S.K. Keogh's Blog: The Jack Mallory Chronicles, page 10

BOOK REVIEW: UNTOLD DAMAGE

Many years have passed since I’ve read a crime drama. The last one was a Dick Francis novel (I had read several of his, being a horse person interested in the racing world). Most of my fiction reading, however, is limited to historical novels. But recently I picked up the debut novel, Untold Damage, by Robert K. Lewis, and I zipped through it in less than two weeks (also very unusual for me).

Lewis, a resident of San Francisco, uses that city for the setting of his novel. It opens by introducing the protagonist, Mark Mallen, as an ex-cop junkie, a man deep into his addiction to heroin yet not so deep that he has totally lost the memory of who and what he once was–a successful undercover narcotics cop with a wife and daughter. When a detective visits him with word of the murder of Mallen’s closest friend from his days on the force, Mallen begins a journey to break his addiction and find those responsible for his friend’s murder.

The story is well-paced, the characters clearly portrayed. The dialogue rings true as does Lewis’s knowledge of his subject. Mallen’s struggle to get clean and stay that way is woven throughout the narrative, always there in the background like a dark curtain that threatens to fall over the hero and drag him back to the darkness. The reader easily cheers for him and hopes that he not only stays clean and solves his friend’s murder, but that he may someday find happiness again with his estranged family.

I enjoyed the story being set in San Francisco instead of someplace more familiar like New York City or Los Angeles. We see too much of those cities on television crime dramas. Lewis uses the city and its underbelly of crime and drugs like another character in the story.

There are few novels that I’ve read where I became invested enough in the characters to want to read on after the last page is turned. But I am happy to say that Untold Damage was one of those books. I look forward to Lewis’s follow-up novel, Critical Damage.

Later this week Robert K. Lewis will join me here for a little Q & A about himself and his writing. Stay tuned! In the meantime, check out his blog, Needle City: http://needlecity.wordpress.com/

PATRICK O’BRIAN: AN INSPIRATION TO MANY

We all have favorite authors. As I have mentioned before on this blog, mine is Patrick O’Brian. Many readers became fans of nautical fiction because of reading O’Brian, whereas my introduction to O’Brian came after my introduction to the genre many years ago. I did not read Master and Commander until after seeing and thoroughly enjoying the movie of the same name. Shortly after seeing the movie, I picked up the book and then went on to read the entire series of books (20) about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. (The given names of these characters particularly tickled me because at that time I had written The Prodigal, in which two of my characters are also named Jack and Stephen.)

When I was a child, I was a voracious reader. I had my favorite series: the Black Stallion series and the Circle of Light series, to name two. Yet as an adult, I found myself reader less and writing more, mainly because I could not find an author with characters that really engaged me; to fill that void, I created my own characters. Not until I started reading O’Brian did I find an author whose characters not only interested me, but whose prose enthralled me. O’Brian reminds me in many ways of Charles Dickens: writing that can, at times, seem obtuse, but upon closer reflection is complex and beautiful. He throws around adjectives and adverbs in a way that I love but is more often frowned upon by modern-day critics. Visit any writers’ websites and you will be lectured about staying away from descriptive writing like the plague. Yet readers whom I speak with more often than not say that they love descriptive writing and miss it when it’s not there in novels.

O’Brian inspired my own writing to be more descriptive, to always look for a different way to say things. And he’s given me a wider vocabulary. I love authors who teach me new words. That love was enabled by the built-in dictionary in my Kindle. With the tap of a finger, I can immediately learn the definition of a new word and highlight it for my own use later in my own writing. I once had a critique partner who chastised me for using words that she didn’t know, and she insisted writing should be understandable for high school level readers. To me, that is doing a disservice to young minds. They should be challenged by what they read. They should aspire to know what the writer knows, including a wide vocabulary.

As an adult, I have never found a novel that so engaged me that I read it more than once. I recently spent some time away from O’Brian while reading other historical fiction writers, and while I liked most of those books well enough, there aren’t any that I would want to read twice, let alone multiple times, like I do with O’Brian. And I find that when I am away from O’Brian, my own writing style suffers.

What, at its core, attracts me time and time again to his books? The prose, sure, but even more are the characters. Not just the main characters, but the minor ones as well, like Killick and Bonden. And then there’s the humor. A very intelligent, quick-witted humor, like Jack’s incessant knack for murdering a well-known saying or quip. So when aspiring writers wonder which is more important–plot or character–I say character. (Granted, having both is ideal.) Without a love of O’Brian’s well-developed characters, I would not have such a strong desire to read those novels again and again.

I am almost done with my second read-through of O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series. During this second voyage, Norton released the series in e-book format (my preferred way to purchase/read books). So, one by one, I’m purchasing the e-books (obviously I already own the series in paperback) and reading them. It’s wonderful to now have my favorite author’s books all at my fingertips whenever I want to revisit them.

