Do You Suffer from...Character Attachment Disorder?

Okay, so I'm nearing the home stretch.  The new book has about 60 pages to go before the first draft is finished.  But in those 60 pages, I have to completely destroy the character's life.  And the lives of her family members, through the choices she makes.

I've noticed my page count dropping slightly per day, ever since I began to approach this final stretch.  And then it hit me...I'm attached to my character.  I don't want to ruin her life.  I don't want to hurt her.  But I have to, because of the bad decisions she's made.

All along, I intended for this story to end a certain way--the end was what I envisioned first.  So I know it has to happen this way.  Everything in the plot leads up to this ending.  I've created the sort of inevitable train wreck you know is coming but can't turn away from.

Yet...I still kind of want to turn away.

Does this happen you guys, too?  Have you ever created a character you enjoyed so much you didn't want to end the story, particularly in a way that harms the character?

This is a tragic story.  Everything is in place for the tragic ending...the foreshadowing, the tone, the language.  Now I'm dreading writing the tragedy because all the character had to do to avoid it was be smart.  But I don't think she's smart in that particular way, so it wouldn't be true to the character to have her save the day instead of ruin it.

*sigh*  On with the final few chapters...let's see what happens when my fingers hit the keys.

Blurring the Lines: Fiction vs. Memoir

Have you guys ever written a story that borrows details or experiences from your real life?  I've done this a few times, but mostly for settings.  I wrote a short story that takes place in Africa, and since I'd been to Africa, I used details about the place I stayed to re-create the setting for my character.

No big deal, right?  Right.

But in my new book, I'm going deeper.  I'm using more than a setting--I'm using a lot of detail about my life, my family, the town I was born and raised in.  Of course, this leads to a dilemma.  What's better for fiction....the verisimilitude of details I know to be true, or the flair of details I'm making up as I go?

Let's look at the problem from both angles.

In the red corner, arguing against using personal experiences:
*Real life isn't art.  Fiction is art.  Devote yourself to art to take full advantage of the medium itself.
*You could get sued if you don't differentiate your characters enough from the real people who inspired them.
*At least in my life, the characters I make up are probably more interesting.  (My family is very white-picket-fence.)
*What's the challenge in writing about stuff that actually happened?  Isn't that journalism or memoir?

In the blue corner, arguing for using personal experiences:
*Using real-life details can't help but give the story a true-to-life feel.  The details will feel real because they are real.
*Writing about people who are, essentially, my family members makes it easier to focus on plot and language.  The characterizations are done for me.
*Remember in Little Women, when Jo wrote trashy Ivanhoe-style stories about things she knew nothing about and they only got rejected, and then she wrote her own story, the story about herself and her sisters, and it was amazing?

So what do you think?  What do you do when it's time to write?  Do you use your memories and experiences as a source, or do you push them away and dive into the unknown?

An Open Letter to NBC: More Things Happen at the Olympics Than Swimming

Dear NBC,

I love the Olympics.  I watch as much of them as I can, sometimes to the detriment of personal relationships (read: a husband who gets ignored for two weeks).  I look forward to the global pageantry, the spectacle, the amazing effort of all the athletes, and to seeing a number of sports that don’t normally get the same glory (or TV coverage) as the NFL or the NBA.     

But your coverage so far has done next to nothing to show America—and the world—what’s really happening in London.  According to one of your representatives, there are 302 medals to be given out in 32 sports.  Yet I can count the number you’ve shown in your prime-time broadcasts on one hand.  Beach volleyball, synchronized diving, swimming, and gymnastics.  That’s four.  Out of 32.  Four. 

Swimming and gymnastics are popular sports, to be sure—but is that all there is to it?  Based on the commercials shown during your broadcast, swimmers generate a great deal of ad revenue, which is likely a goal of your coverage.  Fencers, velodrome cyclists, archers, shooters, weightlifters, boxers, rowers, and equestrians do not generate ad revenue.  Is this why you haven’t shown these competitions in primetime at all?  Are the athletes who bring in ad revenue more worthy than those who struggle out of the limelight?  Your answer appears to be "yes."  

Perhaps you think that everyone has cable, and access to multiple sports channels where other Olympic sports can be viewed.  I do not.  Perhaps you think that everyone has unlimited bandwidth and data usage available for them to stream other Olympic sports.  I do not.  Rather stupidly, I depend on your primetime and late-night coverage to provide a well-rounded view of the games. 

I feel terrible for the members of Team USA who do not participate in swimming or gymnastics.  Their families won’t get to see them on TV.  The people they went to high school with won’t be surprised to see how far their old school mates have come.  No one will even know they’re there—not as long as you insist on showing endless heats for the endless number of swimming races instead of showing finals—people actually winning medals—in other sports. 

After Monday night’s disappointing primetime coverage, I stayed up late, thinking that the late-night edition would show something different.  What was the first sport covered?  Yet more swimming.  Really?  More than half of the primetime coverage was not sufficient?  There was nothing else happening anywhere in any of the other Olympic venues deemed worthy of being shown at 1 am? 

