Christina Hoag's Blog, page 3

Skin of Tattoos: now "cholo-approved!"

"Skin of Tattoos" has now been officially "cholo-approved!" I received this review from two Latino inmates at Lancaster state prison yesterday: "tell blanca she did a firme job!" via a student in my creative writing class there, who reports the guys loved the twisty ending and were intrigued by who had written it. The novel is about a Latino gang member and his struggles to leave the gang and make a new life, based on many interviews. It cracked me up and made my day!
translations: cholo=gang member, blanca=white lady, firme=cool, great

Audio book coming of Girl on the Brink!

Very excited to announce that Girl on the Brink will be released as an audio book in February! Angela Rose Masi, a New Jersey based actor, is going to be narrating the book and she's great! So stay tuned. This will be a new adventure in publishing for me!

And here's the trailer for Skin of Tattoos!

I'm pretty proud of myself for getting these done! The key is keeping them short - one minute max and boiling down your plot to one line sentences.
Here's the link for Tattoos trailer:
https://vimeo.com/241764765

New book trailer for Girl on the Brink!

I've been busy learning how to master Windows Movie Maker and have made great little trailers for my books! I don't know why I didn't tackle this before . It was a bit of a learning curve but then I figured it out. Here's the trailer for Girl on the Brink, let me know what you think!
https://vimeo.com/241592771

great new review for Skin of Tattoos!

From blogger/reviewer Alison McMahan:
"The book is fast-paced and Mags is a sympathetic and credible narrator. Hoag does a masterful job of putting the reader though gut-wrenching cycles of fearing for him and hoping for him, hoping for him and fearing the worst. It’s book that demands to be read in one sitting."
Check out an excerpt and more info at Alison's blog:
http://www.alisonmcmahan.com/news/ski...

I'm "On the Couch" today with Abbie Roads!

On the blogs today, romance author Abbie Roads is hosting me "on her couch," where I talk about writing, motivation and books. Check it out at http://abbieroads.com/2017/08/author-...
Author on the Couch: Christina Hoag
This week I’m conducting a session with…

Christina Hoag
Me: Tell me about an experience that had a profound impact on your life.

Christina: A relationship with an abusive guy. This not only formed the inspiration for my YA novel “Girl on the Brink,” but also was a turning point in pushing myself to focus on myself and my goals, believe in my own talent and opened my eyes to the dark side of human nature.

Me: What personality trait of yours helps you most as an author?

Christina: Empathy. I happen to be very empathic. Things can move me to tears very easily and I have deep compassion for others. Somewhat like an actor, this allows me to inhabit my characters, even when on the surface they’re totally unlike me.
At the age of seven or eight, I knew I wanted to write books.
Me: What personality trait of yours hinders you most as an author?
Christina: A tendency to doubt myself. I still find myself daunted by what genre is hot, what’s not, whether my book will sell, and so on. I have to force myself to block it out.
Me: What was your high point as a writer—a time when you were happiest, on cloud nine, flying high? What happened?

Christina: I’d have to say it was my blog tour for my YA novel “Girl on the Brink.” After getting an excellent “recommended” review from Kirkus, I went on this tour and the response was overwhelming. It’s a novel about a teen girl who gets involved with the wrong guy and chronicles an abusive relationship. It really hit a chord with both teens and adults, more than I had ever hoped but exactly what I had aimed for. I was elated.
Me: What was your low point as a writer—a time when questioned your path, a time when you felt really crappy about your writing? What happened? How did you get over it?

Christina: I think this was when I handed my now-former agent a too-early version of a manuscript of “Girl on the Brink.” I naively thought she was going to help with it. Instead, she was really scornful and wanted me to spend $500 to have a friend of hers, who wasn’t even a writer or in the publishing industry, read it. I plunged into a depression. At the end of a week, I decided I had to pull myself out of it. I put that novel aside and went back to “Skin of Tattoos,” which hadn’t sold and the agent was doing a lousy job of trying to sell. I knew it was going nowhere with her. I started rewriting that novel. By the time the contract ended, I had a new novel ready to go out with again. I never heard from that agent again, not even when I write to terminate the contract. I knew I had made the right decision.

