Why Having a Day Job Is Good for the Creativity

Ruth Brown Snyder. In the electric chair.
If this doesn't creep you out,
I don't know what will.

Have you ever seen a photo of a woman being executed in the electric chair? You have now. But what do this woman, a day job, and the life of a working writer have in common?

I'll tell you.

I work full time, with an hour commute each way. All told, my time is not my own from 6:40 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. 

That's a lot of time that I can't control or do anything with. 

So when I start complaining, it's almost always about not having enough time to write new books and market existing books. I'm deeply, deeply jealous of writer friends who don't work and can spend all day toiling over marketing plans and promoting their books. I can't. And while this feels like a huge disadvantage most days, I'm trying to look on the bright side. 

So I found three ways my day job makes me a better writer.

1. Money. As Dean Koontz wrote in How to Write Best Selling Fiction, "Money is freedom; money is time; money is fame; money is respect; money is a yardstick of many things, but most of all, money is money." I have bills. Lots of them. So devoting 11+ hours a day to being able to pay them is not only necessary, but it helps my mental state remain unstressed and clear for writing. 

If all I'm doing is worrying about the electricity getting shut off or the car repossessed, I'm not going to give a crap about made-up people or worlds. In that respect, having a day job makes my non-office time all about what I want to do. I'm not looking for a job, stressing out, or drifting between friends, hoping someone will feed me for free. Every minute off the clock is spent planning, dreaming, or doing. Yes, you could argue that a true writer writes no matter what. But even true writers really need to eat. Plus, getting foreclosed would make it really hard to charge my laptop. 

2. SEO and social media knowledge. I'm a writer. But I also know a bit about SEO. And a bit about social media. I read most of the big SEO blogs and have two monitors at work, where the good folks of Google+ scroll by all day long, presenting helpful insider tips for me on marketing, social media, writing, self-publishing, and of course, life insurance. I file all that knowledge away in my brain (and, if my brain fails, Evernote) for the day when I have the time to unleash it. 

I wouldn't have been forced to learn as much about social media as I have without this job. I resisted it pretty heavily until my paycheck became partly dependent on it. I still resist it in part...I refuse to get a smartphone (no Instagram for me, folks). At the same time, I have license to check every network there is, absorb as much knowledge as I can, and learn as much as I can to deploy on command and for my own benefit (after hours, of course). I have more weapons at my disposal than I did before I had this job. In this world, marketing is everything. And I'm so much better at it now than I was before, when I thought marketing was posting a new book on this blog.

3. The occasional stranger-than-fiction story that falls in my lap. I write about life insurance, all day every day. To make sure I have something new to say, I have to dig into some pretty weird stories. One weird story involves the woman in the picture, Ruth Brown Snyder. I was writing a blog post about the movie Double Indemnity, where life insurance fraud is a plot point. Come to find out, the movie is based on a novella by James M. Cain, who based the story on a real-life insurance fraud case.

Check this shit out. 

Ruth Brown Snyder was married to Albert Snyder, but having an affair with Henry Judd Gray. She told Gray that she wanted to convince her husband to get a life insurance policy and then kill him. Getting the husband to get a policy worked just fine. But she made seven (count 'em!) unsuccessful attempts to kill Albert before she and Gray decided to try something different. They garrotted Albert and made it look like a home invasion robbery. 

But there's some backstory you also need to know before we proceed. Why did Ruth want to kill Albert? It might have been because he made no secret of his real love, a woman named Jessie Guishard who died before she and Albert could be married. He loved her for years, which, you know, probably made Ruth feel awesome about herself. This guy talked about Jessie, kept her portrait on the wall, named his boat after her, and referred to her as "the finest woman I have ever met." I kinda feel for Ruth on this one. 

Anyway, so the cops are investigating this supposed home invasion gone wrong. They think it's kind of weird that nothing actually went missing. When they found a paper with "J.G." on it, they asked Ruth who "J.G." was. Ruth asks them what Judd Gray (her lover) has to do with anything. But the cops weren't referring to Gray. They were referring to one of Albert's papers with "J.G." on it--Jesse Guishard. So Ruth just handed them her lover's name. (Way to go, Ruth.) Once the cops started looking at the name Ruth dropped, they put two and two together.

Ruth and Gray were arrested, tried, and found guilty of murder. Both were sentenced to death via the electric chair. Of course, all photography of the execution was forbidden. But reporter Tom Howard was from Chicago (not New York) and knew he wouldn't be recognized as a reporter on the scene. He rigged up a weird leg camera that would take pictures without anyone knowing. He snapped his shot, and it was plastered all over the front page of newspapers the next day. The photo was described as one of the most famous images of the 1920s. The camera Howard used to take the shot is now in the Smithsonian.

James M. Cain was a reporter at the time of this trial. He wasn't covering it, but it was big news at the time. (Who did cover it? Mary Roberts Rinehart, D.W. Griffith, and Damon Runyan). When he wrote his novella, Double Indemnity, he interviewed some insurance agents in L.A. One told him,  "All the big crime mysteries in this country are locked up in insurance company files, and the writer that gets wise to that...is going to make himself rich."

Guess I'll keep the day job.
Until the whole money tree thing happens.

So, not only did I find this incredible quote and this wacked-out story, I now have an idea for a short story of my own. And I got it because of my day job. 

Serendipitous, yes? 

The lesson here is that no matter how unrelated your day job seems, if you're a writer, it's feeding your brain. It's feeding your bank account. It's putting ideas and experiences in front of you that you might not have otherwise. Process them, and then use them in the work you want to do.

5 Lessons Writers Can Learn from Pancho and Lefty

I grew up on country music. This was the late '70s and early '80s, so we're talking real country. Outlaw country.

Country that would duct-tape Taylor Swift's mouth shut, take away all Brantley Gilbert's jewelry, and tell Keith Urban that rehab is for quitters.

One of my all-time favorite songs is "Pancho and Lefty," made famous by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. It's a story song, written by Townes Van Zandt. I still hang on every word like there's a secret nugget of truth waiting to be discovered.

How is there so much embedded in one sub-five-minute song? Have a listen and we'll find out.




Now, how can writers learn to tell a story so simply, with so much depth? Let's take a look.

1. A first-person narrator telling a story about someone else can be really effective.

No less a writer than Jonathan Franzen tells us that we should write in third person. This is one of those "establishment" rules for serious literary works. The reasoning? Third person is more remote (read: mysterious), which makes the reader work harder. It's also less limiting if you want to explore multiple characters. Plus, you get to create both the narrator's persona and your main character's (note: these are NOT the same thing).

