By John Gilstrap
It’s Launch Day! This is the day when Threat Warning hits the stands (actually, it’s been on the stands for a week or so, but July 1 is the official launch date). This is my eighth time at bat, and it never gets ho-hum. Far from it, in fact. Each time a new book comes out is another pinch-me moment.
There was a point in my life—the first thirty-eight years—when the thought of publishing a single book seemed ridiculously unachievable. Then, along around 2003, the smart money said that my fourth book would be my last. Now, thanks to a hard-wired resistance to listening to people who tell me what I cannot do—and the good fortune to be introduced to Kurt Muse, who introduced me to the world of Special Forces—I’m basking in the glow of the release of my eighth book while I pound away on my ninth (Damage Control, to be released in July of 2012).
I don’t mean to get all sappy, but honest to God, sometimes I have to step back and wonder what good deeds I did in my past lives to justify the ride I’m getting in this one. Next week, I’ll be in New York City for ThrillerFest, hanging out with some of the best writers and smartest people on the planet, trying my best to be more friend than fan, though I confess that the difference is separated by a hair-thin line.
If you’re planning to be there for CraftFest—the writing program that begins on Wednesday—please consider dropping in on my session, “Who’s Story Are You Telling?”, a workshop on effective use of POV. Alternatively, please pop in on Saturday to the panel I’ll be leading on the future of the military thriller.
ThrillerFest is one of two indispensable meetings for writers of suspense fiction. Whereas Bouchercon—the other indispensable meeting—is mostly about meeting fans and gaining new ones, ThrillerFest is about professional development. Yes, T-Fest is expensive, but New York is an expensive city, and it is the heart and soul of the publishing industry. At the receptions and the bar and the banquet, you’ll find dozens of editors, agents, publishers, sales reps and publicists. It’s not the place to pitch your book (unless asked), but it’s the place to hang out with the power brokers and learn the industry.
Enough about that. This is Launch Day! In Threat Warning, Jonathan Grave and is team confront homegrown terrorists who are much more dangerous than they appear. Quoting the cover copy:
“The first victims are random. Ordinary citizens, fired upon at rush hour by unseen assassins. Caught in the crossfire of one of the attacks, rescue specialist Jonathan Grave spies a gunman getting away—with a mother and her teenage son as hostages. To free them, Grave and his team must enter the dark heart of a nationwide conspiracy. But their search goes beyond the schemes of a madman’s deadly ambitions. This time, it reaches all the way to the highest levels of power…”
I hope you give it a try. Even more, I hope you enjoy the story. One way or another, please let me know what you think.
Category Archives: John Gilstrap
Sometimes A Guy Can’t Win
By John Gilstrap
I’m no expert in young adult fiction, but over the past ten years or so, I’ve consumed more of it than I ever did when I was a young adult. (I don’t think that “young at heart” counts in this context.)
I’m an avid Harry Potter fan—in fact, I already bought my tickets for the July 15 opening. I love the concept of the boy wizard who has no idea who he is, but even more than that, I love the interaction of the characters. They seem very real to me. They’re not the best-written books in the world (J.K. Rowling loves adverbs enough to create brand new ones on the fly), but that doesn’t matter because the stories are so compelling. The characters are so compelling.
There’s no doubt in reading the Potter books that it’s Harry’s story. Still, the secondary characters really sing. Hermione Granger is among my favorites. Smarter than any of the boys, she has a strong moral center, and she’s willing to fight for what she believes. Cupid delivers her a few tough blows along the way, but never once does she go to that self-destructive place that seems popular in other YA stories I’ve consumed recently. She never ties her self-actualization to the whims of a jerk.
Then there’s Bella of the Twilight series—whiner in chief. Never mind that she has no interest in Jacob, the guy who actually loves her and treats her like, well, a human being. Never mind that Edward is constantly pushing Bella away. Let’s concentrate for a moment on the fact that Bella has to die to be with the one she loves. Yeah, I know, dying is part of the construct of the whole vampire craze, but in the second of the Twilight stories (or, at least the second movie I watched), Bella sees self destruction—multiple suicide attempts—as the only way for Edward to pay attention to her.
If you’ve read this blog for any time at all, you know that I am 100% against censorship in all of its forms, but is this really the message with which American girls bond so thoroughly? Is there a purer form of narcissism than the gambit of “If you don’t pay attention to me, I’ll hurt myself”? How is this remotely empowering to young girls?
