As those of you who follow me on Facebook know, I often post questions. Part of the reason is that I find the whole social media thing a little me-me-me oriented, and as a good Midwestern boy, I was raised to find relentlessly talking about myself impolite. But the larger part of the reason is that I'm fascinated by the answers.
Yesterday, my question was this: "What's a book or movie that you've read or watched over and over? Ready, Go."
As of this writing, 49 people have responded. Here are some of the big winners, mentioned multiple times:
To Kill A Mockingbird (book and film)
The Star Wars Trilogy (the real one, not the one for the kiddies)
The Last of the Mohicans (film)
The Lord of the Rings (films)
Catcher in the Rye
North by Northwest
The Godfather
The Shawshank Redemption
Mystic River
This is, at first glance, one weird ass list.
But the more I look at it, the more sense I see. These are all big titles, by which I don’t mean so much that they made a lot of money, though they did, or that they were sweeping in scope, though most of them were.
No, the bigness I mean here is something else. It’s an ineffable sort of bigness. A sense that the story has weight, heft. Something that will endure.
That makes sense, of course, since my question was about books and movies that people have enjoyed multiple times. But as a writer, it’s also an interesting and daunting thing to recognize.
Something made these big. It didn’t just happen. A quality in the idea, or in the telling, or both, took these beyond the norm.
The vast majority of books and movies come out, live their day, and fade into the background. They aren’t lost, but they aren’t likely to get three or four mentions on a list like this. They aren’t likely to haunt the collective imagination of a wide group of people.
If I have a point, I suppose it’s this—I wonder if, as writers, this is a worthwhile test to apply to our own work. It would be a painful one, no question. This is a scary ass hurdle to put before yourself while you’re trying to create something from nothing.
But maybe it’s a good one. Maybe it can help. Maybe, if nothing else, aiming for bigness has value.
Meanwhile, I’d love to see more answers to this question. What book have you read a number of times? What movie can you always watch again?
Short stories are hard work. Maybe not for Joe Konrath, but for the rest of us mortals, they're damn tricky. You need to cram a big vision into a small space, and from the beginning you need a very clear idea of what you're trying to accomplish.
Which makes it all the more frustrating that they also have a very limited shelf life. You write one, it sells, and you get to see it in a magazine or an anthology. Life is great. But then, all too soon, the next issue comes out. The anthology goes out of print.
The story vanishes.
Happily, thanks to the explosion of e-readers, that no longer has to be the case.
All of my novels are already available digitally, but I've just released a new e-book. Scar Tissue is a collection of seven of my previously published short stories, including "The Desert Here and the Desert Far Away," which was selected as one of the best shorts of 2009 by International Thriller Writers and nominated for a Macavity Award. Scar Tissue is available for all e-reader formats, or as a PDF you can read on-screen or even print out. If you haven't checked out my short stories, this is an easy way to catch up.
Want to see it? Kindle users, click here For all other e-readers or a PDF, click here
The anthology is just $2.99, though if you prefer, you can buy the stories individually for a buck a pop (Kindle | Others). Either way, my hope isn't really that I'll sell a bajillion copies and be able to retire to a private island.
I just like these stories, and I don't want to watch them disappear.
In that spirit, as a gift to our loyal Outfiteers, I'm giving away one of the stories for free. All you have to do is click here, add it to your cart, and enter coupon code YB98Q.
I've written five books now, and one of the things I've learned--along with the absolute necessity of caffeine--is that writing makes for a cyclical lifestyle. For me it goes something like this:
A period of blank wandering about, during which I read a lot and soothe myself with metaphor (a field has to lie fallow for awhile, you can't just plant crop after crop, etc.)
Growing panic which forces me to focus on one of the ideas that have been swirling in the back of my brain.
Weeks spent wrestling with the concept, freewriting, exploring variations, looking for a way to crack it open. Also, hating it and myself.
An arbitrary moment in which I decide I will start tomorrow, goddamnit.
The first day of writing, which is one of the more intense of the year. Spending hours looking for the opening sentence. Moving words around. Moving them back. In a good first day, I'll write a paragraph.
The second day, which is really the first of work. I sit down and for awhile, I feel like a professional. The story comes along, I build out the characters, I toy with mood and style. There's a sort of "la-la-la, I'm writing a book" feeling to things. Until...
Page 200. At which point I completely melt down. I've gone the wrong direction. Chosen my traveling companions unwisely. Darkness is setting in. Was that a wolf I just heard?
Between two weeks and five months of floundering about. I reread everything I've done. I try to put my finger on what it is exactly that's got me so troubled. Is it a flaw in the story? A character thread I need to reconsider? An upcoming plot point I no longer believe in?
Slowly I push past. There's a real temptation to abandon the book, but I've never done it, and I hope I never do. I suspect that if I did, I might be opening myself up to the kind of doubt you just can't afford. You can't actually hit reset in life, you can't reload the game at the beginning of the last level.
Eventually, things get back on track. I make good progress. My confidence returns, albeit tempered by the fear.
The climax, which is one of the more interesting and agonizing parts of the process. Interesting because of the million variations I play with, both alone and in conversation with other authors. There are so many ways to tell the same story,a nd so many ways to end it. But the thing about a really good ending is that it when you read it, it seems like the only possible way to finish the book. The agonizing part of the process is that until you figure it out,it's just one of the herd of options.
But eventually I spot it, the ending for me. At which point I write the remaining 50 - 100 pages in a mad fucking rush, often a week or two.
My wife takes me out for dinner and martinis.
Then there's the cooling off period, the rewriting, sending it to other people, receiving their reactions, and the like. This whole period is actually a sort of disengagement, though. You're beginning to unplug.
Finally, there's the part when the book is accepted and essentially done--not counting copyediting and so forth--and it's time to begin to start thinking about the next one.
In other words, see Step One.
Right now, I'm somewhere between Steps One and Two. It won't be long before the panic forces me to click over. It's an odd time. I feel very lucky and sort of guilty and a little blank, blank like the page I'll soon be facing. This cycle has started to become central to me. I realize that I very much mark my life by the story I'm telling at the time, and there's something quite sweet to that.
