Writing For a Living
In 1983, I decided that I wanted to write for a living.
Reading Writer’s Digest in 1983 was a major
revelation. I found out regular people like me could be paid to write.
I’d been a radio broadcast journalist for 2 decades, writing what I called disposable
non-fiction: you write it, you read it, you throw it away.
However, my full-time freelance writing career began in October
1983 when I bought my first computer, a Kaypro with two floppy disk
drives and a 9-inch green screen.
I worked diligently, and uncommon success as a full-time freelance writer came quickly.
From October 1983 to June
1990, I wrote 780 articles for a half-dozen regional business
magazines.
Business magazines were hot at the time, and I wrote
for three of them regularly. Two examples of the business pieces are: “The
Strong Dollar: How has it Affected Tampa’s Port” and “The Department of
Defense buys in the Tampa Bay area.”
In January 1984, I taught a workshop on writing
with computers at the Florida Suncoast Writers Conference
in St. Petersburg. Writing on computers was a new and unusual
thing in 1984, and I authored several articles about it for popular
computer magazines.
In 1985, it occurred to me I wanted to do a
novel.
I couldn’t imagine writing publishable fiction, so I
set a goal of learning to write fiction. while writing non-fiction
and working on the radio. I worked nights at WDUV-FM/WBRD-AM Radio in
Bradenton to support our income.
The beginning of my first novel, Kill Cue,
takes place at the very station where I worked although I changed its
name. A disk jockey like me is murdered but no one knows at first because
the station is automated.
When I visited the Florida Suncoast Writers
Conference at the Bayboro Campus in St. Petersburg.
Mel Parker, then Senior Editor at Berkeley, said, “What
I’d like to see is a non-traditional investigator in an unusual setting. I am
especially interested in a young, female protagonist.”
That gave me a great idea. With a steno
notebook and a pen, I ducked into a sandwich shop on campus and wrote a page of
notes which became what I called the Veronica Slate Mystery Series.
My protagonist was 30-year-old Veronica Slate,
a late-night radio talk show host on fictional WAQT Talk Radio 1020 in Tampa,
Florida. She lived on Coffee Pot Boulevard in St. Petersburg
with two cats and a personal computer.
Her father, Archie Slate, an ex-FBI Agent who retired after Veronica’s mother was killed in a car-bomb explosion intended for him, lived in the tiny waterfront community of Anna Maria Island.
Veronica and her dad were remarkably close,
and neither was recovered from the pointless death of Elizabeth Leigh Slate.
Veronica is not a detective or a private investigator. She is simply a
curious, intelligent, young woman with a heightened sense of justice and fair
play.
The next day, I walked up to New York Literary Agents Jim
and Liz Trupin, thrust my business card into Jim’s hand, and
said, “When you hear from me in a week, remember I'm the guy who looks like
Pavarotti.” I was bearded and
fat.
Two days later, I sent Jim Trupin a two-page proposal
for the Veronica Slate Series, including basic plots of the first ten
books.
Jim Trupin wrote the next week that “Veronica
Slate is clever enough to make a series. I’d like to show the proposal to Mel Parker
and see what he says.” Parker was the editor who claimed he wanted “A
non-traditional investigator in an unusual setting.” He said he was
especially interested in seeing, “a young female protagonist.”
However, Parker did not care for my
young female protagonist.
Jim spent the next month showing the proposal to
other editors. Christopher Cox at Ballantine, wrote, “It would
be a fun project, but I have no idea if Lary Crews can write.”
A valid concern. In his patented low-key way, Jim
wrote, “Apparently the idea is finding favor but if it is going to sell,
you'll have to write the first book in the series.”
I wanted to call it Dead Air but two other
mystery novels with that title were popular at the time so I called it Kill Cue, an
old radio term for when the engineer slices his finger across his throat,
indicating that the announcer should kill, or turn off, his microphone.
I cultivated a habit of rising at 4:30, making
coffee, and writing my novel from 5 to 7 each morning. I continued my
day job writing magazine articles, and my seven to midnight radio job.
It took me eight months of two hours a day, five days a
week, to write and revise the book.
October 1986, I printed the entire manuscript of Kill
Cue and mailed it to my agent.
I couldn’t decide whether to insure it for $25, the cost
of the paper, or $35,000, its value to me.
The lady at the post office saw things more clearly and
insured it for $50.