When the late-night program switched to covering whitewater canoeing, I sat up with interest.  Then I sat back down when valuable minutes were wasted interviewing John McEnroe and Shaun White—two people who are not even competing here.  Why not interview athletes who are living their dreams right now?  Why not interview some American medal winners who would never otherwise get to be on national TV?  Is this the way you treat the Americans who have trained and bled and cried and worked their hardest in order to get here?  In their one moment to shine, you chose to interview a famous spectator who has nothing to do with any of the sports in the summer games. 

Thanks, NBC. 

Thanks for doing absolutely nothing to showcase the wide range of talents and sports on display.  America’s athletes deserve better than what you have provided so far.  

Sincerely,

Jenni Wiltz

I'm Going to Be in Gargoyle!

It's not the best gargoyle photo in the world,
but it's the only one I had handy.
Westminster Abbey rocks, by the way.  

Woo-hoo! My short story, "Integers and Atoms," was accepted for publication in Gargoyle #60 (Summer 2013).

If you've never seen it, Gargoyle is an awesome literary journal that's been around for 35 years.  The editors, Richard Peabody and Lucinda Ebersole, have published truly amazing writers, including Rita Dove, Jennifer Egan, T.C. Boyle, and Allen Ginsberg. Now I'm going to be a part of that list, too!  This is mind-blowing and probably calls for some champagne.

On their website, they provide a list of the awards the writers they published have won.  Here's a sampling:

6 National Book Award-winning authors, 3 PEN/Faulkner winners, 4 Pulitzer Prize winners, 2 MacArthur Fellows, 6 Iowa Short Fiction Award winners, 5 Flannery O'Connor Award winners, 5 Orange Prize Long List writers, 2 Orange Prize Short List writers, 2 National Book Critics Circle Award winners, 6 Lambda Literary Award winners, and 3 Firecracker Alternative Book Award winners. 


This is big time.  
This is awesome.
This is motivation to keep kicking ass.

Book Review: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

I love me some Gillian Flynn.  Her first two books, Sharp Objects and Dark Places, are phenomenal.  I know I write a lot of negative reviews here, but these two books are fan-freaking-tastic and I have no hesitation in saying this.

I am, however, hesitant to say the same about Gone Girl.  Here’s why:   On the back of the book, the publisher has printed raving blurbs from Tana French, Laura Lippman, Arthur Phillips, KateChristensen, and Karin Slaughter (among others...scroll down beneath the jacket copy).  If you read them, you’re expecting the awesomest book ever—filled with psychological insight, biting wit, razor-sharp humor, and electrifying writing.  I don’t think that’s what you get here.  I might be the one who missed the boat, but reading these blurbs before I read the book set my expectations at a level the book could not meet.     

Here’s what the book is about.  Nick and Amy are a married couple celebrating their five-year anniversary.  But on that day, Amy disappears.  From the get-go, it looks like Nick might be to blame.  He protests and claims innocence, but everything from forensic evidence to Amy’s diary implicates him.  With only his twin sister to believe in him, Nick is sucked into a roller-coaster of a summer as he faces family and friends who all think he killed Amy.  Of course, this being Gillian Flynn, little is as it seems and we’re given hints at how things may unfold and what really happened on Nick and Amy’s fifth anniversary. 

Let’s start with what’s good.

The suspense.  Flynn kicks ass at generating suspense.  As the search for Amy widens and the cops find evidence that implicates Nick, you can’t help but be swept up in the gritty realism of it all.  You feel Nick’s shock when each new piece of evidence seems to damn him further.  You know someone here isn’t telling the whole truth (Nick?  Amy?  The cops?), but you can’t wait to see what happens.  The middle of the book is close to perfection, as chapters intersperse Amy’s diary with Nick’s present-day narration.  I read 200 pages in one night, racing to see what happened next.  Hardly anyone creates page-turning suspense as well as Flynn.    

Marriage, for Nick and Amy, is like this: an endless
struggle to be top dog.

The creepy feeling of watching a marriage go sour.  Being a married person myself, this was hard to take.  As you read the first half of the book, you get Nick’s perspective and Amy’s perspective.  You hear about how they met and fell in love, and how they both got laid off and moved to Missouri so Nick could help take care of his dying mother.  There are so many miscommunications and spoiled moments where pride, despair, or stubbornness kept Nick and Amy from connecting.  They grew apart.  But there were still flashes where you could see the old Nick or the old Amy.  You can sympathize with each of them, but you can’t help thinking the people they were did not have to turn into the people they are.  It’s chilling and sad and haunting. 

(SPOILER ALERT:  You will eventually find out that some, of not all of this backstory, is faked.  These are not truthful characters, to say the least.  Still, the first time you read it, before you know it’s fake, you still feel your heart breaking for the relationship gone bad.)     

