Ding Novel is Done: A Stroy of Cute Boys, Romance, Kissing, and Lightning
Last night I finished my current work-in-progress, The Lightning Giver.
What an amazing journey! I can’t wait to get it into the hands of my beta readers after my Secret Squirrel Alpha Reader has given it a whirl. The novel needs an editing pass, and I’m eager to get opinions of the work.
The Lightning Giver is contemporary young adult and I wrote it in eight months. By far, this was the most challenging and difficult novel to write. Normally I take four to six months.
What’s the book about? It’s about love, of course! DUH. AND KISSING.
If I had to write a teaser, right off the top of my head, like RIGHT NOW, like, I have not put any thought into this AT ALL (really!), it would be something like this:
Before the accident, Sarah and Brandon were two normal Colorado teens, mostly kind, somewhat self-absorbed, and enamored with kissing each other.
When they kissed their world faded away, and while finding true love at a tender age was sweet and romantic, even a little sexy, the lightning bolt that interrupted their latest suck-face marathon was painful and horrific.
As they wake up from their comas, Sarah and Brandon realize that all they have left of their old life is each other. As the weeks of recovery turn into months and the months turn into years, they slowly realize the lightning strike may just be a warm up for the real trouble ahead.
Yeah, that needs work. It is a tease, though.
Almost
Almost done with the secret squirrel work in progress. I will finish it this weekend.
I survived the emotional turmoil of the latter third of the book.
Barely.
Wrong?
I have way too much fun writing. Even when it hurts, when the emotional intensity of if all is overwhelming.
Does that mean I am a literary bottom? A masochistic wordsmith? Is it the endorphin-like rush of putting the words I want to put on paper and watching a story come alive? Am I a story junkie?
Sometimes, I wonder if I’m doing it wrong.
Opening Line
The landscape Josh glided through was bleak and blasted, a twisted caress of despair and destruction, yet it was nothing compared to the dark memory of the girl that abused his thoughts.
Zoneage
I am deep in writing zone. I love that zone. It’s one of the best things in the world.
Across the Universe by Beth Revis
Here at the R.H.W. Blog, we target book reviews to people who write novels. There are many other book reviews on Across the Universe out there tailored for readers.
Across the Universe by Beth Revis is a contemporary young adult science fiction book of monumental science fiction YA goodness. There is a particular fondness for YA sci-fi on this blog, as the 9.3 blog readers will attest. Before we get into Across the Universe, let’s talk about that topic specifically: YA science fiction. We need to go there to come to grips on why Beth Revis has awesomesauce for blood.
Dystopian Settings in YA Science Fiction
YA science fiction has historical roots in dystopian settings. What industry labels as simply “dystopian” really used to be thought of, by readers, as “science fiction”, if they thought about the genre label at all.
Enter vampires, urban fantasy, contemporary and paranormal (although vamp fic is a paranormal offshoot). You could say these killed off classic science fiction under the guise of character-driven stories marketed (successfully) to girls, and science fiction stories along “classic” lines was not meeting the needs of a new vastly expanded audience.
We could say that… and it’s BS. Science fiction is alive and well, simply nudged into a little dystopian niche that is selling like chocolate in an all-girl high school student store. There are only so many books and book publishers to go around, in the traditional sense. What sells, sells. That “classic” science fiction for young adults fell by the wayside wasn’t elitism, but it wasn’t the fault of science fiction itself. It was capitalism.
This is only brought up because as novelists, we need to practice the art of eye-rolling. Take for example the following conversation:
“Science fiction as a market for youth is dead.”
“What? What about The Hunger Games? Uglies? Unwind? Or…”
“That’s dystopian fiction.”
(rolls eyes)
“Don’t roll your eyes at me! It’s true. Simply placing a book into the future doesn’t make it science fiction…”
(rolls eyes)
“Maybe classic science fiction for youth is dead…”
“You mean, maybe classic science fiction for youth is underutilized and underrepresented?“
This was an actual conversation, by the way. No names are given to protect the guilty.
Why digress to talk about the current YA book market in speculative fiction? Because the current market has its roots in the older market. And there were some amazing young adult science fiction books in dystopian settings.
Enter John Christopher
The king of dsytopian settings is John Christopher. His legendary Tripod trilogy was a chilling tale of alien conquest and subversion, where as a teen, your own parents turn against you because they have been “capped”. It’s a mind-control device turning people into hypnotic slaves for unseen alien masters.
Christopher nailed all the dystopian YA elements, and one could say, defined them. There is one complete and utterly horrific subplot, where the unseen aliens (in the first book) take the prettiest young girls to “the masters” city once winning a beauty contest, and these girls are never seen again.
Once the truth is known what happens to these girls, oh my. There’s nothing explicit about it. It’s just evil. Pure, understated, evil, and from a literary standpoint, so very delicious.
We’ll come back to John in a moment.
What Makes Dystopian YA So Delicious
There no mystery why dystopian fiction provides a fertile ground for young adult novels. It’s delicious because the setting is great for the come-of-age story. As teens and adults, we yearn for places to put context to growing up, and nothing says “grow up!” like oppression and tyranny, especially in the future. In dystopia, everything is about the removal of choice. And nothing makes a greater young adult story than a teen trying to make choices where it seems like there is none. It often is a choice of defining oneself correctly, or dying.
So much goodness.
Enter Across the Universe. Across the Universe nails the dsytopian feelings of oppression and tyranny, and as a dystopian novel it just doesn’t work, it sparkles brightly (sparkles like stars, heeee). The setting, particularity for Amy, the main character, goes from a disturbing familiarity to an assault on everything it means to be a teen girl growing up. Like Christopher, Revis serves up the terrible with glee, and like Christopher, it is both hauntingly subtle yet at times overpowering and overt.
