Wednesday, August 15, 2012


Victorian England, My Historical Milieu of Choice


I love history and I love reading and writing Historical fiction. That said, I confess that I’ve never met an era I didn’t like and—had I but world enough and time—could happily pen novels set in Stone age Britain, Ancient Egypt, or whenever or wherever—there are so many fascinating episodes in human history (and prehistory).

I grew up in northern England watching Sherlock Holmes mysteries and Victorian sitting-room dramas on the BBC.  Of course, remnants of the past are everywhere in Britain, but the Victorian era in particular is a ghost that has lingered long into the daytime and many 19th century buildings and bridges remain in daily use, right down to the primary school I attended: a Victorian relic with floorboards scuffed-smooth by the feet of generations of children. I can recall sitting at my battered wooden desk (that still held its glass inkwell!) in a high-ceilinged classroom poorly heated by radiators that gurgled and hissed but failed to throw out any real warmth. Hung on the wall was a brittle, sun-yellowed world map with the territories of the British Empire daubed in fading red. (God knows how long that poster had hung there—perhaps Rudyard Kipling’s dad pinned it up.)

Although I have written in various genres and eras, Victorian England remains a favorite milieu. Fiction writers are always looking for drama and London in the reign of Victoria was the acme of industrial progress, the capitol of finance and the seat of a sprawling Empire. And while Victorian London embodied the modern, it remained tethered to its historical past. Foreign visitors as diverse as Leon Trotsky and Gustave Dore described the city as a medieval mazework of narrow and meandering  streets, skewered by modern straight thoroughfares and the steely tracks of the newly-constructed railways. In a nation where revolution never took hold, the monarchy endured and the aristocracy flourished. Thus England retained its class system with all its implicit moral contradictions. While the upper classes resided in palaces and stately homes, eating off silver and attended by a retinue of servants, the working classes ground out lives of desperation in abject poverty. Prostitution was rife. Brothels and opium dens operated openly. And in the worst of the slums, known as “rookeries,” a vast criminal underground thrived beyond the rule of law.

For a novelist, it provides a grand stage upon which to place one’s characters, give them a nudge to set them in motion, and watch the uncoiling conflict of protagonist versus antagonist buffeted by the social maelstrom of the era. As part of the research for my gothic suspense novel, Angel of Highgate, I visited London on a number of occasions to walk the ground where the action takes place. For a writer, it is a thrill to stroll along streets still jostled by the ghosts of literary giants such as Dickens, Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde (amongst many, many others).

One of the central themes I explore in Angel of Highgate is the Victorian fetishization of death and mourning. Despite all the advances of medicine, many Victorians died young, cut down in the bloom of life by the ravages of cholera, typhoid—and the biggest killer, Tuberculosis (or Consumption as it was then known)—a disease that defied class barriers and killed high and low alike. The spectre of Consumption became a memento-mori for the age and Victorians—already given to maudlin sentimentality—responded by elevating the rituals surrounding death and mourning into a fetish. The vile, reeking, bone-strewn churchyards described by Dickens were replaced by the creation of modern, gorgeously landscaped cemeteries such as Victoria Park, Brookwood, Kensal Green, and the crowning glory, Highgate Cemetery, arguably the most beautiful and atmospheric necropolis in the capitol.

The high point of each of my research jaunts was a trip to Highgate Cemetery. Once abandoned to vandals and the encroachment of nature, Highgate has since been rescued by a volunteer group, Friends of Highgate Cemetery, who are working to preserve and restore the cemetery. The group also conducts tours. Audrey Niffenegger, the author The Time Traveller’s Daughter, often works as a volunteer at Highgate during the summers and drew upon her experiences in the writing of her most recent novel Her Fearful Symmetry.)

Angel of Highgate begins and ends in Highgate Cemetery. Following the novel’s protagonist, the Byronesque rakehell, Lord Geoffrey Thraxton, the reader is whisked through London’s fog-bound streets from a champagne soiree in the mummy room of the British Museum, to a pistol duel on Wimbledon Common, to a harrowing life-or-death struggle with violent mobsmen in the lawless criminal enclave of the Seven Dials Rookery. The story ends at the cemetery, as Highgate works its magic, turning tragedy in beauty, sorrow into acceptance  and hope where once was only loss.

Angel of Highgate received an Editorial Recommendation from Kirkus Reviews. The full review can be read here: http://bit.ly/JjCFRG
The ebook version of Angel of Highgate is available for only $2.99 cents through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo. A trade paperback version can be purchased through the Third Place Books website. 

