Tosca Lee's Blog, page 12
April 29, 2016
THE PROGENY Tosca Lee--Start reading now!
The Progeny
THE CENTER
No one speaks when you enter the Center for the last time. There’s no need. You’ve gone through the counseling, tests, and a checklist of preparations to get the plastic bracelet you wear the day of treatment. The one that saves a life. They don’t need to know why you’re doing it any more. Or that you lied about it all. Just the scratch of the stylus as you sign your name on the screen one last time.
A nurse takes me into a room and I lie down on the table. I give her the sealed packet—the only thing I brought with me. There’s cash, meds, and an address inside, the one for “after.” It’s a thousand miles away. She’ll pass it to the companion assigned to me. No point meeting her now.
I’m 21 years old and my name doesn’t matter because it’s about to be erased forever. I’m choosing to forget the ones I love, and myself, in the process.
They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die. But they don’t tell you that every detail comes screaming back to life. That you taste each bite of every meal you savored, feel the shower of every rain you walked in… smell the hair against your cheek before that last, parting kiss. That you will fight to hold on to every memory like a drowning person gasping for poisoned air.
Then everything you knew is gone. And you are still alive.
For now.
ONE
There’s a figure standing by the window. Arms crossed, outlined against the fuchsia sky, looking out at what must be a spectacular sunset. When her chin lifts I wonder if she’s seen something in the trees.
I push up from the cabin’s lone sofa. An afghan with a giant moose stitched on it is tangled around my legs. It in no way coordinates with the moose valance in the kitchen or the fixture in the bathroom. Despite the name of the lake—Moosehead—I’ve yet to see a real moose anywhere since arriving here four weeks ago.
“You’re awake.” My caretaker, Clare, turns from the window. Her blonde hair is pulled back in the loose ponytail she’s worn every day since we arrived and she set up house. Going into town for groceries as I slept, taking me through two-hour assessments in the afternoon, complimenting my recent attempts at dinner including the under seasoned chicken casserole I made last night. It was the first time I’d tried it, I said, but I don’t know if that’s true.
“Yeah, finally.”
My name is Emily Porter. I’m 21 years old and I am renting a tiny cabin in the north woods of Maine for reasons I no longer remember.
I go through this mental routine each time I wake, if only to assure myself I didn’t get the lobotomy I joked about yesterday before sleeping—what, fifteen, twenty?—hours until just now. I don’t even remember going to sleep. Nor do I remember where I lived before this, or where I went to college, or the name of the high school with the blue lockers and squeaky gymnasium floor where I graduated. Including what happened to the garnet ring on my index finger as I accepted my diploma, or the name of the woman who gave it to me other than simply, “Mom.”
Names, identifiers, faces up to age 19 and everything in the two years since. All gone.
“A certain amount of post-procedure depression is normal. That will change, in time.”
I slide my hand to the curve of my skull just above my left ear. To the stubby patch concealed by the longer hair above it. Not so stubby anymore. It could almost qualify for a military cut.
“As will that.”
“Not fast enough.” I flip the afghan off my legs, pop two pills from the bottle on the coffee table, already trying to decide what culinary disaster I’ll create tonight. “Caretaker” is a misleading word; as soon as I reached the two-week observation and recovery mark, Clare has seen to it that I cook, do laundry, find a job and my way around town as though I were already on my own.
“I’m thinking I should stay away from casseroles for a while. How do you feel about tuna quesadillas?” I get up and pad toward the kitchen, wash my hands. When she doesn’t respond, I look at her and say, “That good, huh.”
That’s when I realize she’s wearing the same blouse and skirt she wore the first day, the wooden tao cross hanging just below her collar. It looks like a capitol T, which is what I thought it was the first time I saw it, for her last name: Thomas. And then I see the suitcase by the door.
A surge of panic wells up inside me.
“Today was my last day, Emily.” She says quietly. “I was just waiting for you to wake.”
“Oh.” I put down the dishtowel, finish drying my hands on my sweatpants. Look around me, lost.
Clare tilts her head. “We talked about it when you got up for a while this morning—remember?”
No. I don’t remember. But I don’t need to turn to see the calendar hanging on the fridge behind me, to follow the line of Xs through each day in September to today—the twentieth—to know she’s right.
“Are you sure you want to go now?” I say. “I mean, it’s almost dark.” I gesture to the window, already in shadow.
I’m not ready for this.
She comes to stand in front of me and lays her hands on my arms. Her left brow is angled a few degrees higher than her right. But instead of making her appear asymmetrical, which all faces are, it animates her eyes.
“You’re doing fine, Emily. Your procedure was a success. You have your fresh start. It’s time to live.” A fresh start. A weird concept when you don’t know what you’re starting over from.
She gives me a squeeze and shoulders her purse. “I could, however, use a lift to shore and into town.”
“Right. Of course.” I glance around, lost in my oversized sweatshirt, looking for my jacket. I knew this day was coming. Then why do I feel like I’m being abandoned?
I lace my boots and grab my keys, but the questions that came at me like a hoard of insects those first few days—before Clare firmly counseled me to trust my decision—have come swarming back, louder than ever. I push them way but when I get to the door there’s something in her hand. An envelope.
The handwriting on the outside is mine.
She holds it out. “You wrote this before your treatment.”
I take it slowly. It’s sealed, my initials scribbled across the flap where it’s stuck shut.
“Most patients choose to write a letter to reassure their post-procedure selves. You can read it when you get back.”
I nod, but a part of me wishes she hadn’t shown it to me at all. I slide it onto the counter. “Okay.”
Outside, we climb into the john boat and I start the outboard motor. It takes all of five minutes for me to guide us in to the dock two hundred yards away. I grab the flashlight from the boat, knock it with the heel of my hand when it sputters. The owner’s beat up Ford Bronco is waiting near the slip.
I ask what time her flight is as we turn onto Lily Bay Road, make small talk about the magnificent foliage around the lake. Finally ask if she ever saw a moose. No, she says, she never did.
Twenty minutes later we pull into the Food Mart at the top of the hill—the same place I caught my breath as the lake first appeared below us the day we arrived. There’s a black town car waiting in the parking lot, and she directs me toward it.
I put the truck in park, wondering what one says in a situation like this. I’m glad it’s nearly dark out.
“I’ve got it,” she says when I start to get out. After retrieving her suitcase, she leans in through the passenger door.
“You’re going to be fine, Emily. It’s a brave decision to go through something like this.”
It doesn’t feel brave, to want to forget.
“Read your letter. Trust yourself. But just in case—” She pulls the tao cross over her head and presses it into my hand. “If you ever find yourself in need of answers.”
Impulsively, I lean across the seat to hug her.
And then she’s gone.
Maybe I don’t want to waste the trip to town, or maybe I just don’t feel like getting the crap scared out of me by the stuffed taxidermy bear in the bedroom that has managed to freak me out every time I try to sleep in there like a normal person. As soon as that black car disappears up the road, I hang the cross from the rearview mirror and decide to pick up some supplies.
But the truth is I’m not ready to read that letter. I don’t know what I’ve left behind—my mind has run the gamut from childhood molestation to abusive boyfriends and post-traumatic stress—but part of me is both dying and terrified to hear from that person before. Afraid of any indication of the thing that landed me on an island the size of a Dorito in the back woods of Maine with roots five shades lighter than the rest of my hair.
