What suspenseful music should I add to my next novel?

5 Kickass Lessons Books Could Learn from the Movies.

#5 The Sequel

Sequels are like a license to print small bills… If publishers take up this practice as well, think of all the great works we could be reading right now! We could be perusing the action-packed Dickensian sequel we’ve all wanted to read, 2 Cities 2 Furious. Or laughing it up to The Retard, the light-hearted follow-up to Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. Hell, that Swede already called dibs on Catcher in the Rye 2: Rye Harder – if he’s smart enough to throw some titties in there and maybe have Holden Caulfield learn magic from a vampire, he’ll have officially won writing.

Very funny (and explicit — it’s Cracked.com, after all). But you’ll never think of #4, Explosions, the same way again.

And celebrity cameos — why didn’t I think of that?

(Via Nathan Bransford.)

New Stephen King story, now with extra portions of supermodel

“Give that girl a (book) jacket”:

“The July issue of Esquire features a new story by King, ‘Morality,’ the first few lines of which have been lovingly painted across the bod of Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli. The story is about a writer struggling in an economic recession and the lengths he is willing to go for financial solvency. Not sure how Israeli supermodels work into the plot, but let’s just assume they do.”

Esquire editor Ross McCammon was “tasked” with checking Refaeli for spelling errors: “I had to read her three times because the first read was a wash — I felt disoriented, I wasn’t used to the medium, I was rapt by King’s wordsmithing. So the real work began on the second and third passes.”

And we all thank Mr. McCammon for his diligence.

Snarking aside, I like this story for a couple of reasons. First, because I completely understand the idea of writing on a person’s skin. In my novel The Dirty Secrets Club, Jo Beckett has to find out why a dead woman has the word Dirty written on her thigh in lipstick. And in The Memory Collector, published next week, a man with severe memory loss scrawls messages to himself on on his own body in black ink. Things like, “They die.” You know, as you do. When you’re an ex-mercenary hunting down your enemies in San Francisco.

Second, I think this new medium is fantastically inventive. I think maybe I should try it. But I’m writing another novel, not a short story, so my prose would cover more skin. One model wouldn’t be enough. I’d need more. And let’s be gender-inclusive.

I wonder if these guys are available.

(Thanks to Maxine for the link.)

Kanye-isms: 100% parody-free!

“Proud non-reader” Kanye West turns author.

Rapper Kanye West does not read books or respect them but nevertheless he has written one that he would like you to buy and read.

Please note: This is not a joke.

His book is 52 pages — some blank, others with just a few words — and offers his optimistic philosophy on life. One two-page section reads, “Life is 5% what happens and 95% how you react!” Another page reads “I hate the word hate!”

“‘This is a collection of thoughts and theories,’ West, 31, said in an interview about his spiral-bound volume, which was written with J. Sakiya Sandifer… ‘My favorite one is ‘Get used to being used.’”

And yet “Get used to being used” is not, apparently, printed at the bottom of sales receipts and given to people who buy the book.

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed.”

Says the famously un-self-absorbed West, who, instead of selfishly writing fiction, is publishing a collection of his own sayings.

“I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph.

“I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life,” he said.

West, a college dropout, said being a non-reader was helpful when he wrote his book because it gave him “a childlike purity.”

“West dedicates the book to his late mother.”

That’s his mother Donda West — an English professor.

And now I’m going to step outside, because I need to shake my head really hard to clear it, and I don’t want to crash into the walls and furniture.

(Via Book Ninja.)

A writing question of my own

The writing question which I was grappling with today: What would an evil helper monkey do with a thermometer and a box of latex gloves?

High Noon for Helvetica

Or: When will the new serif ride into town?

Font fight.

(Thanks to Dan for the link.)

The Edgars: pre-game warmup

The Edgar Awards are tonight. Yes, I’m excited. And what they say is really true: It’s an honor simply to be nominated.

China Lake is my first novel, so it holds a special place in my affections. Its journey to this point has been winding and fraught with obstacles. Shortly after it was bought by a British publisher, I asked my literary agent Giles Gordon for advice about writing. Were there things no novelist should ever do? With a droll smile, he said, “Never write about religion, and never put a character in a wheelchair.”

Too late. But with those two taboos firmly broken, China Lake went on to a wonderful reception in the UK.