When did it become cool for girls to hand their emotional future over to some guy who treats her like crap?
Most recently, I read the first book in the Hunger Games trilogy, in which young Katniss Everdeen (a girl) has to fight 23 other teens to the death in a contest that is televised as a sporting event. The Hunger Games is the new Big Thing in YA fiction. Having read and enjoyed Battle Royale—a Japanese version of a story that is strikingly similar—I thought I’d give Katniss and her adventures a whirl. It’s actually a pretty good book.
Katniss is no Bella. She can thread a needle with a bow and arrow at 50 yards, and she doesn’t take crap off anybody. As luck would have it, one of her opponents in the games is Peeta, a boy her age who fell in love with her at first sight back when they were both six or seven years old.
MILD SPOILER AHEAD
Peeta repeatedly saves Katniss’s life at the risk of his own, and he announces his love for her on national television, but she pays little attention because her heart belongs to another guy. It’s the conceit of the story that Katniss suspects that he’s merely using professed love as a strategy, but in the author’s hand, Katniss just comes off as obtuse at best, moronic at worst.
SPOILER ENDED
I know it’s all fiction, but for these stories to resonate as they have, there has to be some element of universal truth. Is this really how the adolescent female mind is wired? Do good guys have any chance at all—and in this case I mean that literally, as in guys who are good to others?
Okay, don’t answer that. Good guys are doomed—at least among adolescents and certainly in YA fiction. The romance of the “bad boy” is at least as old as the printing press. Certainly, as far back as my own high school days, really hot girls have always been drawn to the guys who treat them like crap. The good news is that like everything else about adolescence, most people outgrow the roles they play as teenagers and ultimately get their heads straight.
During that transitional time though, when the out-growing is underway, I hope there are some strong parental hands on the tiller.
When all is said and done, though, Hermione will have been a lot more help creating well-balanced young ladies than Bella ever was.
Can A Bestseller Be Engineered?
By John Gilstrap
In 1997, a literary author named Bradford Morrow made big headlines in the book industry when he allegedly told a reporter from New York Magazine that his publisher, Viking, was trying to engineer a bestselling thriller out of his next novel Giovanni’s Gift. To support the book, and to give it a leg up on sales, the publisher spent a lot of dough promoting it. That’s a good thing, right?
Well, not necessarily. When the New York Magazine story was published, New York Times Book Review writer Walter Kirn tore apart not only the book, but also the author and publisher. Here’s a link to a piece that Salon did on the brouhaha: http://www.salon.com/march97/media/media970331.html.
While some reviews leave room for interpretation, I think intelligent minds can agree that this is gratuitously awful: “an unintentionally campy blend of artistic ambition and commercial cynicism … a case study in the novel as gilded kitsch — a book that proposes to elevate its readers even as it takes calculated aim at their presumed stupidity … a thin romantic melodrama insulated in operatic twaddle.”
Morrow’s offense, such as it was(n’t) was his decision to share with the world his desire for commercial success. (In future interviews, he maintained that he never writes for money.)
How the world has changed, huh? In a mere fourteen years, we have come to a place in history where it’s okay for an author to publicly state his desire for commercial success. (I’ve long believed that even literary writers secretly want to make money off what they write.)
Carrying on with this week’s theme of finding the right strings to pull to engineer a bestseller, I continue to question whether any individual writer can do anything to significantly influence sales. Sure, there are outliers and exceptions (paging Joe Konrath), but in Joe’s case you have to give credit to the power of being first.
Yesterday ended a 10-day run for my book At All Costs on the Kindle Top 100. (As I write this, it sits at #105, having gotten as low as the 20s.) This is great news for a book that was written in the same year when Giovanni’s Gift was released. Could it possibly be that my fan base has finally reached that self-sustaining critical mass?
Maybe. I hope so. But I have serious doubts about that. If that were the case, my Nook sales rank would be substantially lower than 10,223, which is where it sits as I write this. So, what’s going on?
The answer in two words: Paid Promotion.