Inside the Food Mart I distractedly fill a basket with deli cuts, bananas, microwave popcorn, tampons. The grocery is connected to the Trading Post—a camping, fishing, hunting store—making it the type of place you can buy vegetarian nuggets and a rifle, all in one trip. Or, in my case, wool socks and flashlight batteries. I stop in the wine aisle last. It seems fitting to toast my past as I hear from my former self. Who knows, depending on what’s in the letter, I may even need to get drunk.
I’ve just picked a cabernet with a cool label off the sale shelf—because what else do you go by when you don’t know one from the other—when I sense someone staring at me farther down the aisle.
I look up to find a guy in a green Food Mart apron frozen on a knee where he’s been stocking a lower shelf. For a minute I wonder if he thinks I’m shoplifting, or, more likely, not old enough to buy booze.
I deliberately slide the bottle into my basket. As I start to leave, I hear quick steps behind me.
“Hey. Hey—”
I turn reluctantly. Not only because I already wish I had just gone home, but because, now that he’s closer, I can see the chin-length hair tucked behind his ear, the blue eyes beneath thoughtful brows. And I’m standing here with bad roots and tampons in my basket.
He grabs something from the shelf. “We just got this in,” he says, eyes locked on mine. The couple days’ stubble on his cheeks is the color of honey, a shade lighter than his hair.
I glance at the bottle of non-alcoholic cider. “Thanks,” I murmur. “I’m good.”
“It’s organic,” he says, not even looking at it. He’s got an accent so slight I can’t place it, but it isn’t local.
By now I just want to get out of here. The letter sitting on the table back at the cabin has launched a march of fire ants in my gut. If what’s written in that envelope is meant to be reassuring, I need that reassurance now, because I was doing a lot better with my questions before Clare and her level counsel left and I ever knew the letter existed.
I put the wine back and grab a bottle of tequila on my way to the register.
There’s no one there. I swing the basket up onto the conveyer belt and look around. A moment later the same guy comes over and starts to ring me up.
“Hi again,” he smiles. I look away.
Halfway through checkout, I realize I can’t find my debit card. I pull out my keys and dig through my jacket pockets. And then I see it lying on the counter back at the cabin, right next to the grocery list of all the things I just bought.
“I forgot my card,” I stammer.
He shrugs. “No problem. I can set them aside or have them delivered if you want. You can pay for them then.”
“No,” I say quickly, stepping away. “That’s okay.” By now two more people are waiting in line behind me. “Sorry.” I turn on my heel and hurry to the door and the evening outside, leaving the stuff on the conveyer belt.
Outside, bugs swarm the lone parking lot light. I get to my truck, grab the door handle… and then drop my forehead against the window with a curse. My keys are back inside on the little ledge old ladies use to write checks.
I peer through the dark window like the truck is going to come unlocked by sheer force of will. It doesn’t. And there’s the flashlight with the nearly-dead batteries lying between the seats.
“Hey!” The voice comes from the direction of the mart’s automatic door. I push away from the truck.
It’s the guy, holding up my keys. “You forgot something.”
“Yeah. Like my mind.”
He hands me my keys and two plastic grocery bags. I look at them, bewildered.
“On me,” he says.
“Oh. No, I can’t—”
“Already done. Besides, that tequila looked pretty important,” he says with a slight smile.
“I’ll pay you back.”
“It’s no problem.” He hesitates, and then wishes me a good night.
I pass a whole five cars on my way up Lily Bay and none on the road to the lake. Six houses tucked in the trees along this mile-and-a-half stretch of gravel called Black Point Road share the dock where the boat is tied beneath a motion-sensor light. Modest homes of normal people living lives full of details they might like to forget, but have somehow learned to live with.
The water is black beneath the boat and I’m glad for the cabin’s wan kitchen lights, relieved even for its parade of moose above the window, the bear waiting in the bedroom.
I dump the bags on the counter and sit down on the sofa with the letter, not bothering to take off my boots. After a long moment of staring at my name, I slide my finger under the edge of the envelope and tear it open.
Emily, it’s me. You.
Don’t ask about the last two years. If everything went as planned, you’ve forgotten them along with several other details of your life. Don’t try to remember—they tell me it’s impossible—and don’t go digging.
Start over. Get a job. Fall in love. Live a simple, quiet life. But leave the past where it is. Keep your face off the web. Your life depends on it. Others’ lives depend on it.
By the way, Emily isn’t your birth name. You died in an accident. You paid extra for that.
I look up from the letter and take in the tiny, eco-friendly cabin with new eyes. No computer. No phone. No cable television. I’m twenty minutes from the nearest town, population sixteen hundred, where people are outnumbered by invisible moose.
I didn’t come to start over.
I came to hide.
THE CENTER
No one speaks when you enter the Center for the last time. There’s no need. You’ve gone through the counseling, tests, and a checklist of preparations to get the plastic bracelet you wear the day of treatment. The one that saves a life. They don’t need to know why you’re doing it any more. Or that you lied about it all. Just the scratch of the stylus as you sign your name on the screen one last time.
A nurse takes me into a room and I lie down on the table. I give her the sealed packet—the only thing I brought with me. There’s cash, meds, and an address inside, the one for “after.” It’s a thousand miles away. She’ll pass it to the companion assigned to me. No point meeting her now.
I’m 21 years old and my name doesn’t matter because it’s about to be erased forever. I’m choosing to forget the ones I love, and myself, in the process.
They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die. But they don’t tell you that every detail comes screaming back to life. That you taste each bite of every meal you savored, feel the shower of every rain you walked in… smell the hair against your cheek before that last, parting kiss. That you will fight to hold on to every memory like a drowning person gasping for poisoned air.
Then everything you knew is gone. And you are still alive.
For now.
ONE
There’s a figure standing by the window. Arms crossed, outlined against the fuchsia sky, looking out at what must be a spectacular sunset. When her chin lifts I wonder if she’s seen something in the trees.
I push up from the cabin’s lone sofa. An afghan with a giant moose stitched on it is tangled around my legs. It in no way coordinates with the moose valance in the kitchen or the fixture in the bathroom. Despite the name of the lake—Moosehead—I’ve yet to see a real moose anywhere since arriving here four weeks ago.
“You’re awake.” My caretaker, Clare, turns from the window. Her blonde hair is pulled back in the loose ponytail she’s worn every day since we arrived and she set up house. Going into town for groceries as I slept, taking me through two-hour assessments in the afternoon, complimenting my recent attempts at dinner including the under seasoned chicken casserole I made last night. It was the first time I’d tried it, I said, but I don’t know if that’s true.
“Yeah, finally.”
My name is Emily Porter. I’m 21 years old and I am renting a tiny cabin in the north woods of Maine for reasons I no longer remember.
I go through this mental routine each time I wake, if only to assure myself I didn’t get the lobotomy I joked about yesterday before sleeping—what, fifteen, twenty?—hours until just now. I don’t even remember going to sleep. Nor do I remember where I lived before this, or where I went to college, or the name of the high school with the blue lockers and squeaky gymnasium floor where I graduated. Including what happened to the garnet ring on my index finger as I accepted my diploma, or the name of the woman who gave it to me other than simply, “Mom.”
