I continue to grind away on the Jacob Cable book. What draft am I on? The fourth?

I am not sure anymore. I’ve taken my foot off the gas a bit because I got into a state of trying-to-do-everything-and-accomplishing-nothing-as-a-result. One can only spread themselves so thin. I’m still getting writing done. Even a bit adds up. I got some short stories out for submission. I’m going to dash off a flash piece for submission. Once I get the fourth draft of Sharp Things done, I will probably let a couple of people read it, then do a fifth draft to incorporate their feedback, then another draft after that and call it about good.

It would be nice to write a book in a month, but I don’t have that skill. Jim Thompson apparently did. I have been reading him lately. I just finished The Getaway. It is about a husband/wife criminal duo who partner with another duo to rob a bank. They get the money. They also get a lot of backstabbing and death. The interesting part of the book is the end. The couple makes it to El Rey, the king of a town in Mexico where desperadoes can flee to be safe from the law. The location is not without its costs, however, and that is where the book takes a turn into the almost surreal. The residents of the town are forced to spend their money, and when it runs out, they are banished to another town on the outskirts of the city for a true downer fate. Many of the crooks in El Rey’s town are partners, and they eventually turn on each other because money lasts longer when it isn’t split two ways.

I found Thompson’s style interesting. I thought I had read him before but maybe not. His prose is sparse, with asides into hard-boiled territory. The last quarter of The Getaway is almost a different book. It becomes symbolic of being in the tomb, decomposing and ending up in hell. The lesson Thompson taught me was that a story doesn’t necessarily have to be overthought. It may end up someplace odd, but if the writing is tight enough, it can work.

The Getaway was made into a movie twice: once with Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw and another time with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.

I’m going to go right into reading into another Thompson novel and see how that works. I haven’t decided which one I’m going to pick yet.