National Year of Reading

By PD Martin

Sometimes when it's my turn to blog I have to scramble for ideas. But today, I had three potential topics!  

1. Valentine’s Day. I lucked out and drew Valentine’s Day for my Wildcard Tuesday. So I should write a blog about that, right? You know, tracing the history, talking about what it means to me…yada, yada, yada. But forget it…I’ve got other things to write about today. And I’m sure there will be loads of blogs around on Valentine’s Day. And if not, just go to Wikipedia for your fix.
2. Option 2 was relevant to the date, because tonight (Aussie time) I’m launching the National Year of Reading at one of my local libraries. I’m one of the ambassadors and this is my first duty of the year. In fact, when this goes live I will have just finished giving my speech. 
3. Option 3 came around on the weekend. While I believe writing is a craft more than an art, I still consider myself to be a creative, artistic person. And as a creative, artistic person I am upset, outraged and angry at the wasted talent of the one and only Whitney Houston. So much so, I considered writing a blog on it.

In the end, I’ve gone with option 2, the reading theme, because it seems so relevant to this forum, to Murderati.

For the launch I was asked to speak a little about reading and what reading and books meant to me. I’ve decided to write about some of these things today.

First off, I was lucky because I always loved reading. I didn’t need Harry Potter or fancy ebooks on iPads to engage me - I just needed a book. Sure, there were books I loved more than others, books that I read over and over again. Childhood greats like The Wishing Chair, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and Famous Five and Nancy Drew come to mind. But pretty much any book would do me. I’d devour them, keen to move on to the next story, or the next book in a series.

So, what did I love about books and reading? Some people talk about the feel of a book, the feel of turning pages. But for me, although my childhood reading was solely hardcopy based, it was never about the feel of a book, it was about the words on the page, or more specifically about where the book would take me. You can pick up a book and be anywhere in the world, or not in this world at all. Whether it’s reading about a cop in the US, a bodyguard in England or reading about the hobbits travelling to Middle Earth, books take you somewhere else, give you another experience. Sometimes that experience can be grounded in reality or what might be possible, like crime fiction, drama or even romance stories (although many would argue they’re not based in any realism at all!). And at other times, the world you’re transported to is fictional, fantastical. Whether it’s travelling with Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter to Narnia or following the lives of Bella and Edward in Twilight, these books take you to another world, a world that is appealing, interesting or intriguing in some way. 

Reading’s also about emotion, about how a story makes you feel. Reading has the ability, the power , to take you on emotional highs and lows. You can be inspired by triumph, moved or heartbroken by tragedy or drama, intrigued and challenged by a whodunit or you can simply get away from it all with an escapist read. These escapist reads could come in the form of classic fantasy novels, horror books, paranormal stories or even romance. And while some people like the more literary style of writing and others prefer a good vampire book, it’s all reading. And it’s all story telling. Sure, it’s changed a lot over the years. Originally it was people telling stories around campfires or ‘drawing’ stories. Then, as we evolved, stories became about the written word rather than the spoken word. They were about reading, not listening. And now, well in some ways we’ve come full circle with audio books that allow people to listen to stories, but they’ve also evolved to another level with ebooks. Our kids may read online, and via ereaders or i-Somethings, but they will still read. In fact, I think ebooks give these technology-savvy generations the ability to combine reading with gadgets and hopefully that will lead to an increase in the love of reading, and most importantly of literacy.

Reading is also ultimately why I became a writer - I think why anyone becomes a writer. Authors love hearing and reading stories, and most importantly we love telling our own stories.

However, I do have a confession to make. My reading is currently in a massive trough, which actually started when I got published. Like many authors, I found myself juggling tight deadlines and reading non-fiction research books instead of reading for pleasure. Plus I became a mother soon after I became published, which meant juggling the dual acts of motherhood and writing; and I’m also one of those authors who prefers not to read while writing. These things add up to not much reading.

However, I am inspired to read more this year. Inspired by the National Year of Reading, and by my role as an ambassador. What about you? What are your reading plans for the year? And what are your childhood memories of stories taking you to different worlds or on emotional highs and lows? 

SORRY, OUR MISTAKE, WON'T EVER HAPPEN AGAIN

by Gar Anthony Haywood

By now, unless you only yesterday emerged from a coma that was at least 5 days in length, you've heard about the Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood fiasco.  Last Wednesday, the Komen Foundation, the nation's largest breast cancer non-profit, informed Planned Parenthood that it would be discontinuing its funding of the organization, and pretty much all hell broke loose.  Womens' health advocates went nuts, accusing Komen of de-funding Planned Parenthood strictly for political reasons, and in an instant, the public outcry had Komen executives backpedaling faster than a man who's just found himself face-to-face with a black bear.  The charity issued one conflicting rationale after another for its decision, then finally offered Planned Parenthood and its supporters an apology and a promise to consider funding the non-profit in the future.

