SparkNotes published my write-up on the recently released Bioshock: Infinite

This was a heck of a game that made a significant impact — emotionally, visually, creatively. My spoiler-free review explores some of the features that made it an excellent and rewarding experience.

You can find it HERE!

Posted in Writing

When I attended grad school, it was an eye-opener on a startling fact: I didn’t know jack shit about the writing business.

I listened to my peers, my faculty, and gleaned what tidbits of information I could. David Anthony Durham gave some excellent advice about keeping foreign rights. I caught Jim Kelly in the middle of a conversation saying: “Night Shade Books? Uh oh. I heard they don’t pay their authors.” I filed away that piece of intelligence. Even though I had no foundation of knowledge to defend or reject it, that was the sort of detail that I couldn’t let go in good faith. Night Shade was a no-no.

A couple of years later, I learned that my dear friend Zachary Jernigan was publishing his first book through Night Shade. I felt an initial shock of recognition on his behalf, which was quickly eclipsed by hope and good wishes. I want Zack to succeed. I wanted Night Shade to be better to him than it supposedly had to others. And as I wrote in my recent review, Zack’s flagship book No Return is legitimately fantastic, and deserves the best treatment and representation it could get.

The Internet has been buzzing over the last two days: Night Shade is going out of business. Their assets are being sold to a publisher that doesn’t handle speculative fiction. Night Shade’s authors have limited options available to them, and this is my understanding of the scenario.

1) Accept a boilerplate (see: cheap) contract from the new publisher. A certain number of authors need to accept these terms in order for the buyout to succeed.

2) I actually have no idea what the alternative is. I know that some established authors are refusing the terms, but I don’t know what happens to their contracts or their books.

What I do know is that, if Night Shade fails to navigate this buyout and ends in bankruptcy, then Zack’s first novel is going to spend several years in unpublished pandemonium before it has a chance to succeed. That shit makes me want to never stop vomiting.

My previous review was a strong recommendation to read No Return. Now it’s turned into a plea on behalf of a good man and an excellent writer (In truth, Zack is a bastard, but he’s my bastard). Read his book because it’s worthy of your attention. Buy it because you’ll be helping one of the best new writers in the genre get a leg up on a sinking ship. It would break my black heart to see Zack’s book smothered by the industry its attempting to enrich.

Check out Zack’s blog, check out his book, and pray to the Man Jesus that the rest of us find better homes in the welcoming world of publication.

Posted in Writing

I recently attended a reading and signing of Her, by Christa Parravani. This is a memoir about an identical twin (Christa) who lost her sister and spiraled into an odyssey of identity crisis and addiction. I treat nonfiction like cough medicine: I take a tablespoon of it every few months, choke it down, and grudgingly admit I’m a little better for the experience. It’s definitely worth a glance. Christa’s website is also much classier than mine, with a video and everything.

http://www.christaparravani.com/

After the reading, a Q&A ensued. The author fielded questions about finding her way through grief and healing, but my interest was piqued when no one asked about her writing process. Why else were we there? Most of the audience members gravitated toward nonfiction as a means of dealing with misfortune. Perhaps this wasn’t the most fertile ground for a fiction writer who dreams of dirigibles and electric sheep.

Then I asked Christa about what intentions she brought to bear when she sat down to write. Did she prioritize getting the story on paper, or was there something in the craft of the delivery that she wanted to explore? She was approaching writing from such a different angle that it made me wonder about what exactly I aim to achieve when I put pen to paper.

So this is me answering my own question.

How Fiction Works, and Why I’m Writing It (v1.0)

In order of importance.

First and Foremost: A Setting with Teeth

I want my setting to prove as memorable as my characters. This is philosophically sound, but complicated in the execution. How do I achieve it? I see a couple of different, broad approaches.

a) the Subjective setting

A character’s point of view determines the emotional and psychic character of a setting. Is the setting warm and welcoming, claustrophobic, competitive, virtuous, degraded? The character’s experience of the story will define the reader’s experience of it, so care and intention must be observed.

Useful examples include Harry Potter, Ender’s Game, and The Hungry City Chronicles. I think that young adult novels focus on this method because child characters are often dropped into settings driven by anxiety and confusion. A child’s ability to navigate unfriendly terrain is also used as a sign of their progression and maturity.

b) the Objective setting

No matter what a character thinks, the setting can exist as its own distinct entity. Its true character is often unknowable, which hints of age, mystery, or danger on a primal level.

Useful examples include: Mythago Wood, Perdido Street Station, House of Leaves, City of Saints and Madmen. I find that this approach tends to challenge the reader. Books that adopt this method are steeped in the traditions of Gothic novelists and horror writers like H.P. Lovecraft, who recognized that mankind’s ability to control his environment is grossly overestimated. The setting is too big and scary for a character to even know its true name.

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book does an excellent job of adopting both of these practices. Anyone with one good eye and a big heart will adore that story and its execution.

Second: A Calculated Point of View

I think that some novelists are thoughtless when it comes to point of view. This is a bias on my part, but hear me out.

I hesitate to use a First Person point of view, except in the following instances:

-          Memoir

-          Unreliable narrator

-          Radio drama

-          The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

-          All of the above

(plus whatever I add to v1.2)

The Third Person perspective is a gift. We’ve managed to craft it into something every bit as intimate as First Person—if not more so. In Third Person, the reader still gets to experience the inner conflicts, the things unsaid, the hope, the longing, the desire, the despair. The experiences come in real time. We get to see a character’s relationship between thought and action. Best of all: the writing never suffers.

Too often, the only “gimmick” of First Person is that the writer gets to kick off their boots and adopt a colloquial tone, like dictating to an old friend. My problem is when the writing reads as lazy, as if the author didn’t want to burn the calories to write a book in the first place. Let the rain of pitchforks commence.

I always posed this question in workshops: What did using First Person lend to this piece that Third Person would have denied? If the answer is “Nothing,” then I can but open my palms to an empty room, wondering why anyone would write in First Person if they weren’t putting any of its fringe benefits to good use. That’s like picking up a hammer to do the job of an Allen wrench. Bring the right tools for the right contexts.

Drood, The Egyptologist, and Home Land are stories that know what they’re doing. Read Notes from Underground, or anything by Robert Coover. Ironically, First Person is best employed when its goal is to drop a level of distrust between the reader and the narrator. Never trust anyone who writes about themselves.

So that’s the beginning of my treatise on How Fiction Works. I’m going to add a separate link on the side of my blog containing these ramblings, and update them as time goes on. You never know, I’ll probably change my mind. 

Thanks for reading!

Posted in Writing

This might seem less cerebral than my previous post, but it was something to occupy my mind over an afternoon, and you should therefore be subjected to it.

Enjoy! Find it here.

Posted in Writing