Christina Hoag's Blog, page 4

Teaching creative writing to teen moms

International Thriller Writers is running my essay today on teaching creative writing at a school for teen moms and moms-to-be! It was a great experience..Read on
http://thrillbegins.com/2017/07/10/ta...

Except for the toddlers waddling on the track field like a flock of ducklings and a row of strollers lined up along a wall, the cement block building looks like any other high school, but it has one big difference: it’s designed for teen moms and moms-to-be.

My latest stint as a creative writing mentor is at this alternative high school for girls in East Los Angeles. It’s got a free daycare center, policies that allow students to nurse and visit their babies during the school day, and none of the stigma that pregnant girls often endure at mainstream high schools.

As the bell rings, the girls filter in and take their seats. Not all have babies or are pregnant. A good number of them are there because of chronic truancy and other problems at their regular high school. But they are all Latina, which is not surprising. East L.A. is 97 percent Hispanic, mostly Mexican-American, and working class. More than a quarter of the residents live in poverty.

The girls study me intensely. I don’t know if it’s because, being white, I look different than them, or because they’re wondering what this writing thing is all about. Likely both. I explain that each workshop is going to focus on different genres and aspects of writing: fiction, poetry, songwriting, world-building and scene-writing. They don’t look very interested but they dutifully open their journals.

Faces fall particularly blank when I announce we’re going to write science fiction. I realize they have no idea what science fiction is.

“You mean like ‘Alien’?” one finally says after my attempt to define it.

“Exactly!”

That actually turns out to be one of the most successful classes. The girls love making up worlds and seem pleased and surprised about the rich power of their creativity. There’s almost a palpable rise in collective self-esteem in the room when several share their pieces. I get the impression they are rarely encouraged to use their imaginations.

I’ve found that students from limited environments often work best when they draw on their own lives. When we’re naming characters, I ask them how they came up with their babies’ names and that leads to a lively discussion. When they’re writing a poem, I suggest they write something they’d want to read to their children, and that spurs on a few.

The girls who are mothers work more diligently than the ones who are not, many of whom sit listlessly complaining, “I don’t know what to write.” Responsibility for another human being, I surmise, tends to raise the stakes of maturity in life.

It also changes the typical chitchat of a sixteen-year-old. The moms don’t spend a lot of time talking about fashion, clothes, or music. Like any new mothers, they boast about their kids. They proudly show me pictures on their phones and share developmental milestones of sitting, standing, and first words. An eighteen-year-old tells me she has eleven-month-old twin girls. They don’t mention the kids’ fathers so I don’t ask.

Still, at heart, they’re just teenagers seeking safety in conformity. They all dress in a virtual uniform of sweatshirts and jeans – maternity clothing is just oversize sweats–and wear their hair long and flowing.

When I tell them I have a son, they want to know when he started to walk and started to eat solid food. My son is twenty-one years-old. I have to reach far into the crevices of memory to find answers.

Many of the girls are a couple years behind their grade because they had to take time out of school to have their babies. They ask me how to spell words like “disappoint.” They’re also absent a lot, which hinders their progress.

Outside the window, infants totter around a playground, dig in a sandbox, and clamber over plastic toys under the watchful eyes of child-minders as their mothers try to get ahead in life. As very young single parents, their path won’t be easy, but I’m glad that the Los Angeles Unified School District had the vision to create a school where the girls have support instead of judgment.

Hopefully, that will help them gain some options in life and a sense of self-worth beyond motherhood.

And maybe, just maybe, a series of creative writing workshops will have helped.

On the blogs: Why I wrote Skin of Tattoos!

Author Nina Mansfield hosts me on her blog today where I write about writing my noir novel. Read on or go the post: https://goo.gl/1AR16P

What Inspired Me to Write SKIN OF TATTOOS
Posted on July 10, 2017 by Nina Mansfield
I am delighted to host author and fellow International Thriller Writers member Christina Hoag on my blog today! Today she shares the inspiration behind her thriller SKIN OF TATTOOS.

By Christina Hoag

Skin of Tattoos is a noir crime novel set in the gritty underbelly of Los Angeles’ gangland, the darker side of the palm-studded, movie-star lifestyle that L.A. is known for the world over. Why, readers have asked me on more than one occasion, did you write about gangs?

