M. Pierce's Blog, page 8

Trailer perfection

This was easily my favorite trailer of 2012. It’s a work of art, from the opening Tolstoy quote — “There are as many loves as there are hearts” — to the background music, “Nero” by Two Steps From Hell.

I tried damn hard to get people to see this movie. In the end, even M. wouldn’t go with me. She didn’t think Knightley could do justice to Anna and she was put off by the movie’s artsy flavor. (And it is very artsy — shot almost exclusively inside of an old theater and very theatrical throughout, which was a deliberate device).

Anyway, I’m not trying to sell the movie, which I actually enjoyed as a vision and revision of Anna Karenina. I just love the trailer –

And the song in the background:

The night at the end of the tunnel

I’m in a state of low-level agony today. Things are keeping me from writing. For example:

Working
Dicking around on the internet
Reading my Twitter feed
Dicking around on the internet
Talking to A

And I seriously have a lot of fucking work to do. Now I ask myself: how immoral would it be to take a month off work to finish my novel? I need to write the fucking novel. I need to mellow the fuck out and write it. I have a handful of chapters and I add a couple hundred words a day, but it’s not enough.

I wrote NIGHT OWL at an incredible rate. I know, if I had the time, I could write book 2 at the same speed. And speed is important. The energy of the story relies on my ability to channel it. God, and I’m in a weird mental state today — like all I want to do is go for a long, long run. Except that I don’t feel well.

Anyway, I’m going to spend tomorrow writing. That should even me out.

Bark at the moon

I recently wrote a post about my favorite vampire fiction — the stories that ingrained in me a lifelong love of marble-skinned, velvet-voiced blood drinkers. My vampire love is one of my dirty little secrets. Only a few people in my real life know about it, and when someone spots Interview or Lestat on my shelf I usually play it off as a youthful whim I have yet to relegate to my shelf of shame, along with a few other speculative fictions. Maybe I’ll write a post about those down the road.

This, today, is the werewolf post. I should say, my interest in werewolves is less keen than my interest in vampires. The bipedal furred half-men simply never appealed to me. I always preferred the shape-shifters, lycanthropes, the loup garou of Annette Curtis Klause, who make a full transition from feeble human to majestic wolf (and back). Oh, and usually under a fat yellow moon. That kills me.

Here are my top three “werewolf” books. I use the quotes because the werewolves in these books are not of the classic bipedal An American Werewolf in Paris variety. Fuck that…

1.) The Blooding by Patricia Windsor

The best edition of this text

I encountered this book some time between middle school and high school. This is the same cover I encountered — a hardcover at the library — and I recently ordered it online after accidentally acquiring a very hideous paperback edition. The sad thing is — this book is hard to find, totally obscure, before its time, occasionally out of print, and awesome. I really feel for early YA paranormal books — the stuff that paved the way for the success of today’s YA paranormal romance, most of which is sub-par.

Anyway, The Blooding contains one of my favorite novel devices ever — the forlorn/sad ending, god, give me that sorrow — and though it’s not a paragon of prose, it’s a lesson in pacing that almost every self-published author I have tried to read recently could use.

[Aside -- I realize this might seem obvious, but: I do not want to follow your character every second of every day into all the extraneous pointless material of life that's unrelated to the arrow-like intention of your story and plot. Follow your story, skip the rest. If you don't know how this is executed in prose, give The Blooding a read. It's quick and deliciously gothic. And it's YA. If I read one more self-pubbed novel that's 80% cerebral bs in the character's brain and like 20% story, I will throw my Kindle out the window. Not my iPad, but definitely the Kindle.]

2.) Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause

Don’t watch the movie

Unlike The Blooding, Blood and Chocolate has somehow withstood the test of time and entered the canon of werewolf lit. A place well deserved. Blood and Chocolate is well written, unflinching, and whatever you do, don’t watch the movie. The movie didn’t merely “butcher the book,” or portray things miserably. The movie literally altered the ending of this book in a significant way to make it more palatable to teens who want to believe in twoo love that knows no bounds (… even species bounds, and can we all say bestiality* please). Whatever the case… you can probably still find Blood and Chocolate in your local B&N. It’s enduring in its popularity, and it’s worth a read. And it’s by the author of The Silver Kiss. What more do you want?

3.) Shiver, Linger, and Forever by Maggie Stiefvater

Book 1 of 3

This series is more recent and by a very, very popular YA author, Maggie Stiefvater. That’s pronounced Steve-Otter. Say it.

Otters.