"Pancho and Lefty" doesn't follow the third-person rule. It has a first-person narrator; however, the narrator isn't the subject of the song. This accomplishes two things:

True story.

(1) it creates immediacy with the use of the "I" voice, which is why many writers use first-person voice
(2) it generates mystery since the "I" voice isn't the subject of the song.

Our narrator probably knows Pancho and Lefty, and might have witnessed the events in the song. But we don't know. (Mystery? Check.) Our narrator says, "Livin' on the road, my friend, is gonna keep you free and clean." Who is the "friend"? Is it the generic use of "friend" that he's using to tell a campfire story? Or is he singing to an actual friend, maybe Lefty himself, after the events of the song? The narrator holds himself back from us, not making this clear. (Remote? Check.)

2. The right similes can set a tone without a single adjective.

In the first verse, we get two similes in a one-two punch: "Now you wear your skin like iron / Your breath as hard as kerosene."

Think about that. What does it mean to wear skin like iron? It means you think you're invincible. You think you can take a licking and keep on ticking. Or it means you've hardened yourself to the outside world so it can't reach you, no matter how hard it tries. (Unless you rust...that would suck.)  Each of these meanings make the simile richer. And here's the kicker: who is the singer talking to? Who wears his skin like iron? A man listening to the story? Lefty? Is he talking about himself in some weird reflective way? We don't know. But we do know this song is going to be about a mysterious bad-ass. This simile sets a mood, which is what all good storytellers must do.

And what the hell does it mean to have breath as hard as kerosene? Kerosene's a liquid. Liquid, by definition, isn't hard. Or is he referring to its scent, its noxious fumes? Those things are gases, which also by definition, are not hard. We're taking a trip through the three stages of matter here, just working on an interpretation of a single simile. Using "hard" to describe something that isn't hard works well here, especially following on the heels of the "skin like iron" simile. Skin is not like iron, and breath is not hard. But isn't that so much more effective than saying, "This is a song about some hardened criminals?"

3. Using action as a form of characterization works really well.

Also a true story.

It's pretty boring when someone says, "John was a good man" or "John was a bad man." What does "good" or "bad" mean? These aren't absolutes, especially in fiction. It's far more effective to say, "John rescued the cat in the tree because it belonged to the little girl down the block" or "John skinned the neighbor's cat in retribution for the loud party three nights back." This lets the reader place John appropriately on the scale of goodness and badness.

That's what our narrator is doing in this song. Pancho "wore his gun outside his pants / For all the honest world to feel."  I think "feel" should be "fear" here, but that's just me. In any case, the narrator isn't saying, "Pancho was really good at shooting people" or "Pancho had a death wish." No. He's telling us something about Pancho that's revealed through his action. What does it mean to wear a gun outside one's pants? Several things: Pancho means business. Pancho isn't afraid of conflict. Pancho is confident in his abilities. Pancho wants you to stay the fuck out of his way. So simple, yet so effective.

Lefty gets the same kind of characterization in the beginning of the next verse. "Lefty he can't sing the blues / all night long like he used to / The dust that Pancho bit down south / ended up in Lefty's mouth."

That's a powerful way of saying, "Lefty feels like shit for the role he played in Pancho's death." Instead of using the most obvious word on the planet ("guilt"), the narrator ties Lefty to Pancho's death using setting and figurative language. Lefty doesn't have a literal mouthful of dirt. But he's carrying a crap-ton of baggage that has to do with Pancho's death, so much baggage that he can't even sing anymore. We're left to wonder...is that how Lefty earns a living? Is he so broken up over his buddy's death that can't earn a living? This image conveys emotion and suggests conflict in a few simple words. Damn.

4. Be specific with names and places.

There's a beautiful juxtaposition in this song between the vagueness of the story itself and the concrete setting. We don't know who the narrator is. We don't know if he's talking to Lefty or about him. We don't know for sure what went down between Pancho and Lefty (although we can guess). But we do know Pancho died in Mexico. And we know Lefty "split for Ohio." Later, we get more detail: Cleveland's cold. Even here, we have layers. No shit, Cleveland is cold. The average temperature in January is about 28 degrees Fahrenheit. But is it also cold because Lefty lacks Pancho's companionship?

What I love here is the specificity of "Cleveland." Lefty didn't go "out west" or "down south." There's something so much more pathetic about him shacking up in Cleveland, a non-glamorous city that's stuck between the midwest and the east. With all apologies to Cleveland, perhaps the idea here is Lefty's in nowheresville. But rather than say it, the narrator uses a specific place that plants that idea in our heads.

5. Leave a little (or a lot) to the reader's imagination.

Probably not a true story.

One of the best parts of this song is its mystery. The narrator doesn't tell us exactly what happened. How did the Federales finally get Pancho? Why did Lefty split on the day he died, with a mysterious sum of money? Did Lefty sell Pancho out? Probably. Why did Lefty do it? We have no idea. A secret dream of making it big as a singer someday? The need to get out of a life of crime? Why didn't he have the balls to say, "Hey, Pancho, I'm gonna hang up the old gun belt now and start singing showtunes for tips. You're cool with that, right?" Is it really a commentary on friendship, on weakness of character, or misguided loyalty? Or all these things? Or none of them?

We don't know, and that's the way it should be. That's why this song needs a narrator who isn't Pancho or Lefty. That's why it's so much more powerful when we hear about Lefty's inability to sing anymore. That's why it's still moving at the end of the song, when not only Lefty but the Federales are old and gray. Everyone involved still remembers, still feels bad, still has some regrets. It's that important to them. And now it's that important to me, because I've just written 1,500 damn words about an old-ass country song.  

10 Round Gothic Novel Smackdown: Susanna Kearsley vs. Barbara Michaels

I love Gothics. I can't help it.

Literary types will wrinkle their noses, but they fulfill a vital purpose in a young girl's reading life: wish fulfillment and escapism. I might not be young anymore, but my head can still be turned by a book description with words like "windswept shores," "unsolved mystery," and "buried secrets."

That's why I snapped up Susanna Kearsley's The Shadowy Horses when Amazon offered the Kindle version for $1.99. But instead of describing all the ways Kearsley's book missed its mark, I decided to compare it to a book called The Sea King's Daughter by an author who has the Gothic style mastered: Barbara Michaels.

Let's take a look at the ways each book delivered or failed to deliver on the promises that are implicit in a good Gothic novel. We have Kearsley in blue trunks and the Michaels in red trunks.

