Rewrites and Coincidences

I can't stress how important it is to do several re-writes of a manuscript! As I go back and reread what I've written after a several week - or several month - break from the story, I find all sorts of stuff I want to change or eliminate!

Bad writing is bad writing, and we are all guilty of it, so it's necessary to go back, to view the manuscript with a critical eye, not a fond one. Sure, you like the story. Sure, you love the characters, but what are the weak points? The things you've neglected, or the things you should have neglected?

Remember, you are only as strong as your weakest link.

Sometimes when I get carried away late at night I write some dumb shit, or overly pornographic shit. Then in the morning I reread it and think, "Yuk! I can't leave that in there!"

As important as the rewrite is being able to get someone else's opinion. Call up a couple of friends or email some acquaintances. Beg or bribe them to read your manuscript, and make sure you impress upon them the importance of their critique.

As them to circle, underline or highlight things they noticed that either work for them or don't work for them. Ask them to make a side note of all inconsistencies.

What I do is draw up a questionaire or quiz. I ask questions, they fill in the blanks. Then I ask them for comments at the end.

What I found was interesting - the men were more reliable, and they liked the romance and the sex. The women were more critical, and they liked the relationships between characters.

Who knew?

Billy "Spacer" Havens - The Inspiration For My Character Greasy

When I first met Billy "Spacer" Havens in 1969 he was more hippy biker than outlaw.

He and some friends of his in the Asbury Park area rode together on weekends. I met him through Skip Schirappa, a guy I knew who rode a Harley XLCH. Skip is the guy who first turned me on to Marijuana and told me about the fun times he had on LSD. He intoduced me to Spacer, who he roomed with on and off. Enough about Skip. This is about Spacer.

Spacer was a great, likeable guy with a dynamite personality and an easy way of going. Everyone liked him.

I never personally met anyone who didn't like Spacer.

He was thin and tall and lanky, standing about 6'2" with long black hair not quite shoulder length and a beard that I always thought made him look a bit Amish (I'm not sure why, but that's what it reminded me of).

He had a business as a distributer for the Asbury Park Press, and over the years he hired many of his friends to work with him when they needed a job. He was a productive member of society and a hell of a good person back then...

When I met him he had a girlfriend named Murphy and a sleek silver blue Chevy Impala named "Misty".

He rode a red, white and black Harley. He was a free-spirit, fun-loving and sweet. He had a gentle touch and was a truly cool guy. He was righteous and totally trustworthy. He was intelligent and quick-witted. I liked him.

When the Pagans M.C. showed up one day, they "suggested" that Skip, Spacer and their riding buddies join up with them (or else!). So their little hippy biker club split up, with half of them joining the larger club, becoming honest-to-god outlaw bikers. Spacer and Skip were in that group.

Spacer was Spacer. He loved partying - and getting stoned. Weed, a little acid, some dust. Nothing real heavy. Then came the ups now and then. White crosses, black beauties.

Spacer's relationship with Murph fell apart. A year or two down the road he met Robin, the girlfriend of one of the Pagans from the Hartford, CT chapter, who was big time into crank (methamphetamine).

I'm not sure how it happened, but one thing led to another and the next thing any of us knew, Spacer and Robin were an item, and his friends - all of us - were a little worried about the pairing. Spacer seemed to change overnight, and NOT for the better.

They said she was "bad" for him. They said she was "corrupting" him. All I know is that when Spacer hooked up with Robin it was the beginning of the end.

Well, I sorta lost track of Spacer for awhile. He stopped coming around. The next thing I heard he was married to Robin and they were heavy into speed, and then one day he left the club.

A couple of weeks later in a fit of meth-induced paranoia he shot the chapter president Nails with a shotgun when Nails drove into his yard to ask about some money he'd lent Spacer and Robin. Nails never got out of the car. He was not threatening anyone. He sent his girlfriend Attitude to the door and Spacer came out with a shotgun and shot Nails as he sat in his car.

Talk about flipping out! Spacer shot somebody? What? What the hell had happened? Had he lost his mind?

Of course he had, but no one had noticed until he shot Nails.

It was the speed, of course, and the paranoia. The club was at war, things were getting hairy, and Robin was supposedly telling him that the club was out to get them. It wasn't true. The guys in the club loved him. They couldn't stand her, though.

I went to visit Nails in the hospital. He was just as flabberghasted by what had happened as everyone else. He blamed Robin, not Spacer.