Anyway, yes. Trendy new YA paranormal books usually raise my hackles, and I don’t fucking read them, but I picked up Linger on a whim (a whim related to that gorgeous cover design) and read it in two days. That’s fast for me; I’m a slow reader. I proceeded to devour the next two books in the trilogy, Linger and Forever, like a fifteen-year-old girl, and then proceeded to mail bookplates to the author which she returned signed and which now proudly decorate each of my three hardcover editions of these books do I need to keep going to prove my point? These are good. They’re readable, soundly YA, and plotted to keep you coming back for more. Not like, “I want to know what happens.” More like crack.

Now… people laud the writing in these novels as if Stiefvater were Fitzgerald. (I have a theory that most writing now is so bad that anything remotely passable is hailed as BRILLIANT. And that is sad. I could tell you about brilliant prose; I’ll write a future post about books that really sing. And trust me, I don’t accuse myself of writing brilliant prose ever.)

Anyway, I have a ridiculous standard for hot prose and while this trilogy doesn’t meet it, it doesn’t offend me. The writing is good — there are glimmers of loveliness here and there — and the author is extremely competent. That is to say, she knows how to splice up scene and summary and how to introduce characters and how to work in history without killing the reader. Lessons writers need to learn, among others. So again, these books (or books like these) need to be read by learning novelists, i.e. 70% of self-published authors on Amazon, and that percentage is probably conservative.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

1.) Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat — This isn’t about werewolves, it’s about wolves. It’s nonfiction. It’s one of my favorite books of all time. It’s short, sharp, hilarious, and moving. Unlike everything else in this post, Never Cry Wolf comes with my highest recommendation.

2.) Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse — Again, this isn’t about werewolves — it’s about the wolf of the steppes, the animal within the protagonist. It’s philosophical and gorgeous. Most people will never read it; they’ll be weirded out by the rambling metaphysics and seeming plotlessness. Which doesn’t matter. Hesse is a god and this book is gold. It’s also divine because it’s a translation, and so it has that crisp, jubilant, crazy flexible English I only seem to find in translations. And don’t get me started on translations…

*3.) Bestiality. Er, I mean The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice. I have to mention this book because Rice is the queen of the gothic monster. Recently she took a stab at werewolves with The Wolf Gift. The second book in the series is coming out in just a few days. I will read it. That said, Rice is not at the height of her powers in The Wolf Gift. It’s a strange read for a number of reasons, but once/if/when the plot finally hooks you (it starts slow) the book demands to be finished, so there’s that. There’s also bestiality. Werewolf-human copulation. So, you know. Rice can write whatever the fuck she wants, since she was writing vampires before Meyer and bondage before James and doing it better.

4.) A movie. Brotherhood of the Wolf. Watch it in French. Do it. It got the only favorable Boston Globe movie review I ever happened to glance at.

OCD

Having gone, in the last 1.5 days, through about 6 new covers of NIGHT OWL… speaks to a certain degree of OCD. There is something definitely unhealthy about this. I am done — I am so done messing with the cover. Fuck it.

I felt confident in my original cover concept, though over time its simplicity (and failure to allude to the trilogy) began to bother me. I went in the opposite direction then, with a cover that got too complicated and, for reasons unclear to me, novice looking. Something about the fonts and arrangement of the fonts…

The current and FINAL cover meets both concepts in the middle. It holds true to the original, keeps the allusion to the trilogy that’ll be on all three covers, and adds a cool color to the white/bronze/amber palette.

The words “it is finished” come to mind, but I don’t like to blaspheme.

God damn

All day I’ve been agonizing over the new cover for NIGHT OWL. I wrote maybe 500 words. I did no work at all. At this point, I feel slightly nauseous.

This is not an awesome day for me.

What you can do for me

Hi. If you’re on this page, I assume you’ve read my book. Scandalous, I know.

Maybe you wrote a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads, and maybe you left a comment here on one of my blog posts. If so, thank you.

Now, if you really want to support me and you aren’t ashamed to let people know that you read indulgent smut like NIGHT OWL, there are other things you can do for me.

1. Tweet about my book. With a link. This is the direct link to my book on Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F02O1W6 ) and you can tweet whatever you want, but preferably “READ THIS NOW OH GOD IT CHANGED MY LIFE http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F02O1W6”

2. Use Facebook. Post something about my book. I don’t use FB, but if you’re human I assume you do. You should cast aside your dignity and tell all your family and friends that you read NIGHT OWL and that they need to read it to… and the link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F02O1W6

3. Humanly converse about my book. Take your friend aside and tell them you read my book. Tell many of your friends. All of them. Family. Strangers. Anyone.

4. Blog about it, etc.

5. If you haven’t written a review on Amazon or Goodreads, please do. Please write an unequivocally glowing review. Awesome.

Yeah, thank you for considering my shameless self-promotion.

P.S. In the interest of making this suspiciously easy for you, here’s some code you can copy & paste into your blog or elsewhere that’ll make a NIGHT OWL button + link on your page:

The button will look as follows:

If this loud green color that I love offends your sense of taste, here’s the code for a blue button…

And here’s the code for a pink button…

And those look as follows:

3:00 a.m.

