Spotlight Profile
February 2001
When his first Joe Portugal mystery was published, Nathan Walpow finally found something he wanted to spend his life doing. That was the good news.
The bad news was that The Cactus Club Killings didn't exactly take the world by storm.
In Nathan's words: "No one knew the book existed. I'd been warned over and over that my publisher would care little for pushing my little paperback original, but the level of their apathy took me by surprise."
Not to worry, though. Nathan is nothing if not quick off the mark. His second book in the series, Death of an Orchid Lover, was published last year, and the third Joe Portugal is half-written. Nathan has put it aside to write a thriller.
Call him an accidental writer. He hopscotched across the country (New York to California by way of Oklahoma), dipping in and out of careers in engineering, computers and acting, before settling down to write.
To learn more about that, let's go for a skip down the yellow brick road ...
IC
Nathan, do you have a favorite quote?
Nathan
Mantra or whatever, two I'd like to share. One deals with writing, the other with the world at large.
In reverse order -- 90% of everything is crap. At least I think that's how it goes. I've heard it attributed to Theodore Sturgeon, the science fiction writer. It's pretty much how I feel about the world and especially the arts.
And to apply it to writing: Accept that 90% of your competitors for the publishing slot are absolutely talentless. You've just increased your possibility of being published by an order of magnitude.
The writing mantra: Kill Your Darlings. I've heard it attributed to Stephen King, but I first heard it from mystery writer William Relling Jr., my first and almost only writing teacher, when I was in his novel-writing workshop.
Translation: Cut out all the stuff that you absolutely love that doesn't move the story along, illuminate character, or both. It was the hardest thing I had to learn about writing and one of the ones that got me published.
No matter how clever, how glorious, how timeless you think your prose is, if it doesn't serve a purpose, get rid of it. If you can't stand to delete it, keep it for another book, or make a poem out of it, or go to the county fair and have them burn it into a chunk of wood.
IC
You moved to Los Angeles in 1979. You got a day job in computers, a master's degree in communications management from the University of Southern California, and pursued an acting career. Tell us more.
Nathan
To this day I'm not sure what "communications management" was supposed to be. I'd continued doing community theater when I moved to L.A., and one day I looked around, realized some of my friends who were not any better actors than I was were actively pursuing acting careers, and jumped in. Spent most of the 1980s doing the whole actor thing: photos and resumes, showcases and plays in tiny storefronts, the occasional real work.
I continued working at my hateful day job; then I sold a house I'd bought when I moved to L.A. and pursued acting full-time -- meaning I spent half the day complaining that I wasn't getting any auditions and the other half working on my stamp collection.
Eventually, I got a job in the interior design industry, and discovered that while I abhorred mainframe computers I got a kick out of working with PCs. Which I've been doing ever since. (Nowadays pretty much exclusively in website design.) I had no life-long dream of being an actor. Doing it at all was something of an accident, and trying it professionally was unplanned as well.
IC
What sparked your interest in writing, specifically, in writing mysteries?
Nathan
Another accident. You may have gathered by now that I haven't had much of a plan for my life. I've stumbled into and out of things. My writing life started when the acting thing had pretty much petered out. I'd stopped pursuing professional work and decided I sucked at comedy improv, which was one of the things that kept me going through all those acting years.
One day I was leafing through the UCLA Extension catalogue and I stumbled upon the writing courses. I thought, Hmm, that might be fun. So I took a beginning fiction course. This was in 1992. I hadn't written a bit of fiction since seventh grade. I quickly discovered I was a much better writer than I ever was an actor.
When I sold my first short story, I started a novel. It was a quirky science-fantasy thing that was too weird for mainstream publishers and too everyday for SF houses. (I should point out that most of what I wrote in those early days was science fiction and contemporary fantasy.)
Next I started a mainstream comic novel with a theater setting, which I spent two years on, never finishing the first draft. The main problem was that it was a bunch of somewhat interesting characters in search of a story. My first writing teacher, Bill Relling (author of the Jack Donne mystery series), whose novel workshop I spent a couple of years in as well, suggested I try writing a mystery.
I'd just finished reading the complete works of Raymond Chandler, but otherwise had little interest in mysteries. I also pointed out that someone with as little plotting ability as I have had no business writing a mystery. Bill suggested otherwise. He was right.
IC
Did the character of Joe Portugal spring full-blown, so that all you had to do was build a story around him, or did the first mystery come from bits and pieces of your own life and interests?