Names, identifiers, faces up to age 19 and everything in the two years since. All gone.
“A certain amount of post-procedure depression is normal. That will change, in time.”
I slide my hand to the curve of my skull just above my left ear. To the stubby patch concealed by the longer hair above it. Not so stubby anymore. It could almost qualify for a military cut.
“As will that.”
“Not fast enough.” I flip the afghan off my legs, pop two pills from the bottle on the coffee table, already trying to decide what culinary disaster I’ll create tonight. “Caretaker” is a misleading word; as soon as I reached the two-week observation and recovery mark, Clare has seen to it that I cook, do laundry, find a job and my way around town as though I were already on my own.
“I’m thinking I should stay away from casseroles for a while. How do you feel about tuna quesadillas?” I get up and pad toward the kitchen, wash my hands. When she doesn’t respond, I look at her and say, “That good, huh.”
That’s when I realize she’s wearing the same blouse and skirt she wore the first day, the wooden tao cross hanging just below her collar. It looks like a capitol T, which is what I thought it was the first time I saw it, for her last name: Thomas. And then I see the suitcase by the door.
A surge of panic wells up inside me.
“Today was my last day, Emily.” She says quietly. “I was just waiting for you to wake.”
“Oh.” I put down the dishtowel, finish drying my hands on my sweatpants. Look around me, lost.
Clare tilts her head. “We talked about it when you got up for a while this morning—remember?”
No. I don’t remember. But I don’t need to turn to see the calendar hanging on the fridge behind me, to follow the line of Xs through each day in September to today—the twentieth—to know she’s right.
“Are you sure you want to go now?” I say. “I mean, it’s almost dark.” I gesture to the window, already in shadow.
I’m not ready for this.
She comes to stand in front of me and lays her hands on my arms. Her left brow is angled a few degrees higher than her right. But instead of making her appear asymmetrical, which all faces are, it animates her eyes.
“You’re doing fine, Emily. Your procedure was a success. You have your fresh start. It’s time to live.” A fresh start. A weird concept when you don’t know what you’re starting over from.
She gives me a squeeze and shoulders her purse. “I could, however, use a lift to shore and into town.”
“Right. Of course.” I glance around, lost in my oversized sweatshirt, looking for my jacket. I knew this day was coming. Then why do I feel like I’m being abandoned?
I lace my boots and grab my keys, but the questions that came at me like a hoard of insects those first few days—before Clare firmly counseled me to trust my decision—have come swarming back, louder than ever. I push them way but when I get to the door there’s something in her hand. An envelope.
The handwriting on the outside is mine.
She holds it out. “You wrote this before your treatment.”
I take it slowly. It’s sealed, my initials scribbled across the flap where it’s stuck shut.
“Most patients choose to write a letter to reassure their post-procedure selves. You can read it when you get back.”
I nod, but a part of me wishes she hadn’t shown it to me at all. I slide it onto the counter. “Okay.”
Outside, we climb into the john boat and I start the outboard motor. It takes all of five minutes for me to guide us in to the dock two hundred yards away. I grab the flashlight from the boat, knock it with the heel of my hand when it sputters. The owner’s beat up Ford Bronco is waiting near the slip.
I ask what time her flight is as we turn onto Lily Bay Road, make small talk about the magnificent foliage around the lake. Finally ask if she ever saw a moose. No, she says, she never did.
Twenty minutes later we pull into the Food Mart at the top of the hill—the same place I caught my breath as the lake first appeared below us the day we arrived. There’s a black town car waiting in the parking lot, and she directs me toward it.
I put the truck in park, wondering what one says in a situation like this. I’m glad it’s nearly dark out.
“I’ve got it,” she says when I start to get out. After retrieving her suitcase, she leans in through the passenger door.
“You’re going to be fine, Emily. It’s a brave decision to go through something like this.”
It doesn’t feel brave, to want to forget.
“Read your letter. Trust yourself. But just in case—” She pulls the tao cross over her head and presses it into my hand. “If you ever find yourself in need of answers.”
Impulsively, I lean across the seat to hug her.
And then she’s gone.
Maybe I don’t want to waste the trip to town, or maybe I just don’t feel like getting the crap scared out of me by the stuffed taxidermy bear in the bedroom that has managed to freak me out every time I try to sleep in there like a normal person. As soon as that black car disappears up the road, I hang the cross from the rearview mirror and decide to pick up some supplies.
But the truth is I’m not ready to read that letter. I don’t know what I’ve left behind—my mind has run the gamut from childhood molestation to abusive boyfriends and post-traumatic stress—but part of me is both dying and terrified to hear from that person before. Afraid of any indication of the thing that landed me on an island the size of a Dorito in the back woods of Maine with roots five shades lighter than the rest of my hair.
Inside the Food Mart I distractedly fill a basket with deli cuts, bananas, microwave popcorn, tampons. The grocery is connected to the Trading Post—a camping, fishing, hunting store—making it the type of place you can buy vegetarian nuggets and a rifle, all in one trip. Or, in my case, wool socks and flashlight batteries. I stop in the wine aisle last. It seems fitting to toast my past as I hear from my former self. Who knows, depending on what’s in the letter, I may even need to get drunk.
I’ve just picked a cabernet with a cool label off the sale shelf—because what else do you go by when you don’t know one from the other—when I sense someone staring at me farther down the aisle.
I look up to find a guy in a green Food Mart apron frozen on a knee where he’s been stocking a lower shelf. For a minute I wonder if he thinks I’m shoplifting, or, more likely, not old enough to buy booze.
I deliberately slide the bottle into my basket. As I start to leave, I hear quick steps behind me.
“Hey. Hey—”
I turn reluctantly. Not only because I already wish I had just gone home, but because, now that he’s closer, I can see the chin-length hair tucked behind his ear, the blue eyes beneath thoughtful brows. And I’m standing here with bad roots and tampons in my basket.
He grabs something from the shelf. “We just got this in,” he says, eyes locked on mine. The couple days’ stubble on his cheeks is the color of honey, a shade lighter than his hair.
I glance at the bottle of non-alcoholic cider. “Thanks,” I murmur. “I’m good.”
“It’s organic,” he says, not even looking at it. He’s got an accent so slight I can’t place it, but it isn’t local.
By now I just want to get out of here. The letter sitting on the table back at the cabin has launched a march of fire ants in my gut. If what’s written in that envelope is meant to be reassuring, I need that reassurance now, because I was doing a lot better with my questions before Clare and her level counsel left and I ever knew the letter existed.
I put the wine back and grab a bottle of tequila on my way to the register.
There’s no one there. I swing the basket up onto the conveyer belt and look around. A moment later the same guy comes over and starts to ring me up.
“Hi again,” he smiles. I look away.
Halfway through checkout, I realize I can’t find my debit card. I pull out my keys and dig through my jacket pockets. And then I see it lying on the counter back at the cabin, right next to the grocery list of all the things I just bought.
“I forgot my card,” I stammer.
He shrugs. “No problem. I can set them aside or have them delivered if you want. You can pay for them then.”
