The Crime of Last Century

[la_fields]

A very un-merry murder-versary to you all, on this, the 97th year since the Leopold and Loeb crime of the 20th century. It's also the 5th anniversary since my contribution to the canon came out, Homo Superiors, and it’s been quite a journey.

In creating the book it went from:

• Me, some Florida teen wishing she too had an exclusive murder BFF and possibly boyfriend
• Post-college graduate moves to the mythical Chicago to experience seasonal affective disorder firsthand (100% thought that wasn’t a thing until it came for me, I had Sunshine State privilege)
• Grad student in Chicago, learning how to take trains and taxis, going to a scant handful of locations the characters ultimately visited (Ed Debevic’s, the International Museum of Surgical Science, that big ol’ lake out there), and writing the first half of the book
• Whoops, job in South Korea right after MFA graduation, finished the book while teaching children approximately the age of the murder victim (it actually helped me teach better, knowing I wasn’t going to kill any kids but also knowing that one could, and pretty easily too-it lowered teacher's blood pressure)
• Actually writing the last word of the manuscript on the 91st anniversary of the crime (because it’s fun when real life syncs with fiction like that, and I lean into it)

In publishing Homo Superiors, the reviews have been fabulously mixed:

• The Good: “The dialogue is snappy and the writing is enticing [...] Normally in literature, it’s quite a challenge to get a reader to support protagonists who commit crimes, especially as casually as these two do, but Fields woos the reader into the characters’ court quite successfully.” One consistent accolade I’ve gotten across genres and arenas (it was true of my college papers and thesis too) is for excellent dialogue, banter, and voice. This is why I’m trying my hand at scripts these days! Gotta test that mettle.
• The Bad: “The book is intelligent and well-crafted. But it celebrates nothing. It teaches us nothing. I hope Fields’ fascination with the unhappiest aspects of homosexuality does not become the hallmark of her writing career.” This is from a largely unfavorable review (quick summary: writing good, topic bad) that has apparently been scrubbed from the internet so I won’t name who wrote it or where, but it was a shocker for me (I was sitting on a morning bus to a dead-end job in Dallas when it alerted my phone). The review accused the book of being bad for teens (it isn’t for teens, it’s about them), bad for gay people (is the Leopold character a self-hating gay and the Loeb character an opportunistic sociopath? I don’t think so, but like a Rorschach inkblot test, readers may see patterns that writers don’t intend), and bad for the Jewish community (yeah but…that’s just because Leopold and Loeb were bad for their Jewish community-they were terrible press, extremely wayward sons). I’m almost sad the review’s gone now, it was a hell of a curiosity and still called my writing “amusing” and “elegant” so I got over the rest of it and took the compliment in the end.
• The Famous: “As it stands, however, [Fields has] acquitted herself as a modern-day Clarence Darrow, creating as compelling a brief for the defense as Noah Kaplan (or Nathan Leopold) could possibly hope to have. She writes so arrestingly of thwarted desire and social awkwardness that readers may briefly believe themselves to be inside Noah’s own skin. Overall, it’s a thoroughly unsettling book.” I didn’t know what the significance of a starred Kirkus review was before I got one, and I still don’t. I’m a Millennial narcissist and that’s just how it is. But people I respect were very impressed, and only the diehard fans noticed the inaccuracies in it (misattributed quotes and historical wrongs-Leopold and Loeb didn’t “laboriously chisel” their victim’s head apart, they picked a fight with a child who trusted them and suffocated him, as cowards do). That being said, if I’m getting compared to Clarence Darrow, I must be doing something right!

In fans, the book has found a home.

Over the years, this book out of all the 10+ I’ve published (so far) has touched the exact folks I was reaching towards, specifically the kind of person I was before I’d ever written anything of publishable quality, and just wanted to find someone who was on my strange wavelength, and who saw exactly what I saw in the inkblot. From the person who commented on my Tumblr picture of a stack of Advanced Reading Copies and asked how I got the new L/L book so early (I wrote it!), to the first wave of fellow Millennials telling me (at my vain request) their favorite moments, to the new wave of Gen Zers bringing the fanart (I post those gems on my Instagram)…it’s so rewarding. It’s everything I hoped it would be, and no amount of money could ever buy it.

Only the experience of being a fan myself (as problematic as it is with these shitbirds), and knowing what was missing from every book before mine (less courtroom more courtship, amirite?!), and completing half-a-dozen other creative projects over about a decade, prepared me to execute this one just as I imagined it.

For the average reader of gay or crime or gaycrime fiction, the structure may be confusing and the ending will definitely be abrupt, but for the fellow members of my tribe: I’m so glad you like the present I made you! Cheers to the new century.