My publisher is spending real coin at Amazon on my behalf for banner ads and email blasts that alert anyone who has ever bought my work or the work of anyone who writes similar thrillers that there’s a new Gilstrap eBook out there at the readily affordable price of $1.99 (down from the original $4.50-ish). I assure you that it’s no coincidence that everyone who buys the At All Costs eBook will get to read the first chapter of Threat Warning, the front list book coming out on June 28 as an eBook and July 1 as a pBook.
Words cannot express how grateful I am to Kensington for getting behind me and my work this way. It’s all part of a strategy that was engineered and is continually tweaked by several departments of professionals who promote books for a living. If they’re doing this for li’l ole me, can you imagine the horsepower that’s behind the likes of Baldacci, Coben and Deaver? Sure, at the end of the day, the quality of the work is paramount—an author has to entertain his audience—but a lot of the frenzy that surrounds the release of a book is bought and paid for, including much of the stuff that seems spontaneous.
I have no idea what the price tag of all of this is, but I’m going to guess that it’s significant enough to be out of range for most people I know. It’s not just the absolute value of the time and the cash that’s involved; it’s the risk factor, too. There’s no guarantee that they’ll ever see a return on their investment.
My writing career is eight books deep now—eight books published, anyway. I’ve hired two independent publicists in that time, I’ve arranged book tours, I’ve typed my fingers bloody on blog tours, yet I can tell you without hesitation that nothing I’ve done in self-promotion comes close to providing the results of what Kensington is doing for me. And it’s not just the money; it’s the know-how.
I’m the first to say that I’m perhaps overly blessed at the moment, but some really dark times preceded the last couple of years. This is a tough, tough, business, and with few exceptions the road to success—whatever that means to whoever it means it to—is paved with divots and bloodstains.
Jeffery Deaver and I used to meet for drinks and dinner every Thursday evening for five or six years, and during the darkest of the dark times he endured my pity party for a while. Then, when I asked him what he’s doing right that I’m doing wrong, he put it in perfect perspective for me: “I’m twenty books ahead of you,” he said.
And there it is: the secret to publishing success. And after the twentieth book comes the twenty-first. I’ve come a long way since that chat with Jeff, but I have a long way to go.
Finally, at long last, I’m part of a team that supports me; but part of the reason they support me is because they feel I’ve earned it, a book at a time and a fan at a time.
Can you engineer a bestseller? I believe it’s done all the time. But key elements of the blue print include an established, enthusiastic fan base, and a proven ability to turn out good work.
Can a first time author engineer a bestseller on his own? The occasional exception notwithstanding, I believe the answer is no.
Will Livable Advances Be the First Casualty of the Publishing Revolution?
By John Gilstrap
Before getting to the meat of this week’s blog entry, I wanted to share a bit of very cool news. As every TKZ regular knows, Basil Sands is a frequent and entertaining participant here. A year or so ago, when my fellow Killzoners and I published Fresh Kills: Tales From The Killzone, Basil volunteered to produce audio versions of the book and podcast them. If you’ve listened to his narration, you know that he’s very good at that sort of thing.
A few weeks ago, during a routine email exchange with the folks from Audible.com, the people who publish the audio versions of the Jonathan Grave series, I mentioned to them that they might consider adding Basil to their stable of narrators. I’m not sure of the details that transpired between Basil and Audible.com at that point, but I am thrilled to announce that Basil Sands will be the narrator for my next Jonathan Grave novel, Threat Warning, which will be released on July 1.
Having heard the great job he did with Fresh Kills, I can’t wait to hear his take on Threat Warning. For the second week in a row, then, here’s to serendipity! Way to go, Basil!
We now return to our original Blog programming:
*
New York publishing went Hollywood back in the mid nineties, throwing high six-figure and even seven-figure advances at first time authors. It’s a shame that so many of the authors who received such largesse didn’t know that the big money would ruin their writing careers.
A million dollar advance puts a writer in the position of having to sell something like 300,000 copies in hardcover for the publisher just to break even, and 350,000 for the writer to start earning a royalty check. Those are hard numbers to achieve even for established authors; for an unknown rookie, the odds are one in thousands. Whereas in a normal world, rookie sales of 75,000 or 80,000 copies would be the stuff of cork-popping and the terrific launch of a career, those same sales for the anointed and overpaid were a source of embarrassment for the team that forked over the cash.
