Caroline Bock's Blog: Caroline Anna Bock Writes - Posts Tagged "lie"
Questions and answers on LIE
I’ve been asked so many questions regarding my debut novel LIE that I decided to write up a few the most interesting questions – and my answers. If you’ve read LIE I’d love to hear your thoughts!
On the surface, LIE is about white teens and a hate crime against Hispanics. Was there a particular incident that made you interested in this subject?
In 2008, I became aware of news stories about attacks against Hispanics in suburban areas, including on Long Island, where a group of mostly white teenagers attacked Marcelo Lucero and his brother. Marcelo Lucero ultimately died from the attack. And there were other attacks by suburban teens against Hispanics-- in Brooklyn, New York and in Pennsylvania. I am not saying these were the first, or will be the last, incidences of racism in the suburbs, but it was just the moment when I opened my eyes.
At the same time, after ending a long career in cable television, I started attending The City College of New York MFA-Fiction program in Harlem. I had people from all over the world in my classes. I thought surely some writer, somewhere, should take the idea of racism in the suburbs and run with it. But then I thought: Why can’t this person be me? I started writing, furiously, and finished a first draft in about three months. So, while this story was inspired by true events, it is wholly fictional – all the characters are sprung from my imagination.
But the crime seems to be a launching off for something more. What would you say that ‘more’ is?
The ‘more’ is a key question. The ‘more’ in my head is this: What makes good people follow others who are not? What makes some people followers and other leaders? What makes those leaders be bullies or haters? Ultimately, there’s a famous quote – “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,” (Edmund Burke), and I kept turning that over in my head as created all these characters, who are grappling what they should do going forward, especially Skylar Thompson and Sean Mayer, the two teens at the heart of the story.
Why should teens care about evil triumphing or not?
Why should anybody? We live in a world were we have to make choices every day that affect others in big and little ways. We’re all interconnected, aren’t we? On some level? Though, admittedly, I know I made some pretty bad choices at time because I thought everybody else was thinking the same way.
What kind of bad choices?
I think I’m going to save that for my next novel!
P.S. My next novel, BEFORE MY EYES, is coming out in 2014 from St. Martin's Press! More about LIE at www.carolinebock.com.Lie
On the surface, LIE is about white teens and a hate crime against Hispanics. Was there a particular incident that made you interested in this subject?
In 2008, I became aware of news stories about attacks against Hispanics in suburban areas, including on Long Island, where a group of mostly white teenagers attacked Marcelo Lucero and his brother. Marcelo Lucero ultimately died from the attack. And there were other attacks by suburban teens against Hispanics-- in Brooklyn, New York and in Pennsylvania. I am not saying these were the first, or will be the last, incidences of racism in the suburbs, but it was just the moment when I opened my eyes.
At the same time, after ending a long career in cable television, I started attending The City College of New York MFA-Fiction program in Harlem. I had people from all over the world in my classes. I thought surely some writer, somewhere, should take the idea of racism in the suburbs and run with it. But then I thought: Why can’t this person be me? I started writing, furiously, and finished a first draft in about three months. So, while this story was inspired by true events, it is wholly fictional – all the characters are sprung from my imagination.
But the crime seems to be a launching off for something more. What would you say that ‘more’ is?
The ‘more’ is a key question. The ‘more’ in my head is this: What makes good people follow others who are not? What makes some people followers and other leaders? What makes those leaders be bullies or haters? Ultimately, there’s a famous quote – “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,” (Edmund Burke), and I kept turning that over in my head as created all these characters, who are grappling what they should do going forward, especially Skylar Thompson and Sean Mayer, the two teens at the heart of the story.
Why should teens care about evil triumphing or not?
Why should anybody? We live in a world were we have to make choices every day that affect others in big and little ways. We’re all interconnected, aren’t we? On some level? Though, admittedly, I know I made some pretty bad choices at time because I thought everybody else was thinking the same way.
What kind of bad choices?
I think I’m going to save that for my next novel!
P.S. My next novel, BEFORE MY EYES, is coming out in 2014 from St. Martin's Press! More about LIE at www.carolinebock.com.Lie
Do you ever stop reading and start to write?
Do you ever stop reading and start to write? I’ve been reading a lot of short story collections trying to stretch my own writing…it’s quicker to read short stories and the writing is sometimes more telling in short form than long.
More telling: Tom Perrotta talks about point of view is switched, interwoven through many of the short stories in the preface to the 2012 edition of The Best American Short Stories – and how this was radical 20 years ago and more going back— and isn’t anymore. Big check off for me because I like to switch point of views a lot in longer pieces (see LIE, my debut novel-10 points of view) but didn’t do it in the past, wasn’t it against some rule somewhere? But now I’ve tried it in some new pieces – and it doesn’t hurt at all.
