Another story from my Tales of the Late Twentieth Century is one entitled “The Blue Light.” With the previously mentioned “Point Arena” it forms a sort of duology, fictionalizing at least one perspective of my military experience. This pair of stories may be the closest thing I would refer to as autobiographical; although, as a writer, I am wary of offering specific sources for anything I write, and especially my own life. Whenever I’m asked where does such and such come from—ideas, characters, story events—I’m usually not sure what to say. Not because I’m trying to be coy or evasive, but because I’m not really sure. In the first place I don’t think too much about it. Where these things come from. And in truth I don’t really care. What most matters to me is, does it add to the greater good? Does it expand upon the overall effect of what I’m trying to do? Does it help complete the work? I think a knowing writer steals whatever he can from wherever he can (sans plagiarism, to be sure). So beware befriending thine author, for thy secrets and heartaches are his rich garden for the harvest pluck and use.
Best I recall, “The Blue Light” was originally envisioned as a novel. There may even be ragged, yellow-sheet drafts still lying in attics and dresser drawers about the globe. For all I know it may still become one, at some point, should it make itself known as needing that platform. Regardless, the background details of the story were mostly there, intact, when I began sketching the initial notes. What I mean is, this wasn’t a story I recall blowing a fuse trying to imagine and put together. It was always there, for the most part, not because I was simply recounting things I’d experienced, but because I had made myself peek into the dark and occasionally forbidding box of my existence, others’ existences, and knew that experience was true as I encountered it. Beyond that, the era did lend itself to dramatic appeal. If you’re interested, there’s a film which captures the time and place my story is set rather nicely. It’s called The Baader Meinhof Complex, which deals with the terrorist group by that name, and which colored my time there in such unforgettable hues.
“The Blue Light”, hopefully, offers a similar verisimilitude. It tells the story of a young soldier named Paul Adams (originally introduced in “Point Arena”), who encounters a mysterious and somewhat lethally enchanting German girl named Nikki Lotz, and details their ensuing relationship. You could consider it a period piece; however, Russia was the Soviet Union then, but then as now it was and is the 800-pound gorilla lurking along the German border. Terrorists were a part of everyday life at the time, as they are now, even though ethnicities have changed. Migrant workers were the migraine headache the locals suffered through at the time, so perhaps I shouldn’t mention the adage about what goes around. In that sense the story could have taken place yesterday, as easily as the fading decades of the twentieth century. I like to think of it as a unique and provocative meeting of cultures, accompanied by the usual misunderstandings, enticements, and ultimate revelations.
The truth is a character such as Nikki Lotz is a dangerous gift to an author. When that happens, one almost feels guilty talking about character and “creation” in the same breath. I didn’t create Nikki, as such. She was, rather, a creature innate and organic and sui generis from my experience that lent herself so easily to the page. A girl whose every gene and corpuscle begged for fictional exposure. Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises and Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo come to mind. I can tell you with a fair amount of assurance, I doubt Hemingway or Stieg Larsson had to bust much a sweat in initially realizing these characters. I would think they came to them, as Nikki did to me, with a sudden gasp of breath, a flash of light within, and all they had to do was invent all those annoying little details, some call character depth, that make writing so painfully enjoyable. If anything, the larger problem is not one of invention but containment. Characters like Nikki do not behave well. They know who they are. And they know what they want to say and do. And woe to the writer who must convince them there is a larger importance at play than themselves. “What—a story? With other people? You want me to share my moment with other people, so you can tell your silly little tale? Das glaub ich nicht!”
Instead, they strut upon your stage, often picking up your various artifacts and props, occasionally dropping and breaking this one or that, always moving things about—including your other characters—as they think best, before, naturally, becoming bored with it all and wandering away. I believe every good writer has their bag of tricks (You do know, don’t you, that fiction, at its best, is the most wonderful magic show called Suspension of Disbelief?), and one of the tricks I learned very early was to let a maverick character have his or her own head, an unplanned scene its own momentum. Unnerving, I’ll admit. But mastering the trick is to know when it’s not working as when it is. And when it’s not is called artistic faux pas, a day’s writing pissed away, and a shot of brandy to console the loss. And when it is, is called nirvana, a victory fist in the air, and, perhaps, that shot of brandy to celebrate the win. So when Nikki first stepped out onto the screen of my Lenovo ThinkPad, I held my breath. I waited as she surveyed the setting I had placed her, the people I’d placed her with. Then she turned and looked straight at me with those most amazing eyes, letting me know with a glance who she was and what she was going to say and what she was going to do. And, by the way, me and my silly little story could go straight to hell.