Round 1: Young, pretty, usually naive heroine.

Kearsley: Check (mostly). Verity Grey is an archaeologist who works for the British Museum. She has academic and professional chops, yet still comes across as younger and less experienced than the other archaeologists in the novel. Most, if not all, of the male characters reference how pretty she is, including a ghost and a small boy. This actually gets kind of irritating after awhile.

Bonus: Does the heroine's name have special significance? Yes. "Verity" means "truth." Verity's employer refers to this when asking Verity for her opinion, saying he'd believe her over other less-than-truthful characters.

Michaels: Check. Sandy Bishop is a college student who, although she's a great swimmer and diver, isn't a professional treasure hunter. She and her stepfather discovered a Spanish galleon sunk off the Florida coast, but the conditions were such that amateur divers could make the discovery without specialized equipment. Now, her estranged archaeologist father has asked her to come help search for Minoan treasure in Greece. Her naivety comes without question; Sandy is going to college to become a PE teacher, for heaven's sake.

Bonus: Does the heroine's name have special significance? Yes. The very first line of the book is, "Don't call me Ariadne. That's not my name anymore." Sandy's real name is that of a Minoan princess who betrayed her father, Minos, to escape with Theseus after he kills the Minotaur. Unfortunately for Ariadne, Theseus ditches her not long after this. During the course of the book, Sandy finds disturbing similarities between herself and the mythological Ariadne.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? Part of the fun of reading a Gothic is seeing how the character fails to see the warning signs of a dangerous situation unfolding around her. She needs to be trusting so she can fall for a dashing but dangerous love interest (see point 3 below). Also, she needs to have somewhere to go in terms of character development. We have to see her getting smarter and being changed by her experiences as the book develops.

Who wins the round?  It's a tie. Verity has special knowledge, while Sandy has a special skill. Verity has made bad relationship choices, Sandy makes some bad choices period. Both heroines are likable, but Sandy stands up for herself a bit more convincingly. Overall, though, there's not a clear edge for either author.

Round 2:  Interesting location in which the heroine feels out of place.

Kearsley: Check. Verity travels to Eyemouth, Scotland, a cold and dreary place that's a far cry from the London hustle and bustle she's used to. She can barely understand the thick Scottish accent, and is constantly having to look words up in a Scots dictionary. It's easy for the reader to picture the generic kind of windswept moors described in so many Gothic novels, but Kearsley adds a great deal of description to help you get a more accurate mental picture of local geography, festivals, and traditions. There are points, however, where the book feels like a travelogue as much as a narrative.

Eyemouth, Scotland.
Image by Flickr user David Farrer.
Used with Creative Commons license.

Bonus: Do you experience a local festival? Yes. Verity and her love interest, Davy Fortune, attend the crowning of the Herring Queen. The problem with this is that nothing really happens except the festival. I kept waiting for some dangerous incident to occur, but all they did was wander around and remark on how they couldn't wait to make out later. The festival itself wasn't integral to anything that was said or done during that scene. This is bad. Writers: if you're going to indulge in local color, it MUST tie into the plot.

Michaels: Check. Sandy travels to Thera, a Greek volcanic island that was once a stronghold of the Minoans. There's a far more serious language barrier here since Sandy doesn't speak, write, or read Greek. You get a lot of description in this novel, too, but it doesn't weigh down the story like Kearsley's does. The landscape also clearly pertains to the plot since Sandy is helping her archaeologist father look for the remains of Minoan treasure in the island's volcanic caldera.

Thera, Greece.
Image by Flickr user The Philly Lambs.
Used with Creative Commons license. 

Bonus: Do you experience a local festival? Yes. Sandy witnesses a ritual in which the women of the village carry a saint's image around the town to bless the houses and fields. Michaels does it right by showing the village women making way for one other mysterious woman who comes down from her cliffside villa to attend the festival. Obviously important and held apart from the local peasant women, we take note because the other characters do, too. As Sandy's father joins her, he catches sight of the mysterious woman...and promptly freaks out, fleeing the scene. This WTF moment helps break open the subplot that has to do with the goings-on of the previous generation.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel?  Part of the fun of a Gothic is escapism combined with wish fulfillment. If you're a bored housewife in Lincoln, Nebraska or a lonely single girl in Bakersfield, California, you'd probably rather read about moors or desert sands or even Asiatic steppes than, say, Chicago. Both Greece and Scotland qualify as exotic locales that pique my interest. Also, Gothics need to take place in an isolated location so the characters have a hard time leaving or running away when the scary shit starts to go down.

Who wins the round? It's another tie. Both books feature an archaeological mystery that's intricately tied to their settings. Both are described so that you feel you're there. Kearsley's descriptions pall after awhile, but they're more lush in general than Michaels, so there's no clear winner.

Round 3: Dashing but dangerous love interest.

Kearsley: In this corner, we have David (Davy) Fortune. That name is so awesome I'm jealous I didn't think of it first. In terms of description, David is tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, dark-haired...a veritable Scottish Heathcliff who actually wears a kilt in one scene. Visually, Kearsley is on track for the win.

However, poor Davy comes up short in the "dangerous" category.  Every good Gothic heroine needs to think that her handsome, stalwart man might also be the bad guy who's trying to scare her away from her goal. Otherwise, where's the fun in that? The relationship needs challenges. In a romance novel, those challenges are usually communication issues or personality flaws in the hero and heroine.  In a Gothic, those challenges need to be based on danger and uncertainty.  The hero needs to walk that fine line between smokin' hot and holy-crap-this-guy-might-be-trying-to-kill-me. Unfortunately, the relationship between Verity and Davy had no challenges whatsoever. It also had very little heat.  A fifth-grader could read this book without getting any untoward ideas.

Michaels: In this corner, we have Jim Sanchez. He's also tall and broad and handsome, with a healthy tan from working outdoors. He doesn't always button his shirt all the way, which is good for Sandy, but also fits with his character. It's hot as hell in Greece in the summer and he's an archaeologist. Plus, this book was written in 1975, when Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck did this sort of shit all the time.

The "danger" category is also a little light for Jim. However, on a strict one-to-one comparison with David Fortune, Jim takes the cake. At one point, he tells Sandy he'll do anything he can to stop her from diving and looking for Minoan treasure. Of course, he camouflages any nefarious intent by claiming it's for her own safety, but the reader understands there's potential menace there. Also, Jim offers to go swimming with Sandy every day, ditching work to do so. This comes off not as chivalrous, but as creepy. He just wants to be there if and when she discovers something.  This adds to Jim's vague sense of menace. Again, it's not much, but it's more than Davy Fortune gets.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? It all goes back to escapism. Women readers want to meet a man they'd fall in love with on the page. That love needs to be tested.  So if they think that handsome devil might actually be a devil, it makes it all the more delicious when the heroine (and the reader) still can't resist his charm and good looks.