But the big advance was only part of the problem. In order to have a chance at recovering their investment, publishers had to throw another couple hundred thousand bucks at marketing and promotion. Back then, when a “big book” failed, it failed big. If the disappointment was public enough, no other publisher would touch the author, who would forever join the ranks of one-hit wonders.
First lesson of New York publishing: The bad stuff is always the author’s fault.
Meanwhile, because all the marketing dollars were going to the big books, the midlist authors who were lucky to be pulling in $30,000 advances got squat in promotion. Their success (or failure) was driven largely by efforts of independent booksellers to hand-sell. Back then, even if a midlist title didn’t earn out, the independents would still order the next title of an author whose work they liked. There was a tacit agreement between publishers and booksellers to “grow” and author over time. That was before computers started running the business.
Now the indies are virtually all gone, and the hundred-year-old publishing business model is in turmoil. Virtually all of the legacy houses are stuck with bazillion-dollar contracts that have virtually no chance of earning out, and to cover their downside (backside?), many are establishing eBook lines that will provide a steady stream of revenue against greatly diminished costs. Among the diminished expenses are the size of authors’ advances.
This is a game-changer for writers who make their living exclusively through writing. A reasonable advance (pick your own number to define reasonable) keeps the lights on and the kids in shoes during the period after a book is bought and before it is published. The advance is what writers use to pay bills while writing the next book. If advances implode, I’m not sure how full-time writers will make ends meet.
Self publishing will become the solution for some, I suppose, but I continue to believe that the only writers who have even a remote chance for success via self publishing are those who have already established their names via traditional means. There’s just too much noise out there for newbies to have a real shot.
While my crystal ball is notoriously cloudy on all things, I’m confident that there’ll be a solution to all of this that will keep publishers in business, and will continue to make mega-selling authors mega-wealthy. But if publishers have a brain in their collective head, they’ll have to find a way to pay less up front in advances, and more in royalties that are distributed more frequently. That would be the everybody-wins solution, I think.
What about you, dear Killzoners? For those of you who dream of canning the day job and writing full time, do you see yourself rolling the dice on self-published sales, or on royalties alone, or is an advance a critical component of your plan?
The Terrors of Timeliness
By John Gilstrap
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that for at least a few writers, the news of Osama bin Laden’s demise was met with less than pure elation. These writers are no less patriotic than their neighbors, nor are they sympathetic to terrorist causes.
They are authors who were 50,000 words into a novel about the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden. As the mass murderer’s brains were spattering the walls in Abbottabad, the potential value of those manuscripts dropped to just about zero. Months of work (years?) shot to hell—literally. Those writers learned what I consider to be a valid—though painful—lesson:
Reality in fiction ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
It takes a lot of work and countless hours to turn out the kind of books I write. For them to succeed among my fans, the stories need to feel timely and current, and with a contract to produce a book a year, I can’t afford waste. That’s why none of my timely, current stories are ever set in real places.
My series character, Jonathan Grave, lives in the Northern Neck of Virginia (a real place), in a town called Fisherman’s Cove (not a real place). In No Mercy, a lot of the action takes place in the fictional town of Samson in the very real State of Indiana. In Hostage Zero, one of the characters is spirited off to an unnamed village in Colombia. The bad guy who does the kidnapping is able to do so because of a series of diplomatic agreements between the United States and Colombia that never happened.
They call this stuff fiction because it’s all made up. If an author expends enough intellectual energy to construct his fictional world with a few dollops of reality and a pinch of bravado, the reader will follow him wherever he wants to go. I don’t see a reason in the world why the Fisherman’s Cove or Colombian jungle of my imagination have to be any more real than JK Rowling’s Hogwarts.
Jonathan Grave and his crew use some amazing technology in their missions. Some of it is real, but a lot of it is just plain made up. One bit of made up stuff actually prompted a Navy SEAL buddy of mine to ask how I knew about such a top secret project. I told him the truth: Having hung around with a lot of spooky people in my time, I’ve learned that there’s a development project for just about anything anyone can think of. I don’t even have to understand the technology; I just have to convince my readers that my characters understand the technology. I think of it as literary sleight of hand.
There are a lot of authors out there who disagree with me on this subject. These are the types for whom research is an obsession—a calling. For some—like historical fiction writers—the research by necessity never stops, but for the average suspense writer, I think that making stuff up is a way more efficient use of time. I know crime fiction writers whose books are equal parts story and travelogue. Los Angeles and New York seem to be the most frequently-traveled.
