Elevation: A quasi review

Well, a little late today, but better late than never, right? Let's hope so, anyway.

I actually had some partially-written posts going, but when my alarm went off this morning I turned it off--then woke up forty minutes later and ended up short of time. I've had my alarm clock for probably twenty-five years (seriously!), maybe more, and I still never hit the snooze button. I always swear I'll get up in a few minutes, and usually, I do. I must have been a little tired. Anyway, on to today's post. Be  warned, there may be mild spoilers for Stephen King's Elevation ahead. Not like I give away the ending or anything.

I don't know what surprised me more: Finding out in early October that Stephen King had yet another book coming out in 2018, or finding out how very small it is. Seriously, when my librarian handed it over to me last week (first one to read it, too!), I almost asked, "Is that all there is?" King's last two books, Sleeping Beauties, co-written with his son, Owen, and The Outsider clocked in at 702 and 576 pages, respectively. Elevation is, by contrast, a slip of a book, a novella, really, of just 146 pages, a book that can fit in one hand and is barely thicker than that hand (pretty cover, though).

It's like a little notebook!

Elevation is the story of a middle-aged man who finds himself inexplicably losing weight--with a catch. When the story opens, he's already dropped 28 pounds, but he looks exactly as he did when he was weighed 240. As his weight continues to drop, at about two pounds a day, there is no change to his outward appearance. The book hearkens back to King's 1984 novel, Thinner (written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, in which an obese lawyer loses weight uncontrollably after being cursed) and Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man, in which a man shrinks by 1/7" a day. In fact, Elevation's protagonist shares the same name, Scott Carey, with the hero of Matheson's book, and the dedication for Elevation reads "Thinking of Richard Matheson." King wears his influences on his sleeve. (NOTE: I now find myself wanting to re-read both Thinner and The Shrinking Man)

It took me about a day to read, and the surprises kept coming, though. For the first time in a long time, I found myself wishing that the book was longer. That's not something I've said about a King book in a while. Now, for the record, I like long books--when they're good. King has put out some really long books (1138 pages for It; 1074 pages for Under the Dome), and I mostly really enjoy them. But both Sleeping Beauties and The Outsider felt way too long for me, full of extraneous characters and too much...well, something. Elevation has none of the bloat, but I found myself wanting more backstory for our main characters, more of the sketches of small-town Maine and the quirky folks who live there. Not this time.*

But the thing that surprised me the most? Unlike Thinner, or even The Shrinking Man, Elevation is suprisingly optimistic. King is well-known for torturing his characters, for putting them through the wringer, for always asking himself, "How can I make things worse for them?" Here, however, the worst thing happens in the first ten pages. King's version of Scott Carey quickly accepts what he thinks his fate will be, and unlike Thinner's Billy Halleck and The Shrinking Man's Scott Carey, King's Carey actually seems to gain from losing: he gains perspective on his own life, and on that of his beloved town of Castle Rock.

Over at Stacy's blog last week, Stacy asked me what genre I thought Elevation fit into. It's clearly not horror. Nor does it fit quite into fantasy. The phrase that came to my mind was "magical realism," even though there's no magic in the traditional sense. Thinking about it some more, it almost has the feel of a fable to me, so that's what I'll go with.

I'm kind of lacking a concluding paragraph here, so I'll turn it over to you: Have you read Elevation? What did you think of it? Have you ever been surprised by something an author did in a book the way I was surprised by Elevation? Please share, and thanks for reading!

*In hindsight, given the style of book, its length is probably a good thing. If King started coloring in the back pages in his typical King way, it might have shifted the narrative in a direction he didn't want to go, maybe even turned this into more of a horror or science fiction novel. Keep true to your vision, Stephen!

Thoughts on Sleeping Beauties, Part I

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about the Netflix series, Godless, a good show on many levels but one that fell far short on living up to the promise of its preview, which looked to be a lot more woman-driven than it turned out to be. This week, I'm finally coming back to Sleeping Beauties, a 700+ page fantasy/horror novel by father-and-son combo Stephen and Owen King, a book I've been turning over in my mind quite a bit as I've thought about this particular post.

The basic premise of Sleeping Beauties is fairly simple: a mysterious 'flu' spreads across the world. Any female, from the tenderest infant to the most withered hag who falls asleep is quickly enshrouded in a cocoon of some mysterious substance. They're still alive, but woe to the person who removes the cocoon: doing so causes the woman to turn into something like a murderous zombie who destroys the fool who opened the cocoon. Having dispatched the offending sap with whatever is at hand (including hands, teeth, a rock, whatever), she falls back asleep and is re-wrapped. What is the world to do?