Who wins the round?  Michaels.  If it were based on name choice alone, it'd be Kearsley by a landslide. But David Fortune is never menacing in the way a good Gothic hero needs to be.

Round 4: A nurturing father figure.

Kearsley:  Check. It's eccentric millionaire and maligned archaeologist Peter Quinnell, who has spent most of his life looking for the lost Ninth Roman Legion, which disappeared somewhere near Eyemouth. Quinnell is handsome and charming, but most of his colleagues think he's also batshit crazy. Verity starts out thinking he might be nuts, but realizes he misses very little and actually is one of the sharpest guys around.  He's kind to Verity, puts her up in his mansion, really likes cats, and is free with his liquor. I like the guy already.

Michaels:  We have several candidates here.  You could argue that this figure is:

• Frederick, Sandy's abrasive professor father. He's rude and self-centered, he is teaching her about archaeology and gets really surly when she and Jim are together.  
• Sir Christopher, an archaeologist digging on the other side of the island. He's antagonistic toward Frederick and takes an interest in Sandy, offering her money so she can get the hell out of Dodge, as well as a job next summer.  
• Jurgen, a mysterious German colonel who figures heavily in the second half of the novel. At several key points, he seems to be warning Sandy and protecting her against the machinations of his own lover, Kore.  

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel?  For some reason, Gothics usually have nurturing father figures and menacing mother figures. It's all a part of isolating the heroine. You can't give the heroine a dependable best friend or an older female mentor, because then they could help her see past her own naivete. Uh-uh. Not in a Gothic. She can have a kindly older male caretaker or mentor, but when it comes to matters of the heart, this person has to remain clueless.  This is why an older, grandfather-type plays well in these kinds of stories.

Who wins the round?  It's a tie. None of Michaels's characters fit the bill as well as Peter Quinnell does for the Kearsley book, but at the same time, the Michaels story is richer because each of these characters brings a piece of the "father figure" mythology.  

Round 5: A mysterious and menacing older female figure.

Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca is the OG
when it comes to the menacing older
female character in Gothic novels.

Kearsley: There's a menacing and vaguely mysterious female figure, all right, but she's younger instead of older. Her name is Fabia, and she's Peter's granddaughter. She's not a professional archaeologist like Verity--she's just lending a hand for her grandfather. She stays out late, dislikes Verity, and has it out for Peter because she feels Peter loved archaeology more than Fabia's father (Peter's son). Verity never quite trusts her, which is smart. However, Fabia doesn't do any of the traditional menacing things, like tell the heroine, "You need to leave for your own good or bad things will happen to you."  Although Fabia does pose a danger late in the novel, by then, it's really hard to give a crap.

Michaels: We've already mentioned Kore, the strangely alluring older woman who comes to the village festival and freaks everyone out. She's actually the mistress of a mysterious German colonel who lives in a fancy villa up on a cliff above the village. She is not German, however; she is Greek. This brings up a lot of loyalty issues for the older village folk, for whom World War II wasn't that long ago. As the book goes on, Kore gets more and more mysterious. At one point, she walks straight up to Sandy and warns her to get lost. What does she know that Sandy doesn't? Later in the book, Kore takes care of Sandy after an accident. She chants, goes into trances, watches Sandy while she's sleeping, and lets weird guests into the villa during the middle of the night. Yes, this qualifies as menacing and mysterious.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel?  The menacing female is very important. You have to fight fair, and as a writer, it's a little unfair to pit a big, strong man against a tiny, seemingly defenseless female. It's fine to hint that the big, strong man is out to get her, but usually, the villain or villain's assistant is a woman. This way, it's a fair fight when the heroine gets to take her down. Plus, it's very traumatizing for a woman to read about a woman being victimized by another woman. We're used to reading about glass ceilings or horrible male bosses or terrorists/kidnappers who are male. But when our heroine is put down or led astray by a fellow woman? That's disturbing on so many levels.  After all, as Madeline Albright said,

"There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."

Who wins the round? Michaels. Fabia, Kearsley's antagonistic character, never really gets up to much menace until it's too late to care. Kore gets kind of annoying toward the end of the Michaels book, but I'd take annoying and mysterious over Fabia's annoying and...just annoying.

Round 6: Incidents of danger that warn the heroine away from her current course of action.

Kearsley: Nope. Not even close. There's no actual villain, violence, or conflict for most of the novel. (Note to Kearsley: Are you kidding me?) This is what irritated me most about the book.  A couple times, objects sort of move around, presumably at the hand of a ghost.  But although the Sentinel is creepy, this ghostly Roman soldier never harms anyone. Most of the characters never even interact with him.

In addition, there are no accidents sabotaging the dig, no one warning the archaeologists to stop looking for the Ninth Legion or else, nothing remotely sinister. No one wants to steal the treasure, stop the excavation, or harm any of the participants. Mostly it just rains and people stop work to go inside, pet cats, and get drunk. Not a single character's physical safety is endangered until the final chapter, when the ridiculous climax and denouement occur. This makes for a pretty boring read, especially in a book that seems to hew so closely to many other Gothic tropes. One character, whose fey son can see and talk to the ghost, tells Verity to stop using the boy to communicate with the ghost, but there's no hint of the "or else" that every good Gothic needs. Writers, you can't build a strong plot without conflict and an antagonist. I can't believe the Kearsley book was such an epic fail on this account.

Michaels: Check. We've got spies, rockslides, booby traps, errant gunshots, a kidnapping disguised as a rescue, drugging, and more. There are a buttload of reasons why Sandy needs to say sayonara to her father's dig, but in traditional Gothic fashion, she stays.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? The stakes have got to increase as the book goes on. Verbal warnings can only go so far. The villain needs to do things that make the heroine fear for her life. This not only makes it more interesting for the reader, but it also gives the heroine a chance to show her mettle.  Unless she's tested, how will she develop as a character?

Who wins the round? Michaels. No contest.

Round 7: Events that seem to be supernatural.