In 2000, I was sent on a magazine assignment to El Salvador for story about gang members deported from Los Angeles to their birth country, which they identified with, but really didn’t know because they had left, fleeing the 1980s civil war, when they were infants and small children. Some of them barely spoke Spanish. Growing up in L.A., they had joined gangs to protect themselves against long-entrenched Mexican-American gangs who didn’t welcome outsiders. But because the Salvadorans 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, who were basically stuck between worlds, struck me as a bizarre outcome of both a civil war and an immigrant experience. I tucked it away in my mind as a great premise for a story, and a couple years later, I wrote an outline for a novel and stuck it in a drawer.

Flash forward to 2008. I became a reporter for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and ended up covering gang and urban poverty issues. Somehow, I thought, life had come full circle, and I remembered that old outline. I dusted it off and started writing, although I stopped and started many times, not confident that I could pull off writing about a world so foreign to my own. But because I was drawn to the subject and it was part of my day job, I really got into the research. As I drove around these neighborhoods as a reporter, I absorbed details of the landscape and people’s lives like the proverbial sponge.

I interviewed people involved with gangs in various aspects, plus people who were directly affected by gang activity. One of those interviews led to a nonfiction book about community peacekeeping in gang neighborhoods. “Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence” involved even more interviews with experts and former gang members.

To get more personal details about this culture, I read every memoir written by former gang members I could find. They were a fantastic firsthand source. I read books about gangs themselves, devoured news stories, watched movies and TV shows about gangs, which were great as visual and dialogue aids. I found online dictionaries of gang slang. I did this over the course of several years, steadily accumulating a trove of knowledge.

After countless rewrites and rejections, Skin of Tattoos landed a publisher and was finally published in 2016—sixteen years after I did those initial interviews in El Salvador. I just heard from a reader who happened to be a former gang member who said it totally hit home for him. He congratulated me on my research.

On the blogs: How I researched Skin of Tattoos!

Historical mystery author Susanna Calkins hosts me on her blog today, where I write about how I went about researching Skin of Tattoos. It was a long process! Here's the post and link:
http://www.susannacalkins.com/blog/wr...
How do you write about a world you haven't lived in?"
This is the question posed by my guest author, Christina Hoag, a journalist-turned-novelist as she discusses her latest thriller...

From the official blurb:
Los Angeles homeboy Mags is desperate to get out of gang life, but the only exit is through sacrificing everything – and everyone - he loves. He must make the difficult choice, and soon, or have it made for him. Based on extensive interviews with street gang members, this noir crime novel explores a poor immigrant family’s struggle to survive in a gritty world where gangs appear to offer youth a way out but instead ensnare them in a tangle of deceit and betrayal.
Just think how boring literature would be if writers just wrote what they knew. You could basically throw out historical and science fiction, for starters, plus a whole lot else. Just how many authors, screenwriters and TV writers have been serial killers?

But how do you write about a world you haven’t lived in? Write what you’re passionate about, what intrigues you, and prepare to do a lot of research. You’ll also need your novelist’s imagination, a healthy dollop of intuition to fill in the gaps, and plenty of confidence that you can pull it off.

My novel “Skin of Tattoos” is about an immigrant family who leaves a war zone of guerrillas in Central America and ends up in a war zone of gangs in Central Los Angeles. Much to his family’s dismay, the protagonist Mags gets involved in a gang with some inevitable consequences, such as a prison stint. When he gets out, things really go sideways for both himself and his family.

How did I delve into this foreign world? First, I should say that I was a journalist, and the idea was sparked by my interviews with former gang members in El Salvador for a magazine story. I lived in Latin America for nine years so I knew that culture pretty well and speak Spanish.

Years later, when I moved to Los Angeles, I worked for The Associated Press and my urban affairs beat involved writing about inner-city neighborhoods. I remembered my idea for a novel about the trap of gang life, and was amassing knowledge.

I interviewed people involved with gangs in various aspects, plus people who were directly affected by gang activity. One of those interviews led to a nonfiction book about community peacekeeping in gang neighborhoods. “Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence” involved even more interviews with experts and former gang members. As I drove around these neighborhoods as a reporter, I absorbed details like the proverbial sponge.

