So my family and I are about to embark on yet another adventure – just two years after coming back to Australia (after 15 years away) we are now heading back to the USA – to Denver this time – and I am up to my eyeballs in organization and packing (which may or may not explain my current dazed state!). Thankfully final revisions to my manuscript are done and have met with my agent’s approval so, at least on the writing front, things are more or less out of my hands. Apart from that, however, chaos reigns!
We are all very excited about the move and I’m especially looking forward to getting back into the writing community and attending some writing conferences next year. So my question for you all (as I raise my head above the parapet of boxes) is which conferences do you think are the most worthwhile? I’ve attended many in the past but I confess I’ve lost track of most of them by now and it would be great to get feedback from you all on which you attended, which you thought were great (or not so great…), and why.
I’ve already got Bouchercon down on my list – though I do find it a little large and overwhelming – but other than that I’m wide open as to options. My current manuscript is a YA one with a historical/fantasy bent but I also hope to have a traditional mystery out by early next year too.
So I’d love you all to weigh in on some of the conference options – then I can get even more excited about my return to the USA!
How to Write a Novel in a Month
Next month is the annual writing frenzy known as National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. It’s not without its critics, and my blogmates and I have covered this action before.
I extol the virtues of NaNoWriMo. The novel I wrote in November of 2010 was one I had under contract. It became, after editing of course, THE YEAR OF EATING DANGEROUSLY.
There are similar stories. Hugh Howey wrote his novella WOOL during that same NaNo year. The dang thing has sold in the hundreds of thousands as an ebook, and got optioned by Ridley Scott.
That’s a lightning strikes once or twice kind of thing, and most writers are not going to have that kind of out-of-the-gate success, but that’s almost beside the NaNo point. The point is to get you to get your story down, fast and furious (I wish that term hadn’t been purloined by political culture), and unleash the writer within. It’s to give you a sense of the value of finishing an entire novel (even though it will need massive editing).
As the great Robert B. Parker said, “A writer’s job is to produce.” NaNo is one month of pure production.
Here are ten tips to help you get the most out of it this year:
1. Take a week to plan
Use one week for creative brainstorming and organizing. I don’t mean you have to have a complete outline. In fact, it’s probably better that you don’t. NaNo works best when you let the book breathe and dance on its own.
But you also shouldn’t start out with a blank slate. A few, simple steps will get you to a much stronger story. Use my LOCK System (explained more fully in Plot & Structure).
LEAD. Spend a day brainstorming about your Lead character, backstory, goals and dreams. What is it about your Lead that will make readers want to keep reading?
OBJECTIVE.Be sure that the story objective involves some form of death: physical, professional or psychological. That is, your second act (the bulk of your novel) has to have the highest stakes possible. Take a day to brainstorm reasons your Lead will have to be involved. Think about moral or professional duty as a possible motivation.
CONFRONTATION. Now spend just as much care with your opposition character as you do with your Lead. Remember, the opponent does not have to be evil, just have an oppsoing agenda (think Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive).However, if you do want to use a villain, be fair to him. Justify his actions (at least in his own mind). Don’t create a stereotype.
KNOCK-OUT ENDING. This will no doubt be subject to change, but it’s good to have a destination in mind. How do you want the reader to feel at the end? Will your Lead be victorious? Sacrificial? Spend a day messing around with actual scene possibilities for the climax. Choose one as your “go to” scene, knowing you can toss it out as the novel progresses.
Then spend a day planning your TIME. Look at your schedule and block out every free chunk you can. Determine to cut as many distractions as possible during November. DVR favorite shows. Put an auto-responder on your email. Explain to friends that you’re taking time off. Go on a “social media” diet.
2. Choose mood music
Get your iTunes list together, with soundtracks and songs that create the right mood for your story. Make a playlist for different moods. I have an “Energy to Write” list that is full of upbeat rock and movie music. I blast that sometimes to get my blood racing to write.
