The last couple of days have been a bit surreal. On Friday, the trailer my publisher created
for THE TESTING was revealed on EW.com. Um…wow! (Entertainment
Weekly? I mean, that’s just…yikes. I don’t even have words to describe how
stunned I was to learn that was happening.
In addition to the trailer, the website, thetestingtrilogy.com went live
and the e-book prequel has been released.
I’ve also had bracelets that say THE TESTING delivered to my door as well
as a glimpse of all sorts of other cool stuff the PR and Marketing teams are
planning for the release on June 4th.
To say I am delighted is an understatement. To say I am scared is even more of one.
Every book that
publishes brings worry and angst. Will
readers like the book? Will they hate
it? Will anyone ever want to read
anything by me again? This Tuesday, END
ME A TENOR (Glee Club Mystery #2) will hit bookstore selves and I am gnawing my
fingernails off as I wait to hear if readers once again connect with my heroine
Paige and her colorful supporting cast.
But those nerves don’t compare to the ones that I feel when
I think about The Testing launch.
I am scared.
I love my publisher.
I love this trilogy of books. I
did my utmost to write the best stories I could and am so fortunate that my
editor and everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt believe in this series with
such incredible passion. It is an
author’s dream.
But as wonderful as it is, I am scared.
Getting a book published was my first dream as a
writer. I wanted to see my name on a
book. I wanted to see that book on the
shelf of a store or in a library or even more exciting in the hands of a reader
sitting on a park bench somewhere. My
second goal as an author was to make a moderate career out of it. Maybe be able to publish two books a
year. To make a financial contribution
to our family with my writing and maybe…just maybe hang around as a midlist
author for a while.
My expectations as an author weren’t huge. I wanted them to be realistic. And in many ways they were one important
thing –safe.
Each time a book is read by a reader, authors put a piece of
themselves on the line. And in the age
of social media and blogs where everyone says anything they feel, authors (whether
they want to or not) are forced to see and face the reaction of those
readers. The more notice a book gets, the
more push by the publisher and buzz it receives the more vocal readers
are. And people often forget that their
words can bring the highest of highs with their praise or feel like attacks and
bring an author down low.
With the release of the trailer of The Testing, I have
gotten a small glimpse of what might be coming.
The first comment on EW.com was someone who was angry that the author
quote on the cover said readers of Hunger Games would like it. On facebook, I watched my friends post the
link to the trailer only to have their friends say that I had clearly ripped
off other books and that I probably didn’t deserve to be published.
And the ride is just beginning.
I don’t want anyone to think this post is about wanting
sympathy or pats on the back or even a hug.
(Although I like hugs. I wouldn’t
turn one down!) I am the luckiest girl
ever to have this opportunity and to have the full weight of a publishing team
behind me. No, this isn’t about feeling
sad or unhappy or wanting people to be nice to me. (Again…I like when people are nice, but I can
take my licks like anyone else and get up to fight again.) This is a post I needed to write because I
have now seen several sides of publishing and am continuing to learn how to
deal with the aspects I have seen.
As authors, we often talk about the choices we need to make
for our careers. We discuss whether we
want to self-publish, traditionally publish, have an agent, control every
aspect of our book or search for channels to aid us in publication. People discuss how to find readers and
promote their titles. There are lots of
discussions about monetary compensation for authors. How much should a book cost? How much should an author hope to make? How much should authors spend on
promotion? What are the best books for
editing? What is the best method to
improving our craft?
But something I have realized more and more as the release
of The Testing grows closer is that as authors we often forget to talk about
the emotional cost that comes with publishing a book. It’s natural for us to want people to like
the work we have done. Clearly, we did
or we wouldn’t have written the story.
But while we want people to like what we have written, there will always
be those who do not. Some will love what
we have created. Others will attack it
from every side. And the higher and
bigger the release, the more those attacks will come.
So while an author needs to improve their craft and learn
the business, one of the most important things perhaps an author can do is
develop a very thick skin and the ability to turn off Google Alerts. Ego is often a dirty word, but an author
needs one every time a book is released.
Rejection is hard at any point in a career. If this is going to be your career…if this is
going to really be mine for the long haul…building armor against the naysayers
is perhaps the most important thing that can be done.
I loved writing The Testing.
