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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail Yahoo! Search Search: Sign InNew User? Sign Up News Home - Help Navigation Primary Navigation Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Top Stories Most Popular Secondary Navigation Asia Pacific World Search Search: Peter Leonard joins father in the family business By CHRIS TALBOTT,Associated Press Writer AP - Monday, June 29 JACKSON, Miss. - Fresh out of college with an English degree in hand, Peter Leonard wrote a six-page short story he liked very much and asked a famous author for a few notes. ADVERTISEMENT He got back a three-page critique that pointed out, among other problems, that Leonard's characters came across "like strips of leather drying in the sun." "I didn't write another word of fiction for 27 years," Leonard says. While it's not true that the critique knocked him out of the writing business, Leonard admits the it was hard to take. After all, it came from his father, Elmore Leonard, one of the coolest dudes ever to put pen to yellow legal pad. Truth is life dragged Peter Leonard away. He started his own advertising business, got married, had kids, looked up and realized it was 25 years later. "His comments probably bothered me a little bit, but I never aspired to be a novelist because my dad was so good," Peter Leonard says. "I would read his manuscripts and think, 'He is really something. This guy is an incredible writer.' And it was probably because of that that I didn't pursue it as much as anything." Too bad, really. Turns out the younger Leonard shares some of his father's gifts. His just released his new book, "Trust Me," and just turned in his third after warm notices for his 2008 debut, "Quiver." It's understandable, though. Even today's hard-boiled titans feel the weight of the 83-year-old Leonard, who shows in his latest novel, "Road Dogs," he's still the grizzled alpha male of the large crime fiction pack. "I feel for the guy because of the shadow he stands in front of," best-selling author Michael Connelly says of the younger Leonard. Connelly gave Peter Leonard a blurb for "Quiver" after admiring the way the writer struck out on his own path. "When I read that book, it felt very assured to me. It felt like he was very cognizant of how he would be held up to comparison." Peter Leonard shows he shares a few traits with his father, though. His dialogue is singsong and flip, his criminals both cool and incorrigible, and his ability to move a story along is surely genetic. "Road Dogs" is Elmore Leonard's 43rd book, published in his 53rd year of selling stories. His spare, smooth style and mastery of tone and character are the envy of most of his contemporaries. "All the guys from my generation when they were just thinking about becoming writers, that's one of the their leading lights because he just turned everything on its head," author George Pellecanos says. "I know I didn't want to write traditional detective novels or anything like that, but I saw what he was writing and I thought, 'Well, he's doing something different, completely different.' I mean he invented a whole new subgenre of crime fiction." Right before Peter Leonard's eyes, in fact. His father started out as an ad man and part-time pulp writer. He first sold a novelette to Artisan Magazine for $1,000. "I was encouraged," Leonard says. Elmore Leonard aimed his stories at the better pulp magazines, writing for two cents a word. His first stories were Westerns, and he wrote two of the best, "Hombre" and "Valdez Is Coming." His career really took off when he turned to crime, helping to redefine a genre obsessed with the private detective and whodunit plots. Compared to what had come before, Leonard's books felt like free jazz, light and breezy tone poems more about mood than motive. Peter Leonard remembers his father's endless supply of legal pads and the balls of yellow paper scattered around the garbage can. He also remembers his father's uncanny focus and work ethic as he scrawled away during vacations and raucous get-togethers. "I had a bunch of friends over and we were listening to a new Jimi Hendrix album that had just come out and watching the football game and my dad sat in the room with us and wrote eight pages of 'Valdez Is Coming,'" he said. "Talk about getting into a zone." From time to time after his aborted attempt to write, Peter Leonard would feel a twinge, like maybe he'd let something pass him by. "I remember at times leaving my office after having come back from a meeting at Volkswagen or Audi and ... I'd be wearing gray pants and a blazer and a tie, and I'd stop over and see Elmore and he would be wearing jeans and sandals and a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt," Peter Leonard recalls. "In the background you could see the pool and the tennis court, and I'd be like, 'This guy has got it. He's got it all.'" Elmore Leonard always had a look in his eyes like he was having fun, and at 50, Peter Leonard started chasing his own happiness. He wrote a novel called "Invasion" with a "muddled" plot and 38 characters that turned out to be an exercise, then wrote "Quiver." With two books out and another on the way, he's quitting his day job and focusing on writing full time. "I don't know if in retrospect I really ever liked advertising," he says. "It was a way to make money and I needed money, but I really like writing and I want to do it. I don't put it off and say I'd rather be doing something else. I would rather get to my pad and pen or computer. That's first on my mind." The younger Leonard believes he's more interested in plot than the elder and packs in far more detail than his father, but still shares his father's gift of giddy-up. Elmore Leonard saw right away that the juxtaposition worked in "Quiver," and had just a few minor suggestions. "I don't remember what was in the three-page letter," Elmore Leonard says. "I was glad a quarter century later that he got back into it, and then with vigor and great expectations, and pulled it off." Email Story IM Story Printable View Blog This Sign in to recommend this article » 0 users recommend Related Articles: Entertainment & Lifestyle Connery blasts BBC at Edinburgh film awards ceremonyReuters - 1 hour 34 minutes ago "Transformers" tops global box officeReuters - 1 hour 36 minutes ago Jackson was acquitted at trial but never recoveredAP - 1 hour 47 minutes ago Maazel says farewell to NY PhilharmonicAP - 2 hours 19 minutes ago TV pitchman Billy Mays found dead at Florida homeAP - 2 hours 24 minutes ago Most Popular – Entertainment Viewed Chubby people live longest: Japan study Opium-eating wallabies get high, make crop circles Saturn moon may harbour life-giving ocean: study Jackson feared dying like Elvis: Lisa Marie Presley Egyptian tycoon to hang for Lebanese diva murder View Complete List » Search: Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Top Stories Most Popular Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Southeast Asia Pte Ltd. (Co. Reg. No. 199700735D). 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