Paul Austin Ardoin's Blog, page 15

The Story of Bad Weather

A few of my readers have asked me to tell the story of how Bad Weather came about. The novella is set in 1992, after all, and while it's a companion piece to the Fenway Stevenson Mysteries, Fenway doesn't appear (she would have been two years old at the time!). So how did it come about?

About twenty-five years ago, I was an English major at UC Santa Barbara, and my emphasis was creative writing, which meant that I could write stories for my senior thesis instead of a fifty-page essay comparing Oroonoko to Middlemarch.

At the time, I was influenced heavily by the work of Paul Auster, which contained a lot of references to the work itself. He wasn't the only author who did it, but I liked his work the best. My professors called it metafiction and I was a big fan. This was also around the time that the movie Like Water for Chocolate was released, and magical realism was not only in the cinematic consciousness of America, but it also started to creep into the stories I wrote.

For one of my classes—I don't think it was my senior thesis story, but it might have been—I wrote a short story called Bad Weather in its first draft. In it, the narrator, a male grad student living in Los Angeles, meets an intoxicating writer named Frankie who refuses to give up her last name.

At the time, I wasn't writing mysteries—the creative writing program at UC Santa Barbara focused primarily on literary fiction, and looked down its nose at genres like mysteries, fantasy, horror, and the like. This short story was literary, and was heavily influenced by metafiction. Just like in the novella just published yesterday, Frankie tells the main character that she is the author of a crazy, violent, hyper-sexual, award-winning novel called Exodus Nights. But the story explored...Read More

"Bad Weather" Coming November 8

Many people have said that Dez is their favorite character in the Fenway Stevenson mysteries. Which is why she now has her own novella, set twenty years before she meets Fenway, when Dez was more naive, impressionable, and slightly less sassy. Look for Bad Weather on Thursday, November 8th! And check out the cover design video below, done by the talented Ziad Ezzat. 

Sometimes a lie is the only way to reveal the truth.

Only months from receiving her criminal justice degree, Dez Roubideaux’s world shifts when she meets the mysterious and intoxicating Frankie—a woman with an intriguing story of sexism in the publishing industry. A heated discussion leads to heated moments between them. But when Dez realizes Frankie is lying about her identity, the secrets put Dez—and the people she cares about—in mortal danger.

Can Dez uncover the truth before Frankie’s past destroys her future?

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You get one passage from Harry Potter to prove the books are better. What passage do you choose?

Originally posted on Quora. Visit my profile for more Q&A on books, writing, marketing, literary theory, and other interesting trivia. 

It’s a travesty that they didn’t even TRY to put this scene in the movie. It’s the most heart-wrenching scene of the whole book series—and deepens the motivation for everyone, not just Neville. And it makes it so much more satisfying when Neville is the one who “gets” the Room of Requirement, who improves so much in books 6 and 7.

(By the way, at the end of Book 5, Neville breaks the wand that belonged to his father in the battle in the Department of Mysteries. We are told in Book 6 that he and his grandmother get a new wand at Ollivander’s just before Ollivander disappears—and Neville is a much more talented wizard after that (though he had started getting better during DADA practice). The wand chooses the wizard. The wand Neville used wasn’t his, it was his father’s, and never was loyal to him.)

I become a weeping mess whenever I read this part. And it’s not in the movie at all—we see a headline in a news clipping and one line delivered by Neville directly to Harry, and that’s it. The movie completely robs the narrative of its emotional power.

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The Worst Book-to-Movie Adaptation

This answer was originally posted on Quora. 

Q: What has been the worst book-to-movie adaptation?

A: There are some bad movies out there that made a mockery of their source material. But none was worse—ruining its source material for me even after the movie ended—as Robert Altman’s Short Cuts.

How can I say that, you ask? The 1993 movie has a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score! Yeah—I have no idea how movie critics loved it so much. It makes a mess of the themes, the characters, the plots, everything—of nine Raymond Carver short stories.

Carver is a minimalist writer, but the acting (from many of my favorite actors) and direction are completely over the top, jarring any viewer familiar with Carver’s work. The stories are not interconnected, but in the film they are, and it feels forced. In the stories, Carver explores the idea of normal people making some bad decisions and dealing with the repercussions, either emotionally or otherwise; you always see how they justify it to themselves, making even the worst characters somewhat sympathetic. In the movie, they just seem off-their-rocker crazy. The Wymans’ story, where the wife Marian (played by Julianne Moore) argues with her husband (Matthew Modine) wearing only a blouse, is a blatant attempt to show as much of Moore’s nether regions onscreen for as long as possible, under the guise of art; it comes off as creepy and weird—and both gratuitous and unsexy. I know some critics say that’s the point of the scene; I disagree.

Carver’s endings—often the most emotionally powerful part of his stories—are often changed or extended (e.g....Read More

Book Review: Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (AKA J.K. Rowling)

Lethal White is just a phenomenal book. A mystery that hits all the right notes, keeps me up past my bedtime to finish just one more chapter, and has an immensely satisfying ending. I thought I had the murderer figured out, but I was wrong.