Victorian England, My Historical Mileau of Choice

I love history and I love reading and writing Historical fiction. That said, I confess that I’ve never met an era I didn’t like and—had I but world enough and time—could happily pen novels set in Stone age Britain, Ancient Egypt, or whenever or wherever—there are so many fascinating episodes in human history (and prehistory).

I grew up in northern England watching Sherlock Holmes mysteries and Victorian sitting-room dramas on the BBC.  Of course, remnants of the past are everywhere in Britain, but the Victorian era in particular is a ghost that has lingered long into the daytime and many 19th century buildings and bridges remain in daily use, right down to the primary school I attended: a Victorian relic with floorboards scuffed-smooth by the feet of generations of children. I can recall sitting at my battered wooden desk (that still held its glass inkwell!) in a high-ceilinged classroom poorly heated by radiators that gurgled and hissed but failed to throw out any real warmth. Hung on the wall was a brittle, sun-yellowed world map with the territories of the British Empire daubed in fading red. (God knows how long that poster had hung there—perhaps Rudyard Kipling’s dad pinned it up.)

Although I have written in various genres and eras, Victorian England remains a favorite milieu. Fiction writers are always looking for drama and London in the reign of Victoria was the acme of industrial progress, the capitol of finance and the seat of a sprawling Empire. And while Victorian London embodied the modern, it remained tethered to its historical past. Foreign visitors as diverse as Leon Trotsky and Gustave Dore described the city as a medieval mazework of narrow and meandering  streets, skewered by modern straight thoroughfares and the steely tracks of the newly-constructed railways. In a nation where revolution never took hold, the monarchy endured and the aristocracy flourished. Thus England retained its class system with all its implicit moral contradictions. While the upper classes resided in palaces and stately homes, eating off silver and attended by a retinue of servants, the working classes ground out lives of desperation in abject poverty. Prostitution was rife. Brothels and opium dens operated openly. And in the worst of the slums, known as “rookeries,” a vast criminal underground thrived beyond the rule of law.

For a novelist, it provides a grand stage upon which to place one’s characters, give them a nudge to set them in motion, and watch the uncoiling conflict of protagonist versus antagonist buffeted by the social maelstrom of the era. As part of the research for my gothic suspense novel, Angel of Highgate, I visited London on a number of occasions to walk the ground where the action takes place. For a writer, it is a thrill to stroll along streets still jostled by the ghosts of literary giants such as Dickens, Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde (amongst many, many others).

One of the central themes I explore in Angel of Highgate is the Victorian fetishization of death and mourning. Despite all the advances of medicine, many Victorians died young, cut down in the bloom of life by the ravages of cholera, typhoid—and the biggest killer, Tuberculosis (or Consumption as it was then known)—a disease that defied class barriers and killed high and low alike. The spectre of Consumption became a memento-mori for the age and Victorians—already given to maudlin sentimentality—responded by elevating the rituals surrounding death and mourning into a fetish. The vile, reeking, bone-strewn churchyards described by Dickens were replaced by the creation of modern, gorgeously landscaped cemeteries such as Victoria Park, Brookwood, Kensal Green, and the crowning glory, Highgate Cemetery, arguably the most beautiful and atmospheric necropolis in the capitol.

The high point of each of my research jaunts was a trip to Highgate Cemetery. Once abandoned to vandals and the encroachment of nature, Highgate has since been rescued by a volunteer group, Friends of Highgate Cemetery, who are working to preserve and restore the cemetery. The group also conducts tours. Audrey Niffenegger, the author The Time Traveller’s Daughter, often works as a volunteer at Highgate during the summers and drew upon her experiences in the writing of her most recent novel Her Fearful Symmetry.)

Angel of Highgate begins and ends in Highgate Cemetery. Following the novel’s protagonist, the Byronesque rakehell, Lord Geoffrey Thraxton, the reader is whisked through London’s fog-bound streets from a champagne soiree in the mummy room of the British Museum, to a pistol duel on Wimbledon Common, to a harrowing life-or-death struggle with violent mobsmen in the lawless criminal enclave of the Seven Dials Rookery. The story ends at the cemetery, as Highgate works its magic, turning tragedy in beauty, sorrow into acceptance  and hope where once was only loss.

Angel of Highgate received an Editorial Recommendation from Kirkus Reviews. The full review can be read here: http://bit.ly/JjCFRG
The ebook version of Angel of Highgate is available for only $2.99 cents through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo. A trade paperback version can be purchased through the Third Place Books website. You can also view upcoming novels and follow me through this Blog or on Twitter.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012


NOVEL SKOOL: Finding a Premise . . . or, If you can’t pitch it you can’t sell it.

