Christina Hoag's Blog, page 13
October 2, 2016
Girl on the Brink in Reviewers' Choice
Midwest Book Reviews made Marlan Warren's review of my YA novel about teen dating violence Girl on the Brink a Reviewers Choice! http://www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/...
Skin of Tattoos in ITW's Big Thrill!
Dare I say it? I'm well, thrilled, to be featured in the International Thriller Writers newsletter The Big Thrill this month!
Skin of Tattoos
Here's my inerview with author George Ebey:
New this month is author Christina Hoag’s SKIN OF TATTOOS, a harrowing thriller set in the world of inner-city gangs.
Los Angles homeboy Magdaleno is paroled from prison after serving time on a gun possession frame-up by a rival, Rico, who takes over as gang shotcaller in Mags’s absence. Mags promises himself and his Salvadoran immigrant family a fresh start, but he can’t find either the decent job or the respect he craves from his parents and his firefighter brother, who look at him as a disappointment. Moreover, Rico, under pressure to earn money to free the Cyco Lokos’ jailed top leader and eager to exert his authority over his rival-turned-underling, isn’t about to let Mags get out of his reach. Ultimately, Mags’s desire for revenge and respect pushes him to make a decision that ensnares him in a world seeded with deceit and betrayal, where the only escape from rules that carry a heavy price for transgression is sacrifice.
The Big Thrill checked in with Hoag to learn more about this story and her thoughts on the craft of suspense.
What first inspired you to write a thriller set in the gang underworld of Los Angeles?
The genesis for SKIN OF TATTOOS came from interviews I did for a magazine story in El Salvador on gang members deported from Los Angeles to San Salvador, which most of them really didn’t know because their families had emigrated when they were infants. It was a classic “fish out of water” story. They neither belonged in El Salvador nor in the United States. Their story stayed with me because I moved around the world as a child so I know the feeling of not really belonging anywhere. The novel grew out of that, plus my general interest in gangs as a subculture within our larger society. I also co-wrote a nonfiction book on gang intervention called Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence.
Tell us about your character, Magdaleno Argueta. What has his journey been like up to this point?
When we meet Mags, he’s pretty hopeful about his future. After doing time, he wants to put his gang days behind him. He’s smart and he desperately wants something more out of life. But circumstances stack up against him: a criminal record, a lack of work experience and job skills, an unsupportive family. He becomes disillusioned. On top of that, he can’t escape the gang because not only are his homeboys around physically, but they’re his best friends. He misses them, he misses being somebody. The final nail is that his nemesis, Rico, has taken over as shotcaller, or gang leader. Mags, who had seen himself as shotcaller, falls victim to his pride. He wants revenge. And revenge doesn’t lead to good places.
What elements do you feel are essential for a good suspense story?
I think suspense has a lot to do with the pacing of what to reveal and when. I’ve found it almost impossible to plot out reveals in detail. It seems to happen on the page, which necessitates a lot of going back and tweaking so that dialogue and occurrences match up with later events. Emotion also has a lot to do creating good suspense. You want to get inside your character’s head so the reader is along for the ride.
What tricks have you learned as a writer to make your writing time as productive as possible?
I’m a morning writer, that’s really when my best stuff comes out. I try to gear my days around that but I’ve had to develop the wherewithal to write at other times of the day if circumstances prevent me from writing in the morning. I’ve found afternoons or evenings are good for revising what I wrote the previous day or mapping out the next couple scenes. That can help push forward a project and save my precious morning time for actual writing. I also don’t like to write myself out in a session. I leave something for the next day so I can pick up where I left off without spending a lot of time thinking about what I’m going to write that day. Once I learned that, that was a real productivity booster.
Do you have anything new in the works?
I’ve got two novels I absolutely, positively must finish! One is called The Revolutionaries, and it’s a literary political thriller based on the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela, where I was living at the time and which I covered as a journalist. The protagonists are an expat married couple who find themselves on opposite sides of Venezuela’s very divided politics. The other is called Angels Lust. It’s a detective mystery set in Los Angeles with a Latin American twist. I also have a sequel to SKIN OF TATTOOS. A chunk of it is written, but it’s still got a long way to go. Mags’s journey is far from over. He’s got some deep, dark places to before he resurfaces.
http://www.thebigthrill.org/2016/09/s...
Skin of Tattoos
Here's my inerview with author George Ebey:
New this month is author Christina Hoag’s SKIN OF TATTOOS, a harrowing thriller set in the world of inner-city gangs.
Los Angles homeboy Magdaleno is paroled from prison after serving time on a gun possession frame-up by a rival, Rico, who takes over as gang shotcaller in Mags’s absence. Mags promises himself and his Salvadoran immigrant family a fresh start, but he can’t find either the decent job or the respect he craves from his parents and his firefighter brother, who look at him as a disappointment. Moreover, Rico, under pressure to earn money to free the Cyco Lokos’ jailed top leader and eager to exert his authority over his rival-turned-underling, isn’t about to let Mags get out of his reach. Ultimately, Mags’s desire for revenge and respect pushes him to make a decision that ensnares him in a world seeded with deceit and betrayal, where the only escape from rules that carry a heavy price for transgression is sacrifice.
The Big Thrill checked in with Hoag to learn more about this story and her thoughts on the craft of suspense.
What first inspired you to write a thriller set in the gang underworld of Los Angeles?
The genesis for SKIN OF TATTOOS came from interviews I did for a magazine story in El Salvador on gang members deported from Los Angeles to San Salvador, which most of them really didn’t know because their families had emigrated when they were infants. It was a classic “fish out of water” story. They neither belonged in El Salvador nor in the United States. Their story stayed with me because I moved around the world as a child so I know the feeling of not really belonging anywhere. The novel grew out of that, plus my general interest in gangs as a subculture within our larger society. I also co-wrote a nonfiction book on gang intervention called Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence.
Tell us about your character, Magdaleno Argueta. What has his journey been like up to this point?
When we meet Mags, he’s pretty hopeful about his future. After doing time, he wants to put his gang days behind him. He’s smart and he desperately wants something more out of life. But circumstances stack up against him: a criminal record, a lack of work experience and job skills, an unsupportive family. He becomes disillusioned. On top of that, he can’t escape the gang because not only are his homeboys around physically, but they’re his best friends. He misses them, he misses being somebody. The final nail is that his nemesis, Rico, has taken over as shotcaller, or gang leader. Mags, who had seen himself as shotcaller, falls victim to his pride. He wants revenge. And revenge doesn’t lead to good places.
What elements do you feel are essential for a good suspense story?
I think suspense has a lot to do with the pacing of what to reveal and when. I’ve found it almost impossible to plot out reveals in detail. It seems to happen on the page, which necessitates a lot of going back and tweaking so that dialogue and occurrences match up with later events. Emotion also has a lot to do creating good suspense. You want to get inside your character’s head so the reader is along for the ride.
What tricks have you learned as a writer to make your writing time as productive as possible?
I’m a morning writer, that’s really when my best stuff comes out. I try to gear my days around that but I’ve had to develop the wherewithal to write at other times of the day if circumstances prevent me from writing in the morning. I’ve found afternoons or evenings are good for revising what I wrote the previous day or mapping out the next couple scenes. That can help push forward a project and save my precious morning time for actual writing. I also don’t like to write myself out in a session. I leave something for the next day so I can pick up where I left off without spending a lot of time thinking about what I’m going to write that day. Once I learned that, that was a real productivity booster.
Do you have anything new in the works?
I’ve got two novels I absolutely, positively must finish! One is called The Revolutionaries, and it’s a literary political thriller based on the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela, where I was living at the time and which I covered as a journalist. The protagonists are an expat married couple who find themselves on opposite sides of Venezuela’s very divided politics. The other is called Angels Lust. It’s a detective mystery set in Los Angeles with a Latin American twist. I also have a sequel to SKIN OF TATTOOS. A chunk of it is written, but it’s still got a long way to go. Mags’s journey is far from over. He’s got some deep, dark places to before he resurfaces.
http://www.thebigthrill.org/2016/09/s...
September 29, 2016
What inspired me to write about gangs
Author Tina Glasneck features "Skin of Tattoos"Skin of Tattoos on her"Celebrate with a Book" website today! What's great about Tina's site is that she features a variety of genres so there's something for everyone.
My post is about what inspired me to write about gangs:
http://celebratewithabook.com/2016/09...
Having written both a nonfiction book and a fiction book about gangs, people often ask me why gangs? I first encountered gangs as a young newspaper reporter in New Jersey, when I was assigned to write a story about a notorious motorcycle gang delivering Christmas toys to a local hospital. I went to interview them in a small suburban house, very normal-looking apart from the bunch of Harley choppers out front and its rather gloriously hirsute occupants, who insisted they belonged to a “club” not a gang. I was fascinated by them and their chosen lifestyle. They had established their own society with its own rules, dress, language and culture within mainstream society. What drove people to do that? I wondered. A side note: A couple years later, I saw one of “club members” at a New Jersey prison where I’d gone to interview an inmate for another story. So much for the “club,” I thought.
