On genre, sort of.

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I know, I know, everyone's at the beach, I'm talking to myself, here. I'm too tired from the move to even think about going to the beach, so I will just type quietly to myself, which does not even require getting out of bed, by me or the cats, who don't look too inclined to get out of bed, either. (I think half the stress of moving is seeing how much it traumatizes your animals, no matter how much you try to explain what is happening and that it will be all right, eventually...).

I did a post on my own blog this week on editing that apparently surprised some people because my rewriting advice was less about punctuation and a lot more about doing "genre passes" - that is, doing several rewrites that focus specifically on heightening genre elements in your book: a comic pass for comedy, a suspense pass for a thriller, a sex pass for a romance (all right, emotional pass, if you will...)

And then some of the comments on that post sparked a whole discussion on another website in which someone who had read my blog was fuming about the idea of having to know the genre of your story while you are still in the process of writing it.

I don't know, it seems kind of important to me.

I understand the reluctance to be pigeonholed. I think it's a symptom of the new writer, mostly, because anyone who has written professionally has long ago come to terms with pigeonholing (Did they send a check? Then they can call it anything they want).

But I don't understand the reluctance to be associated with the great books that are your story's antecedents. I really don't understand the seeming reluctance to even KNOW what books are your story's antecedents. We all stand on the shoulders of everyone who came before us - which is why I went into such raptures about meeting Richard Matheson last month. But then, so did F. Paul Wilson, whose shoulders I also stand on, who specifically gave tribute to Matheson as one of the greats whose shoulders Paul is standing on...

You have to know what you're aspiring to.

The challenge of genre is delivering something unique and compelling within a proscribed form.

Now, I happen to be grateful for a proscribed form, because it gives a shape to a story from the very beginning, and let's face it, when you first embark on a project, story is a vast and amorphous mass, or maybe that's mess. Any signposts in that chaos are lifesaving.

But also, the form is proscribed because genre fans are paying their money to get a certain kind of experience, which your publisher (or the film studio) will have promised through the advertising of the story - the jacket design, the flap copy, the one-sheet, the trailer.

Does that make those readers lemmings? Because they're expecting and wanting a certain experience?

I don't think so. It's just personal taste and preference, and a consumer's desire to know what you're paying for up front. When I have time to go to the movies I don't want to be forced to sit through bubbly (well, perhaps I mean airheaded) romantic comedies when I could be watching a good thriller. I know myself, and I know thrillers (horror, mystery) consistently hit my pleasure buttons, and I don't have that much free time to gamble two hours on a movie or eight to ten hours on a book that may not give me the basic escapist pleasure that I'll get out of a well-written or well-produced thriller.

But the danger of genre - or perhaps what I mean is, what I am finding unnerving about it - is the lengths to which storytellers seem to feel they have to go to stand out in the field.

Yesterday I did something I do periodically: I took about a dozen books - thrillers - from my TBR pile and read the first few chapters of one after another, not letting myself go beyond three chapters (or four, if they were very short chapters). Just seeing what caught me and why. (Great exercise for people getting ready to send out queries and chapters, right? Do yours stack up?)

Some really well-written things there, and some not so much, and no, I'm not about to name names.

But I have to say I was unnerved - and maybe I mean something stronger - maybe I mean revolted or repulsed - by the level of violence that these books started out with. Not just rape, but multiple rapes, brutal slaughter, torture, mutilation.

These were not horror novels, mind you. They are new thrillers. (And the word "rape", much less "serial rape", does not appear in the jacket copy of any of them, otherwise they would not have been on my TBR pile to begin with).

And yes, I did flip through the books to see if that level of violence continued. It not only continued, it escalated.

Now, I know that the success of SAW started a bad, bad trend in horror movies. I remember one very strong impetus for me to write my first novel was when I had a film executive in a meeting turn to me and say: "And then let's have him rip her face off."

That was when I realized I'd better make other career plans, at least until that trend mercifully died.

But can someone tell me when thrillers turned into torture porn?

I write dark stuff myself. But do serial killer novels really have to have body counts in the dozens these days? Do we need to be subjected to whole chapters of real-time torture or rape?

I wish I WERE going to the beach today, actually, because I feel like I need to be washed out, and like maybe I need a whole ocean to do it.