I love my publisher for believing in it.
I loved watching the trailer…it’s pretty darn cool. And in the months ahead, I will prepare
myself for this interesting and incredibly fortunate turn that my career has
taken. The book could succeed. The book could fail. But I will grow the armor I need to
appreciate every moment of the ride.
And if I’m really, really lucky, there will be readers who
will enjoy it with me.
It's nice to know that the one subject I wanted to write about this week was given a bit of a lead-in by Russell yesterday. His post on Doctor Who--hardly a crime fiction story--has paved the way for my post on the changing definition of a genre. Today, I'll be talking space opera, but you can easily make this case with crime and mystery fiction.
I've been in a space opera mood recently lead primary by Alan Dean Foster. He was my first favorite SF author, the one that introduced me to literary SF. Granted, the first books I read was Splinter of the Mind's Eye and the Star Trek Logs, but I quickly moved on to his Pip and Flinx adventures that took place in Foster's own universe.
A month or so ago, I started to re-read the first few Pip and Flinx novels and found myself transported by to the time when I first discovered space opera that didn't have the words "Star" and "Wars" in the title. These are great stories, following the teenaged Flinx and his flying snake, Pip, on their adventures. Naturally, the youth that I was latched onto the youth that was Flinx and I was an easy sell. Even now, reading them again, I am captivated by the breadth of Foster's universe, the little details he drops in and the entire world he has built. More often than not, back then, I wanted to be in that universe. Such is the way of young readers when they find something they crave that can only be found in books.
Moreover, as the years go by and more books are read and you grow up, that yearning starts to diminish and you don't always find that same level of involvement as you do when you are both a young reader (age wise) and a young reader (one who has just learned to read and you realize that there are whole worlds ready for the discovery). Many of us cut our young reading teeth on the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and longed to be a tagalong on their adventure, but how many want to tag along on some with some of the great character of the past decade or so? As good as the books are, sometimes they don't transport you.
So it was with great interest that I selected Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey as this month's selection for my SF book club. Billed as realistic space opera set entirely in our solar system, but still hundreds of years in the future, I was intrigued by it's promise of a large story told by characters lower in the totem pole. This book did not disappoint. It was splendid. I'm easily going to start the second one just as soon as we have our meeting over the first novel.
What surprised me was the feeling I got while reading the newer novel. It was the adult version of the feeling I go way back when I first started reading SF. But it was an adult feeling, complete with all the years I've lived and the things I've learned. Still, within that prose, I was transported to a universe I'd could see myself living in. And despite what you might think of when you hear "space opera," this novel had real, in-depth characters. Heck, one of them was a cop (there's the crime fiction angle).
It was while reading (listening actually) that I figured out one of the main differences between the type of story Foster told in the 1970s and Corey told in the 2010s. Foster, while having interesting characters, let the plot drive his story and, consequently, drive the reader (in this case, me) to enjoy and want to "be" a part of the story. Corey did the same thing, yet used his characters as that medium, with the side effect of me realizing the world was neat, but the people were neater.
Is that the difference between being an adult reader and a young reader? As a youth, one likely is driven by the plot and wants to rush alongside the protagonists, but, as an adult, one prefers to know what the characters are thinking and why they are taking the actions of the plot?
Bonus:
We here at DSD are very excited at Joelle's new venture. Her YA novel, The Testing, drops in June, but you can get a preview via the book trailer here. And, if you need some words to keep you entertained and enticed, the prequel ebook is here. Oh, and it's FREE.
"Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? To be exiles?" - An Unearhly Child
Fifty
years ago, at the IM Foreman* junkyard on Totter’s Lane, London, a blue
box wheezed into existence. Inside that box, a crotchety, white-haired
old man** was waiting to whisk us away on a world of adventure.
And
now, that white haired old man has become a gangly geek in a bow tie
whose thirst for adventure is seemingly unquenchable. He’s been played
by at least 11 different actors*** but he remains a man with a sense of
justice, a man who abhors hate and prejudice, who delights in the myriad
wonders of the universe; at once a man weighted by the horrors of what
he has seen and still able to look at things with the wide-eyed wonder
of a child.
