The depression, back in 1932, made writing sink-or-swim proposition for Robert C. Blackmon. Cast out on his own after losing a comfortable clerical position with the Atlantic Coast Line rail road, Blackmon swam and today he blesses the day his work terminated with the railroad.
Today, eight years later, Blackmon is recognized as one of the 20 leading magazine writers in the mystery field of what is known as the “pulps”. He is making more money than he probably ever could have made in a railroad office. And he is in a work that is so fascinating that now he can’t see anything else as a profession.
Back in the year 1924 Blackmon went to work here as a clerk for the Atlantic Coast Line. He had just been married, the railroad offered security and reasonably congenial work.
Blackmon had always been interested in writing. From a youth of 12 in Spokane, Wash, he had written because he liked it. And almost from the beginning he had written stuff that “took” with newspapers and magazines. Leaving high school early in his teens, he went out on his own for four years, roaming over the Northwest—to Montana, Idaho, Oregon, California and even British Columbia. He followed various occupations — electrician, paper mill worker, fire lookout man, lumberjack, cowpuncher. And he was not averse to “pearl-diving”—i. e. washing dishes for a meal.
Quits Punching Cattle
At the age of 20 he had a chance to come to Florence, S. C., with his grandmother with whom he had lived for a short while in the Pee Dee city, in early grammar school. He left his cow punching and headed South. Soon he was employed as circulation manager of the Florence Daily Times. Two or three years later he worked as circulation manager of the Florence News Review, finally leaving newspaper work for the railroad in 1924.
The yen for writing again surged forth in Bob Blackmon’s mind. He liked his job all right but he wanted to write, so write he did. And as the expression commonly used by writers goes, he wrote mostly “for the waste banket”.
“Many a day I remember working my regular job at the railroad,” he related in his comfortably heated study at the rear of his home at 603 Park Avenue. “Then I’d go home and spend six or seven hours writing. I have been awakened many times by nodding until I touched the typewriter with my face.”
Heaven, as the philosopher says, is not gained at a single bound, and so it was with Bob Blackmon. He didn’t rise to stardom as rapidly as he had anticipated. He soon learned there were others who thought they could write, too. Instead of finding nice, pink checks in his mail he would receive tersely worded printed slips with the news that unfortunately the editor was unable to use his manuscript. And they would close almost invariably, with these comforting words:
Gets Rejection Slips
“The fact that your manuscript is unavailable for us does not necessarily mean that it lacks merit. But rather that it does not suit our needs at this particular time.”
That was discouraging but the budding author did not give up. One day he received a slip that was different. It bore a pencilled notice at the bottom: “Let us see some more of your work.”
Soon Blackmon was “hitting” occasionally, but oh, so very occasionally. He would have liked to quit his job and spend all his time writing mystery stories, but he was afraid to. And well he might be, for one day in 1927 he collapsed from a burst blood vessel in the stomach, caused by a duodenal ulcer. He was packed off to the Atlantic Coast Line hospital, where his expenses were defrayed by the company. And what he thought, would he do if he were on his own? How would he pay his expenses?
During 5 years of semi-invalidism he hung on to his job, writing like fury in his spare time.
Thus matters went until circumstances decided for him. One fine day in 1932 Blackmon received his “unconditional release” from service with the railroad. Expenses had to be cut and he was one of the victims.
Loses His Job
There probably couldn’t have been any more inauspicious time for Bob Blackmon to be cut loose from his old moorings. It would have been different any other time, but now, when short story markets were shot to pieces by the depression, how could he, almost an amateur make good?
Undaunted by the dark outlook he went to work with his typewriter, turning out thousands of words of mystery stories —tales of ghost-haunted woodlands, of keen-minded cops, of daring detectives, of intricate mystery. The pulps began to sit up and take notice. Here was a writer who had something. The stream of rejection slips became smaller, and the gentle rain of checks grew heavier.
In 1983 Blackmon made his first great bid for national recognition when he submitted two stories in the $1000 contest put on by Writer’s Digest, which always has been his bible. Writing against 5000 other contestants he came through with fifth and eighty-ninth prizes, consisting of a reference book and a typewriter.
Things have been different since then. Blackmon sits out in his study in the back yard, pecking away at his portable into the wee hours of the night. Often enough he spends all night writing, for when an idea seizes him he follows it through to its conclusion.
And generally he comes through with a goodly handful of checks at the end of the month.
The future now has a rosy hue. Blackmon is making a good living at writing. He can get off any time he wishes for a trip to the beach or the mountains.
“It was the best thing in the world for me when the railroad dispensed with my services” he now admits. “In fact I wish they’d done it sooner.”
