Newport Writer on Well-Plotted Course

An FBI agent watching 50 cases of government-issued M-16s being unloaded in a warehouse in the south Bronx is discovered and gunned down by men wearing jackets with small American flags sewn on their sleeves.

The time is the near future, and the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party and other elements of the extreme right have banded together for what they deem a patriotic cause: to overthrow the liberal-leaning United States government.

Calling the shots is the Committee, an elite group of highly placed business and government leaders, including the chairman of the nation’s largest defense contractor aswell as a popular television evangelist and the director of the CIA.

Amazingly, there have been no leaks, and not even a hint of the subversive plot has surfaced in the media.

But a free-lance journalist doing an undercover investigation of a meeting of American Nazis in Louisiana is missing, and her lover, a reporter for the New York Times, has gone down to investigate. . . .

Thus the stage is set for “American Reich,” (Berkley-Charter Books, $3.95), a fast-paced paperback suspense novel billed by the publisher as “the most riveting thriller since ‘Seven Days in May.’ ”

An extremist plot to overthrow the United States government is an intriguing premise, one that novelist Douglas Muir pulls off with considerable aplomb. But just how plausible is it?

Seated in the living room of his Newport Beach apartment, the film maker-turned-novelist couldn’t resist chuckling.

“Ludicrous is too strong a word,” said Muir. “No, it couldn’t happen. There aren’t enough of them; numerically it’s impossible. But as for the philosophy and hate that some of these groups represent, who knows? The danger is who knows how they might erode away our national fiber?”

However far-fetched the plot of “American Reich” may be, there’s no denying the novel is bound to generate controversy.

Muir, in fact, already has discovered that even the book’s cover, which features the United States seal with a Nazi swastika on top, is capable of arousing passion.

A few weeks ago, Muir discovered that all the copies of “American Reich” at his local grocery store had been moved from the front of the bookstand to the back. And when he returned to the market recently, he found that someone had placed pieces of paper over all of his books’ covers.

“It bothers me when I see the books shifted around on the shelves or hidden,” Muir said. “I just wish people would read the book before arriving at any conclusions.”

Despite the book’s volatile ingredients, Muir, who describes himself as politically independent and a moderate, insists he didn’t try to write a controversial novel.

“My goal is really to give someone a pleasant evening’s read, not to politicize,” he said. “I’m hoping there is something in ‘American Reich’ for every political persuasion.”

Although he says his primary goal is entertainment, Muir acknowledges that his background in making documentary and educational films “can’t help but be a strong influence in any project I undertake and, hopefully, I’ve put a little learning experience in ‘American Reich’ as well as a few thrills.”

Saying his novel “explores the connections between people and events,” Muir observes that “too often individuals who believe in absolutes lose their humanity and become monsters. Perhaps the real truth lies in the interstices--the gray areas between conflicting absolutes.”

“American Reich,” which debuted in November and has a first printing of 227,000 copies, is the first installment of a three-book package Muir has written for the New York-based Putnam’s-Berkley Publishing Group.

“Bolshoi,” a political thriller about the defection of the Russian chairman’s ballet-dancer son to the West before a Politburo coup, will be published next fall; it will be followed by “Armada,” a World War II suspense novel about an American submarine commander and his German counterpart.

At 53, Muir finds himself successfully embarked on a brand new career as a novelist.

It’s a longtime dream in the making. But his mid-life career change finds Muir filled with feelings of insecurity, despite a total of $40,000 in advances for the three novels and an “above average” percentage in royalties.

“It’s one of the most frightening things I’ve done, to gamble at this point in my life,” admitted Muir, sipping a mug of coffee and gazing out an open sliding glass door toward the ocean. “At a time in your life when you should be planning for retirement and worrying about pension plans, it’s difficult to be adventurous.

Crossing a Threshhold

“But I know I can’t give up now. I’m crossing a very important threshold. At the same time, it is frightening. It’s much different than receiving a paycheck every two weeks. There are so few novelists who can really make a living by writing fiction.”

