Bryce Moore's Blog, page 269

Mormons and Money: My Response to the Businessweek Article

Sheesh. It feels like I've been writing a lot of Mormon posts over the past few months. Not my real intent with this blog, but at the same time, a lot of my friends come here for my take on Mormon current events, so I kind of feel obligated to oblige. And--probably due to the Romney run for presidency--Mormons have been in the news a lot lately. Up this time? Businessweek did a smear story on Mormon finances. (And for the official church response to the article, go here.) Why do I call it a smear and not a balanced article?



Because that's what it is.



The entire slant of that article is very anti-Mormon, from the way it paints Thomas Monson as the head of the corporation, to the way it frequently cites ex-Mormons for many of its sources. (Hint: if you're talking to people who have left a church and are now making money writing books about that church, chances are they have an agenda. And that's to sell those books. It's not to write about how great the church was.) The Mormons it does cite, it does so in an effort to paint us all as money-grubbing greedy pigs.



Yes, I might be taking it a bit more sensitively than a non-Mormon would, but what would you expect? And I'm sorry, but when the cover image is this gem, there's not really any way to take the article other than as a smear:








So. How accurate are the facts of the article? I'm not an insider when it comes to Mormon business affairs, but I do have some connections, and I've seen how things run "behind the scenes" to a small extent. I can speak to how things are conducted on a local level, and I know that a large chunk of money goes out to individuals in need in the community on a case-by-case basis. I know that no one's getting rich on a local level from the church. That's a fact.



But once you move up the ranks to the upper echelons of the church, are people making money?



Again, I don't have access to people's bank accounts, so I can't guarantee that they're not. But if they are making buhzillions of dollars, they do an excellent job of not spending any of it. My grandparents used to live in the same condo complex that Gordon Hinckley (the prophet before Thomas Monson) lived in. I would see him and his wife in the elevator sometime. It was a nice condo complex. It had a pool (I loved that pool) and an exercise room I used once. But it wasn't a multi-millionaire's hangout. My grandfather was an organist, my grandmother a school teacher--if that gives you any idea.



The Mormon church is a pretty small community, even with it getting as big as it is. (14 million members now, probably around half of those are actually active). Especially in Utah, it's not a community where you could be throwing money around and not have it come back to bite you. Too many eyes to see it.



That said, yes, I believe some of the church leaders have a great deal of money. I'm not sure how much. They made that money--for the most part--in their individual business ventures before they became church leaders. Among the current Twelve Apostles, there's a heart surgeon, U of Chicago law professor, nuclear engineer, president of Papermate, several university presidents, a healthcare executive, and lawyers. All of them retired now, of course--but all of them made a whole lot more money than I make, you can bet that. Should they have left their full time careers that provided for their families, only to start making minimum wage? Some in society seem to think church and wealth have to be an either/or. Mormons definitely don't believe that. And I guess that can come across as grating to people. That said, Mormons are very generous with their money. Just look at how much Romney has donated. But then again, he donated it to the church, so it "doesn't count."



Sometimes it seems that non-religious people feel like anyone who's religious really ought to be wearing burlap all the time. Mormons definitely don't take that tact. We certainly believe you can be spiritual and financially successful. Of course, we don't believe your personal financial success is an outward indicator of your spirituality--despite the efforts of Businessweek to paint us like that.


The article has an unspoken accusation that the church leaders are getting rich off this. That because the church doesn't show all its finances to whomever asks, it must be trying to do something nefarious. The City Creek mall is a prime example of this. The church spent a lot of money on the project, so it must be a conspiracy of some sort. Here's my take: downtown Salt Lake was dying. People were moving out, and it wasn't exactly the place you'd enjoy hanging out on a Friday night. Certainly not with a family. Smack dab in the middle of downtown Salt Lake is Temple Square--a tourist destination for people coming to the city, and  also the center of church operations. If the downtown had continued its downward spiral, that spot would have lost much of its utility to the church. Investing the money in the City Creek Center is a way to counteract that trend.



Again, what it comes down to for me is that if this is a crime or part of some scheme, who's benefiting? The for-profit operations of the church are run as companies. They pay their taxes. I can see the contrast between what's typically thought of as religious matters and business matters, and how they bleed over into each other in some areas of the Mormon church.