Well, Spacer got convicted of assault with a deadly weapon or some such thing. I lost track of him. Right around that time I divorced my biker old man and married my second husband... I extricated myself from club life and segued into an ill-fitting Yuppie lifestyle that proved to be not of my liking.

Yadda yadda yadda. Time passed, I got divorced again and married again, this time to a musician.

One day about 6 years ago I ran into one of the old time Pagans at a blues club in Asbury Park and I asked him "whatever happened to Spacer?"

What I was told that night was that Spacer and Robin had gotten even more heavily involved in Methamphetamine. Then one day someone took a gun and shot him to death in a drug deal gone bad. That's the story I got, anyway. Who knows what the truth is?

Spacer - funloving, pacifist, pot smoking hippy biker dude - dead.

Another victim of meth. Goddamn that shit!

What happened to Spacer still rests uneasily on my mind. It should never have happened, any of it. Whether or not Robin was responsible for his downfall is moot.

He was an adult, and he was intelligent enough to make his own decisions. He may well have met the same end even if he'd never met her. Who knows?

The only thing I do know is that when he hooked up with her the downfall was hard and fast, and ended in his tragic death.

Speed kills. And so, I'm afraid, can love. Let that be a lesson.

It's too sad that Spacer's gone. The world was a much better place when he was in it. He was one of the most likeable guys I ever met. I smile everytime I think of him.

He was part of the inspiration for my character Greasy. Greasy exists in fantasy. Spacer was a real human being. He was as real as real could be, once upon a time...

Times change and so do people, but memories... they're something else.

Rest In Peace, old friend...

Explaining Rae - The Heroine and Ultimate Survivor

Rae O'Brien is the Heroine of the Biker Chronicle Trilogy.

Even when playing a minor role, as in CONVERSATIONS WITH BILL, she is a rescuer and healer of souls.

People have asked me if Rae is actually me in disguise. Rae is NOT me, despite the many similarities. Although a lot of myself did creep into the character, so did the personalities and backgrounds of several other biker women I've known over the years. Rae is NOT me and I am NOT her. Her past is not mine.

In designing the Character of Rae O'Brien I wanted to show a woman with flaws and strengths, one who is not afraid of putting her own neck on the line to protect the people she loves and the things she believes in. She is strong and confrontational, but she is also capable of breaking down. This was - believe it or not - not an uncommon thing amongst the biker women I knew.

In designing her backstory, I wanted to give her an edgy background that would explain some of the reasons why she wound up where and who she is. She's smart. She learned a lot about life and what it takes to survive because she spent a couple of years living on the streets. She has no fear of men or what they can do to her, because she's a survivor of childhood sexual and physical abuse, and their threats fall upon deaf ears. What could anyone do to her that would be worse than that? Kill her?

Her attitude is, "Go ahead and try, I don't care."

Some would say that she's foolhardy, but anyone who hooks up with and outlaw biker gang puts their life on the line, so whether it is foolhardy or bad choices, because of her past Rae has naturally gravitated towards the darker side of life.

She survives - and thrives - inside the confines of the macho outlaw biker gang.

An outlaw bike gang is generally NOT the place for a woman's libber, but she remains unafraid.
Her toughness has won her admirers within the club, both amongst her fellow "Property Chicks" and the men who wear the colors of membership.

She has a strong sense of fairness (as opposed to "right" and "wrong"). When her old man screws around on her, she takes a lover.

Though the men flaunt their sexual conquests, it's strictly taboo for a club guy to mess around with another member's "Property". She breaks that rule. Because she has so many male friends, no one seems to notice her long running "special" friendship with one of the guys in her husband's club chapter.

She is a risk taker. She is also a runner. She runs away either physically or emotionally when her life becomes chaotic, which it frequently does.

When horrible things happen to her, she absorbs them. The only thing she can't cope with is the feeling of being deserted. Because of her past she carries with her an innate sense of worthlessness, but she is able to cope with everything people dish out... except desertion. Desertion is the ultimate way of someone telling her she has no value.

Her husband cheats on her, and her long standing extra-marital affair with her husband's friend never seems to progress beyond sex and friendship. He has drawn boundaries, and though she has tried to move beyond them he has always pushed her back. Subconsciously, she feels as though both men are telling her she isn't worth committing to on a full time basis.

She is both rock solid and emotionally fragile. Things that would crush a normal person barely faze her, but other things that normal people can usually weather without much trouble push Rae into Nervous Breakdownland. Everytime she thinks she has found stability, outside forces cause havoc and her life spins into chaos.