The Value of Choice in Across the Universe
Unlike Christopher, Revis parties in the gray areas of choice and consequences. She parties hard. Right at the beginning of the book, Amy must make a choice and ho-boy (ho-boy being a technical term), is it a doozy. When she “wakes up”, the novel is a quest for the truth. A mystery presents itself and it spirals out of control as she and Elder (a teen boy training to become a leader) come to grips with the awesome evilness of a society built on lies.
And here is where we depart our dystopian study, and how Across the Universe plays in the genre, because the book is so much more.
Ho-boy is it ever.
What is Classic Science Fiction, Anyway?
Let’s not be coy. There are certain elements of science fiction that can be called “classic” and applied to books aimed at young adults, such as Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin and to a larger extent, Cities in Flight by James Blish. I could go on and on but those are “classics” and not “dystopian” (although in Rite of Passage the main setting is not perfect by any means).
Science fiction, in essence, is more than a look in the future and the use of some thing that, if it didn’t exist, the story would come apart.
Classic science fiction holds elements of what I call The Want. The want to know. The need to know. The yearn to understand. Star Trek was up front about this: this is a story of people who want to know more.
There’s a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where the Enterprise is on a mission. On the way, they find a curious hole in space and wonder what it is. The plot is summed up like this:
“Hey, there’s this funny hole in space.”
“Not really relevent to the current mission.”
“Let’s look at it anyway. It’s kinda cool.”
“Okay.”
(soon afterwards)
“Whoops.”
That right there is classic science fiction.
Across the Universe is Classic Science Fiction
Beth Revis nails this. She sticks the yearn to know, the itch to understand, in a 10-point landing. The story takes place on a colony ship, the Godspeed, and what a brilliant story it is. There are problems with the Godspeed. Deep problems. People problems. Technology problems. Problems with simply being in space.
The colony ship is a familiar troupe, and as a science fiction setting it works: a big ship in space going from point A to point B.
Setting, though, is only a small part of it. Science fiction authors should pay close attention to the underlying thematic in this book. Revis goes so far as to place Amy, a runner, in a place where she can run, but soon she realizes there is nowhere to run to. She just isn’t metaphorically trapped by her youth and inexperience, she’s trapped by the cold, hard, reality of space. There is nothing for Amy. Labeled as “nonessential” and alone from anything familiar (including safety), she turns to the search for truth, not simply as a means for survival, but because that’s all she has left.
And oh, Ender, the boy born on the ship. How he yearns. He yearns both for knowledge and the right to know knowledge. He yearns for the stars. He also yearns for the truth.
Indeed, at one point, someone in the novel dies for the yearning. It drives him crazy because he literally is designed to know and question, but because of the dystopian society he lives in commits the cultural equivalent of the Russian Winter Mistake, his creative intellect never goes anywhere. It drives him to the edge of disrepair and beyond.
So Brutal. So full of storytelling goodness.
So classic.
And Finally, Character Driven vs. Plot Driven Elements in Across the Universe
Is Across the Universe a character driven novel mercilessly targeted to teen girls, because, you know, boys don’t read and that’s what sells to girls?
Do it with me folks:
(eye-roll)
No. It is not, and a novelist wanting to write a page-turner targeted to teens should pay close attention. Revis drives the central elements of the novel by events that are both based on character motivations and actions, but also plot elements that interject themselves into the story in which Amy and Elder have to react.
That is, of course, life, and especially a poignant way of looking at the process of growing up. If a writer takes anything from Across the Universe, study how Revis does this, because she pulled it off like this was her tenth published novel, not her first.
Final Thoughts
So here we are. We have a brilliant come-of-age story in a dystopian setting with classical science fiction themes delivered by the yin-yang dance of characterization and plotting. How wonderful Across the Universe is!
While I am loath to even type the word “I” in a book review (witness the thousands of book reviews where the “reviewer” simply talks about themselves), I need to confess I had a dream about Across the Universe the night I finished reading it. I can’t even remember the last time I did that. To say the book sticks with you after you finish it would be an understatement.
Now that I have read the book, I don’t particularly like either the cover or the title. While the starry background makes sense given the way some of the characters feel about stars, both the title and cover art do not convey the wonderful, yummy mystery hidden inside. That’s just me. It’s also me that I didn’t like one of the intense scenes where I felt a different outcome would have made Amy more of a young woman many girls yearn to be.
Of course, the book was expertly written with a distinctive voice even when the viewpoints flipped back and forth between Amy and Elder. Readers will appreciate the subtle foreshadowing and the mystery-in-a-mystery plotting. Readers will also appreciate masterful world-building that never bores you, only teases you and makes you thirsty for more. All these things are the hallmarks of an excellent novel, and as a debut it was a stunning and thrilling page turner. On the Rehabilitated Hack Writer Scale of Book Goodness, I give it four slices of bacon out of five, and it is literally a genre defining book in the Young Adult market segment.
The Blog Harem Needs Feeding
As my decreased post count shows, I’m increasingly not a big fan of talking about myself on my blog. Mainly because I do that everywhere else, ha, ha, ha. Or maybe not so ha, ha, ha.
However, my blog harem is kind of vicious. They have things like knives and fangs. Sometimes both. And lately, I think they have been traveling in pairs. So, here is a writing update:
Work continues on my Secret Squirrel Contemporary YA Book Project(TM), and the novel is 3/4ths done. The book continues to take an emotional toll on me, and the fine height of irony would be if it never sold. Because I am metaphorically bleeding for it.
Also, I have a legitimate fear that the first woman to read this book beyond my Super-Duper Secret Squirrel Alpha Reader (not you), is just going to kill me for being an emotionally manipulative bastard.
Beyond that, creative work on short stories continues, mainly as a defense mechanism for Secret Squirrel Contemporary YA Book Project(TM).