The
Doctor has become a British institution. Even during his years of exile
(the show was unofficially cancelled in 1989 after a long, slow attempt
to slip it off the schedules quietly by the then-BBC bosses) he
remained a cultural force. Virgin Publishing continued the series in
novels. Fan made films cropped up on home video from independent
producers (with varying degrees of quality and success) and of course no
one stopped talking about the mysterious Time Lord from Gallifrey.
But
why is the doctor such a success? Why, when he returned to the BBC in
2005, did he manage to once more capture the imagination of a nation?
Why does The Doctor endure?
Part
of it is that both The Doctor and the show have changed over the years.
Certain elements remain - the TARDIS more and more conscpicuously
“disguised” as a 1960’s police box, the sense of chaotic adventure, the
viewer’s stand-ins who accompany the doctor on his adventures - and yet
the attitude changes with the decades. In the 70s, political and social
concerns became a factor as the Doctor tackled ecological problems as
often as he did aliens (see The Green Death as a particularly hamfisted
example), in the 80s, there was an attempt to darken the show a little,
in the 90s, Virgin’s novels attempted to tell more complex and adult
stories and in 2000s, the show became an adventure series marked by its
fast pace and occasionally anarchic moods.
But the core has always been this (something the Matt Smith era captured perfectly, even coining the very phrase I'm about to use)
There
is a madman who travels through and time space in a box. He is always on the
side of justice. He is always standing up for the oppressed. And while
he makes mistakes, he will always try to be the best person in the room.
Because that’s all he knows how to be.
"It is a fact, Jamie, that I do tend to get involved with things." - The War Games
When
I first met The Doctor, he was short and he was Scottish. He was, when I
first tuned in, tackling his old enemies, The Daleks. Now, I knew the
Doctor a little through the old Target novelisations I had picked up in
charity bookshops, but seeing him in the flesh gave me a chill. I knew
that he changed faces and sometimes personalities, so I did not know
this Doctor, but he was instantly recognisable as that madman with a
box. In the first twenty five minutes I spent with him, I was taken back
to the 1950s where two warring factions of Dalek were about to meet on
Eartth. The doctor was trying to protect something he called The Hand of
Omega, which was being sought by both Dalek factions. The Daleks could
kill people easily with one blast from their weapons. And, as I
discovered at the end of that 25 minutes, despite their cumbersome
appearance, they could float up stairs.****
I was hooked. I remained hooked for another two years.
And then The Doctor vanished.
He was gone.
No fanfare, no long farewell. He simply never returned.
I was gutted.
Home
videos helped me catch up on the doctor’s past adventures. It was a
treat for me, to get an old adventure on VHS and watch it all in one go.
I discovered what I had missed, then: the lunatic joys of Tom Baker’s
tenure in the TARDIS, the occasionally patronising adventurer that was
Jon Pertwee, the wide eyed wonder and occasional anger that Peter
Davison, the anarchic glee of Patrick Troughton and the severity of
William Hartnell (who would soften towards the end of his run, as the
BBC realised that what kids warmed to most was the kindly grandfather
figure he could represent). Heck, I even enjoyed the Colin Baker years
although even as a kid I realised he could got some appalling scripts.
"In
all my travelling throughout the universe I have battled against evil,
against power mad conspirators. I should have stayed here.” - The Ultimate Foe
As
a teenager, I devoured the Virgin New Adventures novels, admiring them
because they dared to take the doctor to places he could never go in the
TV show. Some of them were bad, but most were brilliant, and I the
first novel I ever submitted was to this line right as they lost the
rights to the character (but they sent me a nice rejection). It was,
looking back on it, an appalling book. But then I was sixteen, and still
learning how to write. I’d still like to have another crack at the
doctor to this day. He represents the kind of sci-fi I love; sci-fi that
engages with its own sense of the absurd. Literally anything can happen
on Who, not least because unlike most modern franchises, its “bible” is
not set in stone. It was made up on the hoof by writers over the years,
many of them working from what they could remember about the show’s
past, and some not even worrying about fitting into an established
continuity. I think Atlantis is destroyed in at least three different
ways throughout the show’s history. But since the 90s, attempts have
been made to create some kind of continuity, and this is especially true
on the rebooted show. But all the same there’s enough freedom that the
stories don’t start to blend into each other. The Star Trek franchise
showed some of its limitations in the show Voyager, which tried to break
new ground and ended up too often retreading where other shows had been
before. With Doctor Who, you can have a fantasy story followed by a
historical followed by an epic space opera.