Work-induced insomnia.

I remember learning in psych 101 how various degrees of sleeplessness derange the mind.

Anyway, that’s all.

Making covers at midnight

For the fun of it, and because I can’t sleep, I designed some new covers for the Night Owl Trilogy. Except for NIGHT OWL, these aren’t set in stone. Anyway, enjoy the preview.

Note:  I’ve altered all of these covers, scrapped both for book 3 and used a different cover image, etc.

Charmed

I just laughed out loud reading the latest review for NIGHT OWL. BTS, thank you. Your considerate and lengthy review made my day.

It’s nice to hear from smart readers.

It was especially interesting to hear that Matt felt more realistic and believable than Hannah. I had an easier time writing for Hannah — precisely because she was a cliche at points — and a much harder time writing for Matt, whose perspective is more like mine.

NIGHT OWL started as a “fun” sort of fluffy project for me — a piece of writing I refused to take too seriously. (I normally write literary fiction, which I do take too seriously.) With NIGHT OWL, I wanted to write something sexy, fast-paced, and thoughtful only incidentally.

Well… the story took on a life of its own and swerved in some strange, dark directions.

I imagine that under the tutelage of an agent, I would have been urged to make certain dramatic shifts in the book more motive-supported, and to set the reader up for the less believable plot aspects.

As is, I had no agent and made a very minimal effort to acquire one.

I’ll be making another mortal sin with HOW TO SAY GOODBYE, book 2 in the series, when I switch genres (contemporary romance —> paranormal romance). That’s a pretty big no-no that any agent would gun down. But again, no agent, more self-sabotage.

And if the first book seemed to ask for a lot from the reader, the second book asks more. Suspend your disbelief for me.

Again, let me thank you, BTS, for your thoughtful review. I am truly honored that you took the time to remark on my book with such care, at such length. (And I hope you get to read this thanks.) You’d make a fine manuscript reader.

There will be blood (and vampires)

It’s no secret that I’ve loved vampires since… well, before vampires were cool. I mean before Twilight. Before Anne Rice. Before I could read.

This was my favorite Sesame Street character:

I vant to teach you how to count. COUNT, get it?

I’m not kidding.

For me, the vampire was never the embodiment of hideous horror, as in Nosferatu and Dracula and some of the earliest literary and cinematic takes on the myth. Rather, I always gravitated toward the decadent, elegant, romantic version of the vampire, immortalized most effectively (in my opinion) by Anne Rice.

To this day, I believe Interview With the Vampire is the best book and movie on vampires. There is no, no competition. The force, breadth, brilliance, detail, and passion of Rice’s take on the mythos has not been equaled. It has not even been challenged. (And incidentally, I think the novel is a fine novel irrespective of genre and subject matter. It’s just damn good storytelling.)

Anyway, I want to share the three texts that were formative in my enduring vampire fascination.

The first, of course…

1.) Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

THE classic

Yes, the little red text on the newest edition says “The spellbinding classic that started it all,” and I don’t think the cover designers just meant The Vampire Chronicles. Rice got vampires right — brooding, powerful, mad, damned to darkness and starved for life — where Stephenie Meyer got them all wrong.

I salute Meyer for her take on the myth, and she’s been hugely successful, but in my humble opinion, if you put a vampire in the sunlight… you kill it. Even if it sparkles and doesn’t burn. ESPECIALLY if it sparkles and doesn’t burn. Damnation to darkness is central to the vampire myth. We must assume Meyer altered the myth in order to allow for vampires that can attend high school.

And there my rhetoric ends. Vampires attending high school for decades on end…?

Now, lest you think I believe vampires cannot be done “right” in a YA context, I give you my next two favorite vampire novels.

2.) The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause

The Silver Kiss

I don’t know what to say about this book, except that if you like vampire fiction and you haven’t read it… where is your mind? I consider The Silver Kiss a classic of the genre. I don’t even think of it as a “YA novel” — it’s beautifully written and gripping and melancholy. I own it, have read it multiple times, and turn to it whenever I need a reminder that authors need no license to write about the supernatural.

And last but not least, another YA novel…

3.) Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde

Companions of the Night

Ignore the hideous cover, please. Or rather — don’t let the hideous cover dissuade you from reading this novel. It’s a gem. I read this one before Interview and before The Silver Kiss, and I read it again a year ago with equal (if not greater) pleasure. This book is a lesson in pacing. It has a “real time” feel, following a young woman closely over the course of a brief but insane adventure, and like The Silver Kiss it’s got a romantic element that isn’t cheesy and ridiculous.

I totally stand behind these novels, though they’re all “older” and, in the latter two cases, pretty obscure. I don’t think you’ll be sorry if you read them.