Where does the money go? You've got BYU, where tuition is $4,500 per year for Mormons--$9,000 per year for non-Mormons. That's a steal--and it's that low because the church values education highly, and subsidizes the prices for students. You've got the operating costs of all the buildings and properties across the globe. You've got serious welfare efforts--both on a global and local scale. You've got 50,000 missionaries out in the world. They pay $400/month each, true. But they get a whole lot more than that back, depending on where they're living. You try living on $400/month and see how far it gets you in New York City.



Plus, the church is very much into practicing what it preaches. It teaches its members to save money. To live prudently. To make wise business decisions. Should it come as a big surprise, then, that it's thrifty with its money? That it benefits from the good business sense of its leadership? What do people want--an institution that's deep in debt? One that gives 100% of its money to other institutions? I think the church is in a lose-lose position with some people.



I don't know. If you think Mormons are secretive and up to no good, this article is going to confirm that belief. My blog post won't likely do much against it. People can say I've been taken in by the church. That I'm brainwashed or whatever. But like I said, I'm not uninformed. My family is friends with a lot of church leaders, including some of the current Twelve Apostles. These are good men. They aren't pulling a fast one on anyone. If they are, they're seeing no benefit from it other than little 0s being added to some bank account somewhere.



I just don't buy it.

Helpful Writer's Block Solution: An Internet Off Button

So after writing my big I-can't-stand-writing-middles post yesterday, it still took me a while to actually get my bum in gear and write that 1000 words. And while I was procrastinating, it didn't take much thinking to find out why I was having such trouble.



The internet.



It's everywhere. It's always on. And it's always entertaining. (New movie trailers! New Flash games! Fascinating Wikipedia articles! Facebook! Twitter! FailBlog!) It also happens to be on the same machine I use to write--the computer.



So I could go buy a type writer (not necessarily the best decision from an editing standpoint), or I could look for an Off button somewhere. I chose to go the Off button route. Basically, I wanted something that would turn off the internet--or close to it--for a set period of time. Something that, once I flicked that switch, it wasn't going to come back on. Because I know me. And I know how easily distracted I am. I'll be writing, I'll come to a part that's a little speed bump, and instead of getting over it, I'll check Facebook to "give myself some time to think." The theory was that if I didn't have that outlet to turn to, I'd sit and get over the bumps as they arose.



The tool I settled on is Cold Turkey. I chose it mainly because it's free. You install it, then select what time-wasting sites you want to disable. (It comes with some presets, and you can add as many as you like.) Not quite the internet bomb I ideally would use, but close enough for me to use it instead of some of the paid offerings that were out there. You tell it how long you want to disable those sites, and then you click OK. Once you've done that, there's no going back. Try to cheat it, and it disables the sites for a full week.



Slash and burn, baby.



I turned it on, then closed down my browser completely. No tabs. No anything.



I wrote 1,400 words in less than an hour



I'd call that a success. It worked again this morning, too. Every time I wanted to avoid writing, I had nothing to avoid it with. This is a Very Good Thing, and hopefully it'll get me through this bump and into the ending of the novel, which will be much easier to write.



Anyway--that's what I've done. What do you do to avoid distractions? Most of you probably have much greater willpower than me. I know. Sad that I have to turn to technological means to keep myself focused. Maybe I'll get better at that over time . . .

Frustration Incarnate: Book Middles

I'm not a fan of middles, at least not when it comes to writing. I've been working on a book now for the past few months. It's basically a YA Ocean's Eleven--with magic. It's ideally supposed to be a fun romp through an intricate fantasy underground. And from the responses of people who have read sections of it thus far, it's succeeding.



If only writing it were proving to be as fun.



I've already blogged about how finding a character's voice can be a tricky thing for me to nail down. (The biggest problem being switching from writing the end of one book--where the voice has had time to become very concrete and easy to write for me--over to the beginning of a non-sequel. My writing just keeps trying to veer back to that last voice, and it takes a lot of effort to avoid that.) But once the voice is down, then the book starts to pick up speed.



I've got the voice down now. I know the main character better. It's easier to write what he's thinking and how he's responding to situations.