Not new, uneven, but often exhilarating exploration of character: The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith. Outstanding stories include: “Gideon” by ZZ Packer, heart-breaking, about a black-white romance, and the hilarious stream-of-conscious ranting of Jewish grandmother to her grandson in “Rhoda” by Jonathan Safran Foer to the story I can’t shake from me: “Puppy” by George Saunders with its two different points of views – two women at different ends of the economic divide and a disturbed boy chained to a tree and a puppy.
I’ll admit it. I can’t stop reading. I read to write. I am a hard-core reader.
Next story collection: Married Love, by Tess Hadley. What she says in the afterward resonated with this reader-writer: “I used to be nervous if I didn’t ‘know enough.’ Now I trust, up to a point, that the best part of “knowing” is imagining. If you can imagine it, then you’ll probably be able to write it.”
So here a few of my writing thoughts… notes… from reading these short story collections..,
1) the rule is there are no rules
2) we all want something new
3) even with no rules, wanting something new, we still want what we’ve always wanted: story, a way into other people’s lives because we can’t stand our own or a way into our lives to understand anything at all.
4) At the end of day it’s you knowing that you can trust yourself to
imagine and write.
More thoughts on reading-writing out there?
Caroline Bock
More telling: Tom Perrotta talks about point of view is switched, interwoven through many of the short stories in the preface to the 2012 edition of The Best American Short Stories – and how this was radical 20 years ago and more going back— and isn’t anymore. Big check off for me because I like to switch point of views a lot in longer pieces (see LIE, my debut novel-10 points of view) but didn’t do it in the past, wasn’t it against some rule somewhere? But now I’ve tried it in some new pieces – and it doesn’t hurt at all.
Not new, uneven, but often exhilarating exploration of character: The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith. Outstanding stories include: “Gideon” by ZZ Packer, heart-breaking, about a black-white romance, and the hilarious stream-of-conscious ranting of Jewish grandmother to her grandson in “Rhoda” by Jonathan Safran Foer to the story I can’t shake from me: “Puppy” by George Saunders with its two different points of views – two women at different ends of the economic divide and a disturbed boy chained to a tree and a puppy.
I’ll admit it. I can’t stop reading. I read to write. I am a hard-core reader.
Next story collection: Married Love, by Tess Hadley. What she says in the afterward resonated with this reader-writer: “I used to be nervous if I didn’t ‘know enough.’ Now I trust, up to a point, that the best part of “knowing” is imagining. If you can imagine it, then you’ll probably be able to write it.”
So here a few of my writing thoughts… notes… from reading these short story collections..,
1) the rule is there are no rules
2) we all want something new
3) even with no rules, wanting something new, we still want what we’ve always wanted: story, a way into other people’s lives because we can’t stand our own or a way into our lives to understand anything at all.
4) At the end of day it’s you knowing that you can trust yourself to
imagine and write.
More thoughts on reading-writing out there?
Caroline Bock
FREE GIVEAWAY of LIE on AMAZON
https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/dc0b0e4...
I'm having a mini-sweepstakes for LIE, my critically acclaimed young adult novel (appropriate for teens ages 14 and above and adults), in honor of Donald Trump visiting the town in Long Island, NY that inspired LIE, and where the horrendous hate crime/murder of Marcelo Lucero, which is the inspiration point of the novel took place.
My new motto is: I write to build bridges, not walls.
Read LIE, and through Friday, April 16 enter to win a free copy. Here's the link again at amazon:
https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/dc0b0e4...
Peace.
Caroline
Lie
I'm having a mini-sweepstakes for LIE, my critically acclaimed young adult novel (appropriate for teens ages 14 and above and adults), in honor of Donald Trump visiting the town in Long Island, NY that inspired LIE, and where the horrendous hate crime/murder of Marcelo Lucero, which is the inspiration point of the novel took place.
My new motto is: I write to build bridges, not walls.
Read LIE, and through Friday, April 16 enter to win a free copy. Here's the link again at amazon:
https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/dc0b0e4...
Peace.
Caroline
Lie
Caroline Anna Bock Writes
Here's to a 2018 with
-stories that matter
-time to read those stories
-drive to write (and finish) my own stories.
Here's a happy, healthy world for all!
--Caroline
...more
-stories that matter
-time to read those stories
-drive to write (and finish) my own stories.
Here's a happy, healthy world for all!
--Caroline
...more
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