Rape and child abuse are horrific things. Maybe these authors feel they need to escalate to the extreme to fully convey the horror of the experience.

Or maybe they are distancing themselves from the real-life horror of the by making the violence over-the-top to the point of absurdity.

Or maybe they're scared that they can't write well enough to stand out without butchering dozens of characters at a time.

Or maybe that's what the reading public wants these days and I'm just in denial about it.

I don't know - what do you think? Does "dark" these days mean continual mayhem and slaughter?

Maybe I'll go see a couple of bubble-headed comedies. Because suddenly, it looks like there's not a whole lot around the house that I'm interested in reading.

- Alex

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It's July 4, and I really should say something relevant, right?

When I was sixteen years old, I was an exchange student in Instanbul. There were a lot of hard things about that experience, but one of the hardest was being out of the country on the 4th of July. That was surprising to me, because as people around here have probably figured out, I'm one of those subversive radicals.

It's a terrible irony - and tragedy - that the Declaration of Independence was written in a time of legal slavery, when women were considered property as well, and written by a man who "owned" slaves. But that summer out of the country I realized what a profound concept drove the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

It's that Pursuit of Happiness that really sunk in for me that summer.

It was a violent time - students had been shot in political protests on college campuses, and as a blond American teenager I was sexually harrassed constantly and sometimes in fear for my life.

But that summer is when it clicked for me - that life is short and precious and I decided if I ever made it back to the U.S.  I was going to live my birthright as an American and pursue my happiness.

And when I came back to college I majored in theater instead of law or psychology or anything else practical I'd been thinking about.   Because life is short, and we have the right to happiness.

Happy Independence Day to all, whatever that is for you.

Mortality

by Stephen Jay Schwartz

He would have been 73 today.

He took his life twenty-five years ago, when I was twenty years old.

I’ve been thinking a lot about mortality lately. The triple-whammy celebrity toll didn’t help any. Ed McMahan, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson.

I used to watch the Tonight Show when I was a kid, dreaming of the day I would sit on the sofa beside Johnny, laughing about the plot of the film I had in theaters at the time. Then Johnny died and so did that dream. Now Ed’s gone and the era is over.

I remember Farrah from Logan’s Run. Gorgeous. I wanted a flashing gem in the middle of my hand just so I could meet her. I was one of those boys who had her poster on the wall, too. Red bathing suit showing just enough up top to keep me up at night. I never did watch Three’s Company, but I sure did watch that poster.

I didn’t think much of Michael Jackson. He was kind-of disco era to me, and I was into Rush, Led Zeppelin, and Van Halen. Now I listen to his music and watch his dance moves and I have to agree with everyone else – the guy was amazing. Why didn’t I notice that before?

Last week I had a coroner-related question for my new novel. It had been about eight months since I last e:mailed the ME I knew at the LA County Coroner’s Office. I sent a note – “Hey, when you took me on that tour last year I thought I saw an X-ray machine. Do ME’s use X-ray machines, and under what circumstances?”

About five minutes later he sent an e:mail describing all the situations in which an X-ray machine would be used in helping to identify a body. I sent him another note a little later and he answered quickly again. Later, in the afternoon, I was driving and I heard his name announced on the radio and then I heard his voice saying, “We won’t have Mr. Jackson’s toxicology reports for another six weeks…” and I realized that he was doing the autopsy on Michael Jackson.

I e:mailed him the same day he had Michael’s body on the table.

I don’t know, but that kind-of freaked me out. The entire world was mourning Michael Jackson, and I had this strange, direct link to his most personal of personal possessions—his body.

It made me think of his body of work—what he left behind. I think it’s safe to say that Michael Jackson accomplished his great, artistic goals before passing on. He did what he came here to do. I would say that Ed McMahan, Johnny Carson, Farrah Fawcett, George Carlin…they said what they had to say.

It makes me think of mortality. Will I have enough time to say what I have to say? If I died tomorrow would my life have been fully realized? One novel, a couple short films, a few short stories, a bunch of unproduced screenplays, a documentary for the Discovery Channel. I think that about covers it.