The modest one-bedroom apartment where Muir writes his novels is a cluttered repository reflecting the author’s eclectic sense of decor: Snow skis are propped up against one wall; a papier-mache rhinoceros head is on another. A life preserver hangs from the ceiling, and a wall-length bookcase is crammed with everything from “Warren G. Harding and His Times” to “Laurel and Hardy--A Filmography.”

The apartment is also filled with mementos of his 25-year film career, which ranges from TV news cameraman and program director in the ‘50s to documentary, educational and commercial film maker in the ‘60s and ‘70s. During a nine-year stint at Lockheed Aircraft, he wrote and directed training films on the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes before being promoted to the public relations department.

One wall is plastered with awards for his film work, including a presidential Minuteman Award and a Freedom’s Foundation Medal for “This Land Is Your Land,” a savings bond promotional film he made for the U.S. Treasury Department in 1968. There are also autographed pictures of Jacques Cousteau (Muir served as an associate producer and writer on “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau”) and Bob Hope (the comedian appeared in an air travel film Muir made for World Airways).

Hollywood Burnout

Despite his success as a film maker, Muir found himself in the early ‘70s simply “burned out by the Hollywood pace.”

“You just get burned out doing the same thing over and over,” he said. “I felt I had reached the ultimate in documentary and educational film making and it was time to try something else, and writing a novel seemed a way to do it.”

In his spare time, Muir, who is divorced and has no children, began writing his World War II submarine saga, “Armada.” (“I’ve always loved submarines, even as a kid,” he said.)

Like many budding novelists, however, Muir was faced with a dilemma: “I really didn’t have the time or money to write,” he said.

But a physician friend intervened, offering Muir his condominium at Mammoth Lakes where the writer could complete his half-finished novel.

So Muir sold his North Hollywood home and headed north in 1973, intending to live off his equity and devote full time to writing. Instead, he said with a grin, “I had a good time skiing. My writing career really slowed down. I just wasn’t getting anything done. I was having too good a time.”

Worked at KOCE-TV

A year later, after skiing and working part time in a sporting goods store, Muir was near broke and ready to come off the mountain. He landed a job at KOCE-TV in Huntington Beach, where he wrote and did research for several TV programs, including “Project Universe.”

But he never gave up his dream of writing a novel, and in 1977, realizing he needed help in completing “Armada,” he signed up for the creative writing program at Orange Coast College, where he was coached by author-instructor Pat Kubis.

“I was firm that I was going to be a writer,” recalled Muir, who also enrolled in building technology courses so he could get a state contractor’s license that would allow him to write and work when he wanted.

In 1981, after “Armada” had been rejected by several publishers, Muir started writing “American Reich.”

One of the factors that contributed to his decision to write the novel was the anti-Jewish, anti-minority hate literature someone was posting and distributing at the Balboa Island post office where Muir picked up his mail every day. Out of curiosity, Muir began collecting and examining the brochures, newspapers and recruitment posters from the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazis and the National Assn. for the Advancement of White People.

Opened His Eyes

About the same time, while supervising construction crews, Muir said he met some workers whose vocal hatred of minorities was “a new experience for me. Their intolerance to minorities really opened my eyes.”

Muir said all the elements for “American Reich” quickly fell into place and, he felt, the time was right for writing the novel.

“America wasn’t feeling too good about itself,” he said. “There was unemployment and dissatisfaction with the way things were going in America. It was easier to visualize that type of climate for a terror story like ‘American Reich.’ ”

While searching for a hero for his novel, Muir said, “I thought of Robert Redford in ‘Three Days of the Condor’ and ‘All the President’s Men.’ I said how would I handle such a thing if I were a reporter for a major newspaper?”

Muir, who sold “American Reich” in 1983 and completed his third novel, “Bolshoi,” last year, has been writing full time for two years.

“I work highly irregular hours,” he said. “I give myself a target of so many hours a day and make sure I put in that number of hours. But it may be at 2 in the morning or at 3 in the afternoon.

Like Writing a Symphony

“Undertaking a complex novel, perhaps any novel, is really like writing a symphony. You’re dealing with texture, rhythm, orchestration, plot, characters--the elements just go on and on.”

And, he said, “it occupies your mind 24 hours a day. You can be down at the local pub and suddenly your evening is interrupted when you come up with a brilliant--or not so brilliant--idea and you rush home and commit it to paper. And the same thing happens when you’re up at 3 in the morning.”