Fictional characters travel real streets and eat in real places. They do a lot of stuff that I frequently skip over. Think about it: Unless the specific intersection of Hollywood and Vine plays a role in the story, it might as well be the intersection of Maple and Elm, because, as a non-resident of L.A., I’m dependent exclusively on the author’s description, which means that the realness of the description is irrelevant.
Some research is just a little bit crazy. My friend Joseph Finder posted a piece a week or so ago in which he—a self-described claustrophobe—allowed himself to be sealed into a coffin so that he could adequately describe what it’s like to be buried alive. Really. Turns out it was quite unsettling. I gotta say, as a borderline claustrophobe myself, I think I could’ve just made up the darkness, stale air and panic and saved myself some long-term counseling.
(Love ya, Joe!)
The more specific a writer gets in the depiction of real things and real places, the riskier the writing becomes. The devil is deeply embedded in the details. I read a book not too long ago that involved the fire service. During a response to a call, a character flipped the switch on his Federal Q siren and got a whooping sound out of it. The scene would have worked just fine if the author had stopped short of showing off his research. A Federal Q siren doesn’t whoop. I suppose for most of his readers it wasn’t a big deal because they wouldn’t know the difference—which invites the question (happy, Jim?), why not just leave it at siren? Or, if that extra level of verisimilitude is important to the author, he could just call it a Predator Nine siren? (There is no such thing, to my knowledge, but it sounds like it could be real, and the rank and file reader would be none the wiser.)
When your character jacks a round into his Glock and thumbs the safety off, you alienate people who know that there’s typically no need to do one of those actions, and that the other isn’t possible. It’s a mistake that pushes some of the audience out of the scene. No one would raise an eyebrow, though, if the character jacked a round into his pistol and thumbed the safety off.
So, dear Killzoners, if any of you are among the fictional bin Laden hunters, I hope you’re able to retool for the hunt of a more generic terrorist. Take heart in the knowledge that you’re treading the trail followed by downtrodden Soviet threat writers.
Good Guy PDC
By John Gilstrap
Good morning, everyone. Now that you’ve had a chance to mingle and meet, let’s take our seats and get started. Welcome to the first annual Good Guy Professional Development conference. Mr. Grave, Mr. Rapp and Mr. Harvath, I need you to leave your weapons at the check station. You, too, Mr. Massey. Yes, all of them. Mr. al-Jawadi will take good care of them.
Mr. Rapp, I don’t appreciate that kind of talk here. Not all . . . Okay, apology accepted.
I’d like to offer a special welcome to President Ryan. It’s a real honor, sir. And congratulations on your son’s success as well. I think we all can agree that the world is a much safer—
Excuse me. Yes, Mr. Pitt? Because they’re Secret Service agents, that’s why. They are the single exception to the no weapons rule. Surely this makes sense to you. I thought it would. Thank you.
Moving along, this morning’s agenda includes—
Oh, good God. Who’s pounding on the door? Oh. Just ignore her, and maybe she’ll go away. What? No, I’m not being sexist. Jessica Fletcher is not welcome in any gathering that I run. Certainly not where food or tea is being served. It’s just not worth the risk.
Who locked the doors, anyway? Ah. And why did you do that, Inspector Poirot? Uh huh. I see. Well, technically, Inspector, there’s more than one killer in this room. Quite a lot more than one, actually. We don’t need a locked room, thanks. It’s a fire code violation.
Mr. Lockwood and Mr. Pike, please sit down. I don’t need your help. And Inspector Poirot does not “talk funny,” as you say. He’s Belgian. And meaning no offense, why are you two here in the first place? This conference is for lead characters. A sidekick conference is in the planning stages . . . My apologies, Mr. Pike, you’re absolutely right. I’d forgotten. You’re welcome to stay. But Mr. Lockwood—may I call you Win? All right, then, Mr. Lockwood, I need to ask you to leave.
Getting back to the agenda, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, beginning with a panel presented by Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne discussing the difficulties of living a dual life. That will be moderated by Peter Parker.
I see you, Mr. Bolitar. Please put the laser pointer down. The red dot on my chest is certainly a riot, but it’s distracting. Thank you.