The sharp-eyed critic of media and society that lives in my house (aka, The Magpie), kind of sneered at the book when she saw that I had it, having heard of its premise on line and having read some reviews. When presented with this bare bones outline, it sounds inherently misogynist. Yet King the Elder at least has never shied away from putting women in starring roles (heck, his very first novel had women in pretty much every important role), and he is quite capable of delivering fully-fleshed out women who are not just damsels in need of man for either rescue or a good lay, or to serve as the sacrificial lamb to spur the hero on to Great Deeds. There are plenty of the latter in his books, to be sure, but not all of his heroines quite fit this mold.

And there's hope at the outset for Sleeping Beauties. The action centers on the down-at-its-heels town of Dooling, West Virginia, and Lila Norcross, town sheriff, and her husband, Clint, who is the psychologist at the nearby women's correctional center. When the story opens, Lila is coming home from a night shift while Clint is about to leave for work. Lila, who is brooding over a particular problem in her marriage, is just about to fall asleep when she gets an urgent call. She spends the first half of the book waging a heroic battle to stay awake and keep order in a rapidly unravelling situation. Predictably, the men of the world--and Dooling--start to come unhinged as the women of the world conk out and get cocooned.

As writers, we're told that one of the things that makes for a strong character is agency, namely, that the character makes choices and decisions based on his or her motivations and desires, and that these actions change the world around them. Without giving too much away (I hope), it's ultimately the women of Dooling who hold the fate of the world--our world, as we know it--in their cocooned hands. The Kings take a great deal of time (too much time, in my view) exploring SPOILER the Man Free version of Dooling that the women of the town find themselves in.END SPOILER The choice the women make, and how they make it, takes a back seat to the action taking place in the man's world.

And that's part of what disappointed me. Despite the huge amount of page time Lila Norcross gets, this is really her husband's story. Clint Norcross has a backtory, one that includes living in The Most Awful Foster Home Ever, which drives so much of his behavior. Lila, on the other hand, seems to have been born Sheriff of Dooling and Wife of Clint. We never really get to know her, not in the depth that we get to know Clint, anyway. In fact, we get more backstory on a lot of the side characters than we get on Lila, and that's too bad.

OKAY, this little post is already too long and I have more to say on this book (some of it good), but it's going to have to wait for next time. How's things by you?

In the DNA?

Did he steal his fate or earn it?
Was he force-fed, did he learn it?*

 Anyone with even a passing interest in the Beatles and/or John Lennon probably thought the same thing I did when hearing "Valotte" -- the first single from Julian Lennon's debut album -- back in the fall of 1984: "Holy shit, he sounds a lot like his father!"


His father, of course, is John Lennon, and the resemblance, physical and vocal, between the two men is striking. One thing I do find interesting: Julian at twenty-one sounded less like his father in his twenties than he did his father at forty. Take a listen to something like "Please Please Me" compared to "Watching the Wheels" and you'll see what I mean.

I'm no expert, but there are two things that seem to go into creating a voice: the physical component is based on things like the shape and size of your larynx and vocal cords, chest and lungs, nasal and oral cavity, and probably more than that, but you get the idea. These things go into making the sound of your voice, the timbre, if I'm using that in quite the right way, and these things are determined by genetics. In other words, Nature.

The other component of voice is the way you speak (or, in this case, sing). It's in your word choice, pronunciation, accents, phrasing. These things are the product of non-physical factors: where you live, the people around you, socio-economics. This is nurture. Some things are absorbed, and some things are put on, but these things are easier to learn, unlearn and change than the physical components of voice. I say "Lawn GUYland" because that's where I grew up and that's how everyone talked. I add "eh" on the end of a lot of my sentences because one of my friends and I used to mock (lovingly) Canadian hockey players and broadcasters and that's how THEY talked; in my case, it became habit (Fun fact: in college, I had a guy peg me as from being from Long Island based on how I said the word "strawberry"; some years later, the sister of a co-worker thought I was from Canada).

Questions of voice and nature versus nurture occurred to me last week as I read Joe Hill's latest (published in 2013, so I guess it's already "old") novel, NOS4A2. Hill is the author of three novels, with a fourth due out in a few weeks, one short story collection and at least one graphic novel. He's also the son of "America's Horror Master," Stephen King, a fact he reputedly withheld from his agent for twenty years until his debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box came out in 2007.