But it took several more years for an American publisher to pick up the book. And for finally helping me breach the walls of U.S. publishing, I must once again thank Stephen King, who so generously encouraged readers to pick up my books. And I have to thank Ben Sevier, my editor at Dutton, who was one of the readers who did exactly that. I have to thank Brian Tart, Dutton’s publisher, for taking me on. And I have to thank Kristen Weber, my paperback editor at NAL, for submitting China Lake for the Edgars. Kristen, publisher Kara Welsh, and NAL Editorial Director Claire Zion are the ones who got the book in front of the judging panel.

To have a novel that was once rejected by every U.S. publisher that read it find such a wonderful home, and then to have it nominated for one of the most prestigious awards in crime fiction, amazes me.

To have Evan Delaney be given such recognition, and to know that her story and the people in her world, especially Jesse Blackburn, are appreciated, is deeply rewarding.

Getting here means everything to me. Anything else will just be icing on the cake.

Frankenstory: the results

Yesterday I linked to Frankenstory, the site that lets you write a story with a friend — with the gimmick, and the fun, lying in the fact that each writer can only see the final ten words of each section their partner writes.

I sent Frankenstories to Maxine Clarke, who lured me into participating to begin with, and to Snart. Now Maxine has dared me to post the results.

Very well, then. First, the redacted versions. These are the bits we had to work with when we were writing.

Meg’s and Maxine’s redacted Frankenstory:

Meg:
xx xxx xxxxx x xxxx xxxx… He heard: “The Southwest Trains service to Kingston Upon Thames is cancelled.”

Maxine:
xxxx x xx xx xx xxxx… Matt. But a woman answered! “Tough luck, buddy!” she drawled.

Meg:
xxx xx xxxx xxx xx xx xxxx x… at the seemingly innocuous offices of Nature magazine. Now this.

Maxine:
was deeply dangerous… xxxxx x xx xxx.

Snart’s and Meg’s redacted story:

Snart:
xxxxx x xx x… falsies and arch supports. Suddenly, their deaths are hell. Tonight!

Meg:
xx xxx x… return. The Battle of La Cumbre Plaza is not over.

Snart:
xxxx xx xxxx… staplers and duct tape. Humankind has no taste for carnage.

Meg:
Not raw, anyway… xxx  x xxx xx.

And now, the full stories. Remember — nobody had much idea what her partner was writing. We could only guess, and go nuts. 40 words at a pop. So the results aren’t publishable — just entertaining.

Meg’s and Maxine’s full Frankenstory:

Bourne shoved aside the nun with the knife and ran through Waterloo. Viggo was down, taken by Dr. Clarke, but Bourne could still escape. Then doom struck. He heard: “The Southwest Trains service to Kingston-upon-Thames is cancelled.”

Would the nuns get there first, he wondered desperately? Quickly, he leapt over the fence and grabbed the rucksack. Scrabbling down the hill, he pulled out his mobile phone and speed-dialled Matt. But a woman answered! “Tough luck, buddy!” she drawled.

It couldn’t be the American. He’d sent the monk to deal with her. He ripped off the woman’s wig. Sarah Palin! Could it get worse? Torture, canceled trains, escaping captivity at the seemingly innocuous offices of Nature magazine. Now this…

… was deeply dangerous. Rejecting the manuscript of the cyberbioterrorists was not for the faint-hearted. Nonetheless, Clint did not flinch. Staggering to the coalface, his heart stuttering, he gasped “No!” Was he too late? Will the earthquake hit? Cont part 2.

Snart’s and Meg’s full story:

Zombies live for the night. Fresh meat, dampness, and little traffic. But one night each year, them must endure … the Body Makeover! … when their creator re-installs their pacemakers, contacts, falsies and arch supports. Suddenly, their deaths are hell. Tonight!

We pull our dead from the display window at Victoria’s Secret and shore up the barricades. We have little time. When night falls, the Dr. Scholl’s army will return. The Battle of La Cumbre Plaza is not over.

… come next year, given that the planet is still here and their Queen of the Dead, Joan Rivers, still exists, they will come again, armed with limbs and twining bales, staplers and duct tape. Humankind has no taste for carnage.