I know how the book begins. (I've now revised that--three times. It'll likely be revised a couple more.) I know how it ends. (Less likely to be revised as heavily.) But sitting down to write the part I'm at right now--the middle--is just proving to be like pulling teeth. Getting that 1,000 words done each day is taking nothing less than pure determination. I sit down at the keyboard and stare at the screen, then find myself thinking of all the things I'd rather be doing. Checking Facebook. Twitter. The news. Writing a blog post. Cleaning the house. Mowing the lawn. Researching something.



Anything but actually writing.



I know this is stupid. Every day, I see firsthand how actually writing that 1,000 words isn't as difficult as it seems at first. I barrel through it, and I'm done for the day. It's a great feeling. But then the next day rolls around, and I'm right back there in front of that darn blank spot on the computer screen, watching the cursor blink and wishing it would just type itself.



Why is this such a difficult part?



I think it's because the beginning is sort of like a puzzle, and I enjoy puzzles. Figuring out how pieces fit together. The ending is exciting. You get to write the build up to the climax and then have a great big scene. That's a lot of fun. But getting from one point to another--in a way that's interesting to audiences, and makes that big climax make sense . . .



Tricky.



Anyway. I don't mean to complain too much. Really, this whole blog post is an illustration of my point. I'm writing this instead of getting my 1,000 words done. Which only postpones the inevitable.



Anyone out there have tips on how to handle the doldrums of the middle? Please share.[image error]

Downton Abbey Fans: Have You Checked Out Foyle's War?

I remember back when I was working in the Orem Public Library media department (loved that place!), a lot of people would come in for the TV series. Foyle's War was a constant favorite. I never had the time or interest back then to check it out--too busy with grad school and the like--but when it popped up in Netflix a week or two ago, I decided to see what the fuss had been about.



Complete awesome.



The show is a series of 1.5 hour murder mysteries, all set against the backdrop of Britain in World War II. It's not a series about the war--it's a series that's historically informed by the events of the war. Think of it like Mad Men without the booze and hopeless feeling that none of the characters will ever redeem themselves. Or Downton Abbey, with people getting murdered.



Good times.



Denisa and I both really love the show. The plots are twisty turny and very complex, the actors do a splendid job (I particularly like how consistent Foyle is played, and we both think Sam is fantastic) and the balance of history and mystery is just right. You get details about how life was like back then, without it turning into a Ken Burns production. For example, there's a mystery that takes place right before Dunkirk, and you see the character's responses to the rescue effort. The show starts at the beginning of the war, so you have the firs  few episodes filled with people second guessing Britain getting involved. You see that even WWII wasn't a "everybody knows this war is the right thing to do" sort of thing. True, it dabbles in a bit too much melodrama now and then, but so did Downton, so I'm okay with it.



I really like how the episodes are self-contained, so you can consume one per evening and not be tempted to go for two. (3 hours of Foyle, it turns out, is a bit much. 1.5 is super. Speaking from experience.)



If you're a fan of mystery or period dramas, I heartily encourage you to add this to your queue. Anyone out there already seen it? Am I just late to the party again?

Talking with Clouds: Vodnik Chapter 11 (and a Deleted Scene)

It really feels like chapter 11 should have something to do with going bankrupt . . . but it doesn't. Oh well. For those of you keeping track, this is the chapter where Lesana comes to actually talk to Tomas and plead for his help. Not a long one this time. It was pretty much created from the ground up during the revision process. Lesana in draft 1 didn't have a whole lot to do in the here and now. She couldn't speak (there's a scene I cut where she speaks by using clouds. Let me see if I can find that, actually--it was a fun little bit that got revised into oblivion). (Why couldn't she speak? Because she's made out of water. I can't remember the reason, honestly. It made sense at the time, but then during revision, it stopped being logical, so I ditched it.)



Anyway, with so little "screen time," it was hard for audiences (and Tomas) to really connect to her. And I had this whole subplot with her trying to escape the Vodnik, and without her actually showing up to explain that . . . it didn't work. So this scene came up.



