Australian Pulp Fiction Writers

Lean Streets: The Working Life of Australian Crime-Fiction Writers in the 1950s.

When Gordon Clive Bleeck sat down to write his first ‘detective’ story in 1954 he had already written over 40 novelettes for publishers who had cropped up to satisfy the Australian public’s demand for mass-produced disposable fiction.

After a ‘dumping’ duty was imposed upon American pulps in 1939, Australian publishers stepped in to fill the fiction void. Houses such as Horwitz Publications, Action Comics, Calvert Publishing printed fiction as fast as their writers could produce them. Into the fray stepped writers such as Bleeck, Carter Brown (Alan Geoffrey Yates) and Les R Dunn. They produced numerous novelettes under factory-like conditions.

Work Schedules

Unfortunately Bleeck is the only pulp writer to leave detailed records (in the Bleeck Collection at the National Library of Australia): ledgers and diaries of his punishing work schedule. One week before Christmas in 1954 Bleeck notes that “C[liff] Robinson [Leisure Publications /Action Comics] rang. Wants me to write [48,000 word] crime novels rate of one in three weeks” (Diary Entry 17 December). Two weeks later Bleeck “analysed detective novel”, fixed the kitchen sink and tiled (Diary Entry 7 Jan 1955). The following day he started plotting the novel, he wrote it for nine sessions (his diary numbered each time he worked on the novel) and finished You Can’t Forget Murder on 31^st January 1955. He delivered it to Leisure the following day and received £58/4s for the 48,500-word novel. Leisure must have been impressed with You Can’t Forget Murder (Red Back Novel #359 published May 1955) because Robinson asked Bleeck to write another novel, in four weeks. A week later (February 9) Bleeck outlined Hot Ice-Cold Killer. He delivered it on February 28; in the interim Bleeck had penned a new western and edited Gun Glory for Cleveland Publishing Coy.

Bleeck’s work schedule is nothing short of astonishing: in 1955 he wrote 26 novels—nearly 600,000 words. He worked a full time job at the New South Wales Railways, was a devoted father and busy Masonic Lodge member; and in 1955 he underwent surgery for skin cancer. Sickness was merely an inconvenience and two days after suffering insomnia as a result of a post-surgery rash, Bleeck was back to plotting his next story (Diary Entry August 16 1955). Little wonder that he “battled” and “struggled” with some stories (Diary Entries 13 and 14 May 1955).

Pulp history is replete with anecdotes of the slave-like conditions for writers; Carter Brown admitted to consuming ‘speed’ in order to complete his two-a-month schedule set by Horwitz. It was only when he renegotiated his contract that he could relax and write a ‘leisurely’ one a month novel.

Few writers had the dubious honour of generating a sole income from their freelance work; Audrey Armitage (half of the K T McCall duo) taught at the then New South Wales Institute of Technology; W H Williams (Marc Brody) was working as an editor at the Truth newspaper while he churned out his author series.

When Bleeck analysed a detective story he was not the only author to do so; the University of Melbourne Library has a John Ross MacDonald paperback (Experience with Evil 1958) annotated by W H Williams’ (aka Marc Brody). Williams’ notes on plotting and characterisation are stapled to the inside of the front cover.

Pay and Conditions

Grub Street for the Australian pulp fiction writer was not paved with gold but it could be rewarding not to the extent that American fiction was but it did supplement meagre incomes. Bleeck’s ledgers record his payments for each of his novels and it can be assumed that his remuneration was similar to other writers; rates varied depending upon length (naturally) and publication. In 1955 for example, Action Comics/H John Edwards paid £16/6 for 16,000 words, £18/8 for 18,000 words, and £58/4 for 48,500 words; Cleveland Publishing paid a little better at £22/10 for 18,00 words and £30 for 24,000 words. Bleeck wrote for approximately three hours per day; usually after he came home from his night shift at the NSW Railways.

Bleeck earned a little over £50 in January 1950 for one novelette, one long story and five short stories. In the mid-1950s, Cleveland paid over £22 for novelettes of around 18,000 words, and H John Edwards (Action Comics) paid £58 for novels of 48,000 words. While the money seems paltry by today’s standards, it was a considerable sum of money—he was earning £40 per week at the NSW Railways and a house in Bondi cost about £4,000. At the end of his writing career Bleeck totalled his earnings and converted them to dollars; for twenty years of writing he had been paid just a shade over $21,000 (Bleeck Collection at the National Library). These writers were the working poor.

Writers signed away their overseas rights and Australian companies organised reprinting with overseas publishers. When Bleeck visited Vantage Press in the United States of America, the person there was astounded by Bleeck’s output and declared that if he wrote that many novels in the United States, he would be a millionaire. That is not to say that Bleeck’s stories did not reach North America; in fact, after Bleeck returned and enquired about selling his material overseas, he was told that his fiction was selling well in Mexico (Diary Entry 29 September 1958). After the meeting, Bleeck’s family took him to the QANTAS offices; in the window was a display devoted to Carter Brown whose books were about to be launched by the New American Library.

The most successful writer was Alan Geoffrey Yates whose ‘Carter Brown’ books earned both Yates and Horwitz a fortune (according to Mackenzie). Yates signed with Horwitz in 1949 and became known for his ability to write about 40,000 words overnight; when McKenzie joined the company in 1955 Yates was writing over one million words per year and was earning circa £10,000 (Unpublished Memoirs). McKenzie recalls

one day Yates was sitting in his St Ives garden watching neighbours rushing to work. Naturally they were piqued at him lounging in the yard and one man asked him what he did for a living. “I rob banks” was the glib reply. (personal Interview August 2003)

It is heartening to know that Yates enjoyed his money: he indulged in a flashy Studebaker car with imitation tiger skin seat covers, a “sprawling house” and overseas trips.

McKenzie was lured away from the Daily Mirror to work for Horwitz as an “editor for pocketbooks”. Tempted by the £30 per week salary and the option to write novels at £90 per story he felt he could not refuse the “irresistible” offer; he earned £22 as a C grade journalist (unpublished Memoirs). For his Carter Browns McKenzie earned £1500—all he had to do was to produce ten 60,000 word novels. He worked twelve-hour days, seven days a week to complete the Herculean task; “There were periods when I literally didn’t know what day it was” he remembers (unpublished memoirs). Despite the fact that McKenzie’s scribblings earned him a deposit for a house, he remembers the grind of the work, it was “the hardest job in the world…You worked with stack of quarto paper on the left, a typewriter in middle and the m/s on the right. And woe betide you if you found your hastily typed story wasn’t working out…[there was] no delete, cut, copy or paste buttons. You started all over again” (Telephone Conversation 12 July 2002).