Me: How did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Christina: I won a prize for writing interesting stories when I was five-six years old so I suppose the desire to write stories was something I was born with. Teachers always commended my vivid imagination growing up. I was also a voracious reader. I would spend hours reading. Nothing made me happier. Early on, maybe at the age of seven or eight, I knew I wanted to write books. In high school, I discovered journalism, which I immediately knew was for me because it was a career that would pay me to write. So I became a journalist and write fiction on and off until about 12 years ago, when I plunged into it seriously.

Me: What’s the secret to your success?

Christina: Persistence. You really have to keep going no matter what. Early on in my fiction career, I was derailed once by a rejection, twice by negative comments from beta readers. I’ve learned not ignore such comments, to believe in myself, as well as to surround myself with supportive people. I’m inspired when I hear authors say that their first book published was their eighth novel. It means you really have to remain undaunted and true to your goals.

You really have to keep going no matter what.
Me: What do you collect? Why? What personal meaning does this item have for you?

Christina: Travel is my other passion. I grew up around the world as my family moved with my father’s job, and as an adult, I lived in several more countries. So I collect handcrafts from different places I’ve visited. My home is so full of stuff from around the world that people say it looks like a museum. I love art in all its forms. Things made by hand carry so much more meaning than machine made stuff. Someone put their sweat and soul into these items. They may not be worth much monetarily, but to me they’re irreplaceable. Each represents a little story of where I went, what I did, how I came to buy the item.

Me: Tell me about your Noir crime novel Skin of Tattoos

Christina:

Los Angeles homeboy Magdaleno is paroled from prison after serving time on a gun possession frameup 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.

Me: Tell me your favorite paragraph from Skin of Tattoos.

Christina:

I found Blueboy’s name on a listing of graves near the gate and followed the path to it, cradling the flowers as I walked and drinking in the scent of sunlight on the freshly cut grass. His grave had a plain white cross with his name. I pictured Blueboy lying in a box under the ground, his single blue eye cold and still as a marble. His body lay there, but where did all the things that made him Blueboy go—the history of his life, the knowledge in his head, his donkey heehaw, his one-shoulder shrug? They were just gone. Smoke in the air was all we were in the end. What was the point of life when it all disappeared like that?

Votes needed for Silver Falchion Reader's Choice award!

"Skin of Tattoos" is also up for a Silver Falchion Reader's Choice Award for suspense at the upcoming Killer Nashville conference, as well as the judged award. For the Reader's Choice Award, I need votes! So if anyone can give me a hand by voting for Skin of Tattoos at the below link, I'd be very grateful! Super easy, click on the link, scroll to the susoense category and click the dot next to my name then scroll down and hit submit. https://killernashville.com/silver-fa...
Thank you!

5-stars for Skin of Tattoos!

This great review came in on Amazon today and it made my day!
"Ms. Hoag has written a good book, one that seeps authenticity and reveals the human side of a world too often painted with broad strokes of black and white, good and bad. Her dialogue flows naturally, with an ease that requires marked skill to achieve. Magdaleno and his associates invite an emotional reaction, and the story's lack of gilding (and sensationalism) give the work strong social value. As a criminal-defense attorney who has done too many RICO cases, I am grateful to see a portrayal of this world that gives society a better idea of the odds at stake, the motivations at work, and the lack of easy answers available in the world of gang offenses. The work makes an accessible beach read while also refusing to let the reader off easy. Thank you, Ms. Hoag!"
https://www.amazon.com/Skin-Tattoos-C...

Finalist for Killer Nashville Silver Falchion!