Anyway--not much to add about this chapter, so I'll just leave you with the deleted scene for this week. After reading it over, it reminded me of several changes that the book went through beyond what I had recalled. Lesana originally had no real connection to the Vodnik. Not that she was aware of, at least. She'd been dead for so long that she'd forgotten. She had a much more detached personality, too. (The underlined parts, in case you were wondering, were how I used to denote that it should be italicized. Kind of a dated notation method that I no longer use, actually.



Hope you enjoy it!



DELETED SCENE: Cloud Lesana



[Just to put this in context, this originally took place right after Tomas went on the tour of the castle with his uncle. He's at the top of the tower, and his uncle and Katka just left, giving him some alone time.]






I
sighed and stared out over the city and up at the clouds.  It was a sunny day--I don’t think it could
have been as hot as it was if it weren’t--and the clouds that managed to endure
the heat were fluffy cotton balls, the kind of clouds that probably got beat up
in high school because they were too scrawny. 
The funny thing was that usually fluffy clouds like that appeared high
up in the sky, but if possible, they seemed closer than they had a few minutes
ago.

I
focused on one in particular.  It looked
almost like a woman walking toward me, with her hair blowing in the wind and
separating out into cloud trails.  The
more I studied it, the more I could picture it. 
That little bump on the head was the nose, and there were even two puffs
where her feet would appear from under her dress.

The
cloud seemed to get smaller the closer it got to me, making it so that it
stayed the same relative size.  I
probably would have been freaked out, if it weren’t for one thing: as it got
closer, I could make out two dots where the woman’s eyes would be--looking
almost like holes where the sky broke through the cloud, except the color
inside them was too dark for the sky.  It
was sea blue.  And the nose was
unmistakable.

Lesana.

I
took a moment to look around me.  No one
was near, and I didn’t hear any sign of the tour coming up.  This was about as alone as I was going to get
at the castle.  I looked back at the
girl.  “Hello?” I said.

The
clouds swirled and moved, seeming in one way just to be buffeted by a stray
patch of wind, but at the same time making it look like the girl raised her
hand and held out a finger in the universal “wait one minute” pose.  When she was even closer, I looked down into
the courtyard.  What would people think
if they looked up and saw . . . a cloud. 
Come to think of it, they probably wouldn’t think much; she wouldn’t
look like a girl from below--just a close cloud.  It might be worth a “huh, look at that,” but
not much more.  As long as it didn’t look
like I was talking to it.

When
I looked back up, Lesana was close enough to touch.  She stood there in the air, hovering.  She lacked any details, besides the
eyes.  It was as if someone had taken
cloud and molded it like clay into the shape of a person.  She was like an unpainted white model, just a
bit puffier.

“Lesana?”
I asked.

She
seemed confused, although it was hard to tell the emotions of a cloud.  She opened her mouth to speak, but instead of
sound coming out, little written words emerged, each one delicately etched in
wisps of cloud.  It was the strangest way
of talking I’d ever seen.  What did
you call me?

I
had to squint to read it before the breeze snatched it away.  Her speech--handwriting--seemed flowery and
archaic, with flourishes at the ends of the letters.  I cleared my throat.  “Lesana. 
That’s your name, right?” 

She
frowned and thought for a moment, then nodded and said/wrote, “I think it
might be.  Yes.  Lesana. 
How did you know?”

That
stumped me.  “You mean you haven’t been
sending those vision things to me?”  It
was the only thing that had made sense.

She
shook her head.  “What visions?”

I
glanced behind me back the way I had come up. 
Katka and Lubos had said I wouldn’t have much time, and I wanted some
answers.  I turned back to Lesana.  “Never mind that.  Why did you decide to talk to me now?”

I’ve
been wanting to talk to you ever since I saw you--the wind blurred a few words
before I could catch them--night, down by the canal.

So
that was her, too.  “Oh,” I said.

You
saw me then, yes?

I
nodded, and she nodded back.  I
thought so.  I’d never seen anyone notice
me before.  And you see others, too?

I
nodded again.  I was talking to a
cloud.  And worse yet, I was attracted to
her.

I
remember hearing about people like you, back before.

“Before
what?”

Before
I died.

Dumb
question.  “What happened to you,
then?  How did you get to be this way?”

