Writing Diversionary Fires: A Guest Post by Rodney Ross

By: Rodney Ross

A mental snapshot

My new novel, Diversionary Fires, began with a recurring dream over forty years ago.

Let me make clear that it did not then take me forty years to commit my work to paper. I am a slow writer, although I prefer the word methodical, or even painstaking, but I’m not THAT damn slow!

Rather, it marinated.

The visual was a boy in silhouette, maybe eleven or twelve years of age, sitting on a small dock at a river’s edge at dusk. There may have been large dog panting nearby; there might have also been fishing fear involved.

But I remember thinking: what is he doing there alone? Has he fled from something? Is he uncomfortable in his house? Are the sounds of the water his comfort?

I would occasionally “visit” him, and, as I grew older, the brief interlude became muddled. Was it a hazy memory of something I’d actually seen? Was it just a stolen flash-frame from a movie?

Who I am 

My name is Rodney Ross. (A lil’ sidebar: my mother is Diana Ross but is neither black nor vocally gifted). I was a creative and brooding child. I’ve always written:

• playlets that I would act all of the characters for into a tape recorder
• grade school newsletter/ high school newspaper/college newspaper
• magazine freelancer
• Finally, a Creative Director at a Midwestern ad agency a/k/a the Nine Circles of Hell.

Little time was left to devote for personal writing, yet I needed creative sustenance after a day of calming manic producers and diva directors. I wrote a couple of screenplays, and one was optioned…twice. A play, too, was optioned. Again…twice.

A pattern of twin disappointments was emerging. “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride!” Was I even spending my precious off-hours in the right medium? Yet what I felt would be the best marriage of my observation of detail, fondness for plot twists and quirky characterization was fiction…and that was too great a hurdle after a 60 or 70-hour work week. I convinced myself I didn’t have the energy.

If not now, when?

I finally applied the old, crude adage: “shit or get off the pot.” No charming, jocular elf was going to materialize nightly and do my writing — and, more importantly, editing — for me. The inclination to write was so embedded, I had to. Most is nature…a bit is nurture…all of it is heavy lifting. Still, it’s a challenge, being depressingly aware that the final polish is so, so distant.

Writing is so damned isolated and isolating. A writer — this one at least — seeks distraction: the litter pan to scoop, sit-ups to attempt, a martini that’s just yelling to be shaken.

Poised to write

I always have a notepad and pen handy. I treat my muse like a sneeze: I gotta catch the spray when I can! I am inspired by the observation of people both unknown and known to me.

I find great sport in sitting quietly in the corner of a ginmill, pedestrian piazza or suburban mall and writing down the detail of humanity on the backs of ATM receipts and fast food bags.

• The nasty parent who thinks they’ll calm a crying child by slapping them ferociously.
• The slightly-thick man in the too-tight tee against the wall who is holding in his stomach so intently I can feel his back pain.
• The couple in their twilight years who share a pudding cup and talk in shorthand.

Big sweep 

John Irving was an early inspiration. The World According To Garp opened my eyes to possibilities in literature that didn’t exist to me prior. His subsequent work has been just as vital, and his style brings an empathy, clarity and humanity to the most unrelentingly cruel encounters and unexpected character pivots.

I am, and have always been, a big fan of sagas that cross decades and generations, not necessarily historic bodice-rippers, but more generational, family stories i.e. Garp. It really dates me, but one of my more vivid TV memories is that of Rich Man, Poor Man, an ABC miniseries adaptation of Irwin Shaw’s novel about the Jordache brothers. I even admit to liking utter crap like Valley of the Dolls.

I outlined Diversionary Fires to follow that conceit, in its own eccentric way.

• Which characters will be aggressive, which ones passive?
• Should the “bad guy” get his delicious comeuppance (because, as we all have come to know, they always don’t in real life).
• How do people recover from trauma?
• What if the source of that trauma becomes a constant, inescapable reminder?

Most critically, I had to like my characters to spend so much time with them, and I had to forgive — or at least justify — their various trespasses and missteps.