Now I know what you are thinking. You are thinking how did the Blog Harem come to be, Anthony?
I have no idea.
Really.
Diplonacy, Fleet Style
From my Space Opera novel, Stuff Blowing Up in Space.
As soon as he stepped out of the airlock, he knew the mission, such as it was, was going to hell.
They didn’t step out into a reception area—it was an atrium. Immediately he felt his marines tense up from the increased exposure. Snipers could hide in a hundred places.
Then there was the Princess herself and her four person detail, two of them obviously security.
The Princess was tall. 1.905 meters to be exact. Her hair looked like sapphire silk, made to run hands through. She had legs that went forever out of her tunic, ending in short military boots. At least the top of the tunic she changed into wasn’t diaphanous like her previous blouse, but it might as well have been. Her breasts, which his stupid battle comp proudly told him was 36C, were of the round, youthful sort.
Then her eyes. They were big and doe-like—soft amber-colored with flecks of green.
She was a light shade of purple. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful feminine creature he had ever seen. She put Lieutenant Jennifer Polouski, the female looker of Wolfpack 359, to shame.
As they approached, she looked confused. Then she looked disturbingly hungry. Now she was, and it was hard to tell because facial expressions were somewhat different, smirking.
Yes, it definitely looked like a smirk.
Not good.
“Princess.” He bowed. As to plan, the marines did not.
“Captain.” She simply stood with her hands on her hips.
Her voice was high-but not annoyingly so.
Tilbrook looked around. Everyone had Aoe Station insignia. Bleh.
“Are we to meet the Navy personnel in a briefing room? I would like to present the data to a tactical officer.”
Now she looked positively haughty.
“No, Captain Tilbrook. No, what you are going to do is listen to every Fleet and Aoe regulation and protocol you broke in getting here, and then and only then, hear my plan.”
She gave her hair a little toss. “First, there is the manner of you trying to contact the Navy directly. This was a violation of Section 15a from Article…”
Well, crap. So much for Plan A. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a Plan B. She didn’t want him to submit. She was not intimidated. If she was hungry, she didn’t show it. She was simply annoyed.
**Ah, Skipper? You’re not really listening to this amazon quote regs, are you?** asked Mitty.
**No, Private, I’m trying to come up with a new plan, because the old one just went to hell.**
**Thank you for saying it first, Skipper,** said Kitty.
**I had such high hopes,** he admitted, **especially for all the time and money we put into it.**
**I think we underestimated her smarts, sir. Looks like her plan is to talk until you get very tired of it and slink off,** said Mitty, sounding annoyed, which was a pretty neat trick for sub-vocalization armor talk.
“…and now let’s turn to the quite rude and inappropriate actions of your helmsman starting with…”
Deep down, Tilbrook got angry. Smart and beautiful sish or no, the Commodore was counting on him. He could even be dead, and Princess here was pulling Rear-Escalon-Mother-Fucker.
**Sir, I know I don’t need to state the obvious, but every minute we listen to this purple bitch give us the riot act, Really Bad Things could be pouring out of that jump-point. It could even be war,** said Kitty. She sounded depressed.
That’s when he knew.
**New plan. Stun her escorts, zero body count. GO!**
It was as if Mitty, Kitty and his brain was connected. As he was drawing his sidearm, they were drawing their stunners and both of them were weapons-free before he was.
The snap-hiss of the stunners was loud and he dully noted his helmet had formed around his head and there was a small hiss of a seal.
His pistol was free. He aimed it at the comically surprised Princess and pulled the trigger. Dark sish blood from his expertly aimed shot spurted from her left thigh, and she went down.
***
Staff Sargent Sergei Koltsov wasn’t exactly surprised everything went to hell, although the manner in which it did surprised him. One moment the Princess was droning on and on and the next the captain and the twins threw down.
Well, so much for diplomacy.
“Squad, RESCUE PLAN CHARLIE, GO!”
The rest of the marine detail, including him, poured out of the Coolidge.
His explosive tech was moving with lightning speed. He slammed a boarding surge module into the power receptacle in the airlock, twisted the safety handle, and pulled it up.
“Fire in the hole!” the tech screamed as he slammed the handle down and everyone dived out of the airlock.
The surge module was a particularly nasty device. It debugged the power hardware and then sent a surge in various frequencies up the system until it found a vulnerability, and then it poured an enormous amount of power back up the grid.
Sometimes, they simply exploded.
More often than not, they sent a surge all the way through the system, burning cutouts until the main power plant completely shut out that portion of the grid.
And that’s exactly what happened. Power went out in their station section, the atrium they found themselves in bathed in sudden darkness. Not even the emergency lighting turned on.
Excellent.
His optics went into night-vision mode.
That’s when he saw the twins and the skipper thundering towards him. Only, Tilbrook had the Princess over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
Oh shit.
“Back in the ship! Back in the ship! Back in the ship!” he screamed over the tac-channel.
As his squad retreated, they all fired flash-bangs and the world for anyone not wearing proper armor and looking into the atrium went white.
***
Ensign Fredrick Hernández aka “Rookie” aka “Steady Freddy” was surprised the Princess was in his airlock, but his orders were clear. Rescue plan Charlie called for him to “GTFO” as soon as the Coolidge’s outer airlock door closed with all personnel on-board, and that’s what he did. Since he was combat docked, he blew the flimsy boarding tube and punched it.
“Coolidge! You are to heave-to immediately! Coolidge!” This was from the security channel.
ECM Tech Ensign Gina Kipply, sitting over to his left, punched a virtual button on her console. A pre-program routine started, the first of which was to send massive jamming on all comm frequencies. The comm chatter ceased.
The Coolidge shot out Aoe Station’s space like a speed demon from hell, burning hard towards the FTL safety line, and if anyone had bothered to look, they would have noted she was breaking all the system speed records in the process.
