Shared DNA

 In the build up for their new show, THE HOUSE OF DRAGONS, HBO played the entire run of GAME OF THRONES. I watched when I could and man, when that show was good it was good. Like really good. And even when it was bad, it was still good. In a strange coincidence, a few weeks back I loaned my copy of A GAME OF THRONES to one of my neighbors and decided to listen to the audiobook. I had audible credits to use and I wasn't sure what to listen to. I had forgotten how good that book is. It's incredible. It got me thinking about how important that book was to me as a writer. It got me thinking about shared DNA.

What is shared DNA? It's the strands of other work, the things that inspired you or moved you, that exist in your work. These are the building blocks for creatives. Our starting points. We all have them. Watching GOT and listening to AGOT made me remember how much DNA my novel WINTER'S DISCORD shared with ASOIAF. 

After being reminded of the importance of ASOIAF had on me, I spent too much time looking back on the mess that was WINTER'S DISCORD. It was my first real book. (We don't count the chaos that is THE FALLING DARK. That was a practice book.) I say mess not because the book is a mess. It's not. I stand by it being a damn fine book. If I could afford a decent cover artist, I'd release it myself. It was my first experience with the publishing business. I could lament about that but I'd rather focus on shared DNA. 

WINTER'S DISCORD shares so much DNA with A GAME OF THRONES it's almost scary. I really was trying to write the YA version of it. I had a chance to strike while the iron was hot too. Before it was "cool" to write the "YA Game of Thrones." While the tones are different, I look at a lot of the same themes as AGOT, but done in my own way. Plus it share DNA with other things. I can see the strands in my writing. There's DRAGONLANCE, Tamora Pierce and R.A. Salvatore in there as well along with BEVERLY HILLS 90210 and DEGRASSI. I'm going to save more about that for my 99 Inspirations posts. There was a real opportunity there. But "he who shall not be named" really kind of botched it, but again, I don't want to carry on about that right now. Like I said, I still believe in the book and think it's damn good. Maybe some day I'll let everyone read it. 

The WINTER'S DISCORD/AGOT isn't the only book I've written with shared DNA. 

The first time I saw the trailer for the movie THE BLACK PHONE I literally said out loud, "Holy crap, that's THE GIRL IN THE PICTURE!" When I tweeted the trailer at my friend Neil who responded by asking me if the book sold and I forgot to tell everyone. I wish. But GIRL didn't catch on, even though it not only shared DNA with THE BLACK PHONE but IT at a time when the IT movies were all the rage. Maybe it needs another pass. Maybe a full rewrite. But like all my manuscripts, I just can't give up on it. 

I'm presently studying the DNA of "airport" thriller-style books (like I said, more on those later), trying to find the strands that inspire me and that I can use. It's been an uphill battle thus far. It's the genre's subject matter that I'm not experienced with and I don't know if I have a voice for it. But then again, what do I know about swordplay and riding horses and using magic? And that didn't stop me from writing that.  I guess we'll find out. 

Look for the DNA that makes up your favorites and use it in your work. Sometimes it's hard to find. sometimes it's right there on the tin. 

The Spinner Rack

The other day I stopped at a small, locally owned grocery store with my kids to pick up some beverages to drink. As we approached the cooler, wedged between it and a pretzel display stood a spinner rack of mass market paperbacks. I stopped dead in my tracks. If you follow this blog at all, you know that I love mass market paperbacks. I gleefully spun the rack, absorbing the titles. It was entirely muscle memory. A few thrillers, some romance novels, a few action/adventure airport type books (I've got more to say about airport books, but that's another blog entry) and even a George RR Martin title. I was elated. It brought back so many memories to my earliest experiences with reading. 

Sure, my grandfather took me to the library as a child and I read voraciously, but the spinner was where I learned about storytelling. Combine the the spinner racks at the grocery stores with the wire racks of the department stores of my youth. When my mother would take me along with her to Ames or Hills or Switz's, I would disappear to the aisle of wire racks filled with dozens and dozens of mass market paperbacks. (One time I even snuck out of Hills at Penn Can Mall to go to Economy Book Store. I got in so much trouble for that, she even had me paged.) I would peruse the lurid covers featuring half-naked warrior women or muscled soldiers packing heat against unseen enemies with titles like Raven or The Scorpion Squad. I would sneak them into my mother's cart and read them as soon as I got home.They were books that no twelve year old should've been reading!

My mother rarely blanched at the requests. The books were usually cheap and reading was reading. They were books that weren't available at the library. They weren't literature, that's for sure, but they were formative to my development as a writer. I recently scoured a few of the online used bookstores and bought some that I remembered. I'm going to try and read them in what remains of the summer. To a lonely kid, these books meant the world to me. 

Seeing the spinner rack got me thinking about my writing. The mass market paperback was the backbone of my education as a writer. My earliest attempts at writing were pastiches of these books that I shared with friends. To be honest, I don't know if my writing has advanced much further than writing pastiches of what I love. I have no lofty ambitions about my literary career. I just want to write a book worthy of the spinner rack.