Joseph Wallace's Blog, page 3

Secrets of the Marmaduke Writing Factory Revealed!

In the new issue of Publishers Weekly, Warren Berger, Factory Worker and author of the forthcoming A More Beautiful Question (Bloomsbury, 3/14) reveals the secrets of our writing group’s productivity: sensory deprivation.

No, it’s true. Take a look at the photo to your left. That’s the Factory’s conference room, a stone-walled, windowless chamber with no guaranteed wifi and patchy cell-phone connectivity. If you’ve condemned yourself to spend hours a day in the cave–or in the admittedly more welcoming but no more distracting main room–you have no choice but to write.

And you know what? It works! As Warren points out, both he (with A More Beautiful Question) and Joe Wallace (with Invasive Species) did much of their most productive work on our new books in the cave. Meanwhile, the group also inspires Robert Sullivan (A Child’s Christmas in New England), gives Kate Buford (Jim Thorpe: Native American Hero) a refuge to work on her new projects, and provides a general sense of community to everyone in the group. We’re very lucky!

To read Warren’s take, click here or on the image below:

 

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On the Horizon: The INVASIVE SPECIES Sequel!

My publisher, Berkley Books, gave me the good news last week: They want my follow-up to my recently published apocalyptic thriller, Invasive Species!

My agent, Deborah Schneider of Gelfman/Schneider Literary Agents, and I pitched the idea for The Slavemakers to Berkley months ago. But unsurprisingly–in fact, with logical caution–the company wanted to see how the first book did before committing to a sequel.

It’s been about five weeks now since Invasive Species’ publication, which is still far too early to know how the book will ultimately do. That story hasn’t been written yet. But clearly the early signs–as well as reviews and reader response, which have mostly been an author’s dream–have been promising enough to warrant the go-ahead on the new one.

As you can imagine, I’m thrilled. But also feeling a little stunned. When I finished writing Invasive Species, I had no intention of writing a second novel set in the same wasp-ridden world. In fact, those of you who have finished the novel may understand that I chose the ending specifically to rule out a sequel.

And then something amazing happened. I’ll leave the details for a future post, but I can say that the story of The Slavemakers came to me like a bolt from the blue–and at an inconvenient time and in the least-expected way. (Thank goodness for the blank backs of printed-out driving directions!) Five minutes after I would have scoffed at the idea of a sequel, I was determined to write one.

And now I’ll get the chance to. I couldn’t be happier, or more eager to get the book out into the world ASAP so you can all see what happens next.

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Invasive Species: “In With the Stinger, Out With Our Marbles.”

The title of this post contains my favorite line from this wild, hilarious, bizarre rave review bestowed upon Invasive Species by “Shlockmeister,” reviewer extraordinaire at g33k-e.com  (“We’re all about everything geek related.”)

Another quote from the master of shlock: “Wallace seems to have studied the best speculative action pageturners in history, such as those by Benchley and Crichton, and has outdone them all in one fell swoop. In fact, this is what Hollywood blockbusters should be and frequently aren’t.”

And my favorite illustration from a piece festooned with them? This one:

Love love love it. Shlockmeister has my number, which probably says something about both of us.

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Invasive Species Gets a Rave!

It’s an established fact: Books published in the mass-market-original format–as my new novel, Invasive Species, was–don’t tend to get many reviews in newspapers and magazines.

So I was surprised and thrilled to discover this one in the Winnipeg Free Press…and even more thrilled that it’s a great review. “The writing is very tight, the dialogue crisp, the characters vividly realized,” says David Pitt, the reviewer, who also called the book “downright frightening.”

You can read more by clicking on the hyperlink above or the image below:

 

Until now, I would have been more than happy with one traditional review for Invasive Species. But, of course, now I’m greedy and hoping for more!

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What I Owe My Dad…and Dick Francis

My father found me standing indecisively in front of the bookshelves where he kept the books he read for pleasure. (He was a physician, which meant he had a separate bookshelf filled with incomprehensible medical reference books and gorily illustrated copies of the New England Journal of Medicine.)

