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. 

Regarding THE JUSTICE OF KINGS

Every so often there is a book that I'm super excited about coming out. The book THE JUSTICE OF KINGS was one of those books. I remembered reading the description of the book and thinking that it sounded like a cool idea. Then I saw the cover and I knew I had to read it. And the wait was worth it. I was lucky enough to get an eARC of the book from Orbit Books and I'm glad that I got it. It was a stellar book

THE JUSTICE OF KINGS tells the story of Sir Konrad Vonvalt, one of the King's Justices. Think of them as one part Judge Dredd, one part Elliot Stabler and one part The Witcher. They're a one stop shop for law and order in the vast Empire. Told through the eyes of Vonvalt's young clerk Helena, a foundling given the opportunity to escape her lot in life by becoming the Justice's protégé. While making his rounds, Vonvalt comes across what looks like a simple murder in a town and stays to investigate. He uncovers a vast conspiracy that could undo everything that Vonvalt and his companions fight for. 

As I said, this book is stellar. For such a dense book, I found it to be a quick read. It's an epic story told on a small scale. Helena is our window into this complex world and it's pitch perfect. We learn the way this complex world operates on the ground level and it never feels spoon fed or info dumpy. The action scenes are just amazing and breathtaking. The real strength of the book, however, is the voice. Swan's writing voice is just masterful. You want to keep reading it because of the voice. 

I'd highly recommend this book if you're an epic fantasy fan. 

$9.80

 One of my favorite pieces of authorial lore is the story of Ray Bradbury's classic novel FAHRENHEIT 451. 

Bradbury had an idea for a story, as many of us do, and had nowhere to write it. He had a newborn at home, so there were no quiet places in his house to work or a place for him to work quietly in the pre-computer 1950s depending on your point of view. He had no money for an office. Where was his friend with an IBM Selectric typewriter?

The story goes that while wandering the campus of UCLA, Bradbury heard sound of typing coming from the basement of one of the campus libraries. He found a small room filled with for-hire typewriters. For the price of a dime one could type away for thirty minutes. So off Bradbury went to return bottles or check the cracks of his couch in search of suddenly precious dimes, collecting an entire sack of them. Armed with his sack of dimes, Bradbury returned to the library basement and put his words to paper. Nine days later and ninety-eight dimes later, he completed a story called THE FIREMAN. (Finished, if my math is correct, in forty-nine hours or about five and a half hours a day!) Eventually, that story would be further fleshed out and turned into the classic we know today...a classic that got its first chance to be seen by the public thanks to a hungry young editor of a new magazine that was willing to take a chance on an unpublished novella. That editor? Hugh Hefner. 

I adore this story and the metaphor of the bag of dimes. We all have that bag of dimes inside of us, it's just whether or not we decide to use them or not on whatever you are passionate about. Maybe it's scrapbooking or smoking meat, it doesn't matter. It's potential and effort represented in dollars and cents. It's measurable and tangible. It's 98 dimes. It's 49 hours of work. And that means something to all of us.  

I'm off to go gets some dimes...who's with me?

Regarding MARADAINE

 Maradaine.

A massive, sprawling mess of a city brilliantly brought to life by Marshall Ryan Maresca. I've spent a good part of the last year in the city, meeting its denizens, sharing in their complex lives and unraveling the conspiracies that have intertwined said lives. Like the aforementioned city, "Phase One" of the Maradaine Saga is a massive, sprawling epic adventure that throws us, the reader, into the very things that make Maradaine a massive sprawling mess of a city. Split into four very different but intertwined series, the Maradaine Saga is a must read if you like fantasy, especially if you like fantasy set in a honest-to-goodness, living breathing city like Lankhmar, Ankh-Morpork, Minas Tirith, Riverside or Tar Valon.

In a weird circle of life kind of way, I started the series last year on my family vacation to Cape Cod reading about the adventures of the Thorn of Dentonhill and finished it on this year's family vacation to Cape Cod when I finished the intense and thrilling THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY. 

The series is just terrific and never lets up. In my interactions with MRM on social media, he makes comparisons to the AVENGERS and it's an apropos comparison. Maresca has done something I totally admire in mashing up genres in a brilliant way. The Thorn, our introduction to the world, is part Harry Potter, part Spiderman, part Batman while his his mission to end the rule of Willem Fenmere is more Kingpin than Joker. The Thorn series really shows us both sides of the city. 

Welling and Rainey are Sherlock and Holmes by way of Stabler and Benson but in a massive fantasy city. Welling has the brilliant, Sherlockian brain that is burdened by his late-manifesting magical abilities while Rainey tricks her way on to the force after a career in spycraft that saved her from the streets. The crimes they investigate slowly become more intertwined with those out our very heroes (very ta'veren if you ask me...and that's okay). 

We then meet the Ocean's crew of Maradaine: the Rynax brothers and the band of plucky neighbors that band together to uncover the mystery behind the fire that destroyed all of their homes that is tied to the grand conspiracy that ties them all together. The Iron Man and Hulk of our heroes (sort of), Verci and Asti plot and scheme their way though their own investigation of what caused the fire while protecting their neighborhood, especially when children start going missing. 

The Maradaine Elite, led by Tarians Dayne Heldrin and Jerinne Fendall, is the political thrillers of the Maradaine world. It's Captain America: Winter Soldier but as a fantasy. Dayne is a Boy Scout that finds himself some how always in, as the cool kids on TicToc say, the thick of it. This subseries is the scariest and one of the most prescient books I've ever read as it features the storming of a parliamentary floor by protesters not happy with the way things have gone for them. I was literally reading the book featuring these scenes on January 6th and terrified by the parallels. (There are several others in this series that will make you think he was writing this as things were going on.)