Last year, knowing full well that Hill was the son of King, I read both Heart-Shaped Box and Horns, which came out in 2010. I enjoyed both books and admit that I went in at least partly searching for similarities to King. While there were some, they didn't stand out to me hugely. Heart-Shaped Box felt like a solid debut novel (and Hill won major points with me when, in HSB--SPOILER ALERT--he let a side character that I liked live; I have no doubt his father would have killed that character off 'cuz that's how he rolls), while Horns was a little grittier. If there was any resemblance to King in that one, it was King when he was masquerading as Richard Bachman. But in NOS4A2? Oh, the resemblance is strong.

Aside from the fact that Hill references several of his father's works in this one (remember when I was talking about Easter Eggs last week? Yeah, that post could have been inspired by NOS4A2), it's the style that's eerily similar. There's liberal use of italics and parentheses (though not quite in abundance), and things that advice-givers tell newbie authors to avoid like the plague, like ALL CAPS! AND EXCLAMATION MARKS! AND THE BOOK IS 700 PAGES LONG! And it just really feels like younger Stephen King. So I ask the question: Can something like this be passed down from novelist to novelist, the way elements of appearance or voice (physical) can be? Or is it the result of learning and absorption? What do you think?

*"Victim or the Crime" by Gerrit Graham and Bob Weir

King's Rules

I'm going to be honest here: I'm getting close to full of reading 'writing rules' on blogs, forums, articles and such. It's not that I feel like I'm so superior, so skilled, so AWESOME that I don't need the advice; it's just that I think I've gotten to the point where I've found what works for me, and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm always looking for ways to improve, but I find now I'm more interested in reading about someone's process rather than their rules, if you see the difference.

But then I saw a link to this article: Stephen King's Top 20 Rules for Writers. Well, it's Stephen King, so I've got to check it out. I'm a fan, after all, and whether you like what he does or not, you've got to respect the man. He's got one hell of a track record. When someone as prolific as King, who's sold as many books as King, puts out 'rules,' you read 'em, even if you've had it up to here with 'rules.' Even when you've come to believe the fundamental rule of writing comes down to "Do whatever works," you read.

So, I surfed on over to the article, not ready to swallow it, lock, stock and barrel, but interested in seeing what the man had to say…and I was disappointed. I expected an article written by King. At the very least, I expected an interview in which he dispensed his advice. Instead, the writer pulled tidbits out of King's On Writing and presented them as rules. Twenty of them, supported (mostly) by quotes from the book. Now, King can be as overbearing as anyone who has found success with a particular method, but if you go back and read On Writing, you'll find relatively little that's put down as hard and fast rules. In this article, some of King's 'rules' look pretty ridiculous. Quotes out of context always do.

Here's an example from the article:

10. You have three months. "The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season."

Wow. As a 6- to 8-month guy, that's a little depressing. But, wait! I dug out my copy of "On Writing" and started reading. Here's what King actually said: "Still, I believe the first draft of a book--even a long one--should take no more than three months, the length of a season. Any longer and--for me, at least--the story begins to take on an odd, foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave during a period of severe sunspot activity."

Pretty different in the full context, isn't it? Note how King uses the em dashes to emphasize what happens when it takes longer than three months to write a draft. It takes this out of the realm of "rule" and turns it into "advice." The writer of the article happily turns advice into rules. Like #11:

 11. There are two secrets to success. "I stayed physical[sic] healthy, and I stayed married."

There's all kinds of things wrong with that as a 'rule'--unmarried people can't write? Sick people can't write? Huh? But this came from the paragraphs immediately following what was turned into rule 10. King mentioned how he's asked the question (what's the secret to your success?). The answer given "makes the question go away", but has an element of truth to it. An element of truth is hardly a rule.

The article is full of things like this, which is too bad. Presented this way, King comes off looking just as dogmatic as any professor of writing who tries to force you to outline (in this case, however, King 'forces' you to wing it), or to conform to this structure or that. And, yes, King has his moments. The reality of On Writing, however, is that King encourages readers to write. He dispenses advice based on his experience, and mostly doesn't present them as ironclad rules. The text is full of disclaimers like the "for me" above, and his 'rules' ultimately come down to three things: 

1. You must read a lot, and write a lot.

2. Writing is hard work--don't wait for the muse. 

3. Tell the truth. 

That's really it in a nutshell right there. 

So, what's the point of all this? I suppose it's this: we need to stop worrying about what everyone else says and figure it out for ourselves. Find the way that works for you. It might be King's way. Or my way. More likely, it will have elements of other people's methods mixed in proportions that are all your own. Then, when you figure it out, tell us all so we can try to figure it out for ourselves.

