Origins of ASIAN HAZE.
One of the most asked questions a writer gets is, "Where do you get your ideas?" My first impulse is to sarcastically answer, "Walla Walla, Washington." But since it is a question asked out of genuine sincerity and curiosity, I'll hold back the sarcasm as much as I can.
Where did the idea for ASIAN HAZE come from? Short answer: My brain. (Oops, there goes the sarcasm again.) Actually, it's a combination of many ideas and inspirations. I guess the earliest inspiration comes from the great 1970s series "The Rockford Files," starring the late, great James Garner. It was well-written, well-acted, well-conceived, and had a great sense of humor. And I loved the character of Jim Rockford. He was my first private eye hero, either in visual or printed media The other show that greatly inspired my wanting to write about crime was "Miami Vice." It had a look that no other show had when it premired back in 1984, back when Ronald Reagan was in the Oval Office and Michael Jackson with his one sequined glove seemingly ruled the cultural world. It was both glitzy and gritty. Its use of the current pop music of the time, along with great visual images was genius. And, it got me fascinated with the drug trade. Not enough to want to personally consider it as a way to make a living, but in the same way that "Breaking Bad" in more recent years caused people to be fascinated with the drug trade, or that "The Godfather" and its sequels awoke a mass curiosity about the Mafia. The wondering about what made these people take this illegal direction with their lives in the first place.
And at the same time as "Miami Vice" was capturing my imagination, I was introduced to someone else who inspired me to want to write about crime. His name was Elmore Leonard, and the first book of his that I read was "Glitz" when it was first published back in the spring of 1985. It was unlike anything I had read up to that point. It was stylish, but spare. Dramatic, but laced with enough humor to make it utterly appealing. Characters that you loved, even if they were the bad guys. And it was hip. Everything Elmore Leonard wrote was hip, even, in their own unique way, the early Westerns he wrote back in the Fifties and Sixties. Elmore Leonard was cool to me in the way most TV viewers thought of Fonzie as cool back in the 1970s, myself included.
After Leonard, other crime writers came into my universe throughout the following years: Robert B. Parker (whose character of Spenser was my first private eye hero to come from the world of literature, even though I first watched the television series based on the books starring Robert Urich before I read Parker). Tony Hillerman. Jonathan Kellerman. Michael Connelly. Robert Crais. Dennis Lehane. John Sandford. Lee Child. And others I'm sure I'm forgetting now, but will occur to me later. The point is, I was drawn to this genre. Its spare, to-the-point writing style. Its study of character, the examination of what makes people commit crimes. Its sense of place, whether it was the Boston of Parker and Lehane, or the Los Angeles of Kellerman, Connelly, and Crais, or the southwestern Navajo landscape of HIllerman. In other words, I was hooked for life.
The character of Randall Arthur came from several different places in my imagination. I wondered what it would be like to be both book-smart and street-smart at the same time. Most people are either one or the other. Some are both. Some are neither. I wanted to write about someone who was just as comfortable giving a history lecture to a crowd of college students as he was investigating crimes, even sometimes killing people. After long thought, I came up with a man whose dream was to teach history, but whose dream got momentarily sidetracked by a personal tragedy, a tragedy that drove him to a life opposite of that of the academic. What if he could eventually get to a point to where he could live both lives at the same time? (Quick side note: The idea of this man having a clandestine life in the mysterious world of Asia also came from "Miami Vice." Those of you who were regular watchers of the show remember the character of Lt. Martin Castillo, played brillantly by Edward James Olmos. That character, before ending up as Crockett and Tubb's boss, had worked undercover for the DEA in Asia. That idea so intrigued me that I decided to borrow, or steal, if you choose to look at it that way, the idea for my protagonist.)
So, where to put this character? Would I put him in an exisitng, real-life city, or would I make one up totally from my imagination? Well, it's a lot more fun for me to make up stuff. So I invented the mythical town as Falcon City, NY. I put it in New York State and on the banks of Lake Ontario for reasons I really can't explain, but I'm sure exist subconsciously. If you forced an answer from me, I guess I would say it had to do with my strange fascination with the city of Toronto, Canada, also on the shores of Lake Ontario, I had as a kid (my all-time favorite rock band, Rush, come from that area, and are briefly mentioned in ASIAN HAZE) and being a fan (especally in the crazy days of the early 1980s, when Luke Spencer, his girlfriend Laura, and Robert Scorpio fought the evil Cassadine family from freezing over the world with their weather machine) of "General Hospital," which took place in the mythical city of Port Charles, NY.
Finally, the plot. Well, without giving too much away for those who have not read it, I will just say it is a combination of the fascination I mentioned earlier with the drug trade, and my take on a plot idea used in a lot of daytime soaps, especially since the 1980s. I won't reveal what that plot idea is, but when you read the book, I'm sure you'll get it.
So, that's how this book came to be. A lot of other ingredients were added to my imaginary stew, but I'll save those for another time. Some I have already wrote about on the ASIAN HAZE Facebook page, so if you haven't read those yet, please feel free to visit the page.
Until next time, stay happy, stay healthy, stay as sane as you can in this crazy world, and be good to your fellow human being. If you can achieve all that, I'd say you were good.