Years later, on a magazine assignment, I interviewed gang members deported from Los Angeles to El Salvador, where they had landed like fish out of water because they’d left Salvador as babies and small children during the civil war. It was a country that they identified with, but really didn’t know. Some of them barely spoke Spanish. They had joined and formed gangs in Los Angeles because their families had moved to predominantly Mexican-American neighborhoods that had long-entrenched gangs. The Central Americans formed their own groups for protection, but because they weren’t U.S. citizens, they later were vulnerable to deportation when the government started cracking down on immigrants with criminal records. The stories of the young men I interviewed were really rooted in an unusual outcome of both a civil war and the immigrant experience. They ended up staying in my mind to form the genesis of my recently released thriller, Skin of Tattoos.
Talking to the young men in El Salvador also reignited that previous interest in gangs from when I had interviewed the motorcycle guys, and I started reading about and researching gangs in earnest over the following years. I covered numerous gang issues as a reporter for the Associated Press in Los Angeles, talking to gang members, people who worked with them, people who worked against them, ie. cops. There are many factors leading to gang formation, but in essence, gangs are driven by the universal human need for belonging to and approval of a group, and because some sectors of our society feel excluded from mainstream society, they form their own societies instead. Gang culture is alien to most of our lives and an extreme consequence of socioeconomic marginalization, but everyone can relate in some way to feeling excluded, of needing to belong, of wanting approval.
My post is about what inspired me to write about gangs:
http://celebratewithabook.com/2016/09...
Having written both a nonfiction book and a fiction book about gangs, people often ask me why gangs? I first encountered gangs as a young newspaper reporter in New Jersey, when I was assigned to write a story about a notorious motorcycle gang delivering Christmas toys to a local hospital. I went to interview them in a small suburban house, very normal-looking apart from the bunch of Harley choppers out front and its rather gloriously hirsute occupants, who insisted they belonged to a “club” not a gang. I was fascinated by them and their chosen lifestyle. They had established their own society with its own rules, dress, language and culture within mainstream society. What drove people to do that? I wondered. A side note: A couple years later, I saw one of “club members” at a New Jersey prison where I’d gone to interview an inmate for another story. So much for the “club,” I thought.
Years later, on a magazine assignment, I interviewed gang members deported from Los Angeles to El Salvador, where they had landed like fish out of water because they’d left Salvador as babies and small children during the civil war. It was a country that they identified with, but really didn’t know. Some of them barely spoke Spanish. They had joined and formed gangs in Los Angeles because their families had moved to predominantly Mexican-American neighborhoods that had long-entrenched gangs. The Central Americans formed their own groups for protection, but because they weren’t U.S. citizens, they later were vulnerable to deportation when the government started cracking down on immigrants with criminal records. The stories of the young men I interviewed were really rooted in an unusual outcome of both a civil war and the immigrant experience. They ended up staying in my mind to form the genesis of my recently released thriller, Skin of Tattoos.
Talking to the young men in El Salvador also reignited that previous interest in gangs from when I had interviewed the motorcycle guys, and I started reading about and researching gangs in earnest over the following years. I covered numerous gang issues as a reporter for the Associated Press in Los Angeles, talking to gang members, people who worked with them, people who worked against them, ie. cops. There are many factors leading to gang formation, but in essence, gangs are driven by the universal human need for belonging to and approval of a group, and because some sectors of our society feel excluded from mainstream society, they form their own societies instead. Gang culture is alien to most of our lives and an extreme consequence of socioeconomic marginalization, but everyone can relate in some way to feeling excluded, of needing to belong, of wanting approval.
September 28, 2016
A refreshing interview on Destination Mystery podcast!
I loved being interviewed by Laura Brennan on for her Destination Mystery podcast. She'd read both my books and was able to ask in-depth questions about the novels and what went into writing them. It was really a professional, journalistic style interview.
Listen to the podcast here: http://destinationmystery.com/episode...
Or read the transcript below:
Christina Hoag is a journalist, nonfiction author and novelist. Her thrillers are just that — thrilling rides with young people on the verge of adulthood and already mired in life-and-death situations. Complex characters and interwoven relationships that form, not a net, but a sticky web that traps her protagonists as they fight to escape the consequences of their own dangerous choices. Skin of Tattoos features Mags, just released from prison and trying to escape the gang life that landed him there, while Girl on the Brink is a very different examination of violence and predation. girl
Christina’s nonfiction book, Peace in the Hood, was co-written with Aquil Basheer and digs deep into his program to combat gang violence. Their book is on the syllabi of several university programs, and Basheer himself has been featured in two recent documentaries: License to Operate and The Black Jacket. Plus, I promised to link to a great interview Christina recently did with a fabulous interviewer — herself!
I gave a shout-out to my favorite Golden Age mystery writer, Ngaio Marsh. Artists in Crime is my favorite (and if you don’t need to read the books in order, a great place to begin), but Colour Scheme takes place in Christina’s native New Zealand. Looking for one with both New Zealand and sheep in the murder? Yup, Ngaio Marsh has that, too. Check out Died in the Wool.
Christina, meanwhile, remembers her favorite children’s mystery author, and one whose books I also devoured as a kid: British author Enid Blyton. Blyton was prolific; it’s hard to go wrong with any of them, but the mystery series are, in particular, The Famous Five and The Secret Seven. There are so many others, I’m not going to try to guide you through them, but I will toss you over to the Enid Blyton Society. Enjoy!
To learn more about Christina, check out her website and her Facebook page. And for a great read, turn to any of her books!
— Laura
Transcript of Interview with Christina Hoag
Laura Brennan: My guest today is a journalist, a novelist, and a nonfiction author. Christina Hoag’s novels, Skin of Tattoos and Girl on the Brink, both focus on young people caught in life or death situations — and both are all the more terrifying because those situations are so real, and so frighteningly common.
Christina, thank you for joining me.
Christina Hoag: Thank you Laura. It’s great to be here.
LB: Before we talk about your work, I’d love to talk a little bit about your background. You were born in New Zealand?
CH: Yes. I was born in New Zealand. I lived in a number of countries, my family moved around a lot — which is kind of an understatement. But I ended up in the United States when I was 13, in New Jersey to be exact. So I’m sort of a global nomad.
LB: I wanted to sneak in here that everything I know about New Zealand I learned from Ngaio Marsh.
CH: Oh, great! Great. That’s great that you’ve heard of her and read her. Yes, she’s one of New Zealand’s literary stars.
LB: Oh, she’s phenomenal. I love her.
CH: Yes.
LB: I’m sure New Zealand is more than murders, mind you.
CH: Yes. There are a lot of sheep there.
LB: A lot of sheep. Okay. That sounds like, actually, a couple of her books. So you grew up all over the world and landed in New Jersey. And then, how did you get into journalism?
CH: Mainly because I loved to write. And I won a prize, when I was six years old, in New Zealand, one little prize at school for writing interesting stories. So it’s something, I’d always loved to write, I was a voracious reader growing up, reading Enid Blyton and The Famous Five, The Secret Seven mysteries, you know, those were juvenile mysteries written by the British author Enid Blyton. So I always knew I wanted to write stories. And when I was in high school, I discovered the high school newspaper and joined that and joined the journalism class associated with it. And I just said, that’s what I want to do. That’s going to enable me to write, a writing career.
LB: You actually did a terrific interview recently, with yourself as the interviewer and interviewee.
CH: [Laughter] Yes, exactly. I had fun doing that. That was a good one.
LB: I’m going to link to that in the show notes because it was just awesome. But in it, you talk about how journalism steeped you in the dark side of humanity.
CH: Yes, totally. Because, let’s face it, most of what you cover as a journalist is negative. That’s what makes the news, are negative events. What I always loved about being a journalist is that you get to see other sides of life and of people and of society that you normally wouldn’t get to see up close, and sort of delve into. Even though it’s a superficial sort of dive. You dive into do a story, write your story and move on to do the next thing. But still, you get this great exposure to all kinds of things. I mean I’ve interviewed, what I like to say is I’ve interviewed prostitutes to Presidents, bums to billionaires. And it’s completely true. So you see absolutely all facets of life and humanity.
LB: I love how that comes out in your novels. There’s a real heart and a real humanity, especially in your main characters.
CH: Yes, well, I’m glad you said that. That hopefully is what I’m trying to portray, in the main characters and also the secondary characters. I really try for that deeper character development. One of my problems with mystery and crime genre in general is the character development doesn’t go deep enough for me. So I really try and flesh out character a lot, so thanks for noting that. I put a lot into developing those characters.
LB: Well, I want to get specific about each book, but just another overarching thing with both of them is that, it’s not just the characters that are rich in them. It’s the relationships between the characters, that’s how you really get to know the other people, is in relationships.
CH: Yes. Exactly. You can go on endless description, it’s boring to the reader, so you have the character — it’s really the old showing, not telling. When they interact with each other, then the character comes out. And that’s what we do in life. As we get to know someone, we interact with them, and then we, that’s how we get to know them through their actions and their behaviors and what not. Hopeful that’s a reflection of real life.