The dual life panel will be followed by a technical workshop called “How to Get 500 Rounds Out Of A 30-Round Magazine Without Reloading.” That will be jointly taught by two of my favorite Johns: John “Hannibal” Smith, and John Rambo.
Our luncheon speaker is the ever-entertaining Captain Ahab, whose keynote is titled, “Manic Monomania.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve been thinking about little else for days.
In the afternoon, we have . . .
***
The afternoon sessions are up to you, dear Killzoners. Let’s have some fun. Trying to stick to the voice of the speaker, post your suggested courses and presenters. Or interact some more with the attendees.
This could be a hoot.
(FYI, I’ll be away from the keyboard all day today, so I’ll be kinda quiet.)
Shameless Self-Promotion Alert
by John Gilstrap
A few times a year (but only a few times) I devote my slice of intellectual real estate here on The Killzone to shameless self-promotion. Today is one of those days.
This will be a three-book summer for me. Threat Warning, the third installment of the Jonathan Grave thriller series, will hit the stands on July 1; but before that, in hopes of whetting readers’ appetities, Kensington will rerelease my 1998 novel, At All Costs, on May 1 (next week!). The pBook rerelease will follow in 2012.
We chose At All Costs for the first rerelease (Nathan’s Run will come out again in eBook form in August) because it actually shares literary DNA with the Grave series. That’s the book where Irene Rivers–now the director of the FBI, codenamed Wolverine in the Grave books–was first introduced. In At All Costs, she’s my protagonists’ worst nightmare as she continues to pursue them for crimes that only they know they never committed.
The rerelease strategy was my editor’s suggestion–well, sort of. During a meeting at last year’s Bouchercon in San Francisco, she mentioned that she’d like to see a story about Irene’s past. When I told her that I’d already written it, but it was now out of print, Kensington re-bought the rights, and here we are.
I’ve blogged before that it’s a daunting task to edit page proofs of a previously-published book. In the end, I didn’t change much beyond a significant reduction (but not elimination) of the F-bomb. I tried hard to keep my substantive changes to a minimum, but a few were irresistable. Take the throw-away reference to the “US Air Arena,” which, at the time I wrote the original story, was the hope of the Washington Capitals hockey team and the Washington Bullets basketball team. Since then, US Air became US Airways, the Bullets ceased to exist. The facility itself was abandoned and ultimately torn down. Last time I drove through there, it was an empty lot. I changed the throw-away reference to “a stadium.” That should stay relevant for a while.
The most interesting part of the editing process was the realization that the story would have been largely different if I had written it today. A huge section takes place at a hazardous waste site. In 1996, when I was committing the story to paper, that hazmat stuff was very much a part of my life. As I was reading through the vernacular and the images, I realized that there’s a verisimilitude there that I don’t think I could have created from my now-stale memories of my moon-suit days. Forgive the immodesty, but there are passages in the book that cause me to pause and think, “Wow, that’s really good.”
Then there was the emotion of revisiting that creative space in my mind. My son–now 25–was ten years old when I wrote At All Costs, and it’s impossible to read some passages without being taken back to where I was in my life when I penned them. Those were heady days, when the publishing industry was all hope an opportunity and unbridled success for me–the days when I was first meeting so many of the then-up-and-coming writers who would soon become fast friends, and staples of your local bookstore. I’m not one to long for turning the clock back, but I’m not above bouts of nostalgia. The act of revisiting At All Costs felt like a bit like piloting a time machine on occasion.
As I write this, I fear that I’m not explaining it well, but it’s the best I can do.
I hope you have a chance to read the book. More than that, I hope you enjoy it if you do.
The Mentor-Mentee Compact
By John Gilstrap
Twenty years ago, when I taught rookie firefighters the basics of their craft, we all understood the vast chasm that separated the sterile learning environment of the classroom from the training crucible of a real fire. On paper and in books and in training videos, even the complicated stuff looks easy—or if not easy, then at least predictable. When we took new guys into their first Rookie Roast, we knew that panic was the greatest hazard our students faced. By extension, it was my greatest hazard as an instructor, as well. (You get in trouble if you actually roast rookies in a Rookie Roast.)