Though it would be sweeter if I knew what I was doing next.
For you writers, does this seem familiar, or do you do it differently? And if you're not a writer, what is it you use to mark your days? When I was in advertising, I know I saw things differently...
I'm in the middle of THE FINDER, by Colin Harrison. It's probably the third or fourth of his I've read, and every time I pick one up, I remember how much I love his stuff. He's a terrific stylist who draws psychologically sophisticated characters, people I not only believe in, but understand, dirt and all. He also tends to drop shattering observations almost as side notes, many of which on their own would be worth the price of admission.
And yet I don't feel like enough people know about him.
Harrison is a bestseller, so I'm not singing a sad song about a genius laboring in obscurity. But despite that, he's one of those writers whose names don't seem to come up as often as they should given the caliber of the work.
Don Winslow is another. This guy is a writer's writer. His prose is lean, powerful, stylish, and exciting. THE POWER OF THE DOG is flat-out terrific, like James Ellroy if Ellroy liked people. (I love Ellroy's work, by the way; I just think he's a misanthrope, and I doubt he'd disagree.)
Again, Winslow sells very well, and there have been awards lately and films in the works. I'm not suggesting he isn't doing beautifully. It's just that there seem to be a handful of names that take up most of the oxygen in this genre.
Which led me to wondering--who else am I missing that I really should read? What authors would you guys throw out that fit this category?
I frequently teach a workshop course entitled "Secrets to Getting Published"; I'm actually slated to teach it this July at the Midwest Writers Workshop, along with fellow Outfiteer Sean Chercover. If you're an aspiring writer, we'd certainly love to see you.
Anyway, though the title is obviously calculated for appeal, I have found that a lot of the things I present actually do seem like secrets to people. Sometimes that's because there's a dearth of information on the subject; sometimes it's because the existing information is out-dated or misleading.
So in that spirit, here are a couple of tips to bear in mind if you're trying to get published.
First, finish the book. I mean really finish it, which means getting feedback from a bunch of people, tearing it apart, putting it back together, repeating that as necessary, then revising, and then editing, and then polishing. It's not done until it shines.
But once it does, the next step is to look for an agent. You're not looking for an editor--they don't read unsolicited work these days--and I don't recommend self-publishing. While there are of course a handful of exceptions to every rule, for the most part self-publishing is disdained by the industry, and is also a really tough way to make a buck.
To find an agent, you first need to figure out who to approach. Go to your local library or bookstore and start checking the acknowledgments in books similar to your own. The best way to find an agent who will do well with your work is to find agents who are already doing well with work like yours.
Next, write a query letter. I have an extremely detailed article on how to do that on my website. In essence, it comes down to this: seduce the agent. Don't get bogged down in details, don't include that which has no place, and above all, make sure you're grabbing hold of their jugular. A good query should make an agent desperate to read the book before someone else scoops it up.
Send out a batch of these, then start working on your next book. As the rejections come in, have a beer, send out another batch. Then get back to your book.
In truth, this is the heart of the "secret" of getting published: present yourself professionally, demonstrate that you have knowledge of the industry, and then get back to your next book.
For all the talk of self-promotion, of marketing, of the rise of e-books and the importance of networking and the changing face of publishing, one element remains central. There is one element over which you have absolute control. And one thing that has to be your focus above all else.
Your novel.
For a far, far more detailed version of the query process, as well as a lot of other tips I've discovered, check out my website. Or come to Muncie this July and join Sean and I at the Midwest Writers Workshop--we'd love to see you.
One of the best days of a novelist's year is the one we print out the finished book. It's great fun the first time you finish, but it's all the sweeter after you've revised it, sent it to your editor and agent, listened to their notes, wrestled with the changes they suggest--which always improve the quality of the work, but that's not the same as saying they're fun--revised it again, and, finally, printed it again.
For me, yesterday was that day. Book the Fifth, tentatively titled FADE OUT, is sitting on my kitchen table, markered up with polishes and minor changes and notes. I've got a couple more days of work on it, and then I'll send it off.
In celebration, I thought I'd post the first few pages. I've not shared it publicly before--hope you enjoy.
---
He was naked and cold, stiff with it, his veins ice and frost.Muscles carved hard, skin rippled with goosebumps, tendons drawn tight, body scraped and shivering.Something rolled over his legs, velvet soft and shocking.He gasped and pulled seawater into his lungs, the salt scouring his throat.Gagging, he pushed forward, scrabbling at dark stones.The ocean tugged, but he fought the last ragged feet crawling like a child.
As the wave receded it drew pebbles rattling across each other like bones, like dice, like static.A seagull shrieked its loneliness.
His lungs burned, and he leaned on his elbows and retched, face down, liquid pouring in ropes from open mouth, salt water and stomach acid.A lot, and then less, and finally he could spit the last drops, suck in quick shallow lungfuls of air that smelled of rotting fish.
In.Cough it out.In.Out.There.There.
His hands weren’t his.Paler than milk and trembling with a panicky violence.He couldn’t make them stop.He couldn’t remember ever being so cold.
What was he doing here?
Like waking from sleepwalking, he couldn’t remember.It didn’t matter.The cold was filling him, killing him, and if he wanted to live he had to move.
He rolled onto his side.An apocalyptic beach, water frothing beneath a shivering sky, wind a steady howl over the shoals, whipping the sawgrass to strain its roots.Not another person as far as he could see.
Had to move.His muscles screamed.He staggered upright and tried a tentative step.His thoughts were signals banged down frozen wires; after an eon, his legs responded.His feet were bloody.
One step.Another.The wind a lash against his dripping skin.The beach sloped hard upward.Each step brought muscles a little more under his control.The motion warming them, oh god, warming them to razors and nails, his blood gone acid.He concentrated on breathing, each inhale a marker.Make it to the next one.Five more.Don’t quit until twenty.Goddamn you, breathe.
The boulders the ocean had broken to pebbles gave way to those it hadn’t yet, broad stones with moss marking the leeward side spaced with pools of dark water where spiny things waited.He stumbled from one rock to the next until he reached the top.