The entire series comes to a head in the final book of the Maradaine Elite series as "the people of the city" come together to stop a dragon and save the children of the city, There are some nice moments of redemption and hints of what's to come in "Phase Two." The final half of this book is intense and thrilling, like the end of any good Marvel movie. 

Fast-moving, this entire series is fast moving, mostly because you don't want to put it down.

A few months ago, I complained about "bad input" being part of my recent writing problems. The Maradaine Saga was just what I needed. I've been rolling lately finishing a rewrite on my own "Maradaine" book THE LOST SCIONS. There's a lot of shared DNA between them and that's pushed me to finish the rewrite and I think what I've written is pretty darn good. 

So my time in Maradaine is done for now. I'm moving on to the WHEEL OF TIME now. I'm on book seven, A CROWN OF SWORDS. I'm sure I'll have thoughts on it when I'm done. 

Regarding IT

 So, I finished IT today and boy was it something. I don't mean that in a bad way or in a good way, it was just something. I felt like I had to write something about the book before it faded away. For the most part, I really enjoyed the book. It's an epic story of good versus evil with the typical Kingsian trappings that prevent it from being a true masterpiece. The parts are there, but King gets in his own way most of the time. 

King frustrates me. He's really an amazing writer, I can't deny that, but there are so many frustrating aspects of his writing that prevent me from completely enjoying the story. IT was a prime example of this. It was everything I love and hate about King in one book. So let me break it down by what I loved and what I hated. 

WHAT I LOVED:

• Worldbuilding: King knows how to build a world and it's on full display here. Derry and the world around it is brilliant. 
• Mythology/Canon: King integrates this world into his "Kingverse" flawlessly while existing all on its own. He builds the mythology of It with some well done but info-dumpy sections cunningly designed as Mike's journals. 
• Characters: This might have been the strongest aspect of the novel. We spend a fair amount of time with each character, getting a feeling for them as individuals. He moves between the young and the old versions of the main characters with a deftness that's just impressive while touching on the point of views of lesser characters.  
• Pennywise: What a great villain. He's the monster that we all fear as children and as parents. His control over Derry is terrifying and that adults don't seem to notice anything adds to the tension of the story.
• Messing With Structure And Genre: King does a lot of weird but cool stuff with structure in this book. Maybe it's like other King novels, but I haven't read them all. And he messes with genre by adding Mike's journals and straight up reports of what's happening like they are from a nonfiction book about what happened. It's really kind of neat.
• Mood/Tone: This is a King specialty and it really works in spades in this book. 
• Hints: King sprinkles in bits where we see It's weaknesses throughout the book and they are rare bits of subtlety from King. If you are reading fast, you'll miss them. 

WHAT I HATED:

• Fat People: King rivals Rowling on his distaste of fat people. Besides Ben, we never meet a kind or helpful fat person. 
• Ickiness: I'm not talking about gore but King writes some things that make you squirm as you read them. He's not particularly good about writing female adolescent characters. There are some predilections there that are borderline creepy. 
• Characters: The kids are a little too hypercompetent for my taste. Sure they are scared of It, but keep it together to execute all of their plans that summer, including an underground hideout and smelting silver. My daughter is 13 and I don't see her being as efficient as the Losers' Club. 
• Make Bad Decisions For The Sake Of Plot: I dislike this trope immensely and know that it's a staple of the horror genre, but some of the decisions side characters make frustrated me. The entire Audra subplot fell flat for me as did the Tom subplot. They easily could've been cut out and the book wouldn't have been diminished. Bill didn't need additional motivation to kill It. 
• Eggs: It felt like this entire thing was just tacked on at the end because King thought of it last minute. 

THINGS I'M NOT SURE ABOUT

• Henry Bowers: I thought his arc was incomplete. King invested so much time on him that his ending felt, I don't know...off. I'm glad it was Eddie that did it though. 

IT is an amazing book. It's a huge book with a lot going on in it but it's worth the read. It can be a slog in some spots but it's worth the read. There are parts that are difficult to read because they are cringe-worthy (and I don't mean in a horror way) but if you can get past those, it's really an amazing book. 

I've got THE STAND sitting on my shelf. I listened to about half of it a while back before I quit on it (I don't remember why I did) but I may give it a try again. 

Lost In The Woods

 If you know me at all, you know that I always have something to say. But lately, I haven't had much to say. And it feels weird. 

My voice has been missing for quite awhile and I'm not sure what to do about it. I don't know if this piece is part of the solution, but I'm going to give it a try. I want to write something clever about finding my voice, but I don't have it in me. I'm tired. I'm lost in the woods searching desperately for that missing voice.

In quiet moments, I worry that I've lost my voice for good. It's terrifying. Ideas are elusive. This piece alone was a struggle to write. My friend Brian writes three pages every day. Maybe he knows where the words are. What's funny is that I've actually been writing a lot lately. 

What? That doesn't make sense, does it? How can I feel like I've lost my voice yet still be writing? I don't know. It's a paradox? 

I'm focusing on one project while peeking at another one that I've completely blown up. But something about it doesn't feel right. The writing is awkward and unwieldy. I can't get a good grip on it so it always feels like it's slipping away from me. 

Writing this felt good. I did some work. Got some thoughts on paper and on screen. For now, that's enough.