To get more personal details about this culture, I read every memoir written by former gang members I could find. They were a fantastic firsthand source. I read books about gangs themselves, devoured news stories, watched movies and TV shows about gangs, which were great as visual and dialogue aids. I found online dictionaries of gang slang.

I stopped and started the novel many times, repeatedly losing my confidence as I began to realize the depth of the venture I’d taken on. But in the end, I persisted, and I’m glad I did even though it took years to finish the project. I love that book and all the characters.

Maybe I’ll even do a sequel.

On the blogs: Before I was an Author!

Canadian crime author Judy Penz Sheluk is hosting me on her blog today, where I write about how being a journalist has influenced being a novelist. Two different types of writing, but there are definitely overlaps!
Read on or click the link! http://www.judypenzsheluk.com/2017/06...
Before I was a novelist, I was a journalist, specifically a newspaper reporter. The two are obviously linked as they both involve writing, albeit from very different angles: fact-based versus imagination-based. But frankly, I cannot think of a better foundation for writing novels than writing news stories, at least for the type of fictional stories I want to tell. That’s probably the way journalism has most influenced my fiction, my short stories as well as novels.

I’m drawn to writing stories set in the real world, as opposed to, say, science fiction or fantasy. My novels also gravitate toward exploring social issues, which I consider one of the primary missions of journalism, and which I wrote about a lot as a reporter.

Much as I did as a journalist, as a novelist I want to make a point by exposing readers to experiences they may not have lived, or cultures and places that they have not been exposed to. For me, this is vital role of fiction and one of the key reasons I’ve been a voracious reader my entire life. You can learn, as well as be entertained, through novels by vicariously experiencing other worlds–and character’s bad choices!–without having to live them.

My YA novel “Girl on the Brink” is about dating violence in a middle class New Jersey suburb, while “Skin of Tattoos” is about gang violence in a gritty immigrant neighbourhood of Los Angeles. For both I relied on firsthand experience, research through memoirs and other nonfiction books, and interviews, all skills that are an integral part of a reporter’s job, as well as the essential tool of a novelist: empathic imagination.

News events and feature stories I wrote as a journalist are also a source of things to write about as a novelist. The novel I’m currently working on is also rooted in real-life circumstance. “The Revolutionaries” is a political thriller set in Caracas, Venezuela, in 2002 during the coup attempt against then-President Hugo Chavez. I was living there at the time and reported on the coup for various media outlets.

Having interviewed people from all walks of life also helps me with developing characters. Reporters interview scores of people over the course of their careers, but there’s always a couple interviews that stay with you.

“Skin of Tattoos” grew out of interviews I did for a magazine story about former L.A. gang members who were deported to El Salvador. Several years later, I still vividly remembered being out of the streets of San Salvador with those guys. I sat down and banged out a ten-page outline for a novel about gang members, although the actual novel turned out quite differently than that early outline.

Coverage of specific news events and stories and covering beats like cops, courts and business gave me a wealth of knowledge about how the world works, whether it’s the legal system, police procedure, or corporate regulations. That always comes in handy in different ways, though I often have to complement the generalist’s thin layer of knowledge with research to acquire the level of detail required by a novel.

So while I certainly admire writers of fantasy and science fiction, you won’t likely catch me writing those genres. My focus in fiction was honed by my three decades as a journalist and at this point is pretty engrained in me, but that’s what makes fiction so valuable, everybody contributes their own life experiences.

On the blogs: My fave books!

It's been a great experience being a debut author with the International Thriller Writers organization since the release of Skin of Tattoos. Booktrib is doing an awesome promotion of my debut class ahead of Thrillerfest, coming up in a few short weeks in New York. I can't wait. Read on for this short, three-question interview!
https://booktrib.com/2017/06/thriller...

4 stars from Deal Sharing Aunt!