So if you haven’t read O’Brian, I urge you to shove off and give way for one of the best series of books around. The first book might seem a bit daunting to those who are uninitiated in the era of Age of Sail, but stick with it because the writing and characters will draw you in and have you downloading the second book, then the third, etc. in no time.

 

Of Architects and Gardeners

I enjoyed reading author George R.R. Martin’s analogy about the two different types of writers when it comes to how a story is formed and executed. (Mr. Martin, if you don’t already know, is the author of the acclaimed A Song of Fire and Ice series, which was made into the highly popular HBO series, Game of Thrones.) This is what he had to say:

“I often said that writers are of two types. There is the architect, which is one type. The architect, as if designing a building, lays out the entire novel at a time. He knows how many rooms there will be or what a roof will be made of or how high it will be, or where the plumbing will run and where the electrical outlets will be in its room. All of that stuff before he drives the first nail. Everything is there in the blueprint.

“And then there’s the gardener who digs the hole in the ground, puts in the seed and waters it with his blood and sees what comes up. The gardener knows certain things. He’s not completely ignorant. He knows whether he planted an oak tree, or corn, or a cauliflower. He has some idea of the shape but a lot of it depends on the wind and the weather and how much blood he gives it and so forth.

“No one is purely an architect or a gardener in terms of writers, but many writers tend to one side or the other. I’m very much more of a gardener.”

I, too, am a gardener. I would feel constricted if I plotted everything out with great detail. Part of the magic of writing for me is when the characters take over and show me things I never expected and take me places I had never planned.

What type of writer are you?

Harvesting Rice at Middleton Plantation

This is an informative, short video about harvesting “Carolina Gold” rice at Middleton Plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. I used the grounds of Middleton Plantation as inspiration for the grounds of Leighlin Plantation in the Jack Mallory Chronicles, while I used Middleton’s plantation house as inspiration for Wildwood Plantation’s manor house in my stories.

Like Middleton Plantation, Leighlin Plantation grows rice as one of its staple crops (a new crop to the region in the late 17th century), though “Gold” rice specifically wasn’t introduced until the early 18th century. However, the growing/harvesting process would have been the same for any type of rice grown in the Charleston region at that time.

I wish this video went through the whole process from planting to growing to harvesting to polishing, etc., but the video is still awesome in its abbreviated form.

TAPPING INTO THE YOUNGER DEMOGRAPHIC THROUGH UNORTHODOX METHODS

In today’s highly competitive market, authors have to be creative not only in crafting their novels but in finding ways to sell them as well. That often means stepping outside the box and doing things that might make others in the field uncomfortable. It means searching beyond the known audience for your novel and tapping into readers who have yet to discover not only your writing but your genre as well.

When Fireship Press, the publisher of my debut historical adventure, The Prodigal, suggested to their authors that they build a presence on Tumblr, the concept was not completely foreign to me. I was familiar with Tumblr through various entertainment aspects such as movie fandoms and artwork, and I followed a couple of Tumblr blogs already. But I didn’t have my own account at that point.

At first I figured Tumblr would not be “my audience” for my historical novel because Tumblr has an overall younger demographic than the traditional target audience for historical novels like The Prodigal. But then I considered that perhaps that younger demographic was exactly what I needed to tap into to help boost sales of The Prodigal. After all, what are some of the biggest selling movies/books in recent memory? Things like The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, the Twilight series, etc. Say what you will about their literary merits or lack thereof, the bottom line is those series are huge commercial successes because of their young audiences.

So, I wondered, how could I make Tumblr work for me and my writing while also being an enjoyable experience, a place where I was highly motivated to post daily? Treating Tumblr like I treat this blog, which is dedicated to writing subjects, would not gain me followers among the younger crowd at Tumblr (which, by the way, is now in the Top 10 social media websites in the United States). So I asked myself what did I–a 48-year-old woman–have in common with the younger folks on Tumblr? What do young adults spend much of their time doing? I wish I could answer reading but unfortunately that’s not true. No, they are more likely to watch a movie than pick up a book. After all, going to the movies is a social activity while reading a book is decidedly more private. And young adults are all about the social aspect of life.

So I set up my Tumblr account, introduced myself as a writer and promoted The Prodigal at the outset, then I went off the rails by many professional writers’ standards: I began blogging about my current favorite movie, “The Dark Knight Rises”, and my current favorite actor, Tom Hardy, both of which have huge followings on Tumblr.  Tumblr’s biggest asset is its awesome photographic capabilities and the ease with which bloggers can reblog others’ posts, pictures, etc. It makes it a very interconnected social site, something that feeds the fandoms because, again, the visual is more likely to grab a follower’s interest than just a bunch of text.

