Bentley Dadmun

A while ago I asked a friend how their weekend went. He pulled a face and said, “Well, it didn’t go as I intended.” As I enter the winter of my life and realize I’m now officially a geezer, I can look back on my life and say, “Well, it didn’t go as I intended.” When I should have been toiling in Academia to get my tickets, I was engaging in minor adventures on various parts of the planet. When I should have been writing, I was an existential drifter, trying this, doing that. I should have started writing when the urge to do so occasionally flitted across my mind all those years ago. I finally did start writing and eventually published the Harry Neal and Cat series in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Sometimes I’m asked why most of the protagonists in my stories are older, relatively ordinary people. The mystery/thriller genres are awash with ex-navy seals, invincible CIA agents, rogue, hard boiled policemen, and other operators who are seemingly omnipotent. If the protagonist is a woman, she is frequently beautiful, brilliant, and sensual. These characters are often involved with saving the world or engaging in improbable behavior and heroics to win the day. I prefer my characters to be fairly ordinary, imperfect individuals, not all powerful plastic personages operating on the other side of what is actually possible. An ordinary, older protagonist struggling to cope with a perilous predicament is to my mind, more interesting and engrossing than an all-powerful man or woman defeating a supposedly unstoppable villain. Although, in my novels, Mudgett and Brewster, and A Thousand Joys, the protagonist is goaded into action by a persistent, irritating ten year old, as I like to juxtapose the old and the young and engage them in attempting to solve a mystery and getting into trouble doing so. Of course, the fact that I’m an older, ordinary individual, and like Harry Neal, a bit of a curmudgeon, might have something to do with my choice of protagonists. Sometimes, when I’m writing dialog, the words flow without any conscious effort on my part. I’m merely a conduit, typing away while the characters talk. It never fails to surprise me when the characters take on a life of their own, but it shouldn’t, as I often spend weeks or months writing and editing a story and therefore get to know the characters intimately. From time to time I wonder if they are milling about in the depths of my subconscious, engaged in unknowable endeavors while I’m blithely wandering the aisles of Market Basket or once again snow blowing the damn driveway. At any rate, I enjoy writing and won't stop until I perform a face plant on the keyboard.