Meeting Storm Morrison is a life-changing experience that sets her off on a whole new path, and it's not an easy one to negotiate. In fact she has to draw upon all the courage she's constructed from the chaos in her past to survive Storm Morrison - and the war between Satan's Brotherhood M.C. and the Born Losers Motorcycle Club intact.

The character Rae develops throughout the trilogy.

Creating Storm Morrison - An Exercise in Thinking

The most fun thing about writing fiction is creating characters, and I find that 90% of the fun in creating characters is that I get to build their backstories. A backstory, of course, is the story of the character's past. A good backstory gives dimension to a character. When I began writing DISTANT VISIONS I was a true beginner.

It took several rewrites to flesh out the characters. I have no idea if that's a normal approach to character creation, but it was MY approach. I winged it, just as I do in real life, and eventually three dimensional lives began to develop from otherwise one dimensional words.

Storm Morrison is the main male character in my first book, DISTANT VISIONS. When he first came into my head I had an image of what I wanted him to look like - drop dead gorgeous, of course - but I had no idea what kind of personality he would have.

As I began to write I realized that Storm was simply too perfect to be true. He had it all, but yet here he was involved with an outlaw biker gang. There had to be something that drove him to make the choices he made, and it was up to me to find out what it was.

Storm has a lot of issues when the book begins, but we don't get to see all of them right away. In fact, there are some we don't find out about until sometime in the third book. Appearances can be deceptive, even in an outlaw bike gang. Everyone - as in real life - hides behind the facade they create to protect themselves from the horrors of reality, and Storm Morrison is no different.

Storm Morrison is a strong, dynamic man with great natural talent. There doesn't seem to be anything he can't do. He's an impressive guy, with a cadre of devoted close friends who would do anything for him, and vice versa.

But he is also amazingly vulnerable and he struggles with a psyche that's been fractured too many times not to hurt. He's been wounded by things that have happened along the path that he's chosen. He's done things he never thought he'd do. He's seen too much bad. He's lost part of himself and he doesn't even know it.

I wanted to let the reader see that fate and circumstance brought Storm to where he is when the story begins. Things have happened to him in life that he had little - or no - control over.

He got lost, went searching, and found himself becoming an outlaw biker for all the wrong reasons - all the easy reasons - not really understanding that there was more to the lifestyle than he'd expected. What happened to him happened gradually. One thing led to another. He was too close to the trees to see the forest. Eventually it caught up to him and his life was changed forever. He loses faith in the fairness of life.

I wanted Storm Morrison to have depth, so in devising a past I added several interesting elements to his story, including - but not limited to - the following: A family history (he's a halfbreed Lakota). Youthful passion. Disappointment. Tragedy. Limitations. Betrayal. Vengence. Greed. Depression. Confusion. Debauchery. Hatred. Fear. Redemption. They're all part of his personal character.

He thinks he's been in love, but as the story begins, he's never really known the meaning of the word. He's been a womanizer and a preditory lover.

I wanted him to be goddamn arrogant at times. Cocky, even.

He's an outlaw biker, and he's as righteous as they come, so he needed some enemies and reasons for those enemies to hate him.

I wanted him to feel guilt, too. He's done terrible things. Very few people can get through life without feeling guilty about the bad shit they've done, and he's definitely not been a model citizen.

I also wanted to show that he is capable of kindness. I wanted him to be an adventurous sort, but one who's not afraid of being tender and soft. I wanted him to be more than a good looking stud on a motorcycle, you know?

Storm Morrison is a lot more gritty than I made him out to be, but I've left that side of him - the dirty clothes for days and crapping in the woods on club camping trips side - to the reader's imagination.

Storm Morrison is not a low life. He's a middle-classed background guy wrapped in an outlaw lifestyle. He gets off on the freedom the lifestyle offers him, but also finds the life increasingly confining.

In designing Storm Morrison I drew heavily from people I've known in life. If I wanted him to have a certain trait or habit, I looked into my mental database to find that trait in someone I've known and tried to pinpoint all the little nuances of that part of their character.

I researched personality traits on the internet. I questioned what Storm would do in certain circumstances, given his personality type.

I also drew heavily from my own personal experiences with the outlaw bikers I've known - and loved, by the way - in my life.

They were complex people trying to survive just like everyone else. In fact, they were probably the most complex people I've ever known. The outlaw bikers I used to know were brilliant actors cast in a play of their own creation, and the stage at that time was the Jersey Shore. It was a great show carried to extremes at times. They were definitely over the edge!

