Fly by the seat...

By: Joelle Charbonneau

I have no idea what I’m doing every time I sit down to write.  Okay, technically that statement isn’t completely factual.  I know how to turn on my computer, open my word document and format the manuscript so that my editor, agent and anyone else reading it won’t loose their eyesight from tiny fonts or really wonky margins.  I also had to take a class in high school on how to type—so I’m pretty quick at getting words down on the page.  The problem is, I rarely have a flippin’ clue what those words should be.

Some people outline.  Outlining sounds divine.  I mean, how awesome would it be to sit down, write step by step everything that is going to happen in the novel and then sit down at the keyboard and follow the map you’ve created.  I would love to be able to outline.  So much so that I’ve tried it.  Not just once, but multiple times.  I love the whole process until I hit somewhere between page 50 and page 70 and I realize that nothing that I’m writing really works.  Oh – the first chapter does, but beyond that everything feels forced.  As if I’m herding the story along the path as opposed to it flowing where it is supposed to go. 

Sigh…when that realization hits, I have no choice to go back to where the story stopped feeling fresh and fun and started feeling like a group of ten-year-olds behind forced into a cafeteria line filled with Tofu-Brussels sprout surprise. 

Since I have learned that only chapter one benefits from the wisdom of my planning, I have stopped outlining.  All I know when I start the book is where chapter 1 starts and where it ends.  The rest…well, you got me.  This makes starting a new book feel a lot like walking a tightrope without a net.  You hope you don’t place your foot wrong and go plummeting twenty feet to the ground.  If you do, you cross your fingers that something will catch you at the bottom.

Fun, right?  Actually, yes.  Because while I am terrified with each new book that this will be the story that falls off the tightrope – it never does.  I always get to The End.  Why?  Because long ago, no matter the fear I felt walking that high wire, I refused to look down and forced my feet to take each small step across until I reached the other side.  I got to The End of the book and taught myself that no matter how scary the journey, I will succeed in finding the finish line.  I have written fourteen manuscripts and the most important lesson I learned was that I CAN finish.  That I WILL finish if I keep putting one foot in front of the other.  No matter how confused I am or how certain the story sucks. 

This week, I finished GRADUATION DAY – book 3 of The Testing Trilogy that will debut with THE TESTING from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on June 4^th.  This entire series is a departure for me.  Not only is it Young Adult, these are the darkest books I’ve ever written.  I was scared I wasn’t doing the stories justice and that I would never make it to THE END.  But I did.  Tomorrow I will open a new document.  A new book.  I will be excited to begin and terrified that I will never get to the final pages.  But I will because I have taught myself that I can finish what I start.

Whether you outline or you fly by the seat of your proverbial pants…finding out that you can finish a book is the most important lesson an author can learn.  No matter how many books I write, when the story feel sluggish or stilted or I think it just plain sucks, I know that the storm will pass and I will find my way. 

Tomorrow is a new day.  A new book.  A new adventure.  And if I falter on that high wire, know that I can get across no matter how many times I fall.

James Bond x 2

by
Scott D. Parker

(I was going to have a nice, long take on "Skyfall," the newest James Bond movie mainly as a different outlook to Jay's fantastic post of Thursday, but I have run out of time. On the whole, I agree with many of his points, but, like many comic book superheroes, Bond is ageless and just rolls with the decades. I like that, but I also like the idea of a beginning, middle, and end. For that, truly, we'll need a Bond version of "The Dark Knight Returns." Instead, I'll give you my shorter take (taken from an email to a friend) on the film. Then, so y'all don't feel short changed, I'm posting my October 2010 review of the Bond novel, Devil May Care, by Sebastian Faulks. I've left the text of the review as is.)

Skyfall

I really enjoyed the film. It took from Brosnan's The World is Not Enough (trying to kill M; explosion in MI6) and Goldeneye (former spy turned bad guy), but, THANKFULLY, didn't have a plan for world domination. Just a simple murder. I half expected M to get captured and tortured (a la Colonel Sun, the first non-Fleming book written pre-John Gardner). I loved the in jokes (we don't use exploding pens (Goldeneye); the Goldfinger car), and the obvious imagery of the Asten Marten being blown to bits. Loved the new flinty repartee with the new Q.

Taken as a whole, I think this trilogy of films establishes a new "origin" story for the 21st Century Bond. At beginning of CR, nothing is like every other former Bond film. And Craig, over 3 movies, gets to get back to where all pre-Craig films start/stop (the martini, the introduction, the quips). So, with SF, you end with Bond, coming into the office, chit-chatting w/Moneypenny, going through the padded door, and talking to M for his next case (BTW, saw "Mallory-as-M" a mile away). And, in the closing of the film, we finally get Craig through the gun barrel + music, and the credits roll comes complete with "James Bond Will Return." And, with that, we are on our way to the next 50 years, having come full circle. In fact, and I'll need to watch all 3 Craig films to make sure, I think Craig/Bond was actually lighter/funnier in this one than Craig has ever been. Note the scene when the henchman, in the komodo dragon pit, picks up Bond's gun. Bond actually smiles and says "Good luck with that."