But there are other things, too. A beautiful wife and two incredible boys. I’d rather have those two boys than the ten novels I didn’t write these past ten years. I know it doesn’t have to be one or the other, but I could have made a lot of headway with the career if I hadn’t been the sole breadwinner, responsible for the lives of four. However, I have a lot of single friends who managed to get a lot of good work done, but they don’t have children to sit with in the park, collecting potato bugs.

Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Sunday in the Park with George” makes it pretty clear for me—the most important things we leave behind are children and art.

And so I think again about my father. He took his own life. He would have been seventy-three today. What did he leave behind? The daughter-in-law he would never meet. The grandchildren who would never hold his hand.

He was a doctor and that was his art. After he died I was given the opportunity to take things from his walk-in closet. His wife permitted me that. I asked for one thing only. His medical bag. I saw her gasp at the thought—of course, it really was the essence of the man. One little black bag said it all.

I am his legacy and I carry his legacy. I set the bag upon the bed and open it for my children, his grandchildren, to examine. They run their fingers over the rough, black leather. Feel the pigskin bumps. Read the name printed in gold script above the latch – Doctor Larry R. Schwartz. Play with a twenty-five year old stethoscope, listening to each other’s heartbeats. Dig around the tools of his trade, the instruments of his art.

I think he had more to say. I don’t really think he did what he had come into this world to do.

My wife and I end all of our cards to each other with the same sentence. It’s from “Sunday in the Park with George” again. It’s about the process of living in this world, creating in this world, and sharing what we create in this world. It’s really quite simple:

Give us more to see…

It's time to be BETRAYED

To quote Louise from a couple of months ago, “I only get to do this once a year, so you have to bare with me.”

It’s publication time for my third novel, SHADOW OF BETRAYAL, and I couldn’t be more excited. SHADOW hits stores next Tuesday…just in time for Thrillerfest next week, which I will be attending! And for those of you in the U.K., you get it even earlier, albeit under a different title…THE UNWANTED should be available in U.K. store as of today! That’s right TODAY!

“The best word I can use to describe his writing is Addictive. Razor-sharp prose bits deep, cuts to a raw nerve, and leaves you…craving more. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.” — James Rollins, New York Times Bestselling Author.

About SHADOW OF BETRAYAL

The meeting place was carefully chosen: an abandoned church in rural Ireland just after dark. For Jonathan Quinn—a freelance operative and professional “cleaner”—the job was only to observe. If his cleanup skills were needed, it would mean things had gone horribly wrong. But an assassin hidden in a tree assured just that. And suddenly Quinn had four dead bodies to dispose of and one astounding clue—to a mystery that is about to spin wildly out of control.

Three jobs, no questions. That was the deal Quinn had struck with his client at the Office. Unfortunately for him, Ireland was just the first. Now Quinn, along with his colleague and girlfriend—the lethal Orlando—has a new assignment touched off by the killings in Ireland. Their quarry is a U.N. aide worker named Marion Dupuis who has suddenly disappeared from her assignment in war-torn Africa. When Quinn finally catches a glimpse of her, she quickly flees, frantic and scared. And not alone.

For Quinn the assignment has now changed. Find Marion Dupuis, and the child she is protecting, and keep them from harm. If it were only that easy.

Soon Quinn and Orlando find themselves in a bunker in the California hills, where Quinn will unearth a horrifying plot that is about to reach stage critical for a gathering of world leaders—and an act of terror more cunning, and more insidious, than anyone can guess.

Fast, smart, sleek, and stunning, Shadow of Betrayal is vintage Brett Battles: a gritty, gripping masterpiece of suspense, a thriller that makes the pulse pound—and stirs the heart as well.

After I get back from Thrillerfest, I’ll be going on a mini-West Coast tour. If you’re near one of these locations, stop by and say hi. I’d love to meet you.