Lesana
shrugged.  I don’t remember.  It’s been too long.  She turned and pointed down to the city.  I remember I used to live there, though it
didn’t look like that then, of course. 
It was more like this.  She
breathed out a large amount of cloud, and once it left her lips, it assembled
itself into a perfect diorama of a small city house, sort of what you’d expect
Sleeping Beauty to stay in when she was slumming it as a peasant.  If that’s what the fashionable architecture
had been like when she died, Lesana had been dead for a while, but that’s what
I had thought anyway.

Once
I’d had a chance to look at the house, she blew it away and continued.  Something must have killed me.  Maybe it was a witch, or a Rusalka, or a
Vodnik.  She shrugged again.  I think it had something to do with water,
though.

“Why?”
I asked.

She
gestured down at herself.  It’s what I
am now.  Water.  Most of the time I don’t even bother to make
it so I can see who I am, but when I want to, I can appear as long as there’s
water near.  The canal’s the easiest--I
can--the wind caught at her words again--water there and make almost a
real body.  Other times, this is all I
can do.

Lesana
looked around for a moment, down at the ground, out at the city, then back to
me.  I have to go.  Will I see you again?

“Of
course,” I found myself saying without even thinking.

She
smiled.  Good.  Anywhere there’s water.  The canal would be nice.  And without so much as a goodbye, she broke
apart into a thousand shards of cloud that quickly vanished in the breeze.

“That
was something, wasn’t it?”

I
looked over, startled to see a man standing next to me.  “What?” I said.

“That
cloud.  Never seen one so close before,
and break up like that.”  He shook his
head.  “It was something.”

I
looked back to where Lesana had been standing and nodded agreement.  “It sure was.”

The Refinancing is Finished--Should You Look Into It, Too?

It took about two months--and a whole lot more stress than I hoped it would--but the refinance finally closed yesterday. Surprising how just casually browsing the web one day can lead to so much activity over two months of your life, but I suppose a lot of even bigger life-changing things start with such small things.



We've almost lived in our house for 5 years now. We've now refinanced twice. The initial rate we had was something like 6.625%, as I recall. Three years ago, I refinanced because rates seemed so rock bottom: I got 5.25%, and I was very happy. My payments dropped 11%. Then rates kept falling. And falling. And I was leery of refinancing again, because house prices had fallen, as well, and I didn't want to have to get Private Mortgage Insurance.



But they fell some more. And house prices had come up some, so I went for it.



We closed for 3.875%. Our payments are dropping 17%. Compared to our original payments, we've come down 24%. That ain't bad, being able to save that much money each month. The bad news? Our house's appraisal is now down 13% from what it appraised for when we bought it. That meant that we had to chip in some of our savings to cover closing costs and avoid PMI. (Not a good time for us to be trying to sell our house, either. Good thing we're not planning on doing that.)



The good news? We had enough savings to cover that, leave our emergency savings alone, and still have enough left over. It helps to have so many different income streams coming in (my day job, writing, Denisa's online job, her bread baking, both of us teaching--some of those streams are a lot smaller than others, but they all contribute). But it's definitely true that it takes money to make money sometimes--if we hadn't had that money from our savings, we wouldn't have been able to save as much money as we will now in the future. And if we'd had debts from earlier (student loans, credit card debt), we would have been hosed, as well. (Really, a large part of the credit for us having enough savings goes to Mint, which I still use every day to keep track of finances. It's such an awesome budgeting tool. If you're having trouble staying on top of your finances and you're not using this . . . you really need to start. It's free. And the longer you use it, the more helpful it becomes.)



Anyway. If we don't refinance again, we'll still have paid the house off before we retire, which is my main goal. So hooray for that.



