The Secrets of Secret Dead Men (First in a Series)

Well, my first novel is due out any day now, so I'd thought I'd give you some DVD-style supplemental material on this here blog. You know—the behind-the-scenes crap nobody really cares about. (Except perhaps you, gentle reader.)

So what I have in mind is a series of shocking revelations about Secret Dead Men--available from Barnes & Noble on January 28th, according to their website.

How’s this for starters:

Secret #1: SDM was partially inspired by a Billy Joel song.

Yeah, long before he married a 12-year-old (or was it a 21-year-old?), before his divorce from the Uptown Girl, before he did his white man rap about “Homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz,” Billy Joel released an album called 52nd Street.

It was the first album I ever purchased.

It was 1981; I was nine years old; sue me.

Back then, I used to watch the Tom Hanks sitcom classic Bosom Buddies, which was all about two men who dressed up in women’s clothes and ran a heroin ring out of some swank New York hotel. (I may have messed up a plot point or two; my apologies.) Anyway, the theme song was a peppy little number called "My Life."

Did a little research: found the song on 52nd Street. Christmas rolled around, and I used some scratch to buy the LP.

"My Life" was on there, of course, as was "Honesty," a song I really didn’t appreciate until years later. "Big Shot" was my first flash of what it must be like to party in New York City, though I was befuddled by the references to Dom Perignon and the "spoon up your nose."

Then came track five: "Stiletto."

It wasn't Billy’s biggest hit by any stretch, but it is a noir masterpiece. And like James Ellroy’s daymares about his murdered mother, its lyrics kick-started a series of strange noir fantasies in my nine-year-old brain. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was my first exposure to the idea of the “femme fatale”—the woman who could enter your life and fuck it up beyond recognition, and you’d love every moment of it.

I mean, what’s a nine-year-old supposed to do with these lyrics:

You’ve been slashed in the face
You’ve been left there to bleed
You want to run away
But you know you’re gonna stay
‘Cause she gives you what you need.

I started daydreaming. Like I do to this day, when I’m kicking around a plot for a story. But back then, I didn’t know that the material would end up as words on a page. I was just riffing; fantasizing.

I imaged a woman using a knife to cut a man to ribbons.

No: a stiletto.

(I even looked it up in the dictionary. It referred to a dagger and a type of high heel. Violence and sex. Day-um.)

Then I started wondering why she’d do something like that. Not because she was angry. No, the guy singing the song isn’t talking about an angry woman. She’s a woman who’s calculated, methodical. Maybe even enjoys her work.

Then she says she needs affection
While she searches for the vein

I started thinking about the guy. Liking it, at some level.

And that stiletto, slashing away.

Psychologists and educators and other experts tear out their hair, thinking about the negative effects of violent video games and music and movies on kids. But the thing that fucked me up the most? Billy Joel. Soft rock staple of the American airwaves.

If you read the opening chapters of Secret Dead Men, you’ll see my own version of the "Stiletto" drama, carefully shaped and molded in my brain over 18 years.

Yeah. Scary.

(Wait until you read the other "secrets." I’ve got some doozies in store.)

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, I think you deserve a prize. The first person to leave a comment wins a CD copy of 52nd Street, fresh from my own collection. (I just bought an enhanced version; you’ll receive the original CD release.) Just say “me first!” then e-mail me your contact info off-list and you’ll have a piece of Swierczynski history of your very own. Whoopdee-doo, right?

Coming Soon: How Secret Dead Men was inspired by the Care Bears Movie!