“Change. You. Me. Everything.” - Dimensions in Time.
Still, at 32 (I started watching when I was 8) I count myself a Whovian.
I love the show. I still tune in when its back on air, although I know
that its no longer the show I once loved. But that’s great because its
become the show that a new generation will love. After all, the whole
point of the show is change. The actors change. The crew change. The
times change.
Looking
at the modern show, its easy to see - under Russell T Davis, the show
was all about family, about recurring characters, about a sense of being
part of something so much more than you were. It was about epic space
opera, and big bad guys who wanted to destroy the universe. When Moffat
came on board, the show started to look at what it is to grow up, to
face change and uncertainty. It took on a more fairy tale quality than
it ever had before. But both approaches are valid.
Looking
back in time, even during one Doctor’s tenure, the tone could shift
markedly. Tom Baker went through a long run of horror stories (The Brain
of Morbius, the Pyramids of Mars, the Seeds of Doom) and came out the
other side into more SF stories, often with a sly sense of humour, such
as The Sun Makers, The Pirate Planet and so forth.
I
always had a love of the more horror-themed stories in Baker’s run. And
indeed I loved the more horror themed stories in general. Although they
also scared me, too. On its first run, I couldn’t watch the final
episode of The Curse of Fenric, I was so terrified by the blood sucking
heamovores. But then, that was the point. And as an adult, its become
one of my favourite stories.
“You were my doctor!” - Timecrash
And
that’s the appeal of the show. It is many things to many people.
Everyone has “their” doctor. Everyone has a memory of the show, be it
the horror of Daleks, the comfort of the doctor, their love (or lust) of
a companion, there’s something in that show that will stick in near
everyone’s memory, even if its just a memory of Saturday teatimes
watching adventures in time and space.
The
best of Who is rip-roaring adventure fiction with a suitably eccentric
twist. Its also smarter than one might think on first viewing. Whether
its trying to fulfill its original remit of historically educating a
“modern” audience, or trying to grapple with issues of the day through
looking to the future (the much maligned Happiness Patrol is in fact one
of the most political Doctor Who stories ever... and I bloody loved the
Kandyman, so there!) or even trying to show us that often things are
more complex than simple good vs evil (anything with the Ice Warriors,
who were decidedly neutral as a race, and indeed the Silurians as well),
Who is always belying its roots as “children’s television”. It was
never that. It was a family show, something that you could enjoy if you
were young, old or in the middle. Its one of the reasons that I think
the current run is continuing that trend. While the rise of the fanboy
has meant the show has a new kind of audience to appeal to (the kind
that remembers details and intensely debates the tiniest of moments in
any given episode even when its clear that the moment is of no great
importance) at its heart, the show retains the spirit that has enabled
it to last so long. Yes, its not always perfect, but then the show never
was. It has always had ups and downs, good bits and bad bits, low
periods and periods of amazing, intense creativity. But through it all,
the show has never pandered to one audience over another or marched to
any beat other than the one it hears in its own head.
The Doctor is over 900 years old. The show is turning 50. And believe me, there’s plenty of life in both of them.
Russel’s picks:
12 Doctors. One Story each. Not necessarily the classics.
1st
Doctor (William Hartnell): I haven’t seen much Hartnell, but The Daleks
remains a classic. It changed the show forever and introduced the
Doctor’s most famous foe.
2nd
Doctor (Patrick Troughton): I love a lot of Troughton’s stories, if
only for his performance, but standout for me is The War Games which a)
solidifies some of the mythology of the show and b)is amazingly,
astoundingly epic, taking place over 10 episodes and c) is quite
affecting at the climax when you see what the Doctor sacrifices. If I
didn’t choose this one, though, I would choose The Mind Robber which is
brilliantly trippy.
3rd
Doctor (Jon Pertwee): The Silurians may have a rubbish T-Rex, but its a
great example of why Pertwee’s early stories were great SF - serious,
thoughtful, smart and trying to deal with real issues. Its a pity
Caroline John’s Liz Shaw was shown the door sharpish for being too
strong a character; she really challenged Pertwee’s doc.
