L.E. Truscott's Blog, page 41

Realism Versus Escapism Versus Absurdism

When we first start writing fiction, we do it because it’s fun, because we enjoy it, because it allows us to create and exist in worlds and amongst people that we are unlikely to ever encounter in our real lives. Sometimes that includes worlds and people we would never want to meet in real life.

It’s often only when others start reading our fiction that analysis begins and labels are bandied about. Genres are so varied and specific these days that there is almost always one to suit anything that is being written. And if there isn’t, we create new ones.

Beyond genre, though, there are three categories into which everyone’s writing will fall. They are categories that when we are writing we don’t think much about. But our writing will inevitably fall into one or snugly somewhere between two. Those three categories are realism, escapism and absurdism.

These are the definitions from my beloved Macquarie International English Dictionary:

*Realism: lifelike representation of people and the world, without any idealisation

*Escapism: something such as fantasy or entertainment that makes it possible to forget about the ordinary or unpleasant realities of life for a while

*Absurdism: the idea that the universe is without meaning or rational order and that human beings, in attempting to find a sense of order, conflict with it

Speaking generally, a lot of literary fiction will fall into the realism category and a lot of genre fiction will fall into the escapism category.

Absurdism is more uncommon and these days you are less likely to find an entire novel of absurdism and more likely to find a novel with elements of absurdism scattered here and there throughout. Why?

My personal experience tells me that absurdism can be difficult to read for a number of reasons. It can be difficult to relate to. It can be nonsensical. And it can often seem pointless. These three things alone can make absurdist fiction a nightmare to find an audience for and in these days of the almighty dollar, a potential market is key. No market? Then no point publishing.

Most books written, and most books enjoyed, follow a linear path with a beginning, a middle and an ending and along the way an exploration of the philosophies of humankind takes place. It may be a complex philosophy, such as existentialism, or it may be a more undemanding and popular subject, such as love. But by the end of the novel, we tend to have an answer of sorts or at least be closer to an understanding.

Franz Kakfa’s Metamorphosis falls into the absurdism category. While I don’t claim to be an expert literary analyst, having read the tale of a man who wakes up one day and realises he has transformed into an insect, I can at least recognise that. But why?

Absurdist novels are never tied up neatly because the idea that plots and by extension lives can be neatly tied up conflicts with the entire theory. The universe is “without meaning or rational order” and attempts to imbue it with such cannot help but fail. But many, including myself, read in order to better understand the world. If a novel’s underlying principle is that the world cannot be understood, then why bother reading an entire novel in order to be told that? I can save myself the trouble.

Generally, I prefer escapist fiction. Heroes and heroines with unique skills sets on a mission to save the world from villains you can often be drawn to just as much, falling in love along the way and even if they’re not winning the war, they’re winning enough battles as they go. I’m a sucker for a good plot that follows a logical pattern, meaning that if you’re smart enough as well, you can figure out who the bad guy is and how to stop him, making you one of the good guys, too.

I’m less drawn to character-driven realist fiction. I’m always terribly disappointed when I put down a book having read the last page and say to myself, “But nothing happened! Nobody did anything and nothing changed.”

“That’s right!” they say. “It’s an accurate reflection of life itself.”

Which is poppycock. Life changes all the time. People change, some more frequently than others. Sometimes it’s only the ravages of time but that’s change nonetheless. MH Abrams in his A Glossary of Literary Terms points out, “Casanova, TE Lawrence, Winston Churchill were people in real life, but their histories, as related by themselves or others, demonstrate that truth is stranger than realism. The realist sets out to write a fiction which will give the illusion that it reflects life as it seems to the common reader.”

Part of my problem with realist fiction is that when others read it and realise it isn’t like their real life, they wonder what’s wrong with them instead of wondering what’s wrong with the book.

The majority of the fiction I write falls into the escapism category and if I dabble in any other area, it’s realism. But just toes dipping in the pond at the edges of realism. No absurdism for me. I wouldn’t know how to write it and if I could, I’m not sure I would find much pleasure in it. And surely if I don’t find pleasure in writing it, no one could find pleasure in reading it.

For me, the story comes first (obviously escapism). Then I populate it with characters (with a dash of realism). And if the two work together, then meaning bubbles up from the cauldron in which I created them both (anti-absurdism). So far I’m happy with the results.

Book Writing As Therapy And The Sob Story As Marketing

I’m going to outline a scenario. See if it sounds familiar. You’re reading an article, a very personal article, a confessional of sorts from someone who has had something go very wrong in their life. It’s moving. It might even be heartbreaking. And it’s taken something beyond courage to write the piece and allow it to be published.

And then beneath it is a small line in italics that tells you the author of the piece currently has a book available for sale.

There are variations on this theme – the article might be about something less personal but currently topical and the author, in a former life and before becoming a writer in earnest, was once an expert on the subject – but the last line is always the same. There’s a book and the only reason the writer wrote the article is because they want you to buy it.

As much as any other indie author, I understand how hard it can be for one small and insignificant voice to break through the noise of everybody else trying to do the same thing for their fifteen minutes of fame. Not just writers but musicians and mumpreneurs and a thousand other categories of people trying to achieve their dreams.

But the sob story as marketing particularly riles me. Because the idea that the writing of someone who has been through a difficult life is more worthy of being read than the writing of someone who hasn’t is just a crock. Finding a point of differentiation is the easiest way to market both a person and their work but sometimes that point of differentiation is so irrelevant and intentionally playing on emotions that my stomach turns when I see it.

