A Look Back at "Blood" - The Author Objectifies

A new cover for a new edition

Can an author approach objectively the history and value of one of his novels after twenty years? Can he offer an analysis -- cursory at least if not deep -- of his own work that he feels good enough about to share? Well, I hope so because I’m about to do it as a way of celebrating the return into print of my first published novel, Blood is Pretty: The First Fixxer Adventure. Crossroad Press, which has been selling an ebook edition for the last three years and an audiobook version for the last two, has now gotten their hands ink stained with my pretty blood, and I find that wonderfully pleasing.

Blood is Pretty was originally published in print in 2003 by one of the first publishers to take advantage of the print-on-demand technology, which was brand new and even futuristic at that time. 

The old cover for an old edition

The publication was an important event for me for personal reasons, but it was not an altogether happy experience, for I soon found that this publisher considered its customers to be not readers, but writers. It was (and is) a business model with no integrity.

It was more than a relief to be introduced to Crossroad Press 

and its publisher David Niall Wilson, a fellow novelist,

by another fellow novelist Steven Saville. 

David loves writers and readers in equal measure, and there is quite a bit of integrity in that.

I wrote Blood is Pretty between 1994 and 1995. In ‘94 I was still feeling the disappointment of the cancellation -- after three months of production and one million dollars spent -- of an animated feature my partner at the time and I were producing for Richard Zanuck and MGM.

And of another project we had (along with Gary Kurtz) at MGM being put into turnaround. 

"I could of been a contender!"

Although we were excited about a feature project we were writing and going to produce for Columbia Pictures, those MGM projects would have been a great deal of fun to have made.

I had just finished my writing work on the Columbia project, and while waiting for their reaction I came across a bunch of used (but not used up) hardback John D. McDonald Travis Magee novels being offered for sale at fifty cents each. 

I grabbed them. I had never read the Travis Magee adventures, but had always wanted to. That night as I was reading through the book jacket copy for each of the six books I had bought, the idea for the basic plot of Blood is Pretty, and the personality of its hero, The Fixxer, came to me in the well-known flash. I started writing it that night, producing pages which were eventually tossed with no regrets. But it got me started.

Working on the book for that year was a complete joy. It took me back to what I first wanted to be -- a novelist.

You are known by the company you keep.

In looking at Blood is Pretty today after nearly twenty years after writing it, I can see that I put three streams and a bit of a babbling brook from my life and mind into the novel.

The First Stream --

An adolescence enamored with

James Bond, 

The Saint, 

those Men from U.N.C.L.E., 

the operatives from the Impossible Missions Force, 

those Avengers, Mr. Steed and Mrs. Peel, 

Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott, who I Spied each week, 

and I even Maxwell Smart.  

All of these heroes crowding my brain in my formative years had to have an influence; it could not have been helped. And it led me to an interest in other heroes that I had been introduced to but had not really spent time with, such as 

the literary Saint in Leslie Charteris’ books, 

Bulldog Drummond, 

Nick Carter, 

The Shadow, 

Doc Savage.... 

By the 1990s all of this was a pleasant stew in my mind just gently simmering away. Somehow reading about MacDonald’s Travis Magee brought that simmer to a boil, and out came Blood is Pretty and my hero, The Fixxer.  

True to its antecedents Blood is Pretty is a work featuring thrills, suspense, and action. The hero is witty and charming (or so I tried to make him, and readers have agreed). He is sophisticated, not scruffy. But, in his own way -- he quite dangerous.

The Second Stream --

My reading of the great science writers of the day.

Here’s a list of real life heroes for you:  

Jacob Bronowski,

Carl Sagan, 

Richard Dawkins, 

Francis Crick, 

Paul Churchland -- 

scientists and thinkers and eloquent writers on science.

They, and others, were an education for me far greater than any I received in science in high school or college. Because of their influence and driving of my curiosity about the workings of reality, the “Macguffin” in Blood is Pretty is a computer program that works on the mind, allowing me to sneak in a bit of science (entertainingly presented, I hope), specifically one theory on how the mind works. I cribbed from the ideas of Dr. Rodolfo Llinás (as reported in the New York Times), 

a professor of neuroscience at New York University, on how the brain creates our reality. I used them as the basis for my "MacGuffin," a device call "Veritas" that can fool the brain and create new realities. And he who holds the power to create people's realities....

The Third Stream --

My Time in Hollywood.