Kearsley: This started out well. There's a ghostly Roman soldier haunting the dig site. He's called the Sentinel, and seems vaguely menacing. The only person who can see him or hear him is a little boy, Robbie, the son of Peter Quinnell's housekeeper.  Robbie is a little disturbed by some of the encounters with the ghost, and there's one creepy scene where Verity feels the ghost near her in her office. But for the most part, the ghost is benign. In fact, the ghost's true intentions are revealed a little too early, if you ask me. Overall, the supernatural peters out without providing much more than a bit of atmosphere and a hint of conflict for the ghost whispering boy's father, who thinks he and his son are being used by the uppity archaeologists.

Michaels: This started out well, too. Sandy, who has never been to Greece, starts having weird living daydreams where she knows she's been to some of these places before. She sees an artifact in a Greek museum and knows its purpose, sees herself using it in the past. There's some mysterious connection between Sandy, her father, the legends of Atlantis, and the destruction of Crete. There's also a local female-based cult that mixes elements of Christianity with earlier pagan beliefs, including the idea of ritual sacrifice. Although all of these elements seem like they should be tied together, they don't really coalesce in the end. In the first part of the novel, Sandy's seeming past-life experiences play a large role. They don't in the second, and the novel ends with a weak return to them that doesn't really explain anything. Writers, if you can't explain something that seems supernatural, don't include it. Tie it to your plot, provide hard details of how it's happening, or forget about it.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? It makes shit interesting. Again, it's all about upping the ante and giving the heroine more than she can handle. Not only does she need to sort out her feelings for the hero and deal with the antagonistic female in her life, but now she's supposed to deal with ghosts? Jesus, our heroine says. Give a girl a break.  But we can't, because that's how books work.

Who wins the round? It's kind of a fail-tie. Both authors introduce supernatural elements that aren't really explained and tied to the on-the-ground events well enough.

Now, there are a few characteristics of both books that aren't necessarily de rigeur for Gothics, but that merit additional comparison:

Round 8: An archaeological mystery.

Plaque on the spot where the Ninth
fled Boudicca's army in 61 AD.
Image by Flickr user Dave Crosby.
Used with Creative Commons license.

Kearsley: Check. The Ninth Roman Legion marched deep into the north of England to subdue the warlike border tribes. They vanished sometime between 108 AD, when they rebuilt the fortress at York, and about 150 AD. They were never heard from again. It's a damn good premise, and made me seek out more information about the historical mystery. The book doesn't really solve the mystery one way or another, which is to be expected based on the set-up. Because the mystery still exists, Peter Quinnell can hardly claim to have found conclusive proof that the Ninth was massacred on the Scottish border (although that's what the book hints at).

Ruins of the Minoan
palace at Knossos, Crete.
Image by Flickr
user inis22mara.
Used with Creative
Commons license.

Michaels: Legend says that the lost city of Atlantis fell into the sea, somewhere in the Atlantic. But what if Atlantis were really in the Mediterranean? What if the mystical city were really a garbled representation of the fate of the Minoan civilization? A cataclysmic volcanic eruption in about 1500 BC destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete and Thera, a thousand years before Plato described Atlantis in his writings. Frederick and Sandy are looking for artifacts that might be buried under the water, proving that a magnificent city did fall into the ocean, and that Atlantis can and should be identified with the Minoans.

Who wins the round? Tie. These are both awesome archaeological mysteries to explore. Both authors provide information about the mystery's set-up as well as tidbits that have been uncovered to support or detract from the characters' theories.

Round 9: Nightmares of the heroine.

Kearsley: Verity dreams that she hears horses' hooves pounding the ground outside her window. But no one else hears the horses, and when she finally mentions it, everyone confirms that there are no horses on the grounds that could possibly have made the noises she heard. Ghost horses! Cool, right? Unfortunately, the nightmares don't lead her to any conclusions, and don't really represent anything. Are they supposed to be the ghosts of Roman horses? Do they mean the Ninth is really there, at Eyemouth? Verity doesn't come to either of these conclusions. It's a huge missed opportunity for Kearsley. Plus, it's also the title of the damn book, so you'd think it would mean a little more.

Michaels: Sandy dreams that she's in the Labyrinth with the Minotaur. She watches Theseus follow Ariadne's ball of string to the center of the maze, where he'll face off against the nightmarish creature (half-bull half-man). The dreams are extremely vivid, pretty well done, and creep Sandy out. They cause her to identify with her real name, Ariadne, and make her see the connection between Ariadne and herself: will she betray her father for Jim the way Ariadne betrayed her father, Minos, to run away with Theseus?

Who wins the round? Michaels. The dreams actually tie into the symbolism of her name and the mythology behind it.

Round 10: The sins of the fathers. 

Kearsley: Yes, the doings of the previous generation come back to bite the heroine's generation in the butt. I won't say how, in case you want to read the Kearsley. But there is a secret that leaks, and it leads to the only real incident of physical danger for anyone in the whole book. Still, that being said, the secret isn't really that big deal, and the reveal feels minimal and lame and rushed. Plus, neither the secret nor the reveal has a damn thing to do with the archaeological mystery or the ghost. It's just crap the characters have to sort through.

Michaels: Yes, the doings of the previous generation come back to bite the heroine's generation in the butt. In fact, there's an entire subplot involving Frederick, Sir Christopher, Jim's uncle (a cohort of Frederick and Sir Christopher's), Kore, and Jurgen. Because this book takes place in 1975, the previous generation's escapades took place during World War II and involve the resistance movement against the Nazis on Crete. There's something hinky between Frederick and Kore, and we find out that someone betrayed someone else  to the Nazis all those years ago. Yeah, that's pretty kick-ass.

Who wins the round? Michaels. Come on. Weak drawing room intrigue or a World War II resistance movement?

Okay, after 10 rounds, it's time to crown a winner!

Rounds tied: 5
Rounds to Kearsley: 0
Rounds to Michaels: 5

Now, this isn't to say the Michaels book is perfect. It's not. It has some pretty big flaws in the second half of the book. However, it kicks the crap out of Kearsley's limp, dreary, soggy tale. The winner is Barbara Michaels.

Writer, Edit Thyself: Why You Shouldn't Hire an Editor (Yet)

I've been reading a lot of writers' blogs and posts in writers' communities on G+. One thing I keep seeing is the recommendation (commandment, from some) that all indie writers must hire an editor before (a) sending work to an agent, or (b) self-publishing.

I understand where this advice is coming from, but...I have a big problem with this. And this is from someone who earned her highest salary EVER as a professional editor. (Feel free to laugh at this. My bank account does.) I know a few editors, and most of them are incredibly nice and talented people. I have nothing against them. I do have something against lazy writers who can't learn on their own.