The writers themselves aren’t always to blame. Sometimes it’s the publishers, publicists and press just being lazy and insisting on a narrative that is more myth than reality. JK Rowling is a case in point. A single mother on the dole and writing in a coffee shop. Because her lengthy stay in the middle class wasn’t nearly as dramatic as the brief time she spent struggling after her marriage failed.

I don’t have a sob story. I’m a reasonably well-adjusted woman, educated, lucky enough to have the love and support of my family and friends as I write and write and continue writing despite my lack of anything approaching overnight success. My defining features are being a cat woman (not a crazy cat lady!), a brainwashed-from-birth Collingwood fan and a perpetual but happy single who is determined to remain that way. I’m not poor. I’m not rich. I’m not normal because there’s no such thing. But there’s no story of divorce/rape/disfiguring disease/scam relieving me of my life savings.

And even if there was, I would not use it nor would I consent to anyone else using it as a way of marketing a book I had written. Maybe I’m naïve. Maybe I should be prepared to do anything and everything in order to get my writing the attention it deserves. Maybe I should change my author photograph to something that shows a little more of my cleavage. But I suspect the kind of people who read a book based on the author’s breasts aren’t the kind of readers I want. In fact, they’re the kind of people I go to great lengths to avoid.

The sob story as marketing especially lends itself to a particular kind of book and that, of course, is the autobiography. There are a plethora of them these days about people who haven’t done anything other than survive the same things that many, many other people have survived before them and will continue to survive in the future.

I’m not making a judgement about any of these kind of books because the thing that defines whether they should be read or not is how well they are written, not the sob story itself. I’ve read and enjoyed both Cleo and After Cleo: Came Jonah by Helen Brown. (Cleo was a kitten Helen’s family was considering adopting. After the death of her young son in a road accident, adopting her seemed like the last thing she wanted but it turned out to be crucial in the recovery process. After Cleo died, the family adopted another cat named Jonah and around the same time, Helen was diagnosed with cancer.) Both books are well worth a read.

Writing a book after a devastating life event or even just a moderately upsetting life event is becoming more and more common, so much so that I wonder if therapists are recommending it as a therapeutic technique. If so, I’m sure it’s a valid form of treatment. I’m less convinced, however, that they all need to be published.

I recently discussed a topic that appeared on one of the LinkedIn groups I’m a member of, which essentially asserted that everyone wants to write their autobiography. I proposed that those who feel the need to write their life story might consider not publishing it, just putting it in a drawer where it could wait to be discovered after their death. I want to propose the same thing for those writing books as part of their therapy.

I know some people think that everyone has a book in them but I’m not convinced that all those books are worth reading. So go ahead and write your therapy book. But then think long and hard about whether it really needs to be published.

Then again, I’m more likely to read your therapy book than a biography of a footballer and there are thousands of those. Oh, who am I to tell anyone what to do? Publish and be damned (or saved, as the case may be). Just make sure you come up with some clever marketing and spare me the sob story.

Book Review: The Shell Collector by Hugh Howey

For anyone who thinks they know what picking up a Hugh Howey book will mean, The Shell Collector is the novel that will prove you wrong. There are small elements of similarity with his best-selling and acclaimed Wool series but disappointingly not enough.

The setting for the story is a dystopian future in which the world’s sea levels have risen dramatically and levees have been built around New York, Boston and Florida (just to name a few) to keep the destructive flooding out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The damage that has been done to the oceans means many species are now extinct and shell collecting and trading is a multi-million dollar pastime.

It’s a little strange, given all that, when The Shell Collector reveals itself to actually be a romance. The main character is Maya, a former scientist and science reporter and now an investigative journalist who has spent the past two years compiling a series of four articles about the Wilde family, four generations of which have been devoted to compiling wealth at the expense of the environment by drilling for oil on land and at sea.

When the first of Maya’s articles is published about the great-grandfather, she is contacted by Ness, the great-grandson and current CEO of the Wilde family’s operations, who offers to be interviewed. Maya is then contacted by the FBI, who want her to wear a wire during the interview in order to find out what Ness knows about fake shells that are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

Ness is a notorious recluse and Maya travels to his coastal compound to meet him, where she is immediately attracted to him but fights an internal battle with herself to remain professional and not ravish him without a reasonable interval to maintain her “good girl” status. Ness tells her that everything she knows about him and his family is wrong and that if she gives him a week, he will take her on a journey that proves he’s actually a good guy.

So Maya and Ness go shell collecting, scuba diving, deep-sea diving and to his private island. By this point, Maya hasn’t been given any evidence of Ness being a good guy but she’s so infatuated it almost doesn’t matter anymore. When she eventually finds out what’s been going on, she slashes Ness on the face with a shell and tries to run away but he romantically chases her down a beach (with blood running down his cheek and neck) where they wrestle, then reconcile. (Ah, domestic violence – apparently that’s what’s been lacking from romance fiction all this time.)

The problem with this book is that it can’t decide if it wants to be dystopian fiction or romance fiction, so it tries to be both but it fails at both. The genre confusion is compounded by a story that isn’t interesting or original. Rich, reclusive, misunderstood, gorgeous man meets career-driven woman with a past that has hardened her – he pursues her relentlessly and she half-heartedly resists but eventually, inevitably they end up sleeping together. There’s a daughter from a previous marriage and an interfering ex-wife and it’s all been done before.

