Little known fact: every
copywriter thinks he/she has the great American novel in him/her. And, in
reality, there's evidence to support this: At least six well-known authors
penned jingles or ads before going on to publish novels, and one of them, F.
Scott Fitzgerald, has a strong claim for actually writing the GAM. (That was a
few years after he got a raise for his memorable line for the Steam Laundry
Company of Muscatine, Iowa, “We keep you clean in Muscatine.”)
So with former copywriters
Salmon Rushdie, Dorothy Sayers, Dom Delillo, Joseph Heller, Helen Gurley Brown
and Fitzgerald as my inspirations, I got a job with BBDO advertising in New
York at the age of twenty-five. That was after my first foray into the
workforce, where, miraculously, I talked myself into a job as assistant manager
of The Jolly Green Joint, a bar/ nightclub in Manchester, Vermont (later to
become an off-ramp of Route 7.) My time at the Joint was highlighted by
heart-to-hearts with all manner of rambling drunks, breaking up bar room brawls
and auditioning countless rock bands to play on our cramped 20-square foot
stage.
So after four years
and way too many cocktails, I moved on to Madison Avenue, where I spent the
next ten years aspiring to top Fitzgerald's Muscatine line. (Kidding aside, copywriting
does force one to cut the fat, grab readers’ attention and hold onto it like a
dog with a bone.) While at BBDO, I got hooked on mysteries and thrillers,
and started to write a crime novel. Then after ten years of
extolling the virtues of Canadian Club and Cottonelle toilet paper, I moved to
Florida to write.
Only problem was, I had
about a thousand dollars to my name. Finally, on the verge of starvation, I
landed a job as thirty-five-year-old trainee at ConTop Investigations, which
billed itself as a "private investigation and surveillance agency."
Turned out, though, what that really meant was they specialized in catching
cheating spouses in hot-sheet motels. Scrambling to avoid becoming—literally—a
Peeping Tom, I told the boss I was really bad with cameras, and he bought it.
The result was he put me on background checks and pre-employment screenings.
Not exactly what Dashiell Hammett cut his teeth on as a Pinkerton agent.
Nevertheless, some of the things I saw and heard fill many pages of my novels.
From there—God knows how—I
ended up in no-money-down real estate speculation just across the bridge in
tony Palm Beach. Wow, talk about material! Glitz, glam and beautiful people.
Sure, there are also a lot of hard-working Average Joes there—but,
fortunately, for a hungry writer—a ton of rich people behaving badly, too.
We're talking maliciously, greedily, hedonistically, treacherously, pick
your adverb, people. You'll find it all in my first crime novel, Palm Beach Nasty, and—coming soon to a bookstore near you—its
sequel, Palm Beach Poison.
In conclusion, I have no
conclusion. Except, writers write what they know, what they make up, or a combination
of the two. My life experiences in four radically different lines of work
provided me with rich material, which I’m thankful for. But, let’s face it,
somebody armed with just a fertile imagination can do pretty well for
themselves. I’ve got six more names for you: Steven Crane, S.E. Hinton, Bret
Easton Ellis, Rimbaud, Alexander Pope, and Mary Shelley.
For more information on my
books, please go to: http://tomturnerwrites.com/