“No,” I say quickly, stepping away. “That’s okay.” By now two more people are waiting in line behind me. “Sorry.” I turn on my heel and hurry to the door and the evening outside, leaving the stuff on the conveyer belt.
Outside, bugs swarm the lone parking lot light. I get to my truck, grab the door handle… and then drop my forehead against the window with a curse. My keys are back inside on the little ledge old ladies use to write checks.
I peer through the dark window like the truck is going to come unlocked by sheer force of will. It doesn’t. And there’s the flashlight with the nearly-dead batteries lying between the seats.
“Hey!” The voice comes from the direction of the mart’s automatic door. I push away from the truck.
It’s the guy, holding up my keys. “You forgot something.”
“Yeah. Like my mind.”
He hands me my keys and two plastic grocery bags. I look at them, bewildered.
“On me,” he says.
“Oh. No, I can’t—”
“Already done. Besides, that tequila looked pretty important,” he says with a slight smile.
“I’ll pay you back.”
“It’s no problem.” He hesitates, and then wishes me a good night.
I pass a whole five cars on my way up Lily Bay and none on the road to the lake. Six houses tucked in the trees along this mile-and-a-half stretch of gravel called Black Point Road share the dock where the boat is tied beneath a motion-sensor light. Modest homes of normal people living lives full of details they might like to forget, but have somehow learned to live with.
The water is black beneath the boat and I’m glad for the cabin’s wan kitchen lights, relieved even for its parade of moose above the window, the bear waiting in the bedroom.
I dump the bags on the counter and sit down on the sofa with the letter, not bothering to take off my boots. After a long moment of staring at my name, I slide my finger under the edge of the envelope and tear it open.
Emily, it’s me. You.
Don’t ask about the last two years. If everything went as planned, you’ve forgotten them along with several other details of your life. Don’t try to remember—they tell me it’s impossible—and don’t go digging.
Start over. Get a job. Fall in love. Live a simple, quiet life. But leave the past where it is. Keep your face off the web. Your life depends on it. Others’ lives depend on it.
By the way, Emily isn’t your birth name. You died in an accident. You paid extra for that.
I look up from the letter and take in the tiny, eco-friendly cabin with new eyes. No computer. No phone. No cable television. I’m twenty minutes from the nearest town, population sixteen hundred, where people are outnumbered by invisible moose.
I didn’t come to start over.
I came to hide.
March 21, 2016
A Nano Writing Contest
Goodreads friends, I know many of you are writers. I wanted to alert you to a Nano writing contest sponsored by Splickety Publishing.
The contest is based on one of the themes found in my new book, The Progeny, coming May 24th.
Who are you, really? If you strip away your roles in life, your family, your job… who are you? What is your identity?
You are invited to submit a piece of nano fiction that plays off this theme, You could win a signed copy of The Progeny, and publication in an upcoming imprint of Splickety!
In addition, if you submit proof of purchase for pre-ordering The Progeny, you’ll be entered to win a Kindle Fire courtesy of Splickety Publishing. Just screenshot your receipt and attach it with your submission.
Enter a piece of nano flash fiction (that’s 100 words or less), with the theme of identity.
Visit splicketypubgroup.com for contest details.
Contest Open: March 21, 2016
Submission Deadline: Midnight (PST), March 27, 2016
Send your best work to submissions@splicketypubgroup.com with the subject line PROGENY NANO CONTEST.
The contest is based on one of the themes found in my new book, The Progeny, coming May 24th.
Who are you, really? If you strip away your roles in life, your family, your job… who are you? What is your identity?
You are invited to submit a piece of nano fiction that plays off this theme, You could win a signed copy of The Progeny, and publication in an upcoming imprint of Splickety!
In addition, if you submit proof of purchase for pre-ordering The Progeny, you’ll be entered to win a Kindle Fire courtesy of Splickety Publishing. Just screenshot your receipt and attach it with your submission.
Enter a piece of nano flash fiction (that’s 100 words or less), with the theme of identity.
Visit splicketypubgroup.com for contest details.
Contest Open: March 21, 2016
Submission Deadline: Midnight (PST), March 27, 2016
Send your best work to submissions@splicketypubgroup.com with the subject line PROGENY NANO CONTEST.
January 16, 2016
Tosca's Getting Married!
It’s been a hectic season. I'm hard at work on the sequel to my May release, The Progeny, spending time with my future children-to-be, and finishing last-minute details for my January wedding. So if you’ve sent in e-mails or Goodreads questions lately, I'm still likely to respond personally—but might just be a little slower than normal.
In the meantime, who is this man that I'm marrying, you ask?
A little about Bryan:
-He loves candy. Almost as much as I love bacon.
-He bakes cookies from scratch.
-As a single father of four, he does a lot of laundry.
-He prays with the three boys still at home each night when he tucks them in.
-His kids think he’s secretly Batman.
-His black lab, Charlie, can’t stand to be more than a few feet away from him and jealously keeps to his side. And probably pees on my shoes when I'm not looking.
-He taught me how to shoot. I introduced him to The Walking Dead. Yes, we are prepared for the coming zombie apocalypse. (We knew you were concerned about that.)
In the meantime, who is this man that I'm marrying, you ask?
A little about Bryan:
-He loves candy. Almost as much as I love bacon.
-He bakes cookies from scratch.
-As a single father of four, he does a lot of laundry.
-He prays with the three boys still at home each night when he tucks them in.
-His kids think he’s secretly Batman.
-His black lab, Charlie, can’t stand to be more than a few feet away from him and jealously keeps to his side. And probably pees on my shoes when I'm not looking.
-He taught me how to shoot. I introduced him to The Walking Dead. Yes, we are prepared for the coming zombie apocalypse. (We knew you were concerned about that.)
November 10, 2015
Behind the Scenes: On The Legend of Sheba
Why write about the famous Queen of Sheba?
My on-screen answers have to do with wanting to explore this rich, pagan queen who impressed the authors of Kings and Chronicles so much that they included what amounted to her endorsement of King Solomon in their narratives. But my first reason was that I wanted to be a girl again.
After writing the first-person characters of Clay in Demon and Judas in Iscariot, as well as numerous male characters in the Books of Mortals, I missed the female voice I had so enjoyed in Havah. And, being set nearly a thousand years before the time of Christ, the queen’s story would be much easier to research with more room for speculation than, say, Iscariot,
Wrong.
If Iscariot proved difficult for the sheer volume of material available on first century Israel, The Legend of Sheba proved difficult for the opposite reason. Scholars don’t even agree whether Almaqah, the primary god of Sheba (probably present-day Yemen) was a moon or sun deity. Never mind the involvement of the mysterious Ark of the Covenant and all the conspiracy theories surrounding its disappearance and hidden location. Once again, I consulted the experts: missionaries who had served in Yemen—a place too rife with conflict and kidnapping for me to travel for research—history professors, doctors of archaeology and the Hebrew Bible.
This time, I did not overwrite the story, but kept the heart of it forefront in my mind: the ideas of love, possession, and the desire to be truly known.