LB: Let’s start, actually, by talking a little bit about real life. Because before you wrote your novels, you cowrote a book on gang intervention.
CH: Yes. Peace In The Hood.
LB: Peace In The Hood. How in the world did you get involved in that?
CH: Well, it was through journalism again. I was working as a reporter at the Associated Press in Los Angeles, and my beat was urban affairs. So I covered a lot of, mainly homelessness, poverty, inner-city issues, and one of those in LA of course is gangs. LA is the gang capital of the nation, gave birth decades ago to some of the more notorious gangs that are now not only nationwide but international. I covered a number of gang issues, more from the social side of things rather than the crime, we had a crime reporter reported on some gang crime. So one of the stories that I came across was this guy who had an academy of sorts, a school that he trained former gang members to be the interventionists. And basically an intervention means they go in and work with active gang members to disrupt the cycle of violence and retaliation, because that’s really what drives all gang violence. It’s all about this cycle of revenge. You shoot my homie, then I’ve got to shoot your homie. You shot my homie, so I’m going to shoot yours. It’s just this endless cycle. And interventionists aim to disrupt that cycle in various ways using people whom gang members trust, which is other gang members, usually older, veteran status gang members who aren’t really active anymore, and just trying to work on the other side of the fence.
LB: I saw that there was also a documentary made about the gentleman you wrote the book with, Basheer?
CH: Yes. In fact there’s two. Another one just came out, both different angles on the same subject, on this work. So yes. He’s being called, he just spoke in Geneva at the World Health Organization and has been invited to participate in some community violence solution roundtables all over the world. So it’s a concept that’s out there. Fighting the good fight.
LB: It also reminded me of, especially I watched the trailer to the documentary, it reminded me of Romeo and Juliet in that the only thing that seems to be able to stop the violence is the grown-ups, the ones who maybe even started the violence or started the vendetta, stepping in and saying the cost is too high. Our children are dying.
CH: Yes. It’s funny you should say that, because I just watched, I went to a performance of Romeo and Juliet set in modern-day Palestine, Montagues and Capulets as Israelis and Palestinians, and it hit me as well, boy, this is just like gang violence. It’s these two warring factions who basically — everybody’s forgotten why they’re warring, whatever the seed cause of that was, and just simply is carrying out these vendettas against each other for the sake of it. It becomes something that you define your identity from. Like, I’m not them, fighting against another faction to give yourself more status.
LB: So you actually used, for your first novel, Skin of Tattoos, use the backdrop of the gangs.
CH: Yes.
LB: How did that come about? Were you just so steeped in it that the story begged to be told? What was that?
CH: Actually, that goes back to another story I did years ago. A magazine sent me to El Salvador to do a story on Los Angeles gang members who had been deported to El Salvador, which is where they were from. And I found these guys there, and they were desperately homesick, some of them didn’t speak Spanish that well. They had all left El Salvador with their families in the 80s as babies, infants. They were to all intents and purposes American, they didn’t know El Salvador, they could barely read newspaper and things. But they weren’t US citizens, so they got caught up in gangs and criminal acts and got deported. One I found there had been, actually went to El Salvador to flee, he was a fugitive and was sort of hiding out there. He didn’t tell me what for. So anyway, they were there, and it just struck me that this was such an odd, being an immigrant myself, I know how you can get caught between cultures. You don’t belong to the one you came from, and you don’t belong to the one quite that you went to. You get caught in between. So I sort of related to that aspect of their story. And of course it was just a really strange outgrowth of the whole civil war in El Salvador. I’d lived in Latin America for almost 10 years so I knew the politics and the various civil wars in the region and whatnot. So just struck me, this is a really odd outgrowth of both the war and the immigrant experience. So it stayed with me, and again having an interest in that area, it grew out of that really.
LB: Skin of Tattoos is the story of, he’s 20 or 21, but he’s really at heart a kid, and he’s trying to get out of gang life. What struck me in this novel, and also in Girl on the Brink, is that both of your protagonists have a very fractured family life. And certainly for Mags, the hero of Skin of Tattoos, he’s looking for a family and he finds it in the gangs.
CH: Yes. Exactly. That’s often what happens, is that — I mean, let’s face it, not every kid from these inner-city neighborhoods grows up to be, goes into a gang. Gang joining has very specific patterns there, and one of them is a broken, dysfunctional family life. And so they seek a surrogate family in the gang, and they get the support, the loyalty, ‘I’ve got your back, bro,’ kind of emotional well-being from the gang. And what happens to Mags, of course, as a teenager, you sort of latch onto that, but then you can kind of grow out of it. So when we meet Mags at the beginning of the book, he’s pretty disillusioned with gang life and he sees that it wasn’t the loyalty and everything for the clica, is sort of a false pretense.
LB: And yet his best friends, the relationships that he really can rely on, do come from the gangs.
CH: Yes, because that’s all he knows, and that’s the whole thing. I covered one case where there was a kid who, a gang member, who had been shot by a cop. He sued, he was paralyzed, shot in the spine, won a multimillion dollar judgment. One of the conditions was, against the city, one of the conditions was that he move out of the city. And so he moved out of LA. A year or two later he was back gang banging, he was back with the gang, because that was all he knew. So despite his million-dollar award and trying to get out of it, it’s very difficult to break those ties when that’s all you know.
LB: I just have to say, this goes back to Peace in the Hood, your nonfiction book, you must be so proud to have contributed to something that is helping these kids and helping the greater good. Universities are using it as a textbook?
CH: Yes, it’s on the curriculum of a couple different types of courses at UCLA, University of Southern California, and the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Because it’s sort of how to book. It’s a combination of how to be a gang interventionist and we also made it as narrative as possible, with a lot of Aquil’s memories and anecdotes, what he’s gone through on the streets. And people really love that. People have said to me, could you just write about that? Without all the how to stuff? But, yeah, those are the things that drive the book. So, yes, it is. It is incredibly gratifying that it’s finding an audience and hopefully doing some good out there.
LB: So your next book, you’re actually tackling some of the same emotional problems. Girl on the Brink is not about a boy in a gang, it’s about a girl whose family has also fractured and who is searching for love an emotional belonging.
CH: Yes. They both have in common, they’re both different aspects, vastly different aspects of violence. Which is interesting, I sort of surprised myself. And at totally different ends of the social strata, this is an upper-middle-class white girl in suburban New Jersey. I said it in a fictional town, a Northern New Jersey suburb. And, yes, her family falls apart as well, when her parents marriage breaks up in the mother sort of goes into a tailspin relying on pills, tranquilizers basically, antidepressants, to function. Out of that, the main character, Chloe, is sort of left to fend on her own. She 17, it’s a summer between junior and senior year, she’s got her driver’s license, she’s got an internship at a local community newspaper, she wants to be a journalist. At that age, you’re pretty independent. So she ends up taking care of her mother.
LB: It’s interesting because both families, the one thing they share is an absent father. Chloe’s father is actually absent, he’s moved away and Mags’ father is emotionally absent for him.
CH: Yes. There are different types of parental absences. Mags’ father is sort of broken, he was a guerilla in El Salvador, he had to flee because he was on death squad list and he never talks about it. So he comes Los Angeles, his status as a guerrilla leader and a hero is diminished by his status as an immigrant and he’s forced to take low-rung jobs, two jobs to make ends meet for the family, there’s four kids and a mother has to go to work in a factory as well. So it’s a typical immigrant scenario. But he’s broken, the whole experience, and then he’s incredibly disappointed in the path that Mags, his second son, has taken. So he becomes emotionally absent even though he’s physically there supporting the family.
And in the other case, Chloe’s father just says, okay I’m done with this marriage, and goes off. He’s more self-centered, and then it’s revealed that he’s been having an affair with another woman and that was the real reason for the breakup.
LB: It’s the parental absence and the inability to connect for whatever reason that I think makes both of them vulnerable to the forces the prey on them — the violence that preys on them.
CH: Yes, totally. It’s funny, even as kids get older, even into adulthood, we still, we need our parents. They need to just be there for kids. It’s often hard. As a parent myself, your kid grows up and they’re independent, they’re out in the world and sometimes they seem to not need you. But they do. You’ve got to be there for that support, and as a guide in the background. In these cases, in both these books, the parent is lapsing on that role, and with inevitable consequences and that they’ll seek it elsewhere. With Chloe it’s with Kieran. Kieran adopts this almost paternalistic, ‘I’ll take care of you, I’ve got your back, Chloe. You don’t need them, you’ve got me.’ Which of course is very typical of an abuser. And in Mags’ case, it’s the gang, it’s his homeboys that he can rely on.
LB: So, what led you to Girl on the Brink, then? Emotionally, I think it does mine the same really deep needs we all have, but it is a very different book. What led you to that one is your second novel?