In the acknowledgements, Howey apologises for his Y chromosome but the fact that he’s a man isn’t an excuse for being bad at writing romance. Nicholas Sparks certainly doesn’t have any difficulties.

While I have no problem with writers attempting different genres, I still have an expectation that anything they publish will be worthy. I’m a little sorry to say The Shell Collector isn’t worthy and detracts from the reputation Howey deservedly earned from his earlier books.

2 stars

*First published on Goodreads 10 August 2015

Advice To An Almost Famous Author

There are probably a number of writers out there who think (and hope) it’s only a matter of time (and getting your writing in front of the right person) before the transition will begin from aspiring author to actual auteur. They might be right or they might be a long way off.

Once an author has achieved a level of success, it’s often too late to give any advice, especially if that success has gone straight to their head. So here’s a few important things to remember aimed at the almost famous author to help avoid becoming an asshole (as famous people so often do).

Don’t Forget the People Who Helped You Get This Far

I’m not talking about agents or editors or publicists or other Johnny-come-latelys, I’m talking about all the people long before that who helped make you the writer you are.

I’m talking about teachers (shout out to Ray Mooney, my novel teacher at Holmesglen Institute of TAFE, and author of A Green Light amongst many other projects, and Anne Calvert, my editing teacher at the same educational institution, sadly now departed this earth but forever remembered and credited as an important part of making me as good an editor or possibly even better than I am a writer).

I’m talking about family (thanks, Mum and Dad, for not questioning my decisions to take extended writing breaks from paid employment and offering financial support just in case – so far not necessary – and thanks, Nan and Pa, for letting me live with you until I was twenty-eight and giving me valuable time in which to work low-paying jobs and still have time to write).

I’m talking about friends (thanks, Jess and Reece and Jane, for letting me steal your names for all my characters and reading early drafts and giving advice on where you think changes need to be made).

I’m talking about fellow aspiring writers (thanks, Kelly, for reading my manuscript even though we’d never met and the only things we had in common were one mutual friend who was also reading my manuscript and an ambition to leave the rat race and write full time).

I’m talking about writers who have already made it (thanks, Andy Griffiths, for meeting my nine-year-old nephew and posing for a photograph with him because I think he might grow up to be a writer, too).

I’m talking about everyone else who never gets a mention but plays an important role (thanks to everybody following this blog and reading my posts and to those who stumble across my writing in other ways and choose to read as well).

There are plenty of other people who will doubt you or offer little to no encouragement or forge ahead and leave you behind and then suddenly reappear in your life when your success seems assured. Make sure you have your priorities in order when they do.

You’re Only As Good As Your Last Book and No Matter How Good It Is, People Will Always Want to Know What’s Next and How Soon It’s Coming

It only took a week after the release of my debut novel, Enemies Closer, for one of my readers to read it, declare they loved it and ask how soon they could expect a sequel. It didn’t matter that I’d spent eight years getting it from concept to publication.

Now while there are ways to look at this in an extremely positive light, it’s three years later and I’ve yet to release anything else, let alone a sequel to my first novel. This is why I love discovering writers who are onto their fourth or fifth novel. I can read their back catalogue and fill in the time until the release of their next book. But new authors don’t have this luxury.

So no matter how proud you are of the book that’s about to be published, it is absolutely crucial to be half way through writing your next book by the time the previous one goes public. This is especially important if the reviews aren’t as positive as you might have liked. The sooner you can publish again and give the reading audience something else to talk about, the better it will be. After all, if you publish something second-rate and don’t publish again for another five years, the intervening period will be spent discussing your mediocrity. Or worse, not discussing you at all.

Momentum is key. I know an author whose first book was okay, a good start, but nothing that was going to win any awards. He just kept writing, kept going, and he established a reputation as someone who if nothing else always had something new to offer. He has published twenty-two novels in ten years with some of the most important publishers and has garnered a core group of readers. He always has something on the bookshelves and there are many who would say he has accomplished more than someone who writes one book every ten years that’s well received.

The other thing about having other works on the go is that the next person to ask what’s next might not just be a reader but might be a publisher interested in being the one to publish it.

Your Editor Will Always Know Better

There is one proviso to this and that, of course, is that you have been paired with the right editor. You will know pretty quickly if you haven’t because your life will be hell and the editing process will be filled with frustration.

But if you’re lucky enough to have been paired with an editor who understands what it is you’re trying to achieve, you will still butt heads but more often than not your editor will be right about what needs to change in your style, in your plot, in your characters.

I’ve seen the results of many famous and even first-time authors who don’t listen to their editors (sometimes called “sticking to your guns” but more accurately described as “a stubborn lack of being able to admit anyone else might be right”). Usually those results are books that are okay but that could have been better – hardly the feedback anyone wants to hear about something that took months and potentially years of work.

So please don’t think that an editor is suggesting change for change’s sake. The quality of your work reflects on them, too, and they are simply trying to make it the best it can possibly be.

You Probably Won’t Be Able to Quit Your Other Job

For most of us who write novels, the dream scenario is being able to quit all other forms of work, including sometimes other types of writing, and just focusing on producing books. And to earn enough money from those novels to support ourselves financially.