I had, by this time, begun to date a single father of four—a land developer and farmer who lived an hour away from me. (How we met is another story—one I will tell you if you ask me in person.) I set up shop on sunny days at his kitchen counter when my office became oppressive, a pillow wedged onto a wooden barstool, toes curled round the rungs. The banquet chapter and the bulk of Sheba and Solomon’s letters were written there in the country, out of reach of my cell phone service. I fell in love with a second man during that time—the queen’s loyal eunuch, Yafush, whom I shamelessly modeled after Karen Blixen’s butler Farah in Out of Africa, one of my favorite movies of all time.
The Legend of Sheba took several months longer than expected—about a year and a half—to write. It released September 9, 2014. Four days later, at my home Barnes & Noble book signing, my boyfriend proposed. (The story in photos is on my website.) By the time my next book releases, I will be getting married (you won’t mind if I forego book tour in lieu of a honeymoon, will you?)
My on-screen answers have to do with wanting to explore this rich, pagan queen who impressed the authors of Kings and Chronicles so much that they included what amounted to her endorsement of King Solomon in their narratives. But my first reason was that I wanted to be a girl again.
After writing the first-person characters of Clay in Demon and Judas in Iscariot, as well as numerous male characters in the Books of Mortals, I missed the female voice I had so enjoyed in Havah. And, being set nearly a thousand years before the time of Christ, the queen’s story would be much easier to research with more room for speculation than, say, Iscariot,
Wrong.
If Iscariot proved difficult for the sheer volume of material available on first century Israel, The Legend of Sheba proved difficult for the opposite reason. Scholars don’t even agree whether Almaqah, the primary god of Sheba (probably present-day Yemen) was a moon or sun deity. Never mind the involvement of the mysterious Ark of the Covenant and all the conspiracy theories surrounding its disappearance and hidden location. Once again, I consulted the experts: missionaries who had served in Yemen—a place too rife with conflict and kidnapping for me to travel for research—history professors, doctors of archaeology and the Hebrew Bible.
This time, I did not overwrite the story, but kept the heart of it forefront in my mind: the ideas of love, possession, and the desire to be truly known.
I had, by this time, begun to date a single father of four—a land developer and farmer who lived an hour away from me. (How we met is another story—one I will tell you if you ask me in person.) I set up shop on sunny days at his kitchen counter when my office became oppressive, a pillow wedged onto a wooden barstool, toes curled round the rungs. The banquet chapter and the bulk of Sheba and Solomon’s letters were written there in the country, out of reach of my cell phone service. I fell in love with a second man during that time—the queen’s loyal eunuch, Yafush, whom I shamelessly modeled after Karen Blixen’s butler Farah in Out of Africa, one of my favorite movies of all time.
The Legend of Sheba took several months longer than expected—about a year and a half—to write. It released September 9, 2014. Four days later, at my home Barnes & Noble book signing, my boyfriend proposed. (The story in photos is on my website.) By the time my next book releases, I will be getting married (you won’t mind if I forego book tour in lieu of a honeymoon, will you?)
October 21, 2015
Behind the Scenes: On Iscariot
From the first moment that an editor friend suggested the story of Judas, I was running fast and hard in the other direction. I knew how much research that story would take and was completely cowed.
At some point after avoiding the idea for about a year (this is before work on Forbidden began), I found myself sitting in a restaurant scribbling a scene between Judas and his mother on the paper tablecloth. My head was in my other hand. I was a goner, and I knew it.
I called my agent a few days later, fully expecting him to talk me out of it. He didn’t. All my friends failed in this regard. I flailed around for a few more months. I couldn’t do it.
The thing that finally got me was the idea of slipping into the skin of the only disciple Jesus called friend, of sitting down at the side of this mysterious healer, teacher and uncontrollable maverick called Jesus. I wanted to see him for myself, to experience him in this way.
Over the next year I compiled a library and consulting team of academics, theologians and Bible experts. I went to Israel (and ate so much hummus I couldn’t touch the stuff for two months after returning), read incessantly and then sat down to write. The project took more than three years, (during which time I also wrote Forbidden with Ted Dekker).
Once again, I overwrote the book—this time by 140,000 words (more than 500 pages). Somewhere in that giant forest of history and geek theology I realized I had lost my way, had utterly obscured the trail of this journey and the mystery of Judas and Jesus’ relationship with it.
I thought back to my time in Israel. I had stood on the shores of Galilee’s lake, sat in Capernaum’s synagogue, had seen the theater of history. I had learned so much. But as I entered Jerusalem, I was bereft. Ascending toward the Dome of the Rock that day, steeples and mosques and temples crowding the horizon like so many hands reaching for God, I realized I had not experienced one moment of mystery. I fought back tears on my way toward the mosque, where I stopped to give an old beggar woman a few shekels. The moment I did she grabbed my hand in both of hers, and I nearly fell to my knees. Here was God. And I knew without a doubt I had traveled all the way to Israel just to hold her hand.
I returned to the manuscript and pulled it apart, throwing out three theses’ worth of detail. I returned to the heart of relationship. Iscariot was no longer Judas’ story... it was mine.
The Spring after Iscariot was released, as I was sharing a Styrofoam container of soggy nachos on the floor in front of my TV with my mom, who was visiting at the time, a text came in from my publisher: “Iscariot won the Gold Medallion!” I blinked at the blue bubble of text, a floppy chip hanging out of my mouth. Iscariot had won fiction book of the year. Celebration was short-lived; I was in the final stretch of edits on my novel of Sheba’s infamous queen. I showed the picture of the plaque to my mom, set her up with a TV show, and went back into my office.
At some point after avoiding the idea for about a year (this is before work on Forbidden began), I found myself sitting in a restaurant scribbling a scene between Judas and his mother on the paper tablecloth. My head was in my other hand. I was a goner, and I knew it.
I called my agent a few days later, fully expecting him to talk me out of it. He didn’t. All my friends failed in this regard. I flailed around for a few more months. I couldn’t do it.
The thing that finally got me was the idea of slipping into the skin of the only disciple Jesus called friend, of sitting down at the side of this mysterious healer, teacher and uncontrollable maverick called Jesus. I wanted to see him for myself, to experience him in this way.
Over the next year I compiled a library and consulting team of academics, theologians and Bible experts. I went to Israel (and ate so much hummus I couldn’t touch the stuff for two months after returning), read incessantly and then sat down to write. The project took more than three years, (during which time I also wrote Forbidden with Ted Dekker).
Once again, I overwrote the book—this time by 140,000 words (more than 500 pages). Somewhere in that giant forest of history and geek theology I realized I had lost my way, had utterly obscured the trail of this journey and the mystery of Judas and Jesus’ relationship with it.
I thought back to my time in Israel. I had stood on the shores of Galilee’s lake, sat in Capernaum’s synagogue, had seen the theater of history. I had learned so much. But as I entered Jerusalem, I was bereft. Ascending toward the Dome of the Rock that day, steeples and mosques and temples crowding the horizon like so many hands reaching for God, I realized I had not experienced one moment of mystery. I fought back tears on my way toward the mosque, where I stopped to give an old beggar woman a few shekels. The moment I did she grabbed my hand in both of hers, and I nearly fell to my knees. Here was God. And I knew without a doubt I had traveled all the way to Israel just to hold her hand.
