The Search for Surprise
My parents moved to Florida when I was four. With the exception of my six-year enlistment, I’ve lived in the state ever since.
Imagine Florida, back in the 1970s and 80s. The population of the state was less than half what it is today. It was a time of country roads and acres of swamps, palmettos, and mangroves. A time of 8-track tapes and CB radios. A time when everybody, young and old, wore truckers’ hats. Back then they were just ball caps. No matter if you were advertising the Little League Braves or Schlitz Malt Liquor, the hat was the same.
Beachhead and Tushhog both take place on the Gulf coast, Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Fort Myers in 1980-81. These places and that time frame made an indelible impression on me.
Back in 2010, I was working on a short story about a guy who wakes up on a speed boat. His wrists are bound and a goon points a pistol at his chest as they motor way out toward a small island. It was a fun start to a scene, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
I was recently asked if I plot or fly by the seat of my pants. I always answer that with the famous E. L. Doctorow quote: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” I tend to follow that way of thinking. Scene by scene. Patterns emerge. Inevitabilities reveal themselves. The search for surprise, not just as a writing tactic, but as a way to find those moments when the characters truly have no control.
I make a list of the scenes I’ve written. The farther I get, the more fleshed out the scene list gets. But I’ve found outlining and planning often restrict the potential of scenes. It becomes more about control than about what serves the story. A character can’t lose control unless I’m comfortable with that loss of control at the keyboard. It’s not a perfect system, as my initial struggles with that story proved. But following wrong roads often gets me where I need to be. Sometimes it’s luck.
One day, I threw in the towel on our water heater and the plumber who showed up to help me with it had Scotland stitched above his shirt pocket. I decided it was a perfect name for my new protagonist. I asked him about its origin and he said the name came from his mother combining the names of his uncles Scott and Andy, but of course I put a less wholesome spin on it. After I had the name, the story grew into the novel.
And, as a side note, in the original draft of Beachhead, his last name was Jones, but one of my teacher-friends thought Scotland Jones might evoke Indiana Jones in readers’ minds. I needed a monosyllabic surname and my wife’s grandfather and Uncle Norman happened to be named Ross. It was a perfect name and a great way to honor a couple World War II heroes.
After getting the momentum from the character’s name, I was off to the races with Beachhead.
I discovered that Scotland had relocated to Florida after a series of tragedies involving his infant son, his college education, his marriage, and his Navy enlistment. He moved there to be near his sister and her family, even though his brother-in-law was the reason he’d just gotten out of Navy prison shortly before the opening of Beachhead.
This sense of love, loss, and loyalty drove Scotland into all the violence that world threw at him.
I received a huge amount of positive feedback about Beachhead. Many people commented on the humor. I was gratified to hear it balanced the darkness in the book.
The writing of Tushhog was pretty straightforward too, but the beginning stages of writing went slowly, because I thought I had to hit some benchmark set in Beachhead. That pressure kinked the hose a good bit until I realized I didn’t have to write humor, I just had to write characters who happened to do and say funny things from time to time.
I kept at it and trusted the process, relied on Scotland’s backstory, and though I went down some wrong roads, I got where I needed to be.
It turned out that I opened Tushhog not with Scotland, but rather another character who sets things in motion. This was the biggest difference for me. The dude’s name is Dougie Gibbons. His father runs drugs and numbers out of a bar in Fort Myers and happens to be friends with Scotland.
Scotland hasn’t quit drinking, but he has sworn off trouble. At his friend’s bar, on a day he’s suffering an anniversary related to his dead son, trouble comes to him.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but once I got halfway through the first draft, I recognized the father-son connections running through the book, just like in Beachhead. It wasn’t intentional, but it made sense to me.
In Tushhog, Scotland is drawn into a situation he initially tries to avoid, but then becomes obsessed with it. He has a habit of doing the wrong things for the right reasons, and this time, he’s trying to help a friend who’s mixed up with a Cuban gang and a connected drug lord trying to rule the region’s crime world.
The best part of this process has been working again with Down & Out Books. They make the whole process so efficient, professional, and thorough. They are all in on the next Scotland Ross book too—thankfully!
I set out to write Scotland’s story as a trilogy. I’m waist-deep into writing book three right now. The timeline has jumped to 1986. It’s a different world for Scotland. As you might imagine, I’m anxious to find out what happens next.
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