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I don’t know what to read next,” I told him.

This was in 1971. I was fourteen, and since graduating from children’s books I’d read almost entirely science fiction. Though I still loved the genre, I was ready to try something new. And my father’s bookshelves contained nothing that wasn’t new to me.

Dad read very little besides mysteries. To be more specific: Cozy mysteries. British cozy mysteries, written by such barely familiar (or completely unfamiliar to me) authors as Agatha Christie, Michael Gilbert, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Edmund Crispin. One by one, he pulled the books down from the shelf, but  (though I later read all of them and many more) at the time they seemed remote, forbidding, written in what almost sounded like a foreign language. People were called “Lord” this and “Monsieur” that, and the books were often set in country manors, rectories, drawing rooms, and other places I couldn’t even visualize. To this Brooklyn boy, these novels seemed a lot like science fiction.

Finally Dad pulled a little paperback off the end of the shelf. “I think you might like this one,” he said. “It’s got plenty of action.”

I looked at it: Flying Finish by Dick Francis. I opened it, saw no mention of lords or manors, and decided to give it a try.

I didn’t just read that novel, I absorbed it. The exciting story had to do with horses and human smuggling and airplanes, but what mattered even more was the hero: A young man, underestimated by all, who–through sheer smarts and nerve far more than physical strength–triumphs over those who think they control him. As a scrawny teenager, I found Francis’s unassuming protagonist far more believable and appealing than the smooth, all-powerful Bondian superhero so much in fashion during that era.

I immediately read every Dick Francis novel I could find. In many ways, they were very much alike, but every time I found his thoughtful, solitary, underestimated heroes irresistible. For the rest of Dad’s life, reading and discussing the new Francis was an annual ritual for us, and my fondness for Francis’s novels lasted until the author’s death in 2010.

But Francis’s role in my life didn’t end there. The characteristics of his heroes became part of the DNA of Ruby Thomas, the protagonist of Diamond Ruby, my first novel. Not that this was immediately obvious: After all, Ruby is an eighteen-year-old girl living in 1920s Brooklyn, at first glance a far cry from Francis’s British, male, contemporary main characters.

But only at first glance. What are Ruby’s defining characteristics–and, later, those of Trey Gilliard, the protagonist of Invasive Species, my second novel? It’s clear: Ruby and Trey are both quiet, thoughtful, observant. They don’t jabber or yell or argue. What they do is figure things out. And, when it’s time to act, they know exactly what to do, and suddenly show those who underestimated them what true strength looks like. In short, they owe a debt to Dick Francis.

And so do I. To him and to my father, too, for taking my measure in front of that bookcase forty years ago and planting the seeds of my long-in-the-future–and long-dreamed-of–writing career.

I wish they were both still around, so I could share this post, and my gratitude, with them.

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Gratitude

Here I am at the recent launch for my new novel, Invasive Species, at the Village Bookstore in Pleasantville, NY, my local indie bookseller.

Don’t I look happy? Well, I was. And that’s no sure thing at a book signing. Every author south of Stephen King has book-signing horror stories to tell: Rows of chairs sitting empty under unforgiving lights, books piled unbought and pens capped on the pristine table at the front of the deserted room.

(Actually, I’ll bet even King has a few of those stories to tell from early in his career.)

But not me, not when I have an event at the Village Bookstore. I’ve done perhaps half a dozen signings there, and nearly every one has been memorable.

Some have been more so. My signing for my one children’s book, Big and Noisy Simon, was scheduled for late September of 2001. After the 9/11 attacks, I considered canceling the event, but decided not to. I was so glad I went ahead; I didn’t sell that many copies (who cared?), but the people who came to the signing stayed for hours, welcoming the company in the midst of such a shocking, isolating time.

A few years later, when I had my first two short stories published–in the anthologies Baltimore Noir and Hard Boiled Brooklyn–it felt like a kind of joyful cheating to sell those books. How many people were buying their copies for me, and how many for the authors whose talent I was hitching a ride with: Laura Lippman, S.J. Rozan, Reed Farrel Coleman, Ken Bruen, and so many others? But again, who cared? At least the buyers knew they were getting quality.