3. Watch a “movie in your mind” the night before NaNoWriMo begins
On October 31, plan to get a good night’s sleep. Before you do, get to a quiet spot, a comfortable chair. Put your mood music on softly and close your eyes. Now let a “movie” happen in your mind. Watch your story unfold. Don’t force anything. Let scenes happen, nudge your characters but never push them.
When you go to bed, tell “the boys in the basement” to work hard while you snooze.
4. Kill that first day
Make the very first day the most productive day of your writing life. NaNo works out to an average of just over 1600 words a day. Try to blast past it on Day 1. It will give your confidence a boost.
5. Make it your goal to begin each day with a “furious 500.”
Try getting 500 words down the very first thing in the morning (or second, after you start the coffee brewing). If you have to get up half an hour earlier, so be it.
6. Jot down notes just before you go to sleep
Take five minutes (that’s about all you’ll need) before you go to sleep to put down a few notes about what you might write the next day. Think one or two scenes ahead. If you’re feeling stuck, ask this key question: “How can I make things harder on my characters?”
7. Stick to the knitting
By that I mean the main plot. Make this your focus of attention. At 50,000 words, a NaNo novel is short, and cannot support multiple plotlines.
If you find yourself coming up with a subplot idea, jot a few notes and set it aside for a day or two while you’re on your main plot. If another idea occurs to you, jot that one down, too. After a few days, assess the subplots and choose one, only one. The best one. The one with the most possibilities for conflict. Integrate a scene or two. Then press on.
If you use Scrivener, you can color code the subplot scenes to keep track of them. One subplot only!
8. Write a 200 word nightcap
That is, find some time in the evening to write at least 200 more words. That’s not many. This is in addition to the words you write during the day. If you do a furious 500 first thing in the morning, and a 200 word nightcap, you’ve done almost half the words you need for your daily quota.
9. Break off in the middle of sentence
That’s an old Hemingway trick. And he won the Nobel Prize. Stop your writing stint right in the middle of a sentence. When you sit down to it the next day, you’ll be in flow.
10. If you get stuck
You will probably come to a few points where you don’t know what to write next. Fear will grip you like the cold hands of clumsy proctologist. You don’t want to waste too much time fretting over this, so: open a dictionary at random. Find the first noun you see on the left hand page. Start writing something, anything, based on what the noun brings to your mind.
If you’re still stuck, re-watch Misery and imagine that your number one fan insists that you finish by the end of the month.
And through it all, enjoy the vibe. NaNoWriMo is about community as much as it is about seclusion. It’s about ritual as much as product. It’s a month-long vibe and celebration of being a fiction writer. So enjoy it like you’re in some Hindu festival of colors, or at an Oakland Raiders football game. You don’t have to paint your body (though I’m not saying it’s illegal), but it’s fine to put up a NaNo poster or get a tee-shirt, and to interact online with your fellow NaNos. Check out the community website here.
And now, get ready to rock. November is almost upon us.
Cleveland, City of Lights
When we last met two weeks ago I was in New Orleans. In the interim I returned home for a couple of days, put out some fires, and then travelled up I-71 North for two hours to attend Bouchercon 2012 in Cleveland. Bouchercon is an assembly of mystery writers and fans of same, so, like, how could I not go, with it being so close and all?
I was glad I did. If I had stayed home for three days, I would have done nothing but work. I worked at Bouchercon, too, but also 1) reconnected with friends I had not seen for a few years; 2) made some new friends; 3) became better friends with some folks; 4) reconnected with a guy that I worked with some forty years ago; 5) took award-winning author Kelli Stanley and British crime journalists Ali Karim and Mike Stotter — three of the finest folks you will find on this earth —to Mike the Hatter in Broadview Heights, where they each and all found lids that looked wonderful on them; 5) visited the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame; 6) had breakfast with my editor and BFF Carol Fitzgerald, and three members of the original Bookachino internet chat room from way back when the internet was in its cradle; and 7) was the target of an attack by a drunken troll in the men’s room of a theme restaurant near the host hotel. And how was your weekend?