As lonely and blasted a stretch of earth as any he’d seen.Black rocks and foaming sea and sky marked only by the passage of birds.Only.Wait.
He blinked, tried to focus.Two thin dirt tracks led to a splotch of color, a boxy shape, a car.A car!
Legs cramping.Breath shallow.He couldn’t force his lungs to take.To draw enough.Air.The shivering easing.Bad sign.His feet tangled and he fell.Inches from his eyes, pale grass spotted and marked by the appetite of insects.The ground wasn’t so bad.Almost soft.Easy now.Easy to go.
No.
Crawl.Elbows scraping.Knees.Forearms going blue.Blue berries, blue water, blue eyes.
He reached the trunk, pulled himself up, the metal burning cold.Slouched his way to the door and bent stiff fingers around the handle.
Please.
The door opened.He maneuvered around it and fell into the smell of leather.His legs wouldn’t move.It took both arms to pull them in, one at a time.Gripping the burnished handle, he yanked the door shut.The wind’s laughter died.
There were keys in the ignition.He fumbled for them.They danced away, jingling.Come on, come on, come—
The engine roared to life.
The man turned the heat all the way up and collapsed against the seat.
#
A soft time.Warm air making his body ache and tingle and finally ease.For awhile the man stared at the ceiling, head lolled back.Content to watch the drifting spots in his eyes.Tiny floating things that he could only see when he didn’t try to look at them.He didn’t think about where he was, or why, or who the car belonged to and when they might return, or whether they would be happy to find a naked man dripping on the leather seats.
Just cowered like an animal in his den, the doors locked and the heat blasting.
After a long time—how long he had no idea—he felt himself coming back.Surfacing like he was waking from a nap.Words and questions swirling like leaves blown from an October tree, tossed and swirling and never touching the ground.
Gasoline.That was one.Gasoline.What did…
Oh.He straightened, rubbed at his eyes.His muscles weak and languid.The fuel gauge read almost empty.He switched off the ignition.
So.Where was he?
The car was nice.A BMW, according to the logo in the steering wheel, and well-outfitted, supple leather and wood-grain inlays.A pair of Nikes rested on the floorboards on his side.The passenger seat was buried in maps and takeout bags and a soda cup and empty blister packs of ephedrine and gas station receipts and a worn U.S. road atlas and a fifth of Jack Daniels with an inch left in it.
Hello.
He opened the whiskey, swallowed half the remainder in a gulp.It burned all the way down in the best possible way.
Now that it wasn’t killing him, the world outside the glass had a kind of desolate beauty.Lonely, though.Other than the narrow two-track the car was parked on, there was no sign of people in either direction.And while he hadn’t been fully conscious the whole time, he hadn’t seen anyone since he’d climbed in the car.
So then…
How had he gotten here?
Where the fuck was here and what was he doing in it?
Easy.Don’t panic.The worst is over.You’re safe.Just think about what happened.How you ended up here.You…you…
Nothing.
He closed his eyes, jammed them shut.Opened them again.Nothing had changed.Had he been drinking?Drugged?Maybe.So retrace your steps.
You were…
You were…
It was like that terrible moment he sometimes had waking up in a strange environment, in the dark of a friend’s living room, or in a hotel somewhere, that period where his brain hadn’t come online yet and everything was automatic, just panic and readiness and fear, the tension of waiting for certainty to click, for normalcy to fall like a warm blanket.That moment always passed.It passed, and he remembered where he we was and what he was doing there.
Right?
He set the whiskey down, gripped the steering wheel with both hands.Focus.Focus!
Outside, the wind whistled.The trees looked like they’d been on fire, dark black trunks spreading to broad limbs marked by a handful of stubborn orange and yellow leaves, the last embers.
Okay.Easy.Something must have happened.An after-effect of hypothermia, maybe, some kind of shock.Don’t try to force it.Tease it, coax it out.Like the floaters in your eyes, you can’t drag this front and center.Come at it sideways.
Your brain seems to work.Use it.Where are you?
A rocky beach.Cold.He could taste the salt on his lips, knew this was an ocean.Which one?
The question was crazy, but he ignored that, just focused on answering it.Let one thing lead to the next.The dashboard clock read 7:42.The sun was only a brighter shade of gray above the waves, but it was higher than before.Which made it morning, which made that east, which made this the Atlantic.Assuming he was still in the United States.Yes.The road atlas.
Okay.The Atlantic.And cold and rocky and sparsely inhabited.Maine, maybe?
Why not.Roll with that.“This is Maine.”His voice cracked.He coughed, then continued.“I’m in a BMW.It’s morning.”
Nothing.
His eyes fell on a bank envelope curled in the cup-holder.Inside was a stack of twenties, a couple hundred dollars.Under the envelope there was something silver that turned out to be a stainless steel Rolex Daytona.Nice watch.Very nice watch.
What else.He leaned over to open the glove box.There was an owner’s manual, three pens, a pack of Altoids, a sealed box of No-Doz, and a large black gun.
He stared.An owner’s manual, three pens, a pack of Altoids, a sealed box of No-Doz, and a large black gun.A semiautomatic, he noticed, then wondered how he could know that and not remember where he had been before he woke up on the beach. Or worse, even his own—
Stop.Don’t go there.If you don’t face it, maybe it’s not true.
The trunk.
He stepped out.The wind whipped his naked body, and his skin tightened into goosebumps.His balls tried to retract into his belly.He stepped gingerly to the back of the car on bloody toes.
Would there be a body in there?Handcuffed and shot in the head, maybe, or rolled in a carpet, hair and boots spilling out.
No: it held only a set of jumper cables and a plastic shopping bag with a red bulls-eye on it.He opened the bag.A pair of designer jeans, a white undershirt with pits stained yellow, crumpled boxer-briefs, wadded-up socks.Someone’s laundry.
He looked around again.In for a penny.
He shook out the underwear, stepped into it.The jeans were soft and worn, expensive-looking.Too fancy for Target, and dirty to boot.Maybe the Target purchases had been a change of clothes.He wriggled into the shirt then slammed the trunk.Climbed back in the car, the air inside wonderful, stiflingly warm.The sour smell of feet rose as he wriggled into the sneakers.