My event for Diamond Ruby was memorable for a simple reason: It celebrated the realization of a lifelong dream, the publication of my first novel.

But none of my signings has been more meaningful to me than the one held at the Village Bookstore just two weeks ago, the one for Invasive Species. As astounding, deeply moving array of people from all aspects and times of my life took time away from a busy pre-Christmas Saturday to listen to me talk, to stand patiently in line, and to have me sign dozens of copies of my new novel.

Who was there? My brilliant 10th-grade high-school English teacher, the lovely man who first told me I could write. My own high-school writing students, who inspire me every day. Friends I’ve known for forty years, and others whose acquaintance I just made this year. People I first met via social media, but who have become true in-person friends. My wife and son, brother and sister-in-law. My extraordinary literary agent and her poet husband. An extraordinary young woman I first met working in a nearby restaurant (she heard me talking about Diamond Ruby, then went out and read it), and two baristas from our local coffee place, who kept me supplied with conversation and caffeine during the often-lonely process of writing Invasive Species. And so many more, in spirit as well as in person.

What I felt, what I feel at every one of my events at the Village Bookstore, was gratitude. I’m grateful to have such remarkable people in my life, to live in a town with an indie bookstore, to be able to do what I love and experience such abundant rewards for it.

So: Thank you all. I have no idea how many copies Invasive Species will sell when its story is told, but it is already a success beyond my wildest imaginings.

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“A Novel’s Two Lives”

Why I switched careers midstream, from writing nonfiction nature and travel articles for magazines to taking on the fictional world of Invasive Species…and how my former career made my current one possible.

A guest post on Bea’s Book Nook. Click here or on the image below.

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The “It’s A Wasp!” Card

So I’ve been playing coy with the monster that threatens to bring the world to an end in Invasive Species, my new thriller. (The one that’s “just a few mutations away from coming true,” according to the great sf writer David Brin.) I didn’t want to reveal its identity until people had the chance to watch the book trailer (see previous post), which is spookier if you don’t know what the threat is, only that “it can get in anywhere.”

But now that the book is out, reviewers are starting to discuss it, and I described the monster at my wonderful launch at the Village Bookstore in Pleasantville, NY, I figured it’s time to mention it here, as well. And show it.

Yes, it’s a wasp. A honkin’ big, smart, aggressive wasp, clever enough to travel wherever it wants without being seen…and with some deadly abilities you’ll have to read the novel to discover.

It looks a lot like the portrait on image I’ve uploaded here–which also happens to be the bookmark/card thingy I’m giving away to anyone who buys the book. Created by the gifted illustrator Gregory Nemec, it’s based on a poster Trey and Jack, two of the main characters in Invasive Species, create as they try to track the spread of the deadly threat.

If you’ve bought the book and would like one, either to use as a bookmark (it’s 3.5 x 4.5 inches) or just for fun, just contact me at joswallace7@yahoo.com, and I’ll send one off to you. Thanks!

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The Invasive Species Trailer: Last Chance to See It

…without knowing what the monster is! (The video itself will be up on YouTube forever.)

I loved writing this short film in support of Invasive Species, especially since all you really know about the deadly invaders is that “they can get in anywhere.”

Click here or on the image below to see what I mean:

Later today, in my next post, all will be revealed!

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Saturday, 12/7: Factory Workers Spread Across the Globe!

Across Westchester County, NY, at least.

Joseph Wallace (Invasive Species) and Robert Sullivan (A Child’s Christmas in New England) will both be appearing at bookstores on Saturday, Dec. 7: Joe from 2:00-5:00 at The Village Bookstore of Pleasantville and Bob starting at 3:30 at the Yonkers Barnes and Noble. Details by clicking on the links or looking here:

Stop by at either event (or both!) to say hi if you’re in the area. We’d love to meet you.

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