Philadelphia Inquirer – Scott B. Pruden

December 12, 2012December 12, 2012

More About Ray

Chances are if you’re visiting this blog today it’s because you read an essay I wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer about my former boss, Ray Daub, who passed away Thanksgiving week at the age of 61. If so, thanks for stopping by and for being interested in finding out a bit more about Ray and me.

If you arrived here via some other referral, thanks to you, too. It’s always nice to see some new faces. If you’re interested in the essay referenced above, you can find in the paper edition of today’s (Dec. 12) Inquirer or here at Philly.com. If you need to head over there to get caught up, I’ll give you a minute. Here’s some background music to read by.

Good? No worries. I promise we weren’t talking about you while you were gone.

Actually, it’s funny because Ray would have appreciated that musical interlude as much as anyone. In addition to being a master craftsman of lifelike static and animated figures, he was an unrepentant music fan and occasional snob.

In his workshop there was always music – usually a radio tuned to Philadelphia rock stations WMMR or WYSP – and he never passed up the chance to mock a moldy classic rock war horse (he used to refer to the band U2 as “Why Me?” and, as a longtime Motown and Stax soul fan, was notorious for rhetorically asking when black people would start making decent music again). He’s the one who first recommended to me the Squeeze album (we called them albums back in the ’80s when they were big and vinyl) East Side Story as a pillar of alternative pop. His love for music was brought to life professionally when he helped craft a life-sized figure of blues legend Muddy Waters for the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Miss., in 1990.

If you read the essay in the Inquirer, you know that I credit Ray with a lifetime of inspiration on what it really takes to be a working artist. What you might not know, however, is that I was inspired by Ray in another, more unorthodox way.

I’ve mentioned in this space that it took me 20 years to complete my first (and so far only) novel, Immaculate Deception. During that long period of time, I found myself reaching into various different areas of my life for inspiration. So when it came time for me to create the character of William Z. Robert, a low-rent, chain-smoking demon, I knew where from my own life to pull his appearance and character traits – Ray.

Just take a look at the photo above (taken about 20 years after I last worked for him) and then read this:

“He was not what Jon expected, especially after Eli’s briefing. He seemed of indeterminate ethnicity – maybe Italian somewhere – with thick, dark hair trailing down the back of his neck in what his dad used to call a mullet. Jon imagined the length in back was to compensate for the thinning of the hair that remained on top. On his face was a full beard that was in need of a trim, and the droopy lids and half-moon circles under his eyes suggested it had been a while since he had slept well. He wore a white tank T-shirt and, on his legs crossed at the ankles under the desk, Jon saw khaki chinos and block high-top Chuck Taylor sneakers. His ancient metal office chair creaked as he leaned back and pulled on his cigarette while tapping out a quick rhythm on his thigh with the other hand.”

If you had ever spent more than 15 minutes with Ray during the 1980s – or I’d wager at any time during his life – you would know that when I was imagining Robert offering Jon Templeton a less-than-aboveboard contract for service, I was envisioning Ray.

And just so you know, despite the occasional crap Ray dished out, he was never demonic. I’m not beyond using revenge against a living human to craft an unsavory character, but in this case it was a shout-out to someone who in my mind – and I’m sure the minds of many others – was the quintessential Character. There was no way you could meet Ray and not remember him. Now I hope generations of readers will enjoy my tip of the hat to the way I remembered him, too.

March 20, 2012March 19, 2012

Is it Hot in Here?

Full confession: I never set out to be a writer of erotica, but I’m seriously starting to consider it, if only to tap (heh) the obviously fertile (heh, heh) “horny housewife with an e-reader” market.

I already had a vague notion that this market existed when I started researching e-books in preparation for Immaculate Deception to enter the market in its Kindle version. What I found was a little startling. It seemed like every second title among the Top 100 Kindle books was some form of erotica aimed squarely at women. And not prissy little Harlequin Romance works, either. These tales were hard-core in the traditional (meaning porno) sense.

Lately, one cover I’ve repeatedly seen popping up in 50 Shades of Grey. The frequency of its appearance should have tipped me off to something, but it wasn’t until I read this story in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday that I realized what a phenomenon this book has become.

Headlined “Steaming up moms’ e-readers,” the story details the wave of readership for this naughty novel that details the relationship between a young woman and a significantly older man who’s into all sorts of rough play, known among the folks who haunt leather gear and sex toy shops by the acronym BDSM – that’s bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism to you poor, missionary-position, vanilla, whitebread folks out there who don’t think wrapping your mouth around a rubber ball gag in someone’s suburban basement “dungeon” is a great way to spend an evening.

The story got me thinking about eroticism in my own work, where it comes from and how people have responded to it.

Boris Vallejo is perhaps second only to Hugh Hefner in causing American moms to spend countless hours banging on bathroom doors asking, "Honey, are you OK in there?"

As I said, I never intended to write erotica per se, but I came to a realization a long time ago after reading Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett when I was a teenager. It’s about a Nazi spy who figures out what the Allies are up to with D-Day, but ends up trapped on an isolated island with a lonely Englishwoman who does her duty for king and country in a particularly hot scene that to this day still resonates with me.

That realization was this: The best books are made even better by a little booty.

When I sat down to write Immaculate Deception around 1989, my experiences with things carnal weren’t terribly in-depth. As a young lad, I got away with bringing nekkid pictures into the house thanks to two gentlemen, Msrs. Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta, both masters of the fantasy illustrating genre whose pictures of semi-nude and nude warrior women grace many an Edgar Rice Borroughs and Conan novel cover.

As the idea for the Church of the New Revelation developed, I realized that because it was a sex-and-drugs-based church, there would probably end up being some sexy-sexy in the novel itself.

That realization was solidified as the character of Veronica Whitaker shaped up. There was no way a woman of such surpassing hotness and carnal motivation could be represented in my novel without actually displaying how that shaped her behavior, particularly toward her husband, Lawrence, and the main character, Jon Templeton.

grape — "I have talents you're not even remotely aware of."

So, what has resulted can be easily wrapped up like this: Chapters 28, 29 and 38, wherein Veronica reveals the true depth of her … um, passion in a variety of ways. Suffice it to say that if sexually abusing viticulture was a punishable offense, she would be in jail for a long, long time.

The reaction to these steamy scenes has been particularly puzzling. For instance, before reading the novel, my mom repeatedly told me that my next book needed to be sexy. I assured her that she should read this one before assuming it didn’t fit into that category. From her I have heard not a peep of admonition. However, from her sister, who holds a place in our family as the progressive, open-minded 1960s rabble-rouser, politely suggested that the scenes verged on the pornographic. So apparently I was indeed writing erotica all this time and didn’t even realize it.

What’s particularly amusing is reviews that warn readers of things like the “overwhelming amount of NC-17 content” in the novel. Really? Overwhelming? If the entire book was based on sheer sexual activity and character motivation and development (like, for example … um … 50 Shades of Grey), I could understand. However, the above chapters are really the only that contain any measurable explicit behavior. So why don’t reviews for any other books that have a few naughty bits carry big, scary warnings? Beats me.

I do, however, know that plenty of other people enjoyed those parts (just how much, I suppose we’ll never know, other than by the soft moans we hear from their rooms as they re-read those dog-eared pages). And that’s really what they’re there for. In working in literature as a medium, my end goal is always to provide entertainment. If it’s entertainment that informs, is thought-provoking or titillating, so much the better (especially if it’s all at once).

July 3, 2011March 19, 2012

Sons of Beaches

Forgot to mention last week that Immaculate Deception was named a reader pick for “great beach reads” in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Summer Reading package from the June 26 edition of the paper. Find the story online here.