Then he sat and stared out the window.
How had he known that red bulls-eye was the Target logo?How had he known the watch was a Rolex?Or that Jack Daniels was whiskey, and that he liked whiskey?
How was it that he had been able to count the money, knew Maine was in the northeast, could identify the symptoms of hypothermia, he could do all of that and more, but he couldn’t remember his own goddamn—
He reached for the owner’s manual in the glovebox, careful not to touch the gun.The manual was bound in black leather.Inside the front cover was a registration card and proof of insurance.Both in the name of David Hayden, resident of 6723 Wandermere Road, Malibu, California.
Huh.
He climbed out of the car, walked to the back.California plates.
Who wandered away from a sixty-thousand dollar car, unlocked, keys in the ignition?Where would they go in the middle of nowhere?
And the clothes.The shoes fit.The jeans felt familiar.
Calling yourself David Hayden is a start.Try it on, just like the jeans.
David got back in the car, put on his watch, then cranked the ignition and pulled away.
So Amazon is having a sale on my second novel, AT THE CITY'S EDGE--they're selling it for $1.72 per hardcover copy. Considering that's about $22 off, it's a pretty good deal.
When I discovered that this morning, I promptly went on Facebook and Twitter and announced it to the world. Which prompted, among other things, a question from a fellow novelist:
"Why are you promoting this? Aren't you a little, well, embarrassed?"
The reason my friend asks, of course, is that the fact that they can sell it at that rate tells you that the hardcover has been remaindered, and that Amazon was left with a larger quantity than they might have hoped.
Remaindering, in case you don't know, is what happens to the hardcovers that don't get sold. You see, publishers have no clear way of knowing how many copies they'll be able to move in advance. They have to estimate, and because of the nature of costs in printing, as well as a lot of other factors I don't want to get into, they not infrequently print more than they end up selling. (Incidentally, those estimates become a part of the promotional process--announcing you are printing a large quantity is a message to booksellers that you expect a book to do well.)
The end result is that after a book has come out in paperback, and a respectful time has passed, the remaining books are sold to clearinghouses which resell them. You know those bargain books in the entryway of your local Borders or Barnes & Noble? The hardcovers going for $5? Those were remaindered.
Many authors are made bitter by remaindering. We don't make money on those sales, and of course the books are sold so cheap that it feels like a personal sting somehow.
Me, I disagree.
See, as a novelist, there are so many things you don't have control over. It's not up to you how many copies are printed, or what the cover looks like, or whether Dan Brown has a new book out that month. You can't control the decision to go hardcover or trade or mass market, or how big an order a store makes, or whether the economy is in the toilet.
The only thing you can control is the book itself.
Luckily, that's great. Because the best advertisement for an author's next book is the one you're already reading.
So I say, go for it! Buy a copy. Buy a handful. Get your holiday shopping done early! If you buy 15, shipping is free. You can stuff stockings. You can leave them on the bus. You can trade them with your friends. Hell, I don't care.
Because a book out in the world--instead of in a warehouse--is a book that might be read. And in the end, that's the game. We're not marketers or sales reps or promotional speakers. We're novelists.
As a novelist, the job is simply to write your damn heart out. Let somebody else worry about the cover price. My only concern is making a reader happy.
Hopefully, so happy that they pay full price for the next one.
So yesterday I sent the draft of my new book to my editor.
This is a very good thing. But it’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about what happens now.
My typical process when I finish a book is to tuck it in a drawer for as long as possible, then read it in one sitting. Then I combine my own notes with feedback from buddies, writer friends, and most particularly my agent and editor, in order to edit the thing.
But while in one sense I'm highly focused on the book, at the same time, something else is happening. I'm beginning to let go of it.
This isn’t a simple process, a flip of a switch. When you’ve lived with a story for a year, it takes time for it to drift from your head, which needs to happen in order to leave space for the next one. So during that time, besides editing, I like to read a lot. I mean a lot.
I read all kinds of books, in every genre. But during these periods I focus on books that will inspire me. Not novels I want to emulate per se, but books that take the broad genre I write in and do something innovative with it. That do more than just present a thrilling tale—they do it in an interesting way, or put a twist on it, or cross the border into other genres.
Novels like these are palate cleansers. They perk up my brain, get it receptive to new ideas and new directions.
For example, yesterday I reread WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen. It’s a lovely book, one of those that you can heartily and universally recommend. And it’s a hell of a palate cleanser, because it takes what is at heart a traditional boy-meets-girl and weaves in a wonderfully realized world, some compelling musings on growing old, and healthy doses of cross-genre material. The result is magic.
Thing is, of course, it’s not easy to find books that are at once innovative and commercial. That’s the sweet spot for me during this period: much as I love David Foster Wallace and David Mitchell, much as I dig postmodernism, or the textual play of a book like HOUSE OF LEAVES, it doesn’t work as a palate cleanser. I need books that balance invention and accessibility, that startle and surprise while also seeming familiar.
That, in the Hollywood parlance, do the same thing, only different.
And since I’m part of this wonderful community, I thought I might ask you for some recommendations. What have you read that did this well?
I’m especially interested in books that have a strong commercial appeal, but they don’t need to be straight-ahead thrillers—just a hell of a tale that’s also got something to say. Books like WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, or THE STAND, or THE HUNGER GAMES.
What have you read that you couldn't put down--and couldn't forget?
Not too long ago, I saw Soylent Green for the first time. It’s one of those iconic films that I’d somehow missed, probably at least partly because I was familiar with the catch phrase and figured it might be a one-trick movie.
It’s an interesting film. Dated, certainly—my friend Michael has a great line about how that happens with sci-fi, that “Nothing ages like the future”—and the film's misogyny is a little too hard-edge to write off as satirical. The basic premise is that the future is a pretty bleak, overcrowded place, with the masses barely kept alive by the miracle food Soylent Green, which, yes, is made of people.
What I found most interesting, though, is the way it treated suicide. Because the world is a teeming mass of humanity, the government encourages suicide, especially as people get older. There are advertisements for suicide centers, clinics that promise a smooth transition into death.