Writers are always being encouraged to “write what you love,” or “write what you’re passionate about.” Following a close second is the admonitory, “Don’t write for the market.”
This sage advice is regularly doled out by Agents and Editors at writing conferences and in breathless articles featured in the kind of glossy writing magazines with Cosmo-style teasers on their covers such as, “Earn $150,000 a year Writing Greeting Card Verse.”
            When I hear this “good advice” repeated ad nauseum, my eyes glaze over like Krispy-Crèmes. “The write your passion” advice is given by industry professionals who are well-meaning but who have nothing invested in the three years (on average) it takes a writer to complete a novel. The reality is that you must have a novel that’s marketable, and so it needs to have some kind of commercial “hook.” I sincerely believe that great writing alone is not enough to sell a book in today’s tough market. As proof of this I offer up all the many mega-blockbuster novels of recent times that have a great commercial hook, but feature the prose style of a twelve year-old scribbling in crayon.
My point is that this “good advice” is a relic from the Golden Age of Publishing that grows increasingly irrelevant in the of modern world of trend-driven publishing.
So for the rest of us, a more pragmatic approach is necessary. I’m not advocating that you bang out a zombie novel simply because zombie novels are currently hot (and a little gangrenous), but you always have to keep in mind the commercial appeal of your work, and that has never been easy to guess at.  
The history of publishing is replete with tragic stories of writers whose books went onto success only after the despairing novelist killed him/herself following years of rejection. The flip side of that analogy is the example of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book rejected by every major publisher before being picked up by a small press. As the near-legendary story goes (cue the inspiring music), it then went on to become a best seller with zillions of copies sold worldwide. (I’m still waiting for the movie version and hoping that Stephen Colbert is cast as the motorcycle.)
            Time is a writer’s most precious resource and must be spent with much forethought. I believe that it’s no accident that many best-selling books reflect (and sometimes anticipate) the latest trends in popular culture.
For years, the publishing industry has been quick to hop on the latest trend du jour and ride that hobbyhorse until it dies under them. Publishers then look around for a bright, shiny, new hobbyhorse, and it’s off to the races again. When I graduated from college with a Master’s Degree in English (yes, what was I thinking?) I worked a full-time job (with overtime) and taught two English classes at a community college, scrimping and saving so I could one day quit my day job(s) to write the novel I had always wanted to write.
The novel was finished and after years of fruitless querying, eventually piqued the interest of an agent I met at a conference. She loved my writing style and loved the book but said, “I don’t how I’d begin to sell this.” Today, that novel would be described as a paranormal thriller. Unfortunately, this was twenty years before The X Files. No one knew what a “paranormal thriller” was. At that time Stephen King was—uh, well, king—and horror was huge.
            And then Robert Clancy crashed a giant submarine through everything with his scrupulously researched Techno-Thrillers, torpedoing the Horror renaissance.  
The Next Big Trend had arrived and publishers rummaged the slush piles for anything high-tech: high tech stealth planes, high tech satellites, high tech warships, high tech underpants—you name it. The trickle of high tech clones thickened to a glut and the trend eventually choked on itself (as all trends do) leaving Clancy (the genre’s indisputable master), still crouched at the Techno-thriller control panel while most of the Clancy wannabes flamed-out and burned up on re-entry. (Bar tender, mix me another metaphor.)
            Over the years, the Publishing Industry has come to closely mirror the Hollywood Screenplay mill. Today’s wannabe Novelist must draft a pitch letter which, much like the High Concept logline of Hollywood Movies, distills the essence of an entire novel down to one or two sentences, an idea most famously parodied in Robert Altman’s movie, The Player: “It’s like Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman.”
If you ever do get a chance to attend a writer’s conference and pitch to an agent (which I highly recommend), you will instantly realize the necessity of a penning a book premise that can be recited by heart in under a minute.
And it helps if it’s a zinger.
I remember pitching my 500-page suspense novel at my first writer’s conference. Most agents understand that we introvert writers are nervous and do their best to put us at ease. However, I was pitching to a Big Hollywood Mover & Shaker who was trolling for books that would make good movies. He was a short, bald man who did not flicker a smile when he shook my hand. Introductions over, he lounged back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest, and skewered me with a paint-peeling stare. “Okay,” he grunted. “Pitch me whatcha got.”
So I started reading from my pitch, which was a full page long. Now and then he’d interrupt with brusque, cutting questions that had me backpedalling to stammer out an explanation. I’m articulate and pretty good at thinking on my feet, but I remember hearing—from somewhere a hundred miles away—the idiot in charge of my mouth blathering on with increasingly lame explanations about what happened at the end of the first act and why the ending made sense.
Sadly for me, Mr. Hollywood knew story craft inside and out, and his questions were like scalpel cuts severing tendons until the meat puppet of my novel collapsed to the floor. At that moment I realized that my novel was a tangled yarn ball of ideas five-hundred pages long. I didn’t have one premise. I had four or five premises struggling to operate in one story. Amazingly, when my ramble stuttered to a halt, Mr. Hollywood chewed his lower lip for a silent moment, pondering, and grunted, “Send it to me.”
Convinced of my storytelling genius, I did . . . and of course, it was rejected.
Like all rejections, it was crushing, but the sane part of me realized I’d just been taught a valuable lesson: begin a novel only after you’ve nailed down a one to three sentence premise.
From that experience I realized the importance of crafting a premise that focuses the story like a laser beam. I also understood other sage pieces of advice I have since encountered, my favorite of which is: “Simple stories, complex characters.”
If you’ve ever read a novel or watched a movie that you finally gave up because you had no idea where the story was going on, or no longer cared about the characters and their problems, chances are it broke that rule.
Thank you, Mister Hollywood. Lesson burned . . . I mean, learned.
Of necessity, movies are structurally simpler than most novels, and perhaps trying to reduce a novel premise to one sentence is a bit reductive. But a premise of one, two, or three sentences should be sufficient.
            So here is my checklist for five essential elements contained in the premise of your novel:
1. A great idea that is uniquely familiar
2. An idea that promises conflict
3. An idea that clearly fits an established genre
4. An idea with mass appeal
5. An idea with a sympathetic main character(s)
            Yes, I have broken one or all of these rules in some of the novels I have written . . . and have the bruises to show for it. Nowadays, I not only begin with a premise, I write the pitch letter first—draft after draft—until I’ve crafted a premise and pitch letter that is totally irresistible. Only then, once I know what my novel is about, do I start plotting.
            More next time on the Premise, the Pitch, and The Plot.