The truth is that so few writers earn enough from their novels to enable this. I know several writers who on the face of it would appear to be successful but still have to teach or lecture or write articles in order to make ends meet. We can’t all be JK Rowling or Dan Brown. And if we can, we can’t all do it on the back of our first book.

Your Opinions Don’t Matter More, You Will Just Be Asked For Them More Often

Being famous means more people will ask you questions and more people will listen to your answers. It’s very important to remember that success in one area does not make you an expert in others. Any time someone criticises a footballer for doing something stupid, I always remind them that they are footballers. They are talented with a football. There is nothing in being talented with a football that correlates with being smart. If there was, there’d be more footballers who finish their sporting careers and then go on to become doctors and scientists and engineers.

Same goes with writers. When asked questions about writing, particularly your writing and your process, a writer should feel confident about being able to answer them and have their opinions respected. But when writers are asked about the latest global financial crisis or climate change or the war in the Middle East, unless they are also an economist or an environmental scientist or an international relations expert, their opinions should be given no more weight than those of the man or woman on the street.

It’s nice to be asked and it’s nice to be listened to but one writer is still just one person, no more worthy than anyone else who hasn’t published a book.

Controversy Is Not the Best Form of Publicity

Getting your face in the media and your work in the spotlight can be hard and some people, not just writers, think the easiest way to achieve this is to become notorious. But a bad reputation, even an undeserved one, is a hard thing to shake no matter how hard you try. The reading public have long memories and if every time your name appears in print it is accompanied by the words “disgraced author”, there are some people who will choose not to read your work on that basis alone.

Being a nice person behind the scenes and working hard will get you a lot more in the long run than being controversial now. Just think of all the people who bared body parts on Big Brother – where are they now? Who knows and who cares frankly? Being the best possible version of yourself will get the best results.

If You Thought You Did a Lot of Unpaid Work Before, It Will Be Nothing Compared to What You’re Expected to Do Now

A lot of indie authors point to the amount of unpaid, non-writing work that has to be done in order to get their work any attention. Sometimes there is a presumption that being successful, particularly if you’ve signed with a reputable publishing house, means that there will be other people around to help you do a lot of this work. No.

Publishers require authors to do significant amounts of unpaid work promoting their books and because publishers know what is required, there is usually a lot more of it organised for you. But you’re still the one who has to turn up and perform. Book launches, book tours, store appearances, writers’ festivals, talks at schools, radio interviews, writers’ groups, library visits, local newspapers, charity event attendances and that’s only the things I can think of off the top of my head.

And then you have to repeat these events in every new city you travel to. You will be asked the same questions over and over and over until your head is ready to explode but you have to answer them politely every time, never giving any indication that this is the twentieth time this week you’ve delivered the same answer.

I suppose this is why successful authors get very good at being prolific when they do have time to write because they know so much of their time they would prefer to be spent on writing is eaten up by marketing.

*****

Anyway, if you can remember and implement a few of these pieces of advice, you’ll be well on your way to remaining a good person and a better writer even as you become a famous author.

The Importance Of Writers Who Read OR Why There Are Book Reviews On This Writing Blog

Not surprisingly, this blog is usually all about me. But frequent readers will know I begin every week by posting a book review. I’m a big reader, primarily of longer fiction, although I will slot in a novella every now and then when I’m coming off a previous longer read or when I’m asked to (most recently, Tracy Cembor’s Gaslight Carnival).

Some might ask why a blog that is ostensibly all about me and my writing should so prominently feature reviews of the writing of others (and sometimes even just the writing of others as guest posts).

The first reason is that my reviews are examples of my writing, as well as evidence of my ability to deconstruct a novel, which I think is also evidence of my ability to construct one. It also shows something of my editing ability. I provide the link to my blog when potential employers ask to see samples of my writing and editing ability.

The second is that writing and reading are so intrinsically linked that I don’t believe you can have one without the other. The idea that reading could exist without writing or that writing could exist without reading is nonsensical. Like the idea that speaking could exist without listening or that listening could exist without speaking. (Well, I suppose they could but they would be hollow experiences.)

And yet there are some writers out there who do little or no reading. I won’t shame these writers by naming them (mostly because I’ve encountered quite a few of them over the years and have chosen not to devote memory space to remembering their names) but some of the excuses I’ve heard include not having enough time, not wanting their own work to be influenced by what they might read and being disappointed by the quality of writing flooding the market so choosing to avoid it altogether.

When I first began writing in earnest, I was reading genre books, being left feeling unsatisfied and thinking to myself, “I can write better genre books than this.” That was over twenty years ago and not for one moment did I ever think about stopping reading altogether. For me, that would be a physical impossibility. Reading is something that I simply do, as natural to me as breathing. I don’t think about the environment I’m in or the process of making my lungs move to take in air and move again to expel it. I just do it. I’ve read the shampoo bottle in my shower hundreds of times. It’s down to the dregs now and it’s upside down and I still read it upside down every time I get in.

I understand the relationship between reading and writing will be different for everyone who writes. Reading and writing are not objective. Everyone brings their own perceptions to what they read and to what they write. Two people can read the same text and come away from reading it with two entirely different interpretations. Two people can be asked to write on a particular specific topic and the results will never be the same. Similar, perhaps, but never the same.

But for anyone out there who wants to be or is attempting to be a writer, here’s a small piece of advice. Make the time to read because it’s crucial to the never-ending learning experience of becoming a better writer. If you don’t want to be influenced by the writing of others, don’t read books that are similar to what you are trying to write. If you write fiction, read biographies. Or if you write romance, read crime. And if you’re disappointed by the quality of the writing out there in the market, take it as a challenge to show others how it’s done. Just keep reading.