Now, let’s talk about what might not be so good.

Some of the writing itself.  I know Gillian Flynn can write, and extraordinarily well at that.  But there were parts of this book that felt sluggish, sloppy, and overwrought.  That might be because she was allowing the characters to use their voices to tell the story.  Both Nick and Amy are would-be writers who haven’t done much writing at all; Nick is a laid-off magazine writer while Amy wrote personality quizzes for women’s magazines.  They think they can write, so it makes sense that their narration would be capable yet flawed with things like too many sentence fragments and comma splices.  The more flaws I started seeing in the writing, the more I kept hoping Flynn was allowing Amy or Nick’s flaws to show through.  But is this the case?  I can’t be sure, which makes me wonder how much editing the book received. 

Nick’s writing style also seems to change throughout the book.  On the very first page, he’s obvious and writerly about describing something as simple as getting up in the morning:  “My eyes flipped open at exactly six A.M.  This was no avian fluttering of the lashes, no gentle blink toward consciousness.  The awakening was mechanical.  A spooky ventriloquist-dummy click of the lids:  The world is black and then, showtime!  6-0-0 the clock said—in my face, first thing I saw.  6-0-0.  It felt different.  I rarely woke at such a rounded time.  I was a man of jagged risings:  8:43, 11:51, 9:26.  My life was alarmless.”  

This is a LOT of heavy-handed stylistic detailing just to say, “I woke up.”  This feels like a writer clearing her throat, trying to find the style her character will speak it.  It feels like something that should have been streamlined in the editing process but wasn’t. 

Compare this waking up to one that happens on page 354:  “I woke up on my sister’s couch with a raging hangover and an urge to kill my wife.”   Far simpler, far more effective, far less contrived. 

The first 60 or 70 pages of the book read like the first quotation.  It’s alarming, especially after reading Flynn’s two previous books, which are simple in the best way.  No extraneous words or sentences.  She’s sharp, so sharp it hurts.  Then you get to the first 70 pages here, and it’s like when you see someone wearing stripes, paisley, floral print, and polka dots all at once.  You just want to tell them to take something off and chill out.  Yes, it might be part of painting a portrait of a psychopath.  But until you reveal the character is a psychopath, your reader just thinks you’ve forgotten how to revise. 

The italics.  These characters use italics.  A lot.  It gets really annoying.  On page 20, Nick says, “Amy, I don’t get why I need to prove my love to you by remembering the exact same things you do, the exact same way you do…”  A paragraph later, Nick’s sister says, “I’m guessing—five years—she’s going to get really pissed…”  Are any of these italics actually necessary?  Do they change the meaning of the sentence in any way?  Or is it just a lame way of making the way characters enunciate their sentences a form of characterization? 

The dirty tricks.  Any time you’re dealing with an unreliable narrator, as both Nick and Amy turn out to be, you have to be very careful.  You don’t want to deliberately withhold information from the reader unless the character has a good reason.  Yet Flynn does this.  

In the first half of the book, after Amy’s disappearance, we’re told several times that Nick carries a disposable cell phone in addition to his regular cell phone.  We’re told he makes and receives several calls on this phone.  But we’re never told to whom or from whom.  (This doesn’t come out until later.)  This is bad.  If the character is hiding crucial information from us (he is), why even mention the disposable phone before that secret is ready to come out?  Why include that stupidly tormenting detail in the first place and then hope the reader sort of forgets about it until later?  It would have been far more effective  to have Nick tell the reader:  "I know you’re upset that I’m not telling you who called.  You’ll find out later, I promise."  Use the “meta” moment for all it’s worth, as long as you’re going there.  Otherwise, it’s kind of annoying as well as unnecessary.       

The extraneous supblots.  This book is long.  Or, maybe it’s just that it starts to feel long toward the end.  There is a lot of set up.  A lot of time spent on subplots like the Blue Book Boys.  A lot of time spent with Nick’s sister, Go (a character who, ironically, goes nowhere).  A lot of scenes with Nick’s father, a woman-hater with Alzheimer’s.  This character is necessary, but the time spent on him and with him is probably not.  Overall, it feels like this book could have been tightened considerably.  Another couple of months, another 60-70 pages edited out could have made this an even better book.    

The ending.  The last hundred pages are weird.  Just flat-out weird.  Once I finished the book, I sat back and tried to imagine a different way to end the book.  But I had trouble with that, too.  I’m not sure where you go with a story like this.  The characters are so flawed and so troubled, that any ending seems wrong for them.  The ending they get feels too easy.  Everyone essentially gets off the hook.  Of course, getting off the hook is its own purgatory for these characters, but still.  I’m left with the feeling that the past 400 pages just got washed away, and this ending could have been arrived at with oh, say, 70 pages.  A novella. 