No publicity-seeker by any means, Blackmon is willing enough to talk if he realizes his questioner is sincere. And he has some very definite ideas on writing, chief of which is the belief that pulp writing is no cinch. Some of the best writing in the United States, he believes, is done in the pulps. And although he would be the first to disclaim any thought that his writings will live through the ages, he believes the writing in the rough-paper mags compares favorably in real style and power to anything being written today.
Women’s Mags ’Insipid’
In fact, he brands many of the stories printed in slick-paper women’s magazines as insipid.
“My wife tells me about some of the stories they print in these magazines,” he said. “A few are good-many are awful.”
For that matter, the subject of this piece was written for a wide variety of publications himself, including the slick field on occasion. But he realizes that the pulps, at least for the time being, are his field. Any clay he can dash off a story for Clues Detective, Mystery Magazine, Detective Fiction Weekly or Detective Story, received by return mail a check for $50 to $75 based on 1 1/2 to 3 cents a word. In fact by this time he has achieved the high distinction of being paid in advance.
Yet Blackmon is not a scorner of the slicks. He believes that eventually his work will appear regularly in the slicks. Just now, however, he is content to stay put, turning out stories and novelettes which he knows he can sell.
“I am confident I could sell to the slicks now,” he says, “but see no reason why I should attempt it. The competition in this field is terrific. I might starve to death before I got my hearings. And it’s pretty hard to do it gradually because of the difference in technique.”
A glance at some of Blackmon’s stories will convince anyone that the pulps are something more than mere trash. In practically every case his tales, while chiefly intended for amusement, contain some bit of philosophy or moral that does not appear on the surface.
For instance, in one story he attempted to prove his belief that every man, no matter how much he resembles Caspar Milquetoast, can be heroic on occasions of stress. He takes James B. Dobbins, a pink faced bank clerk with slightly thick lips, and portrays him goaded to the point where he faces death without hesitation. It in this sly portrayal of character which makes his detective stories something more than mere amusing brain disturbers.
With never a bit of medical training, Blackmon has always been interested in portraying the medical phase of crime detection. And so it was not at all surprising when a year and a half ago he began writing a series of stories based on one Douglas True, M.D., a precise and dignified character known to the police as ‘Doc Trouble.’ The cognomen is given because in practically every case Dr Trouble handles a mystery develops.
And s-h-h-h! here’s a secret, Doc Trouble is in reality a certain Florence physician whom Blackmon believes embodies all the mental characteristics of a good detective physician combination.
“Of course no doctor ever gets Into all those scrapes,” Blackmon explained, “but the stories do show what kind of man my hero is. Every time I build a Doc Trouble plot I try to imagine what this doctor would do In such a situation.”
Doc Trouble, he pointed out by one of his stories, is this type of man. He receives a telephone rail one day. It is a woman. She screams excitedly that her father is going to be bitten by a rattlesnake “Please to come quick,” she pleads.
Doc Trouble tells her sharply that be is merely a physician and not a herpetologist or superintendent of a zoo. But when the woman cries out that her father has been bitten in the meantime, he drops the phone and hurries over – for when the man is bitten he becomes a patient and is therefore in the realm of medicine!
Bob Blackmon, now approach his his fortieth birthday, has some very definite ideas on writing gleaned from years of experience to the flood of questions that so often come to him from beginners, he usually says.
“Writing is a Profession”
Writing Is a profession just as is any other doctor, lawyer or businessman. It is also an art. A writer paints pictures with words and through those pictures creates a predetermined reaction in the reader. Any method is permissible if it produces that predetermined reaction. That applies to any of the other arts. It doesn’t matter whether you put paint on a picture with a brush, thumb or spray gun, as long as the desired effect is there.”
As further advice to a young writer, Blackmon suggests that he select the type of story he Is fitted to write and read everything he can get his hands on. Then the real job comes – to take the stories apart and “see what makes them tick,” as he expresses it.
“Some people have the Idea.” he says, “that writing Is nothing but putting words on paper. That’s a mistake. The magazine editors every day return thousands of manuscripts. I have seen stacks of them in the editors’ offices on my regular trips to New York.”
In conclusion, dear reader, if you are one who follows in the distinguished example of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Woodrow Wilson and other famous detective story fans, just look over the newsstands and more than likely you will find one with a name in the index or possibly on the cover, of Robert C Blackmon. Then again it may be Charles R Wayne, Craig Randall. Arthur Humbolt, Carl C. Blackstone or Burt Hampton, or some other pseudonym. But in any case you will know that the author is a Florence man who writes for the pulps and is proud of It.