CH: It was something that happened to me, with a bad boyfriend. It was an incredible upheaval in my life, getting over this. I just had to write about it. So it took a while to hammer out how I was going to write about it and how it’s going to do it, but I finally got it and to me it was important to write it as a teenage story. These things are not taught in schools, but abusive relationships follow a very set pattern of behavior. Abusers almost to a tee, you can see, once you’re trained, you can see those red flags and the controlling, manipulative relationship forming. But if you’re not trained to attune to those signs, you can totally misread them. So that’s what I wanted to really portray in Girl on the Brink, is how Chloe, again because she is vulnerable because of her family situation, how she falls into it. And it is very easy. And then her journey out of it, which is considerable.
LB: Well, like gangs, it’s very hard to get out of.
CH: Yes. Yes. It’s another situation — and that was another theme in my books, is that people get themselves into situations that sometimes they feel boxed in. And you make choices and find that you wake up and think, I can’t get out of this, it’s too late, I’m in this thing. How am I going to get out? And the answer is yes, you can get out of anything. Sometimes it’s much more difficult to get out of something, usually, then to get into it. That’s another theme, is just that we make choices somehow and we sometimes feel boxed in by those choices, but we always have choices to get out. And sometimes we just have to summon our wherewithal to get out, to make an alternative choice.
LB: Tell me what is next for you.
CH: Well, I’ve got a sequel for Mags, for Skin of Tattoos. A chunk of it’s written, but it’ll pick up where Skin of Tattoos leaves off and continue his journey, which will probably get quite a bit more darker — because now he’s even been more at a stage of disillusionment, he’s on the run, before he reaches redemption. And then I have a detective novel almost in the final stages. And another one’s a political thriller because I lived in Venezuela and one of the events I covered was, in 2002 there was a coup attempt against President then, Hugo Chavez. It was just an incredible experience to be in a country where there was no government effectively for three days. It was complete anarchy. So I’m writing about that through the context of an ex-pat couple who goes to Venezuela and ends up on opposite sides of the divide. And again, it’s about choices, the choices we make in trying to get out of difficult situations.
LB: Thank you so much for sharing your experience, personal and professional, with everyone through these novels. Because they are phenomenal and I hope that they will go on not only win you fans but to do as much good in the world as I’m sure Peace in the Hood is doing.
CH: Thank you. Yes. Hopefully people, I’ve actually heard from a number of readers of Girl on the Brink already. These aren’t even teenagers, they are adult women who are picking it up and reading and saying, you know, this happened to me. This happened to me. It just shows that domestic violence is incredibly common, but it’s something people don’t want to talk about because of the shame factor. You become ashamed that you let this happen to you. So that was another factor in my writing the story, is that it is so common. And you can survive it and live a happy life afterwards. And hopefully with Skin of Tattoos, as well, that people can see ways out of bad decisions.
LB: Christina, thank you so much for joining me.
CH: Thank you, Laura. It’s been great discussing the novels. Thanks.
Listen to the podcast here: http://destinationmystery.com/episode...
Or read the transcript below:
Christina Hoag is a journalist, nonfiction author and novelist. Her thrillers are just that — thrilling rides with young people on the verge of adulthood and already mired in life-and-death situations. Complex characters and interwoven relationships that form, not a net, but a sticky web that traps her protagonists as they fight to escape the consequences of their own dangerous choices. Skin of Tattoos features Mags, just released from prison and trying to escape the gang life that landed him there, while Girl on the Brink is a very different examination of violence and predation. girl
Christina’s nonfiction book, Peace in the Hood, was co-written with Aquil Basheer and digs deep into his program to combat gang violence. Their book is on the syllabi of several university programs, and Basheer himself has been featured in two recent documentaries: License to Operate and The Black Jacket. Plus, I promised to link to a great interview Christina recently did with a fabulous interviewer — herself!
I gave a shout-out to my favorite Golden Age mystery writer, Ngaio Marsh. Artists in Crime is my favorite (and if you don’t need to read the books in order, a great place to begin), but Colour Scheme takes place in Christina’s native New Zealand. Looking for one with both New Zealand and sheep in the murder? Yup, Ngaio Marsh has that, too. Check out Died in the Wool.
Christina, meanwhile, remembers her favorite children’s mystery author, and one whose books I also devoured as a kid: British author Enid Blyton. Blyton was prolific; it’s hard to go wrong with any of them, but the mystery series are, in particular, The Famous Five and The Secret Seven. There are so many others, I’m not going to try to guide you through them, but I will toss you over to the Enid Blyton Society. Enjoy!
To learn more about Christina, check out her website and her Facebook page. And for a great read, turn to any of her books!
— Laura
Transcript of Interview with Christina Hoag
Laura Brennan: My guest today is a journalist, a novelist, and a nonfiction author. Christina Hoag’s novels, Skin of Tattoos and Girl on the Brink, both focus on young people caught in life or death situations — and both are all the more terrifying because those situations are so real, and so frighteningly common.
Christina, thank you for joining me.
Christina Hoag: Thank you Laura. It’s great to be here.
LB: Before we talk about your work, I’d love to talk a little bit about your background. You were born in New Zealand?
CH: Yes. I was born in New Zealand. I lived in a number of countries, my family moved around a lot — which is kind of an understatement. But I ended up in the United States when I was 13, in New Jersey to be exact. So I’m sort of a global nomad.
LB: I wanted to sneak in here that everything I know about New Zealand I learned from Ngaio Marsh.
CH: Oh, great! Great. That’s great that you’ve heard of her and read her. Yes, she’s one of New Zealand’s literary stars.
LB: Oh, she’s phenomenal. I love her.
CH: Yes.
LB: I’m sure New Zealand is more than murders, mind you.
CH: Yes. There are a lot of sheep there.
LB: A lot of sheep. Okay. That sounds like, actually, a couple of her books. So you grew up all over the world and landed in New Jersey. And then, how did you get into journalism?
CH: Mainly because I loved to write. And I won a prize, when I was six years old, in New Zealand, one little prize at school for writing interesting stories. So it’s something, I’d always loved to write, I was a voracious reader growing up, reading Enid Blyton and The Famous Five, The Secret Seven mysteries, you know, those were juvenile mysteries written by the British author Enid Blyton. So I always knew I wanted to write stories. And when I was in high school, I discovered the high school newspaper and joined that and joined the journalism class associated with it. And I just said, that’s what I want to do. That’s going to enable me to write, a writing career.
LB: You actually did a terrific interview recently, with yourself as the interviewer and interviewee.
CH: [Laughter] Yes, exactly. I had fun doing that. That was a good one.
LB: I’m going to link to that in the show notes because it was just awesome. But in it, you talk about how journalism steeped you in the dark side of humanity.
CH: Yes, totally. Because, let’s face it, most of what you cover as a journalist is negative. That’s what makes the news, are negative events. What I always loved about being a journalist is that you get to see other sides of life and of people and of society that you normally wouldn’t get to see up close, and sort of delve into. Even though it’s a superficial sort of dive. You dive into do a story, write your story and move on to do the next thing. But still, you get this great exposure to all kinds of things. I mean I’ve interviewed, what I like to say is I’ve interviewed prostitutes to Presidents, bums to billionaires. And it’s completely true. So you see absolutely all facets of life and humanity.
LB: I love how that comes out in your novels. There’s a real heart and a real humanity, especially in your main characters.
CH: Yes, well, I’m glad you said that. That hopefully is what I’m trying to portray, in the main characters and also the secondary characters. I really try for that deeper character development. One of my problems with mystery and crime genre in general is the character development doesn’t go deep enough for me. So I really try and flesh out character a lot, so thanks for noting that. I put a lot into developing those characters.
LB: Well, I want to get specific about each book, but just another overarching thing with both of them is that, it’s not just the characters that are rich in them. It’s the relationships between the characters, that’s how you really get to know the other people, is in relationships.
CH: Yes. Exactly. You can go on endless description, it’s boring to the reader, so you have the character — it’s really the old showing, not telling. When they interact with each other, then the character comes out. And that’s what we do in life. As we get to know someone, we interact with them, and then we, that’s how we get to know them through their actions and their behaviors and what not. Hopeful that’s a reflection of real life.
LB: Let’s start, actually, by talking a little bit about real life. Because before you wrote your novels, you cowrote a book on gang intervention.
CH: Yes. Peace In The Hood.
LB: Peace In The Hood. How in the world did you get involved in that?
CH: Well, it was through journalism again. I was working as a reporter at the Associated Press in Los Angeles, and my beat was urban affairs. So I covered a lot of, mainly homelessness, poverty, inner-city issues, and one of those in LA of course is gangs. LA is the gang capital of the nation, gave birth decades ago to some of the more notorious gangs that are now not only nationwide but international. I covered a number of gang issues, more from the social side of things rather than the crime, we had a crime reporter reported on some gang crime. So one of the stories that I came across was this guy who had an academy of sorts, a school that he trained former gang members to be the interventionists. And basically an intervention means they go in and work with active gang members to disrupt the cycle of violence and retaliation, because that’s really what drives all gang violence. It’s all about this cycle of revenge. You shoot my homie, then I’ve got to shoot your homie. You shot my homie, so I’m going to shoot yours. It’s just this endless cycle. And interventionists aim to disrupt that cycle in various ways using people whom gang members trust, which is other gang members, usually older, veteran status gang members who aren’t really active anymore, and just trying to work on the other side of the fence.
