The Story Behind "The Kansas Cross-up"
The Kansas Cross-up is a novella now, but the idea and the writing started as a short story. When I was 5,000 words into the first draft, I naively thought I could wrap it up with another 5,000 words—10,000 in all, maybe 12,000 if I had loose ends to tie up.
I was wrong.
The Kansas Cross-up ended up a touch over 30,000 words, way too long to be a short story but only half the length of a short novel and a quarter the size of my longest work (Holes in My Armor, 125,000 words).
As others have observed, the job of the fiction writer is not to write the story but to reveal it.
When a writer reveals a story, characters grow and behave in ways that surprise even the person tapping at the keyboard. But the writer keeps at it until the story is done.
So did this little thriller exist somewhere in the ether before I wrote (revealed) it? It’s sort of spooky to give that idea serious weight, but during the writing I sometimes did feel that way. I’m sure other fiction writers have had similar experiences.
Now, a few words about the content of The Kansas Cross-up.
I grew up in Kansas and lived there through high school before moving to Oregon with my parents. So setting a story, or part of it, in Kansas may seem like a natural event for me. Some might even ask why I haven’t done it before.
I don’t have the answer to that question, but I have had an interest in doing some kind of Kansas book for a while. I just needed the right vehicle.
A farm story was a possibility, but it didn’t move me. I spent most of my early years on a farm, and I’m happy to leave those times back where they belong. Also, I don’t write autobiographical fiction. So there was little chance of my characters feeding the hogs and shoveling manure.
Finally, it occurred to me that I could send my protagonist back to Kansas from somewhere much different (Los Angeles/Hollywood). Then he could visit his home state and do something interesting that would tie together his old life in Kansas with everything he’d done since he left. He could know about wheat and farming, but yet have some distance.
I’d also thought for some time about writing about a hit man. The idea was only mildly attractive at first, but I warmed to it. Even if a writer is a model citizen, he can at least imagine he’s not.
Protagonists in my other books have tended to be good guys, sometimes with noticeable flaws but essentially heroic in quiet ways. So creating Harry Hall was a chance to explore a morally ambiguous character. I tried not to make Harry too bad or too good, just plenty bad enough that he can’t deny what he is. Telling the truth to lovers or coworkers is out of the question.
There are good novels on contract killers out there, but I didn’t want to mimic those stories. My ideas along those lines had the necessary action and conflict, but nothing integral to Kansas, nothing that a hundred other people couldn’t have been written.
So I’d like to think that The Kansas Cross-up is a book that only I could have written. I know I’m the only one who did write it.