Saturday, July 18, 5:30 PM – BOOK LAUNCH PARTY
The Mystery Bookstore
1036-C Broxton Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90024

Tuesday, July 21, 7:00 PM
M is for Mystery
85 E 3rd Avenue, San Mateo, CA, 94401

Thursday, July 23, 7:00 PM
Powell's Bookstore at Cedar Hills Crossing
3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, 97005

Friday, July 24, 12:00 PM
Seattle Mystery Bookshop
117 Cherry Street Seattle WA, 98104

Thursday, July 30, 7:00 PM
Mysterious Galaxy
7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite 302, San Diego, CA 92111

Tuesday, August 11, 7:00 AM
Poisoned Pen
4014 N Goldwater Blvd. Suite 101, Scottsdale, AZ, 85251

Saturday, August 15, 2:00 AM
Lancaster Library
601 West Lancaster Blvd., Lancaster

October 15 thru 18
Bouchercon Conference
Hyatt Regency, One South Capitol Avenue, Indianapolis, IN

Saturday, November 21, 9:00 AM
Men of Mystery
2701 Main St, Irvine, CA

And if anyone’s been waiting for the paperback of my second book, THE DECEIVED, it’s now available!

Hope to see you all on the road somewhere!

To Be Made Flesh... Again

Many years ago, when I was still living in Honolulu, I went to a hypnotherapist for what's known as a past-life regression session.

For those of you who don't know, such a session is very similar to your typical hypnotic regression, but takes you beyond childhood and into your past lives -- all in hopes of helping you find out what happened way back when that may be screwing you up now.

I didn't, however, undergo this procedure because I was feeling screwed up.  Instead, I was researching an idea for a screenplay and wanted to get some first hand experience.

It was an interesting hour.  I don't know if I was actually ever under hypnosis -- it certainly didn't feel like it.  But I did find myself seeing visions of a previous life.  Visions that were either real memories or simply figments of my overactive imagination. 

I tend to believe it's the latter.

If the visions were real, then I was a Southern Belle during The Civil War who lived on a sprawling plantation.  If not, then I have problems that may well need to be addressed by someone with either a degree in psychology or intimate knowledge of the plot to Gone With the Wind.

Reincarnation is a subject that has interested me for many years.  I have no reason to believe it's possible, but then I have no evidence that it's hooey, either.  It makes perfect sense to me that we could well be living our lives over and over, in various forms, all in an attempt to finally get it right.

The woman who hypnotized me told me I'm a very old soul and am currently on my last life.  So I guess I'm finally getting it right.

One can only hope.

Reincarnation is one of those subjects that nearly everyone has an opinion about.  There are a ton of books about the subject and probably an equal number of movies and television shows that have addressed it.

While I've never approached the writing of a book from a commercial standpoint -- that is, creating a plot simply because I think it's hot and will sell -- I have to admit that the idea of plotting a story based on a popular subject like reincarnation was pretty compelling.  Over the years, I've found myself so consumed with the phenomenon that I've never been able to let go of the story premise that sparked that long ago hypnosis session.  A story premise that goes something like this:

What if a woman discovers that she's the reincarnated victim of a serial killer -- a serial killer who may still be alive?

This creepy notion was the jumping off point for my new book, KILL HER AGAIN, which I'm happy to say was just released in the U.S. yesterday.

KILL HER AGAIN is the story of Anna McBride, a disgraced FBI agent whose life is slowly being destroyed by terrifying visions of a kidnapped little girl.  And while my original premise plays strongly into the story, it really was just a jumping off point.

After pitching the idea to my friend Peggy White a couple years ago, she had one of those "what if" moments that really turned the premise on it's head and made me realize that it really was time to write this book.  So thank you, Peggy, for helping me make a good idea great.

I'd love to tell you more about the book, but I've already given you enough of a spoiler.  And if you're at all interested in the notion of past lives married to an unrelenting thriller plot, I would be a fool not to urge you to pick up a copy <big grin>.  I've been telling everyone it's a great beach book, and I certainly hope a lot of people will be going to the beach this summer...

Blatant self promotion aside, I'd like to bring this topic around to you, by asking you a few questions.

1. Do you believe in reincarnation?

2.  Who do you think you might have been in a past life?

3.  Who would you like to be in a future life?

And five of you who comment will be chosen at random to win a signed first edition of my debut thriller, KISS HER GOODBYE.  The deadline is midnight tonight, and the winner will be announced on my web page on Friday.

In the meantime, you're all gonna have to do the right thing and immediately rush out and buy a copy of KILL HER AGAIN.  If not, I may just have to come after you in the next life....

Ban my book. Please.