This being a story, of course one of the main characters ends up going to one. And as a savvy viewer, what I was expecting was the bait-and-switch: I figured that the moment he entered the clinic, he’d be handcuffed and lock-stepped, screaming, to the futuristic equivalent of a concentration camp shower. The problem with dystopia fiction is that it often pulls from the same bag of tricks.
What was interesting, though, is that I was completely wrong. The character was asked about his favorite colors, his favorite music. He was led to a gracious room where he lay down on a comfortable platform bed. Soft orange lighting—his favorite—filled the room, and a sunset screened on the wall. Two beautiful, serene people came in and stood holding his hands. Classical music swelled as he drifted painlessly away.
And then they made him into food.
The reason I bring it up, in this wildly odd post, is that it struck me as interesting how different my 2009 reaction was than the one I imagine was felt in 1973. The film is supposed to be a warning sign, a story about the future we should avoid at all costs.
Personally? It’s okay by me.
I’ve never understood our culture’s view of suicide. It has never made sense to me that ending your life with dignity and at a time of your choosing is anything but noble. Yes, it needs to be done with consideration for others, to be done in a way that doesn’t traumatize everyone dealing with the aftermath. But to me, suicide is as much a right as the decision to procreate. Why do I owe it to the world to linger on past the point where I enjoy life, or, worse, past the point where I can even be said to be myself? Some people are scared of heights; I’m petrified of dementia.
As for the eating people part, I’m not religious. I believe what’s left behind is meat. In reality our bodies are probably better used as organ donations than Thanksgiving dinner, but once you’re gone, I don't think you should get much say in what use the continuing world finds for you.
But besides my personal feelings about death, I also think it’s interesting the way the culture has changed. I doubt people seeing the film today would be shocked. That’s partly because other stories have tread the same ground. But I think it’s also a shift in the way we think. And for my money, a positive one.
What do you think? Should suicide be a right? Or is it a reprehensible act? If you’ve seen the film, how did you feel about those aspects? Do you feel differently now than you did then?
Hard to believe it, but another year has blown by. Time, she passes.
And so in keeping with tradition—it’s tradition if I do it twice, right?—I thought I’d list my favorite reads of this year. This isn’t about books released in 2009, just my personal picks of the 70 or so I’ve read since January 1st. (You can see last year's picks here, if you're interested.)
SAMARITAN, Richard Price For my money, Price is probably the best “crime” writer working today. He’s got a subtle understanding of humanity, unmatchable style to his prose, and pitch-perfect dialogue.
A MOVABLE FEAST, Ernest Hemingway I rediscovered Hemingway this year, and I’m thrilled about it. Yes, the complaints about him still ring true, but what he does well, he does amazingly.
IN THE LAKE OF THE WOODS, Tim O’Brien I’ve never been anything but floored by O’Brien’s work. THE THINGS THEY CARRIED remains my favorite, but this one is a masterpiece.
THE POWER OF THE DOG, Don Winslow One of the most ambitious and accomplished crime novels I’ve ever read. An epic telling of the war on drugs from every angle.
BAD MONKEYS, Matt Ruff Matt Ruff is one of this year’s discoveries; I’m actually reading another of his right now, FOOL ON THE HILL. A fantasist with a wonderful sense of play who also has something to say.
THE SONG IS YOU, Arthur Phillips Phillips continues to dazzle with this novel of music, love, and obsession.
THE HUNGER GAMES, Susan Collins The most fun I had reading this year. Smart, tense, and entertaining as hell, this one is really is pure pleasure.
SATURDAY, Ian McEwan It’s Ian McEwan.
MARKET FORCES, Richard K. Morgan Morgan was last year’s big discovery, and the most exciting sci-fi writer I’ve come across since William Gibson.
THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN’S UNION, Michael Chabon Chabon can, apparently, do any goddamn thing he pleases, including write a noir fantasy about a Jewish state in Alaska. His style is so adroit and so muscular it leaves me at once thrilled and pissed.
THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO Junot Diaz Probably the second most fun I had reading this year. Diaz’s debut novel is charming, wicked smart, and wonderfully nuanced.
If you’re looking for more recommendations, on my website I keep a running list of books I dug. They’re all over the place in genre and style, but all of them entertained, educated, or inspired me.
How about you? What blew your hair back this year?
I had a gig in Los Angeles the week before Thanksgiving—just a quick in and out, sorry to the peeps I didn’t call—and while there, I took a cop buddy up on his offer to visit the LAPD’s Davis Training Facility.
This is one of the best things about being a writer. You get to do so much fun stuff. I spent the whole day saying, “Yes!”
"Would you like to fire a gas-operated Benelli Tactical Automatic Shotgun?" "Yes!"
"Would you like to jump on the slick track and try to recover from a full-drift spin?" "Yes!"
“Would you like to try the laser simulation system we use to train in use of force?” “Yes!”
Probably the most fun part was the track; an extensive, sinuous system of curves and twists used to train recruits in pursuit driving, maintaining control under dangerous circumstances, and, my personal favorite, PITting.
What’s that, you say? Glad you asked.
It stands for Pursuit Intervention Technique, and it’s a carefully calculated way to spin out a car you’ve been chasing. Done properly, there’s minimal risk of harm to either officer or suspect, and little to no damage to the vehicles.
You know all the ramming you see in movies and TV? This isn’t like that. It’s a finesse move, and far more effective than a blunt crash.
What you do is, as the pursuer, you close in on the offender at a steady rate. Pull up alongside until your front bumper is aligned with their rear wheels, and then match their speed. Then gently ease your car over to touch theirs.
This is the hard part—it runs counter to every instinct you have as a driver, and about five kinds of alarms go off in your head. You want to pull away, or else you want to yank the wheel hard and get it over with. But the key is to ease into a static touching position, your car riding against theirs.
Look at it this way. Take one hand and punch yourself in the other arm lightly. It moved, but less than you’d think, right? Now place your hand against the arm and push, steadily, with the same amount of force. Notice how much more effective that was?
