Saturday, June 3, 2017

Guest Blogger, Tim Hallinan: In Limbo


Tim for Jeff—Saturday

I have a terrific treat in store this week for our Murder is Everywhere readers: Tim Hallinan is back!  Yes, one of our founding members has been released from the institution long enough to write a post about the maddeningly creative new book he’s just written, titled PULPED, which went on presale on Amazon yesterday, and will be on sale June 9th. 

For those (few) of you who might not know Tim, he’s one of the most talented, productive, and respected mystery writers out there, with twenty novels to his credit.  He currently writes two highly praised and much honored series, the Junior Bender Mysteries (for which Herbie’s Game won the Lefty for best comic novel) and the Bangkok-based Poke Rafferty series, for which he’s been nominated for practically every award out there (Fool’s River comes out in November). 

Where does the man find all the time? It sort of makes you think some of his characters must be helping him out with his chores…more on that below.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a confession to make.  Though everyone loves Tim, I can say without hesitation, having read Pulped, I hate him, for he’s written the novel I, and every writer I know, will wish we’d written. It is sheer genius, and I guarantee it will have you looking at reading in an entirely new light. 

For the record, Tim says he lives in Los Angeles and Bangkok and is a proud graduate of the Maharishi Mahesh Very High School in Jabalpur, India, though I think the high school info just might be an alternative fact.

Welcome back, buddy.

—Jeff


I'm thrilled to be back here on MURDER IS EVERYWHERE because I've just had the interesting experience of writing a book in which murder is, essentially, nowhereor at least nowhere any of us is ever likely to go unless we're fictional. It's called PULPED, it's like nothing I've ever written before, and thanks to “Gentleman Jeff” Siger (as we call him) for lending me his spot this week.

I last wrote about Simeon Grist in 1994. By the end of that year I'd put the Topanga Canyon slacker/private eye in six books, all published to rapturous reviews and zero sales. The reviews were important to me because they compensated for the absolute deluge of indifference from the reading public.

Then came the long cold winter as Simeon and his world made the sad descent from bad sales to no sales to out of print. And then from out of print to the final indignity of being pulped. I always liked old Simeon, so I asked myself, “How must he feel?” This book is my attempt to answer that question.

So here's the curve of a discarded fictional detective. While he's being written, everything is fine. He feels real, he experiences the stories as they happens, even if he sometimes can't figure out why he doesn't think up better dialogue or figure out more quickly who the killer is; but, you know, none of us always live up to our own expectations. So he might not always be totally fulfilled, but he's there. Then, when his writer moves on to the next thing, it's like the character has gone into a coma: no new adventures, no sense of time passing.

But while he blissfully snoozes, the various streams of imagination and attention that powered his world and kept him “alive” are dimming and dying out: his writer isn't writing, his readers grow fewer, bookstores stop stocking him, libraries don't replace their copies. And then one day, the publishers send the last unsold copies of the final book in the series off to be pulped, to make cheap newsprint for those annoying free “shopping papers” that materialize on unwanted on your doormat.

Cheap limbo house

At that moment, pop: He finds himself in a crime fiction limbo, in the house or apartment that was written for him. Living elsewhere in the limbo (geography up there is sort of elastic) are other failed detectives from all ages and genres of crime fiction. Worst of all, he discovers he's fictional and that even that world has come to an end. As he says in the book:

All those books, those gratifyingly thick copies of me doing the same things over and over again with minor variations and iffy dialogueripped apart, shredded, and mixed up any old way with the absolute dregs of literacy: men’s adventure magazines, coupons from Bed Bath & Beyond, instructions for assembling barbecues, faux-Regency romances, and (for a specific kind of fiber) used “facial-quality tissue.” Then the whole glop was bleached . . . mixed it with liquids of questionable origin, and pressed it flat to become huge rolls of newsprint. 

“Me; my girlfriend Eleanor Chan; the irrepressible Dexter Smif; my indispensable cop friend Hammond; plus all the bad guys and girls, momentary love interests, thugs and angels, suppliers of drugs, exposition, and local color . . . all of it, our lives and our world, reduced to pulp to carry classified ads for failing businesses, misrepresented used cars, ads for payday loan companies, life-insurance scams. All the trivial ephemera of dodgy basement-level capitalism.”

If he sounds bitter, it's because he is. It can be a blow to discover you don't actually exist, that you were a figment of the imagination, and it wasn't even your imagination.

On the somewhat brighter side, his house remains forever as it was when it was last described, which means there are always three Singha beers in the refrigerator, no matter how many he's drunk. And he's made friends with other failed detectives; his best friend is Lobelia Twombly, the heroine of a series of cooking cozies, each a tribute to another great fictional detective, each with accompanying recipes. Lobelia is particularly of her tribute to Mickey Spillane, in which she came up with a meat dessert.

