Film in the Literary Sense
Author of seven Margot O’Banion & Max Skull mysteries, Kit Sloane’s offbeat stories chronicle the intricacies of Hollywood filmmaking from the point of view of her protagonist, feature film editor Margot O’Banion and 
her significant other, director Max Skull. She was the first fiction editor of Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine from 1996-1998. A longtime member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Mystery Women of the UK, Kit graduated from Mills College, Oakland CA with a degree in Art History and was named one of Mills College’s Literary Women for 2007.
My dual protagonists, Margot O’Banion and Max Skull, are in the movie business. I know it’s popular for most of us to have a love/hate ambivalence about Hollywood. There are always some rotten movies to complain about, but it’s the GREAT stuff that is cherished. The creative process in any venue isn’t always a smooth road or a pretty process (for books, art—you name it). For instance, my 6th, LOCATION LOCATION, was in the middle of being printed when the printer went out of business! But the creative process, no matter which of them it is, IS exciting, to put it mildly.
I created my female protagonist, Margot O’Banion, as a successful, well-paid, feature film editor. The film editors I’ve met are mostly all women; smiling, quiet, unobtrusive, rather shy people. This wasn’t the “Hollywood” I saw depicted in books and on TV. These quiet people with their technically demanding work are a long way from the glitz of Hollywood. I liked the dichotomy.
In fact, the concept of filmmaking as this totally collaborative industry employing hundreds of people with different personalities, talents, hang-ups, agendas, and goals appeals to me deeply. Think of two hundred people working at their separate trades to create one product, a movie. And, much like the publishing business, movies must start with a STORY, or, at least, the idea of a story. In publishing our books depend on other’s talents, too. We have the editors, the proofers, the design and graphic artists, and the printers, not to mention the wholesalers and the distributors. Somewhere inside all that is, hopefully, a terrific story!
As a quiet, rather shy, person, Margot likes and needs the privacy and relative anonymity that her job provides. She is not an amateur sleuth. Margot’s editing job is to find the one perfect frame of film (or digital image) out of miles and miles of the stuff, the exact take that fulfills the director’s vision. Her talent is in examining detail and observing the big picture—both great characteristics, I decided, for the protagonist in a mystery series. In my series, problematic situations require Margot to step forward. She finds this both difficult and occasionally terrifying.
But interesting to me as Margot’s character is, I felt it important to team her with a partner who is all the things Margot isn’t—a partner who insists on dragging her out of her wallflower mode and into real life. Meet Max Skull! Margot’s partner, in work and love, is a flamboyant and highly popular film director and screenwriter, the “flavor of the month,” as he puts it.
But the characters I describe are not off-the-wall personalities. These people are talented, creative, ambitious, and smart. That’s how you compete and survive in their world. My daughter Annie (also my cover artist) is an art director for TV and the movies. I listen to her talk about her jobs. I listen to her long time partner, Marc, a production designer, and I hear what they do, what they want to do, the odds of getting to these goals and what the people are like working around them. The film industry, like trying to get published, is not for the faint of heart!
Now my stories don’t describe the horrifying tactics of a terrorist or a serial killer that shock the nation. My stories describe the small bumps in the road that we all encounter on a nearly daily basis, the small incidents that might actually add up to something unfortunate, unpleasant, or even dangerous. And the curiously problematic people we meet… The people we instantly sense that we won’t be inviting over for dinner!
Luckily, having placed Margot and Max in the “business,” allows me to locate my stories anywhere. I’ve taken the duo from a rural ranch in Northern California, to the wine country on a luxurious vacation from hell, to Guatemala and Panama on location and now, with THE FAT LADY SINGS, they are in Cambridge, England.
I hope you will enjoy their adventures!
January 26, 2010
Posted in: Guest Blogs
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2 Responses
Your novels are an interesting, “different” take on the traditional cozy. I like the locations, too. The California locations are cool and I love foreign locales. I wish mysteries had more of them. Good characters and situations,
Kit, your books sound great and I’m looking forward to reading all about Margot and Max. Welcome to the Oak Tree Press family!
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