Lies We Tell Girls
The loss consumed Davis.
If there were stages of grief, he felt he was at the very most bottom, standing in a hole, looking up at a sky getting farther and farther away.
Reality suddenly intruded on his circular thoughts. Someone else had left flowers. They weren’t even wilted, but the petals where sagging in the rain.
Davis added his own. They made a nice, soggy, arrangement.
***
Two months. Summer gone. Today it was a teacup, with a teabag of jasmine tea. The rain had filled the cup, the raindrops going plip and sending small waves of water over the rim.
She never drank jasmine tea.
At least, she never drank jasmine tea in front of him.
***
A winter rain. More flowers. These were bright and vivid, as if picked to dispel the ever-present grey winter gloom. A beacon of color.
He left the mistletoe next to the flowers. He could imagine holding the sprigs above her head, giving her the flowers and receiving a sweet kiss in return.
The kisses were the most cruel of daydreams.
***
At his apartment, Davis stared at the calendar.
I see you, he thought.
***
Early spring.
The man was tall and well-dressed in his trench coat, expensive shoes and tight-fitting black leather gloves. One of those men would would look good in a hat, only he wasn’t wearing a hat, and the rain was in his dark hair.
Davis walked to his side and stood next to him, both of them silent. They were silent for a long time.
“She always liked the rain,” the man said, staring in his cup of petals. Japanese maple petals.
“She loved Japanese maples, she did,” said Davis.
The man turned to him.
“Joshua?” David asked.
The man nodded.
Joshua. The boy who moved away. She confessed to him one day after a glass of wine in the late hours, that her first love was a boy named Josh. Her parents told her she could not follow the boy.
She was too young to be married, they said.
There would be other loves, they said.
Davis remembered the look on her face when she told him this. There were other loves all right. Other loves after a broken heart. She cried, finally, when he touched her face after she sat there staring into her empty wine glass.
Crying like Joshua. Silently.
Davis set down the very same glass, or the glass he liked to think was the same, and grabbed the man. Joshua was stiff and then it was as if he melted.
“Why? Why do we tell girls those lies? Why do we hurt them so?” Joshua whispered.
“They were just trying to hold onto something they loved. But it’s never right to lie to a girl.”
“No,” said Joshua, “it’s not.”
Goodbyes Are Never Forever
Three young, lonely lovers said goodbye today and walked down the common lane to their offices after grabbing their lunch.
Lover Number One, broke up with her boyfriend of a year. His arguing tired her just as he was probably tired of her speaking her mind on just about anything one could have an opinion about.
Oh, she knew she had flaws a-plenty. It’s not that she didn’t warn him what he was getting into. She had years and years of pent-up desire to express herself outside her soulless, mind-numbing apathetic family of which she escaped.
That man knew how to make her giggle, though, so she would miss that. And his kisses. But she was supposed to miss kisses, was she not?
She got a hot bowl of noodles in beef broth.
Lover Number Two broke up with his girlfriend of only a month of exclusive dating. When it came to down to it, she was disrespectful. She used her wit and natural insight to wound, not heal.
She was ferociously good in bed, but work was a zoo, and he didn’t need to date himself into the monkey house outside of it.
He got a sandwich. With pepper-jack cheese.
Lover Number Three’s ring finger is missing his ring. Too much alcohol. Too many drugs. Affairs on either side. It wasn’t a marriage, it was a pair of enablers. He couldn’t even remember who suggested parting ways first. Indeed, they both felt lucky to pull back from the cliff, and the parting was amicable.
Love, though, is a funny thing. He thought he took her for granted, a bed warmer of convenience, the perpetual go-to party girl. But now he had some regret. He still loved her.
He got a bowl of clam chowder. He wasn’t that hungry.
Three young, lonely lovers said goodbye today and walked down the common lane to their offices after grabbing their lunch. Little did they know the future haunted them. Goodbyes were never forever, but they were young, and even the oldest amongst us sometimes do not recognize
the lingering certainty
of looking back
and
always
missing
The Quiet Intensity of Falling to Pieces
I’ve given up on hit stats, and gauge my blog posts in how they connect with readers in three ways, in order of increasing popularity:
- Did anyone comment?
- Did anyone send me mail?
- Did anyone link my post on their blog and comment?
The link is the Holy Grail of popularity indicators. While my post yesterday did not generate any links, it sure hit a nerve. It took one reader by surprise, and even the Wife Unit told me I needed to put warning labels on things like that.
Heh. Insert sheepish grin here. Whoops. Someone emailed me and asked why I wrote that. Why indeed.
Quite simply, my work-in-progress is kicking my ass. This novel is, unfortunately, a creative and emotional vampire.
Contemporary Young Adult was never on my horizon. I love reading it, I just never saw myself writing it. My love for genre fiction is deep, and more than that, I have such fun writing science fiction and fantasy. But when the plot for this novel hit me along-side the head, I knew I had to drop everything and write it.
The emotional intensity of my work-in-progress is high. The situation my main characters find themselves in is as absurd as it is heartbreaking, and as I approach the ending the intensity and emotional impact increases dramatically. I find myself in need of a creative outlet in order to not, um, explode or something. Because that would be messy.
I wrote The Pilot simply as a need to express the emotions bleeding from my work-in-progress. It was write it or fall to pieces.
Yes, that post was merely spill-over.
The Pilot
Her lover liked to hold her hand and she found it cute.
She liked cute. When she traded the perpetual frown for the goofy grin, really, she felt like she had boys all figured out:
Young men that frowned all the time, sucked. Those that smiled, not just at her, but, for example, at their moms, ruled.
This was a good rule. A girl could live with that rule. The rule went with cuteness like chocolate syrup went with ice cream.