Would I recommend people refinance right now? Yes. With a few stipulations:




Know how much you have left on your mortgage. It's not easy to refinance unless you are doing it for 80% or less of the value of your home. (Over that, and the banks get skittish. They start wanting PMI--which is pricey and you do NOT want--or they try and con you into getting a home equity line of credit (something our bank "helpfully" tried to do when our appraisal came in too low. I said no thank you (the line of credit was going to cost a ridiculous amount of money in monthly payments--it would have meant our monthly payments would have gone down by only 3% instead of 17%. I was no math major, but I can see a bad deal like that from a mile away. Yikes!)
Be fairly confident of how much your house will appraise for. This is the one thing that was really tricky for me to anticipate. And I turned out to be wrong. The problem is that the appraisal cost $450 or so, and I was going to have to pay that one way or another--even if I decided not to refinance. I didn't want to pay $450 just to find out I couldn't do it.
If your loan interest rate is currently within 1 percentage point of the advertised mortgage rates, then it's probably not worth it. (Them closing costs are expensive, folks). Rates today are around 4%. That means if your rate is between 4% and 5%, then I'd probably not do it. If it's over 5%, I'd definitely look into it. Especially if
You're planning on staying in your house more than 3 years. If refinancing costs $2000, and it will save you $200 a month on payments), then it will take 10 months before you've earned that money back. If it costs more and saves less, obviously that time gets longer. No need to refinance if you're just going to move next year or the year after.


Anyway. It worked for us right now, and I'm glad we did it. I'm even more glad that it's over.

Adventures in Bed Buying

Yesterday, to celebrate our nation's freedom, I drove with the fam to Sears to pick up a new bed. The one I've been sleeping on is the first one Denisa and I got when we were married. (Well, technically the first one we got was the air mattress that we used for a few weeks until our bed arrived. Our first apartment smelled strongly of cat urine--especially the closer you got to the carpet. Sleeping on an air mattress for two weeks in that apartment? Not the best experience I've ever had in my life. I've come a long way . . . )



Anyway. I've decided that mattress makers go to extremely great lengths to make sure the consumer is as confused as possible before he or she makes an actual purchase. There was Sealy, Serta, Memoryfoam, Sears-o-Pedic--and some other brands I've already blocked from my memory. And while all of them had similar features, they all called them something different. This would be like a car manufacturer deciding to call their tires "firbles", their engines "bagdoodles", and their air conditioning "tiddledings." ("It's got a brand new set of firbles, and the tiddledings work great, even when the bagdoodle is churning away.") Maybe if you have a PhD in bedding, you might have a chance of telling them all apart, but if you don't, fuhgeddaboutit.



Then there's pillow tops, memory foam, firm, plush, ultra plush, ultra firm plush, double plus bad firm. (I like firm beds and I cannot lie. You other brothers can't deny . . .) It's enough to make a guy go cross eyed.



And then there's pricing. Sears was running a sale yesterday. But the list price for the mattresses was like $2500, and then there was 50% off, and another $200 off for kicks, and another 10% off because why not . . . They're practically giving them away, right? Except it still cost us $800 for what we picked out. (The Franchesca TI2 firm, in case you were wondering.) And we got the set, not just the mattress, because I was assured that if I just bought the mattress, demons would come and ruin in overnight. The box spring apparently keeps the demons at bay. Go figure.



But hey--at least I don't have to do this for another decade or so, right? By then, maybe they'll have figured out the demon problem. Science can do some amazing things these days, you know.



Oh. I also had a BBQ. But something tells me buying a mattress was much more in line with what our founding fathers intended us to do on Independence Day.

When Did You Feel Most Patriotic?

Happy Fourth of July, everybody. I wasn't really planning on doing much of a blog post today--it's a holiday, after all. But I did want to throw something up here. A collective question to you all--when did you feel most patriotic? I'm talking about a specific time/day.



For me, there are two days that I remember distinctly. The first is right after 9/11. I was reading gas meters at the time in Utah, and every house had an American flag out. Those things were everywhere, and I remember just thinking how proud I was of our country--that things could go so wrong, and we could come together to be unified. I would imagine a lot of other people felt the same back then.



But the time that sticks out in my memory the most was a high school football game in October of 1997. It might have been November. I was already graduated by then, but I was at home waiting to go on my mission to Germany. I went to the game, and as they played the Star Spangled Banner, I had an epiphany: I was leaving this country. Not for a week or two, but for two years. For a nineteen year old kid, that was a pretty daunting realization. And I recognized for a bit just how big a part America played in my life. Yes, it's not like I had my life on the line for my country, but it was a strong enough experience that I still remember it, fifteen years later.



So how about you? Any particular times stand out? Please share. And have a safe and happy Fourth of July.

