MALE MUSES

by Melodie Johnson Howe

All of my short stories, except for one, feature an aging actress called Diana Poole. It’s important to note that aging occurs much faster in Hollywood than it does, let’s say, in Kansas. It’s a phenomenon that only tiny, driven producers and cranked-up agents seem to understand. But I digress. I chose a continuing character because years ago I fell in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby stories. As most of you know, Pat Hobby is an out of work screenwriter who will do anything to get back onto the studio lot to have another shot at making it big. At the same time I discovered Raymond Chandler’s short stories and fell in love all over again. Here was a writer who could capture the disturbing sensation of the Santa Ana winds by describing a woman feeling the edge of a knife while staring a the back of her husband’s neck. Who wouldn’t want to write like that?

It wasn’t until I wrote my first novel that I was asked to write a short story for a Sisters In Crime anthology. I blithely agreed and then panicked. What the hell was I going to write about? Could I actually write a short story? My previous attempts were written in my literary period. For example, one was called “Good-bye, Mrs. Rubberman”. My literary style consisted of stealing from Paul Simon and desperately searching for a metaphor. Needless to say these stories were never published and rightly so. But I was learning my craft.

Now I was a published author. People thought I knew what I was doing. So I called on my two male muses: Fitzgerald and Chandler. They hovered over me drinking, and smoking their pipes. Chandler wore these funny little white gloves that, he said, made him feel like a beauty queen. We never discussed them.

I told my muses that I had once been an actress. That I had glimpsed stardom and knew what it was like be a working actress — in Hollywood jargon this means you barely eke out a living. My muses and I decided that I’d create a female Pat Hobby who was an actress instead of a writer. I would name her Diana Poole. Then I’d place her in Chandler’s world of betrayal and murder. Nobody reading my stories would know this, of course. The important thing for a writer is to make her work her own. And I made that clear to my muses. Soon I wrote my first Diana Poole story, “Dirty Blonde”.

Unasked by anyone, I wrote my second, “Another Tented Evening”. This short story led me to Janet Hutchings at EQMM. Ten Diana Poole stories later my male muses and I have found a home. Fitzgerald keeps falling off the wagon and Chandler still wears those silly gloves to cover his rash. I think he’s allergic to his beloved cat Taki or his wife. But I don’t say anything. You know what it’s like dealing with men.