***
She had no idea what the minister was saying. She vaguely remembered the words from the rehearsal.
Suddenly her hand was in his.
He turned to her and smiled.
You take my breath away, his eyes said.
***
“Push, Darling.”
“I am pushing!”
A tired smile.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Okay, new plan. You push!”
He grabbed her sweaty hand.
“I’ve got you covered, Babe.”
***
Her daughter’s baton went up, up, and up, so high she was sure it was going to hit the gym ceiling.
It came crashing down, impossibly fast. She caught it, spun around, and did a split, just like that.
He turned to her, put his hand in hers, and gave her a little squeeze.
“That’s our girl,” he said through misty eyes.
***
“I don’t understand,” he said through labored breath, a breath as old as the world. “Why can’t I see?”
She touched his face tenderly. “It’s just time to rest,” she said.
“I am tired,” he admitted.
“You’ve been awake, a long, long time.”
“Thank you. For everything,” he whispered.
“I love you,” she said. She had to say it. She so wanted him to hold on to those three words. Just three words. Surely he could take those with him.
“I’m scared,” he said.
She grabbed his hand and held it in hers. Fingers weak but intertwined.
“My turn, now. I got you covered, Babe.”
He smiled.
Swimming with Sharks
Ha!
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DarkShip Thieves by Sarah A. Hoyt
For anyone new popping up on the scene, I target my book reviews towards novelists (you can find my prior reviews here).
DarkShip Thieves by Sarah A. Hoyt was my holiday me me me book, but it turned into much more than that. For the novelist interested in speculative fiction, DarkShip Thieves is a course of science fiction om nom nom nom with a major serving of romp and romance.
Here’s the book blurb:
Athena Hera Sinistra never wanted to go to space. Never wanted see the eerie glow of the Powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. Never had any interest in finding out the truth about the DarkShips. You always get what you don’t ask for. Which must have been why she woke up in the dark of shipnight, within the greater night of space in her father’s space cruiser, knowing that there was a stranger in her room. In a short time, after taking out the stranger—who turned out to be one of her father’s bodyguards up to no good, she was hurtling away from the ship in a lifeboat to get help. But what she got instead would be the adventure of a lifetime—if she managed to survive . . . .
You can always count on the publisher, Baen, to deliver some classic sci-fi with a bit of the libertarian thematic, but DarkShip Thieves is a not-so-subtle homage to Robert Heinlein, and that is one reason it is worthy of study. Once a reader gets into that, the book comes into its own in a major, major way, and how Hoyt does this is a bit of the ‘ole awesomesauce.
Essentially it goes like this: any Heinlein fan is going to read this book and start grinning like a dork about a quarter of a way through it. Halfway through the book the little science fiction libertarian in you will go “this is soooooo good,” but then, like the dogs of war unleashed, the novel takes off on its own and doesn’t end until the reader is breathless.
And Hoyt does this with an exploration of love and honesty, two great libertarian themes so worthy of needing exploration in science fiction.
Heinlein was the master of the libertarian thematic but he also dabbled on the edges of libertarianism beyond the personal affirmation and the economic delivery from tyranny. The core of libertarian philosophy centers around peaceful interactions between people in a “trust, but verify” relationship. A person has to believe in the overall good of mankind, yet expect the odd duck to cause problems and thus plan accordingly.
Thena finds herself as the obligatory fish-out-of-water in a libertarian society after being rescued by Kit, a genetically modified pilot who makes a living stealing power from the terrans. Kit brings her to Eden, a large asteroid with refugees from a nasty war back on Earth. Eden is, for the most part, an anarcho-capitalism society.
Oh, but Kit. Kit is so nakedly honest, so honorable (not to mention a bit of a studmuffin), Thena falls in love with him. She falls hard. She’s a product of a declining civilization, a civilization kept together through understated oppression and slight of hand. When encountering pure goodness, it drives her a little crazy, and she is drawn to Kit not so much because he can get inside her head (literally) but because Kit is simply Kit and no one else. Hoyt brings out the craziness in Thena as she realizes the core of her beliefs are a lie, and then, like a master novelist, Hoyt dials it up to eleven when Thena finds out her life has been a lie.
Thena, my fellow writers, kicks-ass throughout the entire novel despite all of the setbacks a cruel universe throws at her. And yet, when faced with the prospect of losing the first real taste of love she has ever known, she goes on an unholy libertarian rampage that is both epic and intensely personal at the same time.
I could prattle on and on about how DarkShip Thieves is a marvelous science fiction book in a classical sense, with wonderful uses of technology and some truly clever settings. At its heart, however, it is a romantic love story wrapped up in a personal coming-of-age yarn about good triumphing over evil.
For a novelist in any type of speculative fiction, I give the novel five slices of bacon up out of five.
The Pericles Commission by Gary Corby
Update: Comments closed, winner selected!
Here I insert my standard disclaimer: I target my book reviews to novelists.
Also, if you would like to win a FREE copy of The Pericles Commission, comment on this post. I will select a commenter at random and mail you the copy. You need only to have a valid postal address somewhere in the world. The contest ends December 13 at noon, Pacific Time.
The Pericles Commission is a wonderful debut novel by researcher and writer Gary Corby. A murder mystery set in ancient Greece, the novel is also a political thriller, a coming-of-age-story and a cultural study all in one tight, little, whirlwind package of historical mystery goodness.
And Corby pulls it off masterfully.
Thus, I give you a disclaimer. If you are a novelist who likes to write murder mysteries (as I do), this book will make your head spin. Corby’s artistic creativity at putting a mystery together has the capability of frying your poor writer brain if you attempt to deconstruct the novel beyond its entertainment value.
The plot goes like this:
Early one bright, clear morning in Athens, 461 B.C., a dead man falls from the sky, landing at the feet of Nicolaos.