I have to tell you though that one of the best parts of Bouchercon was beginning it and ending it with fellow Killzoner Jordan Dane. If Jordan ever raffles off a dinner with herself, buy up the tickets. She is wonderful company. We had dinner with author Bev Irwin Wednesday night, before the conference really got rolling, and Jordan is unbelievably funny. She was even funnier after dinner, when I was back in my hotel room, and she began texting observations about this, that and the other to me. Hilarious. And yes, Jordan, you can borrow my gun any time you want; just leave me a bullet so that I can take a shot as well.
Saturday night I was blessed by joining Jordan for dinner once again. I found myself seated with about ten million dollars’ worth of talent in the form of Jordan, Rick Mofina, Linda Castillo, and Julie Kramer. It was a celebration of wonderful news for Rick and Linda: they announced their engagement that evening. Just kidding. What was their news, really? Rick that morning had just received the news that his wonderful new novel, THEY DISAPPEARED, entered the Canadian book lists at Number Two. He learned of this from Linwood Barclay, whose own book, TRUST YOUR EYES, remains at Number One on Canada’s list. There is excellent taste up north, all the way around. As for Linda, her Kate Buckholder series, set in the Ohio Amish country about an hour’s drive from me, is on track to be a television series. Linda, if you hear that the producers are looking about for someone to play a rotund English, please tell them that Sweet Joseph is available.
Seeing Wonderful Jordan, however, was not my only encounter with Kill Zone participants. San Francisco’s Michelle Gagnon was in the house for the William Morrow party. Michelle, besides being an incredible wordsmith, has a fashion sense that any and all would envy. I don’t know anything about such matters, but she somehow always seems dressed to the nines without even trying. Everyone gravitates toward her, and rightfully so. It was wonderful to see her again and to get to spend a little time with her. And what conference would be a conference without Kill Zone alumnus John Gilstrap? John, who is always worth being seeing with and listening to, was in the “Cool Kids Corner,” outside of the hotel with the smokers, even though he doesn’t smoke. I was privileged to spend some quality time with him and Matthew Clemens and get several updates and down dates on the state of the industry. I also hear that Kill Zoner Boyd Morrison was in the House, but somehow failed to meet up with him. Boyd, you evaded me this time, but your luck will not last forever.
There’s more, of course, but that should be more than enough to persuade you to attend Bouchercon the next time it’s in your area. It will be in Albany, NY in 2013; Long Beach, CA in 2014; and Raleigh, NC in 2015. You gotta go. And if you do, say hey.
Reader Friday: Health Insurance and the Self-Employed Writer
Many in the thriller writing community are aware that writer Tom Piccirilli is battling brain cancer. Surgery to remove a tennis ball-sized tumor was successful, and now a long recovery and ongoing fight are in store. So are medical costs. Which brings up the issue of health insurance for the self-employed writer. Thanks to frequent commenter Terri Lynn Coop for suggesting this as a Reader Friday topic. Let’s start a discussion on strategies for writers who must find their own health insurance coverage.
[NOTE: This is not a political forum, so let’s keep partisan politics out of it. This is about what to do right now with options currently available.]
[NOTE: This is not a political forum, so let’s keep partisan politics out of it. This is about what to do right now with options currently available.]
Meanwhile, if you’d like to help Tom out, here are some options.
Is Cutting More Important than Adding?
Today I have a guest post from Sechin Tower, author of Mad Science Institute (MSI), a highly unusual yet thoroughly entertaining young adult suspense novel. I met Sechin on Twitter. Once I saw that he was a game developer, I asked for his help on my next proposal, a near future YA techno thriller that involves gaming and he helped me fine tune my game world. I also downloaded his book and found a real gem. Since he’s a teacher, he incorporates science into the plot to make learning fun for young readers. I absolutely fell in love with his YA voice, his characters and his humor. I’m looking forward to his next book. Below is a summary of Mad Science Institute.
