Wasted Life

Epilogue

Hello there everyone, Sam the author here.  If you’re reading this, I can only assume you enjoyed the story.  I’m glad.

I love mystery novels, especially those from the golden age back in the 1930s to the 1950s.  Some of my favorites are Raymond Chandler and his Philip Marlow mysteries, Dorothy Sayers and her Peter Wimsey mysteries, and Dashiell Hammett and his various heroes / anti-heroes.

When I set out to write the book that became ‘Wasted Life’ my first task was to figure out who my main character would be.  I didn’t want to simply copy one of the classic detectives and make him gay.  I wanted a man with nuance, with depth.  I wanted a hard-boiled man.  Someone for whom life had lost its luster.  Someone who’d been living in the sordid world of crime for a large portion of his life.

The next question I had to answer was the era to set the story.  I am a big fan of early 20th century American history.  I am fascinated by the World War II era.  The rule of ‘write what you know’ is a good one.  As such, I set the story in 1944.

Once I had a middle-aged man in 1944, much of what would become Law Edwards fell into place.  Creating him as a battle-scared veteran of what was at the time known as ‘The Great War’ was a logical step.  It gave him a built-in backstory, one full of senseless violence and tragic loss.

As I understand the aftermath of the conflict that would eventually be known as WWI, it was the first war that dashed the promise of the valor of battle.  The meatgrinder of mechanized warfare and the deprivation of life in the trenches swallowed up hopeful youth and spit back hardened men for whom Victorian morality no longer held sway.  They were confused and embittered by the carnage they’d witnessed and participated in.

Law Edwards is the poster child of these veterans.  On top of his shattered sense of morality, we add the savage wound of being rejected by his father and his family and by society at large.  To have him invalided out of the army and taken up by a big city police force seems darkly comical, especially at the height of the roaring twenties and the lax morality of the Prohibition era.

What does Law do during this period?  He wallows in it like a hog in warm mud.  Indeed, why shouldn’t he?  The cliché of ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’ seems an appropriate phrase for this period in both national history and in Law’s personal history.  The perverse carnival of Madam Mitchell’s saloon and brothel is the perfect setting for him to celebrate his fantasies.  The fact that the Madam calls him her ‘Hero of Law and Order’ is just so much corrupt icing on the cake.

And what happens?  Like all drunken orgies, the party eventually must end.  The thirties came and with them The Great Depression.  From there Law experienced a long slide into poverty and anonymity.  His brief sense of belonging and eventually his every pleasure is slowly taken from him by the crushing march of time.  Even his livelihood becomes impossible for him to maintain.  This is where we meet our protagonist as he chomps on a stale cigar and screeches the unlubricated works of his swivel chair while he growls at young Bea Arlott.

What happened after that, you well know, or you wouldn’t be here.

A man with nothing to lose is a very compelling character for me.  That man can be anything.  He can do anything.  He is completely free of all responsibilities and obligations.  He is especially compelling if he has given up on his life because no action would be too drastic for him.

The other beauty of a character in this position is that often, because he’s so downtrodden, any step he takes is a step up.  He is also in the perfect position to learn and to grow and to evolve because he can no longer remain static.  Law Edwards, unlike many of the classic detective characters, is dynamic.  He isn’t the same man at the end of the story as he was at the beginning.

That is what makes ‘Wasted Life’ different from many of the other books I mentioned, the fact that Law grew as a person.  This story is his redemption, his return to the human race, his Pinocchio transformation from a static archetype into a real ‘boy.’

That, dear reader, is the point.

So, the question for me to answer is, ‘now what?’  Well, I’m working on a sequel.  I think there is more story to tell.  Because Law is a dynamic character, he cannot go on and on and on like Philip Marlow could, because at some point the transformation is complete.  Once a caterpillar is a butterfly, the story is over.  That said, our friend Law still has a way to go, and perhaps, so do the people around him.  There’s at least enough there for one more story, perhaps two.

In the meantime, dear reader, I hope you enjoyed our time together.  Before I sign off, I would be remiss if I did not issue a couple of thank yous.  The first is to Earth-Boy.  Earth-Boy is someone I met on Nifty who read my work and offered insightful comments that helped me as a writer.  Earth-Boy taught me brevity.

The next thank you is to Jeremy.  Jeremy is another person I met on Nifty.  Jeremy taught me to let the setting of the story take shape around the main character instead of making him report on every new setting he steps into before the action starts.  His advice allowed my writing to reach a new plateau.

Beyond those special thank yous are the massive thank you I would like to say to all the people who read and enjoyed this work.  To all those silent readers who added to the GayDemon reader count, thank you.  To all those who read on Nifty, thank you.  I appreciate that you spent your precious time with me.  To those who emailed and commented, THANK YOU!

Like everyone, I love to be appreciated, but even more than that, I love nuanced comments.  I love when people guess at the next step in the story, or tell a story of their own experience that parallels that of the characters, or express an emotion that the writing brought about within them.  Those comments illustrate engagement and that tells me I’m producing good material.  That is the most important thing to me.  So once again, THANK YOU ALL!

Until next time,

Yours very sincerely,

Sam Stefanik