4th
Doctor (Tom Baker): Bit of a left fielder, perhaps, my choice here. But
I will always, always have a soft spot for The Seeds of Doom, largely
due in part to the Target novelisation of the story, which formed my
earliest impressions of it. When I finally saw the story, I was
massively impressed by just how exciting it was, especially for an epic
six part story. Sure, at times it seems like the writer had only a
passing knowledge of Who and was in fact writing for The Avengers, but
the chemistry between Tom Baker’s Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah
Jane Smith is amazing, and the Krynoid is one of the most terrifying
aliens ever, even if it is realised as a bunch of rubbery tentacles by
the end of the story (and even if they foolishly choose to give it a
voice for one terrible scene).
5th
Doctor (Peter Davison) I was never that big on Davidson’s era. It
always seemed to take itself too seriously. But Enlightenment is a gem
of a story. Big ideas (the immortals), a fairy-tale structure and an
almost insane ambition combine to make a story that no other sci-fi show
could have told. If you watch only one Davidson, it should be this one.
6th
Doctor: (Colin Baker) Poor Colin Baker. They tried, they really tried
to do something different. And then they got hit by budget cuts. And
then the writing staff forgot how to craft stories. He got shafted, he
really did. But still he had one or two ambitious gems in his run, and
his take on the Doctor as a vainglorious megalomaniac whose heart was
still in the right place was actually very good indeed. Revelation of
the Daleks is a continuity heavy story that still remains absolutely
excellent, even if it has one of the most rubbish cliffhangers in the
show’s history (look, there’s a polystyrene gravestone filled with Karo
syrup and... oh, its just too stupid to explain) but it makes the Daleks
scary again, has a great line in double acts and Colin Baker and Nicola
Bryant remind everyone why they worked so well together. Its a little
more violent than earlier eras, but perhaps that’s kind of the point.
7th
Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) Since McCoy was my Doctor, I have more
fondness for him than some, although I do agree that his first season or
so was very bad indeed. However, towards the end he began to develop a
take on the Doctor that was very intriguing indeed. I have to go here
with The Curse of Fenric, which was the story that terrified me on first
viewing and which I later came to realise was a more grown up story
about choice and fate. It also featured Nicholas Parsons in what seemed
to be celebrity stunt casting but turned out to be a very affecting
little turn from the presenter of Just a Minute.
8th
Doctor (Paul McGann) Well, he only appeared on TV once in the American
TV movie in 1998. The TV movie was meant to be a backdoor pilot, and is
something of a muddled mess but Paul McGann’s performance as a slightly
Byronic time lord is brilliant. Just ignore the plot and enjoy McGann’s
infectious sense of fun.
9th
Doctor (Christopher Ecclestone) From a shaky start to a brilliant end,
the 9th Doctor was around for one season but made one hell of an
impact. Ecclestone committed to a role that he clearly wasn’t too
comfortable with and gives the show an edge thast feels very
contemporary. And nowhere is this more evident than in Dalek, where the
Doctor finally confronts the beings that killed the Time Lords (or maybe
they didn’t; Russell T Davis seems to go back and forth on this a lot).
A single Dalek. An angry Doctor. It gives you chills.
10th
Doctor (David Tennant) David Tennant took a more traditional approach
to the role and his laid back Doctor was, depending on the show, either
beautifully eccentric or painfully over the top. But his finest hour
came in The Impossible Planet, when he confronts some of the most
terrifying scenes in New Who. Seriously, this episode and its follow on,
The Satan Pit, are absolutely brilliant moments of television.
11th
Doctor (Matt Smith)I really, really like Matt Smith’s take on the
character. But for me, it all comes together in The Big Bang, the season
5 closer. Its a brilliant script that ties up a lot of loose ends, and
plays about with all the wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff in a very
clever fashion. Plus the Doctor wears a Fez.
*its been spelt at least two different ways on the show
**This is one of the standard descriptions of the first Doctor as used in the old Target novelisations of the TV series
***Not counting Peter Cushing’s turn in two theatrcially released movies or the countless fan made films out there
****
This was of course the second episode of Remembrance of The Daleks,
and is one of those stories that puts paid to all the talk of Doctor Who
being rubbish in the late eighties; its a brilliant story, even now.