Nathan
All I knew about Joe when I started was that he had a collection of cacti and other succulent plants (like, what a friggin' surprise, me). All I knew about the story was that it started with a female friend of Joe's being found dead with a poisonous succulent sticking out of her mouth. Everything else developed as I wrote.
Joe became an actor early on, because it was a good way to give him a lot of time off for amateur sleuthing activities. Also early on, he was a former action show third banana living off his residuals. I don't remember how he became a moderately successful TV commercial actor.
The name: I had Joe pretty early, but Portugal took a while. I got it off a friend whose last name is Portigal. I thought Portugal just worked better. Gina -- Joe's sidekick/best friend/former lover/possible love interest -- started out as Joe's sister. She was a schoolteacher for a while before she decided I should make her an interior designer.
I can't remember at what point I knew who the culprit was. Certainly not when I started, because I hadn't even thought up the character yet. Because I'm still a lousy plotter, I've continued writing the same way -- I have a beginning and maybe an ending, and I just start at the beginning and see what happens. This results in first drafts that tend to be half again as long as the final book.
IC
Did publication of The Cactus Club Killingschange your life? Can you count the ways -- long lost friends coming out of the woodwork, old girlfriends showing up for booksignings, readers offering suggestions for your next book?
Nathan
The main way in which publication changed my life was that, at the age of fifty, I'd finally found something to spend my life doing. Something that I was good at, that I enjoyed, and that I thought I could be successful at. I never really expected success as an actor. I do expect it as a writer. I think my two Joe Portugal paperbacks so far are only a small first step in my career.
Also, as a mystery writer, I feel part of a group of people that I'm very at home with -- people I can hang out with, people I can have no contact with for a year and pick up a conversation almost where I left off. I had this feeling to some extent with actors, but not to the same depth.
People have come out of the woodwork. Acting friends, for one thing. For instance, the woman who was my closest friend in my acting days, and who I hadn't seen in eight or nine years, suddenly e-mailed me one day; another acting friend had seen my book. A guy from upstate New York, who I hadn't seen in twenty-five years, got in touch with me. Just recently, some of my Oklahoma City colleagues tracked me down and we've all been bringing each other up to date.
I've had a couple of old girlfriends show up for booksignings. One I've stayed friendly with, but the other was a complete surprise. It was a woman I'd done a play with in my first years in L.A., with whom I had a very bizarre ... oh, never mind.
I do get readers asking for advice on plants, partially because when Cactus Club came out, I gave out small plants at signings and to people who contacted me through my website -- which, by the way, is at http://walpow.com.
And the favorite plants thing, too -- lots of people want me to do a rose book. I tell them all that I don't want to make each book about a particular group of plants. The third Joe Portugal, The Petal Pushers,is about the people who work at the Los Angeles Flower Market.
IC
You said you were disappointed with Dell's lack of promotional support when The Cactus Club Killings was published. How so? How about editing? Are you still under contract to Dell? Do you at this stage have an agent and/or a publicist?
Nathan
I had a publicity person who was eager to work for me, but she had little in the way of resources to back up her eagerness. An example: The official release date was a couple of weeks after the Malice Domestic mystery convention. But books were printed and available. I had to jump through multiple hoops to get some for sale at the convention, and when I did it was just a handful that sold out by Saturday afternoon.
While Dell's sales and promotion efforts were disappointing, their editorial work was fine. I got very good notes from my editor for The Cactus Club Killings -- mostly kill-your-darlings stuff that tightened the story up. But she left shortly before Cactus Club came out -- which was, I think, one reason the support afterward was so rotten. The guy who replaced her gave me good notes on Death of an Orchid Lover, but I didn't have the rapport with him I had with my original editor.
I was a victim of the great paperback original author purge of '99. Just four months after Cactus Club was released, I was informed that Dell didn't want any more Joe Portugals. I soon found out that in a reorganization/merger of the Bantam and Dell staffs, the Dell people lost out all around, both the staffs and the authors. A whole bunch of us were let go, many with much longer histories with Dell than I had.
I'm still with my agent, and she's been an absolute angel. She's very excited about the thriller I'm working on now, which is a huge departure from my Joe P. books. Fans of Joe, never fear: The third one's half-written and I'll go back to it after I finish the thriller. I never had a publicist, other than the barely-past-teenager Dell assigned me.
IC
How did you research your second book, Death of an Orchid Lover?
Nathan
It was a big switch for me, since with Cactus Lover I already knew all the background I needed. I read orchid books and visited orchid websites. I joined both local and national orchid societies. I went to orchid shows and visited orchid nurseries. And everywhere I went I asked questions and observed. The orchid people were very generous with their time and information.