Sophia “Soap” Lazarcheck is a girl genius with a knack for making robots-and for making robots explode. After her talents earn her admission into a secretive university institute, she is swiftly drawn into a conspiracy more than a century in the making. Soap is pitted against murderous thugs, experimental weaponry, lizard monsters, and a nefarious doomsday device that can bring civilization to a sudden and very messy end.
Welcome, Sechin!
I had a professor who insisted that the best way to write a two-page paper was to write a 10 page paper, throw it all away, and then hand in pages 11 and 12. When I tell the same thing to my students, they don’t buy it. I can’t blame them: I didn’t really buy it either, not until I started writing novels.
My professor’s point was that not all pages are created equal. Of course it takes more effort to write 10 or 12 bad pages than two bad pages, and maybe even more than two mediocre pages. But good pages require time and effort, as well as research, experimentation, structuring, restructuring, and a nearly endless amount of general fussing. At the very least, good pages require two steps: adding and cutting.
I teach two discrete groups of students and I’ve found that each needs this advice for different reasons. One of my student groups consists of the crème-de-la-crème of our school’s scholars, students who take the most challenging courses, maintain the highest GPAs, and participate in every extracurricular activity that might sparkle on their college applications. My other group consists of at-risk kids in an alternative school program. Many of these students are extremely intelligent, but for a dizzying array of reasons none of them has had much success in school.
The advanced students always want to build up their writing until it overflows. They do the research, they know the issues, they have the facts, and they want to pile it all in without any thought to purpose or readability. The bigger the better: if the assignment calls for two pages, then they assume 10 ought to get a better grade. If they run out of things to say, they resort to inflated words and ponderous sentences. Their writing often becomes a cluttered, colorless hallway that never leads anywhere.
My alternative high-schoolers, on the other hand, bring a great deal of passion about anything they see as relevant to their lives. They are lively, colorful, and outspoken, but even on their favorite topics their writing is terse. For them, it’s about getting to the point. Why wade through the muck of evidence and logic when you can gallop right to the exciting conclusion? Why bother explaining anything if you feel like you already understand it?
Although I didn’t know it at the time, I built a composite of these two groups when I wrote Mad Science Institute. I started by combining all the drive and technical know-how of the advanced students with the vitality and quirkiness of the alternative school kids. I crammed a lot into each character and just as much into the plot and setting, but in the cutting phase I eliminated everything that failed to accelerate the story or develop the characters. It meant cutting some perfectly good ideas, but that was okay: true to the mad science theme, I knew I could stitch them together and give them a new life whenever I was ready. Right then, all that mattered was pruning back and boiling down until the book became balanced and lean.
Being a teacher helped me write a better novel, and writing a novel helped me become a better teacher. I’m not trying to teach my students to become novelists—I wouldn’t push it on them any more than a P.E. teacher would urge all of his students to aim for NFL careers—but what works for crafting a novel applies to essays, letters, and other forms of writing as well. By the end of each year, I’m gratified to see that those students who tended to add too much have learned to accomplish more with fewer words, and the ones who want to start too small learn that they need to build up before they can trim down.
Despite what some students claim, the art of writing is nothing that can be mastered with a mere 16 or 17 years of practice. If I’m any better at it than a student, it isn’t because of what I’ve written but because of what I’ve un-written. Deleting the thousands of pages of rough drafts and practice novels was the only way I could learn what should stay and what just gets in the way, and by the time my students delete that many pages they’ll be better writers than I am.
It seems to me that what you cut is as important as what you add, but maybe that’s just my process. I’d love to hear your opinions on the matter.
How about it, TKZers? Are you more of a cutter or adder?
