Manly Fiction for Manly Men, by a Manly Man.

I realize now my fiction doesn't have enough testosterone.  It's just not manly enough.

Sure, sometimes my characters kill people.  And yes, a few kill them and do stuff with the bodies.  One does stuff with the bodies but he doesn't kill them.  But these men just aren't manly enough.

They usually think themselves into situations that don't require a fight.  Instead, they kill the person before anything is suspected.

Piece of Meat Victim #1 walked to his car, cautiously looking around the dark parking lot, when suddenly he felt a hot, searing pain across his throat.  As he turned around, his legs gave out, and he fell to the asphalt.  He looked up to see a man smiling broadly and holding a razor blade.  

Piece of Meat Victim #1 tried to ask the man who he was and why he slit his throat.  And most importantly, how did he creep up on him like a ninja.  But all that come out was, "arrghgle-gargle, thpht, blargh!"  

Piece of Meat Victim #1 then broke wind for the last time and died a confused man sprawled on cold asphalt. 

That's not very manly.  I should point out that from now on, whenever I describe somebody dying, they fart.  And shit themselves.  Just today I spent a whole paragraph describing the various fluids, sounds and smells associated with those last few seconds of life, and the first few minutes of death.  It wasn't manly, but I sure had fun writing it.

And that's the whole point, right?  Editors can see you smiled as you wrote the story you submitted to them.

When I was in grade school, I read spy novels and a series of books I'm not proud of.  Mack Bolan.  The Executioner. 

I buried my nose in a ton of these.  By the time I was in 7th grade, I had graduated to a whole slew of Vietnam memoirs.  Because of how I had been growing up, they made sense to me, and I learned a whole lot of the wrong lessons. 

My personal favorite was Once a Warrior King by David Donovan.  I love it.  I remember in 7th grade, I used to sit in study hall and read that, ignoring my other homework. 

It was a different time back then.  We were dealing with getting our balls back after Vietnam.  John Wayne was dead and all we had left was Stallone and a whole bunch of pissed off veterans who didn't want to talk about it. 





So now I'm trying to make manly fiction and it just isn't going so well.  Joe R. Lansdale pulls it off perfectly with his Hap n' Leonard Series.   They're manly men solving crimes in manly ways.   Of course, Mr. Lansdale is a walkin' boss himself.  I'm pretty sure he would whoop my ass rather quickly.

Hemingway was known for beating the crap out of people.  Every professor I ever had despised the man and his fiction. 

After recently reading Strega by Andrew Vachss, I decided I should use that as a template to make my own fiction more manly.

The Token Bad Guy sneered at Willie and called him a "midget."  Willie smiled because that allowed him to do what he needed to.  

Willie--the only little person to ever play the in NBA.  After that, a short tenure in the porn industry, then he moved on to starting up a series of safe houses for battered women.  Only his close friends knew his real name.  Willie was just his porn name.  

Willie unleashed a series of punishing testicular-based attacks while his girl Vera watched and smiled.  She still worked as a call girl but only for twenty grand a night.  She used that to fund her research into a cure for pediatric cancer.  But after living on the mean streets of Scum City, she was hard as drunk's liver.  

I kept a lookout for cops while Willie did his customary stomp on the Token Bad Guy.  Once he was on the ground, Willie unleashed his 14-inch meat hammer and began smacking it against the Token Bad Guy's head.  

"I guess he took offense at that term, asshole."  

"Make him stop!  Make him stop!"  

But it was too late.  The Token Bad Guy lost consciousness from the severe beating.  

  

Once again, that didn't seem to work, either.  I mean, why would a dwarfish NBA player/porn star and his hooker/cancer researcher girlfriend hang around a genius necrophiliac private investigator? 


Maybe my fiction needs more grease?  And guns!  Can't forget guns... 

Dirk lifted the Chrysler transmission on his shoulders and began to wedge it under the woman's van on the hoist.  She was stunning in her black evening dress and pearls.  

"So," he began.  "Big night tonight?  You seem pretty dressed up."  

"Oh this?"  She sounded bored.  "I always wear Prada."  

An old Elvis song played on the radio and Dirk absently moved his hips from side to side as he threaded the bolts to the tranny. 

Suddenly, a Random Rapist Thug ran into the shop and headed right towards the hot woman.  She screamed.  

Dirk threw a wrench at the Random Rapist Thug and hit him square in the face, dropping him to the concrete floor.  And that's when his friends followed up behind him.  

Dirk reached into his toolbox and pulled out his Dan Wesson .500 Mag Revolver with the chrome plating and custom leather grips.  Three quick shots and the Random Rapist Thugs were on the ground with holes the size of basketballs in their chests.  

"You save me!"  The hot woman looked at Dirk with lust in her eyes and began to strip off her dress.  

"Wait, baby."  Dirk held out a hand.  "Let me finish this tranny first.  A man's gotta do his job, after all."  

That's right!  A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.  And right now, I gotta stop being a pansy and write some manly fiction!  Fiction with grease, and guns, and cartoonishly large members.  And stupid women with no souls and so many mutually exclusive characters traits they couldn't possibly exist in real life.

Yup!  That's what I'm gonna start writing.  Just as soon as I'm done with my short story about the pastry chef too terrified of the lady he buys eggs from to tell her he's madly in love with her.