And that’s what this maneuver is about. Once you’ve got that steady touch, you push. You do that by turning the wheel into the offender’s car. Less dramatically than you’d think; call it 20 – 30 degrees. The steady force of your vehicle spins theirs; the moment that begins to happen, their forward momentum does all the work, yanking them into a full-spin and out of the line of your car. You brake, correct your steering, and you’re good to go, while they are backwards and watching fellow officers box them in. It’s beautiful, a ballet of metal and asphalt at high speed.
God I love my job.
Anyway, a little tidbit of Wednesday morning knowledge for you. I know a lot of you are crime writers, so hopefully it will come in handy. It should go without saying, but this is for research only, don’t try it at home, and most important, don’t get me in trouble.
While I’m wrapping up, I’d like to take a moment to thank the Los Angeles Police Department for their generosity--and their service. Whether in LA, Chicago, or Pleasantville, cops have a hard job, one where their daily successes go unsung but every mistake is front page news. It’s a job they do for far too little money and in the face of far too much criticism. I can’t change that, but I can at least say, with all sincerity: Thank you.
As I’m sure you all know, Teddy Kennedy died last night. While hardly unexpected—the man was 77, and battling brain cancer—it’s still a blow. The end of an era.
No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, this was a man to be admired, a man who spent decades fighting for the larger good. Civil rights, voting rights, Americans with disabilities, healthcare, immigration, these were his central causes. In a world that was increasingly focused on personal gain, he fought for a better nation.
It’s interesting to me—his father, Joseph Kennedy, was not a good person. A brutal businessman, a bootlegger, a machine politician, an insider trader, a briber of politicians and journalists, he amassed a fortune by breaking the rules. The parallels to today’s shady tycoons are easy to draw.
But for all the reasonable comparisons you can draw to Ken Lay and James Cayne, one crucial point of difference is the love of country and the dedication to service that he instilled in his children. Joe Kennedy may have been a relentless grasper after money and power, but once he had both, he used them to assure that his children would do better than he had. It’s sort of a dark version of the American dream.
John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy all had personal failings. They all had skeletons in their closets. But they also had a dedication to making the world a better place that makes it hard for me to judge them.
These days, politicians have learned that it’s better to be seen as not standing for anything at all than to risk being seen as human. Watergate, the war, the eighties, the other war, the Bush administration, 9/11, the other war, they’ve shaken the system to a point where it seems like politics is less about country and more about campaigning.
Edward Kennedy was one of the last of the old guard. A sinner? Sure. But a man who fought to make the world better. And I for one will miss him.
There’s an axiom that writers should “write what they know.” It’s one of those nuggets of threadbare wisdom that has probably screwed up a whole passel of aspiring authors:
“Write what I know? Okay. Well, I’m a administrative assistant with a pug, so I’ll write about an administrative assistant with a pug…who solves murders!”
If that’s the book you want to do, great. But don’t get suckered into it.
“Write what you know” isn’t terrible advice; it’s just been elevated beyond its inherent value. It’s like a solid character actor who reliably nails bit parts. That’s valuable, but it doesn’t mean they should carry the starring role, and “write what you know” has been given far too much weight.
Here’s what I recommend. Forget “write what you know.” Replace it with these three statements instead:
“Write from the inside.” Consider the person who is serving as your point of view character. Describe the world, and their reaction to it, according to what kind of person they are. The same place, event, or individual will look very different to a bubbly high-school cheerleader than it will to a world-weary journalist. Different even to a man and a woman. Think about those differences, and exploit them in your writing. That way you not only paint a more vivid scene, you define the character at the same time.
And remember cultural and temporal factors. Medieval characters aren't disgusted by open sewers, modern travelers are more interested in their seat assignment and free drink than the wonders of aviation, and no one on Star Trek thought tricorders were particularly neat.
A hamburger is a different thing in Texas than in Mumbai.
“Learn something about what you’re writing about.” AKA, research. Depending on your topic, that might mean riding with cops, reading histories of the Boer Wars, or taking swimming lessons. You should always try to get close to the things your characters are doing, especially if it’s a major part of their world.
The caveat is that research isn’t the same as writing. Don’t let research get in the way of page count. Most of us aren’t writing Clancy novels, where the info dump is part of the fun.
“Write what you know…about people.” This is the most important component. Don’t worry about applying the explicit details you’ve learned in a job, or a hobby, or a religion. Just because you’re 20 doesn’t mean you can’t write about someone 90. But every experience you’ve had, and most especially those involving other people, has some impact on the way you write. That’s good. Use it.
One of the central goals of storytelling is always to render life to the page as accurately as you can. Even if you’re writing the most fantastical piece of magical realism, you should still be trying to capture accurate truths about the way people think and act. Without that, you got nothing.
Hey folks, I hope you’ll forgive me today’s post, but I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about, well, me. More precisely, about my new book, THE AMATEURS, which will be released a week from tomorrow. It’s the story of four friends in their early thirties who aren’t happy with where they’ve ended up in life, and who undertake a risky plan to try to take everything they think they deserve.
Things do not go smoothly.
In any case, besides begging you to buy an armload of copies, I also wanted to tell you about a couple of things I’m doing to promote the novel.
The first is a contest based on a game in the book called, “Ready, Go,” essentially a question game:
"If you died today, what would you most regret? Ready, go."
I’m hosting a couple weeks of "Ready, Go" for some pretty stellar prize packages, including one worth about $750 in hardcover books, many of them signed. (For a full list, click here.)
Here's how to play:
Every day I pose a new "Ready, Go" question on Twitter and Facebook
To enter via Twitter, ReTweet your answer, including the tags @marcussakey and #TheAmateurs
To enter on Facebook, visit my profile and respond
Enter as often as you like. Respond on both Twitter and Facebook for double points!
When the contest is over, I'll select three winners at random, so the more days you participate, the better your odds. Simple as that.
As a special bonus for Outfit readers, if you post an answer to the above question in the comments here, that will count as an entry too. Take that, non-Outfitters!
The second thing I wanted to tell you about is my release party in Chicago. It will be on August 6th, from 7 – 10pm, at Sheffield’s (3258 N. Sheffield), one of my favorite bars. Come by and have a drink with me, and bring your friends. The more the merrier.