To deviate from this model of "Jersey Shore" whiteboy outlaws, I made Storm Morrison a southern boy. I gave him Indian blood. Storm Morrison is definitely not a Northerner. He's got a slow southern charm that turns his women on. Once he settles into a relationship, though, he becomes a one-woman man. He's loyal and protective.

On a lark, I asked a lesbian reader what she thought of Storm.

She replied, "I'd fuck him!"

I take that as a compliment.

Mysterious Biker-Musician Coincidences Pt. 2

Picture this: 1970, Asbury Park, NJ. The Upstage Club. Upstairs Bruce Springsteen is jamming with the boys. Downstairs the Hazard From Harvard is doing acoustic music. Big Danny Gallagher is wandering back and forth between floors. (I went to High School with Big Danny. He and this guy Eddie Lurachi are sorta bouncers at the Upstage.) .

Big Danny was part of Springsteen's DR. ZOOM AND THE SONIC BOOM onstage entourage, and he has a gold album given to him by Bruce to prove Bruce's loyalty to him. Margaret Potter - the owner of the Upstage - is swilling down brews with the boys upstairs.

In come several members of the Pagans MC. Okay, so big deal. Well, one of the guys in the Pagans is this dude named FOO who is pals with Tinker West and both of them are Springsteen's buds. At the time I was married to this Pagans MC member HEAVY. FOO is living with NAILS, one of the Pagan big-wigs, who HEAVY and I used to party with a lot, so this is how I meet FOO. This is all just backstory...

Cut to the 1980s - The Upstage is long closed down. Down the beachfront, right next-door to the infamous Stone Pony club is Mrs. Jay's Beer Garden, and out front the Harley Davidson and Indian choppers are lined up at the curb. Both clubs are blasting loud rock/blues music into the hot summer night air. Asbury Park is hoppin'. I've long ago divorced HEAVY, married my 2nd husband Charlie, and then got divorced from him. It's the 1980s, like I said...

My present husband Too Tall Tom (a musician to whom I am still married) and I are in this little Asbury Park dive bar named JP Maloney's (a legend in it's day) where he is playing the Blues with some guys he knows, and in walks Big Danny Gallagher with his dobro and he begins to play. So Tom and he wind up playing together for the next 12 years or so in one band or another. I was at the time on the board of directors of this environmental organization, Clearwater, where I meet this guy Lee ( who I eventually learn is The Hazard From Harvard ) whom I'd never met before. Turns out he's old pals of Big Danny's from Upstage days. Lee and I remain friends, as do me (and Tom) and Big Danny.

Cut back to 1970 - Eddie Lurachi joins the Pagans. Eight months later, so does his little brother Little John Luraschi. Johnny does not stay a member - he can't handle it - but Eddie, now known as "DIRT", stays a lifelong member.

Cut back to the 1980s - Tom and Big Danny are playing in this bar and in walks Johnny Luraschi with his bass guitar. Now, I haven't seen DIRT or Little John Luraschi since 1973 ( I divorced HEAVY in '74) and here it is, 10 years later and DIRT has Multiple Sclerosis and is in a wheel chair. Johnny is now playing bass in a band with my 3rd husband Too Tall Tom. I never knew he could play bass! In fact, Johnny was in a legendary Asbury band named CAHOOTS with George Theiss, who was the band leader of Springsteen's first band.

One big incestuous family, huh? And by now you're thoroughly confused, right?

Cut to 2005. Big Danny visits us in North Carolina just prior to moving to Ireland for good. In the course of discussions we talk about Bruce, the Luraschi boys, the Pagans, and then I ask whatever happened to FOO?

Well, seems FOO ran off with Danny's wife is on everyone's shitlist. He hasn't been a biker since the early 70s and dropped out of sight. FOO is probably of consequence to no one except Big Danny anymore.

And what of Bruce? Bruce never hangs with any of his old friends anymore. He didn't even go to Margaret Potter's funeral (Little Steven did, to his credit) when she died of lung cancer in her early 50s. DIRT is dead, NAILS is dead. I still speak to HEAVY who is a Christian now. Johnny is still playing the Asbury Park circuit and riding his Harley.

IF you get yourself a copy of Springsteen's THE WILD, THE INNOCENT AND THE E STREET SHUFFLE, read the liner notes and listen to the songs. In some way or other, everyone is in there. Even me, vicariously. In fact, the first 3 or 4 Springsteen albums are all about those days in Asbury Park.

So what's that got to do with The Biker Chronicles? It's the backstory to why I wrote the books and my life as a biker chick in the 1960s-70s in Asbury Park NJ. It was all documented on those first 3 or 4 Springsteen albums. That place and those times and those characters - even me - were so intense that Springsteen wrote platinum-selling albums about the same scene that inspired The Biker Chronicles (although my books take place in more contemporary times).