Sechin’s website & Twitter
Joining the Revolution
I’ve joined the electronic revolution and purchased an iPhone. Having been resistant for some time, I could no longer avoid the temptation of having the social networks at my fingertips, cool apps to explore, email at the tap of a button, and a personal calendar on hand. Now I can relieve my purse of my pocket-sized appointment book and my emergency Sudoku pad. No longer will I have to fumble for someone’s phone number or wish I could send a photo directly to Facebook. I can do all of these things and more.
And therein rests the problem. The iPhone, like its larger cousin the iPad, is in itself a complete source of entertainment. Miss a favorite TV show? Watch it on your device. Need to look up the nearest pizza palace? Ask Siri. Need to kill time at the doctor’s office? Read a book on iBooks. Or better yet, play a game of Solitaire.
No wonder people’s attention spans are decreasing. It makes me worry for the future of reading. Who will be able to concentrate on finishing an entire novel when so many other activities require less effort?
Thank goodness for teen fiction that captures the interest of our youth and perhaps spurs them on to develop a lifelong reading habit. Because once the older generation who gobbles up our stories in print form dies off, who will be left? Consumers who expect their reading material to arrive in the form of daily excerpts? Will the art of storytelling devolve into single page entries? How can we make reading more attractive to the younger set to compete with iTunes?
Storytelling will always be part of our psyche even if the means of delivery evolves. But as a novelist, I am concerned for the future of our art. Can those of us trained to write lengthy works adapt to the changing marketplace? What if we have no choice? Do we want to write shorter, compelling, quicker prose? Can we compete with smartphones and tablets, or must we join the revolution and change our techniques to suit them?
“Heed this advice now!” she warned desperately
Note from Kris: I am in France this week so am handing over the reins to my co-author and sister. Take it away, Kelly!
By PJ Parrish
I was sitting in a restaurant the other day when my friend and fellow author, Tom Swift, happened to stop by and ask if he could join me.
“Yes,” I said cordially.
He sat down, his eyes slipping secretly to the paperback book lying wantonly near my wine glass. “I see,” he said insightfully, “that you are reading a popular author.”
“Yes,” I said affirmatively, nodding energetically.
“Do you like the book?” he asked inquiringly.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. Both of us had just returned from SleuthFest, which was geared for aspiring writers. There was a lot of good advice about plot structure, the differences between thrillers and mysteries, and character building.
My friend wisely picked up on my silence. “So,” he said flatly. “I take it you don’t like the book?”
“It was hard to read,” I said effortlessly.
“In what way?” he asked inquisitively.
“Well, I’m not sure what it was,” I said perplexedly.
“How was the plotting?” he asked ploddingly.
“The plot was okay. But it kind of fell apart toward the end,” I added brokenly.
“That’s too bad,” he said sympathetically. “Anything else?”
“The characters were okay but kind of cardboard,” I added woodenly.
“Really?” he said shockingly.
“Yes,” I acknowledged.
“But the book was a New York Times bestseller,” he interjected suddenly, jabbing at the book pointedly. “You are suppose to love the bestsellers. This one got great blurbs. And all the reviewers loved it.”
“Well,” I said deeply. “I just don’t know what it was about the book that I found tiresome but there was something.”
Tom Swift gave me a nod of his head, shaking it up and down, and then added a small, understanding smile, displaying his Hollywood teeth. “Well,” he said philosophically. “Some books are just like that.”
And with that, Tom sauntered away, slowly and casually disappearing into the misty dark inky black night.
I was left with my thoughts — and that bad book. I was thinking about all the good advice I had heard at SleuthFest. Really good stuff, even a great debate about talent versus technique. But one thing kept coming back to me — the thing all the good authors stressed. Robert Crais had said it best in his keynote speech: “Adverbs are not your friend.”
He didn’t say it lightly. He didn’t it dramatically. He didn’t even say it succinctly. He just said it.
Writers’ Conference Tips
I’m simultaneously energized and exhausted, and anyone who’s ever attended a writers’ conference knows how that can be possible. I just returned to Seattle from a fantastic time at Bouchercon in Cleveland, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to provide a few tips for those writers out there who have never gone to a conference and are thinking of trying it out (I heartily recommend it for those who intend to pursue writing fiction as a career).
