Tag Archives: 1980s

I love the ’80s, especially for exploring fiction

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Anybody who knows me knows that I really enjoy writing stories set in the 1980s.

My new book THAT OCTOBER is set – for the most part – in October 1984, although there’s some exposition in the book that leads readers back 20-plus years before that.

There’s a “Stranger Things” vibe that a couple of writer friends who kindly blurbed the book noted, although there are no monsters – except for the human kind – in “That October.”

Sara McKinley, my friend who created the wonderful cover for THAT OCTOBER, said she was thinking about “Paper Girls” and other “kids on bikes” stories as she was working on the art. (My kids in the novel are slightly older, although not by much, and more mobile.)

But besides THAT OCTOBER, I wrote another story, “Steel Victory,” which was published in the 2024 Slaughterhouse Press anthology “Maximum Firepower: An ’80s Action Anthology.” The premise behind the Brian G. Berry-created “Maximum Firepower” is that the tales we wrote were inspired by 1980s action movie tropes.

In my story “Steel Victory,” a Captain America-style super soldier escapes from a top-secret lab in 1986 Washington, D.C. This super soldier is no Steve Rogers, however, and when he goes missing he goes on a murder spree.

For the look of the missing super soldier, I pictured Martin Kove, the actor who played the bad guy in “The Karate Kid” and other 80s action pictures and recently returned in the “Cobra Kai” series.

It’s up to three women – the doctor who conceived the project, the “lab rat” who knows more about the project than anyone and the project’s head of security – to track him down in the darkness of D.C.

“Steel Victory” and THAT OCTOBER appealed to me because the time period was very defined and familiar to many of us, even those who were too young to experience it. Everybody knows the trappings of the decade, from “Terminator” movies to “Star Wars” on home video to the music of MTV.

As much as I find my cell phone and the Internet indispensable now, there’s something very freeing about writing about a time when the protagonist couldn’t just pull a phone out of their pocket and call or text some crucial information to someone.

I love research, and one of the things I discovered as I wrote “Steel Victory” was that I couldn’t round up a bunch of those government-issue black SUVs for the search party. SUVs, other than Jeep Cherokees, were not in wide use at the time. So my protagonists had to improvise.

It’s an intoxicating thing, to write about a period that’s so close yet so far away. I hope I get to do it again.

Here’s where you can get “Maximum Firepower” and my story “Steel Victory.”

Music and my playlist for THAT OCTOBER

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I know writers – and readers – who want absolute quiet when they’re writing or reading.

For me, maybe because I spent decades working in a newsroom, with overlapping conversations, police scanners and all manner of noise competing for attention, I can usually tune out the noise when I want to. Or maybe it’s that I like some noise while I’m writing.

However it works, I like having music playing when I’m writing, especially with novels. When I was writing my first novel, SEVEN ANGELS – not yet published; maybe someday? – in 2019, I played non-stop the music of the Highwomen, the Chicks, Bonnie Raitt and other artists. It’s music I like and the main character is a strong woman, which really fit with the music. When I was writing my second novel, GHOST SHOW, in 2020, I played artists of the 1940s because the book is set in 1948. This wasn’t as conducive to writing for me. I knew the music and artists but didn’t get into the right headspace during it.

When I was writing THAT OCTOBER 2021-2023, I played music of the early 1980s non-stop for a year and a half. The story takes place mostly in October 1984, so I kept my playlist – almost exclusively youtube posts of music videos – limited to songs that predated that month and year.

I incorporated some of that music into the book, making references in some cases by having the high-school-age characters mentioning or singing or dancing to the songs. I didn’t include lyrics in the novel because it can be expensive or nearly impossible to get the rights to print lyrics.

When I readied the book for publication this year, working with my friend and editor Jill Blocker, I decided to get on Spotify and make a THAT OCTOBER playlist. I used songs that I listened to during writing, songs that are cited specifically in the book and songs that just work well with the story.

Duran Duran, Ratt, Cyndi Lauper and more than a dozen others are on the playlist. I’ll probably tinker with it at some point and add some more.

THAT OCTOBER publishes June 1 and you can pre-order it now through most of the usual online booksellers. Hopefully it can be found and purchased from one of the booksellers that aren’t among the very worst on the planet.

In the meantime, here’s a link to the THAT OCTOBER playlist on Spotify. I hope you enjoy it, and the book.