"SADDLE THE STORM, is one of the top six westerns of this year" said the
Saturday Review of Literature,
and the Western Writers of America voted SADDLE THE STORM number one of the 10 best paperback westerns of 1954.
Fifteen of my novels sold to motion pictures. Three television series were based on my books.
I was living high. One of the few people doing exactly what I wanted to do. In 1957, Warner Brothers hired me to write a screenplay from my western novel TROUBLE RIDES TALL for Gary Cooper. I couldn't write an adaptation that excited them. Finally, my option was dropped, the project became LAWMAN, a TV series starring John Russell and Peter Brown which ran about five years.
I had contracted the movie virus in Hollywood. I returned to Florida, wrote, produced and directed-and could not sell to a distributor-a horror film called FACE OF THE PHANTOM.
For the next eight years I could not produce or sell enough scripts to stay ahead of howling creditors. My agent decided I must do only nonficnon-things like "How I Made a Million in Florida Real Estate"-though I knew or cared nothing about the subject. He rejected out of hand the next five novels I submitted, then when I sold them myself, he demanded his ten percent because the books had once been in his office. He even wrote letters to editors threatening to sue if they bought my work except through him. I went to court and six months later I was free of him. But I had to write true confessions under my wife's name in order to keep my son in college during the long fight.
I signed, in 1964, to do a 60,000-word novel a month for a publisher under his house names. I was paid $1000. On the first of each month. I wrote one of these novels a month for 39 months. At the same time I was Robert Hart Davis, doing several 30,000-word novels for
Man-from-Uncle Magazine.
Strange things happened at Gold Medal. Walter Fultz called with the great news that my novel DON'T SPEAK TO STRANGE GIRLS had at first reporting sold 85 percent and was certain for immediate reprintings. Instead, nothing happened and Fawcett, which had been since 1950 like family, suddenly rejected everything I submitted. Walter Fultz even wrote a nice letter apologizing. The next thing Fawcett published by me was the novelization FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE for which I "was the only writer for the job."
DESERT STAKEOUT went into six printings for Gold Medal once they did business with me again. CHARRO was reprinted five times.
The novel a month with the other work I was trying to do, plus the tensions and the debts, exhausted me. Emotionally. Mentally. Physically I cried at weather reports. Then came the
coup de grace.
My new agent got me an assignment to do an original novel using the characters from the TV series MAN FROM UNCLE. The publisher had issued 30 of my novels and said he'd done well indeed. I'd always had royalty contracts from him. Now he wanted to pay $1500 for outright purchase of all rights.
What in hell had happened to me? Wasn't I the same writer who'd been giving the best he knew for 20 years? The agent advised me to accept. But he and the publisher knew what I didn't know. Mike Avallone had written the first
Man From Uncle
novel. It had sold at least a million copies and Mike was bleeding in rage.
So now it was my turn. I signed the contract. I wrote the book. I saw it on the Chicago
Tribune
paperback best seller list for
one full year
and I, who owed my shirt, made $1500 on a book that would easily have paid off all I owed and more.
I wanted to go on, pay no attention to setbacks, overlook discouragement or doublecross. With all my heart I wanted to, but I was too tired, too disappointed, too depleted.
So, sadly, I closed up shop. I still loved to write, but nobody cared, nobody wanted me. I figured if I were less than nothing to one of my most consistent publishers, I had come to a low place indeed. I had come by winding roads to the place where an agent and publisher conspired to use me for money the IRS wouldn't let them keep anyway.
I threw away every unsold script, put my books in storage. I quit. I asked for a job as an editor in the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, and they hired me for Rural Electrification Administration.
I had reached the low place where writing lost its delight, the place where I refused to go on. No working writer knew more about plotting than I. Fifteen years it took me to learn. Twenty years I practiced. I was a damn good writer. I knew what made a scene real, what made a heart break or a reader respond. But I also knew nobody gave a damn.
For seven years, I worked in the government. I did sell three books in seven years because I felt
guilty
when I wasn't at my typewriter. What else was I? What else did I know?
In 1974, my wife-that same girl who bought out-of-print Scott Fitzgerald for me in 1935-got the name and address of literary agent Anita Diamant. Want a plot gimmick? She got Anita's address from Bill Brannon who'd sold my first suspense stories in 1947.
Mrs. Diamant arranged for me to become Ashley Carter. Since 1975, I've written the Falconhurst and Blackoaks novels, the antebellum slave stories of the Mandingo slaves done by Kyle Onstott and then Lance Horner.
***
Then I learned that during those seven years of exile, I hadn't been totally forgotten. Jean-Jacques Schleret, a French critic of Strasbourg, wrote to my Hollywood agent, Mauri Grashin, to learn when Whittington had died since there had been no Whittington suspense novel in France since 1968.
The
Magazine Litteraire
(Paris) wrote: "For the past 25 years, we in France have considered Whittington one of the masters of the
romain noir
in the second generation-after Hammett, Chandler, Cain of the first generation… his novel BRUTE IN BRASS is one of the finest of the genre ever written…"
Gallimard, which had published my books in
Serie Noire
now was reprinting them in
Carre Noir.
The French equivalent of the Mystery Writers of America, 813, Les Amis Du Crime, published a book devoted to my work.
The 813 and the Maison d'Andre Malraux invited Kathryn and me as Guest of Honor at the Fourth Festival of Suspense Novels and Films at Reims in Oct. 1982. Along with Evan Hunter, I was the first American writer to be invited to join 813. I was treated with such kindness and love and awe and attention that the entire celebration seems more dream than reality.
It was all an elegant and brilliant party. The French were the kindest hosts on earth. Jean-Jacques Schleret, Jean Paul Schweighaeuser, Rafael Sorin, Stephane Bourgoin, Francois Gerif and Robert Louit, all wrote glowingly of my work.