If you ask me, the solution isn't to hire someone to make your writing better. It's to make it better your own damn self.

Suck at editing? Learn.
Suck at grammar? Learn.
Suck at revising? So do lots of people. Guess what? They fucking learn.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well. If you can't commit the time to learn how to use the English language well enough to pass muster with a reader, are you really cut out to be a writer? Or do you just like the cheap thrill of how easy it is to tell a story?  There's nothing wrong with storytelling. But it's only half of your toolkit.  You can't buy the other half.  Okay, maybe you can. But it's lazy and wrong and I'm going to berate you for it.

Objection #1: But as a writer, I'm too close to my story to see its flaws.
Bullshit. Read some books. Is yours like theirs? If so, you're doing it right. Sit down and make a list of the kinds of things that happen in good books. See the story arcs? Diagram your own story arc. Is there an arc? There are all kinds of story arc tools you can use before you write your story to make sure it's plotted and paced well. If you have any analytic capability at all, apply it at this stage in the game. If you don't have any analytic capability at all, you might not be cut out for writing. If you have analytic capability but this sounds like a hell of a lot of work, you're damn right. Stop reading blog posts and go diagram your damn book.

Objection #2: But I've read my manuscript so many times that my eyes glaze over the typos.
Bullshit. Read it out loud. Read it backwards. Print it out and look at it on paper. Put it in a drawer for a month and come back to it. None of these are impossible tasks unless you refuse to devote the necessary time. Are you refusing to devote the necessary time? Are you short-cutting what I hope is the most important thing in the world to you when you're doing it? If you have a nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach, if your cheeks are red, or if you're thinking of other things you should be doing right now, you're who I'm talking to. Don't ignore it. Embrace it, and then get it done. It might lengthen your production schedule to include a cooling-off period and then final proofing, but that's not my problem. It's yours.

Objection #3: But I'm just not good at grammar. I need someone to fix a few commas and things.
Bullshit. If you're not that good at grammar, how are you crafting sentences that shock and awe? How are you being careful when you pick your verbs? How are you playing with language to create the precise effect you want in a reader's mind? Or are you just whizzing through it all, using descriptions you've read in books because it's easier that way? Doing shit like this gets you nowhere. I read the jacket copy for a self-published romance novel where the author actually wrote that the dangerous and intriguing mystery man knocked the heroine's world on its axis. I kid you not. This is the kind of writer I'm talking about.  I saw a second writer who tried to convince me of a character's ability to deploy "feminine whiles." These people need to become better craftsmen. Right now, they're just swinging hammers with a blindfold on and hoping they hit a nail.

Objection #4: But editors need money. I have the money. What's the problem?
This is a slippery slope that often ends in bullshit. Replace "editors" with "prostitutes." Are you really doing this out of the goodness of your heart for your editor? Don't use this as an excuse not to learn to revise or proofread yourself.  Trust me.  We editors are a skilled and wily bunch. We'll survive.

What do you think...would Michael Crichton have appreciated
being immortalized on a purple gingham background?

Objection #5: But I need someone who will push me to do better.
Bullshit. If you want to do better, you can and you will. If you have the desire to become a better writer, don't do it by hiring someone to tell you why you suck.  That's stupid.  Figure it out yourself so you're not dependent on an editor for every book you write. It's like this:  "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime."  Teach yourself to fucking fish.  Do it by reading, experimenting, writing more, getting critiques from friends and beta readers, then rewriting again and again until you've produced something that leaves them speechless.  And then you can hire an editor for that extra 10% of effort that gets you to the full 110%.

An editor can be a part of that solution, but only a part, and only after you've exhausted every inner working of your soul that can go into the creation and recreation of your book.

Tip: A really good creative writing professor once told me that the best way to learn how to write good stories is to copy a great story out by hand. As you write the other writer's words, you'll absorb how they flow and how they're put together. You'll be forced to slow down and really read the story.  He suggested doing this with Flannery O'Connor. Have you done this yet? I didn't think so.

Objection #6: Why do you hate people so much?
As Bukowski said, "I don't hate people. I just feel better when they aren't around."

If you love writing, great. So do I. But doing only the fun parts is like what a five-year-old does when she strews toys all across the living room, plays with one or two of them, and then abandons the mess to go play outside. Or when you cook a great meal, eat it, and then leave dirty dishes lying everywhere. No, it's not fun to clean them. But paying someone else to do it because it's a difficult or distasteful task is cheating.

Think of the great writers of history: Homer, Sophocles, Chaucer, Shakespeare. They learned their shit and they learned it well. Yes, guys like Hemingway and Fitzgerald received editing from their publishers...only once they had turned in a manuscript that was as honed and polished as they could get it. They didn't slap-dash anything the page, do a Microsoft spellcheck, and hire someone to make sure it wasn't a mess. They agonized and revised and revised again. Your agony level needs to be somewhere north of poison-oak-in-your-nether-region. If you're at lemon-juice-in-hangnail stage, you're not nearly there yet.

Yes, beta readers can be helpful. As the book's writer, you cannot approximate a first-time reader's experience (unless you become psychic or telepathic). But fixing commas and quotation marks and hyphens and holes in your plot an elephant could fit through simply because you can't learn how to do it yourself?

Give me a break.  You can do better.  (Have I mentioned I love memes?)

Reasons to Be Cheerful

I'm amazed by how hard it is for me to write a happy post. I am naturally inclined to think the sky is falling if I don't have everything on my worry bird list checked off. And I don't....NOT EVEN CLOSE. Stressing out is sort of a natural state of being for me as an indie writer. 

At the same time, I realize that you guys probably don't want to read dark and bitchy posts all the time. Sometimes we (and I mean me) have to take a step back and look at the things that are going right to keep from freaking out over the things that aren't going at all. So queue up the player below, which contains the official soundtrack for this post: Ian Drury's Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3.

How to Be Happy (When You Still Have 8 Damn Million Things to Do)

Now with more sparkle!

1.  Look at that sky. It's not actually falling. Heck, it's not even raining. 

2.  Your shoes are cute. 

3.  Hey, your necklace is cute, too. 

4.  All of your fingernails are intact. 

5.  You submitted to 10 literary journals over the weekend. That's 10 chances to kick ass.

6.  You entered your first-ever YA novel in a contest to win a publishing contract. That takes balls.  Whether you win or lose or just make it through to the second round and then lose, you still have a brand-spankin' new book done and ready to go.  If you want to read it (and vote for it!), click here. 