I may have used this before, but I'll leave you with this bit of 'writing advice' from the geniuses of Monty Python. Have a great weekend, all.

Stupid Little Truths

Almost two years ago (Really? It was two years ago already? Yes, yes it was) I wrote about truth in fiction. At that time, it was the poignancy and truth I recognized in the source material of the local high school production of Fiddler on the Roof. The point was that there were large truths about relationships between fathers and daughters, between tradition and change. 'Fiddler' works so well because it's a case of fiction revealing the Truth, and it's something the best fiction should aspire to.

There's another kind of truth that can be found in good fiction. It's one I'm a big believer in. Unlike Truth with a capital 'T', I think of these as 'stupid little truths.'

You know you've encountered them--stupid little truths are those small, seemingly inconsequential details in a work of fiction that make you nod along and say, "Yeah, that's it, right there." I love it when I get something back from a beta reader and find a comment that says, "That's so true!" or "You nailed it!" And I love finding them when I'm reading someone else's book.

Red Hot, Godzilla-sized

New writers are constantly warned not to load up on needless detail and unnecessary verbiage. "Use the fewest words possible," we're told. "Keep your word count down. If it doesn't reveal character or advance the plot, dump it." All good advice, yet  stupid little truths fly in the face of this advice. Unlike Chekhov's Gun, stupid little truths may not be especially important to the story, yet like a pinch of salt, a dash of pepper, a few drops of Red Hot they add so much to the story.

One of the masters of stupid little truths is Stephen King. King peppers his work with stupid little truths. I always think of a short, simple quote from Needful Things: "But the real reason he'd gone was the one most bad decisions have in common: it had seemed like a good idea at the time." The line feels a bit like a throwaway. It's part of a passage that establishes the character of Alan Pangborn, top lawman in the doomed town of Castle Rock. Is it necessary, that line? No, I don't think it is. But I also remember the first time I read it, and how it made me smile and think, "Yeah, that's it, right there!"

Another great stupid little truth comes in King's massive book, IT. In the opening pages we meet six-year-old Georgie Denbrough, who is tasked with getting something from the basement for his older brother, who is bed-ridden with the flu. Like many six-year-olds, Georgie is petrified of the basement. There's a scene of perhaps 12 paragraphs in which Georgie does his best to get this thing from the shelf four steps down the cellar stairs. He's there, clinging to the door frame, fumbling for the light switch, and while the damp smell of basement rises to meet him, his fear of some horrible creature in the basement rises as well. It's perfect, and it captures neatly an experience common to so many children, though it's not strictly necessary. It's a little over one page out of 1100, a handful of paragraphs out of thousands. The Denbrough basement plays no other role in the book, and while Georgie himself looms large as a motivator for his brother's later actions, he himself will be dead by page 15 (since King tells us this on p. 5, it's not exactly a spoiler). George's fear of the basement is not needed; it's unnecessary verbiage, the sort of detail that we might be tempted to keep out of the book in favor of streamlining and minimal word count, yet it's a stupid little truth that adds so much to the reading experience. 

Would we miss it if it weren't there? Of course not. If his editor had said, "Steve, this whole bit here should go," and King had said, "Yeah, you're right,"we never would have known. But it's there, and it enriches the reading experience.

Granted, Stephen King has a lot more leeway than many of us. Still, there's room for 'stupid little truths', and, I think, need. What do you think?

"Hot Sauce, Big & Small" from Jeffrey Krohn's photostream. 

The Disappointing Dome

Once upon a time there were TV shows. These shows aired in 30- or 60-minute blocks of time, once a week, roughly twenty-six times a year between early September and mid-May. They took a few weeks off here and there, for major holidays, and were occasionally pre-empted for special events and other programming. Each week's show was a standalone episode, though on rare occasions you would get a two-part episode. The problem was presented, the crisis ensued, and all was wrapped up within the span of the time slot. With few exceptions, characters did not change a whole lot over the course of a program's lifetime--Barbara Eden's Jeannie was about the same at the end as she was at the beginning, and so was Tony Nelson, Major Healy, and Dr. Bellows. Yes, there were some shows that broke this rule (M*A*S*H was one that did it quite well, in my opinion), but they were the exceptions.

