The Girl With The Horizontal Walk (Marilyn Monroe)

My short story collection, Candescent Blooms,  was published by Salt Publishing recently. I've previously posted here with regards to the background to the collection, and the fact that twelve Hollywood actors whose lives ended prematurely are the main characters in each of the twelve stories. As stated in that post, the intention around publication is to focus on each actor with some snippets of information (both about them and the writing of their stories). These posts will follow the same format for each. Our tenth character is Marilyn Monroe.

1: the reason for the title of the story

One of the nicknames attributed to Marilyn Monroe was The Girl With The Horizontal Walk presumably due to a certain swinging movement of her hips. I thought it worked ideally as a title.

2: why I chose that actor

I couldn't not choose Marilyn Monroe. I wrote this story before I had any plans to write any of the others. This story was originally published as a standalone chapbook by Salò Press. There may be a handful of copies left in their store. When that was published, I posted extensively about why I wrote that story here.

3: one 'gift' that enhanced the story

I used the plot from the abandoned Monroe vehicle Something's Gotta Give as the basis of the plot for this story, with multiple identities interlinking. As Priya Sharma said in the introduction to that original chapbook, The more times I read it, the more I see. The more I think about it, the more Marilyn Monroe converges.

4: one thing I never knew about them

Marilyn was a great reader. She had four hundred and thirty books in her library.

5: an extract from the story

I play a photographer, Marilyn Monroe. I get to go platinum. Preferably a wig. Marilyn doesn't take great pictures, but she's always in the right place at the right time. Plus she's pretty - we know how many doors that opens, front and back. She carves out a career for herself, Life, Movieland, Modern Screen, all those covers. She gets invited to all the right parties, then some of the wrong ones. So there's then a photo of the president; in flagrante. Before you know it, she's killed.

6: what music I listened to whilst I wrote it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I wrote this story listening to a Marilyn Monroe song compilation on repeat. Every baby needs a Da-da-daddy...

Buy Candescent Blooms here.