In the end, I think this book is a beautiful, blissful experiment in unreliable narrators who manipulate the reader and each other.  I’m just not convinced that the experiment worked.  I hate saying this, because I love, love, love Flynn’s first two books.  And I will be first in line to get her next book.  I just can't recommend this book as wholeheartedly as I did her first two.

Movie Review: Savages

Gators are pretty savage.
But so is Benicio Del Toro.

I don’t usually review movies here, but since I read the book the movie is based on, I’m gonna go for it.  

Oliver Stone’s movie is based on Don Winslow’s book.  The book is about Ben and Chon, two twenty-something friends who grow the best pot in the world and run their empire from a SoCal beach house.  They share a girlfriend, named Ophelia (“O” for short), who is a stoned beach bunny/trust fund girl.  When a Mexican drug cartel wants in on Ben and Chon’s operation, Ben and Chon refuse.  To help them reconsider, the cartel kidnaps O.  Instead of knuckling under, Ben and Chon decide to take action and get her back.  The book follows the dangerous and disastrous consequences of that decision. 

Winslow’s style is fast-paced, humorous, and gritty.  The book has the best first chapter in the history of literature.  (I’m not kidding.  Pick it up and read just the first page.  It’s a fast read, I promise.)  The storytelling is accomplished through straight narration as well as script dialogue, complete with stage directions.  The breezy style keeps things moving, and as the reader, I turned pages quickly to find out what happened next.  This isn’t to say the book didn’t have serious problems.  It does.  And those same problems nearly sink the movie. 

First, a bit about the movie.  It follows the book pretty closely, for the most part, which is likely due to Winslow having a screenwriting credit.  Ben is played by Aaron Johnson (I have no idea who this person is), Chon is played by Taylor Kitsch (I have no idea who this person is, either), and O is played by Blake Lively (I am an avid Gossip Girl fan, so at least I know who she is).  The head of the Mexican cartel is Elena “La Reina,” played by Salma Hayek.  Elena’s right hand hit man, Lado, is played by Benicio Del Toro.  John Travolta lends a hand as a corrupt government agent who plays both sides.  With a cast like this, you should immediately notice two things:  the main characters do not have one-tenth of the acting chops of the supporting cast.  I am not sure if this was done on purpose or it just happened that way.  It mirrors a serious problem in the book, however.

Problem the First:  None of the three main characters are interesting, unique, or likable. 

In the book, Ben is a wimp.  He’s smart enough to grow the world’s best pot using his UC Berkeley education, but he’s not smart enough to hand over his operation to the cartel, cash out, and enjoy a work-free life for the next sixty years.  The cartel beheads people with axes and knives and chainsaws and whatever other garden tools they can find.  A sheltered California beach bum isn’t smart enough to cut and run at the sight of this?  Are you kidding me?  There better be some pretty good motivation behind his decision.  And guess what?  There isn’t.  This guy makes no sense.  He shows no spine and no development.   

Chon is also a pretty flat, undeveloped character.  He is an emotionally scarred war veteran after several tours in the Middle East.  This, at least, is a reason for his strong, silent characterization.  He likes beating people up, doing it with Ophelia, getting high, and not much else.  This will never change.  He never changes throughout the course of the book or the movie.  At least he has a good reason. 

Ophelia is one of the lamest, most annoying female characters I’ve read in years.  She does absolutely nothing and adds absolutely nothing.  She is vacant and empty.  There is no personality there.  I think we’re supposed to feel sorry for her because she is somewhat the product of a shitty childhood—rich mother, several stepfathers, no one to care about her having sex too young or smoking pot since the 8^th grade.  Boo hoo.  Even so, she has no goals or ambition.  She goes shopping.  That’s it.  I have no idea why either Ben or Chon actually likes having her around, other than the fact that she lets both of them do it with her at the same time.  (There’s a gross three-way scene in the book that is begun but mercifully cut short in the movie.)         

All of these flaws are replicated in the movie.  Ben is flat, lame, and uninteresting.  Chon is flat, but moderately interesting since he knows how to blow shit up.  Ophelia is a black hole, a swirling vortex of nothing that still seems to suck in everything around her, including Oliver Stone.  Stone chose to make Ophelia the narrator of the movie, and seems obsessed with Blake Lively.  There are tons of close-ups of her eyes, her skin, her teeth, her fake butterfly tattoos.  She’s beautiful, yes.  She fits the role incredibly well, which may or may not be a compliment.  Is telling someone they’re a perfect zombie a compliment?  The voice-over narration is dull and dead-eyed and the movie would have been better without it.  Still, Lively wasn’t given anything to work with, so I can’t really say she did a bad job.  She did a great job, but zero times zero is still zero.

Problem the Second:  The supporting cast steals the show.

Maybe this isn’t actually a problem, since the moviegoer is sitting in her seat thinking, Thank goodness someone here is doing their job.

