Elmore Leonard

I think it was in 1993 in the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport where I had to wait for connecting flight to LA that I wandered into a book store and picked up a copy of Freaky Deaky by an author I had heard about, Elmore Leonard. I started to read a few pages and realized I had to have the book. I was suddenly immersed in a world I had thought I had left forever. I was back in Detroit meeting the psychotic freaks and ghetto creeps I tried so hard to steer clear of in the 60's. Mr. Leonard was too familiar with that world. It smelled too real. The book was so well written that I felt I had to take a bath when I finished it. I was hooked.
Since then I have tried to read all of his published work. I scour used book sales here in France. We have a great English language book exchange to raise funds for the Phoenix Association, a private animal rescue organization near Vergt. Just this week, I read Cat Chaser. In almost every book or story, Leonard managed to bring some detail about Detroit into the action. In Cat Chaser, the action takes place in Honduras and Florida, but the main characters met in Detroit and that is what defines them. What makes his characters so real is that they are all flawed. Nobody's perfect, in fact most are wrestling with their own sordid demons and somehow make deals with the demons and then out smart them. That and great sense of plotting and action. He started writing Westerns, but found his true voice writing about Crime! He became one of the best the genre ever produced!
I found it very interesting that Leonard attended The University of Detroit, a Catholic Institution run by Jesuits. My cousins all went there and it was always to my shame that I never measured up or could afford it...Hell, I was a high school drop out who didn't get a GED until I was 20. I guess I was too busy hanging out in Detroit with characters who would someday end up in one of Mr. Leonards novels. I really regret that he will never write another book, because I've read them all.

Elmore Leonard, who was born in New Orleans in 1925, moved to Detroit in 1934 because his father was an engineer for General Motors. I cannot think of another writer who so graphically captured the feel of a place, the smell of it with is prose. He died on Tuesday, August 20th.
Here are Mr. Leonard's 10 rules about writing fiction:

1. Never open a book with weather.2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
—Elmore Leonard