LB: I saw that there was also a documentary made about the gentleman you wrote the book with, Basheer?
CH: Yes. In fact there’s two. Another one just came out, both different angles on the same subject, on this work. So yes. He’s being called, he just spoke in Geneva at the World Health Organization and has been invited to participate in some community violence solution roundtables all over the world. So it’s a concept that’s out there. Fighting the good fight.
LB: It also reminded me of, especially I watched the trailer to the documentary, it reminded me of Romeo and Juliet in that the only thing that seems to be able to stop the violence is the grown-ups, the ones who maybe even started the violence or started the vendetta, stepping in and saying the cost is too high. Our children are dying.
CH: Yes. It’s funny you should say that, because I just watched, I went to a performance of Romeo and Juliet set in modern-day Palestine, Montagues and Capulets as Israelis and Palestinians, and it hit me as well, boy, this is just like gang violence. It’s these two warring factions who basically — everybody’s forgotten why they’re warring, whatever the seed cause of that was, and just simply is carrying out these vendettas against each other for the sake of it. It becomes something that you define your identity from. Like, I’m not them, fighting against another faction to give yourself more status.
LB: So you actually used, for your first novel, Skin of Tattoos, use the backdrop of the gangs.
CH: Yes.
LB: How did that come about? Were you just so steeped in it that the story begged to be told? What was that?
CH: Actually, that goes back to another story I did years ago. A magazine sent me to El Salvador to do a story on Los Angeles gang members who had been deported to El Salvador, which is where they were from. And I found these guys there, and they were desperately homesick, some of them didn’t speak Spanish that well. They had all left El Salvador with their families in the 80s as babies, infants. They were to all intents and purposes American, they didn’t know El Salvador, they could barely read newspaper and things. But they weren’t US citizens, so they got caught up in gangs and criminal acts and got deported. One I found there had been, actually went to El Salvador to flee, he was a fugitive and was sort of hiding out there. He didn’t tell me what for. So anyway, they were there, and it just struck me that this was such an odd, being an immigrant myself, I know how you can get caught between cultures. You don’t belong to the one you came from, and you don’t belong to the one quite that you went to. You get caught in between. So I sort of related to that aspect of their story. And of course it was just a really strange outgrowth of the whole civil war in El Salvador. I’d lived in Latin America for almost 10 years so I knew the politics and the various civil wars in the region and whatnot. So just struck me, this is a really odd outgrowth of both the war and the immigrant experience. So it stayed with me, and again having an interest in that area, it grew out of that really.
LB: Skin of Tattoos is the story of, he’s 20 or 21, but he’s really at heart a kid, and he’s trying to get out of gang life. What struck me in this novel, and also in Girl on the Brink, is that both of your protagonists have a very fractured family life. And certainly for Mags, the hero of Skin of Tattoos, he’s looking for a family and he finds it in the gangs.
CH: Yes. Exactly. That’s often what happens, is that — I mean, let’s face it, not every kid from these inner-city neighborhoods grows up to be, goes into a gang. Gang joining has very specific patterns there, and one of them is a broken, dysfunctional family life. And so they seek a surrogate family in the gang, and they get the support, the loyalty, ‘I’ve got your back, bro,’ kind of emotional well-being from the gang. And what happens to Mags, of course, as a teenager, you sort of latch onto that, but then you can kind of grow out of it. So when we meet Mags at the beginning of the book, he’s pretty disillusioned with gang life and he sees that it wasn’t the loyalty and everything for the clica, is sort of a false pretense.
LB: And yet his best friends, the relationships that he really can rely on, do come from the gangs.
CH: Yes, because that’s all he knows, and that’s the whole thing. I covered one case where there was a kid who, a gang member, who had been shot by a cop. He sued, he was paralyzed, shot in the spine, won a multimillion dollar judgment. One of the conditions was, against the city, one of the conditions was that he move out of the city. And so he moved out of LA. A year or two later he was back gang banging, he was back with the gang, because that was all he knew. So despite his million-dollar award and trying to get out of it, it’s very difficult to break those ties when that’s all you know.
LB: I just have to say, this goes back to Peace in the Hood, your nonfiction book, you must be so proud to have contributed to something that is helping these kids and helping the greater good. Universities are using it as a textbook?
CH: Yes, it’s on the curriculum of a couple different types of courses at UCLA, University of Southern California, and the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Because it’s sort of how to book. It’s a combination of how to be a gang interventionist and we also made it as narrative as possible, with a lot of Aquil’s memories and anecdotes, what he’s gone through on the streets. And people really love that. People have said to me, could you just write about that? Without all the how to stuff? But, yeah, those are the things that drive the book. So, yes, it is. It is incredibly gratifying that it’s finding an audience and hopefully doing some good out there.
LB: So your next book, you’re actually tackling some of the same emotional problems. Girl on the Brink is not about a boy in a gang, it’s about a girl whose family has also fractured and who is searching for love an emotional belonging.
CH: Yes. They both have in common, they’re both different aspects, vastly different aspects of violence. Which is interesting, I sort of surprised myself. And at totally different ends of the social strata, this is an upper-middle-class white girl in suburban New Jersey. I said it in a fictional town, a Northern New Jersey suburb. And, yes, her family falls apart as well, when her parents marriage breaks up in the mother sort of goes into a tailspin relying on pills, tranquilizers basically, antidepressants, to function. Out of that, the main character, Chloe, is sort of left to fend on her own. She 17, it’s a summer between junior and senior year, she’s got her driver’s license, she’s got an internship at a local community newspaper, she wants to be a journalist. At that age, you’re pretty independent. So she ends up taking care of her mother.
LB: It’s interesting because both families, the one thing they share is an absent father. Chloe’s father is actually absent, he’s moved away and Mags’ father is emotionally absent for him.
CH: Yes. There are different types of parental absences. Mags’ father is sort of broken, he was a guerilla in El Salvador, he had to flee because he was on death squad list and he never talks about it. So he comes Los Angeles, his status as a guerrilla leader and a hero is diminished by his status as an immigrant and he’s forced to take low-rung jobs, two jobs to make ends meet for the family, there’s four kids and a mother has to go to work in a factory as well. So it’s a typical immigrant scenario. But he’s broken, the whole experience, and then he’s incredibly disappointed in the path that Mags, his second son, has taken. So he becomes emotionally absent even though he’s physically there supporting the family.
And in the other case, Chloe’s father just says, okay I’m done with this marriage, and goes off. He’s more self-centered, and then it’s revealed that he’s been having an affair with another woman and that was the real reason for the breakup.
LB: It’s the parental absence and the inability to connect for whatever reason that I think makes both of them vulnerable to the forces the prey on them — the violence that preys on them.
CH: Yes, totally. It’s funny, even as kids get older, even into adulthood, we still, we need our parents. They need to just be there for kids. It’s often hard. As a parent myself, your kid grows up and they’re independent, they’re out in the world and sometimes they seem to not need you. But they do. You’ve got to be there for that support, and as a guide in the background. In these cases, in both these books, the parent is lapsing on that role, and with inevitable consequences and that they’ll seek it elsewhere. With Chloe it’s with Kieran. Kieran adopts this almost paternalistic, ‘I’ll take care of you, I’ve got your back, Chloe. You don’t need them, you’ve got me.’ Which of course is very typical of an abuser. And in Mags’ case, it’s the gang, it’s his homeboys that he can rely on.
LB: So, what led you to Girl on the Brink, then? Emotionally, I think it does mine the same really deep needs we all have, but it is a very different book. What led you to that one is your second novel?
CH: It was something that happened to me, with a bad boyfriend. It was an incredible upheaval in my life, getting over this. I just had to write about it. So it took a while to hammer out how I was going to write about it and how it’s going to do it, but I finally got it and to me it was important to write it as a teenage story. These things are not taught in schools, but abusive relationships follow a very set pattern of behavior. Abusers almost to a tee, you can see, once you’re trained, you can see those red flags and the controlling, manipulative relationship forming. But if you’re not trained to attune to those signs, you can totally misread them. So that’s what I wanted to really portray in Girl on the Brink, is how Chloe, again because she is vulnerable because of her family situation, how she falls into it. And it is very easy. And then her journey out of it, which is considerable.
LB: Well, like gangs, it’s very hard to get out of.
CH: Yes. Yes. It’s another situation — and that was another theme in my books, is that people get themselves into situations that sometimes they feel boxed in. And you make choices and find that you wake up and think, I can’t get out of this, it’s too late, I’m in this thing. How am I going to get out? And the answer is yes, you can get out of anything. Sometimes it’s much more difficult to get out of something, usually, then to get into it. That’s another theme, is just that we make choices somehow and we sometimes feel boxed in by those choices, but we always have choices to get out. And sometimes we just have to summon our wherewithal to get out, to make an alternative choice.