Setting aside all the politics involved --- and we're all going to do that, people, here and in the comments, because this isn't the place for that kind of discussion --- what amazed me most about the controversy was how surprised the Komen execs seemed to be by the firestorm of criticism their decision received.  They all behaved as if no one at Komen could have possibly predicted how thousands of women would react to one womens' health organization yanking the rug out from under another.

Breast cancer research charity pulls $600,000 in contributions from non-profit supplying women with reproductive health services; many women get upset.

Gee, you think?

This particular brand of cluelessness, however, is not a new phenomenon. 

Remember when Coke tried to pass "New Coke" off on its faithful customer base and had to pull that crap-in-a-can off the shelves and replace it with the original almost before the delivery trucks had pulled out of the dock?  Result: Humiliating mea culpa and reversal.

Or how about the Gap's recent attempt to "upgrade" its iconic logo from this . . .

. . . to this?

Result: Humiliating mea culpa and reversal.

Mark Zuckerberg suffered a similar case of brain-lock back in 2009, when his Facebook's privacy policy was changed to essentially ensure that there was nothing at all "private" about user data --- Facebook owned it all.  "Uh, no.  Hell, no," users --- and the FTC --- said.  Result: Humiliating mea culpa and reversal.

As near as I can tell, nothing along these lines has ever happened in the publishing business.  But surely it's just a matter of time, and this being Wildcard Tuesday and all, I thought I'd look into my crystal ball and see if I can't imagine what could lie ahead . . .

Online retail giant Amazon.com today announced it is scrapping plans to have a virtual employee "greet" customers on the home page of their website.  Modeled after the flesh-and-blood front door greeters at Walmart's brick-and-mortar stores, Amazon's computer-generated greeter would have met users with a cheerful hello and directed them to Amazon's "World Domination Specials" of the day, but the program's debut has now been put on hold indefinitely.  "We studied the matter carefully," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, "and we decided to go in a different direction, primarily because customers told us they'd rather chew glass than have some character out of a bad Pixar movie tell them where to mouse-click to get the best deal in the known universe on ball-peen hammers."

After weathering weeks of irate blowback from her faithful fans, bestselling mystery author Sue Grafton has decided her popular series character, private investigator Kinsey Millhone, will remain a woman in all future books.  Word of Grafton's intent to change Millhone's gender from female to male --- to alleviate a bad case of "alphabet-induced boredom," she said --- went viral after a pirated copy of her outline for the next book in the series, "T is for Transsexual," appeared all over the Internet, and reader outrage was as deafening as it was immediate.  "Sue labored long and hard to develop a heretofore secret backstory for Kinsey in which she'd always wanted to be a man," Grafton's agent said.  "But we both underestimated how many readers adore her specifically because she's a woman, and how poorly they'd take to her first name being changed to 'Klyde.'"

Search giant Google's controversial effort to single-handedly retire the word "book" and replace it with a word of the company's own invention has come to an abrupt end.  Public outcry and widespread ridicule --- no Jay Leno Tonight Show monologue has been complete lately without at least one reference to the gaffe --- ultimately did the ill-conceived scheme in.  As a press release issued by the company today explained, in part:

"While we are still of the opinion that electronic publishing has rendered the word people have always used for a piece of long-form reading material --- 'book' --- outdated and useless, Google must concede that our timing in suggesting the word is dead and needs replacement was, at the very least, poor.  Therefore, effective immediately, Google will be returning to the practice of using the word 'book' in all its on-site content, and will no longer be using the word 'zot' --- the copyright to which the company fully intends to maintain --- instead."

It sounded like a bad idea when the company first announced it two weeks ago, and now New York publisher Random House has been forced to agree: Asking book buyers to pay extra to find out how a book ends is no way to grow revenue.  Withering under an avalanche of criticism from retailers and readers alike, company executives took to the stage at a press conference today to officially end the publisher's plans to sell all its titles minus their last five pages, which readers would have had to pay an additional $5 to receive.  Suggesting most readers don't read to the end of every book they buy anyway, Random House had tried to sell the program --- called "Five for Five" --- as a value added service, but readers weren't buying, hence the company's hasty retreat.  Questions posed to Random House spokesperson Dervin Elbert regarding a rumored plan to try charging extra for punctuation next went unanswered.