About that title

Diversionary Fires sprang from a newspaper crime story I once read (I even wove it into a small subplot of my first novel, The Cool Part of His Pillow). It was about a diversionary crime. Someone who wanted to steal a prized item from a store created a distraction; they set a fire in a trash can in a restroom. As staff anxiously attended to it and worried customers evacuated, the crime was committed, the item lifted unnoticed. I was fascinated by something so obvious: that you could, like a magician with his presto-change-o!, move the eye and covertly accomplish a scheme, or caper, or felony, or even a kindness.

Good luck and bad luck can look a lot alike

I also wanted Diversionary Fires to explore what happens when great fortune literally falls into your lap and so also explore how the poor and the very rich ironically share a lot of behavioral traits. Terrible decisions are made without thought of the ramifications. Dicey people with bad intentions lurk on the periphery. Actual kindness is mistaken for deception.

The plot

Left in her grandparents’ care while her reckless mother works the Ohio carnival circuit, Tara learned the strange art of the diversionary fire in 1970 from grandmother Beryl, her mentor in flame. She grows too quickly into a mother who never knew her own, raising a son who will never know his father.

She mows yards, empties bed pans and presses shirts, and, when she dreams, it’s for her son, Dare. Living in a ramshackle house along the Fuego River of Ohio, disdained as “water bugs,” they are constantly reminded of their modest means, from the utility disconnect notices to the financial inability to even go to the drive-in theater.

It is only when — and yes, this might qualify as a plot spoiler, but I’m the author, so I am permitted — they win the largest Ohio state lottery on record, everything changes. But as Tara holds the right combination of numbers to a record-breaking lottery, she has one problem before she can claim the winnings: what to do about the dead boyfriend, stabbed by her son, on the kitchen floor?

It was, after all, his ticket.

A diversionary fire will again be the answer.

Some of the characters

As variants of crimson swirl through five decades of the Atwater family, Diversionary Fires is more than a saga, mystery or thriller…it’s an acrid journey through the ironic life of a brash, uncompromising woman who always has a book of matches ready. From the most marginal means to material comforts never imagined, flames in all their variation, dense and smoldering, engulf and divide everyone in Tara’s radius:

• Percy, desperate to leave Ohio, if only he could scrape up the gas money…
• Millicent, whose joy at motherhood is eclipsed by a heartbreaking crucible…
• Peaches, the landlady with a secret in the attic…
• Mr. Tomlinson, old, blind and bedridden but not quite done…
• Vawnda, victimized by her husband Meade for the last time…
• Elder Lauretta, the simple churchgoer with the complicated hair….
• The wealthy Marquardt family and their suffocating wingspan of influence…
• Betty from New Orleans, who creates her own pyrotechnics after a couple Sazeracs…
• Suzette, whose show business aspirations yield international celebrity….
• Fortuneteller Tatiana, who prophesizes the dangers of anything sharp or shiny…
• and son Dare, who forces his way through the hazy past of his real father and finds an explosive truth.

More about the author

Author Rodney Ross lives, writes and sweats in Southern California.

The Cool Part Of His Pillow, now in its 2nd edition from JMS Books (first published by Dreamspinner Press), was the 1st Place Winner in the LGBT Fiction category from both the Indie Excellence Awards and the Next Generation Indie Book Awards; Silver Medalist in the 2013 Global EBook Awards; and Honorable Mention in the 2012 Rainbow Book Awards.

Other works include “Signing Off” in the short story collection’ Impact from Other World Ink, “Otis,” a short fiction from JMS Books about a Christmas Eve where lessons are taught and learned; “Bended Knee,” from JMS Books, a short, bittersweet contemplation of same-sex marriage; and a nonfiction contribution to the The Other Man: Twenty-One Top Writers Speak Candidly About Sex, Love, Infidelity, Heartbreak and Moving On, also from JMS Books. A trio of essays from this book are being adapted into a play for 2016 by Chicago playwright Bernard Rice. Rodney’s work is one of the three.

His screenplays have earned honorable mentions or runners-up citations in the Monterey County Film Commission, FADE-IN and the LGBT One-In-Ten Screenwriting Competitions. Ross was also cited as “Most Creative” in the Key West Mystery Fest Writing Competition.

He can be found at (links open in a new tab):

Website

Goodreads

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Facebook

Amazon 

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