The Origin of a Story With ‘California Bear’ Author Duane Swierczynski
On New Year’s Day 2018, I decided to write down a new story idea a day, every day, until the end of the year.
Crazy? Possibly. But I wanted to push my brain to the limits to see what I could come up with over the next 365 days. At the time, I felt stuck obsessing over the same old ideas. So on January 1st, I started with this entry:
1/1: A near-future L.A. private eye can’t afford real digs in a wildly overpriced market, so he lives in the sample apartment in a complex. He can occupy it from 9:30 p.m. until 5:30 a.m., at which point he must return it to its pristine sample condition. No personal possessions—though he hides stuff in the A/C closet. He specializes in people with no fixed address who go missing or are screwed over by the system. He likes this arrangement; he’s Buddhist, and it helps with avoiding attachment to physical objects and keeps his mind clear.
Which was not bad for a first entry. (Hell, I might even write this story someday.) You know what they say about habits, right? After 21 days, it becomes more difficult to avoid the thing, vs. actually doing the thing. So I did the thing. I wrote down an idea a day, no matter what.
I knew the odds. Out of 365 days, maybe what… a half dozen ideas would be okay? Ish? Even if they weren’t okay-ish in the moment, maybe they’d percolate over time and become something else. This happens all the time. Sometimes an idea will pop into my head, and I must start working on it right away. Other times, an idea will knock around my skull for 30 years before I figure out how to crack it.
But the idea that became my 11th novel, California Bear… well, that was actually two ideas that slammed into each other. The first, from early March:
3/5: Tonight saw Patton Oswalt discussing his late wife’s true crime/memoir, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, at the Writers Guild Theater. Interesting detail: how similar the language of falling in love is to the language of pursuing a serial killer. “Ooh, I like him.” You can’t get the person out of your head. “I think he’s the one.” The language is the same. Also: the same dark energy that fuels the crime is what fuels the cops and journalists who are pursuing the killer.
Not sure there’s an actual idea there at all; more an interesting observation (that I shamelessly stole from Mr. Oswalt).
Then in late April came this one:
4/29: Lazy morning reading a lot of online pieces: the L.A. Times, as well as the Sunday Long Read. One piece that jumped out at me was the wrongful conviction of a guy who spent 40 years in prison for a double murder he did not commit and was only pardoned thanks to the hard work of a cop who never gave up. Now the former felon is living with the cop and his wife down in Carlsbad, California, and awaiting a $1.9 million payment for the wrongful conviction. But… if this were a Jim Thompson type story…
I flagged that one with a few asterisks—a note to myself to circle back to this one.
Exactly one month and one day later, things went sideways. I did not record a new idea on May 30th, because that was the day my 14-year-old daughter Evie was diagnosed with leukemia.
This was a shock to my family, and we rallied around her. My wife and I vowed to trade days at the hospital with Evie so she’d never be alone. If you’ve ever spent time in a hospital room, you know that time can stretch into… well, forever. And there are only so many rounds of Connect Four and Mastermind you can play.
Purely as an escape, I started writing what I thought would be a comedic mystery based on the ideas from 3/5 and 4/29. In short: a novel about an ex-cop who coerces an ex-con to blackmail an ex-serial killer. I mean, that’s comedy gold, right?
Even though it was an escape, the story dragged me back into Evie’s hospital room, too—which is how the Girl Detective was born. At that moment, California Bear really came to life for me, because Evie’s humor and spirit became an essential part of story.
We lost Evie the day before Halloween. And for a long while, Bear went into hibernation. But when I resumed work on the story, I was heartened to discover that writing about the Girl Detective was like being with Evie again. Hearing her laugh. Marveling at her creativity. Watching her eyes roll when I make yet another lame Dad joke.
As for that idea memo… I am sort of proud to say that continued with an idea a day straight through the year (with the exception of October 30th). I think that memo helped keep me sane because it gave me something to focus on aside from the awful reality. And you know what? I think there even might be an idea or two for a California Bear sequel somewhere in there…
Discover the Book
THE GIRL DETECTIVE: Fifteen-year-old Matilda Finnerty has been handed a potential death sentence in the form of a leukemia diagnosis. But that’s not going to stop her from tackling the most important mystery of her life: Is her father guilty of murder?
GENE JEANIE: Jeanie Hightower mends family trees for a living, but the genealogist is unable to repair her own marriage. And her soon-to-be ex may have entangled her in a scheme that has drawn the bloody wrath of…
THE BEAR: A prolific serial killer who disappeared forty years ago, who is only now emerging from hibernation when the conditions are just right. And this time, the California Bear is not content to hunt in the shadows…
From two-time Edgar nominee Duane Swierczynski, California Bear is clever, moving, and surprising as it takes aim at the true crime industry, Hollywood, justice, and the killers inside us all.
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