Borrowing a technique used in film making, Muir uses note cards to plot out his novel on a cork board on a wall in his bedroom. On each card, which represents an individual scene, he jots down notes for dramatic action.

“Format and structure are very important to my writing,” he said. “I think that’s because of my film background. Timing is an illusive thing, and it’s much easier to visualize with everything in front of you at the same time than it is to look at a stack of 500 manuscript pages.”

Muir also keeps a chart of his novel on which he diagrams the emotional tension in each chapter. If he sees certain sections of the novel that are too dull or that have too much exposition, he said, he tries to add the missing elements.

Plateaus of Suspense

“The thing my agent kept drumming into my head was to keep thinking in terms of plateaus of suspense, and that’s a neat term I want to pass on to other writers. It means tightening the tension and escalating the suspense.

“There’s so much happening in a novel of this type. I’ve pretty much structured it like Arthur Hailey’s ‘Airport’ or ‘Hotel’: multiple plots and multiple characters on a large scale.

“But my real commercial literary heroes are probably masters of international intrigue and suspense: Ken Follett (‘Eye of the Needle’) and Thomas Harris, who wrote ‘Bloody Sunday.’ ”

A gregarious person, Muir said he misses the social aspect of film making, “the interaction of people on the set.”

“Writing is the loneliest thing in the world,” he said, noting that after hours of sitting at the word processor, “I go bananas sometimes, and I just go ride my bike or take a walk.”

Muir said every chapter of “American Reich” underwent the scrutiny of the writers workshop at Orange Coast College, where he won an Outstanding Writer Award several years ago. He strongly supports the idea of reading a work-in-progress and receiving constructive criticism from fellow writers.

Have to Be ‘Thick-Skinned’

“My editor and agent aren’t that impressed with writers’ workshops and constantly prod me to make sure I’m in the right workshop if I endorse them so much,” he said. “Some are good and some are bad. It depends on who is in them. I’ve seen some very good writers shot down by unjustified criticism. You have to learn to be thick-skinned. In my case, going into Orange Coast I had to learn to humble myself, which isn’t easy.”

Muir, who credits UC Irvine author-in-residence Oakley Hall and UCI guest author-instructor Paul Gillette for helping him further develop as a novelist, is working on his master’s degree in education at UCLA. One of his goals is to teach a writers’ workshop and, in so doing, inspire people to go on with their writing.

“It’s a thrill seeing young people--or people of any age--dream big and work their tail off to fulfill those dreams,” he said. “Even if they’re never published, it’s great therapy.”

Muir laughed when asked if it is a thrill for him to walk into a bookstore and see his novel on the shelf.

“It gives me ulcers,” he said. “I tend to worry too much about the marketing of the book, and I shouldn’t. There’s really not too much you can do about it. I don’t think any writer should be concerned about it; they should just get to work on the next book.”

Cites Changing Market

Muir said that as far as he knows, “American Reich” has not been reviewed yet. It’s the policy of most major newspapers not to review mass-market paperback novels, he said. “They just don’t have the time and space, and, I think, it’s the old thinking that they (paperback novels) just aren’t important enough. But today the market is changing radically, the escalating cost of the hard-cover book being the major factor.”

Muir said his agent currently is sending synopses of “American Reich” to film producers. But despite his own background in film making, Muir doesn’t plan to write the screenplay for “American Reich” because, he said, “it is such a complex novel with political overtones, I’d like to get another creative viewpoint.” He is, however, writing a screenplay for “Bolshoi.”

With three thriller novels completed, Muir said he is uncertain whether he will tire of writing the same type of book.

“Who knows, maybe I’ve got six more in me,” he said. “In any event, I’d like to try something in a different genre, maybe something absolutely outrageous like John Irving’s ‘Hotel New Hampshire’ or ‘The World According to Garp.’

“I’m constantly looking for new challenges. It’s just my nature. I’m a restless character.”

With a chuckle, he added, “I can’t believe my age and how time has gone by. There’s still so much I want to do.

“The key to my personality is I’ve always tended to dream big. But the problem is finding time to fulfill them.”