Novartis thought it had the perfect pitch man to star in its Excedrin Superbowl commercial scheduled to run this February: hip-hop superstar Kanye West.  But literacy advocates forced the company to shelf the spot sight-unseen when its script became public and its tagline became the butt of jokes everywhere.  In the commercial, West --- who created a stir back in 2009 by issuing a number of searing anti-literacy proclamations, including, "I am a proud non-reader of books.  I would never want a book's autograph" --- sits in a drawing room beside a roaring fire, peering intently at an open copy of Dr. Seuss's classic book for pre-schoolers, FOX IN SOCKS, before looking directly into the camera and exclaiming, "Reading makes my damn head hurt!"  He then reaches for a nearby bottle of Excedrin and downs two tablets.

In its public apology, issued today by the company's attorneys on the steps of the New York Public Library, Novartis said, "We realize in retrospect that the commercial would have sent an entirely inappropriate message regarding the importance of books and reading to people of all ages, and hope our lapse in judgment hasn't caused anyone too much pain.  Get it?  Pain?"

Author and self-publishing guru J.A. Konrath said today he will not attempt to serve as his own anesthesiologist during the gall bladder surgery he is scheduled to undergo next Thursday.  Claiming licensed anesthesiologists are unnecessary middle-men between surgeons and their patients, Konrath had declared last month that he would not be paying one to assist in his surgery and would instead anesthetize himself in accordance to his surgeon's directions.  The author changed his mind, however, after an attempt to self-administer Novocain during a recent root canal procedure went terribly awry.

"As much as it burns my ass to pay someone to do something I could easily do myself, given the proper time and training, I owe it to my fans not to take such unnecessary risks with my health," Konrath told Publisher's Weekly, speaking only out of the left side of his mouth, as his experiment at the dentist still has him waiting for any feeling to return to the right.

Only six days in, book retailer Barnes & Noble is ending its heralded e-book exchange program for the Nook.  The program, which would have allowed customers to upload four old e-book titles from their Nook e-readers back to B & N in exchange for one new one, quickly proved a disaster, as readers by the score took it as an opportunity to rid themselves of books they completely regretted buying in the first place.  "From Barnes and Noble's perspective, good books were going out with only bad books coming in," industry observer Angie Linchbach wrote in a column for Inkwatch.com Monday.  "They were getting twenty James Pattersons for every James Lee Burke they downloaded."

It was reported that three Barnes & Noble data center servers crashed under the stress of uploaded Stephanie Meyer titles alone.  B & N says it hopes to have the machines back online in time for Christmas.

BUILDING THE (TOO-) PERFECT PROTAGONIST

by Gar Anthony Haywood

One of the questions we writers get all the time is:

"Is your protagonist you?"

I've heard a lot of different answers to this question, some long and some short, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone just come out and say what we all know to be true:

"Of course he is!"

Because really, is there ever any doubt?  Why create a heroic character --- especially one who triumphs in the end --- if you can't live vicariously through him?  And how can you live vicariously through a character who's totally removed from yourself?

Has any card-carrying 'Rati ever read a Charlie Fox thriller and not seen Zoë Sharp herself doing all that ass-kicking?

I didn't think so.

Sure, we take pains to disguise ourselves, giving our protagonists attributes we don't actually share, but we're in there, all right.  Fiction is a game of pretend, and part of the fun of writing it comes from putting yourself at the center of the action, in the guise of a bigger and better you, facing enemies and dangers larger than you could reliably handle in the real world.  With ourselves as the underlying framework, we build a protagonist built for heroism, endowing him with strengths and powers we either lack altogether, or do not possess in sufficient quantity to tackle the task at hand.

But there's a limit to this process.  Unless you're writing pulp, or some kind of retro-crime fiction that harkens back to the days when "realism" was a dirty word, you never want to follow such fantasies to their extreme.  You know what your perfect protagonist looks like, but he's not anybody you could actually use in a story supposedly grounded in a non-fictional universe.

God bless Ian Fleming.  He got to have his cake and eat it, too, creating the ultimate male protagonist in James Bond, agent 007, at a time when scores of readers were still willing to forgive such laughable affronts to realism, common sense, and the sensibilities of women.  Try writing a series about such an ingenious, indefatigable, sexually flawless protagonist as Bond now and see how many rejection letters you collect.

Still, whether you can use him or her in your fiction or not, it's always fun to imagine what kind of protagonist you could build were the sky the limit.  Unencumbered by any restrictions suspension-of-disbelief might demand, what would he look like?  What would his powers be?

Or should I say, what would your powers be?  Because your protagonist is really you, remember?

When I created Aaron Gunner, the Los Angeles private investigator I've now put at the center of six novels, I drew the line at giving him only one thing my "perfect" protagonist would possess that I, sadly, do not: a red Ford Shelby Cobra, my favorite sports car of all time.