*****

To continue the theme of the writing of others, here’s a selection of posts from a few of the people who follow this blog that I thought were pretty good reading.

Libby Cole

Forcing the Muse to Visit

The Ninth Life by KL Register

Why Do You Write?

Writing. Life. Stuff. by Kelly Teitzel

I Don’t Ask For Help

Alysha Kaye

Supposed to Be

Book Review: Tokyo (AKA The Devil of Nanking) by Mo Hayder

Mo Hayder is for the most part one of Britain’s top crime writers – they sure know how to breed crime writers in the UK – and while I’ve read most of her books centred on the characters of Jack Caffery and Flea Marley, it is the standalone Tokyo (published in some territories as The Devil of Nanking) that has stayed with me long after I finished reading it.

I first read it in 2004 and although I rated it 5 stars in 2012 when I first joined Goodreads, I didn’t write a review, feeling it was too long ago to do it proper justice. I recently included it in my top ten books blog post and decided it was time to re-read it and post a review.

The quotes on the front and back cover and on the first page are a who’s who of other authors lining up to recommend it: Michael Connelly, Minette Walters, Harlan Coben, Val McDermid, Tess Gerritsen, Colin Dexter and Karin Slaughter. I was already reading Mo Hayder when this book was published so the recommendations didn’t factor into my purchasing decision, but they powerfully reinforced what I came to feel about the book.

Tokyo is the story of Grey, a young English woman who was brought up in an extremely sheltered home. As a teenager, she read an obscure fact in an equally obscure book and used that knowledge to recreate an act (which I can’t tell you about or it will ruin the conclusion). Her parents, her doctors and the nurses at the mental health facility she was committed to told her over and over that the act was evil, that she was evil. She tried to tell them about the book to prove she didn’t have evil intentions but the book had mysteriously disappeared from her parents’ bookshelves.

It’s a decade later and Grey has travelled to Tokyo to seek out Professor Shi Chongming, who is rumoured to have an old film of the act she read about. She is on a quest to see that film and to prove that there was nothing evil in what she did. But the professor is reluctant to help her, denying at first that the film even exists.

Grey has no money and no plan for what she was going to do once she got to Tokyo other that seeking out the professor. But she becomes a club hostess to tide herself over after meeting Jason (who also works in the club) in a cemetery where she slept her first night in Tokyo. He also gives her a place to stay. At the club, she meets Fuyuki, a notorious but very old yakuza boss. Fuyuki has something that Shi Chongming wants and when the professor finds out about Grey’s access to the old man, he proposes a deal. If she helps him get what he wants, he will give her the film.

The appeal of Grey, to the reader as well as to the men she meets in the club, is her complete lack of artifice. She has become an expert on the Japanese massacre of Chinese citizens in Nanking in 1937 through her university studies and enlightens the current day Japanese men who come to the club but who have been denied proper knowledge of their country’s history.

The tale of Grey’s quest is interspersed with diary entries written by Shi Chongming when he was living in Nanking with his pregnant wife. China and Japan were at war but the professor knew the Japanese as a respectful, cultured race and refused to leave when they invaded and occupied Nanking. Mo Hayder must have done a lot of research on this terrible historical incident and it is well incorporated. Reading the book again, I did wonder about her portrayal of Chinese and Japanese characters. I hope they’re not stereotypes and I didn’t think they were but I’m not much of a judge being neither Japanese nor Chinese.

This is not the book to read if you are looking for something action packed. It is a slow burn, beautifully but unhurriedly paced, and you are really given the opportunity to get to know both Grey and Shi Chongming. Their stories have a heartbreaking but meaningful parallel and the ending is not perfect but very, very close.

Like I said, it’s on my top ten books list so I highly recommend it. It won’t be for everyone but if you’re a fan of novels that incorporate actual history, if you’re a fan of well-written novels, if you’re a fan of complex stories, if you’re a fan of realistic stories, if you’re a fan of stories set outside a regular person’s everyday existence, if you’re a fan of beautiful endings, then give it a go and I hope it is as memorable for you as it has been and still is for me.

5 stars

*First published on Goodreads 4 August 2015

Does The Age Of Your Characters Get Older As You Do?

There’s a theory (and it might just be my theory but I’m sure there are others who espouse it, too) that most main characters are simply disguised versions of the author writing them. Sometimes the disguises make that fact virtually unrecognisable. Sometimes the disguises are so thin the authors might as well not have bothered.

A quick glance over the marital, gender, racial and family statuses of my main characters shows that I only write people who are single, female, white and childless. Single because it allows for a bit of romantic tension with a supporting male lead. Female because I always feel like I am doing a disservice when I attempt to write in a male voice, both to men and to my writing abilities. White because I’m white and while I know writers can and should explore racial identity in their writing, it’s not something I focus on. And childless because having to care for and chauffeur children to their mundane everyday activities really gets in the way of the things I like to make my characters do (such as getting kidnapped, travelling at a moment’s notice, evading authorities, living reclusive lives, that sort of thing).

The one thing that has varied over the years is the age of my main characters. And as I get older (closer to my forties now than I am really all that comfortable with – I read a main character in a novel bemoaning the fact that they were forty and middle-aged and realised I need to start thinking of myself that way as well shortly!), it seems a lot of my main characters are getting older, too.