But . . . it's a cheap limbo. Things are badly built and ragged at the corners, the special effects (weather, etc.) are on the level of “Plan Nine from Outer Space.” Unlike, naturally, the literary fiction limbo, which, according to those who have visited it, is high-budget all the way. Some of the characters even have theme music.

No-expense-spared special effects

So where does the mystery come in? (Remember, Simeon was a detective.) Well, there's exactly one connection with the world “down here.” When someone opens a book in which you're the main character, you can see the reader; you're looking up through the page at him or her. You can hear, although silently, what he or she is reading.

And that's what Simeon is doing when a big pair of hands circle his reader's throat from behind and, to be poetic, put out the light. When somebody kills your reader, to paraphrase The Maltese Falcon, you're supposed to do something about it.

So he has to figure out how to get down therethe most dangerous thing a character in limbo can doand solve the mystery. And there's this girl, who'd be perfect for him if she weren't, you know, real. And there's the fact that his fictional gun, down in the real world, says “Bang bang” when he pulls the trigger, which is not only embarrassing but also perilous. And there'soh, yeahhis writer is mixed up in it somehow . . .

Oh, the hell with it. It was the most fun I've ever had writing a book. I might even go back to limbo for a sequel. Or maybe not. This one took me five years to write.

. . . and thanks, Jeff.

—Tim


19 comments:

  1. Good to have you visit us here from Limbo, Tim. Having been lucky enough to get an early read of PULPED, I can honestly and correctly say it's wonderful to be back with Simeon again, and it's a great, fun ride! It's classic Simeon, classic Hallinan, and yet completely different and worth far more than the price of admission.

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    1. Wow, something magic is in the air, I actually agree with you!

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    2. Thanks, Everett. You scoured it pretty good.

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  2. This is one of the most imaginative mysteries I've ever read. Fortunately electrons never get Pulped so Simeon has a new lease on life. Hopefully he'll be back in one life or another...
    Thanks, Tim!

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  3. I am counting the minutes, Tim, till I can start reading Pulped. What a pleasure to have you back for this visit to MIE. Please stop by as often as possible. I have to go now. I'm about to start reading the most imaginative book I've heard of in a long, long time.

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    1. Ditto, on that, Sis. You will love it.

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    2. I know. I love all Tim's books. But this one!!! Wow! And it won't download till Friday. I am envious you and EvKa. I want in on that list!

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    3. And you BOUGHT IT!!! What a wonderful person and what a good friend. Hope you like it. It is ... different.

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  4. Hysterical, Tim...spilling coffee and sputtering laughing - can't wait

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    1. Thank, you, Cara -- I'll give you a copy when we meet up at Chevalier's on the 15th (I think -- but it's on my calendar.)

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  5. Well . . . if you could see me, you'd know that I'm tugging at my forelock, scraping the toe of my boot in the dust, and blinking my eyes really fast. This is the kind of homecoming people dream of but rarely get. I know it's said that home is the place where they have to take you in, but too often it's the place where someone else is using your bedroom. Thanks to all of you for the welcome and the kind comments and the enthusiasm, which (as we all know) is especially helpful at this time in the writing/publishing process. And I just got a call on my newly installed Limbo Line to say that Simeon thanks you, too. What a bunch you all are.

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    1. Your room is always open to you, though I can't vouch for the status of the sheets. :)

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  6. Hi Tim, lovely to hear from you again, my friend. This sounds like a brilliant and wonderful book. But then, I don't believe you're capable of producing anything *but* brilliant and wonderful work. I remain, as always, in awe of your talent. Can't wait to read PULPED.

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    1. Hi, Zoe -- I've missed you. Hope we meet in realtime soon. And thanks for the kind words. If you do read PULPED, please let me know what you think. Writers read it quite differently from non-writers.

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  7. The problem with PULPED is that readers will be left wondering whether they're real or part of the story. As long as they buy the book, who cares?

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  8. That would be wonderful, Stan -- talk about suspension of disbelief. And thanks to both of you for the support.

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  9. What a clever idea! Tim, I am your new colleague at Soho. You are one talented and hardworking guy.I was just at BookExpo and scored a galley of your next book, FOOLS RIVER. I lost sleep because I couldn't stop reading!

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    1. Tim does that to us, Sujata. I have also had people looking askance at me both on a flight and the NYC subway because I was close to hysterical laughing at the Junior Bender books. Watch out for this guy, he's dangerous that way. But watch even more closely for the next book.

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