There were lots of homages to other films in this movie. Well, homages as *I* took them. Bond, M, and "Alfred" prepping for an assault = Saving Private Ryan; bad guys walking down the road to the Bond manor = Witness; numerous The Dark Knight ones; Silva's island = Russian junk yard from Goldeneye; more that I can't remember but noticed them while watching.

Oh, and another thing: Taking a cue from Nolan's Batman (most obvious), Mendes has a lot of shots of Craig just standing there, in relief to the background, staring into space and guarding the realm. With Craig's size, it works. Don't think it would have worked with any of the others. And the fight w/the neon sign in the background, making the fight just silhouette, was great. I very much enjoyed the visuals of that scene.

Devil May Care

Bond is Back! And he's...different*.

To celebrate what would have been Ian Fleming's 100th birthday, the estate commissioned literary novelist Sebastian Faulks to write the "thirteenth" novel that Fleming he never wrote. (For those keeping score, there are fourteen Bond titles published under Fleming's name. Two of them, For Your Eyes Only and Octopus-y were story collections. Thus, Fleming only wrote twelve novels, the last one being 1965's posthumous book, The Man with the Golden Gun.) By choosing this course of action, Devil May Care eliminates some forty years worth of novels written about James Bond by other authors. You could think of it as the literary equivalent of a reboot, just as the movie version of "Casino Royale" was to the films.

Faulks, born in 1953, the same year the first Bond book, Casino Royale, was published (coincidence?) is better known as a literary writer. I haven't read any of his books so I can't comment on his own style. However, other reviewers have commented on Faulks-as-Fleming is pretty dead-on. I've read the first five Bond books (check out CommanderBond.net for the true novel order) and I can tell that Faulks did a good job at emulating the style of the late author.

*In the opening sentence, I said that this Bond is different. He is only different if you've never read any of the Fleming novels. The Bond of the books and the Bond of the movies are different creatures. Heck, the movie Bonds themselves are different creatures. Differences can be good. Let me put it this way: the movie "Casino Royale" knocked my socks off it was so good. This book is better than half the films--easily--but not as good as, say, the movie or novel From Russia With Love.

Like most Bond films, Devil May Care starts off with a "pre-credit" sequence. Here, an Algerian drug dealer in France gets his tongue ripped out with pliers. Cue Theme Song. Next, we see Bond at the end of a three-month sabbatical after his encounter with Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun. (Again, judging by the movie version, my first question was "Really?" Perhaps the book is better. Couldn't possibly be worse.) Bond stays on Barbados and learns tennis, travels in France, and ends up in Rome. One day at an outside café, he sees a man with a large left hand wearing a white glove. Odd, thinks Bond, I think that chap is up to no good. (That's foreshadowing, by the way) With two weeks remaining on his sabbatical, he has a decision to make: return to the field or be benched behind a desk for the rest of his career. A lovely woman catches his eye and, after having dinner with the married woman, declines her invitation to go up to her room. Yes, I said declines. Yes, this is a James Bond book. It's okay. Just keep reading.

For Bond, that refusal of a sexual encounter is proof that he's lost the edge. Well, until he gets a cable from M ordering him to report back to London. Here is where Faulks demonstrates that he's read all of Fleming's material. And it's part of the book's charm. If you have never read the Fleming novels, you are missing a lot about the fictional Bond. When Bond returns to London, Faulks takes you to Bond's house and you get to see his housemaid--and she ain't one of the tall, slim, scantily clad ones either. In the novels, the second book, Moonraker, shows you Bond's house and his habits for the first time. Faulks lovingly throws in snippets of details that the die-hards will already know and new readers--perhaps those who only know Bond from the films--will find appealing. Faulks has Bond remember past adversaries throughout the book and this plays like a greatest hits.

M dispatches Bond to investigate Julian Gorner, a pharmaceutical magnate suspected of importing heroin into the West. And, lo and behold, if Gorner isn't the man with the large left hand that Bond just happened to see in France one day. (I'll be honest: I rolled my eyes on that one. Too coincidental and unnecessary.) Bond lands in France and is met by Scarlett Papava who just so happens to be the same lady Bond refused to sleep with back in Rome (roll eyes again). This time, she's being her real self and wants Bond's help to rescue her sister from the clutches of Gorner.