Back home in America Bill Crider, Bill Pronzini, Michael Barson and others praised my old suspense and western novels.
I wasn't dead after all.
This spontaneous outpouring of affection and warmth in France and here at home restored my old lost excitement and enthusiasms. It was like plodding for a long time in lonely night wind and coming suddenly upon a bright and festive place loud with love and laughter.
Rafael Sorin, writing in
Le Monde,
Paris: "(Whittington)… this prolific writer of more than 140 novels is largely unappreciated. He holds, nevertheless, an honorable position among that intermediate generation of the American suspense novel alongside David Goodis, Don Tracy and Wm. Campbell Gault. Even the most minor of Whittington's earliest narratives reread today does not fail to charm. Whittington, who acknowledges the influences of Cain, Fredric Davis and Day Keene is the most violent writer of this genre. His tomb of death can be the appliance freezer, alligators, mosquitoes carrying fatal virus. But his worst enemy is
la femme.
She who kills for money and devours those who succumb to her charms… Whittington, who appeared pictured in his early books to be a rebellious young turk, arrives at Reims looking like a casting director's dream-ideal of the well-fed, successful TV lawyer…"
The
West Coast Review of Books
in 1979 awarded Porgys to my RAMPAGE as "best contemporary novel" and PANAMA as "best historical novel based on fact." WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA decided to include me in their august pages.
Twentieth Century Crime & Suspense Writers
were most flattering as was
Twentieth Century Western Writers.
Aroused by affection to optimism and resolution again, I could even remember the good which had accrued in the worst of times: The night at the Mystery Writers Award Dinner when I was introduced to Howard Browne, then executive editor at Mammoth Western. Howard greeted me, "My God, I'm glad to meet you. My chief editor Lila Shaffer says you're the most exciting new writer she's read. Better get a lot of material in to her fast. You've got a real fan there."
Or Harry Stephen Keeler, in his 80s and still selling his convoluted mysteries, writing in those years when sex in books was two passionate sighs, two loosened buttons and three asterisks: "Whittington is the only writer I know who can make a sex scene last for six pages without ever going out of bounds."
Or that most caring and selfless lady literary agent of Copenhagen who wrote, deeply troubled, in the midst of my 1960 battle to be free of an agent who admittedly planned to destroy me: "I cannot believe this man would risk losing your great talent for writing by his insensitive and selfish behavior. I have taken the liberty of writing to five New York agents (names and addresses enclosed) who each promise me they would welcome you, with sensitivity, caring and support, as a client."
It's been a wonderful life and I've met some wonderful people; it's been one hell of a roller-coaster ride.
Scott Fitzgerald once wrote: "There are no second acts in America." Maybe he was right. Maybe not. Maybe the trick is to hang in there-until after the intermission.
***
And, before we part, a few words about this book before you and the others selected for this classic-suspense-novel revival that constitutes the Black Lizard series.
Questions most often asked: Why did you write a particular novel, how long did it take to write it, where'd you get the idea for it and, where do you get your ideas?
First, my story germs are contracted differently than those of some of the leading practitioners of suspense and mystery, and even western, writing. Several stellar-performer-writers have averred on TV and other public dais that they start to write with no idea where they're going, or how their tale will resolve itself. One famous gentleman, writing for beginning writers, said he rewrote the ending of one book several times before making it come out right.
Despite the protestations of these best-selling writers, I personally find this lack of planning wasteful, unprofessional, and worst, even amateurish. Sometimes, I realize it's said to sound artistic. Still, it's much like setting out in a billion-dollar shuttle for outer space with no flight plan. Head for the moon, but if you land on Mars, what the hell? It's like a magician's walking on stage without knowing if he will draw rabbit or dove or anything at all out of his hat. In my world of writing at least, suspense is for the reader, not the writer. I can't believe bridges are built without minute preparations, or that Donald Trump okays a new tower which might turn out to look like the World Trade Center or Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disney World.
I usually start at the crisis, climax or dramatic denouement of my story, even if it's sparked by some unusual scene, character, situation or speculation. A story is not about "an innocent man framed by his own government" but how-with what special, carefully foreshadowed strength, skill, knowledge or character trait-he overcomes this terrifying situation. That "planting" and a preconceived "emotional effect" which will gratify, shock and involve the reader is truly what the novel is all about. Or, as Mickey Spillane said, "The first page sells the book being read, the last page sells the one you're writing."
Once a writer sets in his own mind "how" a story-line will be resolved, he is then freed to torment, tease, terrify or tantalize his audience. Alfred Hitchcock called this story core "the McGuffin," Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures called it the "wiener." I call it the key, the complication factor, the gimmick.
Don't take my word for it. Let me quote Edgar Allan Poe who wrote, in reviewing Nathaniel Hawthorne's
Twice Told Tales: "A
skillful artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents but, having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or SINGLE EFFECT (caps mine) to be brought out, he
then
(italics mine) invents such incidents, he then combines such effects as may best aid him in establishing this
preconceived
effect. If his initial sentence tend not to the out-bringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not in the pre-established design. And by such means, and with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished, because undisturbed…"
And I believe a good cabinet-maker can build a cabinet without rebuilding it forty-seven times. And I suggest he likely lays out his entire plan before he starts to build.
Having said this, I immediately stipulate that some of these writers who embark boldly with only nebulous idea, dramatic first scene or unusual character, have sold more books than Poe and I combined (and including Nathaniel Hawthorne). I still hold to my battered barricades. I still don't want to put myself in the untenable position where, when all else fails, I must resort to God in the machinery or "come to realize."