But I could have been much more generous to Gunner than that.

If I were building him according to my own personal wants and needs today, independent of what I thought readers would be willing to buy, this would be his basic profile:

1. Height/Weight: 6'-2"/220 lbs.
   
   Just big enough to give someone thinking about throwing down on him reason to think twice.
   
   
2. Physical attractiveness: 7.5
   
   This is on a scale of 1 - 10, 1 being Homer Simpson and 10 being Denzel Washington.
   
   
3. Sexual prowess: 8
   
   Again, this is on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 basically means any song featuring the words "all night long" in its lyrics could have been written about him on a typical Tuesday in March.
   
   (Sorry, ladies, I know you think this stuff is silly, but we guys really do fantasize like this, especially those of us with serious performance anxieties.  You dream about chocolate and warm baths, we dream about making Gisele Bündchen forget she ever even met Tom Brady.  What can I tell you?)
   
   
4. Annual income: $95,000
   
   Enough to live comfortably without losing sight of his humble origins.
   
   
5. Place of residence: 3 bedroom home in Ladera Heights (Los Angeles, CA)
   
   Because every man should have an expansive view of his city, and a spare bedroom to put all his toys in.
   
   
6. Could be a Jeopardy champion in the category of: World history
   
   
7. Aptitude in the kitchen: 7
   
   Where Bobby Flay would be a 10.  Not good enough to win any cooking contests, but capable of making any first date memorable for the food and drink alone.
   
   
8. Languages spoken fluently: 3
   
   English, Spanish and Japanese
   
   
9. Musical instruments played: 2
   
   Piano and guitar.  Self-taught.  No pro by a longshot, but he could join the band at any concert and not embarrass himself.  And every once in a blue moon, can rip off a jam like this:




10. Hidden talent: Expert magician.
    
    And I don't mean card tricks.  I mean "How the hell did he do that??" stuff.

And so on and so forth.  You get the idea.  A ridiculous character, to be sure, but someone it might be fun to be for a day or so, just to see how it would feel.

So what about you, my fellow 'Ratis?  Using the 10 categories above as a jumping off point, what would the profile of your "perfect protagonist" look like, if suspension-of-disbelief was not a consideration?

THIS CAN'T POSSIBLY END WELL . . . (OR CAN IT?)

by Gar Anthony Haywood

The other night, the wife and I caught the last forty minutes or so of the classic film THELMA & LOUISE on television.  The story of two BFFs on the run from the law after a weekend getaway from the troublesome men in their lives turns deadly, it's a movie I greatly enjoyed when it was first released in 1991.  The late Callie Khouri's script is fantastic and the two leads, Geena Davis as Thelma and Susan Sarandon as Louise, are simply brilliant (not to mention gorgeous).

Iron-willed feminist that she is, I expected my wife Tessa would be a fan, but just before fade-out, she surprised me by demanding we turn the movie off.

Turns out she can't stand how it ends.

If you've seen the film yourself (or have just watched the clip above), you know that its big payoff is a flashy suicide: With the law fast closing in, and facing an almost certain future behind bars, the girls decide to show all the men who've ever wronged them one final, giant-sized "Fuck you!" by taking a flying leap (actually, it's a driving leap) into the Grand Canyon.  Better to die in a blaze of glory than go on living as a second-class citizen under the oppressive, sexist thumb of the Man.

Those who have found this ending to be extremely satisfying --- and there are many --- would probably describe it as a happy one.  After all, aren't Thelma and Louise breathlessly fist-pumping as the curtain falls, having left Harvey Keitel and a small army of lawmen holding nothing but dust in their wake?  Haven't they escaped the injustice of going to prison for a crime they committed only in self-defense?  In driving off that cliff, rather than surrender and submit for the ten-thousandth time in their lives, aren't they realizing the ultimate dream of oppressed people everywhere: self-determination?

Well, yes . . .

Except that they fucking die!

That's your happy ending?  Victory in death?  Really?

Oh, hell, no.  There's nothing "happy" about that ending at all.  Suicide under any circumstances is an act of desperation; it's a capitulation to forces making life too unbearable to hold on to.  And yet, this is not to say the ending to THELMA & LOUISE is not a perfectly fitting one.  In fact, one might argue it's the only ending to the film Callie Khouri could have written that would have been true to all that came before it.

But was it?

Were there other, equally authentic but far less tragic ways to bring the saga of Thelma and Louise to a close Khouri could have devised instead, had she been motivated to try?  Or was this a story that simply demanded the downer ending it was given?

I don't know.