Every Bond story has to have the inevitable battle of wills between Bond and his adversary. Think golf with Goldfinger, shooting geese with Drax, or that horrid video game in "Never Say Never Again." This time, it's tennis (eye roll again because that's just exactly what Bond took up in Barbados during his sabbatical. Good thing, huh?) I think you can guess who wins. Which brings up a question: in almost all these films with the egomaniacal villain who think that they are so superior to Bond, why do they always feel the need to cheat?

I'll admit that the eye rolling stopped here. Once Bond makes his way to Iran (a first for Bond), the scope of a typical Bond story rolls along very quickly. He meets up with Darius Alizadeh, MI6's man in Tehran. He's a great character and as staunch an ally as Darko Kerim Bey in From Russia With Love. And you get a real sense of what Bond likes to eat, something that is usually skipped over in the films. Soon, Bond discovers the Caspian Sea Monster (as told by a man not unlike Quarrel from "Dr. No" who thinks the tank in that film is a dragon) and Gorner's plan to bring Britain to its knees (like in "Goldeneye" and "Die Another Day") in a manner not unlike Elliot Carver in "Tomorrow Never Dies." Got all that?

One thing that surprised me was the climax. It wasn't at the end; it occurred about three-fourths of the way into the book. But, like "The Spy Who Loved Me," the #1 Henchman returns and, well, you could have guessed that. And if you're wondering if Bond and Scarlett end up together...come on! It's a James Bond story. What do you think?

You get past the opening, slower sections and the book picks up a head of steam that barrels it way to the end. I listened to the book and the reader, Tristan Layton, does a fine job. He even nails the stereotypical Texas accent of Felix Leiter (bet you didn't know Felix was a Texan if you just watched the movies).

I certainly enjoyed the book and look forward to reading others as they are released. I'm up to Book 6 in the novels, Dr. No, and, after reading Devil May Care, I might tackle the rest of the Fleming books soon. I always hesitate to plow through novels by authors who are dead because there are a finite number of books to be read and I want to savor them. But if the Fleming estate continues to commission books as enjoyable as this one, we'll all have our constant fix of James Bond for years to come.

Books Like People.

 By Russel D McLean

Last week I spoke at a school as part of their Book Week, being held right before National Book Day hits here in the UK. National Book Day is all about getting kids reading, because we should all be concerned about literacy rates.

One of the things I talked to them about (and I covered a massive variety of topics, so all of the stuff that follows is an expansion or exploration of some off the cuff comments) was the fact that we don't have to read books to "better" ourselves. Yes, we should talk about books. We should talk about issues raised in books. But in the same way that we do that with movies and computer games and other forms of narrative entertainment. Books are always being touted as being somehow "better" than other narrative forms, but I sometimes think this translates into books not working as hard as they could, as though by the very nature of being prose they've earned some slack.

Not true.

Look, books (we're talking fiction here) are about entertainment. Like movies, they can be about deep, provoking entertainment or they can be about relaxing us in some way, helping us escape reality. Sometimes, on rare occasions, they can do both. One of the reasons I love crime fiction is that I can at once thrill to the excitment of what I'm reading, but I can also talk about issues raised, whether its about the nature of crime, the culpability of criminals, the society that creates certain types of crime, or whatever. But the fact is that I seek out books I enjoy and that speak to me.

I see no shame in not enjoying a book.

And just because I don't enjoy it doesn't mean its bad. This was one of my other points: that we should not be afraid to say we didn't enjoy a book. It just means that, as with people, we suffer from a kind of personality clash. There are some people out there who are perfectly nice that we just don't get along with. And its the same with books.

Me and Agatha Christie don't get along too well. I appreciate her intelligence, her influence and the way she so cleverly creates these perfect little plots where the guilty are caught, but the fact is that we don't have anything in common. Me and Raymond Chandler on the other hand, have a little magic on every page and care about atmosphere and character over plot, which is why we get on so well (and why neither of us really care who killed the Sternwood Chauffeur).

You shouldn't be afraid to dislike a book. But you should be able to say why that is beyond "I didn't like it." By examining the reasons certain books don't appeal to you, you start to discover more about yourself and who you are.


I think we need to talk about books. But not just about how they better us. We need to talk about them on the same level as movies and other narratives. We need to talk about them not as special objects but simply as things that are. They're another delivery method for stories and fictions both good and bad. They're not innately special compared to these other methods, but they are different and unique in their own way, capable of delivering a certain kind of experience in a way that movies cannot in the same way that movies deliver a certain experience books cannot.

A good story is a good story.

A bad story is a bad story.

And there are millions of good stories between paper covers or glowing out at us from the screens of our e-readers.

Let's talk about them.

Let's agree about them.

Let's disagree about them.

Let's discover them.

Let's read them.