Happy News!

Wow, am I thrilled to share this news.

I'm going to be published by Polis Books! I have long admired Jason Pinter and Polis Books and am extremely excited and honored to be part of a publishing team that includes authors such as Alex Segura, Rob Hart, Bryon Quertermous, Patricia Abbott, Dave White, and Todd Robinson!

Here is what will run in Publisher's Weekly about the book, which is slated for spring 2017.


Anthony and Macavity nominee Kristi Belcamino’s debut Young Adult novel CITY OF ANGELS, set in 1992 Los Angeles amidst the boiling tension of the Rodney King trial, about a destitute teenager named Nikki who ends up living above a punk rock bar, and must investigate the disappearance of a young girl who has either succumbed to the streets, or something far worse.

And here is my own blurb/synopsis:

Nikki Black, 18, a self-imposed lone wolf since her mother died, fled suburban Chicago to escape her painful past. But when her so-called boyfriend reveals why he really lured her to Southern California — to star in child porn flicks — she ends up on the streets of L.A. with only the clothes on her back and a fourteen-year-old addict named Rain trailing in her shadows. The girls seek refuge at a residential hotel above a punk rock bar in downtown L.A. a few months before the city erupts into chaos during the 1992 riots. At The American Hotel, Nikki makes friends and for the first time in years feels as if she has a real family again.

All that changes when Rain disappears. Everyone except Nikki, including the police, thinks Rain succumbed to the seductive allure of addiction and life on the streets. Nikki finds herself fighting for her own life the closer she gets to unveiling a sinister cover-up by a powerful group that secretly controls the city of angels. City of Angels is an edgy, gritty, mature YA mystery about a teenager’s struggle to not only belong — but survive.

Breaking Down Books

By

Scott D. Parker

How often do you break down a book you’ve read to see how it’s built?

On Wednesday, I wrote a review of BOUNTY ON A BARON by Robert J. Randisi. One of the things that amazed me was just how fluidly I got through the story. It was effortless. No sooner had I started than I was sucked into the tale and just went along for the ride.

How did Randisi accomplish this? I set about to discover the answer.

About a quarter of the way into the book, I started taking notes. With pencil in hand, I jotted bullet points per chapter about the action. Later in the novel, as Randisi inserted more than one scene per chapter, I sub-divide my bullet points into scene. When I had completed the novel, I wrote all my notes into a ledger so I could refer to it in the future.

What emerged was the structure of a well-crafted story. Next I did a little internet research to discover if Randisi, author of over 650 books (no, that’s not a typo) outlined ahead of time. Surely, that’s the only way a writer could be this prolific. Nope. He just goes. Naturally, having decades and hundreds of novels of experience, much of the mechanics of writing a story is now ingrained in his mind, but still.

Looking at this book at such a high level, the mechanics of the story start to reveal the overall story structure. Sure you can see that in one later chapter, he had five small scenes in one chapter, but sometimes, those little scenes were merely setup for later scenes. It proved to be a constant flow of small little cliffhangers and denouements throughout the entire book, to say nothing of the overall climax and epilogue.

I’ve read in more than one place that some beginning writers will actually type out a book they enjoy literally to get the feel of a book. I’m not one of those people. This structure breakdown is enough for me.

The exercise is illustrative, however. Just having a book diagrammed out enables a higher level of storytelling. I’ve heard that what happens when you dictate a novel, a professional goal for 2016.

Do y’all breakdown a book into its component parts in order to learn how it was constructed? Is there another exercise y’all do? I’m curious.

NEAT THING OF THE WEEK

I’m listening to the latest novel by Clive Cussler, THE PHAROAH’S SECRET. It’s a Kurt Austin adventure, my first of this series. Cussler has five by my count: Dirk Pitt, Isaac Bell, NUMA Files (Austin), Oregon Files, and the Fargo Adventure.

Well, midway in PHAROAH, there’s a shootout and Kurt hears the voices of a couple other people. When they get closer, he realizes they are characters from the Oregon Files. And, what’s even cooler, when they namedrop the case their investigating, I realized that it’s in the *next* Cussler book to be published in May, THE EMPEROR’S REVENGE.

How cool is that!

In all the books I’ve written to date, all my characters typically walk on in nearly every book. But I’ve never had the idea of something like this. You know what this means, right? In, EMPEROR’S REVENGE, I’ll get to see the exact same scene but from the POV of the Oregon characters.

That is really, really neat.

Black Sails, Disco Inferno

A little over a year ago, I was laying in the guest bedroom at my in-laws' house, browsing Facebook on New Year's Eve. Being eight hours ahead of most of my friends made the activity light, but I saw a post from a friend and writer talking about this idea he was playing with - he wasn't sure if he should go ahead.

The idea was, what if you gender-flipped the Tristan and Isolde myth, modernized it, and made it noir? Holy shit, I was not going to let him talk himself out of that one. I had read (and loved) all of Andrez Bergen's work up to that point, and I couldn't think of a person better suited to that story, so I picked up my pom-poms and started cheerleading.

Fast forward to September of last year and the seventh issue of the resulting comic, Trista & Holt, debuted with my name in the slot for guest-writer. I'm a huge comic book fan, and a huge fan of Andrez, so this was absolutely surreal. When our first review for the issue came in, and it was overwhelmingly positive, I actually cried. I couldn't have been happier with our collaboration - or so I thought.

Because Andrez never sleeps (he says he does, but I don't buy it), once he wrapped up the comic series, he moved right on to the next project: a novelization of the comic series with a different ending.

Completely unexpectedly, it turns out that the first novel with my name on the cover will be Black Sails, Disco Inferno, set to be released this summer.

This is HUGE.

This is AMAZING.

This is INSANE.

I don't even know how to process the turn of events. For my part, I stumbled through my collaboration on the comic with Andrez, held my breath, and hoped for the best. I am so proud of the work I did, and how beautifully the collaboration worked out, but when Andrez sat down to write the novel, he promised I'd be credited for my part, he assured me the story would not have been the same without my work - but to have my name on the cover? To have a dedication to my husband in the front and acknowledgements in the back? To be planning a release party? HOLY SHIT.

This book is amazing, the previews I've seen for the cover are beautiful. This collaboration is absolutely the high point of my (admittedly short) career. I'm a bit stunned, but overall bursting with excitement to share this work with everyone.

I'm sure I'll come to grips with how to fully take the credit for my part (I'm not there yet), after all, it did suddenly feel real when I started writing acknowledgements but for now I'm trying to savor the excitement of seeing something I was a part of come out into the world with my name on it. Andrez is, as always, a wonderful person to work with, and has made sure I feel like this is mine, too, but I've been calling it, "The novel I collaborated on... well, I mean... I didn't write it..." which is a bit of a mouthful. I'm open for suggestions on something a little more succinct.

In the meantime, I bought myself a cool toy and am having a drink to celebrate.