First of all, I should clarify that Bouchercon is actually a mystery fan convention. As with other fan conventions, such as the RTBooklovers Convention, Bouchercon provides a chance for readers to meet authors whose books they enjoy, listen to them speak on panels about a variety of topics, and get signed copies of their books. The whole weekend is dedicated to readers, and writers love going because they get to meet fans and network with other writers who are going through the same trials and tribulations they are. It’s also the one place writers are treated like celebrities (there’s nothing more exhilarating than have a stranger on the elevator tell you she loves your books).
As opposed to fan conventions, writers’ conferences are geared toward authors, particularly those who are interested in learning the craft, understanding the business, or finding an agent or publisher. Confusion between the two may arise because authors tend to use the term “writers’ conference” generically.
With both types of conferences, I get a lot out of the long days and nights spent swapping information about writing with my fellow authors. My voice often ends up hoarse and I always need to catch up on sleep when I return home, but I’m also inspired with newfound energy to tackle projects that may have bogged down during my solitary confinement in front of the computer. Although I always learn something about the business and the writing craft, I especially enjoy hearing that someone else has the same doubts and challenges that I do, that I’m not alone.
I’ve been to over twenty conference and conventions over the last six years, and I consider every one of them time well spent. I list some of my lessons learned below, but I’d love to hear if anyone has their own helpful hints to add in the comments.
1. If you can afford it, stay in or near the conference hotel. Trekking back and forth between a distant hotel and the conference center is a chore and doesn’t allow you to run up to your room to drop something off, get something you forgot, change, or simply recharge.
2. Book as far ahead as you can. Popular conferences can fill up quickly, and there are only a limited number of hotel rooms reserved at the conference rate. I usually book the hotel room when I register for the conference because I can always cancel the hotel for no cost. If you do book late and the hotel is out of rooms, try calling the hotel daily in the hope that you can snag one of the cancellations.
3. Dress in layers. Even if it’s warm outside, ballrooms can get chilly. Wear comfortable shoes during the day, and try to avoid wearing heavy perfume or cologne because it can be overpowering in a crowded room. Check to see if there will be any formal banquets or costume parties that might warrant snazzier duds.
4. Target the panels you want to see ahead of time. You can usually download the programming schedule from the website a month before the conference.
5. If you’re lucky enough to be chosen for a panel, be a generous panelist. Hogging the microphone is tempting because we all want to share our wisdom, but keep in mind that there are four or five other writers up there with you.
6. Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to people, even bestselling authors. That’s why we all go. I’ve made many good friends simply by joining in on a fascinating conversation, and writers tend to be very welcoming.
7. Include people you don’t know in your discussion. You never know who’s going to have an interesting story or background or is just a really cool person. It may even be that bestselling writer you didn’t recognize.
8. Have business cards to hand out. They don’t have to be fancy; just the basic info of name, email address, and website (if you have one). Ask for cards from people you talk to.
9. Write down notes about people that you meet (if it’s an author, you can jot them down under the author names in the conference program). If you return next year, it’ll be a great way to remind yourself about the people you’ll see. When you see someone only once a year, it can be hard to remember the circumstances. I’m terrible with names, so please don’t be offended if this method doesn’t work for me.
10. When you’re in a discussion, always ask the follow-up questions to learn about why writers did what they did. It’s interesting to know what someone did to get published or how they wrote a book they way they did, but the reasons for their decisions can be even more illuminating.
11. Invite people to join you for lunch. I often strike up a conversation with someone I’ve met in an interesting panel and continue that discussion over a noontime nosh, usually with a boisterous group of friends who welcome the new person into the gang.
12. Check the schedule to see if there’s dinner provided. If not, plan to go out with your new acquaintances. During weekends, you’ll also want to make reservations if you go out to a local restaurant.
