I recently had an e-mail from a reader who asked where I get my inspiration for my stories, especially Turning Idolater, which seemed unique to her — genre defying and yet satisfying genre need. In Turning Idolater, I literally take the protagonist, a young internet stripper who is yearning for something indescribable, and beach him in a world that makes him squeamish. The sleaze of the porn world smashed into the preciousness of the literary world creates a tsunami for all the characters. That the two main characters are as noble as Ishmael and Queequeg, taken from Moby Dick, grounds Turning Idolater in a genreless world, despite the echoes of gay-themed and whodunit. Is it a murder mystery? Is it slice of life? Is it a gay romance? Is it a romance, period? Yes. Like tofu in a pot, this novel is meant to appeal to every imagination it infects. A fish out of water in every genre in which it swims.
However, this doesn’t answer the prime
question. Where do I get my inspiration? Well, here’s a state secret. I imagine
a story that interests me, perhaps topically; perhaps it’s the character
development possibilities. I think on that story and its possibilities and then
I lay it out in a plank — simple and direct; an anchor for my writing. It stays
with me for a long time — years perhaps. THEN, and
this is the Patterson family recipe, I add an element diametrically oppose to
the simple line; a kettle of fish out of water. Thus, a study of gay activist
meetings becomes a satirical comedy on human frailty (Cutting the
Cheese). A love story teaming with deceit becomes
a super-charged ghost story (Bobby’s
Trace). A simple coming out tale becomes a
contemporary poster for prejudice (No Irish Need
Apply). A memoir of the gay experience in the
military in 1967 becomes a marathon run by a fat man (Surviving an American
Gulag). A simple porn boy meets snob man romance
becomes a high-powered murder mystery (Turning
Idolater). A quest story becomes a Dickensian epic
(The Jade
Owl).
A sedate exposition of a Chinese official’s life in the twelfth century becomes
an historic epic (The Academician and Swan
Cloud – the two parts of Southern
Swallow). What happens when you tell a prosaic military tale set
in Germany during the 60’s and smash it up again the Brothers Grimm? You get
The Road to Grafenwoehr. Mix time travel and
alternative worlds with the history of the Cherokee nation and you get
Belmundus. How about gay discrimination in the
workplace mixed with a cocktail of the biblical triad — Jonathan, David and
Saul. That would be Green Folly. And it goes on and on
in my works.
Take a fish out of water and let it swim in
snow and everyone will want to know whether the snow is cold enough to preserve
the fish, or the fish large enough to swallow the snow. Nothing is ever too
simple to be riveting or too complex to repel.
Happy reading, dear
readers.
Edward C. Patterson
