Alex C. Telander's Blog, page 89

"11/22/63" by Stephen King (Scribner, 2011)

In Stephen King's latest tome, weighing in at almost 850 pages, the master of horror takes on a whole new sub-genre that he hasn't really dealt with before: time travel. What's interesting is while playing around with time travel can be a lot of fun for a while, King sticks to simple rules, and has more fun in making 11/22/63 more of an excellent work of historical fiction.  The date — November 11th, 1963 — is one burned in many people's minds, especially if they were alive and old enough at the time to remember where they were the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

Jake Epping is a thirty-five year old high school teacher living in Lisbon Falls, Maine.  He enjoys his simple life, conveying to kids not just the beauty of the English language, but discussing and enlightening the teenagers with some of the great works of literature.  In the opening of 11/22/63, the reader learns about Harry Dunning's past life.  Dunning is an adult student who got his high school diploma a while ago; Jake still has that very special essay Dunning wrote.  It wasn't grammatically correct, and was filled with spelling errors; but it was also the story of the day Dunning's father came home drunk, when he was a child, and brutally murdered his mother, sister and brother with a hammer, while Dunning barely made it out alive with his life, suffering a smashed leg.

It was a moving story that Jake has never forgotten.  He enjoys his days after school going to see his friend Al, who owns a local diner, where he enjoys one of the most delicious burgers on the planet, and the amazing thing about it is he hasn't raised his prices in decades.  A customer can still enjoy a burger with fries for the ridiculously cheap price of under $3.  It seems like something Jake should be suspicious about, but the burgers taste too damn good.  The following day Jake meets up with Al again and finds him to be a changed man, incredibly aged overnight and he looks like he's dying; that's when Al tells him his story.

In the back of his diner is a portal to 1958.  Al himself has been back a number of times, and each time he comes back through it to the present, everything resets.  He's narrowed everything down to one important event he believes will change everything: the assassination of JFK.  He tried once, spending five years back then, but it didn't work.  Now it's up to Jake.  And just to prove that anything is possible, Jake's first mission is going to be to go back and stop Dunning's father from killing his family.

11/22/63 isn't a time travel science fiction novel, it's a historical fiction novel that features time travel; kind of like how The Time Traveler's Wife was a love story involving time travel.  And while the time travel is an entertaining facet of this novel, it is the moving story of the past, of the 1950s and early '60s, the lives of some incredible characters, and the work of one man's detailed effort to prevent one of the most infamous moments in American history.  King has outdone himself with some immense research, immersing the reader in the feel of this time period, in the minutiae of everyday life for some people living in Texas.  And as the reader reads further into the book, he or she can't not notice the details of this world, and how different it is to our modern one.  The result is a moving story with powerful characters and an insight into a way of life many of us have never experienced, making it one of King's most important works of his career.

Originally written on December 28, 2011 ©Alex C. Telander.

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What's Going on with BookBanter in 2012

I started this blog in September 2008, and debuted the BookBanter podcast in November of the same year, and was soon featuring exclusive interviews with authors.  Since then I've gone on to interview over fifty authors, both on audio and in written interviews.  I've tried to vary my interviewees, not just with science fiction and fantasy, but also nonfiction; I've also made the effort to interview more female writers.  I've met, got to know and become friends with a lot of amazing people.

Over these years, in addition to my book reviewing for over a decade, I've also gotten to know a lot of amazing people in the publishing world, mainly publicists, many different publicists from different publishers of all sizes and kinds.  Part of me has wondered, as I emailed and chatted back and forth with these publicists, what it was that made them decide to get into publishing, and then sometime early last year an idea came to me: why don't I found out about this?

And what better way than to interview them.

Enter Faces of Publishing: a new series of interviews I will be running this year on BookBanter, which will specifically be covering people in publishing, going beyond the author to the people behind the making and creating of these books we read and love.  I've been in touch with a number of publicists, and received some good strong responses and happy agreements to do interviews; I've also been in touch with editors and will be running a number of interviews with them also, and I'm hoping to get some interviews with agents here on BookBanter and any other position in publishing I can track down.

We live in an interesting, unusual time where self-publishing, ebooks, and Amazon are changing the way publishing works.  I feel, therefore, it's more important than ever to see how vital publishing houses are in the production and creation of those things we love to read.

So I'll be running an author interview with Ben Loory on January 15th, and come February 1st I'll be running the first of the Faces of Publishing series, with Justin Golenbock, a publicist for TOR.  I may intersperse an author interview here and there, otherwise I plan on dedicating all of 2012 to interviews with people in publishing.

So here's to a very interesting year with BookBanter.