Not raw, anyway. With salsa, definitely. We shovel up the glass, prod prisoners into the barbed-wire pen at Gymboree, stoke the fire at Sears. And open a new restaurant to crown La Cumbre Plaza: Chili’s Con Carnage.

Great, something new to distract me

Frankenstory.

You write the first part of a story “and send it on to a friend… the twist is they can only see the last few words you wrote! They write the next part and volley it back to you. Write two parts each and it’s finished.”  

And each participant only gets 40 words at a pop. Devilish. Time-consuming. Challenging!

(Via Petrona, who is an evil genius at luring me into online physics and writing games. But we shall see how many others I have pulled into Frankenstory’s web… mwahahahaha! Okay, I am now returning to work.)

Scary words

Chapter One.

That’s what I just typed, on a clean, fresh piece of virtual paper. And even though I’m starting my eighth novel, it still feels like running toward the edge of a cliff and leaping off… into whatever lies beyond.

I’ll land sometime in the autumn. Till then, I’ll keep you informed about the ride.

Rejection, or getting to Yes

In the comments on my post about how not to get published, SteveC asks: “How many rejections did you receive before the eventual yes? And did you keep them? (Just being nosy.)”

How many rejections? I’ve lost count.

That’s because I’ve been submitting my work to agents and publishers since I was a university student — short stories, essays, feature articles and, finally, novels. And it’s because, in the writing business, you almost never get “the” eventual yes.

There’s never a single, defining moment when no disappears for good. God doesn’t touch you with a glorious spectral finger and say, Be Thou Forever Published. Ask any freelancer. Or print journalist. And even when your books line the shelves at B&N and Waterstone’s, you still have to keep your publisher, and readers, satisfied. Fail to turn in your manuscipt, fail to sell enough books, or run your life off the rails — pull a Joaquin Phoenix and suddenly become a hairy rapper instead of a reliable author — and your career can end up in a ditch.

I was extremely fortunate that the first short story I ever submitted for publication was accepted by the first editor I sent it to, at a university literary magazine. Since then I’ve experienced the typical ups and downs. I’ve pitched and written a magazine column. I had a short story win a prize and then be rejected by an agent. I’ve had articles commissioned, only to find out after I submitted them that the magazine’s new publisher had decided to drop the entire series… and that the editor had failed to tell me, because he was afraid I’d feel hurt. Or get mad. (I did.) Months later, when a new regime took over at the magazine, those articles saw print.

When I turned to writing novels, I began searching for an agent. At that stage, I got the usual mixed bag of replies. Not interested. It’s a tough market. Try again next year. Until I got a phone call from the late, great Giles Gordon, asking to take me on as his client. That was the turning point in my then-nascent quest to become a real novelist.

And Giles’s “yes” still wasn’t the end. He submitted my early work to editors and got a variety of responses: No. Maybe, if you revise the manuscript. Yes! Wait, maybe! No! Wait, I mean… wait! One day I opened a letter from him. It began: “I hope you’re feeling tough.” He had enclosed a brutal rejection letter. It went on for two pages, single spaced, in small type, excoriating my writing skills and worth as a human being and at one point comparing my work to the thousands of dirty chewing gum wrappers that litter the gutters of New York City — just so much trash to be ground beneath his grimy heel. Giles said: “Read it. Burn it. Then pour yourself a glass of whisky. And get back to work.”

Not long after that, I began writing China Lake. Giles sold it in 72 hours, to the first editor who read it.

And it took almost five more years before American editors stopped saying no to my work. Five years when I thought I’d never get published in my own country, until a new crop of editors got a big nudge, took another look, and thirteen of them decided in a big rush that they wanted to publish my books.

Yes is an eternal project.

And SteveC, to answer your original question: I don’t save rejection letters. I don’t repeatedly stab myself in the hand with a fondue fork, either. I don’t need the pain. Remembering is enough.

How not to get published

I’ve mentioned this before, but if you want to get published, you should behave professionally. When submitting a query to an agent, don’t type it on red paper in Gothic typeface. Just don’t. Really. Don’t stuff a handful of Count Chocula cereal in the envelope to “sweeten” your submission. Even if it’s a vampire novel. And when sending a manuscript to an editor, don’t include photos of yourself, or drawings for the cover. I’m being serious. Yes, you there, with the sketch of the unicorn — I’m talking to you. And you, with the photo of the toothless beggar you downloaded from the New York Times website — I don’t care if you think it would be perfect for the cover of your novel Despair; just don’t.

