Author Event with Denise Hamilton & Jim Pascoe
I went to an author event at the local library tonight that featured Denise Hamilton and Jim Pascoe discussing the collection Los Angeles Noir (I’ve read most of the [Insert City Here] Noir collections, including that one) and writing in general. Although some of the Noir collections are less compelling than others (Toronto Noir just didn’t convince me; that city’s just too darn clean!), not surprisingly, Los Angeles Noir is one of the strongest of the series, and I remembered Pascoe’s story as soon as he started to describe it.
I find it interesting to learn at such events that some habit I thought was peculiar to me is more common than I thought. Since I wasn’t formally trained as a fiction writer and have until this last year determinedly avoided author talks, such moments are always an epiphany — “you mean, others do that, too?” For example, both Harlen Coben and Denise Hamilton will cut out scenes they like but just can’t use and save them in a separate file rather than deleting them. Apparently they, like me, find it much easier to delete a beloved passage that way, because it doesn’t feel quite so permanent, even though you’ll probably never go back and look at those lost scenes again. And Hamilton described an extensive backwriting effort of hers that struck me as oh-so-familiar, in which she had to go back after 200 pages of one of her books and insert a brand-new character — the murderer!
I bought and had signed a copy of Jim Pascoe’s Undertown manga while I was there, having learned from experience what a courtesy it is to the authors to buy something, and chatted a little with Pascoe about OEL manga. As a researcher in the field, I wish I’d had more time to probe his experiences and thoughts about the way manga are overwhelming/being absorbed into the Western comic book industry. I learned that Lillian Diaz-Przybyl, the TokyoPop editor who’s been so generous about answering my questions about yaoi, is now his editor on the project.
Denise Hamilton mentioned Esotouric tours into “the secret heart of” Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the Black Dahlia tour is this Saturday, or else I’d love to go on it. I have a strange but deep appreciation for Los Angeles history — I don’t treasure this city the way I treasure Venice, Italy, but I do find it endlessly fascinating. I most certainly will take some of these tours in the future; they sound fantastic.
drupagliassotti @ June 18, 2008