Spotlight: Mike Dennis -- musician turned author

March 1, 10:52 PMLas Vegas Writing ExaminerMorgan St. James

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Mike Dennis - Noir mystery author with his own Maltese Falcon

Mike Dennis, a former musician, made the transition to soon-to-be-published-author since moving to Las Vegas. His noir mysteries have a classic quality. Noir fiction is the name sometimes given to a mode of crime fiction regarded as a subset of the hardboiled style, popularized by pulp fiction. The protagonist is usually not a detective, but instead a victim, a suspect, or a perpetrator—someone tied directly to the crime, not an outsider called to solve or fix the situation.

This talented writer was asked to share what the journey was like.

What sort of training did you have that allowed you to make the leap from musician to author?
Thirty years of playing music isn't exactly the best training for an author. Thirty years of writing would be more like it. But playing music is what I did, so that's what I had to work with.

What was your life like as a musician?
Well, to set the record straight, I was a piano player, also venturing off into electronic keyboards from time to time. My career, which started in Houston, took me to nearly every state in the Union, as well as to several unusual foreign countries, all the while roving through disparate musical genres: rock & roll, rhythm & blues, and country. I played in clubs, concerts, TV, radio, and recording studios. I played large venues in front of tens of thousands of people and in smoky bars for no one at all.

That’s quite a variety. What places did you live that influenced your writing?
After Houston, my music took me to Memphis, Nashville, Fort Lauderdale, New Orleans, and finally, my beloved Key West, where I lived for sixteen years, and where I retired from music around 2003.

How did you start your transition? What actually sparked the desire to write?
I had begun writing almost by accident somewhere in the late 1980s. At that time I was living and playing in New Orleans. I was encouraged try writing by a friend of mine, Marda Burton, who was herself a writer. She had read a little account I wrote of an overseas trip I'd taken, and she seemed to think I could make up stories and string words together in a coherent fashion, filling up hundreds of pages in the process.

So with this encouragement, did you immediately try your hand at writing?
Of course not. I disagreed, claiming fiction was for "real" writers.

What changed your mind?
She stayed on my case until I got started. Writing on and off for the next twenty years, I eventually completed eight novels and many short stories. Oh, and did I mention hundreds (or was it thousands?) of rejection slips.

You said you settled in Key West. What brought you to Las Vegas?
I left Key West in late 2006. Living here is much more agreeable than I thought it would be, and I've even found a nice home on the water! (okay, okay, it's a man-made lake, but believe me, it'll do) I've played a lot of poker since then, and I'm now devoting most of my time to writing.

What kind of support did you find for your writing once you settled in Las Vegas?
One important discovery I've made is the invaluable nature of writers groups. I belong to four of them here in Las Vegas: Sisters In Crime Southern Nevada, the Las Vegas Writers Group, the Henderson Writers Group, and an as-yet unnamed organization. The last two are critique groups. They're populated by writers in all stages of development and from all genres, but I can say without hesitation that the critiques the Henderson Writers Group has given my noir fiction have improved everything I've read to them and made me a better writer.

What do you think was the one most important thing Henderson Writers Group offered to you?
Their chief function is to provide other eyes and ears to point out things that I never would've seen myself because my brain is geared in another direction.

You said that you wrote eight novels and many short stories over a twenty year period. I understand that one of them will finally be published. What can you share about that?
After twenty years, all I can say is it finally happened. L&L Dreamspell, a small press in Texas, is going to release one of my novels. It's called The Take, a compact noir tale of ordinary people, minor players in society, caught up in extraordinary circumstances and emotions: greed, lust, and the survival instinct. The publication date will be sometime in 2010. Look for it!

Do you write every day?
Yes. It's something you have to do if you want to get better, or, as I like to put it, to become a "real" writer. And it's not measured in terms of word output. Right now, for instance, I'm going over a novel that I finished a couple of months ago, editing it, adding scenes, deleting other scenes, tightening it up...it's all part of the writing process. But I do it every day, regardless.

As an emerging author, what is the best advice you can offer to aspiring authors?
Very simple. Don't quit. A professional is merely an amateur who didn't quit.

And as a professional, Dennis kept at it, honing his skills and polishing his work until his current novel was accepted for publication.

With two of my own new novels due out sometime in the next few months under the pen name Arliss Adams, I  heartily concur with him.These were the first fiction I ever tried my hand at, and although my other work has been published in the interim, these took fourteen years to get to publication. I never gave up and neither did he.

For more Spotlight articles: Sue Ann Jaffarian's advice,  Young Las Vegas author donates profits to save animals ; Judy McFaddan's Life With McDuff, a therapy dog

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