13. Spend your evenings at the hotel bar. It’s the place we all gather to shoot the breeze and meet new people. That doesn’t mean you have to drink; I know plenty of writers who are teetotalers.
14. If you do drink, do it in moderation. No one enjoys being around a sloppy drunk. Besides, writers love telling stories, and that kind of reputation gets passed around quickly.
15. Tip well. The waiters at this past Bouchercon were run ragged, and it doesn’t hurt to share your appreciation for them making your weekend enjoyable.
16. Wear your name badge, even when you’re in the bar. This will help me out a lot on the name problem.
17. Introduce yourself to booksellers, who also hang out at the bar. Don’t be shy about going around to the stores that are set up in the on-site book room. They love meeting writers. That’s why they’re in the business of selling books.
18. Take a nap. If you’re staying at the conference hotel, it’s easy to do.
19. Be nice and considerate, particularly to the conference volunteers. They’re putting in a lot of time and effort to create a great event. Not everything is going to go smoothly, but a little understanding and a friendly smile go a long way to getting past those rough patches.
20. Enjoy getting to know your peers. These are the colleagues you’re going to know for the next twenty years or more.
How Writers Should Die
When I first waded into the waters of self-publishing, I did so with two novellas. The first, WATCH YOUR BACK, showed me within the first month the potential for shorter books in the indie world. The second, ONE MORE LIE,became the first self-published work to be nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award, for which I will always be grateful.
And I owe it all to James M. Cain.
Cain, as most of you know, was the author of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, his most famous work. Just behind it are DOUBLE INDEMNITY and MILDRED PIERCE. With hit movies based on each, Cain was, by 1947, one of the most famous novelists in America. The postman was delivering him a lot of money in those days.
His best books were written in a style that Cain made his calling card: the first-person confessional. The narrators recount their downfalls due to the entanglements of lust or greed or some combination thereof. There is something so direct in Cain’s prose. Spare and unsparing. Hardboiled but with a heart. Dialogue that snaps. Plots like runaway trains.
So one day I found myself sitting down to write about a man with a confession to make, and out came WATCH YOUR BACK. I liked it so much I did the same with ONE MORE LIE.
And I’m pleased to no end that the novella is back! You couldn’t get them published traditionally. They just didn’t sell. They were a staple of the old pulp era, but dinosaurs by the end of the twentieth century.
Now, with self-publishing, with low prices and instant delivery, novellas are back stronger than ever. I plan to make them a staple of my future work.
But even more important to me in all this is the example of Cain the man, Cain the writer. He was riding high when the 1950s hit, but then began a period of decline. Publishers started rejecting his stuff. He became, in the eyes of many, “damaged goods.”
By 1963 Cain was 71 years old and without any contracts. He thought he might be the very thing he never wanted to become: an ex-writer. Yet James M. Cain still wrote a 1200 words every morning. Here he is doing that very thing, on his beloved typewriter, at the age of 75:
Now that is inspirational. And guess what? At the age of 82 James M. Cain received the largest advance of his career, for his novel RAINBOW’S END, which was published to excellent reviews. He completed another novel that was published and well received, then immediately got to work on a new one. He had just completed THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS when he died at the age of 85. That last “lost” novel has now been published by the good folks at Hard Case Crime.
That is a writer’s good death–type THE END and keel over! Don’t you believe that? You’re a writer, after all. It’s what you do. You’d do it even if everyone in your family came to you at midnight, woke you up and begged you, for your own good, to stop writing once and for all. You’d tell them to get out of the room because you’re dreaming of your next book and the boys in the basement need to get to work!
And that is why I will never stop writing. Even if the postman stops delivering checks.