Finally, my tour schedule is as finalized as it tends to get. Check out the dates here. Hope you’ll come out to see me!
Thanks again for the indulgence, and don’t forget, buying copies of THE AMATEURS has been proven to lower cholesterol, assure conviction of corrupt ex-governors, and protect baby seals.*
* These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. Or anyone else.
Six or seven years ago, my wife bought me a book called PRAGUE on a whim—she liked the cover and the flap copy, and knew that I harbored expatriate daydreams. The book turned out to be amazing, and I’ve been a big Arthur Phillips fan ever since.
Three books later, he hasn’t disappointed. The man is wicked smart, and writes emotionally sophisticated showpiece prose that’s also a pure joy to read. His latest, THE SONG IS YOU, came out this year, and I snatched it in hardcover but pleasure-delayed until the other day.
It’s wonderful. Each of his novels tread distinctly new ground; this one focuses on music, and the longing it can evoke, and how that longing effects the lives of those who love it, and which came first, the music or the longing or the love. I’m about halfway through, and spellbound.
The reason I bring it up is that there’s a section where the middle-aged protagonist is watching a woman sing, this rock-star-to-be who is just on the cusp of exploding, and he’s writing notes for her based on his experience as a commercial director. I thought the advice applied to writers as well:
(Arthur, if you’re out there and object, email me and I’ll take ‘em down, and, separately, offer to buy you a beer next time you’re in Chicago.)
Indulge in no one’s taste but your own
Never fear being loathed and broke
Repeat only what is essential; discard mercilessly
Sing only what you can feel, or less
Hate us without trepidation
All advice is wrong, even this; a little makeup would not go astray
Never admit to your influences, not dear Mum or Da, nor the Virgin Mary (competition)
Laugh when others think you should cry—we will gladly connect the dots
Even now, cooing, swooning ghouls of goodwill scheme to destroy you
Oh! Bleaker and obliquer.
Good stuff, huh? Of course, they’re aimed at a developing pop diva, at a woman trying to morph herself into a myth, so some apply more than others. But honestly, I got something from all of them.
“Repeat only what is essential; discard mercilessly” is a variation on some of the best writing advice you’ll ever get; Elmore Leonard puts it, “Don’t write the parts people skip,” Strunk & White say, “Omit unnecessary words,” but it comes to the same.
“Hate us without trepidation” sounds like it applies more to a punk rock girl, and does, but what if you apply it to free yourself to write what you want? Or to keep yourself from falling into a comfortable, safe place, where you’re begging for love instead of trying to tell honest stories?
“Never admit to your influences” is antithetical to my instincts—I tend to shout the names of the people whose work formed mine, as you all know—but is probably great advice. If your goal is to craft a public image, there’s some merit to the idea that it’s best to present yourself as a finished whole, the influencer instead of the influenced.
Anyway, while I wouldn’t take every word as gospel, I think there’s some damn good advice there. But what do you think? What about the later ones, which are a little more challenging, a little less comfortable—do think they apply? Do you like them?
So in preparation for the release of THE AMATEURS, I’m doing the stuff we do: planning my tour schedule, doing interviews, thinking about contests, and, the topic of the day, revamping my web site.
I’ve had a site to promote my books for about four years now, and it has changed significantly as time has passed. Initially it was really a sales piece aimed at the industry, a reference point I built for agents and publishers. Once I was signed, I started to change the focus, hopefully making it more useful and interesting to readers.
Which brings me to the topic at hand. What does interest you about an author’s website?
Certain things are obvious. My tour schedule is up there, as are excerpts of all my books, and review copy, that sort of thing. And I suspect that those elements form the core value for most people.
But over the years I’ve been trying to expand beyond that. I built and maintain my site myself—in a past life, I ran a web design shop—so I have a lot of flexibility. Everything is in my voice because, well, I’m typing it, and I hope that helps.
I also have sections where I write about good books I’ve read recently, give hands-dirty advice for aspiring writers, answer common questions, and share interviews and photographs. And of course I’m promoting my mailing list, and the fact that I’m on Facebook and Twitter. (I’ll post more on that another time, but I have to say, thus far I’ve been impressed by Twitter, and used judiciously I do see the value in it.)
Anyway, the revamped version of the site is live now, at MarcusSakey.com.
My feeling is that if you take the time to visit, I’d like to make sure that time is rewarding for you. Seems the least I can do. And so I’m wondering, am I missing anything?
What else would you like to see on an author’s website, mine or anyone else’s?
I'm in Los Angeles researching my next novel, so today I thought I'd leave you with something a little different: an excerpt from my upcoming novel, THE AMATEURS, which hits August 6th. It's short, just a teaser prologue, but I thought you might enjoy.
Later, Jenn Lacie would spend a lot of time trying to pinpoint the exact moment. There was a time before, she was sure of that. When she was free and young and, on a good day, maybe even breezy. Looking back was like looking at the cover of a travel brochure for a tropical getaway, some island destination featuring a smiling girl in a cream sundress and a straw hat standing calf-deep in azure water. The kind of place she used to peddle but had never been. And of course, there was the time after. So it stood to reason that there had to be a moment when the one became the other. When blue skies bruised, the water turned cold and the undertow took her. Had it been when they first met Johnny Love, that night in the bar? Maybe. Though it felt more like when she’d opened the door at four a.m., bleary in a white T-shirt and faded cotton bottoms. She’d known it was Alex before she looked through the peephole. But the tiny glass lens hadn’t let her see his eyes, the mad energy in them. If she hadn’t opened the door, would everything be different? Sometimes, feeling harder on herself, she decided, no, the moment came after the four of them did things that could never be taken back. Not just when they decided; not even when she felt the pistol, the oily heaviness of it making something below her belly squirm, a strange but not entirely uncomfortable feeling. Like any birth, maybe her new life had come through blood and pain. Only it hadn’t been an infant’s cry that marked the moment. It had been a crack so loud it made her ears hum, and a wet spattering cough, and the man shuddering and staring as his eyes zeroed out. But late at night, the sheets a sweaty tangle, her mind turning relentless carnival loops, she wondered if all of that was nonsense. Maybe there hadn’t been a moment. Maybe that was just a lie she told herself to get through the day, the way some took Xanax and some drank scotch and some watched hour after numbing hour of sitcoms. Maybe the problem hadn’t come from outside. Hadn’t been a single decision, a place where they could have gone left instead of right. Maybe the road the four of them walked never had any forks to begin with.