Book Review: The Hollow City

My friend Dan Wells has a book coming out today. And he was nice enough to give me an advanced copy so I could read it ahead of time. Verdict? Awesome. I wrote up a review for Elitist Book Reviews, in fact. Here's the start:

Dan Wells has had quite the run. The John Cleaver series--starting with I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER--was a fantastic blend of Horror and Fantasy with a YA tone (although it wasn't really marketed as YA in the US). His novel PARTIALS has been getting some really strong reviews. So I was pretty excited when I got my hands on an ARC of his latest work, THE HOLLOW CITY.

I'd heard him describe the basics: a story told from the point of view of a paranoid schizophrenic, Michael Shipman. A man who literally can't tell what's fantasy and what's reality. He's seeing faceless men, and is convinced they're trying to kill him. But no one else can see them, and he hasn't been taking his medication in months. To make things worse, there's been a serial killer at work in the area. Someone's been killing people and essentially destroying their faces, and Michael is a prime suspect.

Go check out the full review. Good old fashioned schizophrenic main character paranoia fun. And you should totally buy Dan's book--or ask your local public library to get a copy.

Research in Writing: Vodnik Chapter Ten

As I looked over this chapter, I discovered that--lo and behold, nothing really significant changed in it over the course of revisions. Obviously it didn't really exist before Katka had a brain tumor, but once that got put in early on, this was a chapter that hung tough the whole time. I think a large part of that is due to the fact that it just worked well. Good tension, good introduction of conflict, character building, setting details--it's a chapter that gets a lot done, even if it isn't one of the flashier sections of the book.




When I'm writing a novel, my first drafts will only rarely have really effective chapters. They'll be centered around one or two things: advance the plot or develop characters or something like that. But in a final draft, all the chapters need to be working on different levels. Doing multiple things at once, or else it becomes hard to justify their presence in the novel, and the material they cover gets gobbled up into a different chapter. (Brings to mind an interesting mental image of a society of chapters. Chapter Darwinism, so to speak.) This was a chapter that was formed and then defended itself from any intruders.



On the other hand, actually writing this chapter wasn't too easy. Mainly because it starts off with the seizure, and I distinctly remember sitting at my computer, ready to write the scene, and then freezing. I had no idea what really happens with seizures. What are you supposed to do if a person has one? How do they respond? You make them bite something, right?



I had no idea, and in order to write the chapter properly, I needed to know. This is a case where having the internet is a great big benefit. Before, I would have had to go off to the library to do some searches. Now, it was a few keyboard clicks away. But I still had to inform myself and read up on the topic. Then comes the next trick: making sure the section doesn't read like a medical manual.



Just because you've done the research for a section doesn't mean you need to include it all on the page. I needed to know enough to understand what was going on, but then I needed to tell it all from Tomas's point of view. That meant putting myself back into the frame of mind I started in: Tomas sees a seizure for the first time. He has to do something. What is it? Well, he did what I thought I would do in that situation--prior to all my research.



The paramedics then show up and do what they're supposed to do. Through Tomas watching that, I was able to insert a fact or two, but the large bulk of my research went unused for the actual chapter. That's okay. I'm pretty confident it was a better chapter because I was informed. Things like actually knowing what you're writing about bubble up to the surface in surprising ways. I'm all for the subconscious.



Anyway. One last note--I struggled throughout the book with characters not wanting to talk to each other. Tomas's family really has a problem with communication. There are so many secrets--big secrets--and nobody wants to talk. Ever. Tomas is frustrated that his parents do this, but he does the same thing to them with his problems in the book. This carries over into the racism of the book. Tomas experiences the effects of prejudice, but he also makes biased assumptions about others. No one's completely free of this.



For the communication issue, it was difficult to get the balance right. I'm generally the sort of guy who'd rather just get something out in the open than hedge around it. For most things. So writing about a family that had years of experience ignoring huge gaping problems . . . it was a balance game. Because as an author, you don't want to have the readers get frustrated with how little communication is actually happening. Characters can't not communicate just "because." There needs to be reasons, and those reasons need to be explained. Otherwise, it all comes across as a plot device, not an actual plot.



That's all for this week. Thanks for reading!