Elmore Leonard was born October 11, 1925 in New Orleans, Louisiana

To Elmore Leonard:

You said bring them out on stage, 

your characters. 

Have them audition in the early scenes.

Elmore Leonard. Image by John Levanen via Flickr

Elmore Leonard. Image by John Levanen via Flickr

See if they start to talk. 

And boy, did they?

That’s just what you did, Dutch, with your pad of paper

back when you

wrote copy for Chevrolet.  

See the USA? 

Yuma, Hamtramck, Cape Girardeau.

Detroit and later.

But you remained invisible, and you left out the parts 

readers tend to 

skip.

Find my crime novels on Amazon and on this website.