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Subscribe!Body Bags
Thursday, November 05, 2009
(I know, I know, I haven't blogged in like forever. With a book on the way and a new baby on the way, it's been a bit crazy at the Mullen household. But since I'm struggling through the latest toddler virus my son loving shared with me, and I don't seem to have the verve for fiction at the moment, back to the blog I come! I promise to be here more often in the coming weeks, as part of the launch for the new book, for which I am totally and incredibly excited. And on to today's post.)
I spent the morning deleting body bags from my new novel.
Wouldn't it be cool if books were like DVDs and came with special Behind the Scenes bonus features? Instead of a backstage interview with George Clooney, or storyboards from Tim Burton's earliest brainstorming session, or commentary from the director and cinematographer about how they got that cool tracking shot over the beach where all the soldiers lay dying amid twenty simultaneous explosions, etc., you'd get stuff like this: tales of writers frantically making corrections to their text in the final minutes before it goes to the printer. Not nearly as interesting, true. But this one involves body bags!
My new book, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, comes out in less than three months. (Mark your calendars! January 26.) It takes place in the 1930s, and it has some gunfights, and the aftermaths of some gunfights. In the final pass-through proofread, an alert and historically astute reader noted that, in one scene, I make a certain use of a black, plastic, zippered body bag. Specifically, a character who is not entirely dead finds himself in one. It's a cool scene. Kind of funny, kind of twisted. I'm fairly confident it hasn't been done before (at least, I'm quite confident it hasn't been done the way I do it, but that would be giving away too much). Alas, the astute proofreader pointed out that body bags did not yet exist in the 1930s.
Some frantic emailing led to some frantic Googling, and some more researching, and some angsting. I've read many, many books about the 1930s and crime or both over the last three years, and I could have sworn I'd seen reference to body bags back then. Apparently, I hadn't. Or I'd been reading the books of other misinformed writers. Mattress covers or bedsheets were the more common method of corpse transportation until after the Second World War, I am now told. I consulted my notes and, alas, I failed to find any record as to whether body bags did in fact exist in 1934. If they did, it's safe to assume that they would have been rare and cutting edge technology, and would not have been used in rural districts of Missouri, which happens to be where the relevant scene is set.
So: Rewrite! Call in the writers! Wait, that's me. It meant I had to lose a few lines I liked, as well as a certain description of the sound of a zipper, etc. And it meant I had to beg and plead the very friendly and patient copyeditor into allowing me to make these changes at the three-month-and-counting mark, which in book publishing is equivalent to the last minute. But I can now safely say there are no anachronistic references to body bags in the version of the book that will soon be mass-produced and available at a bookstore (let's hope) or Target or Wal-Mart near you. There will no doubt be other anachronisms in the book despite the best efforts of myself, my various editors and proofreaders, and at least one history professor I enlisted specifically for this task. I can predict an email or two from retired history professors or 1930s buffs who insist I used a slang term two years before it was invented, or the wrong model of car, or a hair wax that wasn't really in vogue that year. It's these little things that can make the writing of historical fiction so vexing. But historical fiction is also the only way I can vicariously rob banks, and drive a 1933 red Terraplane, and date a wealthy automotive heiress, and come back from the dead.
More on that later.
link to this | File: Writing
I spent the morning deleting body bags from my new novel.
Wouldn't it be cool if books were like DVDs and came with special Behind the Scenes bonus features? Instead of a backstage interview with George Clooney, or storyboards from Tim Burton's earliest brainstorming session, or commentary from the director and cinematographer about how they got that cool tracking shot over the beach where all the soldiers lay dying amid twenty simultaneous explosions, etc., you'd get stuff like this: tales of writers frantically making corrections to their text in the final minutes before it goes to the printer. Not nearly as interesting, true. But this one involves body bags!
My new book, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, comes out in less than three months. (Mark your calendars! January 26.) It takes place in the 1930s, and it has some gunfights, and the aftermaths of some gunfights. In the final pass-through proofread, an alert and historically astute reader noted that, in one scene, I make a certain use of a black, plastic, zippered body bag. Specifically, a character who is not entirely dead finds himself in one. It's a cool scene. Kind of funny, kind of twisted. I'm fairly confident it hasn't been done before (at least, I'm quite confident it hasn't been done the way I do it, but that would be giving away too much). Alas, the astute proofreader pointed out that body bags did not yet exist in the 1930s.
Some frantic emailing led to some frantic Googling, and some more researching, and some angsting. I've read many, many books about the 1930s and crime or both over the last three years, and I could have sworn I'd seen reference to body bags back then. Apparently, I hadn't. Or I'd been reading the books of other misinformed writers. Mattress covers or bedsheets were the more common method of corpse transportation until after the Second World War, I am now told. I consulted my notes and, alas, I failed to find any record as to whether body bags did in fact exist in 1934. If they did, it's safe to assume that they would have been rare and cutting edge technology, and would not have been used in rural districts of Missouri, which happens to be where the relevant scene is set.
So: Rewrite! Call in the writers! Wait, that's me. It meant I had to lose a few lines I liked, as well as a certain description of the sound of a zipper, etc. And it meant I had to beg and plead the very friendly and patient copyeditor into allowing me to make these changes at the three-month-and-counting mark, which in book publishing is equivalent to the last minute. But I can now safely say there are no anachronistic references to body bags in the version of the book that will soon be mass-produced and available at a bookstore (let's hope) or Target or Wal-Mart near you. There will no doubt be other anachronisms in the book despite the best efforts of myself, my various editors and proofreaders, and at least one history professor I enlisted specifically for this task. I can predict an email or two from retired history professors or 1930s buffs who insist I used a slang term two years before it was invented, or the wrong model of car, or a hair wax that wasn't really in vogue that year. It's these little things that can make the writing of historical fiction so vexing. But historical fiction is also the only way I can vicariously rob banks, and drive a 1933 red Terraplane, and date a wealthy automotive heiress, and come back from the dead.
More on that later.
link to this | File: Writing