The creative process between cartooning and writing is similar for this Royal Palm Literary Award winner. Dana Summers writes suspense when he isn’t working on his comic strips The Middletons and Bound & Gagged as well as editorial cartoons. His novel Downhill Fast won Unpublished Book of the Year in the 2018 Royal Palm Literary Awards after it won First Place for Unpublished Mystery or Crime and First Place for Unpublished Thriller or Suspense. Dana discusses his book and creative career in this week’s RPLA Showcase.
The Art and Writing Connection
I’ve been writing for roughly fifteen years and cartooning since the 1970s. My first two books are kindling, and they should be. After many workshops, seminars and conferences, I finally began to get the hang of writing. The creative process between cartooning and writing is similar for me. Especially in writing dialogue. I’ve been writing captions and comic strip dialogue for forty years, so dialogue in novels comes easier for me. Also descriptions. I visualize a scene in my mind and imagine myself there. Putting that into words is part of being creative, I guess.
The Winning Entry, Downhill Fast
I’ve always been interested in noir. Downhill Fast is noir all the way. But I wanted a protagonist who was different. I drew from real life and made him 68 years old and in ill health, over-the-hill, and losing his touch. That’s not really me, but there’s a lot of me in Lou Braga. I then set him against horrendous odds, protecting his daughter and a ten-year-old boy from a ruthless crime boss. I found the play between an old white guy and a young black kid to be a ton of fun. Lou is a stranger in today’s world. Social media, man buns, and political correctness irritate him. He is out of touch with the latest slang and can’t understand why everyone has tattoos. On the other hand, the kid is right at home. I’m a cartoonist, so humor is front and center in this story.
Logline: While protecting a ten-year-old boy, geriatric hit man Lou Braga must overcome his crumbling body in order to save his daughter from a ruthless crime boss. Read an excerpt here.
Two Truths and a Lie, Writer’s Edition
All the rules of writing must be followed.
If you don’t persevere you’ll never make it.
You can’t just sit down and write a novel without a bit of education.
The truth? If you don’t persevere you’ll never make it. Getting into cartooning was tough, but breaking into writing is way tougher by a long shot. It took five or six years to land a paying cartoon job and ten years of sending cartoons to Newsweek before they used one. I’ve been writing for the last fifteen years and it took me that long to land an agent. So don’t give up.
The other truth: Don’t think you can just sit down and write a novel without a bit of education. I wasted years thinking I could do this on my own. I started reading James Bond novels in high school. I always thought I could write a novel, until I sat down to do it!
And the lie…All the rules of writing must be followed. I’ve been told that you can break any rule as long as you do it well.
An RPLA Rock Star
My first novel Drawn and Buried won a Royal Palm Literary Award, the Freddie Award, and landed me an agent, Victoria Skurnick of Levine, Greenberg, Rostan Agency. My second novel, The Dark and the Dead, also won an RPLA. Downhill Fast is being shopped now, so I have my fingers crossed.
Coming Next for this Novelist
I’m currently working on a YA paranormal book, of all things. The protagonist, a bullied kid at school takes a dare to shoot a selfie in a haunted house. He comes away with more than he bargained for. Not my normal genre, but I had the idea and I’m going with it.
And if you are wondering if the political cartoonist will be writing satire or political humor… I can’t see myself writing anything political. I’ve been immersed in that for a long time. My first book Drawn and Buried has a little bit of politics, but not much. I like stories where an everyday person finds himself/herself in a situation that is totally out of their comfort zone.
Connect with Dana
Visit me at www.danajsummers.com or connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
More About RPLA
The Royal Palm Literary Awards competition is a service of the Florida Writers Association established to recognize excellence in members’ published and unpublished works while providing objective and constructive written assessments for all entrants. Judges include literary agents, publishers, film producers, current or retired professors, teachers, librarians, editors, bestselling and award-winning authors, and journalists from across the nation. Entries are scored against the criteria set by RPLA using rubrics tailored to each genre. Winners are announced at the annual FWA conference during the RPLA awards banquet. To learn more about RPLA, click here for the guidelines.
First Place Unpublished Mystery or Crime
First Place Unpublished Thriller or Suspense