How does engaging in such fandoms help a writer sell their novel? You introduce your followers (who then, hopefully, reblog your content to their followers, and on and on) to your writing craft. But I knew I couldn’t just slap content from The Prodigal out there and expect the non-traditional audience to suddenly lap it up. So, like with the shared experience of movie fandoms, I needed (and wanted) to write something that they would want to read. A subject I already knew thousands of people on Tumblr were interested in and that I was interested in as well. Something that would introduce new readers to me as a writer, something they would read and enjoy enough to consider then going to Amazon, etc. and checking out The Prodigal.

So one hundred pages later I’m into an ever-expanding story that tells the origins of the fascinating character Bane from “The Dark Knight Rises.” One of my followers on Tumblr, after reading the first chapter, suggested I post the story at FanFiction.net, which I did. At FanFiction.net I have readers from 34 different countries around the world. In the month of November, the story had 2,403 hits and 914 viewers. There, like on my Tumblr, I promote The Prodigal by posting the book blurb in my profile and regularly mentioning it at the end of new installments, directing those who enjoy my writing to consider buying/reading my debut novel. I know of at least two people who bought the book through this type of promoting. With Tumblr’s beautiful picture capabilities, I regularly post a “Shameless Plug” for The Prodigal, complete with a gorgeous picture of the book’s cover.

Fireship Press recently posted on their Facebook page a story of an author who wrote a story for her Twitter followers and generated a lot of interest through it. Many others give away free books to generate new readership. But like my story on Tumblr and FanFiction.net, or that author’s story on Twitter, writing a “free” story on social media can be just as effective and definitely more interactive than giving away a physical book. It encourages your followers to come back every day to your site, waiting with bated breath for the next installment, and introduces your voice to new readers. And, speaking for myself, it’s just a helluva lot of fun to write “just for fun” and share that passion with readers who then give you instant feedback and create a valuable dialogue between writer and reader; you build a relationship.

I recently received this message from one of my Tumblr followers, a sample of similar remarks I’ve received between the three different sites where my story is posted: “I just wanted to tell you how much I love Risen From Darkness. I check it all the time for updates, and it’s one of the highlights of my day when there’s a new chapter. I love your characterization of Bane, it feels so spot on for a child in that situation. I’m definitely going to check out your book!”

To those more traditional-thinking writers who might poo-poo these new strategies to expand your audience, consider this. 50 Shades of Grey originated in the fanfiction world before it ever became a novel. And we all know how many copies that novel sold. Though we all may talk a good game about “real writing,” the bottom line is sales because without sales there won’t be another book.

 

SPIELBERG AND “LINCOLN”: BRINGING HISTORY TO LIFE

There are few things I enjoy more in life than going to a movie that I have highly anticipated, especially one that is historical in nature. And the American Civil War is, to me, the most fascinating era in American history. Being a Steven Spielberg fan, having such a movie made by Mr. Spielberg increases the anticipation, for I know the effort will be superb. So when the lights went down today in a packed theater in Michigan and the words “Lincoln” appeared on the screen, I smiled with all the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning.

Of course I knew Daniel Day-Lewis would be sublime as Abraham Lincoln and he most certainly was, but he was by no means the only jewel of this production. Sally Fields delivered a heart-wrenching, realistic portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln; Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens displayed both wit and conviction; David Strathairn as William Seward made me believe Seward himself had resurrected to portray himself, so much did he look like the real man. Even the smaller parts, like that of John Hawkes as Robert Lathum (fans of the television series “Deadwood” will remember Hawkes) and Walton Goggins (“Justified” television series) as Clay Hutchins were memorable as well.

While I could see Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln the transformation was no less stunning, from his humor to his passion for politics to his grief as a father and husband. Throughout the movie Spielberg shows us Lincoln’s humanity, a man who seems both larger than life yet as accessible as any man on the street. His stories and rhetoric are often laced with humor.

One of my favorite aspects of the movie was the dialogue. While steeped in that era’s formality, it was delivered by the actors in an easily understood fashion. I’ve always loved the collective sense of humor among Americans of that era. It was threaded throughout the primary and secondary sources I’ve read and used as research for my own writing. And this comes across in the dialogue convincingly and authentically.

John Williams composed the soundtrack, as he does for so many of Spielberg’s films, and he does a masterful job, as always. The music is subdued and beautiful but never upstages the actors or the scene, instead simply enhancing the mood with seamless understatement.

I was pleasantly surprised by the large crowd at a matinee on a beautiful day. Though there were few younger folks there, I hope word of mouth from us long-in-the-tooth viewers will bring more of the younger generation to see this film, and once it is released on blu-ray and DVD I would certainly hope that every history teacher in high schools and universities uses it as a teaching tool.

I overheard one viewer call the movie “gripping” after it was over. Indeed it was, from start to finish. There were no action sequences, no big special effects or explosions…just great acting, great entertainment, the magic of movies, and history brought to life before our very eyes.