These stunts won’t “get you noticed” — at least not in the way you wish they would. What matters to agents and editors is the quality of your writing. Anything else shrieks “amateur hour,” and exponentially increases the chance that your work will be rejected.

And I know that plenty of you won’t believe me.

How do I know? Because I was planning to write a post recommending How Not To Write a Novel. I found this book hilarious and, more importantly, full of advice that’s dead on. I bought it after reading Lynne Truss’s review in the Times, and agree with everything Truss says about it. Having taught writing, and having once been a novice novelist myself, I found the book’s “200 mistakes to avoid at all costs if you ever want to get published” painfully familiar.

And when I looked up How Not To Write a Novel on Amazon.com, I found the usual mix of customer reviews… including one complaining because the book encourages a kind of writing the customer dislikes: writing that’s full of suspense, action, and witty dialogue. The customer, an aspiring writer, prefers novels full of interior monologue, which go off on philosophical tangents and thereby encourage him to put a book down so he can think.

That’s fine. But teaching people how to write books that readers will want to put down is not a recipe for success. Or publication.

And on the “Look at me! Look at me!” front, there’s this tidbit, from Joan Lock’s column in Red Herrings, the magazine of the Crime Writers’ Association:

Tips on how and how not to approach a commissioning editor are offered by Kathy Gale In Writing Magazine. Leading qualifier for how not to, it seems, was the approach by one writer (presumably a budding crime writer) who imagined it would be a fun idea to send her fake body parts in jiffy bags.

“I thought I was being stalked by a serial killer.”

When the manuscript came in she realised the body parts had been a teaser and was “deeply unamused”.

“Never had I wanted to reject a manuscript faster.”

But I’m sure the fake body parts you send, accompanying your 250,000 word novel, will garner a completely different reaction.

Good luck.

Cleaning up

The Memory Collector will be published in June. I’ve now gone through my editor’s comments on the manuscript, the copy-editor’s corrections to the manuscript, and the first pass of the typeset pages for the American edition. The galley proofs — typeset pages — for the British edition are still to come. But the novel is on its way to being printed and bound. This means I no longer need to keep the roughly 2,000 pages of Memory Collector-related paper that are scattered around my office, consisting of:

1. Research notes.

2. Story notes, character sketches, outlines of scenes and of the entire novel, snippets of dialogue, and ideas that made sense when I woke up at four a.m. and scribbled them down.

3. Drafts, with corrections scrawled on each page.

4. Oh, my God, that’s not an article from the Washington Post, it’s an electric bill.

The photos show sample pages I tripped over discovered on the floor as I was cleaning up. The top photo shows a page of notes I wrote during a conversation with my sister, the doctor. It’s an explanation of how to take a patient’s history when evaluating someone for a head injury. The bottom photo shows a page from the climax of the novel, which (a) I’m keeping to remind myself that these corrections were made to one of the later, good drafts of the novel, and (b) I’ve reduced to a size that should be illegible unless you’re a fighter pilot whose most recent eye test certified you to fly the F-16. Of course I’ve reduced it. You don’t think I’m about to post an actual readable page from the climax of the novel, do you?

And yes, in the top photo, the circled term is neurocysticercosis, “tapeworms getting into brain.”  I learn all kinds of wacky things when doing research.

Tricky questions

I enjoy answering readers’ questions. That’s why my website includes my e-mail address on the Contact page. That’s one reason I blog. It’s what I love about going to book fairs and conferences and talking at libraries and doing signings. Talking to the people who read my novels is one of the most enjoyable parts of this job.

Still, some questions are not as easy to answer as people may think. Examples:

“How long is an ideal novel?”

“I’m a new writer. Quick question: How does a writer’s career unfold?”

“To be a writer, I hear, you need to be unstable and a genius. Are you unstable and a genius?”

This last question was followed by: “Because I’m writing a book, and I need to know if being stable will hurt my chances of success.” At which point the Husband walked up. The questioner said to him, “So, is your wife an unstable genius?” The Husband, sensibly, threw himself headfirst through the nearest window and ran across the parking lot to escape.

