From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...
This piece has an odd history. It started as a college essay. Some class was looking for us to write an essay based on material we had read. One of the things was "The Maltese Falcon." So I latched onto that and wrote up a story about meeting an old-school private eye to find out what the job was really like back in the film noir days. I was very much in a Woody Allen phase in college (prose-wise) having read his collections of essays and short stories. I think I got an A on it. I know it's sitting in a file somewhere, if I really had to back up that claim. It was this time I started to believe I would be a writer, so I clung to my creations like something precious that I might get to release some day. Instead, whenever I kind of hit a dry spell, I would pull something out and rework it. This was one of those times.
I often would think that if I could nail one of the regular bits, it might impress PHC enough to be used. That thinking is very wrong; it's tricky to submit a version of their baby and not have them focus on the mistakes and shortcomings. Always better to hit them with something new (usually). Guy Noir is one of GK's signature bits, and having played around with the form with my own creation, Nick Flebber, and my Christmas-tery, Lost Claus, it was a genre I felt comfortable doing. A new week and month were upon us as the season was winding down and I remembered the detective bit and pulled it out, shaping it into a radio sketch. It didn't make the cut.
Back to Nick Flebber: as I played around with the character in different mediums, I turned Lost Claus into a novella. I would adapt it to radio. I pitched it as a series and wrote two pilot episodes, which I adapted into novellas. And I started writing more adventures. I needed to increase the page count for my one novella, Space Case, so I turned the radio sketch into a short story. From there, I adapted it back into radio episode. It's been produced by a local radio group and I'm awaiting the audio link. You can read more about Nick Flebber here. I still work my favorite line "I always get my man plus expenses" into a few other episodes. And not to spoil the ending, but I always liked my little "Some Like it Hot" reference at the end.
I often would think that if I could nail one of the regular bits, it might impress PHC enough to be used. That thinking is very wrong; it's tricky to submit a version of their baby and not have them focus on the mistakes and shortcomings. Always better to hit them with something new (usually). Guy Noir is one of GK's signature bits, and having played around with the form with my own creation, Nick Flebber, and my Christmas-tery, Lost Claus, it was a genre I felt comfortable doing. A new week and month were upon us as the season was winding down and I remembered the detective bit and pulled it out, shaping it into a radio sketch. It didn't make the cut.
Back to Nick Flebber: as I played around with the character in different mediums, I turned Lost Claus into a novella. I would adapt it to radio. I pitched it as a series and wrote two pilot episodes, which I adapted into novellas. And I started writing more adventures. I needed to increase the page count for my one novella, Space Case, so I turned the radio sketch into a short story. From there, I adapted it back into radio episode. It's been produced by a local radio group and I'm awaiting the audio link. You can read more about Nick Flebber here. I still work my favorite line "I always get my man plus expenses" into a few other episodes. And not to spoil the ending, but I always liked my little "Some Like it Hot" reference at the end.
