my time doing what I do at home.
In fact, my primary reason for going was to check out the possibility of setting one of my Bradford Fairfax comic mysteries there. Luck, and Charlie Dingo, were with me. I had some of the best adventures I've had in a long time, and most of it quickly spun itself into a plot long before I boarded my plane home. So if you're a fan, keep your eyes open for Fairfax International: Havana Club in the future. Once I get around to writing it, of course.
Hasta la vista, baby!
Dec 13, 2011 This week my newest book, Lake On The Mountain, is going to press. For a writer, that's the equivalent of being in a plane and taxiing down the runway. You're not quite airborne, but your seatbelt is snug and all the expectation is there. The timing was propitious. Last month LOTM received a positive pre-review in Publisher's Weekly, the bible of the American publishing industry. A single glowing sentence from that review will now end up on the book's cover along with a blurb by Gail Bowen, one of Canada's most delightfully audacious writers and author of the highly successful Joanne Kilbourn mysteries. Both of these are great coups and the sort of thing writers and publishers dream of. As with any journey, there's an anticipated place of arrival down the road. For me, as for most writers, that hoped-for destination is one of undying fame, financial success beyond my wildest dreams, and outrageous adulation from my readers. It's called "Dreamland." Few, if any, writers reach it in their lifetime, however, so in the meantime I've learned to enjoy the journey. Duty Free shopping, here I come. Lake On The Mountain, the tale of a gay missing persons investigator and father of a teenage son, is a bit of a departure for me in one way, yet in another it's precisely where I've been heading for years. I intended it to be that rare, some would even say "apocryphal" animal, the literary-thriller. Like most university-educated Canadians of my generation, I was raised to be a bit precious in my reading. Genre? Not for me. Nicht, nein, never. It was verboten! I sniffed my way through the romance section in bookstores. I didn't deign to crack open a mystery or a sci-fi book, what with all the wonderful CanLit novels to be read. So how ironic to find myself the subject of genre discrimination. My first novel, A Cage of Bones, was refused by just about every publisher in Canada. Not because it wasn't well written or literary, but because it was in a genre barely acknowledged at the time: GayLit. In fact, I had to find a publisher outside the country to take it on. For all our literary affectations, Canadians were decidedly behind the times on that one. Not that I minded having a UK publisher first time out of the gate, however. They turned it into an international bestseller, something many Canadian publishers could not have done for me. Learning I'd inadvertently become a genre writer made me see things differently. One day I picked up a copy of John LeCarre's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, wondering if it would be even half as good as the film. In fact, it was terrific. But I was suspicious. Should I admit I'd read it? Should I worry it might influence my writing? Since then I've come across a considerable number of genre books and writers I feel can hold their heads up to anything being written today. Not to mention the success they achieve. In fact, you're far less likely to die the death of a starving artist if you can write outside the literary arena than in. Ironically, the snobbery I've faced over genre writing has been a double-edged sword. Some of the most blatant discrimination has come from genre-philes who refuse to accept that a literary writer could or should make the cross-over. Our territory—keep out, is how they seem to think of it. One of my most telling experiences came when I participated in a mystery writers' seminar in New Orleans, not long after the publication of my satirical thriller, The P-Town Murders. I talked about the difference between writing mysteries and literary fiction. At the time, I was set to publish my literary novel, The Honey Locust. Set in the Bosnian War, THL had taken me more than a decade to finish. I'd struggled with it greatly and certainly didn't want to have to repeat the effort. "The formula for writing mysteries is easier," I confided to my genre-loving audience, who gasped. Apparently the F-word is about the worst thing you can say to a genre writer. "Where is this formula? Can I buy it somewhere?" snarled one curmudgeonly old fellow, who turned out to be a seasoned American mystery author. "Try Walgreen's," I suggested. "Second shelf on the right." In fact, all good writing is based on a formula. Agatha Christie used one and so did Shakespeare. If you want to argue with them, grab a Ouija board and do your best. I can't help you there. In the meantime, here I sit on the runway, waiting for my fifth title to be released. I no longer worry whether my books are considered genre or literary or something as yet uncategorized. It's a book. And I believe it's the best one I've written. Years from now, I may still believe it. I know that because of how proud I am of it and how right it seems when I re-read it. I can feel the plane lifting.
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