The guy who plays Ben is flat.  Stone substitutes close-ups of his pale, pretty eyes for acting.  When things 

get intense, he goes blank.  The guy who plays Chon is marginally better, thanks to an outburst where he stabs John Travolta in the hand.  He’s going for “still waters run deep,” and he might actually pull it off.  Blake Lively is…well…Blake Lively.  She’s a one-trick pony, and that’s all that’s required here.  I doubt anyone could save this character, so might as well let Lively have it. 

But all anyone really wants to see is Salma Hayek and Benicio Del Toro.  These two really fuck some shit up, in the best possible way.  Salma Hayek’s Elena is bitchy, controlling, yet vulnerable.  She wears a jet-black blunt-banged wig throughout the movie, symbolizing her need for utter control.  Every hair is always in place, except for the scene when she learns that her beloved daughter has been put in danger.  Then, in a powerful moment, she rips off the wig as she sinks to the floor, sobbing.  Everything you need to know about this character is contained in that moment, in the best possible way. 

Benico Del Toro is creep-master supreme.  I’m not sure if he’s just a creepy guy in real life, but he plays a stone-cold killer like he IS a stone-cold killer.  There’s no hesitation, no regret, no guilt.  He goes for it. Shooting punk-ass lawyers in the kneecaps?  Check.  Shooting henchmen who hesitate to murder helpless women?  Check.  Bullwhipping a traitor’s face until his eyeball comes out?  Check.  Yeah, he’s that kind of hit man.  Now here’s a lesson in acting for the guy who plays Ben.  Benicio del Toro doesn’t need all kinds of facial contortions to express emotion.  His character undergoes fear and anger and happiness, and you’re completely aware of what he’s feeling though a few very small facial gestures and body positioning.  He gets it exactly right, every time, without resorting to Jack Nicholson grins or Tarantino-style theatrics.          

*SPOILER ALERT:  DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE*

Problem the Third:  The super-sappy Hollywood ending the un-does the real ending. 

In the book, everyone dies.  It’s kind of disappointing since you’ve just spent 200 pages trying to muster up the enthusiasm to like them, and then they’re killed.  But it’s also fitting since these aimless losers drifted through life…let them drift into death, too, with the same kind of bored, unthinking abandon.        

In the movie, everyone dies, too.  Oh, wait, but then they don’t.  Ophelia’s drugged-out voiceover tells us that it might not have actually happened that way.  I’m instantly reminded of Clue, where they show you two “maybe” endings and then a real one where everyone committed one of the murders.  The movie backs up a few minutes, to before the death-carnage goes down, and it’s all re-done with the cavalry coming in to save the day, all the bad guys getting punished, and all the good guys living happily ever after.  Are you freaking kidding me?  This gang of losers takes down the Mexican cartel?  And they’re rewarded for their lame aimlessness with a tax-free life in Africa or Indonesia somewhere? 

I don’t know if Universal executives forced Stone to produce a happy ending for their big summer blockbuster, or if someone couldn’t bear to see Blake Lively bite the big one, or if Stone just wanted to give a big middle finger to the audience.  Whatever the reason, it was a stupid move and pretty much destroys any integrity the storyline might have had.  At least when the characters die, we’re presented with a lesson:  Try to get something for nothing, and you will die.  If you don’t care enough about yourself to even try to survive, you will die.  The California consumer lifestyle creates people of such unutterable aimlessness and vapidity that they can only die without producing anything of real value in life. See, death works as the outcome of all these ideas.  What does not work is letting them off scot-free, not a scratch, to live happily ever after.

Oh, well.  You win some, you lose some.  Savages is beautiful to watch, electrifying when the minor characters are on screen, but it has no soul.     

Mark Wahlberg Has Ted, but I Have Mr. Tudball

Me and Mr. Tudball today

Okay, so I saw the movie Ted today...and in honor of teddy bears everywhere, I decided to write a few words about mine.  (I promise this relates to writing.)

As you can see, Mr. Tudball is a little bit worse for wear.  I've had this bear as long as I can remember, which makes him nearly 35 years old.  I'm pretty sure I wasn't even the one to name him--how would a baby have come up with the name of the boss on the Carol Burnett show?  I don't even remember watching the Carol Burnett show.

What I do remember is taking him absolutely everywhere.  One time, my mom wanted to go to Kmart, and I wouldn't leave Mr. Tudball in the car.  I took him into the store, which resulted in us having to go all the way to the customer service counter in the back of the store so someone could wrap poor Mr. Tudball in this ugly yellow tape so the employees would know I hadn't stolen him.  I'm eternally grateful to my mom, who stood patiently and waited while all of this went on.  

As the years went by, Mr. Tudball sat in my room more than he accompanied me.  But he always held a place of honor among the other stuffed animals I acquired.  As you can see by his photo, at some point, I tried to use my Tinkerbell peel-off nail polish on him, as well as some crappy Tinkerbell lipstick.  (Do you guys remember Tinkerbell cosmetics?)  I sort of wish I hadn't done that, but then again, he's still alive to tell the tale, so no great harm was done.