It doesn’t normally rain corpses. This one is the politician Ephialtes, who only days before had turned Athens into a democracy, and with it, kick-started western civilization. It looks very much as if Ephialtes was assassinated to stifle the world’s first democracy at its birth.
But Ephialtes has a lieutenant: a rising young politician by the name of Pericles. Pericles commissions the clever young Nicolaos to expose the assassin.
Nicolaos walks the mean streets of classical Athens in search of a killer. He’s totally confident he’ll succeed in finding him.
There are only a few small problems. Pericles is looking over his shoulder, critiquing his every move. Nicolaos would like to get closer (much closer) to Diotima, the intelligent and annoyingly virgin priestess of Artemis. He’d prefer not to go near Pythax, the brutally tough chief of the city guard. It would definitely help if the main suspect weren’t Xanthippus, a leading conservative and, worst of all, the father of Pericles.
But most of all, what Nicolaos really needs is to shake off his irritating twelve-year-old brother, Socrates, who keeps making helpful suggestions.
Can Nicolaos save Athens, democracy, and the future of western civilization?
Oh, how I loved Nicolaos, and Corby’s voicing with his main character leaves a reader not so much seeing the wonders of ancient Greece through his eyes, but living it in a visceral, immersive escapism that I had not experienced in a murder mystery since Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Realtime.
There is a certain purity in murder mysteries. There’s a dead body. Sometimes more. The stakes are high, and beyond the expert voicing and characterization, the gem of The Pericles Commission is its sheer relentlessness. For this novel is relentless in the stakes. Corby ratchets them up again and again and again until a reader is left almost panting with tension, reading furiously as nothing so much as the fate of humanity is on the line.
This novel happily dances around thriller territory and simply calling it a historical murder mystery is an understatement. If you are a writer, don’t let the fabulous research blind you, or the mesmerizing voicing nor the purity of how the setting comes alive. Never has a historical book been so much fun to read. It was intelligent escapism at its highest form, and that, dear writers, was simply awesome. The Pericles Commission is not so much a novel as it is crack for mystery lovers.
Don’t forget to comment below to win a chance at a free copy!
A New Post in Adventures in Writing
Hearken ye over to Adventures in Writingville, where you can dither about the Expression of Self.
Good vs. Evil in the Shade of Ink
Ah, the life of a consultant: the move from one contract to another.
Perfect for the little ADD Monster inside all of us.
This is an exciting re-engineering contract. I get to plumb the depths of the undocumented and air our all the deficiencies.
So, what does that have to do with writing or reading?
Nothing! Ha! But I am behind in my blog list of things to do (as you can see by the lack of updates). This always happens when I switch contracts. I need to find my rhythm. I am almost there.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the artistic expression of the battle between Good vs. Evil. Then I watched this movie:
The Indy movie Ink is gathering hype, as it should. The pacing is masterful, right from the slow beginning to the crescendo of the ending. The extraordinary clever writing. The understated special effects.
But, dear 9.3 blog readers, this is, at the core, a story of Good vs. Evil in the most basic sense to its most insidious. It encompasses every major Good vs. Evil thematic you could possibly imagine wrapped up in a glorious narrative rapture, from the overt to the slices of gray so thin you can see through them.
I don’t normally review movies, but I will review Ink after I post my next book review.
Bottom line: If you have a Good vs. Evil theme in your writing, don’t even talk to me until you’ve seen this movie.
Teen Boy in Kissing Trouble
This is the opening of chapter 2 of my current work in progress. I was thinking about kissing this morning (oh, the life of a writer!) and my thoughts fell back to poor Brandon. He doesn’t know what he’s getting into, does he?
Sarah made a bargain with herself.
She would not scream.
She would not go off like a crazy clichéd psycho bitch girlfriend.
She would not say something stupid.
She wouldn’t bite him, nor hit him in the head with her purse really super hard.
He was waiting in his driveway with his camera bag and tripod.
She made her face blank. When his eyes met hers, his face lit up as if she was his world, and her stupid heart went all a flutter again.
Damn it, she either was falling in love—or had gas.
At least she had minty-fresh breath. She never went anywhere without her toothbrush and mouthwash.
He got in the truck, putting the camera and equipment near the door so he could sit next to her.
Oh my God, he wants a smooch! Right now!
She bit her lip. Her entire life seemed poised right at this moment. This very moment. What Brandon said next, it seemed, would either change her life forever or doom their relationship to one spectacular bittersweet kiss they would each remember for the rest of their empty, lonely and pathetic lives. She would become a stripper. Perhaps a go-go dancer. He would sell used cars with a bad comb-over.
He looked at her expectantly with his stupid mousy-brown tussled perfect hair and big brown eyes flecked with stupid grey with his perfect complexion and his always smell-good scent. It was probably something stupid, like Old Spice deodorant, or a stupid foot powder, or even stupid fabric softener, something that triggered her stupid comfort feel good…
“You’re late.”
She could actually feel her eyes narrow. Anger, she decided, was a great nausea killer. She reached over, he leaned forward for a kiss, she grabbed teen boy nipple through his shirt, and twisted. Hard.
“OW!” he yelped, throwing himself backwards. “Ow!” he said again as he banged into his tripod. “What did you do that for?”
“That’s for not telling me you had already kissed a girl!”
“Oh, crap.” He looked guilty enough to pee himself.
“Yeah, oh, crap,” she said as she drove off. She was still mad, and she may have the maturity of a grade school girl, but she did, she had to admit, feel a whole lot better.
The she remembered that he just asked her why she went off. How could he not know? Maybe she could bash his head in with the tripod and then bury his body. After running him over. Twice. Maybe three times.
Checking In
Work has kept me under several deadlines, and blogging is the first thing to go as my current contract ends. This particular contract had technical issues, most of which I fixed. Personally. Usually on a weekend. Now that is all coming to a close today and tomorrow, and I’ll be back to my babbling, gray-haired self.