After narrowly surviving a vicious knife attack, gangland detective Eoin Miller thinks he’s earned a break from hunting down thieves, runaways, and stolen drug money. But when crime boss Veronica Gaines tips him off to a particularly sensitive new case, his Romani blood won’t let him say no. A rapist is targeting immigrant girls, and the half-gypsy Eoin knows all too well just how little help an outsider can expect from the local police. Besides, his client isn’t looking for someone to arrest the bastard. He’s looking for someone to stop him—for good.
But the deeper Eoin digs, the more tangled he becomes in a web of corruption, racism, and revenge…especially once his troubled past threatens to derail the investigation by raising questions about his own loyalty and family ties. With his life teetering on the brink of disaster, Eoin realizes there is a fine line between justice and punishment. Now it’s up to him to decide just which side he’s on.
It's book two of a trilogy. Does that mean you have to have read the first one? No. Each story stands on it's own two feet in addition to serving the overall story arc. The first Matt Scudder book I read was the fifth one in the series. But be warned that Runaway Town pays no respect at all to the concept of spoilers, and a few things revealed in book one are taken for granted here.
Here's the super suh-weeeet cover;
And here's the links to buy the hot sexy little thing for both the US and the UK.
Here's a link to the (unofficial) soundtrack album on Spotify.
And here's the much more official single to coincide with the release of the book. It's by 8-Bit Ninjas, and it's less than a quid in UK money. In fact, right now you can buy the kindle version of the book AND this song and still come out cheaper than a cup of high-street coffee.Spotify ItunesBandcamp.
I’m late, I know. I had a post all set to go about recording the audiobook for PENANCE, but there really wasn’t much to it. Turns out reading 375 pages into a microphone is hard work. Turns out, when you’re doing that reading in a small studio that’s usually booked by indie rock bands, it smells a lot like your college dorm used to. Guess that foam stuff on the walls soaks up the marijuana smell pretty good.
And I couldn’t really think of anything else to talk about. Been having trouble making sense out of things lately. Life’s been a little too chaotic, unfocused, random. I could weigh in on the great issues of the day I suppose, be just another blogger shooting my mouth off on gay marriage or why rape is bad, probably make the same points a few thousand people have already made, but probably less articulately.
Lots going on, most of it personal, most of which I choose not to talk about, but I’m in one of those stretches where life feels like an Asteroids game. (Not that most of you would remember Asteroids. It’s what passed for cutting edge video game technology in my salad days. You were captain of a little triangular space ship. Big chunks of space rocks would float across the screen and you had to maneuver amongst them, blasting them with your laser, which turned them into more numerous, smaller, faster space rocks, and then you had to maneuver amongst them and blast them with your laser, which turned them into more numerous, smaller, faster space rocks, and eventually you’d crash into one of them and die.)
That Asteroids game was kind of addictive. Get into a good groove where you got all space psychic, you’re spinning your little triangle around and bulls-eyeing zipping space pebbles you could swear you hadn’t even SEEN yet, managing impossible cross-screen deflection shoots while simultaneously making an impossible s-turn between converging galactic boulders, so caught up in your mastery of the immediate, in the mad space scramble, that the larger meta issue never strikes you – that it’s just pointless chaos and no matter how good your run, it always ends the same way. Your last video-game life smashed into oblivion by a pretend space boulder. Game over.
It occurs to me that maybe that’s what this writing thing is all about, the meta question. Taking the Asteroids game of life and making sense out of it, finding a gestalt in it, a beginning, a middle, an end. Making stories for people that give them a little of that Asteroids adrenaline rush, that put them in captain’s seat of that tiny space triangle, but that turn those zipping space rocks into something other than all there is, something more than the inevitable end. That turn them into obstacles overcome on the way to some purpose, some goal, some reason that this all makes sense.
I hear that’s what they do with video games now – give them stories. You still get to zip around a shoot shit, I guess. But you’ve got something to accomplish. That’s what I’m told. I wouldn’t know.
I’m still stuck in the Asteroids universe, trying to make sense out of it, but I haven’t got time. Up to my ass in space rocks in the vast indifference of heaven.