1980:  Yep, me and Tudball were inseparable

Now, this adorable guy sits in my writing room and watches me while I work.  He sits very calmly, with one movable arm outstretched, and watches me write terrible sentences.  He watches me write awesome sentences.  He watches me delete and re-read and delete again.  He watches me get frustrated and cry and wonder why on earth I'm doing this.  Some days, he watches me slam the laptop shut in disgust at my inability to write something that an agent might actually want to read.  But no matter how my day goes, he's always there, waving at me.  It's weird, but it definitely makes me feel better about things.  No matter how badly I mess up, Mr. Tudball believes in me.

Circa 1981

In fact, one could make the argument that Mr. Tudball does the most important job of all--he reminds me that it doesn't matter how many agents reject my work.  He reminds that I'm writing for him.  My original audience.  Which is to say, people who like the same things I do.  If, some days, it seems like there aren't that many of us out there, it doesn't matter.  At the end of the day, Mr. Tudball still wants me to write something for him.  And I still want to write something for Mr. Tudball.


Some people might think it's a bit ridiculous for a 35-year-old person to use a teddy bear as a motivational tool.  (My husband springs to mind here.)  But anyone who's ever tried writing and then submitted that writing to an agent or a journal knows that some days, you'll take inspiration wherever you can find it.  Some days, I feel like Mr. Tudball is all I have...and all I'll ever have.  But other days, he has a few fellow fans in his corner who gather together to cheer me on.  On the days that are awesome and the days that are not, he's always there, in my writing room, wondering what I'll come up with next.

1982:  Still inseparable

Cheers to you, Mr. Tudball.

Book Review: The Preacher by Camilla Lackberg

Okay, so I finished this one last night.  If you read my previous post, you know I was worried about this one.  Here's how it shook down:

The verdict:  I can see why Lackberg sells books.  I just can't see why she gets the glowing reviews from people and institutions that should be a little more conscientious in pointing out some truly major flaws going on here.

What I liked:
The plot.  It kept me interested enough to finish the book, despite my major annoyance with the things I didn't like, listed below.  This says a lot for Lackberg's ability to dream up a scenario that sticks with you.

I figured out *why* the murders/kidnappings were happening about 100 or 150 pages into the book.  (I was actually a little disappointed when I got to the end and found out I was right...I was hoping Lackberg had something trickier up her sleeve.)  However, I didn't know who the exact murderer was, so there was plenty of suspense remaining as I finished the 400+ page book.

What I didn't like:
The writing.  It never got better.  The adverbs stuck around, there were awkward phrases, there were missing commas, and sentences that just didn't flow well.  I ground my teeth and pressed on, but it irritated me.  A lot.  Here's an example of a classic Lackberg sentence introducing a new character:  "Stig Thulin, normally sporting a toothy grin, now had a worried frown furrowing his noble brow."  Adjectives and adverbs aren't more effective when they appear in number.  They're just a sign of sloppy writing.

For those of us trying to get published, we read agent and publisher blogs, and their first words of advice are to proofread, proofread, proofread, and be sure that your writing mechanics are solid.  Then we see the kind of sloppy writing in this book, with #1 International Bestseller slapped across the top of the book.  What kind of message does that send?  Apparently good writing skills aren't that important...but being part of a trendy literary movement is.

The dialogue.  It's stilted, and sometimes it doesn't read any differently than the narration.  It reminds me of the gist of an Elmore Leonard saying:  If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.  This should count double for dialogue.  Here's an example of the clunky dialogue.  The police are questioning a character, Solveig, and the character responds angrily:  "Then his brother came along and began hovering about, and that was something completely different.  Those hands of his could be all over you at once.  He made me burn with lust just by looking at me."  Let's be honest.  Are those words ever spoken out loud?  Does anyone actually say "burn with lust"?     

The characters.  I didn't find any of them sympathetic, except for the father and parents of two of the missing girls (and these are ancillary characters at best). They're all kind of dim or mean or short-sighted.  That's not necessarily a kiss of death.  The book takes place in a very small town, with characters who don't have a lot of exposure to other people or viewpoints.  It's entirely possible this town is populated with some pretty dull crayons.  But it doesn't make for the most enjoyable of reads.  None of them were good enough to root for, and none of them were evil enough to where I could love to hate them.

The main character, Patrik, had his moments, but he seemed far too suggestible.  Near the end of the book, the police station receptionist tells him he hasn't been paying enough attention to his pregnant wife, and he instantly takes her advice to go home early and feels super-guilty from that moment on.  Is a guy perceptive enough to solve major crimes really this dim about his personal life?  I'm not sure I buy it.  

The other main character, Erica, was sidelined by being heavily pregnant throughout the book.  (She had a much more active role in the previous book, The Ice Princess.)  In this book, however, she came across as bitchy and cranky.  I have never been eight months pregnant during a hot summer, though, so maybe I'm being too hard on the character.  What I do know is that the character's misery often came by being too passive.