Thrilled to announce that "Skin of Tattoos," my noir crime novel, is a finalist for the Silver Falchion Award in the suspense category at Killer Nashville next month, where I'll be a panelist, too. Very chuffed to get this recognition as I spent years researching and writing this book! Nominee list here:
https://killernashville.com/

My favorite research assignment

I recently attended my city's citizen police academy, where regular joes like myself can learn about the inner workings of policing, and write a piece about it for The Thriller Begins, the newsletter for the International Thriller Writers. It was a great experience and highly recommend it for anyone writing or just interested in crime!
http://thrillbegins.com/2017/07/31/po...

Police 101: Going Behind the Blue Wall with Cops

The patrol officer and I were just hitting the street to start night watch when the first radio call came in: A pistol-whipping assault in a Wells Fargo bank. We hung a left toward the location. Seconds later, the incident was upgraded: Possible bank robbery. I bolted straight in my seat. A bank robbery in California’s genteel seaside city of Santa Monica! I had lucked out with my ride-along!

The officer hunched over the steering wheel and the Crown Victoria sliced through traffic. My adrenaline zinged as we zoomed. The radio squawked again with further incident details: A mentally ill homeless woman had caused the disturbance outside the bank. Situation handled. All clear. I think even the officer was a little bummed.

The ride-along, where I got to go out on patrol with a cop, was part of the Santa Monica Community Police Academy, a 12-week course that gives regular people a chance to peer behind the blue to better understand how police work. Many law enforcement agencies across the country, including the FBI, run these free academies. They’re a great community relations tool for an institution that captures the public’s imagination, yet is often resented.

Having covered true crime as a journalist and made the stuff up as a novelist, I was keen to glean real details of police work I could use in my writing, plus I’m just into the topic of crime and criminal justice. I signed up, and I learned a ton.

Every week, officers offered presentations on different aspects of policing, including active shooters and police shootings, narcotics and SWAT, DUIs and traffic accident investigation. I thought the latter would be a yawn but it wasn’t at all. Who knew that hi-tech license-plate readers can detect stolen cars as they drive by? We could ask anything about policing that we wanted. Nothing was deemed a dumb question.

We went on field trips through the police station. We visited the bulletproof-windowed communications room and saw dispatchers juggling calls coming in on several different computer screens. We toured the forensics lab and saw how painstaking and time-consuming fingerprint matching can be. We watched a suspect being booked in the jail and studied the rubber-lined cells where drunks, addicts, and generally mentally unstable types are put so they don’t harm themselves. We even went for a cool ride in the Santa Monica Harbor Patrol boat.

I learned all kinds of things that could be useful as plot devices or simply to add realistic detail in a crime novel. A person in a diabetic shock behaves like a drunk. Fleeing suspects may change their clothing, but rarely their shoes. Shoeprints, however, are hard to definitively match. Determining the direction of gunshots in a city is tricky because the sound ricochets off buildings.

Pepper spray is nicknamed “taco sauce.” Many police dogs are trained in Eastern Europe and respond to commands in languages like Czech. If you’re barricading yourself inside a room with a door that opens outward, tie a belt around the doorknob and hang on.

We also got a glimpse into how cops think, which is based on two things: they never know how a situation is going to unfold, and they want to go home to their families at the end of their watch. We got a taste of how that plays out during a traffic stop role-playing exercise.

We were the cops, and two plainclothes officers pretended to be the guys we pulled over in an SUV. With me, they were drunk and wouldn’t obey commands. That was pretty frustrating. With others, they stuck cell phone cameras in the “officer’s” face, mouthed off, or worse, pulled out a gun (plastic), threatening to shoot themselves or us, the officers.

The point was cops don’t know how even a traffic stop is going to turn out, and they have to make decisions that carry high-stakes consequences, and make them in the moment. We also got to experience how they train for that through a video-game like simulator that sets up nerve-wracking scenarios such as a backyard shootout with multiple shooters.

This course was one of the best research assignments I’ve given myself. I came away not only equipped as a better writer, but as a better citizen. And in the end, that’s what counts.