I returned to the manuscript and pulled it apart, throwing out three theses’ worth of detail. I returned to the heart of relationship. Iscariot was no longer Judas’ story... it was mine.
The Spring after Iscariot was released, as I was sharing a Styrofoam container of soggy nachos on the floor in front of my TV with my mom, who was visiting at the time, a text came in from my publisher: “Iscariot won the Gold Medallion!” I blinked at the blue bubble of text, a floppy chip hanging out of my mouth. Iscariot had won fiction book of the year. Celebration was short-lived; I was in the final stretch of edits on my novel of Sheba’s infamous queen. I showed the picture of the plaque to my mom, set her up with a TV show, and went back into my office.
October 14, 2015
Behind the Scenes: On Havah
At some point during the six years I waited for Demon to sell, I randomly penned a single page in the voice of the earth’s first woman. I imagined her nearly 900 years old and near death, preparing at last to tell her full story. I’m not sure why I did this—I only remember her voice, warbled with age, as vivid in my head as my old Korean grandmother’s was the last time I saw her before her death.
And then I put the page away in a drawer where I kept scribbles and random story notes, and forgot about it.
In 2005, as my agent and I were negotiating the sale of Demon, my soon-to-be-editor asked what else I had. I remember looking blankly around, yanking that drawer open and fishing inside. “I have this…” I said, pulling out the fringed notebook page, which eventually became the prologue to Havah. Of course, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. A year later, Genesis commentaries, horticulture textbooks, books on ancient farming, early weapons, textiles, basket weaving, brick-making and early civilizations littered my floor alongside a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
I was fascinated with the emotional journey of Adam and Eve, with the potential for tension between the alpha Adam and his first son, the idea of seeing a first infant, the first death, the first enmity between human and animal and dysfunction in relationship.
But there was a problem. I was paralyzed by Demon’s early success, which had garnered rave reviews and award nominations in the first months of its release. And here I was, about to prove myself a one-hit wonder.
I chased Eve’s story in a dogged panic and overwrote the first draft by 67,000 words (about 260 pages). Somewhere toward the end, I called my friend Meredith.
“I can’t do this anymore. I’m so tired. I can’t get it out.”
“You’re almost there!” she said.
“I can’t—”
“Push! PUSH!!”
I whined, begged for some kind of creative epidural and went back to work, convinced I was birthing some literary monster.
Some time after Havah released with a starred review from Publishers Weekly, I realized I had learned a valuable lesson. I wasn’t sure what it was yet, but it had something to do with forests and trees and simply bearing down on the work.
In 2005, as my agent and I were negotiating the sale of Demon, my soon-to-be-editor asked what else I had. I remember looking blankly around, yanking that drawer open and fishing inside. “I have this…” I said, pulling out the fringed notebook page, which eventually became the prologue to Havah. Of course, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. A year later, Genesis commentaries, horticulture textbooks, books on ancient farming, early weapons, textiles, basket weaving, brick-making and early civilizations littered my floor alongside a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
I was fascinated with the emotional journey of Adam and Eve, with the potential for tension between the alpha Adam and his first son, the idea of seeing a first infant, the first death, the first enmity between human and animal and dysfunction in relationship.
But there was a problem. I was paralyzed by Demon’s early success, which had garnered rave reviews and award nominations in the first months of its release. And here I was, about to prove myself a one-hit wonder.
I chased Eve’s story in a dogged panic and overwrote the first draft by 67,000 words (about 260 pages). Somewhere toward the end, I called my friend Meredith.
“I can’t do this anymore. I’m so tired. I can’t get it out.”
“You’re almost there!” she said.
“I can’t—”
“Push! PUSH!!”
I whined, begged for some kind of creative epidural and went back to work, convinced I was birthing some literary monster.
Some time after Havah released with a starred review from Publishers Weekly, I realized I had learned a valuable lesson. I wasn’t sure what it was yet, but it had something to do with forests and trees and simply bearing down on the work.
October 7, 2015
Behind the Scenes: On Demon
I first got the idea for Demon in 1998 while driving home on a straight and hypnotizing stretch of Nebraska road. I was in the middle of another project, a fantasy novel about a woman warrior I had been working on for years and had affectionately named The Book That Will Kill Me, if only because I had spent years writing and rewriting the first 100 pages like some literary Sisyphus with his boulder. Had I known then what I know now, I would have pressed on to the end and fixed the rest later, but I was bent on getting it right (whatever that is) and pummeling that story into submission. (New writers: do not do not follow my example!)
I jotted down the idea of a demon telling his story, planning to revisit it some day after I had vanquished The Book That Will Kill Me.
“Some day” turned out to be only a few hours later when my motherboard short-circuited as I sat down to write. It fizzled and popped inside the case, a tiny wisp of smoke drifting out the vent. I freaked out, pulled the thing apart, beat my head against the desk, and finally sunk down in a concussive slump. It was early evening by then—help would have to wait til morning.
I sulked out to the sofa with notepad and paper, determined to march on.
Nothing came. Just the faint waft of burning circuitry from the direction of my office.
At last, I flipped the page and began to write this demon idea. The story that would become Demon: A Memoir, was finished six weeks later.
What you may not know about Demon:
-The manuscript took six years to sell.
-It was nearly published under the title The Appointment.
-Every detail of the setting is real, including Clay’s apartment house on Norfolk, the large house in Belmont and the artwork on display at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
-The dim sum restaurant, The China Pearl, is a regular stop for my sister (who lives in Boston) and me whenever I’m in town.
My father, my sister and I all have cameos in Demon. My sister immediately recognized the two of us standing in the Four Seasons’ Bristol Lounge scene. Dad, however, didn’t recognize himself (or his Gold Toe socks!).
For more Demon trivia, see the back of the book!
I jotted down the idea of a demon telling his story, planning to revisit it some day after I had vanquished The Book That Will Kill Me.
“Some day” turned out to be only a few hours later when my motherboard short-circuited as I sat down to write. It fizzled and popped inside the case, a tiny wisp of smoke drifting out the vent. I freaked out, pulled the thing apart, beat my head against the desk, and finally sunk down in a concussive slump. It was early evening by then—help would have to wait til morning.
I sulked out to the sofa with notepad and paper, determined to march on.
Nothing came. Just the faint waft of burning circuitry from the direction of my office.
At last, I flipped the page and began to write this demon idea. The story that would become Demon: A Memoir, was finished six weeks later.
What you may not know about Demon:
-The manuscript took six years to sell.
-It was nearly published under the title The Appointment.
-Every detail of the setting is real, including Clay’s apartment house on Norfolk, the large house in Belmont and the artwork on display at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
-The dim sum restaurant, The China Pearl, is a regular stop for my sister (who lives in Boston) and me whenever I’m in town.
My father, my sister and I all have cameos in Demon. My sister immediately recognized the two of us standing in the Four Seasons’ Bristol Lounge scene. Dad, however, didn’t recognize himself (or his Gold Toe socks!).
For more Demon trivia, see the back of the book!
September 29, 2015
On Writing: Essential Caca
My sister’s bulldog has a penchant for eating stuff he shouldn’t: bits of Frisbee, sponge animals from my niece’s bathtub, the eyeballs of stuffed bears. They all emerge like little treasures in the yard after a warm rain.