For character development, for real storytelling, we got the miniseries. The first mini-series I remember was Roots, in 1977. Roots was huge. It was an event. It ran for eight nights straight on ABC, 12 hours of programming time, and had everyone talking about it. While there had been miniseries before, Roots ushered in the Golden Age of the Miniseries: Holocaust (1978). The Winds of War (1983). 'V' (1983, not related at all to 'V' for Vendetta; this was more like an expanded version of The Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man). The miniseries was the perfect way to bring some stories to life that were too big for both regular TV and the movies. As an added bonus, they often attracted talented people who were usually only seen on TV appearing as guests on talk or variety shows.

photo by papalars

When I saw that Stephen King's Under The Dome was getting the miniseries treatment, I was excited—and a little peeved.* Like those big stories cited above, the miniseries format seemed perfect for Under The Dome. King's book is full of interesting characters doing interesting (and typically despicable) things to each other, too dense to be easily adapted to a 2 or 2-1/2 hour movie, not without having to cut the character list way down. Could it be done? Sure, Hollywood can do just about anything. Should it be done? In my view, too much would be lost. But a miniseries? Yes, thank you.

And now that I've seen five—or maybe it's six—episodes, I'm not so thrilled. In fact, I'm quite disappointed. Maybe I've been spoiled by the kind of programming that exists on HBO or Showtime, where you get things like The Sopranos, or Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones. You just can't get that sort of grit on the broadcast networks. Yet you can get quality, and Under The Dome, despite King's name as executive producer, and despite being backed by the television arm of Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, is falling short.

This is not me complaining about how much it differs from the book, though I do that for the benefit of my wife, who scoffs at certain things that have happened (like Stephen King needs me to defend him). No, this is about the quality of the show. I expected better. The minseries format should allow for the story to develop at the right pace, and it's the pacing that feels all out of whack to me. The problem is that each episode should have been longer, either 1-1/2 or 2 hours long, like the miniseries in the days of yore. Under The Dome is only an hour, and on network TV, one hour means about 42 minutes of actual programming. The result is that each episode feels rushed, cramped like Drusilla's foot in Cinderella's glass slipper. Add to that the fact we're keeping track of so many characters (Barbie, Julia, Big Jim, Junior, Phil, Linda, Scarecrow Joe), we end up jumping so much that we don't get enough of any one of them. It's ironic that the miniseries could stand a trimming down of the character list, given that one of the strengths of the format should have been the ability to follow more characters.

Still, as unhappy as I've been with the production, I've continued watching. Part of the interest has been in seeing how it's going to end--I want to know. I figured I could put up with less than stellar acting, and with occasional, head-scratching bits of logic. Let's see how it ends. And then came the unexpected news, just the other day: it's not ending. Under The Dome has been renewed for a second season. Wait, what? How do you renew a mini-series? Oh, I guess it's not a mini-series after all, and never WAS a mini-series. It feels like a ripoff, like a bait-and-switch at a smarmy car dealer. Part of the appeal of the minseries is that you're going to get a full story, spread out over time, but that it's going to have a conclusion. Like the best books, a miniseries should end with us wanting it to go on, though we know it can't. Now that I've learned that Under The Dome has no end, I'm actually less compelled to keep watching.

Have you been watching Under The Dome? What do you think? Have a great weekend.

*I'll perhaps explain this another time.

Monday Musing: Print Only

© Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar

Almost as soon as I announced my intention to take a short break from the blog, I saw/read/heard things that made me say, "Oh! I've got to blog about that!" Naturally. But I'd broken too many promises in the past, too often I'd written, "Hey, on Friday, I'm going to…" and never done it. This time, I was determined to keep my promise.

Anyway, one of the items that caught my eye was the news that Stephen King's newest novel, Joyland (and I swear, I'm not getting paid for plugging this book in any way, shape or form--I wish I was!), was going to be released only in print. No e-book. No digital download. Just paperback (oh, and a limited edition hardback). Charles Ardai, co-founder and editor of Hard Case Crime, the book's publisher, wrote aninteresting article explaining the decision. "Presentation matters," Ardai said. Part of his purpose in founding Hard Case was to "replicate a pleasure from the past – not just the type of stories told in those old books but the physical artifact itself." Indeed, the books published by Hard Case have quite the, uh, retro look, the sort of covers that caused me to break into a sweat when I came across them in the early stages of adolescence. Ahem, enough about that.