First, HAPPY RELEASE DAY to our own Jay Stringer, whose RUNAWAY TOWN hits the stores today. As Amazon won't allow me to review books if I've read them, allow me to say here what a great book this one is. Jay's take on the Midlands region of the UK is fantastic and his treatment of characters -- those who have professional or familial relationships with the protagonist -- could be used as textbook chapters on how to write. This one is one of the rare books I've run across in the past few years that carries as much weight for writers as it does for readers -- and that's saying something. Because RUNAWAY TOWN is a remarkable story about characters you'll carry with you forever. This Eoin Miller series is one of those that ups the stakes with each outing. Each book seems both larger and more personal than the last. Just amazing, honestly.
Now, on to the show:
So, there you are, writing your story, when you're faced with the dilemma.
As they sat in the restaurant, enjoying their fast-food tacos, they saw the killer.
Hmm, that sounds too phony, right?
As they enjoyed their tacos at Burrito Bell, they saw the killer.
Sure, it has (ahem) a sort of ring to it, but will that do?
I mean, we all know we can't NAME THE REAL THING in our fiction, right?
Think of the lawsuits. Or the people reading the story in 2816. Will they know what a Taco Bell is? We have to avoid the particulars.
I was working on a project this weekend, when I had to say that something was mentioned "on Twitter." I'd recently, in the same work, gotten by with saying that a video had been uploaded "to the web." I didn't say "YouTube."
And here all the murky confusion starts.
If you've read a thriller, you know that it is fairly standard procedure to spend pages describing the bits and pieces of your protagonist's watch. Or computer. Or showing that you are able to Google the inner-workings of a jet airplane. Sorry. I meant "web search" the inner workings.
We can't use the names of real things while we're being descriptive, right?
Hollywood has to use the "555" numbers for American telephones.
We have to say that someone is being paid "twice his normal rate" to kill someone instead of being paid $500,000. What if a kill rate is higher in 2187? You need to prepare to be read forever!
In an early draft of an unpublished novel, I had the characters spend quite a good deal of time at a restaurant in Shreveport. The restaurant was called Michone's and was home to my idiot self from midnight to three many days during college. The restaurant no longer exists. Had I kept the name in the story, then that anchors the story to a certain time. The story could not have happened yesterday, as the restaurant has been closed for years.
So, of course, I never should have named the particular restaurant.
Street names? Of course. Name them. But make sure that they are correct. Don't have someone driving down Line Avenue in Shreveport and then hang a left onto Youree, because everyone in northwest Louisiana will know what an idiot you are. I mean, of course you want to use street names, right?
But what about website? Are they too fleeting to mention? If you say that someone was being stalked on Facebook, would you have just MySpaced your novel?
If you have someone murdered at Taco Bell, will you be sued?
If you start a phone number with 739, will Ma Bell shoot you? (Kids, ask your grandparents.)
Be specific.
Use details.
Except when you shouldn't.
I mean, imagine if Jane Austen had mentioned specific card games --Loo or Speculation-- that no one plays anymore. Everyone would laugh at the poor novelist and shun her books as expired tripe.
Historicals and westerns and sci-fi and other genres are governed by their own rules, of course.
You'd want to detail the streets and buildings and names of restaurants if you were writing a book that takes place in 1920, for example. Look at what a good boy I am. I have surfed the web and found a map! You can totally trust me because I know all about 1920s buttons!
Sci-Fi certainly requires that you beep your A09-X Confabulator properly, though "fictional particulars" are something else entirely.
I'll probably just go back and have the people being attacked Taft's ghost at a Taco Bell. I mean, an ex-president's ghost.
-I've started a new photo blog where I'll be posting pictures, images, books covers, and photographs that I like. Basically whatever interests me. It's called The Cold Blooded Sausage Maker, please follow it if such a thing interests you.
Disorientation is the key ingredient of contemporary neo-noir. It also manifests in Harmony Korine's neon-caked explosion of excess, "Spring Breakers," which -- depending on your perspective -- celebrates or indicts the hedonistic tendencies of modern youth. Korine certainly doesn't make it easy to determine whether the criminal antics of gangster-pimp-arms-dealer Alien (James Franco) and his entourage of giddy college girls have gone off the path of righteousness or discovered a spectacular new freedom. Atmospherically, "Spring Breakers" is an elegant evocation of noir storytelling, littered with misdeeds with girls and guns at every turn. As with "Trance," it's nearly impossible to figure out whether any given character should elicit viewer's sympathies, but Korine relishes the confusion.