When I started writing Blood is Pretty I had been involved in the film industry in one form or another for about twenty years. I started as an editor and feature writer for The Cinemaphile, 

Vol 1 No1 of The Cinemaphile. Short-lived but long remembered by me

a film publication covering Hollywood of old by catering to the film collectors of that time (who collected real film films in 8MM and 16MM), and covering Hollywood of the time by catering to cineasts and movie lovers crazy for current cinema. This led to a job with an animation society, 

which led to an animation programming job with a film festival, 

Addressing the crowd at screening I programmed at the Los Angeles International Film Exposition

which led to my setting up shop as a one-man publicity company with clients such as 

Chuck Jones, 

Chuck Jones, me, and Mel Blanc goofing off at a recording session.

Richard Williams, 

With Richard Williams and his coronet at Jimmy Ryan's Jazz Club in New York.

and Bill Melendez, 

Offering Bill Melendez a trim.

which led to executive and producing jobs working with such players as Gary Kurtz (Star Wars), 

Richard Zanuck (Jaws), 

and Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters), 

which led to screenwriting.

And even a detour to Montreal to produce programs for the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival, such as The Top Ten Funniest Hollywood Cartoons of All Time!

During this time there was fun, travel, new experiences, expense accounts, and limo rides. And all the horror stories you have ever heard about ego-clashing, back-stabbing, upstaging Hollywood. 

But as I always counseled colleagues who would sit around and piss and moan and bitch about the horrors of Hollywood: “Hey, Hollywood is an all-volunteer army.” Which, coincidentally, provided the title for my second Fixxer novel.

This near twenty year experience -- both the fun and the horror --  was so prominent in my head as I sat down to write Blood is Pretty, that it was inevitable that it would become the playground for the novel.

My Hero, The Fixxer -- two Xs mind you, two Xs to set him apart from all those mundane, humorless fixers in organized crime and politics and big business -- plies his craft among the denizens of Hollywood who are constantly breaking lives and careers and good common sense, and needing it all to be fixed. And, going back to the first stream and despite the reality of the Hollywood setting, The Fixxer fits comfortably in his larger-than-life skin to take on the heightened (if not higher) reality of dire plots and black-hearted thugs and a complex villain.

And so, thinking of these two streams, I have described Blood is Pretty as 

The Player 

meets The Saint 

as introduced by James Bond.

The Babbling Brook --

My natural (some might say unnatural) and normal (some might say abnormal) sense of humor. 

I cannot dissect that sense of humor, 

if it would even be possible to dissect it, but it has always been with me, leading to askance looks from relatives when I was a child, 

Not an actual relative.

and being declared a “satirist” by the cartoonist of my college newspaper for which I wrote a column. To be called a satirist by a cartoonist is either a high compliment -- or a warning.

In either case, Blood is Pretty has certain satiric aspects which I hope the reader finds amusing among the blood.

And there is blood. 

Blood splattered, 

blood pooled, 

blood spurted. 

But, I suppose you should expect that in an adventure/suspense/thriller novel with blood in the title.

Some of my more raw-tending-toward-outrageous humor comes out in the character of Petey, who has become loved by some of readers of the book. Petey could be the bastard child of 

James Bond’s Q 

and Gilbert Gottfried, 

if such a thing were physically possible. 

Jeff Foxworthy’s manager 

Jeff Foxworthy - not his manager.

-- one of those who has looked askance at me in my adult years 
(I don't think Jeff was too sure about me either)

-- used to say to me, “Leiva, you are one sick puppy.”  I co-opted this as a statement directed by The Captain, one of The Fixxer’s aids, to Petey.  The Captain is very good at looking askance.

Some of the more subtle sense of humor I believe I have -- I hope I have -- comes out in The Fixxer’s first person narration, and in stretches of dialog that I like to think of as vaudeville.

Combining all these streams -- and the babbling book -- into a lake of fresh water I strived to create in Blood is Pretty a larger-than-life, hero-centric adventure thriller with suspense, humor, Hollywood dirt, and science. I present it to you for your entertainment and edification and -- an admirable goal for a writer -- your reading pleasure.

So if you are looking for a thriller a little different from the standard, with its tongue sometimes in its cheek, sometimes sticking out, with a hero more larger-than-life than down-to-earth; or if you are tired of those light comedy thrillers with no gravitas, and would be interested in one with gravitas (even if it defies gravity on occasion), and if you're interested in the location for the action being a den of iniquity that the curious inquire about, then I have no hesitation in recommending Blood is Pretty to one and all.

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