In addition to recapturing a bit of the past, Mr. Ardai said that another reason for not doing a digital version of Joyland was because of his and Mr. King's "desire to support traditional booksellers." He goes on to say, "it’s frightening to see the decline in the fortunes of bookstores over the last handful of years." Indeed, it is. Supporting and saving bookstores is a noble notion, and it's great to have a heavy hitter like Stephen King in on the fight. Sadly, it's also a pointless gesture, I feel, but not because I am convinced that bookstores are going the way of the dinosaur. They might, but not yet, anyway. No, the reason this gesture is pointless is because Joyland is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and as an audio book through iTunes. It's probably also sitting on the racks at Wal-mart and other non-bookstore booksellers. It seems to me that the only way to support traditional bookstores is to make the books available only through traditional bookstores, and that is just not going to happen (and I wonder--if King told Amazon, "Sorry, you can't sell this," what would happen? Lawsuit? Would Amazon break the "Buy now" links on all of King's books? Who knows?). Even a guy like Stephen King, who is playing with a huge pile of house money, isn't going to do that.

Selling Fun

"Never forget, we sell fun."

That quote comes from a character in Joyland, Stephen King's most recent book. Released earlier this month, the book is notable in part because King has decided not to release it as in print only, at least for now. That decision is actually the subject for another post, another day. No promises, though.

AT any rate, in an interview for Parade magazine, King had this to say: “The major job is still to entertain people. Joyland really took off for me when the old guy who owns the place says, ‘Never forget, we sell fun.’ That’s what we’re supposed to do—writers, filmmakers, all of us. That's why they let us stay in the playground."

'Fun' is such a strange word. The implication of 'fun' is…well, fun. Laughing. Smiling. Happy sounds and warm feelings. Tigger is fun. Clueless Pooh (or accidental genius Pooh) is fun. Fun can even be a book that is somewhat unpleasant but has that "Holy crap, I never saw that coming!" moment. Think Gone Girl (or most anything  by Gillian Flynn, come to think of it). As long as the twist doesn't feel like a cheat, it's usually pretty damn fun. But if there's no twist? If you're dealing with straight up tension? Is that fun?

Thinking of movies for a moment, I can't say that The Exorcist was 'fun.' I was about 7 or 8 when that movie came out; just seeing the commercials on TV scared me, and Tubular Bells still gives me the shivers. When I finally saw the film, it scared the hell out of me, and though I was past the age for movie-induced nightmares, I still got 'em. Fun? Maybe, maybe not, but it was one hell of a good movie.

Fun or fright? Kind of hard to tell

And that's the odd thing about it, isn't it? 'Fun' is different for everybody. Some love roller coasters, some don't. Some find fun in collecting stamps, some in skydiving. There's no real right or wrong to it, it's just the way we are. I don't know that I'd say what I've written so far is 'fun.' Some of my short pieces, yes, but the novels, not so much. In fact, if you read one of my novels and said to me, "Hey, thanks, that was a lot of fun," I'd probably wonder where I went wrong (or what was wrong with you, hah hah). I think that there's fun in them, amusing lines, segments that make you chuckle, but not necessarily fun. I don't feel like the sort of person who rights 'good time stories.' Though I don't think I write ultra dark and depressing stuff, either.

The good thing is, there's room for all of it.

 Have a great weekend, all.



Photo from Fellowship of the Rich.

Aberrant? Oh, You Betcha

Congratulations to Lisa L. Regan on the arrival of her second book, Aberration, born yesterday to already strong reviews! I'm looking forward to getting hold of this one, it promises to be an enjoyable read, in that strange way that suspense is enjoyable.

Rather than do any sort of blog tour, Lisa decided to do something different: a blog hop. And so we have The Aberration Blog Hop: Finding The Most Aberrant Characters. 

How does it work? Easy. Sign up (Hurry! Today is the last day!), list your top five choices for most aberrant character from literature, television, or movies, and Bob's your uncle. You can also add a blurb on a favorite aberrant character from your own work, if you're one of them writer types (and let's face it, if you're reading this, you probably are).

Finding the most aberrant character from books, TV and movies is no easy task; there are just so many of them. Those listed below have struck me as particularly aberrant for one reason or another, though I note that, as I've been reading other entries, I repeatedly find myself smacking my forehead, saying, "How could I have missed that one?" Like I said, there are a lot of them. And, by the way, it's funny how we focus so much on the negative side of 'Aberrant'. There's a shading of the word as defined that implies 'aberrant=bad', though you could make the argument that aberrant is just different, which is why Dana Mason had Forrest Gump on her list. That certainly made me think differently, though I was already committed. Who are they? Here we go (in no particular order):

Annie Wilkes, Misery, by Stephen King. The good news for writer Paul Sheldon—he's dragged from his wrecked car by a registered nurse who adores his books and is his "number one fan." The bad news? He's been dragged from his wrecked car by a registered nurse who adores his books and is his "number one fan." Annie Wilkes makes all those Goodreads/Amazon review trolls look like Gandhi. Annie is horribly disappointed when she finds Paul kills off her favorite romance heroine in the final installment of his Misery Chastain adventures, and him write a new one, just for her. Along the way, she gets him hooked on painkillers, makes him drink rinsewater, and has lots of fun with sharp objects. What's most frightening about this book is that, unlike King's tales of vampires and extraterrestrial spiders disguising themselves as killer clowns, there is nothing paranormal about it. Annie Wilkes could—and probably does—exist.