The quick-jump method of cutting between scenes.  The scenes here are short--sometimes only a page.  On one hand, it's good that Lackberg doesn't linger and let readers get bored.  On the other hand, in a book 419 pages long, it represents a crapload of setting and character switches for the reader to process.  It gets old.

The fact that neither the author nor publisher included a list of characters or family tree in the beginning of the book.  I was almost constantly confused as to who was who's son, cousin, aunt, grandfather, etc.  When I was still confused halfway through the book, I sort of gave up trying to actively understand and just let the names wash over me.  And this is coming from a history major and genealogy enthusiast--I'm used to keeping enormous family trees in my head.  Would it have killed the publishers to go back and add a one-page family tree in the beginning?  They did it for Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The pointless flashbacks.  We're taken back to 1979 in a series of flashbacks from the victims' point of view.  We learn nothing useful.  There's no reason for these flashbacks to be here.  Their sole purpose seems to be to break up the action and perhaps to generate a sense of sympathy for the victims.  But come on...they're murder victims.  They already have my sympathy.  In an indirect way, perhaps they're meant to show how horrific these crimes really are.  But there are better ways to do this using the reactions of the detectives as they piece the crime together.  Another example of something sloppy that probably should have been edited out, or made more useful.

The fact that Lackberg hides facts from the reader to prolong the suspense.  This is a biggie.  A no-no.  One of the dirty tricks that writers can resort to, but shouldn't.

For example, a character named Stefan is beat up in the course of the book.  We are not told who does the beating up.  The attacker makes demands of Stefan and tells him to do certain things.  We are not told what they are or who makes the demands, although clearly Stefan knows.  ("But when he was turned round so that he stood eye to eye with the person who had attacked him, all the bits fell into place.")  Why are we even taken to this scene in the first place if we're not to be told any of the key facts that are revealed here?  If knowing who the attacker is would spoil everything, why even show us Stefan getting beaten up?  Why not just have us find out when the other characters do?  This only makes the reader mad.  Had we known who the assailant was, we would have had a major clue as to the murderer's identity.  

This happens frequently.  Characters are frequently getting phone calls that provide key information in the plot, but the reader is left out of the conversation.  For example, Patrik takes a call at the station:  "With trepidation he steeled himself to listen to what the lab had to say.  Maybe they would finally have the piece of the puzzle they were looking for.  But never in Patrik's wildest imagination could he have predicted what he heard next."  We don't find out what the lab said.  The characters know, but the reader doesn't.  This doesn't strike me as fair.  Yes, it prolongs the suspense, but a bit artificially.  Once again, we would have had a major clue as to the murderer's identity, but Lackberg withholds this information.

The result:
It's weird.  I'm kind of at a loss here.  I get why people read these books--obviously I plowed through on the strength of the plot alone.  But because of all these other irritations, I'm not planning on reading any more Lackberg.  On the back of the book, some of the words of praise from her blurbs use words like "haunting," "skillful," "masterful," "perfect," and "keen understanding."  I'm shaking my head and thinking, really?  The U.S. has far more talented writers than this, ones who deserve this type of praise.  But maybe Nordic noir as a genre is so hot that publishers and even reviewers can overlook things that aren't overlooked for the rest of us?

Nordic Noir: Camilla Lackberg's The Preacher--I'm Worried, You Guys

Nordic noir, here we go!


In terms of ancestry and heritage, I'm half Swedish.  I don't speak Swedish, and I haven't yet been to Sweden, but I do know a bit about the culture and the darkness and the silence often portrayed as natural to Swedes.  Since "Nordic noir" is the latest trend in mystery/thrillers, I'm taking a sampling and sharing my thoughts here.


I'm beginning with Camilla Lackberg.  I started "The Preacher" two nights ago, and let me tell you, folks, I'm worried.   


Let's start with the good:
*The plot is intriguing.  I'm sucked in almost against my will.  I do want to find out what happens next.  I'm only 90 pages in, but so far, there's a current murder that ties in with two decades-old murders.  A sleepy small-town police department without much murder-solving experience is responsible for figuring out whodunit, so it's not like watching a crime show where the slick characters toss around lingo for the sake of looking like they know what they're doing.  These cops are regular people, and as such, easy to relate to in their befuddlement and horror at the crime.

*There's a creepy cast of characters, most of whom do seem capable of murder.  This makes for lots of suspects and lots of "hmmm...is it her?" moments.

*The details of Swedish life are interesting.  For example, to please a vacationing family with picky eaters, one of the main characters makes macaroni and Falun sausage au gratin.  I have no idea what Falun sausage is, so I looked it up.  I wondered if it's the same sausage my family makes and serves each Christmas.  These kinds of details might not interest someone without Swedish ancestry, but they're fun for me, so I'm chalking it up in the plus column.

