Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #1. Arthur Conan Doyle
in a book store near you this July. And I’ve always been fond of Harry Challenge in both novels and short stories.
SHMM: With regard to comic books, what have you done, and what your views of the genre’s significance? When did your interest in comics begin, and what are some of your likes and dislikes?
RG: I got hooked on funnies at a very early age. I was reading the Sunday comic sections before I could read, spreading them out on the kitchen floor and savoring the pictures. Comic books came along about the same time I did, and I started buying them (financed by my mother) from about the age of four. Graphic images of all sorts have always appealed to me, even the ones I turn out. In the middle 1970’s, Gil Kane and his family moved into the same Connecticut town where we were living. He was a great fan of science fiction and was familiar with my work. Or so he said. He introduced me to Roy Thomas, who was the head editor at Marvel back then. I got about a dozen scripting jobs, mostly adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch and the like. In the late 1970’s, Kane and I collaborated on a syndicated comic strip called Star Hawks. In the 1990’s I wrote the first eighteen issues of William Shatner’s Tekworld for Marvel. I was never able to work on DC comic books and the late Julie Schwartz once told me I ought to stick to novel writing. I still buy comic books every week and like a wide range of stuff, from Bone to 100 Bullets.
SHMM: Which genre authors influenced your style and career?
RG: I wrote fan letters to a few of my favorite writers in my distant youth: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer and Leslie Charteris among them. Burroughs and Rohmer obliged with autographs and a few kind words. Charteris actually wrote a couple of letters answering my questions. I read Charteris in those days not for his plots but for the adventure and the humor. The Saint was all over the place in the 1940’s. Movies, radio, comics and the affordable two-bit paperback. Charteris even had his own paperback outfit — Chartered Books for a time. The lesson from him was that a mystery could also be funny. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that some of his stuff was ghosted. By Henry Kutter (another of my favorites), Cleve Cartmill, etc.
SHMM: Do you have advice or observations on the plotting process, which some writers regard as the toughest part of story writing?
RG: My approach to plotting? My basic theory is that a good short story is constructed like a good joke. Or maybe a good shaggy dog story. So you have to know the punchline before you can start telling it. Usually I try to know what the ending is going to be and sometimes I even write out the last lines first. That way, I know where I’m heading. I must admit that in recent years I sometimes start a story without that punchline clearly in mind. To get myself going on the plotting process, I often think up titles first. Those often trigger a plot. Although I have some titles that I jotted down years ago and am still trying to figure out a story to go with. One a long time on my list is The Case of the Extra Ventriloquist. Another method for me to get a plot going is to put the end at the beginning, but in a vague way that is hopefully intriguing. For example
— “As to why they found his body floating in the Pacific wearing those strange shoes.” Then you go back and explain why. Another source of inspiration is the old what if? approach. Works for both fantasy and mystery.
SHMM: Where do you think the business is going? What’s wrong — or right — with it?
RG: No idea. I just hope it lasts as long as I do.
SHMM: This issue contains a new Harry Challenge story. How did you come up with Harry and his magician sidekick in the first place?
RG: Harry was inspired in part by my interest in Victorian fiction. Especially the sort of romantic thrillers produced by the likes of Anthony Hope with such novels as The Prisoner of Zenda. And there’s a bit of an homage to one of the favorite writers of my teens, the incomparable Sax Rohmer. It occurred to me some years ago that there was no reason why I couldn’t turn out stuff like that myself. I see the Harry Challenge yarns as falling somewhere between pastiche and spoof. Harry first appeared a couple of decades ago in a paperback novel titled The Prisoner of Blackwood Castle. Most all of my novels, even the ones that aren’t officially mysteries, tend to have a mystery plot and so it seemed only logical to make Harry a detective in the tradition of both Nick Carter and Carnacki. The Great Lorenzo, his magician friend, was partially inspired by my interest in stage magic of a century ago, especially the gaudy posters. And I’ve been using plump, avuncular likeable windbags in my stories since grade school days. The other recurring character in the series is Jennie Barr, the daredevil reporter who frequently crosses Harry’s path. She’s part Nellie Bly, a real life daredevil reporter, and part a fictional reporter that Robert Barr wrote an adventure novel about and part my feisty writer wife.
SHMM: Are there any of your interests outside of your writing that you feel have influenced your writing?
RG: Comics have always been an influence. I’ve written quite a few stories, as well as a couple of novels, about cartoonists and the comics world. All the radio dramas and comedies I listened to while young also had their effect and I think my habit of telling quite a bit of a story in dialogue I owe to my long ago listening habits. I’ve always been a fan of jazz and the blues and I’ve used lines from blues songs for story and book titles — such as Broke Down Engine. This is something I was more inclined to do in my younger days.
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