By the way, if you're a writer you should read this book, even if you aren't a King fan. There are loads of interesting 'writer stuff' in here, specifically about playing fair and not 'cheating the reader'. Writers writing about writers often feel self-indulgent. Not this one.

Hannibal Lecter, Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, etc., by Thomas Harris. The good doctor is turning up on a lot of these lists, and with good reason. When you watch Anthony Hopkins' riveting take on Lecter in the film version of Silence of the Lambs, it's hard to remember that Dr. Lecter was a bit player in terms of 'page time' in Red Dragon, Harris's first book to feature the cannibalistic doctor. Lecter is a terrifying villain because of his intellect and mastery of psychology. He's also witty, tasteful, classy, and charming in his way, to the point where you can almost forget he eats people. In Red Dragon, he goes out of his way to try to kill Will Graham from behind bars, using the classified ads of a sleazy tabloid to communicate with the serial killer known as The Tooth Fairy.

Roger, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. Roger is a cruel and sadistic boy, whose impulses to tease, torture, and bully have been kept in check by society. On the island, free of the rules and policing adults, Roger gets his jollies by bullying the 'littluns', killing a pig with a very sharp stick, and, eventually, torturing other boys, like Samneric. One of the beautiful things about this book is how so much of the violence is implied. We know what he did to the pig, and where he put that stick. We're never sure what he does to the other boys, and that's brilliant storytelling. He is a frightening character, because he makes us wonder about ourselves in the same situation.

Jumping over to movies, we're going to go with Mr. Blonde, of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. Michael Madsen's portrayal of Mr. Blonde, aka Vic Vega, is one of the highlights of Tarantino's directorial debut. The guy is so cool and collected as he antagonizes his fellow robbers, keeping a "We're just joking here" gleam in his eyes, yet you know he won't hesitate to do something awful. And that he does. I'm hearing Stuck in the Middle With You as I write this, and it's creeping me out. Time to move on.

The Joker, Batman. Sure, it's easy to point to Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight as the be-all and end-all performance take on this character, but look at this (listen, too) and tell me this isn't somehow worse:

Victor Frankenstein, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. The guy builds people out of spare parts. 'nuff said.

(Dis)Honorable mentions: Tyler Durden, Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, George Stark, The Dark Half by Stephen King. Figments of the imagination come to life, these two wreak havoc on their 'creators' in often brutal, ways.

Gaear Grimsrud, Fargo. The 'Big Fella' knows how to use a wood chipper.

About 80% of the adults in Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, but I'll single out Bill Sikes, the housebreaker. Fagin is nasty and manipulative; Sikes is an out-and-out brute who beats women and children alike.

And one more: Walter White, Breaking Bad. We can sympathize with him early on, but the man shows no remorse, no regard, no thought to the lives he's likely ruining by making meth. And he's full of himself. Check out this brilliant clip:


As for my own work, sadly, I don't deal (so far) with characters like these, for the most part. However, there is a character, Roger Fields, in BARTON'S WOMEN. He's a bit player who doesn't figure prominently in the book, but every time I wrote a scene with him in it, I had the creeping feeling that there was something really sleazy about the guy, just waiting to be discovered. And yes, the name choice was deliberate (see entry #3).

Wow, that's about it for me. What about you? Who's on YOUR list? Thanks for stopping and reading, thanks to Lisa for coming up with this great idea. Have a great weekend, and congratulations to Lisa for book #2!

Writing with the King

First off, big thanks to everyone who commented on my post earlier this week. The question, can you get away with a character who doesn't change? drew many interesting responses. And this may be one of these things where I have to take another look at the story and character in question, and see if he does, in fact change on a level that I don't notice, or not. And if not, can I get away with it? This story is firmly on the backburner. Parallel Lives is still in query mode, and my second book is 'finished' in a rough drafty sort of way, so I may be looking for something to work on, and that story could be it. Although there is something else that has been bubbling on the stove in the back room of my mind for a while, and the aroma has been wafting out into the main room at times, so I may have something else to start soon, we'll see. I appreciate the comments, as always.