And several chapters were emotionally moving as well, as the characters are put in heartrending situations. Rowling/Galbraith is wonderful at getting the readers smack dab in the middle of the characters' lives and finding out where those empathy buttons are.

The will-they-or-won't-they of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott—which seemed to be destined for "won't-they" with the ending of Book 3, gets rekindled—not unexpectedly. Matthew, Ellacott's longtime boyfriend-turned-husband, is the closest thing this book has to a two-dimensional character, but even he shows depth and motive.

And the central mystery—which gets complicated by a murder halfway through the book—is complex, but Rowling/Galbraith makes it absolutely sparkling clear what happened. The reader isn't left wondering about loose ends. It does seem a bit pat at the end, and Rowling/Galbraith does a nice take on the villain "monologuing" when the whole plan is revealed, but it's all done quite well.

These Galbraith mystery novels get better with each release. Highly recommended.

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Launch Day!

Well, it's official: the Fenway Stevenson Mysteries are a series! Thank you to everyone who helped and cheered me on throughout the process. Book two was a ton of fun to write. The characters had already been introduced, so this one jumps right into the grit of the story -- political backstabbing, drugs, blackmail, hit men, manipulative fathers, and steamy affairs. Oh, and solving a murder.

Buy The Incumbent Coroner now on Amazon • Barnes & Noble • iBooks • Kobo

Also, please spread the word that if you haven't read The Reluctant Coroner yet, it's on sale for just $0.99 this week only! 

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Pre-release Praise

Several of Fenway's biggest fans received early copies of the book, and the reviews are even better than I'd hoped!

 

"Fenway Stevenson's latest mystery had me really turning those pages! The smooth prose kept me interested not only in the outcome, but the characters themselves. Ardoin is a fantastic writer." --Carlie Lemont, author of Murder at a Discount

 

"Fenway Stevenson is an incredible main character, with believable flaws that just make her even more lovable....I haven’t read an explicitly biracial main character in a very long time. This book is diverse both in ethnic background and sexual orientation." -- Alexis Marcom on Goodreads

 

Pre-order The Incumbent Coroner from your favorite retailer:

Amazon • Barnes & Noble • iBooks • Kobo

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The First Novel I Wrote...

Originally published on Quora.

As I prepare The Incumbent Coroner, my second novel in the Fenway Stevenson Mysteries, for publication on September 25, a fellow Quora user asked about the first novel I ever wrote.

It was a book I wrote in fifth grade called The Gadget Club Goes to Europe. The Gadget Club was a group of crime-fighting preteens with special remote controlled “gadgets”—a mini fighter jet, a mini helicopter, a mini car that could turn into a plane or a submarine. Rick and Donna were the co-leaders (who made googly eyes at each other but something was always keeping them apart, naturally). There was the brainy one, the bratty one, the jock, the cheerleader, the too-cool-for-school one… twelve kids (oy! too many characters!) fighting an international crime syndicate that stole the French state jewels and hid them in a ranch house in Normandy. (Rick's dad was the French ambassador, because of course he was.)

My father was an early adopter of the personal computer, and I typed it out on an Osborne 2 (with a 4″ monochrome screen!) using WordStar, and printed it on a daisywheel DTC printer (which was pretty much just an automated typewriter). I hand-designed all the covers on cardstock, using rub-on letters, and stapled them together using my school’s commercial-grade stapler. I remember carefully writing the title and my last name on the “spine”—just the edges of all of the pages next to the staples. I think I made about five copies of the book in total.

My friend and I planned The Gadget Club as a series that we would co-write, alternating authorship. (Looking back, it was probably barely novelette-length—probably about 10,000 words.) Each of us wrote a book and then stopped.

You can't order The Gadget Club Goes to Europe, but you can pre-order The Incumbent Coroner now on your favorite online bookshop: Read More

Book Two Coming September 25!

I'm proud to announce Book Two in the Fenway Stevenson murder mysteries, coming to you September 25! 

The Incumbent Coroner

A beloved mayor. A seedy motel room. One baffling murder.

The bizarre circumstances of Fenway Stevenson’s latest case as county coroner drag her to the center of one very dangerous game. With one suspect in custody, an attempt on the life of the key witness leads to her disappearance and more unanswered questions. Fenway must race to solve the mystery before anyone else dies while also juggling a contentious election and her overbearing father’s meddling.As summer temperatures rise, so do the stakes. What will Fenway have to sacrifice to ensure the safety of those she loves?

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eBooks for Every Reader

Good news: "The Reluctant Coroner" eBook is no longer exclusive to Amazon Kindle! You can now find it on all major eBook retailers:

Amazon • Barnes & Noble • iBooks • Kobo •
Playster • Scribd • Tolino • Walmart

The paperback is available from:

Amazon • Barnes & Noble • BookDepository • Walmart

from your favorite bookstore through special order through libraries using Bibliotheca or Overdrive.

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