7.  You are planning your first-ever urban fantasy novel. You've always wanted to write something that combines your favorite writing subjects: hicks and the supernatural. Don't stress about how long the planning and research is taking. Be happy that you'll get to fulfill a goal by writing this book. Use it as an excuse to say "y'all" even more often. Plus, it means you get to watch Justified and Duck Dynasty and this and call it research. 

8.  You're working now. So what if 3 out of 4 of your eBook covers still suck? Set aside some money and pay to get new ones. Then market with confidence.  In the land of eBooks, nothing is permanent. It can always be fixed or upgraded. It's just money. Why do you have it if not to use on on something that's really, vitally important to you?

9.  Your husband loves you.  And he wants you to spend your money on book covers if that's what will make you happy.  And he is going to tile the kitchen floor. And he will come all way across the house when you yell, "Spider!" 

10. There are lots of cute puppies in the world. You don't have one, and probably never will, but that doesn't mean the world is a lesser place.  

11. You have learned so much about marketing as a writer in the past few months. It makes you feel like you're eight hundred years behind schedule, but that's only because you're comparing yourself to others. You are you. You know what you need to do. That's all that matters.  

12. Have you seen the view from your deck?

Not a painting, no sirree. This is genuine Pilot Hill awesomeness.

Book Review: Angelopolis by Danielle Trussoni

The characters I know and loathe
are at it again in Angelopolis.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that the first book in this series, Angelology, earned my undying loathing for its failure to capitalize on a near-brilliant premise. Well, that and some of the worst writing I've ever read in a book praised by everyone from the New York Times to USA Today. Clearly there was some Kool-Aid going around and everyone became insane for a brief period of time in 2010.  

Well, this time I was much smarter about things. I didn't spend my own money--I patronized my local library. There's one more sliver of good news here: I didn't loathe it quite as much as the first one. If the first book received a grade of F from me, this one's a D.  It might just be because instead of 450 mind-numbing anger-inducing pages, this one's a scant 300. Let's see how it shakes down, shall we?

Spoiler-free summary:

The heroine of the last book, Evangeline, is an angel (we learned this at the very end of Angelology). Verlaine, her love interest, has become an angel hunter and spent the last 10 years looking for her. Yes, we have jumped 10 years forward in time. Why? God knows. Two or three years would probably have sufficed. Verlaine and Evangeline have a brief run-in that convinces Verlaine he is in love with her. Evangeline is kidnapped by another angel, working for the Grigori family (angel bad guys), but not before she slips Verlaine a Faberge egg. Verlaine and Bruno, his angel hunting mentor, must figure out what the egg means and where Evangeline has been taken.

WTF spoiler-filled summary:

Grad school asshats
always mention the Panopticon
when they want to seem smart.

The angels are trying to build themselves a city and take over the planet. Apparently, some Nephilim descendants used to give birth by laying eggs. People came out of these eggs, I shit you not.  Egg births have become quite rare, although they are desirable for the higher-quality angelic offspring they produce.  Queen Victoria is a Nephilim descendant and, by extension, Empress Alexandra of Russia. Alexandra had an egg birth that occurred during what history has recorded as a phantom pregnancy. Alexandra was actually impregnated by the archangel Gabriel and so the resulting egg-child (Lucien) is of a purer angelic strain than ordinary Nephilim. There is some huge angel prison in Siberia, modeled after the Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham. It blows up in the end. Oh, and there's an angel vaccination of sorts, which could turn an angel or a Nephilim human again.  It can only be made once due to the rarity of one of its ingredients. The angel hunters made it, and Verlaine hands it over to Evangeline, thinking she will quaff it, but no, she steals it and leaves to hang out with Lucien, who is actually her father. Verlaine gets pissed and instantly wants to kill her (again). He gets voted as the leader of the next round of angel/Nephilim resistance fighters. The end. My head hurts.

Things that Didn't Suck

1. Angelopolis was shorter than the first book.  This represents an attempt on the author's part to keep the plot more tightly controlled. It also meant the whole thing gets over with faster.   

2. The Romanovs were peripheral characters. Ideas that link real people and historical events to mythological events are cool.

3. It created some interesting mythology about the Biblical flood, Noah, the Ark's location, and what exactly got preserved on that Ark. Those are all the nice things I can think of to say.

Things that Sucked

1. The author still seems to believe that long-winded explanations and backstory and plot setup can take up 70% of a book without the reader getting bored. It is DISASTROUS. In the quote below, a co-worker of Dr. Azov, an angelologist, asks a visiting angelologist named Vera if she needs a refresher on the kind of work Azov does before meeting the good doctor:  

"No need," Vera said. "I know that Azov has occupied the center on St. Ivan Island for over three decades--since before I was born. His outpost was created in the early eighties, when a body of research pointed to the presence of well-preserved artifacts under the Black Sea. Before this, angelologists stationed in Bulgaria worked near the Devil's Throat in the Rhodope mountain chain, where they monitored the buildup of nephilim and, of course, acted as a barrier should the Watchers escape." (p 136)

Holy mother of God, if the answer to someone's question is a simple "no," just say "no."  

2. The dialogue is tragic. It's artificial at best, and often used to deliver complicated history lessons. This makes the characters themselves seem even more wooden than they actually are. Here's one stellar example of tragic dialogue:

"Absolutely certain," he said. "And I'm not the only one--an angelologist is hunting her at this very moment. An angel hunter." 

How could we fail to be aware of the fact that an ANGELOLOGIST who is HUNTING her is an angel hunter?  At what point in the second sentence is this unclear enough to need a third?

3. The tone and sentence structure never change. A five-page digression into angelology and a motorcycle action scene are treated exactly the same way, and this does a disservice to the few action scenes. It gives the book a plodding feel. 

4. There is no humor whatsoever. This series takes it itself so goddamn seriously.  Even books and shows that deal with the end of the world need a little humor. Supernatural does this amazingly well.  You can't have DANGER DANGER BIBLICAL WEIRDNESS RASPUTIN DANGER LECTURE ON BIBLICAL WEIRDNESS OMG WORLD ENDING PANOPTICON THE END without a moment or two of levity. People are not robots. I found myself seeking an escape from this book, which is theoretically entertainment, and thus supposed to be an escape. Epic fail.   