Before you could emerge from the far side of rookie school, you had to prove certain proficiencies. You had to carry a really heavy load from here to there, and you had to navigate a very stressful and confining maze without showing signs of panic, all within a prescribed amount of time. And you had to, you know, raise ladders and put out fires and stuff. There was no faking the practical tests. (One day over a martini, ask me about the time when we had to test all of the battalion chiefs to the rookie standards. That was a hoot!)
I miss the simplicity of those days, when stupid was stupid, ugly was ugly, and if you screwed up, the screw-up was a source of ridicule. I have often said that if you’ve never been chewed out by a fire captain, you’ve only been mollycoddled. The sensibility at the time was that a little embarrassment ensured that mistakes were never repeated, and that as a result, the entire crew had that much better a chance of returning home whole and healthy.
For all the harshness and grab-ass, though, it was a wholesome and nurturing environment. You had to respect people to ride them hard; otherwise, you just ignored them. Mentors were everywhere, just waiting to be asked. There was a tacit, reasonable understanding that experienced firefighters knew more about firefighting than inexperienced ones, and the longer I stayed in, the more I realized how little I understood that when I was a know-it-all rookie. Come to think of it, most rookies are know-it-alls when they are fresh from the exhilaration of rookie school. It was the mentors’ job to help the new guy massage his knowledge into experience.
I was reminded of these good old days during last week’s dust-up over allegedly mean-spirited critiques. I don’t want to reopen the wound, or even examine the specifics of that particular case, but I was stunned by the vitriol.
I am the first to admit that I am fully self-taught in this writing gig. I know nouns and verbs and adjectives, but once you get into participles—dangling or otherwise—and pluperfect anything, it’s time for me to leave the table. I don’t know that stuff. I’ve never taken a writing class. I don’t say this with particular pride, but I say it without shame.
My writing career, then, was built on the principle of rejecting rejection. No one ever told me what I was doing well—truth be told, I already had a good sense for that. Instead, I got rejections, the mere existence of which told me that the aggregate of what I was doing was wrong. The specifics were left to me to figure out. I sought trusted opinions to help me ferret out the bad stuff. What wasn’t identified as bad was presumed to be good. It worked for me. It continues to work for me.
What I would have given for the kind of critiques that are offered here! Sure, not all critiques are as helpful as others, but in all fairness, not all submissions give you a lot to work with.
When fellow authors give me a manuscript to beta-read, it never occurs to me to soft-pedal my opinion or to blow even a single ray of sunshine. They give it to me to help them find and disarm the landmines, and by agreeing to do so, I owe them the respect to be brutal. I don’t worry about bruising their fragile egos because professional writers’ egos have turned to stone by the time they’ve got three or four books under their belts.
I believe that far too many people are lied to by their friends and their families and their teachers. Alternatively, the average friend, family member or teacher wouldn’t know commercial-quality fiction if it bit them on the nose. Either way, there are a lot of marginally talented (or talentless) people out there who are angered and embittered by their first brush with honest critique. I don’t get it. Why ask if you don’t want to hear the answer?
Better still, why listen to an answer if you think it’s wrong? In a business where there are no rules, all that’s left is opinions. I’ve got mine. Miller’s got ’em too. Jim Bell, Joe Moore and Michelle Gagnon, and all the rest of us denizens of The Killzone have opinions, and look how often we disagree with each other. That’s all a critique is: an opinion.
If the deliverer of an opinion has a little fun in the process—even if it makes some people squirm—so what?
The job of a mentor is not to make someone feel good about oneself. The job is help the student master the skills that will lead to him feeling good about himself on his own.
Sometimes—let’s be honest here—that means choosing a different career. As the saying goes, if you can’t stand the heat, flee the burning building.
The Curious Case of the Overpriced Kindle
By John Gilstrap
A friend of mine who happens to be a mega-selling thriller writer finds himself in an interesting spot. A month or so ago, Publisher’s Weekly gave his now just-released book a coveted starred review. That’s a big deal. Just about everybody in the book business reads or is familiar with PW, and a rave review from them can do great things for a book. It’s more important for newer writers than it is for authors of my friend’s ilk, but still, it’s quite an honor.
Imagine the disappointment, then, when I logged on to Amazon and I saw that his average review there is 2.5 stars. What gives? How can there be such a disconnect? How can a book that received such acclaim garner so many one-star reviews?