LB: Tell me what is next for you.
CH: Well, I’ve got a sequel for Mags, for Skin of Tattoos. A chunk of it’s written, but it’ll pick up where Skin of Tattoos leaves off and continue his journey, which will probably get quite a bit more darker — because now he’s even been more at a stage of disillusionment, he’s on the run, before he reaches redemption. And then I have a detective novel almost in the final stages. And another one’s a political thriller because I lived in Venezuela and one of the events I covered was, in 2002 there was a coup attempt against President then, Hugo Chavez. It was just an incredible experience to be in a country where there was no government effectively for three days. It was complete anarchy. So I’m writing about that through the context of an ex-pat couple who goes to Venezuela and ends up on opposite sides of the divide. And again, it’s about choices, the choices we make in trying to get out of difficult situations.
LB: Thank you so much for sharing your experience, personal and professional, with everyone through these novels. Because they are phenomenal and I hope that they will go on not only win you fans but to do as much good in the world as I’m sure Peace in the Hood is doing.
CH: Thank you. Yes. Hopefully people, I’ve actually heard from a number of readers of Girl on the Brink already. These aren’t even teenagers, they are adult women who are picking it up and reading and saying, you know, this happened to me. This happened to me. It just shows that domestic violence is incredibly common, but it’s something people don’t want to talk about because of the shame factor. You become ashamed that you let this happen to you. So that was another factor in my writing the story, is that it is so common. And you can survive it and live a happy life afterwards. And hopefully with Skin of Tattoos, as well, that people can see ways out of bad decisions.
LB: Christina, thank you so much for joining me.
CH: Thank you, Laura. It’s been great discussing the novels. Thanks.
September 25, 2016
Author Richard Godwin takes me to his "slaughterhouse" for a quickfire chinwag!
Novelist Richard Godwin, author of "The Pure and the Hated," and "confessions of a Hit Man" among others, takes me to the "slaughterhouse" for a quickfire interview:
Christina Hoag is a thriller writer, her short fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry have been published in 25 literary journals with two of her short stories published in anthologies. Christina worked as a reporter and editor for the Miami Herald and The Associated Press. She has a new novel out, Skin Of Tattoos. Christina met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about her new release and her literacy influences.
Tell us about your latest novel.Skin of Tattoos
It’s called “Skin of Tattoos.” It’s sort of genre-defying – a noir-crime thriller written in a literary style. The setting is the gang underworld of Los Angeles, the U.S. capital of gangs, and the main character, Mags, is a gang member. We meet him as he comes out of prison wanting, as most parolees do, to go straight and never return “behind the wall.” To do that, he has to get away from his gang, the Cyco Lokos, but the “clica” has undergone some changes since he’s been locked up, namely his rival Rico, who set him up on the charge that got him imprisoned, is now the “shotcaller” or leader. It’s a story of revenge and rivalry, but there are also other layers: Mags’s quest for his father’s approval, the hardships faced by a poor immigrant family, as well as the larger picture of the socioeconomic factors that drive gangs in our society in general.
Who are your literary influences?
Probably my favourite all time author is Graham Greene. Many of his books are about the concept of being a foreigner, an outsider/observer, which I relate to on a personal level since I’ve lived in many countries both as a child and as an adult. That influence comes through in my novel “Skin of Tattoos,” where the protagonist Mags was born in El Salvador but left with his family fleeing the civil war when he was a child so he doesn’t really feel Salvadoran, doesn’t remember anything about the place, yet that is his identity. He’s an outsider to El Salvador, yet as an immigrant an outsider to mainstream American society, as well. He finds his home in a gang with others from similar backgrounds.
As a reader, I love immersing myself in foreign cultures and settings because you always learn something new. As a writer, Greene’s work made me see how key setting can be. It can almost become almost like another character with a personality all of its own.
Having lived in Central and South America, I’m also partial to Latin American authors. One of my favourite books is “The Goat’s Party” by Peruvian Nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. This book is a fictionalization of the 1961 plot to assassinate the Rafael Trujillo, the dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for 31 years. I found it fascinating, like a window into an unseen world in the way it fleshed out historical events with the motivations and emotions of the real people. It has certainly influenced one of the novels I’m working on now, “The Revolutionaries,” which deals with the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela that I lived through and covered as a journalist.
How important is the family in your fictions?
In both my current novels, “Skin of Tattoos” and my YA romantic thriller “Girl on the Brink,” the protagonist’s family is key to fleshing out the characters and their motivations. It may have to do with both characters’ young ages – Mags in SOT is 20, Chloe in GotB is 17, and our immediate families tend to be much more important to our worlds when we are young, before we go on to form our own families. In the YA novel, the plot sort of revolves around Chloe’s family situation. The impending divorce of her parents is a main reason why Chloe is so drawn to Kieran, the antagonist, and her mother’s pill addiction keeps her distant from her, thus allowing this doomed relationship to flourish. In SOT, Mags has tons of family strife stemming his resentment of his over achieving older brother (I made him second-child, same sex deliberately so he’d have that sibling rivalry), he’s desperate for his dad’s approval and his mother’s attention, and he’s very protective of his younger sisters so that also forms motivations for his actions when they are threatened. Family strife makes for some good emotional strings to tie up neatly at the end, too. However, in the two novels I’m finishing now, both with older adults as protagonists, I’ve struggled with how much of their family of origin to bring into play because it doesn’t seem to matter as much as their marriages, both of which are in dire straits and form context for the plot as it unfolds.
What else is on the cards for you this year?
For the rest of the year, I’ll be busy promoting “Skin of Tattoos” and “Girl on the Brink.” Marketing is fun, but time-consuming and I’m already itching to get back to my two unfinished novels: a detective mystery and a political thriller I mentioned (which I’ve been working on since 2005 so my goal is to finish this one this year by hook or by crook!) Both of them are about 80 percent there, I’d say, so I’m eager to finish. I also have a sequel of “Skin of Tattoos” on the drawing board. I have a chunk of it written but a lot to go, so this one will be on for next year.
Thank you Christina for an informative interview.
http://www.richardgodwin.net/author-i...
Christina Hoag is a thriller writer, her short fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry have been published in 25 literary journals with two of her short stories published in anthologies. Christina worked as a reporter and editor for the Miami Herald and The Associated Press. She has a new novel out, Skin Of Tattoos. Christina met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about her new release and her literacy influences.
Tell us about your latest novel.Skin of Tattoos
It’s called “Skin of Tattoos.” It’s sort of genre-defying – a noir-crime thriller written in a literary style. The setting is the gang underworld of Los Angeles, the U.S. capital of gangs, and the main character, Mags, is a gang member. We meet him as he comes out of prison wanting, as most parolees do, to go straight and never return “behind the wall.” To do that, he has to get away from his gang, the Cyco Lokos, but the “clica” has undergone some changes since he’s been locked up, namely his rival Rico, who set him up on the charge that got him imprisoned, is now the “shotcaller” or leader. It’s a story of revenge and rivalry, but there are also other layers: Mags’s quest for his father’s approval, the hardships faced by a poor immigrant family, as well as the larger picture of the socioeconomic factors that drive gangs in our society in general.
Who are your literary influences?
Probably my favourite all time author is Graham Greene. Many of his books are about the concept of being a foreigner, an outsider/observer, which I relate to on a personal level since I’ve lived in many countries both as a child and as an adult. That influence comes through in my novel “Skin of Tattoos,” where the protagonist Mags was born in El Salvador but left with his family fleeing the civil war when he was a child so he doesn’t really feel Salvadoran, doesn’t remember anything about the place, yet that is his identity. He’s an outsider to El Salvador, yet as an immigrant an outsider to mainstream American society, as well. He finds his home in a gang with others from similar backgrounds.
As a reader, I love immersing myself in foreign cultures and settings because you always learn something new. As a writer, Greene’s work made me see how key setting can be. It can almost become almost like another character with a personality all of its own.
Having lived in Central and South America, I’m also partial to Latin American authors. One of my favourite books is “The Goat’s Party” by Peruvian Nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. This book is a fictionalization of the 1961 plot to assassinate the Rafael Trujillo, the dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for 31 years. I found it fascinating, like a window into an unseen world in the way it fleshed out historical events with the motivations and emotions of the real people. It has certainly influenced one of the novels I’m working on now, “The Revolutionaries,” which deals with the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela that I lived through and covered as a journalist.
How important is the family in your fictions?
In both my current novels, “Skin of Tattoos” and my YA romantic thriller “Girl on the Brink,” the protagonist’s family is key to fleshing out the characters and their motivations. It may have to do with both characters’ young ages – Mags in SOT is 20, Chloe in GotB is 17, and our immediate families tend to be much more important to our worlds when we are young, before we go on to form our own families. In the YA novel, the plot sort of revolves around Chloe’s family situation. The impending divorce of her parents is a main reason why Chloe is so drawn to Kieran, the antagonist, and her mother’s pill addiction keeps her distant from her, thus allowing this doomed relationship to flourish. In SOT, Mags has tons of family strife stemming his resentment of his over achieving older brother (I made him second-child, same sex deliberately so he’d have that sibling rivalry), he’s desperate for his dad’s approval and his mother’s attention, and he’s very protective of his younger sisters so that also forms motivations for his actions when they are threatened. Family strife makes for some good emotional strings to tie up neatly at the end, too. However, in the two novels I’m finishing now, both with older adults as protagonists, I’ve struggled with how much of their family of origin to bring into play because it doesn’t seem to matter as much as their marriages, both of which are in dire straits and form context for the plot as it unfolds.