My Untitled and Unpublished First Novel (Really More of a Novella)

I wrote this when I was in my final year of high school, aged seventeen, and the main character was twenty-two. She had finished university and was working in the electorate office of a senator. I have no doubt that at the time I thought being twenty-two made my character very mature. Looking back on it now, it just makes me remember how naïve I was.

The more life experience I have, the more I genuinely believe that there is nothing else that can make up for it. That’s not to say that you can’t be mature when you’re young, only that I wasn’t and only that you only get more so as you age.

A Handful of Unpublished Romance Novels

I wrote three romance novels which I reference by the names of the main characters, Natalie and Cameron, Michaela and Alex, and Liberty and Quinn.

Natalie and Cameron were the first lovers I wrote about and Natalie was in her final year of university, so early twenties. I wrote this in my first year of university (aged eighteen).

Michaela and Alex came next and they were in their mid-twenties. I wrote this in my last year of university and first year of TAFE (aged twenty).

Liberty and Quinn were my final attempt at writing a romance novel and the most complete of the three unpublished romance novels. They were in their late twenties. I wrote this in my first few years in the workforce after leaving tertiary education (aged twenty-two to twenty-four).

I’m sure, like me, you can see a sort of pattern emerging. My main characters were always a few years older than me, no doubt because I kept thinking that given a few more years I would know it all and be ready for something like the exciting lives my characters were living. Pfft!

Enemies Closer

I began writing Enemies Closer in 2004, finished in 2007 and published it in 2012. In 2004, I was twenty-seven and Cassandra Broderick, the main character of the novel, was in her early to mid-thirties. Pattern on track.

But Cassandra had a very specific educational and employment history that meant she needed to be older. She had joined the military straight out of high school, progressed to the rank of captain before leaving, studied weapons engineering at MIT, worked briefly in Hollywood as an advisor on action movies before joining a prestigious gun manufacturer as a designer and being made a poster girl for the gender equalisation of the weapons industry. All that takes time.

Black Spot

Black Spot, my upcoming novel, is where the pattern gets turned on its head. For a very good reason. Whereas before I had been writing novels for audiences of a similar age to me, Black Spot was a very deliberate attempt to cash in on the appetite for young adult/mainstream crossover novels (I’ll let you know how that goes in due course).

I wrote Black Spot when I was thirty-six. But, of course, I couldn’t have a main character who was in her late thirties, bordering on or even tipping over the border into early forties. She needed to be of an age where tweens and teens as well as people in their twenties and thirties could relate to her.

Besides, part of the story is about the amount of control we are subjected to or allow ourselves to be subjected to by parents and people in positions of authority. The older we get, the less often we allow this to happen. So Livia, the main character, is eighteen – just finished high school but not sure what she wants to do with her life, not sure if she even wants to leave the family farm.

Rather than drawing on my ideas of the maturity and life experience an older character would have, like I had done in my previous novels, I had to regress to my teenage years and remember how differently I looked at things. While Livia is nothing like me as a teenager, I had to remember what an angst-filled time of life it was. We didn’t worry about money or job security or that our parents and grandparents might die soon. There is a freedom to being that age even while wrapped up in the limitations imposed by society and family to ensure safety.

Some of my early readers also pointed out to me that in places the language I used sounded too old. I was specifically told to take out all the “Louise” words that a teenager like Livia wouldn’t say or think.

Trine

I’m half way through writing Trine. I started writing it in 2012, stopped when I released Enemies Closer to focus on marketing, started again in 2013 but stopped again to write Black Spot, and started again in 2014, although it’s been slow progress. It’s still my current novel in progress although I’m seriously thinking about stopping again to write the sequel to Black Spot.

In 2012, I was thirty-five but as with Enemies Closer, I gave the main character, Prudence, a very specific history, something terrible that had happened to her when she was fifteen. The novel is an exploration of someone who has lived with a terrible event in their lives for longer than they lived without it, meaning she had to be at least thirty. I don’t think I actually name her age but she’s in her early thirties.

Will my main characters ever move into their forties? Well, I’m not there yet and neither are my characters. Maybe that’s what I’m waiting for – the birthday that tips me over the edge. I have plans for a new novel that is generational, featuring an aunt (aged fifty-five), her niece (aged thirty-five) and the niece’s daughter (aged seventeen), but the main focus of the story will still be the yet-to-hit-forty niece.

There are also plans to write a sequel or two or three to Enemies Closer and as Cassandra Broderick was in her mid-thirties in the first novel, the inevitable progression of time means she will hit her forties at some point whether I want her to or not. In the unfinished sequel, a year has already passed since the events of the first book.

Perhaps I’m just attracted to what a main character in their thirties can offer: some life experience but not enough to dispel all doubts about how to live, fit enough to cope with the physical activities my stories all seem to encompass (horse riding, jumping, tucking and rolling from aeroplanes as they land on tarmacs, marathons, swimming, punching unfaithful lovers in the face and breaking their noses), and young enough that their single status is still acceptable without being pathetic.

We’ll just have to wait and see. I like to think that when I’m in my seventies I’ll still be writing about single, female, white, childless characters. And maybe those characters will be in their seventies, too.

Reading (Once Is Enough) Versus Rereading (Over And Over Again)

“Confession: I have read Pride and Prejudice about two hundred times. I get lost in the language, words like ‘thither’, ‘mischance’, ‘felicity’. I’m always in agony over whether Elizabeth and Mr Darcy are really going to get together.”