You get me.
Far be it from me to compare my beloved art form to a pile of dog business, but you know, there’s a reason Anne Lamott calls them Shitty First Drafts.
When I write I put down a lot of words—upwards of several thousand a day. I do time in my chair (the first part of which may consist of internal debate on the merits of Botox or mindless eyebrow pulling). But somewhere around the twenty-minute mark I get down to it. I write fast and ugly.
I do not look back.
Anyone who knows me knows this goes against all natural law. That I am, in fact, an obsessive nit who will pick at just about anything—sweater pills, labels, cuticles. Especially cuticles. That I can rearrange a sentence like a kitchen shelf for the better part of an hour. But I also know that without writing a bunch of essential caca, I cannot get to the good bits.
What are the good bits? I don’t know. Really—I never know. I never knew a jogger would get hit by a car in Demon. I did not know how a man’s head would shake on his neck in mortal fear... how Eve’s name would sound on the lips of Adam. Without letting it run out from the fingers, I still would be none the wiser.
And so I’ve just learned to trust that those bits are in there.
But let me say: writing crap is tough. We don’t want it to stink long on the page. We have high aspirations for these words; they should reflect on our insouciant brilliance, maybe be worth some kind of money. In the very least, they should not embarrass us, like sweet-faced children who parrot the best expletives of their parents.
And yet, there they are: parroting, stinking, and not worth… well, you know.
I prepare to go mucking on the second pass. I expect to shovel out a load. I expect to wade through manure.
And, against logic, I expect to find treasure.
You get me.
Far be it from me to compare my beloved art form to a pile of dog business, but you know, there’s a reason Anne Lamott calls them Shitty First Drafts.
When I write I put down a lot of words—upwards of several thousand a day. I do time in my chair (the first part of which may consist of internal debate on the merits of Botox or mindless eyebrow pulling). But somewhere around the twenty-minute mark I get down to it. I write fast and ugly.
I do not look back.
Anyone who knows me knows this goes against all natural law. That I am, in fact, an obsessive nit who will pick at just about anything—sweater pills, labels, cuticles. Especially cuticles. That I can rearrange a sentence like a kitchen shelf for the better part of an hour. But I also know that without writing a bunch of essential caca, I cannot get to the good bits.
What are the good bits? I don’t know. Really—I never know. I never knew a jogger would get hit by a car in Demon. I did not know how a man’s head would shake on his neck in mortal fear... how Eve’s name would sound on the lips of Adam. Without letting it run out from the fingers, I still would be none the wiser.
And so I’ve just learned to trust that those bits are in there.
But let me say: writing crap is tough. We don’t want it to stink long on the page. We have high aspirations for these words; they should reflect on our insouciant brilliance, maybe be worth some kind of money. In the very least, they should not embarrass us, like sweet-faced children who parrot the best expletives of their parents.
And yet, there they are: parroting, stinking, and not worth… well, you know.
I prepare to go mucking on the second pass. I expect to shovel out a load. I expect to wade through manure.
And, against logic, I expect to find treasure.
April 9, 2015
On First Drafts
A friend recently asked me if I enjoyed writing. My honest answer was, “Sometimes.”
The truth is that I’m a second or third draft writer. That’s the point in the process when I get to see what kind of clay I’ve really got on the wheel, when I can crimp the edges and pull out my high points, and make the dire ones worse. When I’ll stay up twenty hours straight and, after just enough sleep to make me more tired, go at it again. Because by then, at least, I have something to work with. But that first, initial draft? Pull my fingernails out from the beds with pliers, why don’t you.
I have friends who turn on their playlists and lay down first drafts in a state of euphoric bliss—the weird literary equivalent of women who experience pleasure in childbirth. I have never written like that. I do have moments of stream-of-conscious ecstasy that churn out sentences as coherent as word salad. But most of the time I sit in silence, stare out the window, pick at my lower lip and wonder if my last book, which won some award or another, was the last good thing I had in me.
“But don’t you have a system pretty well down by now?” the friend asks.
I nod vaguely, but the answer is not really. If anything, eight novels in (ten, if you count the unpublishable ones), I have an instinct about the basic material I need to get down, more or less in order. More importantly, I have trust in the writing and editing process and faith that I can patch up the leaks—later.
For now, in the early stages, I’m only interested in one thing: getting the clay on the wheel. I trust that there are seeds in there—of things real, from me, that will resonate in another soul in months and years to come. I don’t know what they are yet, and it’s not my business to force them into shape.
I have a few rules for this process that I briefly listed in my November issue. I put so much stock in these rules that I’m expounding on them below and in the next three issues to come.
1. Write like no one will ever read it.
In 1993, while writing on the staff of
“We just wanted to make a game we would want to play,” the one brother said. I have never forgotten this. Write the story you want to live—and live it for yourself, first. Take that journey—don’t just build a roller coaster for a reader to consume at some point down the line. Ride it, yourself, screaming, yelling, and peeing your pants, first.
Ride it yourself, screaming, yelling and peeing your pants first.
“But what about the audience? You have to think about them!” Forget them. Everything you do from your edits on will be about them. But for now, write with the candor you would in a secret journal. It is the only way to be authentic with the grit of everything you need to say without worrying that it’s pretty or eloquent or clean enough. Don’t be pretty. Be raw.
If you are an aspiring writer whose end goal is to be published, let me tell you something: you will never be as bold and daring as you are in those first blissful years of writing before your work finally gets published. Before critics post public reviews of your work and readers rank you like a blender on Amazon. Before people forget that you’re a real, breathing person and respond only to your picture and covers as a brand. This undiscovered period in your life is an advantage you won’t have twice. Use it.
Eight novels later, I have to trick myself into following this rule. I know my agent, editor, and a movie producer are waiting for my first draft. I want them to like it. Oh, who am I kidding—I want them to tell me it’s the best thing they’ve ever read, that they wept, told their therapist, and pre-ordered 100 copies for friends and distant acquaintances.
But the only way I will touch one cell of their soul is if I banish their faces from my mind—along with beloved readers and reviewers. No one will read this. It is my mantra. This is me, writing secret stuff in safety, dealing some audacious literary badassery. Time to edit, censor, and make coherent later. The good stuff happens now.
The truth is that I’m a second or third draft writer. That’s the point in the process when I get to see what kind of clay I’ve really got on the wheel, when I can crimp the edges and pull out my high points, and make the dire ones worse. When I’ll stay up twenty hours straight and, after just enough sleep to make me more tired, go at it again. Because by then, at least, I have something to work with. But that first, initial draft? Pull my fingernails out from the beds with pliers, why don’t you.
I have friends who turn on their playlists and lay down first drafts in a state of euphoric bliss—the weird literary equivalent of women who experience pleasure in childbirth. I have never written like that. I do have moments of stream-of-conscious ecstasy that churn out sentences as coherent as word salad. But most of the time I sit in silence, stare out the window, pick at my lower lip and wonder if my last book, which won some award or another, was the last good thing I had in me.
“But don’t you have a system pretty well down by now?” the friend asks.