What else is on the cards for you this year?
For the rest of the year, I’ll be busy promoting “Skin of Tattoos” and “Girl on the Brink.” Marketing is fun, but time-consuming and I’m already itching to get back to my two unfinished novels: a detective mystery and a political thriller I mentioned (which I’ve been working on since 2005 so my goal is to finish this one this year by hook or by crook!) Both of them are about 80 percent there, I’d say, so I’m eager to finish. I also have a sequel of “Skin of Tattoos” on the drawing board. I have a chunk of it written but a lot to go, so this one will be on for next year.
Thank you Christina for an informative interview.
http://www.richardgodwin.net/author-i...
New review for Girl on the Brink: A "howdunit"
Great new review in from reviewer Marlan Warren, who totally gets the book and its mission!Girl on the Brink
Los Angeles author Christina Hoag has crafted Girl on the Brink as a "howdunit." While it is no mystery why the vulnerable and intelligent 17-year old Chloe falls for the initial charm of a potentially lethal 19-year old young man whose avid attention leads her into a summer romance, the real mystery lies in how the heck this otherwise sharp, but troubled, teen will extricate herself from what increasingly becomes an abusive relationship.
Hoag has grounded the story in the psychological reality of how abusive relationships can occur at any age. The episodic story is told in first person from Chloe's point of view, which gives it a kind of one-sided diary quality, but its use of present tense gives it a you-are-there immediacy. It unfolds the way life--and relationships--unfold.
This is not a "sleeping with the enemy" tale. There are no real villains here. Neither the sex nor the violence is sensationalized. In fact, the tragedy and victory play out with greater impact because "domestic abuse" is sadly commonplace--even though it is almost taboo in American culture to discuss it openly, especially with young daughters and sons.
Many readers may see themselves or someone they know in these pages. And to her credit, Hoag supplies a "Resources" list in the Appendix where teens can seek help if they are in Chloe's situation.
It is a well-documented fact that a significant number of abusive relationships are inhabited by two people who say they love each other. Girl on the Brink gently explores this paradox (nothing is preachy). And when it is finally over, a wiser Chloe states:
"I know it was okay to leave Kieran, and it was okay to miss him, too."
Abusive relationships can happen throughout women's lives in repetitive patterns. Girl on the Brink serves as a beacon that shines light on how to nip potential abuse cycles in the bud, and place high priority on mutual respect in relationships.
http://losangelesnowthen.blogspot.com...
Los Angeles author Christina Hoag has crafted Girl on the Brink as a "howdunit." While it is no mystery why the vulnerable and intelligent 17-year old Chloe falls for the initial charm of a potentially lethal 19-year old young man whose avid attention leads her into a summer romance, the real mystery lies in how the heck this otherwise sharp, but troubled, teen will extricate herself from what increasingly becomes an abusive relationship.
Hoag has grounded the story in the psychological reality of how abusive relationships can occur at any age. The episodic story is told in first person from Chloe's point of view, which gives it a kind of one-sided diary quality, but its use of present tense gives it a you-are-there immediacy. It unfolds the way life--and relationships--unfold.
This is not a "sleeping with the enemy" tale. There are no real villains here. Neither the sex nor the violence is sensationalized. In fact, the tragedy and victory play out with greater impact because "domestic abuse" is sadly commonplace--even though it is almost taboo in American culture to discuss it openly, especially with young daughters and sons.
Many readers may see themselves or someone they know in these pages. And to her credit, Hoag supplies a "Resources" list in the Appendix where teens can seek help if they are in Chloe's situation.
It is a well-documented fact that a significant number of abusive relationships are inhabited by two people who say they love each other. Girl on the Brink gently explores this paradox (nothing is preachy). And when it is finally over, a wiser Chloe states:
"I know it was okay to leave Kieran, and it was okay to miss him, too."
Abusive relationships can happen throughout women's lives in repetitive patterns. Girl on the Brink serves as a beacon that shines light on how to nip potential abuse cycles in the bud, and place high priority on mutual respect in relationships.
http://losangelesnowthen.blogspot.com...
September 21, 2016
My Inspiration for "Skin of Tattoos"
Mystery author marilyn Meredith hosts me on her blog today.
I write about the inspiration for my literary thriller "Skin of Tattoos."
http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/
Since I’ve been a journalist (a newspaper reporter, which almost sounds quaint these days!), I get a lot of ideas from news events and people I’ve covered. That’s how “Skin of Tattoos” was born. I was sent to El Salvador back in 2000 to do a magazine story on gang members deported from Los Angeles to San Salvador, which most of them really didn’t know because their families had emigrated when they were infants or small children. It was a classic “fish out of water” story. They neither belonged in El Salvador or in the United States. Some barely spoke Spanish. It’s really a strange take on the immigrant experience.
By the way, this was before the scourge of gangs became a pandemic in the northern countries of Central America. When I was there, the gangs had formed, spurred by these deported Angelenos, but they were nowhere near as strong as they are today.
The story of these young men I interviewed resonated with me. I could relate to them because I had moved around the world as a child, so I also feel I don’t really belong anywhere; I straddle numerous cultures. Although my novel is not about deported gang members; it’s the tale of rival homeboys in L.A., the book was inspired by those interviews in El Salvador, although I didn’t sit down and write an outline until maybe six years later and started writing it in 2008. It’s been a long haul!
But I confess I have a general interest in gangs as a subculture within our larger society. I first encountered gangs again as a journalist in New Jersey, where I was working as a reporter for The Times in Trenton. The editor assigned me to write a story about a notorious motorcycle gang delivering Christmas toys to a local hospital. I went to interview them in a small suburban house. It was all very normal-looking apart from the bunch of Harley choppers out front and its rather gloriously hirsute occupants, who insisted they belonged to a “club” not a gang. However, a couple years later, I saw one of them at a New Jersey prison where I’d gone to interview an inmate for another story. So much for the “club,” I thought.
I also covered gangs and related issues when I was a reporter for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and later co-wrote a nonfiction book on gang intervention called “Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence” (Turner Publishing, 2014) with a South Los Angeles gang interventionist. It’s now being used as a textbook in various courses at UCLA, USC and the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, a fact which I’m very proud of.
I write about the inspiration for my literary thriller "Skin of Tattoos."http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/
Since I’ve been a journalist (a newspaper reporter, which almost sounds quaint these days!), I get a lot of ideas from news events and people I’ve covered. That’s how “Skin of Tattoos” was born. I was sent to El Salvador back in 2000 to do a magazine story on gang members deported from Los Angeles to San Salvador, which most of them really didn’t know because their families had emigrated when they were infants or small children. It was a classic “fish out of water” story. They neither belonged in El Salvador or in the United States. Some barely spoke Spanish. It’s really a strange take on the immigrant experience.
By the way, this was before the scourge of gangs became a pandemic in the northern countries of Central America. When I was there, the gangs had formed, spurred by these deported Angelenos, but they were nowhere near as strong as they are today.
The story of these young men I interviewed resonated with me. I could relate to them because I had moved around the world as a child, so I also feel I don’t really belong anywhere; I straddle numerous cultures. Although my novel is not about deported gang members; it’s the tale of rival homeboys in L.A., the book was inspired by those interviews in El Salvador, although I didn’t sit down and write an outline until maybe six years later and started writing it in 2008. It’s been a long haul!
But I confess I have a general interest in gangs as a subculture within our larger society. I first encountered gangs again as a journalist in New Jersey, where I was working as a reporter for The Times in Trenton. The editor assigned me to write a story about a notorious motorcycle gang delivering Christmas toys to a local hospital. I went to interview them in a small suburban house. It was all very normal-looking apart from the bunch of Harley choppers out front and its rather gloriously hirsute occupants, who insisted they belonged to a “club” not a gang. However, a couple years later, I saw one of them at a New Jersey prison where I’d gone to interview an inmate for another story. So much for the “club,” I thought.
I also covered gangs and related issues when I was a reporter for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and later co-wrote a nonfiction book on gang intervention called “Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence” (Turner Publishing, 2014) with a South Los Angeles gang interventionist. It’s now being used as a textbook in various courses at UCLA, USC and the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, a fact which I’m very proud of.
September 20, 2016
Read My Writing Tips!
My guest post on writing tips on Author Sandra Cody's blog: https://birthofanovel.wordpress.com/
I am pleased to welcome
Christina Hoag as a guest to Birth of a Novel. Christina is a former reporter for the Associated Press and Miami Herald and worked as a correspondent in Latin America writing for major media outlets including Time, Business Week, Financial Times, the Houston Chronicle and The New York Times. She has very graciously agreed to share some of the knowledge she’d picked up along this impressive journey.