1984, the Thriller
by Mark Alpert
During our summer vacations in northern Michigan we spend a fair amount of time in the car, so my wife likes to read to the kids while we’re driving. This past summer she chose George Orwell’s Animal Farm for our automotive reading, and the kids loved it. They especially liked pointing out the hypocrisy of Animal Farm’s porcine leaders: “Hey, the pigs are breaking the rules again! They’re not supposed to sleep in beds!” And I loved it, too. From behind the steering wheel I kept interrupting my wife to shout comments such as “That pig is Stalin!” and “The battle against the farmers is really World War II!” until everyone yelled at me to shut up.
When school started last month I decided to continue the George Orwell theme by reading 1984 to my 13-year-old son. My feelings about this book were more ambivalent; I didn’t enjoy it very much when I read it for high-school English, and thirty years later I could remember only two things from the novel: the scene where Winston Smith is arrested and the infamous rats in Room 101. I recalled almost nothing about Smith as a character. In contrast to the memorable beasts of Animal Farm (especially Boxer the horse: “I will work harder!”), the hero of 1984 didn’t stick in my mind. I thought it would be interesting to read the book again and see if I liked it any better now. Is 1984 — the great-granddaddy of The Hunger Games and other dystopian novels — an entertaining book? Can it be considered a thriller?
Well, the book definitely doesn’t start like a thriller. No murder or mayhem in the first ten pages. The novel’s opening reads more like science fiction, because the author spends so much time sketching the outlines of the horrible future he’s imagined. But the extreme creepiness draws you in. While Smith hides in a corner of his apartment, writing “Down with Big Brother!” in his black-market notebook, I’m definitely there with him, anxiously wondering if the Thought Police are also watching the scene. And the plot gains some momentum after Winston starts conspiring with Julia, the Junior Anti-Sex League crusader who turns out to be a hottie.
Smith, though, isn’t much of a hero. He’s unattractive, both physically and spiritually. He has a disgusting sore on his ankle. (Orwell never explains how it got there, but it fits in with the general squalor of totalitarian London.) Winston is also irritable, peevish, self-absorbed. When he was a child, he stole food from his dying sister. His rebellion against Big Brother isn’t triggered by sympathy for his fellow sufferers. He seems most outraged by the Party’s constant revision of history. And his rebellion is thoroughly passive; everything falls into his lap. Julia is the one who initiates their affair by slipping the “I love you” note into his hand, and O’Brien lures him into “the Brotherhood” in such an obvious way that if Winston had any sense at all he would’ve immediately realized it was a trap.
For a thriller writer, these are cardinal sins. We all know that our heroes must be heroic. They must be active, clever, resourceful. But Orwell deliberately made Winston Smith a pathetic figure. He wanted to emphasize the powerlessness of the individual against the state. “If you want a picture of the future,” Orwell wrote, “imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”
The other sin Orwell commits (from a thriller writer’s point of view) is clogging the narrative with the thirty-page tract supposedly written by Big Brother’s nemesis, Emmanuel Goldstein. When I read this section to my son, he asked, “Can we just skip this part?” and I said, “Sure.” And later on, Orwell takes some of the suspense out of the torture scenes by padding them with too many lectures from O’Brien. This criticism, I admit, is a little unfair; Orwell never meant the book to be a thriller. He was trying to make a point as well as tell a story, and sometimes those two aims don’t mesh.
Still, there are some powerful action scenes in 1984. I’m thinking in particular of the scene in the crowded jail cell shortly after Smith is arrested, when the anxiety and terror of the political prisoners is interrupted by the entrance of a man whom the Party is starving to death. One of the other prisoners — another pathetic figure, chinless and chipmunk-faced, with the ridiculous name of Bumstead — offers the starving man a grimy piece of bread, and the guards punish him for this crime of compassion by bashing his face in. “His body was flung across the cell and fetched up against the base of the lavatory seat…Amid a stream of blood and saliva, the two halves of a dental plate fell out of his mouth…His gray eyes still flitted from face to face, more guiltily than ever, as though he were trying to discover how much the others despised him for his humiliation.”
Thriller or not, this is great writing. And best of all, my son liked it, too.