But back to our topic. Easy questions or hard, I’m generally happy to take a crack at answering. But sometimes I’m happier to do that than others. What discourages me to engage in a back-and-forth?

Let’s work backward. This won’t hurt your chances of a thoughtful reply: pointing out mistakes in my books. Really. I, and my publishers, actually feel grateful to know about typographical errors, botched print runs, and factual mistakes. Those are things that can — sometimes, at least — be corrected in subsequent editions.

On the other hand, making demands is likely to put me off. For example, insisting that certain words be capitalized (because lower case is “belittling”). Or that the full legal name of a city, organization, or person be used at all points in the novel (e.g., San Francisco, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Honorable John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States) rather than being referred to by common shorthand (San Fran, the FBI, the Chief) — even in dialogue, when the characters are sprinting for their lives. Demands will be met with little enthusiasm. Especially if you claim that I am disrespecting you because one of my characters prefers his job to yours.

Also likely to discourage long, thoughtful responses to your questions:

“I found your website while browsing ‘writers’ online.” (Followed by: “How does publishing work?”)

No salutation or signature — especially when your e-mail address doesn’t include your name. Yes, e-mail is less formal than a handwritten letter, but still, “Hello, Meg,” and “Signed, Bobby,” tacked to either end of a message that reads, “The person narrating your audiobook pronounces a word wrong, and it’s really stupid,” will encourage me to respond.

Asking for free books. Yes, even if you’re asking me to send it to your mother as a birthday present. No, “She’d LOVE it,” accompanied by smiley faces, a heart over the i, and her address, will not encourage me to rush to the post office and fork over the international postage required to ship a hardback to Tierra del Fuego. Unless you’re asking on behalf of a registered charity, or you’re one of my siblings, this ploy is unlikely to succeed.

Asking for money. See above, re: charities and siblings.

“Have you ever done this?” When “this” refers to the porn photo included in the body of the message.

In fact, I can pretty much promise that sending me porn — and not just violent, bestial, horror-movie porn, but any porn, period — will guarantee that you’ll get no response from me, now or ever.

All right? All right. Talk to you soon.

Journalism FAIL

Attention, students. Please read through the following items from the linked news article, headlined “Techie Terrorist’s Worst Nightmare” on the FoxNews.com front page, and analyze what’s wrong with them. Because I know that every editor I’ve worked with in my life would have thrown me headlong through a window for doing even one of them, much less all of them. And I’m talking about the editors of my high school paper. Even a bunch of seventeen-year-olds knew better than this.

• “Techie Terrorist” headline superimposed on photo of bearded, black-turban-wearing man holding an iPhone. Clicking the link takes you to the article, where the man is identified as “Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, a former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan.”
• Headline on the full article: “Cell Phone Tracking Can Locate Terrorists — But Only Where It’s Legal.”
• Lede: “Technology that tracks millions of 911 calls from cell phones in the United States every month is being deployed in Middle Eastern and Asian-Pacific countries to track terror suspects — but legal obstacles prevent widespread usage in the U.S., and some critics say this hampers authorities from tracking suspected terrorists and other dangerous criminals on American soil.”
• After identifying the technology as “Location Intelligence”, the article spends seven straight paragraphs talking about the corporation that has developed this tracking technology, with quotes from the corporation’s VP of marketing.
• The “legal obstacle” is finally specified after eleven paragraphs: The U.S. Constitution.

Hints:

• The article is not about “techie terrorists” at all, unless being able to punch numbers on a cell phone makes one a techie. In which case, every one of us must be regarded a suspected terr… oh, right. That’s the point, isn’t it?
• The Taliban may be a bunch of theocratic misogynist thugs, but showing their former “ambassador” with an iPhone doesn’t equate to depicting a techie terrorist. It will, however, give the folks at Apple nightmares.
• Cell phone tracking can track criminals anywhere. Legality is irrelevant to this technical capability.
• The dictionary defines obstacle as “something that hinders or prevents progress.” In other words: something that must be overcome, and gotten rid of.
• “Some critics say” + extensive quotes from VP of marketing + seven paragraphs about the company developing the technology = PUFF PIECE.
• Any time the U.S. Constitution is mentioned as an afterthought or labeled an obstacle, think twice about the message being conveyed in the story. Think three times. Then four.

FAIL.