It turns out that there’s a readers’ revolution in play, and the cause they’re fighting for is fairly priced Kindle books. In my friend’s case, the Kindle version of the book is selling for $14.99—about a dollar more than the discounted price for the hardcover—and his fans are in full revolt. Their only weapons in this war are to boycott the author, and to pollute his rating with one-star reviews.
I get the anger over the pricing. Back when the Kindle was first making the news, the deal was clear: You could buy any book you wanted for no more than $9.99. Then the publishers revolted, and the so-called agency model was born, in which publishers get to set the retail price for their books. Thus, mega-selling authors have more expensive eBooks than non-mega-selling authors, and Kindlefolk feel betrayed.
I can’t begin to understand what the publisher is thinking in this scenario. In what world does it make sense to market eBooks at a higher price point than hardcovers? Add that to the list of bazillion things in the entertainment business that make no sense at all.
Because it makes no sense, I think the feelings of betrayal are justified, but the payback strategy feels flawed. People feel like they have to make their feelings known, and polluting the ratings feels good. It’s kind of the same thing as punishing a waiter with a bad tip because your steak was overcooked. It might feel good, but at the end of the day it accomplishes nothing.
If you read deeper into many of the angry reviews, you’ll find stated intentions not just to boycott the author whose book has been overpriced but his publisher, but—inexplicably, I think—to boycott the Kindle and eBooks in general. This is where I start to get pissed.
Why throw out the reading device? Why not express your anger by reading a new author in the same genre? Why not give a break to some newbie whose publisher is working hard to grab your attention? Are people so addicted to name brand franchise authors that they can’t take a chance on a new name?
If you’re angry about the price of the brand name books, and you want to get the publishers’ attention, I think you need to take your business to a different publisher. Not only might you find a new author to like, but your experiment would truly publish the offender you’re trying to get back at.
Off the top of my head, I can think of 11 mystery and thriller writers who would love a chance to be added to your must-read list.
Method Writing
By John Gilstrap
I used to be fairly addicted to James Lipton’s show Inside the Actor’s Studio, during which he would conduct incisive interviews with famous actors. It used to come on every Sunday night, but got shuffled in the schedule a while ago, and I’ve not been able to catch up with it again. The stories of creative courage, and of success in the face of repeated rejection inspired me. I think the show was inspiring to anyone of a creative bent.
Back in high school, I used to toy with the idea of becoming an actor—having been a star in our production of Godspell and learning to love the sound of applause. (I’m the holder in the picture, not the holdee) Then I was cast as George in the school’s production of Our Town, and I realized that I was far too self-conscious to strip away the social armor of adolescence and show real emotion to a room full of strangers. I went through the motions because that was what I’d signed on to do, but acting was not for me.
I chose instead to do my emoting on the page, where I have the luxury of limitless attempts to get it exactly the way I want before I show it to anyone. It’s part of my nature as a control freak.
While the up-by-the-bootstraps stories were inspiring, I also took great interest in the guests’ discussion of method acting, in which actors insert themselves emotionally into their character’s reality, and then leverage their own emotional and sensory memory to deliver a convincing performance. The Method, as it is called, contrasts with “classical” acting, in which actors merely simulate their characters’ emotions through external factors such as voice and facial expression. (Thanks to Wikipedia for the definitions.)
We talk a lot about point of view here at The Killzone, and for me, there’s a lot to be learned about POV by what little I understand about The Method. I’ve never articulated it as such, but when I write any given scene, I am in the emotional space of the character to whom the scene belongs. I see and hear what they see and hear. When I’m truly in the zone, writing a scene is merely a matter of reporting what I see and what I feel. I can be that much in the moment.
To the degree that I have a gift for writing (how’s that for a pretentious phrase?), I think that gift lies in my ability to bring readers into my characters’ heads. I’d been writing that way for long before I watched my first episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio and learned about The Method, but the more I think about it, the more I believe that the processes are similar.
As I write this, I realize that there’s also a writing analogy to the classical style of acting. It manifests itself in the writing styles of many of the titans of the mystery genre, starting with the Great Agatha. While I enjoy her stories, I never feel terribly bonded to her characters emotionally. I admire them for their puzzle-solving abilities, but I don’t feel that I know them personally. (Having written this paragraph, why do I feel like I should be digging a bunker to hide in?) As a result, those stories feel dated to me.
What about you, fellow Killzoners? Do you think there’s a link between acting and writing?