It was about two months before I felt I knew enough to get started on Orchid Lover. During that time I spent my limited writing time every morning doing research instead of writing. When I was ready to submit the manuscript, I had one of the orchid society guys read it, and he pointed out some things I'd still gotten wrong, and I fixed them. I don't know of anything I got wrong in the finished book, not counting the copy-editing error that substituted "conelike" for "canelike."
IC
Joe Portugal is changing. He's beginning to bloom in Death of an Orchid Lover. How do you plan or plot the changes in Joe personally, and in his relationship with Gina?
Nathan
I don't plan any of this stuff, except perhaps in the broadest strokes. In my early days of writing, I was constantly assaulted with advice that I had to know my protagonist like I know myself; every neurosis, every bit of history, every failed affair. I discovered as I began writing novels that that method doesn't work for me.
Just as I discover the story as I go along, I discover more about Joe as I go along. It's kind of like making a new friend. The more time you spend with them, the more you know about them. Sometimes I'll discover stuff in the middle or the end of a book and have to go back and change Joe's behavior earlier on to make it consistent. Naturally, I can't have him do anything that contradicts what we've learned in an earlier book.
But there's still a lot about Joe I don't know. Like, for instance, something as simple as his middle name. I know he was kind of wild in his early twenties, but I don't know any of the details yet. An example of something that developed as I was writing: Part of the way through Orchid Lover, I realized Joe was starting to yearn to get back on stage. Near the end he met someone who could help him do that. When The Petal Pushers begins, Joe's in rehearsal for a play. Having him planning on treading the boards again is one of those broad strokes I mentioned earlier.
The developing relationship with Gina is one of the most exciting things about the Joe Portugal books. (For those unfamiliar with the series, Gina is a woman who Joe had an affair with fifteen years ago, met again eight or so years ago, and is now best friends with.)
One thing I knew when I started was that I wanted Joe to have a female sidekick. I've always been told I excel at creating female characters, but I didn't feel enough in a woman's head to make a woman my protagonist. (Though I have taken up that challenge in my thriller.) At first, the character was Joe's sister. Then she got mutated into a character from my unfinished comic novel named Jackie, who was an auto mechanic. Who became Tina, and then Gina.
But I had no intention of having them become romantically involved again. In Cactus Club,they almost did. That just developed in the writing, when all of a sudden I discovered both of them were jealous of the people the other was involved with. Those feelings continued in Orchid Lover. I have to go somewhere with it in The Petal Pushers, and I'm not sure where that will be.
IC
What's ahead for Joe Portugal, and Nathan Walpow?
Nathan
I've touched on my plans for Joe in the other answers. I intend to continue the series. I enjoy spending time with Joe and Gina. I suspect they'll be with me for a long time, though I can't predict how often we'll hear from them in print.
There's also a Joe Portugal short story in the works. I'll be finishing it and another story, featuring Daniel Spain, a secondary character in my thriller, after I complete the thriller and before I return to The Petal Pushers.
This thriller I keep talking about ... I've been working on it for over a year now. Much more serious (though not without humor), much darker, much bigger scope than the Joe books. Probably half again as long as the Joes. As I mentioned, a female protagonist, a woman who's about to see what she's worked her tail off for fifteen years finally come to fruition, only to have it snatched away. She's mad as hell and she's going to find out who screwed her. Mayhem ensues.
It started out as a private eye book, but one of the minor characters kept demanding pages. Soon she became the protagonist. I was working in multiple point of view for a while, but have returned to single POV. And about four months ago I realized I knew nothing about who this woman was, and converted her into someone I did know about.
I hope to finish the first draft by the end of February. Then the fun stuff starts - the rewriting. And I mean that sincerely. I enjoy rewriting far more than I do coming up with the first draft.
IC
What is your writing routine like?
Nathan
I try to rip off the first draft without looking back. Sometimes I realize I've done something so wrong that I have to go back and fix things. More often, when I realize things will need to be changed, I insert notes into the manuscript.
I used to have a separate file with all my notes, both general and for each scene, but now I'm finding it works better for me to insert them all right in the manuscript, enclosed in square brackets. The comments can range from [weren't his eyes green before?] to [this whole scene needs to be rewritten because Jed no longer is Ellie Mae's father].