-Great review (from one of my favorite blogs) of First Blood by David Morrell which also dips into some of the differences between the book and the film:
"First Blood comes off like an action-adventure take on Moby-Dick, with Rambo and Teasle acting as both Ahab and the whale for one another."
If you trace the roots of literary noir back far enough, eventually you’ll run into the unlikely figure of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. Though in recent years she has been overlooked in the rush to canonize folks such as James M. Cain and Cornell Woolrich, Holding was just as pivotal in the development of noir as a distinct literary genre. Like Cain and Woolrich, she didn’t write about hardnosed good guys very much. Before the term “roman noir” had even been coined, her specialty was isolated and desperate characters with profoundly poor decision-making skills.
Before there was film noir, there was the roman noir, the dark novel. What Americans of the mid-twentieth century called pulp fiction was simply the contemporary incarnation of the dime novel or penny dreadful of the previous century. The lurid stories behind the lurid covers were considered lowbrow trash and indeed, many of them aspired to be nothing but the same. But one man’s trash is another man’s dark worldview, as evinced by the French embrace of these tales from the godless gutter of the New World.
You walk into a bookstore and see lots of fabulous books on
shelves.You walk out of the store with
a bag full of books because you love reading. You love the written word.You can’t get enough.
The first book you read is pretty good.The second not so hot.And finally you read one that makes your
blood boil until you say – I can write better than that.So you sit down at the computer and
write.Because hey – you hate your day
job and you think that writing a book has to be a really easy way to make
money.After all, you make your own
hours.You control your own
destiny.And books get made into movies
all the time.Cha-ching!You’ll be rich in no time.
Ha!
I believe writing is a wonderful career choice.The process of sitting down and building a
story line by line is challenging and incredibly rewarding.But let me debunk a few myths about the
writing life.
Yes – you make your own hours.That just means that often you are up at
4a.m. to write pages before going to your day job or (like me) you’re up until
all hours of the night getting your goals met.You’ll also find that you’ll need to work every day and that it will be
a struggle to take a day off when you are working under contract.Just because you are technically working for
yourself doesn’t mean things are easier.They’re just—different.
Yes—most writers have a day job.They aren’t striking it rich with a book
deal.Most first time traditionally
published novelists get advances between $3,000-$10,000 a book.$5,000 is probably the most typical
number.Now that is an advance on your
royalties, so if the book sells well you’ll make more, but don’t count on
it.And even if you do make more,
royalties start getting paid about 6 months to a year after the book comes
out.(This is different if you
self-publish, but those authors I know who have done REALLY well
self-publishing and have been on the Kindle best-seller lists have often pulled
in around $10,000-$12,000 a year on a book…the more typical number is lower, so
that’s not the best way to get rich quick, either.)Yeah – the old adage of don’t quit your day
job is pretty important advice when it comes to being an author.I’m lucky that I can make my living as an
author…but I am also aware that can change at any time.An author is only as good as their last
contract and their last book.So you
have to keep pushing forward and hoping that your work connects with readers or
you’ll be out of a job.
Yes – books get made into movies all the time.But I have heard that the percentage of books
that have been optioned and actually made it to screen is somewhere around the
1% mark.There are lots of stories being
told on the page.Just go to your local
bookstore on a Tuesday when new titles are being released and you’ll see how
many are there…and that is only the books that store is stocking. Catching the
eye of a film producer and actually seeing the book turned into a movie is a
lot like catching lightning in a bottle.If it happens – WHOO HOOO!But
don’t think that’s the norm.
Yes – in many ways more than ever authors control their own
publishing destiny.There are lots of
ways to get a book into a reader’s hands.YAY!But I think too many writers
are far too busy worrying about their publishing options and whether they’ll
make a million dollars when they sit down and write.Because while those are the really cool,
often impossibly unattainable aspects of being a novelist, they cannot be
controlled.The only thing you can control
in the business of publishing is writing the book, getting to The End and then
going back and making it the very best book it can be.
If you want to be a writer and you are busy thinking of the
flexible hours and the potential movie deals – find something else to do
because you’re just going to be disappointed.If you want to write the best book you can—welcome to the club.Writing isn’t always easy.It isn’t always fun.But it is rewarding.And I can’t imagine doing anything else.
