Tell me Where you Write

By M.E. Proctor

Getting a peek at writers’ working spaces fascinates me. Faulkner’s office at Rowan Oak (Oxford, Mississippi) is simple and spare. I think his horses had more room. I love the picture of Stephen King’s messy nook on the cover of On Writing. Roald Dahl had a cozy shed. Jean-Paul Sartre (and other luminaries) scribbled at the Café de Flore, in Paris. Liters of coffee in the morning, harder stuff later on? What did that check run up to? Did they have a deal with the owner?

When people post a picture of their workspace on social media, I’ll look at it with a magnifying glass wondering what it says about them. Messy or tidy, whose books are displayed prominently, do they have posters of their covers, a resident pet (cat, dog, goldfish), a comfortable chair, a favorite mug? A Hall of Fame, a Board of Rejections? Everything tends to be curated in this world of appearances and influencers. Which begs the next questions: How much do these authors want me to see, and does it tell me anything about what they write? I know a science-fiction writer who has a model of the Millennium Falcon hanging over his computer. I’m green with envy!

I am a detective at heart, and these are clues.

 My husband, who’s also a writer (James Lee Proctor), has a small cabin tucked next to the house where he retires to work, listen to music, do research on our next trip, pay bills … The whole point is personal space, so when I have to ask him something, I go knock on the door. Or even better, I call him. It’s a wonderful place with old Texas maps on the walls and sports memorabilia sprinkled around. When I want to make a good impression, I borrow it for Zoom calls.

A few years ago, thinking I should have a similar setup, we arranged a space for me in what was supposed to be a garage and ended up being a woodworking shop. There’s a cool baroque desk that we found in a flea market, a swivel chair straight out of Sam Spade’s office, a lamp like in the Pixar logo, shelves, posters on the wall, everything a writer might need.

I’ve never used it.

Instead, I’ve set camp at one end of our long dining room table. When we have more than four guests, I have to clear out. Sometimes I’m ensconced in a big armchair with my laptop, or plonked down in a rattan chair on the back porch. I’m clearly not a ‘nester’. I also have a hard time working in quiet places. It goes back ages. I did my school homework in the kitchen with the entire family going about their business, studied for high school exams in the sitting room with the TV or the radio on, and have clear memories of hauling my books and notes to a blanket on the lawn, despite persistent hay fever.

 Noise doesn’t bother me. When I’m ‘in the zone’, I don’t hear anything. Right now, I’m deep in the follow up to Bop City Swing, a retro-noir written in collaboration with crime author Russell Thayer, and unless there’s a thunderstorm making the windowpanes rattle (there’s one looming on the horizon as I write this), I won’t stir. I’m in Kansas City in 1952 dealing with mobsters, dames, a cattle show, and an unnerving contract killer. Nothing around me is remotely related to any of that. Where I write won’t reveal anything about what I write.

But it might say a whole lot about who I am …

 So, what’s your writing space like? You know I want to know.

About Bop City Swing

According to one reviewer:

“…a tale that twists and turns like a brakeless ride down Mulholland Drive in a 1940s Caddy.”

San Francisco. 1951.

Jazz is alive. On radios and turntables. In the electrifying Fillmore clubs, where hepcats bring their bebop brilliance to attentive audiences. In the posh downtown venues where big bands swing in the marble ballrooms of luxury hotels.

That’s where the story begins, with the assassination of a campaigning politician during a fundraiser.

Homicide detective, Tom Keegan, is first on the scene. He’s eager, impatient, hot on the heels of the gunman. Gunselle, killer for hire, is no longer there. She flew the coop, swept away in the rush of panicked guests.

 They both want to crack the case. Tom, because he’s never seen a puzzle he didn’t want to solve, no matter what the rules say. Gunselle, because she was hired to take out the candidate and somebody beat her to it. It was a big paycheck. It hurts. In her professional pride and wallet.

 The war has been over for six years, but the suffering and death, at home and abroad, linger behind the eyes of some men. And one young woman.

(Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPJBGPT8)

M.E. Proctor was born in Brussels and lives in Texas. The first book in her Declan Shaw PI series, Love You Till Tuesday (2024), came out from Shotgun Honey, with the follow up, Catch Me on a Blue Day, scheduled for 2025. She’s the author of a short story collection, Family and Other Ailments, and the co-author of a retro-noir novella, Bop City Swing. Her fiction has appeared in Vautrin, Tough, Rock and a Hard Place, Bristol Noir, Mystery Tribune, Shotgun Honey, Reckon Review, and Black Cat Weekly among others. She’s a Shamus and Derringer short story nominee. Website: www.shawmystery.com – On Substack: meproctor.substack.com.