The Easily Offended People are at it again.  This time, it's happening out in Milwaukee, where they have raised a ruckus about a young adult book in their local library.  Not only do they want it removed from the collection, they also want it publicly burned and destroyed (!).  (I find this case so absurd that I've already mentioned it on my own blog. ) The book in question is Francesca Lia Block's Baby Be-Bop, which the complainants deemed "sexually explicit."  They're suing for emotional damages caused by being exposed to the library's book display.

Milwaukee Group Seeks Fiery Alternative to Materials Challenge

Life grows more interesting by the day for officials of the West Bend (Wis.) Community Memorial Library. After four months of grappling with an evolving challenge to young-adult materials deemed sexually explicit by area residents Ginny and Jim Maziarka, library trustees voted 9–0 June 2 to maintain the young-adult collection as is “without removing, relocating, labeling, or otherwise restricting access” to any titles. However, board members were made cognizant that same evening that another material challenge waited in the wings: Milwaukee-area citizen Robert C. Braun of the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) distributed at the meeting copies of a claim for damages he and three other plaintiffs filed April 28 with the city; the complainants seek the right to publicly burn or destroy by another means the library’s copy of Baby Be-Bop. The claim also demands $120,000 in compensatory damages ($30,000 per plaintiff) for being exposed to the book in a library display, and the resignation of West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss for “allow[ing] this book to be viewed by the public."...

... Accusing the board of submitting to the will of the American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, Ginny Maziarka declared, “We vehemently reject their standards and their principles,” and characterized the debate as “a propaganda battle to maintain access to inappropriate material.” She cautioned that her group would let people know that the library was not a safe place unless it segregated and labeled YA titles with explicit content. However, after the meeting board President Barbara Deter emphasized that it was the couple’s “freedom of speech” to challenge any individual library holding, according to the June 3 Greater Milwaukee Today.

Attempts to ban books almost certainly go back to the age of papyrus and parchment, and the reasons may be political, religious, or moral.  But sometimes, I just have to scratch my head at what offends people.  During a recent visit to a Maine library, I asked the staff if they'd had any recent challenges to their collection.  The children's books librarian (book banning efforts usually happen in the children's section) laughed and said, "Oh, yeah.  One parent was outraged by a history book about famous women scientists."

Famous women scientists?  What could possibly be offensive about that?

"It had a picture of 1940's actress Hedy Lamarr, dressed up in typical movie star garb," the librarian said.  (Hedy Lamarr, for those who don't know it, was also a brilliant inventor.)  "The parent thought the photo was too racy, and she wanted us to remove the book from the collection."  Of course, the librarian refused.

Librarians are like that. 

If a picture of a 1940's actress can offend people, then so could just about any book, on any subject.  Recently, one of the most-challenged titles has been an illustrated children's book, And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson.  It's based on the true story of two male penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo who bonded and together raised a penguin chick.  Immoral penguins! Horrors!

Another much-challenged book, to my astonishment, is Maurice Sendak's delightful In The Night Kitchen, which was my sons' favorite childhood picture book.  The reason it's offensive? The little boy in the story falls out of his clothes and actually ends up -- gasp -- naked.  (Hey, if God wanted kids to be naked, he would have made them that way.)

Take a look at the list of most-challenged books in the U.S. and you'll find some of literature's best-known and most beloved works, from Catcher in the Rye to the Harry Potter series. In fact, that list of banned books could also be a list of the bestselling books in this country.  Merely a coincidence?  Do bestselling books end up on banned-book lists because that's how Offended People find out about them?  Or are they bestsellers because they got challenged, thereby boosting their sales?

Most authors will agree: banning books just doesn't work.  All it does is draw attention to the book, enticing people into reading it.    

Author Sherman Alexie (who has himself been a banned author) says: "The amazing thing is these banners never understand they are turning this book into a sacred treasure.  We don't write to try and be banned, but it is widely known in the (young adult) world, and we love this shit."

Yeah, we do love it.  

So please, ban my books.  I want to join that lofty pantheon of authors that includes Alexie and Sendak and Twain and Vonnegut.  My books have plenty to offend everyone.  There's adulterous sex and graphic violence, foul language and disturbing perversions.  So go ahead, ban me!

I could use the extra sales. 

Summer Job? Or Reward from the Universe?

Fiction is what happens while you're busy making other plans.

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The Great Internet Drought of 2009

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