I also tend to leave out a lot of words and descriptive passages, just putting an underline if the right word doesn't come to me right away, or saying [description here] when I don't want to take the time to describe the scene. My philosophy on this is that I don't know until I finish the first draft what scenes are going to stay in, so why spend time agonizing over stuff that may not be kept? Plus, especially with people, I may not know some of the details until later, when they come out organically.
Since I have a full-time job, I do my writing early in the morning. (I tried at night, but I just do better work in the morning, and also when I left my writing until nighttime I found, as I went through my day, that I was treating it as one more chore to do when I got home.) I generally get in about an hour and a half each weekday.
I do everything on the computer, in Microsoft Word, sometimes using Excel for timelines and to keep track of what characters are up to. I have a daily minimum word count. This does not necessarily mean I add the minimum to the manuscript every day. Sometimes in the early stages or when I'm stuck I pound my words into what I call my ramblings file, just a stream-of-consciousness thing where I hash stuff out, or let two characters hash it out by having a conversation.
The minimum is usually a thousand words a day, but since I got hot on the thriller a couple of months ago it's been fifteen hundred a day. I also write on the weekends; same minimum, but start time depending on when I get up. I feel bad if I don't write every day; I lose momentum very quickly.
IC
Are there certain mystery writers, past or present, who have influenced your own writing?
Nathan
For me, everything begins with Raymond Chandler. Wonderful characterization, great sense of place. He is still my number-one inspiration. I'm also fond of pointing out that he had his first novel published at the age of fifty, just like me.
The other old-time author I'm influenced by is Fredric Brown. I first knew him as a science fiction writer, and when I moved into mystery I was excited to discover he was more prolific there than in SF. He was the master of the short-short story. One reason I relate to his writing is that it was filled with quirky humor, which is something my own has been accused of being.
More recent writers: Lawrence Block, especially the Matthew Scudder books. He is truly a master, and his how-to books were very helpful in my beginning writer days. And Lee Child, whose Jack Reacher books have been an invaluable guide as I've started navigating the murky waters of writing a thriller.
Other writers I especially enjoy, though I can't say I've been influenced by them, are Dennis Lehane, Stephen Hunter, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, and John Shannon.
IC
You'll be a panelist, discussing humor in mystery, at Left Coast Crime in Anchorage this month. In your opinion, how valuable are conventions and conferences to first-time mystery novelists?
Nathan
We're talking about two very different animals here.
Conferences first. There are two reasons to go to a writers' conference: to learn about writing and to make contacts. Personally, though I find I have things to learn from some speakers, I don't get enough out of how-to sessions (and never did) to make going to a conference for this reason worthwhile. Others do. I've been to one writers' conference in my life, the San Diego State one held each year in January.
I went shortly after I finished Cactus Club because it seemed like a good way to meet agents and editors. They know that's what they're there for, and they are far more approachable than at other times. And I was lucky enought to snag an agent the weekend I went, one who got me a two-book deal in no time at all.
Mystery conventions, on the other hand, are not about business, though some does get transacted there. They're about hanging out with other mystery people. Published writers, unpublished writers (I'm sorry, I feel as charitable toward the term "pre-published" as I do toward "pre-owned" cars), and fans, all hanging out together in bars and corridors and hotel rooms. There's a wonderful sense of community at these things. Just remember, they're not the place to sell your manuscript. I've been to eight conventions over the last four years, in three flavors:
Left Coast Crime is held in February or March at various locations on (more or less) the West Coast. I had a miserable time in San Diego in '98 -- mainly because I was unpublished and too shy to talk to anyone -- and my absolutely best convention experience in last year in Tucson.
Malice Domestic is in May in the Washington D.C. area. Mostly for "traditional" mysteries. I've been to the last two.
Bouchercon, the world mystery convention, is held in the fall in various locations. I've been to the last four, in Carmel, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Denver. Had a blast at each. (Well, there was that altitude sickness in Denver ...) Bigger and more intimidating than the others; a first-timer might want to break in at a smaller one.
IC
Last words or parting shots, Nathan?
Nathan
Only that I'd like to thank Spotlight for having me, that I hope I didn't run off at the keyboard too much, and that if anyone wants to learn more they can visit my website at http://walpow.com or e-mail me at nathan@walpow.com. And thanks to Pat Browning for the great questions.
IC
Thank you, Nathan, and good luck in Anchorage.
Check out Nathan's colorful website. Besides his bio and some interesting interviews, there are numerous photos/descriptions of succulents and orchids, and a raft of his intriguing short stories.
This interview was conducted during the month of January 2001 for SinC-IC by Pat Browning.
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