Kathleen Kelly in You’ve Got Mail

“It is a truth generally acknowledged that we are all longing to escape. I escape always to my favourite book, Pride and Prejudice. I’ve read it so many times now the words just say themselves in my head and it’s like a window opening. It’s like I’m actually there.”

Amanda Price in Lost in Austen

What is it about some books that makes us want to read them over and over again? And what is it about others that makes once enough?

Unlike Kathleen Kelly and Amanda Price, I only made it through Pride and Prejudice once and that was with the knowledge that the BBC adaptation was awaiting me as a reward when I finished it. The second time I tried, all I could think was that there was so much more blathering on than in the television miniseries. (Ironically, I have probably watched the BBC miniseries over twenty times.)

I’m actually not much of a rereader. I love the surprise of something new and when I reread a book I am constantly anticipating the events I know are coming. So imagine my astonishment when I realised that 2015 is turning out to be a year of rereading for me.

It started when I found a top ten books list I had constructed about fifteen years ago and decided to construct a current top ten books list to see how they compared. Once I had my top ten, I realised how few of my favourite books I had actually reviewed on Goodreads. Rated, yes, but reviewed? No.

I started by rereading The Great Flood Mystery by Jane Curry, which was my favourite chapter book as a child, a sort of easing in, if you will. It was just as good as I remembered, justifying the five star rating I had given it. Next was Tokyo (also known as The Devil of Nanking) by Mo Hayder. Another five star rating and review. Now I’m rereading Ninety East Ridge by Stephen Reilly and I’m also planning to reread Room by Emma Donoghue before the year is out. (Look out for all of these reviews on this blog.)

The last time I did any significant rereading I was still at university and I filled in the long summer gap between my second and third years by rereading Kay Scarpetta novels in order and back to back, starting with Postmortem.

I think there are three reasons for rereading books:

*We considered them fantastic last time we read them and we’re just confirming that opinion.

*They make us feel a certain way and we want to feel that way again.

*We’re looking for the small details and hidden meanings that we missed the first time around.

And then, of course, there’s the secret fourth reason:

*To write reviews for Goodreads on books rated but not yet reviewed

Okay, so maybe that’s just me.

So what kinds of books tend to be reread? Well, there’s Pride and Prejudice obviously. Sweeping aside the vast array of young adult books that are currently dominating bestseller lists simply because they are current, a quick online search came up with Anne of Green Gables. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Great Gatsby. The rest of Jane Austen’s novels. To Kill a Mockingbird. This is highly unscientific but the one thing all these books might have in common is that they are books we read during our formative years.

And what kinds of books tend not to be reread? Obviously the ones we didn’t enjoy in the first place. But it’s not as easy a question to answer as one might think. To reread or not to reread is a highly personal question. When I was googling books that people read over and over, someone said Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, which I didn’t enjoy at all and do not need or intend to read again.

Books with twist endings might ultimately shoot themselves in the foot in the rereading stakes. After all, once you know the twist, everything that comes before it is tainted by the knowledge. The purity with which the words were once read can never be recaptured.

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel is one of these books, I suspect. I was blown away by it but I don’t think I could read it again, because the ending is so powerful only because you don’t see it coming. Once you know the secret, it changes how you experience the first 95% of the book.

Then again, No Way Back by Matthew Klein has a fantastic twist ending but I so enjoyed the actual experience of reading of the whole book that I predict I may read it again at some point in the future.

Well, I think I’ve thoroughly failed to answer the question initially posed. What is it about some books that makes us want to read them over and over again? It is dependent on both the novel and the reader and an indefinable something that occurs when the two come together. In that regard, I suppose it’s a little like a love story. Nobody can predict when or why. We can only be thankful when it does.

Book Review: The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

Disclaimer #1: I don’t generally read or like fiction that classifies itself as fantasy.

Disclaimer #2: I don’t care what genre of fiction a book is, there are still universals when it comes to good and bad writing, plot, characters and style.

Going into reading this book (as a non-fan of fantasy), I at least hoped I would be able to appreciate it on an objective level. But there wasn’t that much to appreciate. Regardless of the fact that I knew I wouldn’t especially like the genre, there was nothing particularly original about the underlying story. A girl with a unique talent is forced to hide it from general society and is then captured and tortured by those who want to use that talent for their own purposes. There’s an insider who’s secretly on her side (what a stroke of luck, because she never would have gotten through it all in the end without him). There’s a hidden community of people just like her (although she can never really tell who’s on her side or not). And there’s a large group of people who are evil and duplicitous for no real reason that is ever explained.

Paige Mahoney is the main character and she’s a dreamwalker – a very uncommon type of clairvoyant. She works for a mime-lord with a number of other very talented clairvoyants (although not as talented as she is) and together they commit mime-crime, illegal acts using their clairvoyant talents. Clairvoyance is illegal in this dystopian version of London.

One night, Paige is captured by the Night Vigilance Division after killing one guard and making another permanently insane by driving her spirit into theirs and forcing them from their bodies. (This was the point at which I thought, “Oh, no.”) But instead of receiving the expected punishment, she is instead handed over to the Rephaim, a group of humanoid netherworld beings whose clairvoyant skills exceed anything ever seen in a human.