For all the love I have for Roman Polanski's CHINATOWN (actually, I prefer to think of it as Robert Towne's CHINATOWN), the ending to that film has always left me asking the same question: Was that really the best Towne could do?  Was there really no other way to bring Jake Gitte's conflict with Noah Cross to a satisfactory conclusion other than to have Cross --- as evil and twisted a villain as has ever darkened the silver screen --- win?

Again, I don't know.  The only thing I do know is that, had Towne not chosen to take the path he did, he might never have written one of the greatest last lines in movie history: "Forget it, Jake.  It's Chinatown."  And that would have been a tragedy.

Personally, I think both Robert Towne and Callie Khouri nailed the endings to their respective films, whether viable, more upbeat alternatives were available to them or not.  But I don't believe the same can be said for every screenwriter (or novelist) whose film (novel) ends on a similar, fatalistic note.  Sometimes, a writer runs his ladies off a cliff, or has his private eye taste the bitter taste of defeat, simply because finding another way out of the jam he's placed them in is too terrible a thought to contemplate.

Readers call authors to task all the time for slapping happy endings on books that don't logically point to one, and with good reason.  But affixing sad endings to stories that don't necessarily require them is just as egregious in my opinion.

Like the old saying goes: "Tragedy is easy.  It's comedy that's hard."

Questions for the Class: Can you think of a book or film that ended badly more out of obvious convenience than necessity?

Too good to be true?

By PD Martin

Before I get into today’s post, I wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to all our North American readers. I know you may be expecting a Thanksgiving-themed post but guess who got Thanksgiving…the Aussie! So I’ve gone with a regular post :) Now, on to ‘Too good to be true’…

While I’ve never been one of those writers who paces for hours to come up with one sentence or spends six months planning out every detail of a book before I start writing, I’ve still always thought of writing as hard work. It is hard work.  

Sure, there’s the fun stuff…writing in your pyjamas, the long commute from bedroom to study, tax-deductible trips to various destinations for research and/or promotion (although you have to be able to afford the flights in the first place), not to mention sitting in a café and writing. And sometimes cake does need to be involved! I don’t think anyone can argue that the above perks of the job are cool…way cool.  But it’s still bum on chair, thinking, creating and writing. And while it’s tempting to get up and procrastinate every time the flow stops, it’s not something I do.

In a post some time ago, I mentioned that I was working on a new book that’s not crime fiction. It’s not even a thriller or remotely related to my past work. I’m still getting my head around what I’d call it, but I think ‘mainstream fiction/drama’ is pretty accurate. The book is about relationships and how people deal with different traumas. I’m also entering another new world, using multiple viewpoints. And some of my subject matter is tense and issues-based…controversial, I guess.

I started writing this book at the beginning of the year, and then it was on hold for months as I took corporate gigs to pay the bills. I started on the project again in October and soon found myself zooming through it. My writing week is often very fragmented as I fit it in around being a full-time mother (to a pre-schooler) and freelance writing gigs. But I’d find I’d have an hour to write…and write 1,000 words. And every Saturday I have four hours to write while my daughter is in classes. The last two Saturdays, I’ve written 5,000 words during each of those four-hour blocks. Two productive sessions, to say the least. 

So, a couple of weeks ago I found myself asking the inevitable question. Is this too good to be true? Can writing really be this ‘easy’? Am I writing dribble that I won’t be able to edit into shape? I’m a write first, edit later kind of girl, so that’s fine. But will my bare bones be barer than usual? Or is it because the subject matter is close to my heart? One of the characters is experiencing something that I went through about eight years ago and I’m finding it easy to tap into that character and the others too for that matter.

I know Gar wrote a post two weeks ago with pretty much the polar opposite sentiment of this one, and I think that highlights the different working processes of writers. But then I’m still left with the question: Too good to be true?

This feeling is compounded by the fact that I came to this project after six months off my own writing altogether, then writing a thriller that I found incredibly hard-going. The writing didn’t seem to come naturally to me and I wasn’t sure if it was the idea/characters or the fact I’d had six months off fiction writing. This new project certainly provides a stark contrast to writing the thriller.

 So now I’m torn between two polar opposites.

1. I’m writing what I’m “meant” to write. (Although this sounds a little cliché or dramatic…or something.) The flow and ‘ease’ is just an indication of that.
2. It’s too good to be true.

Obviously the proof will be in the pudding. I’m now 70,000 words into the first draft, so the end is nigh and soon the major, major editing will start. Then I’ll have a better idea of how bare the bare bones are.

In the meantime, I wanted to throw this out to the Rati. Does good writing HAVE to be a hard slog? And if it flows incredibly easy, is that too good to be true?