Here's what's not so good:
*The writing itself.  It's really, really, really bad.  I don't know if this is a translation problem, or if Lackberg is this poor a stylist.  The paragraph-long bio tells us that she was working as an economist in Stockholm until a creative writing class changed the course of her life.  Okay, so this explains the poor style on her part, but what about editing?  What about revising?  Let me give you some examples:

An insistent ringing of her doorbell interrupted Erica as she was laboriously running the vacuum cleaner over the carpets.  Sweat was copiously pouring out of her, and she pushed back a couple of wet strands of hair from her face before she opened the door.  They must have driven like joyriders to arrive that fast.

I'm not a fan of the adverbs, which are EVERYWHERE in this book.  I'm not a fan of the passive voice, which is EVERYWHERE in this book.  It's grating, and I can't help but think that any American writer who submitted writing like this would be told to go back to her desk and revise and polish until the manuscript was in a bit better shape.  

*The quick jumps from scene to scene. Prepare to be confused.  The book progresses in quick scenes, no more than a few pages at a time.  Then there's a hunk of white space, and you're catapulted into another character's thoughts.  Which one?  Sometimes you don't know for a good paragraph.  And since there are lots of characters, it can sometimes be a struggle to re-orient yourself every few pages.  The book tests your determination and the author tests your goodwill with this strategy.

*Some of the characters are annoying.  Actually, lots of the characters are annoying.  One of the main characters, Erica, takes the cake.  She is whiny and passive.  Granted, she is pregnant and allowed to be a little grouchy.  And Swedes can be very passive.  But behind that passivity and silence, there is usually a deep strength of will and conviction in keeping silent to solve one's own problems in one's own time.  (Think Stieg Larsson's Vanger family in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.)  So far, I'm not seeing that in Erica.  Most of the characters are unsympathetic, which makes the rare sympathetic character stand out all the more.  A murdered girl's widowed father stands out as one of these.  It's not that he's angelic, it's just that he's not rude, whiny, passive aggressive, full of himself, or just generally dim.

*You need a cheat sheet to keep the characters straight.  There are the police officers and their families.  There are the dead women and their flashbacks and their surviving family members.  There are the suspects and their three generations to keep straight.  You have to either read very slowly, or break down and make a cheat sheet.  So far, I'm just reading slowly.

Okay, so that's my feeling based on the first 90 pages.  I'm going to slog through and see if the pluses or minuses win out in the end.  Will the interesting plot save the bad writing and sloppy style?  We'll find out.

In case you're interested in Lackberg or The Preacher, here's the Washington Post's review of this book.  What do you think?

Have you read Lackberg or any other Nordic noir authors?

New eBook: The Romanov Legacy

My third eBook, The Romanov Legacy, is now live at Amazon!

I might be biased, but can I just say that I love this book so much?  I  didn't ever want to let go of these characters and these settings.  In fact, I still don't.

If you're a fan of Dan Brown, you'll enjoy the globe-trotting suspense.

If you're a fan of Olen Steinhauer, Robert Ludlum, John le Carré, or Eric Van Lustbader, you'll enjoy the nifty Russian spies.

If you're a fan of female-driven suspense novels with more psychological goings-on than Girl, Interrupted, you'll enjoy meeting Natalie, the heroine.

If you're a history buff, you'll love the details about the Romanovs, their murder, the flight of Russian emigres through China, and the bit of speculative history I throw in at the end that might make England's Queen Mary turn over in her grave.

And if you've ever done something crazy because you love your family so much you'd die for them, you'll understand why the two sisters do some crazy things to protect each other.

Really, with all this going on, you're totally getting your .99 worth.

Here's what it's about:

A family murdered in the dead of night.  A treasure lost in the throes of revolution.  A ninety-year quest that Lenin, Stalin, and the entire Soviet war chest couldn't solve.  One woman holds the key to it all:  the missing fortune of Nicholas II, last tsar of Russia.

Natalie Brandon believes the stories--that the murdered tsar left behind a secret account intended to provide for his family in exile.  She believes them because the voice inside her head believes them.  Labeled a schizophrenic by her childhood doctors and psychiatrists, Natalie hears the voice of an angel named Belial.  Belial tells her things...things no one else could possibly know.  Natalie knows Belial is real.  She knows the tsar's account is real.  But no one believes her until a blond, blue-eyed Russian spy breaks into her apartment and kidnaps her, claiming she's the only one who can help him find it.

Together, Natalie and Constantine must find a pair of letters written by the tsar's daughters, in which the account's password is encoded.  But Russian Prime Minister Maxim Starinov also wants the letters and will do anything to get them.  The pair must outrun Starinov's lethal spetsnaz unit as they chase the letters from San Francisco to Moscow to London.  The hunt draws in Natalie's sister, Constantine's partner, and a loyal Russian family whose only mission is to preserve the tsar's legacy.

With nothing more than Belial's strange whisperings to guide them, Natalie and Constantine fight for their lives--and each other--in a race to protect the tsar's legacy from a greedy despot.


Available for Kindle via Amazon.