And now, from Christina:
Here are several writing tips I’ve discovered through many years of writing. You may find them helpful. They’re in no particular order.
I don’t write myself out every day. I leave something – the very next scene, usually – so when I come back the next day I know what to do. I just pick up and keep going. If you write yourself out, then you end up wasting a lot of time wondering what comes next and trying to get back into the rhythm of the story.
If someone says something in your piece doesn’t work, it’s only one person’s opinion. But if two people make the same observation, you need to pay attention to what they’re saying. More often than not, it’s something that needs fixing.
Develop a thick skin. It takes courage to write and show your work to the world for judgment, but remember that not everyone is going to like your work, and that’s okay. You have to learn to let criticism roll off you. The nastiest rejection I ever got was from the editor of a literary journal who scornfully said of my experimental fiction submission, “Why would anyone even read this?” I kept submitting it and got the piece and another like it published in other journals.
If there’s someone in your life who does not support you creatively, either get rid of them out or distance yourself from them as much as possible. Be ruthless because your art is worth it. I’ve broken up with boyfriends because they were not supportive or had no interest in my writing. In my mind, you can’t be with a writer if you’re not interested in what they write because their writing is part of their self-expression.
Don’t give up! It can be hard to keep going amid the onslaught of rejection –agents, editors, reviewers. If you get a particularly bad rejection or setback, allow yourself to wallow in self-pity for a set period of time, say three days. When that’s over, get back to your PC.
When critiquing other people’s work, remember to be constructive and how it feels to be on the receiving end. Always state some positive points first then say ‘I thought you could improve this by…”
Have a general sense of where your story is going and how it will end. I’ve tried “pantsing,” ie. writing by the seat of my pants, and ended up lost in the plot labyrinth and wasting a lot of time. So now I have a loose outline and I periodically map out the next couple scenes as I go, that keeps me on track and thinking ahead. It makes the process much smoother.
Read a wide range of genres and authors. Read poetry to develop lyricism and an ear for language. Read plays to develop dialogue. Read mysteries/thriller classics to improve plot development. Read literary works to enhance character development.
When confronting the dreaded writer’s block, do something else for a while, don’t fret and don’t force. I’ve found that getting up and going to the kitchen clears my head enough for the next step to pop in it. You can also use the time to do something else writing-related: work on your website, submissions, an essay, or on another section of your book. The secret is changing your focus so you can clear your blocked channel.
This may be the most important tip of all: Believe in yourself. Believe that you have something worthwhile to say. Believe in your talent. Believe that you will succeed and that the rocky road is part of any artist’s journey.
I am pleased to welcome
Christina Hoag as a guest to Birth of a Novel. Christina is a former reporter for the Associated Press and Miami Herald and worked as a correspondent in Latin America writing for major media outlets including Time, Business Week, Financial Times, the Houston Chronicle and The New York Times. She has very graciously agreed to share some of the knowledge she’d picked up along this impressive journey.And now, from Christina:
Here are several writing tips I’ve discovered through many years of writing. You may find them helpful. They’re in no particular order.
I don’t write myself out every day. I leave something – the very next scene, usually – so when I come back the next day I know what to do. I just pick up and keep going. If you write yourself out, then you end up wasting a lot of time wondering what comes next and trying to get back into the rhythm of the story.
If someone says something in your piece doesn’t work, it’s only one person’s opinion. But if two people make the same observation, you need to pay attention to what they’re saying. More often than not, it’s something that needs fixing.
Develop a thick skin. It takes courage to write and show your work to the world for judgment, but remember that not everyone is going to like your work, and that’s okay. You have to learn to let criticism roll off you. The nastiest rejection I ever got was from the editor of a literary journal who scornfully said of my experimental fiction submission, “Why would anyone even read this?” I kept submitting it and got the piece and another like it published in other journals.
If there’s someone in your life who does not support you creatively, either get rid of them out or distance yourself from them as much as possible. Be ruthless because your art is worth it. I’ve broken up with boyfriends because they were not supportive or had no interest in my writing. In my mind, you can’t be with a writer if you’re not interested in what they write because their writing is part of their self-expression.
Don’t give up! It can be hard to keep going amid the onslaught of rejection –agents, editors, reviewers. If you get a particularly bad rejection or setback, allow yourself to wallow in self-pity for a set period of time, say three days. When that’s over, get back to your PC.
When critiquing other people’s work, remember to be constructive and how it feels to be on the receiving end. Always state some positive points first then say ‘I thought you could improve this by…”
Have a general sense of where your story is going and how it will end. I’ve tried “pantsing,” ie. writing by the seat of my pants, and ended up lost in the plot labyrinth and wasting a lot of time. So now I have a loose outline and I periodically map out the next couple scenes as I go, that keeps me on track and thinking ahead. It makes the process much smoother.
Read a wide range of genres and authors. Read poetry to develop lyricism and an ear for language. Read plays to develop dialogue. Read mysteries/thriller classics to improve plot development. Read literary works to enhance character development.
When confronting the dreaded writer’s block, do something else for a while, don’t fret and don’t force. I’ve found that getting up and going to the kitchen clears my head enough for the next step to pop in it. You can also use the time to do something else writing-related: work on your website, submissions, an essay, or on another section of your book. The secret is changing your focus so you can clear your blocked channel.
This may be the most important tip of all: Believe in yourself. Believe that you have something worthwhile to say. Believe in your talent. Believe that you will succeed and that the rocky road is part of any artist’s journey.
September 13, 2016
Read my interview about writing & publishing!
Thriller author Matthew Peters was kind enough to host an interview with me on his blog today!
I talk about my books, writing journey and give a few tips. For more:
http://www.matthewpetersbooks.com/an-...
I talk about my books, writing journey and give a few tips. For more:
http://www.matthewpetersbooks.com/an-...
Librarian-author calls "Skin of Tattoos" complex, rich, vivid!
Here's Isabelle Kane'sSkin of Tattoos full review:
"This book was unlike anything that I have ever read before. From the very first page, I was drawn into Magdaleno's tragic life. Magdaleno is an oddly compelling and charismatic protagonist. Yes, he is a criminal, and he does hurt, use, and abuse people, but he is also trying to "go straight." The issue and the fundamental problem of the story is that though Mags wants to get out of the Cyko Lokos gang, this proves almost impossible because those whom he loves are still deeply embedded in the gang life. Paroled from jail, he returns to the old neighborhood where his father, once a guerilla leader in El Salvador, is now merely a "small, brown man." Mags fears becoming one himself. He does not want to live without power and dignity, but that seems to be the fate of those who leave the gang. Staying can only result result in incarceration or death. For Mags, life on "the outside" seems to closing in on him, as one by one, he loses, in one way or another, all of the people whom he loves most. Only in the destruction of the means by which he had identified himself, his skin of tattoos, does Mags realize that there is no future for him in Los Angeles.
This is a complex and deftly woven tale. The texture of the story is rich and vivid. Ms. Hoag's language and description bring the characters vividly to life. Mags is fallen hero, but I found myself rooting for him. I didn't know how or if he would be able to escape "the life." The noose seemed to be tightening with the turn of every page. The ending was surprising and satisfying, particularly in the resolution of Mags troubled relationship with his father. This is a an authentic and worthwhile read which provides readers with insight into the life and lack of options for ex gang members. Ms. Hoag does an amazing job of immersing a reader's senses into her glimpse of gang life in LA.
"This book was unlike anything that I have ever read before. From the very first page, I was drawn into Magdaleno's tragic life. Magdaleno is an oddly compelling and charismatic protagonist. Yes, he is a criminal, and he does hurt, use, and abuse people, but he is also trying to "go straight." The issue and the fundamental problem of the story is that though Mags wants to get out of the Cyko Lokos gang, this proves almost impossible because those whom he loves are still deeply embedded in the gang life. Paroled from jail, he returns to the old neighborhood where his father, once a guerilla leader in El Salvador, is now merely a "small, brown man." Mags fears becoming one himself. He does not want to live without power and dignity, but that seems to be the fate of those who leave the gang. Staying can only result result in incarceration or death. For Mags, life on "the outside" seems to closing in on him, as one by one, he loses, in one way or another, all of the people whom he loves most. Only in the destruction of the means by which he had identified himself, his skin of tattoos, does Mags realize that there is no future for him in Los Angeles.
This is a complex and deftly woven tale. The texture of the story is rich and vivid. Ms. Hoag's language and description bring the characters vividly to life. Mags is fallen hero, but I found myself rooting for him. I didn't know how or if he would be able to escape "the life." The noose seemed to be tightening with the turn of every page. The ending was surprising and satisfying, particularly in the resolution of Mags troubled relationship with his father. This is a an authentic and worthwhile read which provides readers with insight into the life and lack of options for ex gang members. Ms. Hoag does an amazing job of immersing a reader's senses into her glimpse of gang life in LA.