The Rephaim arrived two hundred years ago when the barrier between the corporeal world and the netherworld was broken down. Now they run a secret prison for clairvoyants, who are handed over by the “normal” humans because they are afraid of supernatural abilities. The Rephaim feed on the auras or the supernatural power of the clairvoyants and treat them appallingly – it is a prison after all.

There was an attempted rebellion forty years ago and no prizes for guessing that it’s just about time for another one with Paige as their reluctant leader.

I’m not sure why authors need to imbue their main characters with unique talents – it’s very reminiscent of this era in which all children are being brought up and told they are special and can do and have anything they want in this world. Honestly, I’d like to start reading more books about people who have reasonable talents and have to compete with many others who have the same talents. I’d like to read more books about people who achieve something but fail just as often, having to watch others succeed ahead of them without it being the end of the world (literally).

There are several times in the book when characters are threatened with losing their powers and being reduced to amaurotic status, which means just being a normal, everyday human. Oh, no! How could this be tolerated? Well, the rest of us manage it okay. The “special” people should try it some time and realise it’s easily tolerated. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with actually having to work hard to have a skill instead of just being born special.

This is Samantha Shannon’s first book and supposedly the first of seven in the series. It reads very much like a first novel. There is something amateurish about it, probably because of the lack of complex and original stories, characters and themes. (Keep an eye out for the inappropriate inter-species romance – you’ll see it coming a long way off – it’s a little bit Buffy and Angel but lacking in any real feeling.) I see an unrealised potential and by book seven, she will probably have gotten there. But she’s a long way off in this book.

There’s a glossary at the end of the book that would have really helped me out had it been at the front of the book because a lot of the time, the characters were using words that I had no idea of what they meant (made up words, Bone Season-specific slang, etc). I was able to get the gist but is that really what an author wants their readers to be saying? “I got the gist of it.”

And I’m sure this head scratcher will reveal itself over the course of the seven books, but there are shadowy creatures, enemies of both humans and the Rephaim, who feed on human flesh called Emim. Is it just a great big coincidence that Emim is mime spelled backwards? Hmmm.

It’s just an okay first effort, a little lazy and not destined to be a great of the genre. I won’t be reading the next six books.

2 stars

*First published on Goodreads 17 July 2015

Have I Got A Story For You…

I’m sure I’m not the only one to experience this: family, friends and even people you barely know who all have an idea for your next book. We listen politely, nod half-heartedly and agree indifferently, “Yes, that sounds like it would make a wonderful novel.”

And here’s the follow up we never seem to have the heart to deliver: “But I have no interest in writing it because I need to be really emotionally invested and personally connected to devote a year of my life or potentially longer to it and sometimes I can barely find the time and/or motivation to write the stories I am emotionally invested in and personally connected to.”

And here’s the follow up to the follow up that we also never say because it’s inviting trouble that will be revisited on us ten times over: “Why don’t you have a go at writing it?” There’s enough bad writing in the world without knowingly asking for more.

A couple of my recent examples include:

*My little sister sent me something someone had posted on Facebook, a woman blathering on about the mirror world, how perhaps there were people trapped in the mirrors or perhaps they were protecting us by stopping us from going into the mirror world or some such nonsense and that someone should write a book about it. I didn’t respond to the email but the mere fact that my sister sent it to me suggested she thought I should be the one the write this book.

*One of my stepbrothers has apparently had his life savings misappropriated, allegedly by his own brother, and my father has been assisting in compiling a brief of documents for a lawyer who is attempting to assist in getting the money back. It’s a forensic nightmare but my stepmother thinks and has told me several times that it would make a terrific book. Hint, hint, nod, nod, wink, wink.

The honest truth is that these stories may very well make great novels. I just don’t want to write them. I currently have one finished novel awaiting publication, one half-finished novel awaiting completion, two sequels to two different series awaiting development and my next novel already planned. And even if I didn’t, I probably still wouldn’t want to write those stories because I don’t write in the fantasy genre and I’m not sure how I would make a case of simple fraud and theft a must read.

Having said all of this, I must confess that a suggestion from a friend is the only reason my upcoming novel was ever written. We were both reading and watching the success of the Twilight, Hunger Games and Divergent series and she thought I should write something in a similar vein to take advantage of the appetite for this type of young adult/mainstream crossover fiction. She asked if I had any ideas and we workshopped a few, which she vetoed, before I hit on the one that would become Black Spot.

I wrote Black Spot in six months, the quickest I have ever written a book, and although the specific premise for the novel was mine, I never would have written it had it not been for the encouragement of my friend. In fact, the dedication specifically mentions her with the words “without whom this book would never have been written”.

But for all the family, friends and acquaintances of writers out there, don’t take this as an invitation. It’s a rare (extremely rare) exception (barely even an exception) to the rule. We already have more than enough ideas that we don’t have the time or inclination to bring to fruition without you adding to the pile.

And if I haven’t convinced you yet, how about this? Do writers try to tell you how to do your job? No. Then why would you try to tell a writer how to do theirs? As a general rule, writers really only want advice from other writers while they’re writing – which they will solicit themselves – and once they’ve finished writing, they only want advice from people willing to read what they’ve written. Opinions welcome, ideas not.

And the next time a writer is going on and on about a story of theirs you have no interest in, you can listen politely, nod half-heartedly and agree indifferently, “Yes, that sounds like it would make a wonderful novel.” And the circle of the writing life will be complete.