I had a whole other post planned for today. But in the last week I've discovered two works of surpassing beauty, and I decided I'd rather write about them.
The first is a free online game called Auditorium, and when you're done reading, I urge you to take a couple of moments to check it out, even if you think you don't like computer games.
I discovered this last week in a column written by my brother Matt Sakey, a respected industry columnist, occasional guest here, and owner of the review website Four Fat Chicks. I intended only to check it out as context for Matt's article. But when I clicked "Play" I was captivated.
I'm not going to tell you much about the game itself, because part of the joy is in the discovery. What I will say is that it is a gorgeous experience, one that manages to simultaneously engage a number of different parts of the brain: problem-solving, aesthetic, emotional. The half an hour I played was the magic part of that day.
Click here to try it. You'll need your speakers turned on. Don't look for instructions--there's a reason they aren't there.
The second recommendation is for a film, Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler. I'm a big fan of Aronofsky's work; I love the way he tells a story, the way he uses the whole breadth of the medium to engage the viewer. The intersection of ontological puzzles and commercial thrills in Pi was remarkable; after watching Requiem for a Dream, I just wanted to crawl in bed and have someone hold me; The Fountain had its flaws, but it was so lushly beautiful on an emotional scale, so grand in its intent, that they were easily overlooked.
The latest is his most accessible film, the story of a professional wrestler who was at the top of the sport, performing in sold-out stadiums--but that was 20 years ago, and now he works small fights in VFW halls to a crowd of a hundred. His body is shattered, his life is a mess, he lives in his van when he's locked out of his trailer, but he keeps coming back, weekend after weekend, because, well...watch the movie.
Besides this being an absolutely stunning piece of film-making, it also features one of the finest performances I've ever seen. Mickey Rourke completely submerges himself in the character. In a role that would be so easy to overplay, he keeps it subtle, expressing himself as much through his physicality as through his words. He quite simply becomes Randy "The Ram."
It's not a happy movie--none of Aronofsky's work is--but it has its moments of triumph and beauty, and I haven't been able to stop thinking of it since I caught it last week.
So there you go, two things that blew me away recently. Now, my requests to you. First, if you check either of these out, pop back here and gimme a post to let me know what you thought.
And second, if you have time, post about something that moved you recently. I don't care if it's a book or a song or a painting or a sunset or a recipe or a sports car. I'd just love to hear about it.
As you can't possibly not have heard by now, last Friday David Foster Wallace hung himself.
The thing about the death of a famous person whose work you admire — or, in the case of DFW, flat-out love — is that it's a loss at once personal and abstract. I'd never met Wallace. I don't really have the right, the emotional props, to grieve for him as though he were a friend.
And yet at the same time, I knew one part of him better than I know the inner minds of some of my nearest and dearest. There are plenty of writers out there whose novels don't betray what's under their own hood, but he wasn't one of them. Reading Wallace was a singular experience, an exhilarating brush against a brain of staggering capability, that was trying, always, to reach you and tell you something about the world, maybe something deeply true and important.
His second novel, INFINITE JEST, is generally considered his masterpiece. As it would have to be; it's 1079 pages long, including about 100 pages of footnotes. It's a staggering work, satirical in the extreme, often laugh-out-loud funny, and yet also unrelentingly sad. Wallace was one of those rare writers who could short-circuit your emotions, have you swinging from misery to hilarity and back again in the space of a page. It's not an easy book, and it's one I've stopped recommending to people because it's not everyone's taste. But while it isn't easy, it's also not challenging in a force-yourself-through-it way. No, the challenge is in trying — and failing — to keep pace with a genius.
I've read INFINITE JEST twice. The first time in 1998, when I lived in Atlanta, worked in television, and the woman who is now my wife was my girlfriend. Again in 2003, when I had built and then lost a million-dollar graphic design company, and was unemployed in a Chicago studio apartment, toying with my old dream of writing a novel.
When I heard about his suicide, I picked it up again. Again, my life is wildly different; I'm married, and as of this afternoon, 229 pages into my fourth book. But I remain astonished by everything it accomplishes, and I'm loving it more this time around than any other.
I can't really give you a synopsis. It's just not possible. Let me say that it's a near-future novel about the pursuit of happiness and the near impossibility of communication. It's a wicked satire filled with joy and sadness and gleefully prescient dread.
An example.
In the book, most of which takes place in the corporate-sponsored Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, America has "given" Canada large chunks of the north of our country, and then proceeded to use those areas as our literal garbage dump, packing waste from every corner of the country into canisters and slinging it via massive catapults into a festering heap of filth and disease, around which we have built a Lucite wall topped with massive "bladed air redistributors" to blow the clouds of toxic waste back where it belongs. As a consequence of which, besides rapacious packs of feral hamsters, a notable portion of children near the Concavity, as it's called, are born without skulls, which makes life and love a little difficult. But not impossible, as a legless Quebecois terrorist, member of a much-feared organization known as the Wheelchair Assassins, discovers when he falls in love with one, and in order to get proper medical care for his skull-less wife, he works as a triple-agent betraying his comrades to the very nation that caused his wife's condition in the first place.
This is one minor thread of a very big tapestry.
Taken on its own, the above probably just comes across as silly. And there is whimsy to it, no question. But Wallace injects so much social commentary and exploration of the human condition into these ridiculous premises that as you read, his world becomes more real than your own.
I'm 200 pages into this third read of IJ, and I'm in love all over again, and it breaks my heart, because there's no more coming. Sure, there are essays that I haven't read, and a short story collection. But there's not another grand masterpiece, another cultural earthquake of a novel. And the kicker is, as brilliant as his work was at 32, can you imagine what it might have been at 60?