Last weekend I found myself spending forty minutes in front of a Youtube video of Stephen King giving a talk at George Mason University last fall, when he was honored with received the Mason Award for "extraordinary contributions to bringing literature to a wide reading public." King was funny and self-deprecating, had some interesting tales of life on book tour, talked a little bit about his process, and poked fun at the audience—but in a good way. "You don't get out much, do you?" he asked at one point. And then, later, "You're out on Friday night because of books. Clap! Books! The most potent weapon against the assholes of the world – books!"

He also read an excerpt: not from what was then going to be his soon-to-be published novel, 11/22/63 (which I recommend, by the way), nor for his Dark Tower 4.5: The Wind Through the Keyhole, but from what will be his next novel (or maybe the one after that), called Dr. Sleep. This is the continuation of the story of Danny Torrance, last seen as a six-year old being chased around the Overlook hotel by ghosts and his insane father in The Shining. The story picks up with Danny as a middle-aged man, and is scheduled for a 2013 release.

During the reading, King showed exactly what makes him so good at what he does. At least in my opinion. I realize not everyone likes him. The piece he read was about the antagonists of his story, a group he called The Tribe (and, from reading the description of Dr. Sleep on King's website, I think this name may have changed since then. Ah, the drafting process). There are two things about this piece that I love so much. First, King has a way for delving deep—into the ordinary. He goes on at length about The Tribe, also known as the RV people, a group of mostly old people who roam the countryside in their Recreational Vehicles. He goes on for several pages describing these people, and it's perfect, because we've all seen them, anyone who's traveled on the turnpikes and interstates of this country have seen them, and you know them. Consider this passage:

"Gas hogs driven by bespectacled Golden Oldies hunched over the wheel, gripping it like they think it's going to fly away"…. "The men wearing floppy golf hats or long-billed fishing caps. The women in stretch pants—always powder blue—and shirts that say things like 'Ask me about my grandchildren' or 'Jesus is King' or 'Happy Wanderer.' You'd rather go half a mile down the road to the Waffle House or Shoney's because you know they'll take forever to order, mooning over the menu because you know they'll always want the Quarter pounder without the pickles, or their Whoppers without the sauce."

And you know these people! You've seen them! You've gotten stuck behind them, on the highway and in the rest area. You've seen them 'mooning over the menu', and paying separately, each one reaching into their little change purses and counting out to the penny while the line builds up and you think about how much time you're losing while you're stuck here.

And then, because King is King, he turns it on its head: 

"And, if you happen to be one of those unfortunate people who has ever lost a kid--nothing left but a bike in a vacant lot down the street, or a little cap lying in the bushes at the edge of a nearby stream--you probably never thought about them, did you?" 

Brilliant. With that twist, the entire tone of the piece changes. It starts as a slightly mocking—but affectionate—poke at elderly travelers and veers into the land of horror. You can hear it in the room, too, the way it goes even quieter than before. That sort of hush that comes over people when something heavy goes down.

This is what King does so well. He takes the ordinary and describes it in minute detail, makes us nod our heads and say, "Yeah, that's right, I've been there." The little chuckles from the audience as he read was because they've all seen it. They've experienced the RV people. This is a case of tapping into a truth of the human experience, and shining a light on it, and, when King is on his game, he does it brilliantly. He made his bones as a horror writer, but including those familiar details is part of what makes him so good at writing, period. Think non-horror, like The Body (Stand By Me), or Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, or even 11/22/63, whose paranormal elements are more like a framing device than the focus of the book. And even in his horror books, quite often the most gripping passages are ordinary things we've all experienced: Kids walking through the woods at night, or having to get something out of the scary basement. One of my favorite bits all-time is Larry Underwood's journey through the Lincoln Tunnel in The Stand—horrors of the mind, which are often far worse than reality.

I've talked about The Truth before. This is another example of The Truth in action. Check out the video, one on Vimeo, produced by GMU, the other a 'bootleg' from an audience member, which cuts a little off the beginning and ten minutes or so after King finishes reading (the reading begins at about the 26:45 mark and runs about 15 minutes). I'm looking forward to Dr. Sleep.

Now, in another note, Robin Kristoff at Bends in the Writer's Road has written an interesting piece on her blog today (last night, I guess) that builds off of my Unforgivable Sins posts. Take a look at what she has to say. Thanks for stopping, have a great weekend, all.