Well, better late than never! I was pleasantly surprised to find in my inbox this morning that a reviewer from my blog tour last fall has finally posted her review! And it's a good one! Here's what the Deal Sharing Aunt had to say about Skin of Tattoos:
"This book made me think about things that I never real thought about before. I never knew the code of conduct for being in a gang and the ramifications of not following the rules. I liked that there was romance, intrigue and of course suspense. There were moments when I thought that Mag's was done for. Definitely a different look at Los Angeles. I can not wait to read more from this author. I am giving this book a 4/5. All opinions are my own."
Check out the whole post at:
http://dealsharingaunt.blogspot.com/2...

Teaching creative writing to at risk girls

It was the first time I’d witnessed someone getting punched and it came in an unlikely setting: a writing workshop at a girls’ high school in South Los Angeles where I was volunteering as a mentor.
My piece on mentoring at-risk teen girls in creative writing. It was quite the experience!
Check it out here:
http://thrillbegins.com/2017/06/12/mo...

On Blog Talk Radio!

Cynthia Jordan interviews me about "Girl on the Brink" and other girl empowerment topics on her radio show B Women. Here's the link, accompanied a neat slide show of various pictures from my life.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/b-now/20...

On the blogs: Learning @publishing the hard way!

On Buried Under Books, I'm writing about things I've learned on my publishing journey: the hard way! Check it out at https://cncbooksblog.wordpress.com/20...
or read on:
I often wonder that if I’d known all that I know now about the publishing business, would I still have flung myself headlong into writing novels?

The answer is probably yes. Writing novels has been my dream since I was a small girl. Still, I wish I’d known a few practicalities beforehand.

A key one is how much more I could have done to build my author’s platform before I was even published. In fact, this may have helped me get published as agents and editors are all looking at an author’s platform as much as their manuscript these days.

As a journalist, I should have had a website up and running with my nonfiction book that I co-authored, and I should have started other social media sites such as Instagram, GoodReads and a Facebook author page. (I’m glad to say I did do something right—I built my Twitter following to 20.4K over the course of steady daily tweeting.

I should have started joining writers’ organizations that are open to unpublished authors, like Sisters in Crime, which would have allowed me to network and make more connections that could have helped me gain marketing and promotion expertise. Ditto with writers’ conferences. I could have saved myself so much time and energy in cold-querying agents by pitching them directly at conferences, and again doing that crucial networking.

I should have thought more about branding myself and developing one genre instead of, as my former literary agent told me, writing “all over the place.”

So why didn’t I do all this stuff? In short, I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t have the confidence in myself and my writing that I should have. I was intimidated by conferences and organizations because they were just for published authors, or so I thought. According to me, I was just another one in the mass of aspiring novelists begging for a contract. I was afraid I wouldn’t be taken seriously until I was published.

So I got published and then ventured out into the woolly world of trying to get my books discovered. Then began another series of lessons.

I had no idea developing a genre or writing a series of books was essential to building a publishing career. To me, writing the same stuff over and over again seems boring, but I seem to be the only person who thinks this way. I also had no idea just how competitive publishing is and how writing a good book just isn’t enough to catapult you above the heads of everyone else. I didn’t realize getting readers to write reviews was a Promethean struggle.

I didn’t realize I was way ahead of the game in being a newspaper reporter and foreign correspondent for many years, which gave me a far more interesting bio than many as well as more expertise in the subject matter of crime, as I’ve covered real life crime and cops, done ridealongs and so on. I should have emphasized this from the getgo.

I also didn’t realize that agents were basically sales people and weren’t going to invest a lot in an author they hadn’t sold, such as in advising them that they should build a platform or social media, or give editorial advice on early-stage manuscripts.

But here’s the thing. I’m glad I didn’t know all this stuff. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have even attempted this foolhardy game of being a novelist at all. Maybe I would have put too much focus on business instead of just working on my craft. And let’s face it, writing the best book you can write is still the heart of this business.

So now I’m building my author platform, slowly but steadily. It’s been a steep learning curve, that’s for sure, but now I know.

Skin of Tattos a Silver Falchion nominee!

Proud to announce that "Skin of Tattoos" is a nominee in the suspense category of the Silver Falchion Readers' Choice Contest!
But to win, I need votes! So any boost would be sincerely appreciated. It's very easy-no annoying registration. Just click on link, scroll to suspense category, click on dot, scroll further and hit submit. A minute tops.
http://killernashville.com/silver-fal...
Thanks and fingers crossed!