NOVEL SKOOL: Finding a Premise . . . or, If you can’t pitch it you can’t sell it.

Writers are always being encouraged to “write what you love,” or “write what you’re passionate about.” Following a close second is the admonitory, “Don’t write for the market.”
This sage advice is regularly doled out by Agents and Editors at writing conferences and in breathless articles featured in the kind of glossy writing magazines with Cosmo-style teasers on their covers such as, “Earn $150,000 a year Writing Greeting Card Verse.”
            When I hear this “good advice” repeated ad nauseum, my eyes glaze over like Krispy-Crèmes. “The write your passion” advice is given by industry professionals who are well-meaning but who have nothing invested in the three years (on average) it takes a writer to complete a novel. The reality is that you must have a novel that’s marketable, and so it needs to have some kind of commercial “hook.” I sincerely believe that great writing alone is not enough to sell a book in today’s tough market. As proof of this I offer up all the many mega-blockbuster novels of recent times that have a great commercial hook, but feature the prose style of a twelve year-old scribbling in crayon.
My point is that this “good advice” is a relic from the Golden Age of Publishing that grows increasingly irrelevant in the of modern world of trend-driven publishing.
So for the rest of us, a more pragmatic approach is necessary. I’m not advocating that you bang out a zombie novel simply because zombie novels are currently hot (and a little gangrenous), but you always have to keep in mind the commercial appeal of your work, and that has never been easy to guess at.  
The history of publishing is replete with tragic stories of writers whose books went onto success only after the despairing novelist killed him/herself following years of rejection. The flip side of that analogy is the example of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book rejected by every major publisher before being picked up by a small press. As the near-legendary story goes (cue the inspiring music), it then went on to become a best seller with zillions of copies sold worldwide. (I’m still waiting for the movie version and hoping that Stephen Colbert is cast as the motorcycle.)
            Time is a writer’s most precious resource and must be spent with much forethought. I believe that it’s no accident that many best-selling books reflect (and sometimes anticipate) the latest trends in popular culture.
For years, the publishing industry has been quick to hop on the latest trend du jour and ride that hobbyhorse until it dies under them. Publishers then look around for a bright, shiny, new hobbyhorse, and it’s off to the races again. When I graduated from college with a Master’s Degree in English (yes, what was I thinking?) I worked a full-time job (with overtime) and taught two English classes at a community college, scrimping and saving so I could one day quit my day job(s) to write the novel I had always wanted to write.
The novel was finished and after years of fruitless querying, eventually piqued the interest of an agent I met at a conference. She loved my writing style and loved the book but said, “I don’t how I’d begin to sell this.” Today, that novel would be described as a paranormal thriller. Unfortunately, this was twenty years before The X Files. No one knew what a “paranormal thriller” was. At that time Stephen King was—uh, well, king—and horror was huge.
            And then Robert Clancy crashed a giant submarine through everything with his scrupulously researched Techno-Thrillers, torpedoing the Horror renaissance.  
The Next Big Trend had arrived and publishers rummaged the slush piles for anything high-tech: high tech stealth planes, high tech satellites, high tech warships, high tech underpants—you name it. The trickle of high tech clones thickened to a glut and the trend eventually choked on itself (as all trends do) leaving Clancy (the genre’s indisputable master), still crouched at the Techno-thriller control panel while most of the Clancy wannabes flamed-out and burned up on re-entry. (Bar tender, mix me another metaphor.)