Wiriting Goals for 2012

(The place where I do most of my writing now; the chair is my old one from when I worked at Borders; the artwork is also from Borders that I always found inspirational, as I would study it while making copies)

It's the start of a new year, which means it's time to look back at my Writing Goals for 2011 and see how I did, and then come up with my writing goals for 2012.  And this is a first, ladies and gentlemen, as I can honestly say I hit all my writing goals for the year, which is certainly a first for me.  I believe the key lies in my setting myself achievable goals for a 12-month period, and while I didn't get the last one done until the last week in December, I can still say that I hit all those writing goals for 2011.

Results for Writing Goals of 2011:

Result for GOAL 1: I stuck to this for most of the year when I was working on a writing project, and the only time I didn't was when I had schedule changes to my daily life that I couldn't predict happening.  GOAL ACHIEVED!

Result for GOAL 2: I did complete my "White Horse novella," though it in fact became an almost 100,00 word novel!  I had to put my other novel, Wyrd, on hold and focus on finishing White Horse due to a difference in tenses in each book that was just driving me crazy switching between them.  In early November I finished White Horse (writing THE END on November 5th, in fact) and was delighted to find it had turned into a nice long book.  Then I put it to sleep and will forget about it for  a number of months.  In February or March I'll pick it up again and begin editing and writing new drafts.  GOAL ACHIEVED!

Result for GOAL 3: While I didn't necessarily hit my deadline of June for finishing the last editing touches on Nothing is an Accident, I nevertheless did complete this last part of the writing process in early August and began (and continue to) send it out and query it to agents.  GOAL ACHIEVED!

Result for GOAL 4: This was the one that didn't get done until the last week in December with just days to go!  But this was mainly because the other "novella" I was working on became a full-length book that I had to focus on solely.  But at the end of it all, I hit page 250 and ended up passing it, stopping at page 253 with over 52,00 words written.  GOAL ACHIEVED!

Result for GOAL 5: Ended up writing three short stories for the year, and since my goal was two to four, I'm delighted to have hit this number.  One I'm currently sending out to magazines; another I submitted for an anthology that was rejected, but will continue sending it out; the other didn't work as a story.  GOAL ACHIEVED!

Result for GOAL 6: Pretty much stuck to this regimen, but as always could've done more. Still: GOAL ACHIEVED!

Writing Goals for 2012:

GOAL #1: Hit Page 500 of Wyrd.  The goal for the manuscript I'm working on, Wyrd, this year is to hit page 500.  One might say this should be the end of the book with how it's going, but I have a feeling I'm going to hear page 500 and have more story to tell, so we'll just have to see.

GOAL #2: To be half ready with White Horse.  By this I mean to have the manuscript half-edited, or either in a second or third draft, but at the halfway point of being completely edited.  I have a feeling I might get more done than this, but want to hedge my bets with the other projects I'm working on.  One thing I do know about this manuscript is that I'm going to change the name.

GOAL #3: Begin work on second Four Horsemen book.  White Horse is the first book in a four-book series involving four separate and distinct post-apocalyptic worlds.  This goal is to get started on the second book, whether it's with research, outlining, or writing out the first couple of pages, but to get it started in some way.

GOAL #4: Write 2-4 short stories. Since this worked well for last year's goal, I'm setting it again for this year.

GOAL #5: Self-publish two short story collections.  This is already in process, I have the cover and layout set for the first collection, called Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers, and hope to self-publish it on Smashwords later this month.  The second collection, In That Quiet Earth, I plan to self-publish  in March or April.

GOAL #6: Self-Publish Kyra: The First Book of Enchantus.  My young adult fantasy book that I'm currently in the process of getting ready for self-publishing.  I don't plan to get this self-published until the summer, say June or July.

GOAL #7: Start work on the the second book of Enchantus.  Depending on how things go with self-publishing Kyra, but if things take off and it sells well and there is demand for the sequel, then I plan to start work on it in some way, whether it's outlining and/or writing.  I would really like to do this and am excited to see what story would come out of it.

GOAL #8: Give Nothing is an Accident a home. By this I mean, by the end of the year, Nothing is an Accident will need to be either available to readers in some way, or in the process of reaching that goal.  I'm still querying it to agents, and the next step will be looking into small presses, and the final step would be to self-publish which, if it becomes necessary, would probably be happening in fall, like September or October.

Okay, that's the writing goals for the year then, and if it didn't make me excited writing this out, then I think there would be something wrong with me, but at the end of this post I'm totally psyched to get started on hitting these goals.

Here's to another successful year of hitting my writing goals!