5. The characters are flat. They aren't allowed to do or say anything except spout Trussoni's "big ideas" about history and angelology. They don't have favorite foods or favorite colors or get bitten by bugs or hate their shoes or express real-life opinions about anything non plot-related. They don't have thoughts about past loves or wives or girlfriends or boyfriends or past experiences that reveal who they are. They are plot devices, not people. This is the closest to characterization you get:

He would be forty-three years old in less than a week and he was in the best condition of his life, able to run for miles without breaking a sweat.  (p 35)

6.  The writing is flat.  Everything is told, never shown. We are simply told what characters feel. They do not express it or show it. It gets boring. So very boring. Apparently, Trussoni graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Coulda fooled me.

"You want to re-create paradise," Angela said, astonished.

Someone who's good at writing wouldn't have needed to explain the bad guy's shtick, and could have used a gesture or body language to convey said astonishment. Here's another awesome example:

There was a rusty Zid motorcycle parked nearby, its wires hanging loose. The engine was vastly different from his Ducati, but in a matter of seconds, he'd hot-wired the bike, thrown his leg over the leather seat, and was speeding after Eno. (p 125)

Hmm. In addition to the multiple "was" verb forms making this theoretically exciting chase scene boring, this passage begs several logistical questions. If Verlaine has a Ducati, how is he intimately familiar with the workings of a Zid engine? What the hell are the wires doing hanging loose in the first place?  Wouldn't the owner, like, I don't know, fix that shit?  And how, pray tell, does one hot-wire a motorcycle? A bit of authenticity here would have helped. At least YouTube it and try and find out how it's done.

As Verlaine followed Angela's movements, he realized that his entire body had gone rigid. (p 82)

In the above, why wouldn't you simply say, "Verlane's body went rigid"? All of the "following" and "realizing" dilute the power of the physical effect Trussoni is trying to create. This is bush league, people.

From the way she looked at him, he could feel her rage. (p 178)

And again, we have the bush league version of telling, not showing.  How did she look up at him? What was in her eyes, in her body language?

7.  Some of the facts are not right. Could have been a simple typo, but the book gives 1917 as the Romanov execution year. Nope.  Also, when mentioning the Romanov execution, she talks about them going out "into the cold."  Um, it was July. And hot as Hades. Not sure anything would have been cold. Minor quibbles, I know, but they exist.

I give up. I fucking give up.

8. The sheer ridiculosity of the egg birth thing. I just don't buy it.  Nephilim lay eggs?  Like, an egg actually grows in the woman and she gives birth to it?  Does it then hatch immediately?  Or does it friggin' incubate in a bassinet? And I'm supposed to believe Peter the Great came out of an egg?  All Trussoni says is, "...how such a birth had come to pass was never documented" (p 221). Wow, convenient, huh? But if the ranks of European royalty are littered with Nephilim, what happened in the days when many royal births were public? Did the woman know in advance whether she'd give birth to an egg or a baby?  How could all the ladies-in-waiting and midwives who were present at egg births throughout history have been silenced? This just has too many logistical weirdnesses to it.  I can't suspend my disbelief that far. And who said angels have egg babies? They aren't birds.  Birds evolved from dinosaurs. Did angels evolve from dinosaurs, too? Again, I am confused.  If the author has thought through the answers to these questions, they need to be shared.  In a way that doesn't involve eight pages of lecturing dialogue. But this is what we get:

Verlaine stole a look at Vera, wondering how all of this was striking her. It seemed that her dubious theories about Easter eggs and royal egg births could be supported by the tsarina's collection. (p 104) 

WTF? Because the Romanovs had Faberge eggs, they MUST be nephilim?  I have a carving of an elephant on my bookshelf.  Does that mean I'm half pachyderm?

9.  The sheer ridiculosity of the idea that Empress Alexandra and her daughters had wings. That she taught them to fly on lazy afternoons in the Crimea. I mean, really.  If anyone had wings, it would have been Felix Yussupov, right?  And isn't it extremely likely that some one in the Romanov entourage would have seen crap like this?  Again, how were these witnesses silenced? Even when on "vacation" at Livadia in the Crimea, there was still an enormous household of servants, tutors, cooks, ladies in waiting, and friends.  It strains credulity that this could have happened. And let's think a little harder about this...if they did have wings, how likely is it that they would have been held prisoner for so long?  Especially toward the end, after the rescue attempt failed?  Couldn't they have flown away from the Ipatiev house?  It boggles the mind. But, no, in the author's world, this is legit:

She spent hours grooming her great pink wings. She would use her leisure time teaching her daughters to fly in the private garden of their country estate in the Crimea. (p 112)

10. I'm still not clear on *why* the archangel Gabriel chose to impregnate Alexandra. What was so important about that time, that situation? It's important for the world-building and mythology, but it was glossed over.  I mean, why not impregnate Anne Boleyn?  Surely she prayed just as hard for a son as Alexandra. What was so important about Alexandra and Russia and that moment in time?  We are never told. 

11.  Trussoni is incredibly bad at building a believable relationship. Verlaine and Evangline are cardboard characters, so it's impossible to take them seriously when they try to feel things.  Like love.  Verlaine runs the gamut from "I hate her, I want to kill her" to "Maybe she's not so bad" to "I freakin' love her" to "I hate that bitch."  The words fly out of his mouth and it feels random because there is no establishment of his emotional history.  Here's the big moment when Evangeline and Verlaine have some Jedi mind-meld moment of togetherness as they escape from danger:

He was sure that all of the thoughts and all of the desires that he'd ever felt had collected in his heart at that moment. (p 290)

So glad he's sure.  Wouldn't want any of those stray, unnamed thoughts or desires getting away from him now.

12. The number of times she uses the phrase "as if" to describe things that are happening is staggering.  Witness the following examples: 

The entire structure had the appearance of a ruin, the light fixtures crude, as if the building had been wired for only the most basic functionality." (p 151)

 It was as if they all felt that a solution was possible, that once they made it to Valko they would overcome the seemingly impossible odds. (p 175)

 ...a second blast of searing heat seized her, this one more intensely painful than the first, as if her skin had been peeled away in one clean sweep. (p 258)

ONE PARAGRAPH LATER 

...the moment Vera woke it seemed to her that she had died and emerged on the other side of existence, as if Charon had in fact taken her across the deathly river Styx to the banks of hell. (p 258)

 ONE SENTENCE LATER

Her body felt stiff and hot, as if she had been dipped in wax. (p 258)

The Takeaway
This book is a flop. There is no deft or beautiful language, no metaphor, nothing of note linguistically. It's just a weird-ass confusing story, told with little grace or charm and absolutely no hint of humor or spark or real life.