My career was rather chaotic after Hurricane Katrina. I write two different series-in addition to the Chanse series, I also write a lighter funnier series about a gay French Quarter private eye named Scotty Bradley-but after the devastation suffered by New Orleans after the failure of the levees on August 29, 2005, I didn’t really see how I could write a ‘funny’ series about New Orleans any longer. So, the Scotty series went on hold for a while.
But in 2007, I had an idea that seemed right up Scotty’s alley. Since the turn of the century, New Orleans had started wooing the film and television industry with tax breaks and other incentives to start filming here. This proved to be enormously successful, to the point that New Orleans was nicknamed “Hollywood South.” Before Katrina, I had thought about writing a mystery built around the filming of a movie-I’ve always loved the movies, and books about the movies-but I never quite got around to it.
After Katrina, there was some major concern about the burgeoning film and television industry here in Hollywood South-but the production companies did come back, and one of the most popular parts of the city for filming became the neighborhood where I work, the Faubourg Marigny, and especially Frenchmen Street.
One day, I was walking down to the deli from my office to get a soda and a snack while some filming was going on. All of a sudden gunshots rang out, and I almost jumped out of my skin. My heart racing, I spun around just as someone yelled “cut” and it was with no small sense of relief that I realized it had all been just a part of the filming.
And just like that, I saw the opening scene of my next Scotty book: on his way home from an errand, someone starts shooting at him, and he gets pulled inside a gate about a block from his house. That was it, but I kept seeing it over and over again in my head, and when I got home from work that night I sat down at the computer and started writing the scene. As I wrote it out, I realized two things: one, that Scotty isn’t the intended target but bears a strong resemblance to him and two, the intended target should be a movie star. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I titled it Vieux Carre Voodoo, and the next morning I wrote a quick proposal and outline, printed them out along with the chapter I’d written, and sent it off to my publisher.
Usually in those circumstances, I generally don’t start writing the book until I have a signed contract in hand. But I was really into this story, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. As I was waiting for my other publisher to make an offer on Murder in the Garden District, and at loose ends, I started writing the first draft of Vieux Carre Voodoo. The more I worked on it, the more I liked it.
Ironically, my publisher decided to drop the Scotty series-and let me know the very day after I finished the first draft. Disappointed, I put it aside.
A month later, there was some turmoil at the publisher of the Chanse series, but once it settled down, it turned out they wanted Murder in the Garden District-but there was a catch; they needed it as soon as possible. As I hadn’t even started writing it yet, we went back and forth for a few days-and then a solution occurred to me: I’d already written the first draft of a New Orleans mystery; I could probably rewrite and revise that in ten weeks and convert it from a Scotty book to a Chanse book.
But if I was going to put myself through this, I also wanted a contract for Murder in the Garden District, which I would write next.
They were desperate enough to agree to my terms, and I was very proud of myself…right up until the moment I started trying to convert a Scotty Bradley novel into a Chanse MacLeod.
I wasted probably two weeks before I realized it wasn’t possible.
I threw out almost everything I had already done and kept some basics: I kept the Hollywood South stuff and the characters, and the basic skeleton of the plot: the ex-wife of a major film star is murdered, and their divorce had been very public and very ugly. I wrote like a demon, and even managed to incorporate the ‘mistaken identity’ trope (which had sold me on the story in the first place) into the book. I turned it in, and even convinced my publisher to contract my friend and mentor Julie Smith to work with me as my editor once it was finished.
And once Julie got her hands on the book, we wound up throwing out about a third of the story-as well as a new boyfriend for Chanse I had introduced-and I had to rewrite like crazy all over again. We didn’t have much time-perhaps a month at most-and we both worked like demons, but we got it done, finished, and turned in.
And then I had to start writing Murder in the Garden District.
When the opportunity came along to bring Murder in the Rue Ursulines back into print as an ebook, again the temptation was there-as it was with the others-to revise and rewrite it. From beginning to end, the book was written, rewritten, edited and rewritten again, in a little over three months.
But, as with the others, I decided against it. Murder in the Rue Ursulines, whatever it’s faults, should remain what it always has been since it was first published in the fall of 2008. I hope you enjoyed it.
And who knows? I might resurrect that original Scotty novel again someday. It was really a good idea-and pretty damned funny.
– Greg Herren
New Orleans, February 2012
Greg Herren