I nod vaguely, but the answer is not really. If anything, eight novels in (ten, if you count the unpublishable ones), I have an instinct about the basic material I need to get down, more or less in order. More importantly, I have trust in the writing and editing process and faith that I can patch up the leaks—later.
For now, in the early stages, I’m only interested in one thing: getting the clay on the wheel. I trust that there are seeds in there—of things real, from me, that will resonate in another soul in months and years to come. I don’t know what they are yet, and it’s not my business to force them into shape.
I have a few rules for this process that I briefly listed in my November issue. I put so much stock in these rules that I’m expounding on them below and in the next three issues to come.
1. Write like no one will ever read it.
In 1993, while writing on the staff of
“We just wanted to make a game we would want to play,” the one brother said. I have never forgotten this. Write the story you want to live—and live it for yourself, first. Take that journey—don’t just build a roller coaster for a reader to consume at some point down the line. Ride it, yourself, screaming, yelling, and peeing your pants, first.
Ride it yourself, screaming, yelling and peeing your pants first.
“But what about the audience? You have to think about them!” Forget them. Everything you do from your edits on will be about them. But for now, write with the candor you would in a secret journal. It is the only way to be authentic with the grit of everything you need to say without worrying that it’s pretty or eloquent or clean enough. Don’t be pretty. Be raw.
If you are an aspiring writer whose end goal is to be published, let me tell you something: you will never be as bold and daring as you are in those first blissful years of writing before your work finally gets published. Before critics post public reviews of your work and readers rank you like a blender on Amazon. Before people forget that you’re a real, breathing person and respond only to your picture and covers as a brand. This undiscovered period in your life is an advantage you won’t have twice. Use it.
Eight novels later, I have to trick myself into following this rule. I know my agent, editor, and a movie producer are waiting for my first draft. I want them to like it. Oh, who am I kidding—I want them to tell me it’s the best thing they’ve ever read, that they wept, told their therapist, and pre-ordered 100 copies for friends and distant acquaintances.
But the only way I will touch one cell of their soul is if I banish their faces from my mind—along with beloved readers and reviewers. No one will read this. It is my mantra. This is me, writing secret stuff in safety, dealing some audacious literary badassery. Time to edit, censor, and make coherent later. The good stuff happens now.
April 2, 2015
On Writing Iscariot
From the first moment that editor friend Jeff Gerke (who had acquired Demon and Havah and now gone on to start his own publishing imprint) suggested the story of Judas, I was running fast and hard in the other direction. I knew how much research that story would take and was completely cowed.
At some point after avoiding the idea for about a year (this is before work on Forbidden began), I found myself sitting in a restaurant scribbling a scene between Judas and his mother on the paper tablecloth. My head was in my other hand. I was a goner, and I knew it.
I called my agent a few days later, fully expecting him to talk me out of it. He didn’t. All my friends failed in this regard. I flailed around for a few more months. I couldn’t do it.
The thing that finally got me was the idea of slipping into the skin of the only disciple Jesus called friend, of sitting down at the side of this mysterious healer, teacher and uncontrollable maverick called Jesus. I wanted to see him for myself, to experience him in this way.
Over the next year I compiled a library and consulting team of academics, theologians and Bible experts. I went to Israel (and ate so much hummus I couldn’t touch the stuff for two months after returning), read incessantly and then sat down to write. The project took more than three years, (during which time I also wrote Forbidden with Ted Dekker).
Once again, I overwrote the book—this time by 140,000 words (more than 500 pages). Somewhere in that giant forest of history and geek theology I realized I had lost my way, had utterly obscured the trail of this journey and the mystery of Judas and Jesus’ relationship with it.
I thought back to my time in Israel. I had stood on the shores of Galilee’s lake, sat in Capernaum’s synagogue, had seen the theater of history. I had learned so much. But as I entered Jerusalem, I was bereft. Ascending toward the Dome of the Rock that day, steeples and mosques and temples crowding the horizon like so many hands reaching for God, I realized I had not experienced one moment of mystery. I fought back tears on my way toward the mosque, where I stopped to give an old beggar woman a few shekels. The moment I did she grabbed my hand in both of hers, and I nearly fell to my knees. Here was God. And I knew without a doubt I had traveled all the way to Israel just to hold her hand.
I returned to the manuscript and pulled it apart, throwing out three theses’ worth of detail. I returned to the heart of relationship. Iscariot was no longer Judas’ story… it was mine.
Last spring, as I was sharing a Styrofoam container of soggy nachos on the floor in front of my TV with my mom, who was visiting at the time, a text came in from my publisher: “Iscariot won the Gold Medallion!” I blinked at the blue bubble of text, a floppy chip hanging out of my mouth. Iscariot had won fiction book of the year. Celebration was short-lived; I was in the final stretch of edits on my novel of Sheba’s infamous queen. I showed the picture of the plaque to my mom, set her up with a new Game of Thrones episode, and went back into my office.
At some point after avoiding the idea for about a year (this is before work on Forbidden began), I found myself sitting in a restaurant scribbling a scene between Judas and his mother on the paper tablecloth. My head was in my other hand. I was a goner, and I knew it.
I called my agent a few days later, fully expecting him to talk me out of it. He didn’t. All my friends failed in this regard. I flailed around for a few more months. I couldn’t do it.
The thing that finally got me was the idea of slipping into the skin of the only disciple Jesus called friend, of sitting down at the side of this mysterious healer, teacher and uncontrollable maverick called Jesus. I wanted to see him for myself, to experience him in this way.
Over the next year I compiled a library and consulting team of academics, theologians and Bible experts. I went to Israel (and ate so much hummus I couldn’t touch the stuff for two months after returning), read incessantly and then sat down to write. The project took more than three years, (during which time I also wrote Forbidden with Ted Dekker).
Once again, I overwrote the book—this time by 140,000 words (more than 500 pages). Somewhere in that giant forest of history and geek theology I realized I had lost my way, had utterly obscured the trail of this journey and the mystery of Judas and Jesus’ relationship with it.
I thought back to my time in Israel. I had stood on the shores of Galilee’s lake, sat in Capernaum’s synagogue, had seen the theater of history. I had learned so much. But as I entered Jerusalem, I was bereft. Ascending toward the Dome of the Rock that day, steeples and mosques and temples crowding the horizon like so many hands reaching for God, I realized I had not experienced one moment of mystery. I fought back tears on my way toward the mosque, where I stopped to give an old beggar woman a few shekels. The moment I did she grabbed my hand in both of hers, and I nearly fell to my knees. Here was God. And I knew without a doubt I had traveled all the way to Israel just to hold her hand.
I returned to the manuscript and pulled it apart, throwing out three theses’ worth of detail. I returned to the heart of relationship. Iscariot was no longer Judas’ story… it was mine.
Last spring, as I was sharing a Styrofoam container of soggy nachos on the floor in front of my TV with my mom, who was visiting at the time, a text came in from my publisher: “Iscariot won the Gold Medallion!” I blinked at the blue bubble of text, a floppy chip hanging out of my mouth. Iscariot had won fiction book of the year. Celebration was short-lived; I was in the final stretch of edits on my novel of Sheba’s infamous queen. I showed the picture of the plaque to my mom, set her up with a new Game of Thrones episode, and went back into my office.
