Birth of a Character

I've often been asked from where and how I developed the protagonist for my first novel January's Paradigm, and its two successors, One Hot January and January's Thaw. Here, for the first time anywhere, is the whole story...

My name is January. Joe January. I was a private dick from the South Bronx, circa 1940. Was once described as an indignant Humphrey Bogart. Who am I to argue? The difference between Bogie and me is that I was the real McCoy. Where he took the scripts that Hollywood wrote for him, I took on the tough cases nobody else would. Unlike Bogie’s, my bumps and bruises were the real deal, not makeup. Although in retrospect I can see that this could be construed as one of those Hollywood type scripts that Bogie might have been interested in bringing to the screen were he alive today.

In truth, I’m no Joseph Conrad, but I wrote every word on these pages. This is my story, but make no mistake, it’s anything but a story. I know. You’ll say it reads like science fiction, spanning two centuries and dealing with time travel and alternate realities. Some might find a less than satisfactory denouement, while still others will accuse me of arrogance in my self-depiction, creating a sort of comic book superhero; but in truth, in youth we often view ourselves as invincible. It isn’t until later in life that we come to realize how fragile life really is; furthermore, that we come to see the global repercussions of our actions. Yet given the chance to live life over again, avoiding the mistakes made during the first go-around, who among you would turn your back on the chance? Hence the real meat of my story is about missed opportunities, how, through my own foolishness, I lost the one woman who meant the most to me, not once but twice…

— Excerpt from One Hot January


And so was born Joe January, the protagonist from my forthcoming novel One Hot January (OHJ), its predecessor January’s Paradigm (JP), and the third book in the series, January’s Thaw, which I’ve just sat down to write.

The name Joe January comes from a John Wayne film, perhaps one of his least known films, Legend of the Lost, filmed in 1957 and costarring Sophia Loren. Wayne is hired as a guide for a French spiritualist in search of his father who disappeared in the Sahara while searching for a lost city in which he hopes to acquire a vast treasure. Loren, a thieving prostitute, tags along as the romantic interest, playing the two men against each other, in hopes of getting a share of the treasure.

I first saw Legend of the Lost as a boy in 1962 or 63. A Duke fan then (and yes, even now), the film did little to fuel my imagination (it was far too wordy, costarred a woman, and contained too little action to capture my attention), but the name Joe January stayed with me for nearly 25 years, at which time I sat down to write The Gig is Up, my first interactive comedy/mystery for a dinner theatre in the Detroit area. The action takes place in a nightclub in which a jazz trio — two female vocalists and a male pianist — are performing. During the first set, each member of the trio leaves the stage with a variety of props (opportunity) and exchanges of dialogue (motive), and Joe January appears in the second act as the police detective who, with the help of the audience, solves the offstage murder (during the intermission) of the trio’s manager, who is never seen. The show did well for me, being performed several times in a variety of venues.

But I wasn’t through with the character. In 1991 when I asked a friend of mine what she wanted for her birthday, she replied that she wanted me to write a short story for her. Perhaps she saw in me more talent than I realized I had. While I was writing this short story — I believe I titled it The Ultimate Paradox (TUP) — a Faustus type piece in which a man bargains with the devil for redemption of his soul, I began to envision a much longer piece, novel length and less much of the spiritual message of the short piece, in which one of the co-protagonists must face down his darker self in order to come to terms with his wife’s infidelity. The result was January’s Paradigm.

The protagonist from TUP (who wasn’t Joe January) didn’t make it into JP, but the antagonist from TUP evolved into JP’s third supporting character. Affectionately dubbed the beast, he’s described as a small gargoyle — standing at no more than five foot, three inches tall … it was obese, its girth greater than its height. Its personal appearance was obscenity personified: a bulbous nose, red, from too much drink, supported glasses so thick the magnifying principle worked both ways. The watery blue eyes, disproportionately huge, glared with cold, savage indifference ... its teeth, black from the rot of 10,000 Baby Ruth bars, jutted at a multitude of crazy angles, like those of some weirdly mutated rodent …

In JP, Joe January evolved from a comedic police detective in The Gig Is Up into a Bogie-esque tough guy, wise-cracking private investigator from the 1940s, a loves ’em and leaves ’em bad boy for whom many women toss away the warm and sensitive man they claim to want.

With at least one more book to come in the January series I feel Joe has a lot more to say; but after working with him for nearly 15 years, I can honestly say I’m looking forward to writing about someone else (no hard feelings, Joe).