----- Original Message ----- From: "William Denton" <
buff@pobox.com> To: "RARA-AVIS" <
rara-avis@icomm.ca> Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000
7:39 PM Subject: RARA-AVIS: Mike Shayne Month!
> Well, this is Mike Shayne month. A list of all the
Mike Shayne books is
> up on the web site, so have a look and read any
you've got sitting
> around. I'm sure we all have a few, probably those
Dell paperbacks with
> cocky-looking Mike in a circle at the top. I've had
to do a lot of
> reading on something else, so haven't done any, but
will start one in day
> or two. Has anyone else been in the spirit of the
month? (Mike Shayne,
> not Christmas.) Any comments? There's no particular
title assigned, just
> read what you feel like and we'll probably end up
covering a lot of
> ground.
>
> Mr. Reasoner on the list actually *was* Brett
Halliday for a while.
> Perhaps you could tell us about how you came to
write for the Mike Shayne
> Mystery magazine, and what it was like? Are there
any other Brett
> Hallidays on the list?
I haven't had a chance to read any Shaynes lately, either,
but I hope to soon. I got started writing them for the
magazine because I was selling short stories on a pretty
regular basis to Sam Merwin, Jr., the editor of MSMM at the
time. He asked me to if I wanted to try my hand at one, and I
said sure. He said the pay was "a flat, lousy three hundred
bucks" for 20,000 words, but that didn't sound too bad to me
at the time. Sam sent me a copy of the Mike Shayne "bible",
which went into a lot of detail about the characters and the
settings, especially Shayne's office and apartment. I don't
know who actually wrote this. I probably still have it
somewhere, but I don't have any idea where. Sam told me not
to worry too much about the details, just to get the story
down and he could always make it sound more like Shayne. But
when my first story came out in the magazine, I read it and
saw that he had changed only about three words in the whole
thing. (I remember one of them -- he changed "hotel" to
"caravanserai". Don't ask me why.)
When Merwin left the magazine, Chuck Fritch took over as
editor (actually Larry Shaw was the editor for one issue
between Merwin and Fritch, but I never had any contact with
him). Chuck had been Sam's assistant and already knew me. He
asked me to write all of the Shayne stories. I was able to
keep that up for a couple of years but got burned out on the
slow pay and also started selling other stuff so I didn't
have as much time. Hard to believe those days were almost
twenty years ago. What I remember most about writing Shayne
stories was how much fun it was. Fritch gave me a free hand,
didn't want to see outlines, just told me to write the
stories and send them in. I wouldn't want to go back to those
days, but they were nice while they lasted.
Best, James
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