On one hand, I’m happy that I can still bust out the technical mojo and get’er done.
On the other hand, I really, really, really need to get back to writing or I will explode with pent-up writing, um, ness.
Next week I’ll be reviewing Gary Corby’s The Pericles Commission. The novelist will find several gems of writer-ery goodness in Gary’s debut novel. Here at Rehabilitated Hack Writerville, we have a fondness for unusual murder mysteries and books with fabulous research. When I get both in one novel I get all excited. So much so, I will be giving a copy away to a lucky blog reader who comments on my review post (thus you have 1 in 9 chance of winning, ha ha)! Tune in next week.
Speaking of book reviews, I talk about them here in Adventures in Writing.
Talk to You Later!
Anthony
So Blogging This, Part V
[12:52:52 PM] heatherpa: I finished Gary’s book
[12:52:58 PM] heatherpa: When is the next coming out?
[12:54:35 PM] Anthony Pacheco: LOL
[12:54:40 PM] Anthony Pacheco: same time next year
[12:54:47 PM] heatherpa: but but but…
[12:54:56 PM] Anthony Pacheco: Once a year
[12:55:01 PM] Anthony Pacheco: He is working on book 3?
[12:55:08 PM] heatherpa: sigh you writers….
[12:55:15 PM] heatherpa: what do you do with your time? Write faster!
[12:55:26 PM] Anthony Pacheco: OMG I am so blogging this.
The Why
Some whys need no asking. There is no reason to ask “why” someone broken into my car and ate my Altoids and took all my D&D dice, he just did. Nor was there a profound why when King County Sheriff returned my dice. It was the deputy’s job, and I was thankful.
True story, by the way. But I digress.
A writing friend asked me for some advice. After the “I am not published” disclaimer, I told her if she really wanted to improve her characterization, she needed to start asking the hard questions about herself and be prepared to deal with the truth of her self-assessment.
I gave her a kissing example (no, I did not kiss her, geeze). Why, when I was a young man in my teens, did I kiss one girl and not another?
The easy answer would be opportunity. That’s only a small truth to a larger answer. Did I kiss the right girl, or the wrong girl? To not answer the question of kiss, for a writer, is to make the unsaid claim that kissing isn’t important.
The romantics in us know that kissing is everything.
Right?
Right!
Self-reflection can dive into the danger zone. Mistakes we made are a part of us and to wish they were not leads to self-loathing.
That’s the rub. The writer has to look past that. She has to answer why. Sometimes the answer is full of regret. There is no second-guessing in the almighty pursuit of the why. Even guilt is a substandard emotion when digging at ourselves for the truth.
This leads me back to kissing; kissing is visceral. It is a physical act of desire, passion, lust and love. Sometimes at the same time.
Mmmmmm kissing mmmmmm
Oh wait, what were we talking about again? Oh, that’s right. Writing.
There is always the story of the boy or girl that got away. And that’s why I brought up kissing. It’s more than the boy and girl that got away as a universal story of longing, regret, and loss. It’s the reality of not kissing. Think about it. It’s one thing to say “oh, that’s the one that got away,” and quite another to say “we never kissed yet I can close my eyes and feel her lips on mine.” Never held hands. Never made love. Never fought, never made up. Never admitted a mistake with a sheepish grin.
The why. Always the why. Don’t tell me why that one got away. Tell me a story about why you didn’t kiss.
A New Post in Adventures in Writing
In which I point out a not so obvious trend in book selling.
Paranormalcy by Kiersten White
I bleeping love Kiersten White’s Paranormalcy.
Loving a book isn’t enough to appear here on Rehabilitated Hack Writer Reviews™, the book needs to also have value to the novelist. Consequently, I target this review towards fiction writers.
With that said, I bleeping love Kiersten White’s Paranormalcy.
The writer needs to take away three things from Paranormalcy, the first being “wow what bleeping awesome plotting” and, more obvious, the outstanding voicing White employs to suck the reader into the book with an iron, literary grip. Don’t let White’s happy-bouncy-mommy online presence fool you. She is a vicious literary storyteller, using deep, persuasive skills to capture your attention, mesmerize you and then leave you wanting more as your turn the last page.
We’ll come back to the plotting in a moment, for the voicing of the book steals the show. The voicing of the main character is lifeblood to the writer.
Evie, oh, you pink loving girly-girl, a bastion of teen goodness that doles out snark and sarcasm that actually had me giggling manly chuckling in places. How I very much love this Taser-loving character.
Evie is not some empty shell for a teen girl to project herself into and ride the waves of faux conflict into a sequel. White’s mastery with making her unique from the first chapter speaks to a very creative talent and is worthy of a writer’s study. Indeed, I would assert Evie has a universal appeal simply because she is so alive and unique.
White’s use of dialog coupled with plot gives Evie her voice, but you can see this razor-sharp characterization at work with all the characters present, especially the dark bad-boy Reth, and the mysterious and noble Lend. This characterization is water boiling under the surface; when I speak of voicing, I’m mainly talking about literary voicing in a classical sense.
Voicing, the way I think of it, is the writer’s grasp and mastery of the literary elements of diction, tone, syntax, unity, coherence and audience to create a clear and distinct “personality of the writer.” This personality emerges as readers interact with the text.
And this, my writer friends, is what makes this book more than simply a good read. Voicing can be hard to explain, but it’s it’s not hard to spot. Simply pick up Paranormalcy for a great example. I love Kiersten’s writer voice, I always have, and it’s on grand display here in this novel.
Least you get sucked into the characterization, leave no doubt White is also a master plotter. One wonders if her stable of author friends calls her “The Plot Mistress” behind closed doors.
But I digress.