            Over the years, the Publishing Industry has come to closely mirror the Hollywood Screenplay mill. Today’s wannabe Novelist must draft a pitch letter which, much like the High Concept logline of Hollywood Movies, distills the essence of an entire novel down to one or two sentences, an idea most famously parodied in Robert Altman’s movie, The Player: “It’s like Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman.”
If you ever do get a chance to attend a writer’s conference and pitch to an agent (which I highly recommend), you will instantly realize the necessity of a penning a book premise that can be recited by heart in under a minute.
And it helps if it’s a zinger.
I remember pitching my 500-page suspense novel at my first writer’s conference. Most agents understand that we introvert writers are nervous and do their best to put us at ease. However, I was pitching to a Big Hollywood Mover & Shaker who was trolling for books that would make good movies. He was a short, bald man who did not flicker a smile when he shook my hand. Introductions over, he lounged back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest, and skewered me with a paint-peeling stare. “Okay,” he grunted. “Pitch me whatcha got.”
So I started reading from my pitch, which was a full page long. Now and then he’d interrupt with brusque, cutting questions that had me backpedalling to stammer out an explanation. I’m articulate and pretty good at thinking on my feet, but I remember hearing—from somewhere a hundred miles away—the idiot in charge of my mouth blathering on with increasingly lame explanations about what happened at the end of the first act and why the ending made sense.
Sadly for me, Mr. Hollywood knew story craft inside and out, and his questions were like scalpel cuts severing tendons until the meat puppet of my novel collapsed to the floor. At that moment I realized that my novel was a tangled yarn ball of ideas five-hundred pages long. I didn’t have one premise. I had four or five premises struggling to operate in one story. Amazingly, when my ramble stuttered to a halt, Mr. Hollywood chewed his lower lip for a silent moment, pondering, and grunted, “Send it to me.”
Convinced of my storytelling genius, I did . . . and of course, it was rejected.
Like all rejections, it was crushing, but the sane part of me realized I’d just been taught a valuable lesson: begin a novel only after you’ve nailed down a one to three sentence premise.
From that experience I realized the importance of crafting a premise that focuses the story like a laser beam. I also understood other sage pieces of advice I have since encountered, my favorite of which is: “Simple stories, complex characters.”
If you’ve ever read a novel or watched a movie that you finally gave up because you had no idea where the story was going on, or no longer cared about the characters and their problems, chances are it broke that rule.
Thank you, Mister Hollywood. Lesson burned . . . I mean, learned.
Of necessity, movies are structurally simpler than most novels, and perhaps trying to reduce a novel premise to one sentence is a bit reductive. But a premise of one, two, or three sentences should be sufficient.
            So here is my checklist for five essential elements contained in the premise of your novel:
1. A great idea that is uniquely familiar
2. An idea that promises conflict
3. An idea that clearly fits an established genre
4. An idea with mass appeal
5. An idea with a sympathetic main character(s)
            Yes, I have broken one or all of these rules in some of the novels I have written . . . and have the bruises to show for it. Nowadays, I not only begin with a premise, I write the pitch letter first—draft after draft—until I’ve crafted a premise and pitch letter that is totally irresistible. Only then, once I know what my novel is about, do I start plotting.
            More next time on the Premise, the Pitch, and The Plot.