I worked as a driver for some time when I was in grad school.   I had a scholarship.  But there’s always a cash crunch, especially during the summer when school is out.  So my best friend—a fashion designer–would hire me.  Man, I was happy as a clam, driving around in her car on her gas money, doing errands that got me exploring parts of LA I never knew existed.  This is what got me thinking about writing a detective novel about this world.

You never get to see a dye house in LA unless you have business there.  They’re in unmarked storefronts in areas zoned for industrial work—areas nobody will care about if a vat of bleach somehow springs a leak and leaches into the water supply.  There’s something very film noir about the dye houses.  All the workers look like they just got out of prison and are trying to straighten up and fly right…for the moment.  The workers have tattoos–mostly blue ones—covering their arms.  Shaved heads.  Their fingers are always stained:  blue, indigo, orange, red—so many layers, the digits are almost black.

They stain the invoices I hand them.

It’s humid in a dye house. There’s always smoke rising.  The workers emerge from shadows, like demons from a hell mouth.  And even though the workers look menacing—like I would be scared to see them in an alley—they are deferential when they greet me.  This is what is unnerving.  It does feel like a place in hell, like people living some sort of limbo penance.  Has hell beaten the rebellion out of them?

This is the world of fashion I never see in fiction.  The antithesis of The Devil Wears Prada, which sells the flipside world of the magazine covers:  a beautifully tailored world of fashionable, svelte young things.  There’s gotta be a reason why they keep pumping out this stuff.  It sells.

Here’s my low self-esteem moment—the inner-demon calling out in the dye house of my head–when I’m nursing a hang-over:

Hey, Loser…Do you think your world is marketable?  You’re just a loser just like the rest of us.  You live in an unmarked storefront and you’re no better than anyone else.  Your hands are dirty.  You breathe hazardous chemicals.  Who’s going to pay for a loser like you?  You’re not worth shit.

This is not a healthy interior monologue but it’s there when I’m feeling vulnerable—a nobody.  I try not to think about it, so I gave up drinking, even though my hero is an alcoholic.  Alcoholism counts as research.  It’s technically tax deductible.  So I’m justified in this habit.  But I think I better stop these voices in my head.  A writer’s work is never done—his work, only exceeded by his sacrifice.