The plot for Paranormalcy is a forward-facing, e-ticket ride into the paranormal:
Evie’s always thought of herself as a normal teenager, even though she works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, her ex-boyfriend is a faerie, she’s falling for a shape-shifter, and she’s the only person who can see through paranormals’ glamours.
But Evie’s about to realize that she may very well be at the center of a dark faerie prophecy promising destruction to all paranormal creatures.
So much for normal.
Holy Bleeping Crap, the plot, wow would be a great way to describe it. Just, wow. White dishes out word building in such a sneaky fashion, each couple of page flips reveals some of her backstory and if you’re happily plowing through the book, you’ll miss it. For the writer, her use of foreshadowing is worthy of your study. Like a good mystery author, White doesn’t agonize over if you figure it all out before the main character. White stays true to Evie to the very last page of the story, and it was simply fabulous. I can’t wait to read the next two books simply because I am in love with her plot-forward style of world building.
Awesome. Coated in awesomesauce. Wrapped in bacon. Bacon awesomesauce.
But forget about voice and plot. No, the highlight of Paranormalcy is the lack of themes.
What, you say? Lack of themes? Are you crazy, Mr. Rehabilitated Hack Writer?
Yes, I am crazy. Crazy like a fox!
But I digress.
Almost every book targeted to young adult audience has a theme, sometimes more than one. White, however, does not dive into thematics. What separates a good young adult novel from a great young adult novel is when the author sticks true to her values and writes to what she believes. It’s the brave thing, rather than the safe path. It’s writing to how things are, rather than an opinion on how things should be. This is what makes Evie so lovable. White didn’t pattern Evie after herself of course, but she embraces what she wants to share with the reader.
If you don’t see this raw honesty, I encourage you to re-read the novel again, paying attention not just to Evie’s empathetic nature, but also Lend’s.
And that, my friends, moves Paranormalcy from the realm of bubble-gum literary girly snack to simply brilliant. My secret wish is for White to explore more of this raw honesty, and, at the end of the day, isn’t that what moves a novel into a loved story?
You can buy Paranormalcy at Amazon here.
The Barnes and Nobel link is here.
Son of Ereubus by J.S. Chancellor
Every epic fantasy series worthy of a recommendation from me and my friends pays homage to what I call fantasy je ne sais quoi.
I will attempt to describe the indescribable anyway.
As readers, we enjoy books but wallow in the really good ones. My buddies and I chew through fantasy novels like a Rottweiler puppy going through a bone. Here at Rehabilitated Hack Writerville, however, we review books for fellow writers. I target this book review to novelists, not simply readers.
Real fantasy has an intangible quality that makes it distinctive and attractive and this has little to do with world building and more to do with raw, creative talent that one could say is the voice of the book.
Son of Ereubus by J.S. Chancellor is like a warm piece of olive bread slathered generously with fantasy je ne sais quoi. So very delicious. Oh, did I eat the whole loaf? Whoops.
On the surface, leave no doubt that Son of Ereubus is creepy as hell. I would not call it a horror book but there are many horror elements on display. Indeed, the level of creep is so persuasive that, like the inhabitants of the human world and their protectors, a reader gets used to it. There is a certain, brutal aesthetic to the plot.
Underneath the surface, however, is a complex tale of which I’m not going to attempt to describe, so let’s just go with the back of the book:
Since time immemorial, Man has lived in fear of losing his soul to the darkness of Saint Ereubus. For generations, the Ereubinians have wielded that power and ruled like gods. Three thousand years ago, Man irresolutely placed his faith in a mythical world. That world, Adoria, now holds Man’s final hope. As the last stronghold of Man is threatened, the fates of three strangers become forever intertwined and everything they once believed will be irrevocably changed as they discover…
Their time has run out.
Chancellor packed Son of Ereubus so full of Epic Plot Goodness, it makes that plot summary akin to saying your favorite vacation spot in the entire world is “nice.”
That, my writing friends, makes the book worthy of study. Seriously. The plotting for this fantasy novel is incredible.
And that’s just getting started, for Son of Ereubus is a rare novel indeed: it’s character driven epic fantasy.
The characters Ariana and Garren are the yin and yang of the novel, and they both compliment and repel each other in a perverted harmony. Ariana is a powerful yet feminine character who seems continually frustrated that she is able to outthink everyone around her, yet they treat her as a “normal” woman, which she is so very not. I love Ariana. So spunky. So sassy. So in need of getting laid.
But I digress.
As much as Ariana is a special treat to read in a fantasy story, Garren, my friends, completely runs away with the novel. I was a quarter of the way into the book when I closed it and looked at the cover and went “Yesssss, this is going to be so awesome!”
Garren is the anti-hero and even before he grasps the ugly horns of self-determination, he strangely becomes a sympathetic figure. How Chancellor made me feel pangs of sympathy for such an evil fuck, I have no idea. Chancellor’s voicing with Garren is as complex at the mythos and plotting of the novel. She tricks the reader into thinking Ariana is a creature of chaos—wherever she goes, she sows the seeds of change. Compared to Garren, however, Ariana is a piker.
This is what pulls Son of Ereubus into brilliant epic fantasy. The creepy Armageddon undercurrents with the intertwining, complex plot and mythos combined with outstanding character voices come together in a wondrous opening novel of a trilogy.
Like I said, earlier, however, Son of Ereubus is fantasy je ne sais quoi and I believe that comes from the intense themes hiding behind the action-infused plot along with all the other hallmarks of an epic fantasy novel. It’s war, in Son of Ereubus. It’s not just a war for man and the souls of the human race, but also a war between good and evil, fate and self-determination and even a war between hot-blooded lovers.
I can’t wait to read the next book in the Guardians of Legend series, for Son of Ereubus was pure epic fantasy awesomesauce.