I've run into Springsteen on a number of occasions. One of our musician friends Mike is his brother-in-law. I remember going to DR.ZOOM gigs on our chopper with HEAVY.

I remember when both DIRT and LITTLE JOHN LURASCHI were prospects with The Pagans. Mrs. Jay's is no longer there. The club was razed to make way for urban renewal in Asbury Park. The Stone Pony has been through several owners. The Pagans are still around, but even they've changed. Most of the guys I knew in the club back then are either dead or born again Christians now.

Those times, those places, those people are burned into my memory and the memories of many people, and every time we hear those early Springsteen Albums it all comes back. You had to be there, and if you were, you know what I'm talking about.
-Suzi

The Mysterious Biker-Musician Coincidences Pt. 1

I moved to the mountains of North Carolina in 2001, abandoning the Jersey Shore for a much saner environment... someplace where I could concentrate.

When sanity returned, I decided it was time to sit down and write the "Great American Biker Novel" (!), so I dragged out old photos and memories, and then decided to do some research to get a better grasp of the past. Several decades had passed since my last biker adventure, afterall, and my memory of those times were fading.

So I went online, found me a "younger" biker convict penpal to correspond with from the old club and began asking questions.

Little did I expect that he would actually KNOW most of the guys I asked about from the old days, but that he would also be able to fill me in on a lot of the details that I'd forgotten about. . It also turned out that he was a bigwig in the club and doing 16 years in the federal pen. Tsk, tsk.... He was also the bearer of bad knews that many of my old pals were dead and how they'd died.

Meanwhile - back to real time - my husband found a band to play with in Asheville, so for the next year I took my trusty pen and faithful composition books with me everywhere I went, to every gig he played.

Then one night 6 months after he started playing with this band, I was sitting out on the front porch of one of the clubs during band break and someone told me to talk to "Johnny" because he was from somewhere in NJ, too.

Johnny was the band's keyboard player. So I asked him where he was from and it turns out that he was not only from the town we'd just moved out of, but that he'd gone to the same High School as my husband, only three years earlier!

THEN Johnny mentioned playing the Asbury Park circuit once or twice, and I said that my husband was a long time veteran of that scene, and that so was I, both as part of the music scene and the bikers scene.

HERE IS THE REALLY WEIRD PART....

He not only KNEW all my old biker pals, but HE was the one who converted several of the very baddest guys I knew to becoming Born Again Christians.

In fact, he was still in touch with them. Is that not coincidence? After knowing this guy for 6 months I find out he shared friends with both me and my husband. Did I mention that my husband is 11 years younger than me? And that long before I knew him or even noticed him, he played at the biker club parties and the bars I used to frequent?

Anyway, these were just a few of the many strange coincidences that helped convince me to write - and finish - DISTANT VISIONS, the first book of the Trilogy.

More strange coincidences next time.... Johnny Luraschi and his brother Dirt, and the Big Danny - Foo connections to Bruce Springsteen.

What? Biker Romance? Are You NUTS?

Someone recently asked me why I chose to write a trilogy of romance books centered around an outlaw biker gang. Who, they asked me, were my target readers.

The answer to the first question is that it's something I know about, since my first husband and I rode with one of the biggest, baddest outlaw clubs in the nation for 5+ years back in the seventies. It's a lifestyle that was exciting, alternative, and definitely over the top, and I can't say that I didn't enjoy the hell out of it. However, drugs and women got to him, and I moved on, but I know the ins and outs of the lifestyle as well as any other lifestyle I've lived, and a lot of it was very romantic, indeed. Some of the deepest people I ever met were outlaw bikers. I was romantically involved with a few, friends with many others.

Looking back I can see that I was one of the few who got out in one piece, without falling prey to addiction or getting killed. Looking back I see how many of my old friends and lovers died along the way. In tribute to them, I decided to write the first book.

Who are my "targeted" readers? Anyone who likes a good sexy story with the following elements: motorcycles, sex (sometimes kinky), violence, crime, drugs, romance, and deep introspection. I guess that means people with open minds and no fear of dirty language.

I'm not quite sure how to define a genre of readership. My stuff is not mainstream, but yet it's not so raw and rough that only outlaw bikers would like it. It's deeper than that. My readers are alternative thinkers who are not afraid to read about the darker side of life.

I wonder how you would pigeon-hole that into a genre of readers? Any comments?