FERAL, GENRE, AND BLOG REVIEWS

Genre may very well be the most important marketing tool a book has.  After all, genre is often the yardstick by which a reader measures the book’s success.  

Case in point: My forthcoming FERAL is a psychological thriller—an important distinction.  While this subgenre does borrow from more action-oriented categories (for example, the straight suspense-filled thriller, mystery, and horror), the primary focus is on, well, the psychological.  Like classic psychological thrillers, FERAL features a Hitchcockian pace and focus on character development (here, we’re exploring the inner workings of the main character, Claire Cain).  The oft-used water metaphor (employed frequently in psychological thrillers to represent the subconscious) is incorporated in the form of a brutal ice storm (and represents Claire’s “frozen” inner state, her lack of ability to move on from a violent act, though she desperately wants to).  The ending and explanation of what has been happening in the town of Peculiar is also an exploration into and portrait of Claire’s psyche—as it should be; the rest of the book is an exploration of where she is mentally, as well.  Ultimately, FERAL is a book about recovering from violence—that’s an inner process, a terrifying process.  The classic psychological thriller allowed me to explore that frightening process in detail.  

That having been said, I’ve been seeing some reviews go live that list some of those classic psychological thriller elements (the slower pace, etc.) as flaws.  Each book is a learning process—I would no more go back and change FERAL than I would ever expect to change anyone’s mind who’d written a less-than-glowing review; however, I do read all my reviews and think critically about them.  This time around, the critique’s got me thinking about the classic psychological thriller.  There’s no doubt that the subgenre is becoming less frequently represented, especially by the box office.  I wonder how many young readers are familiar with Hitchcock’s work.  How many know only Pyscho’s shower scene, and have never watched the rest of the film. 

I wonder about the expectations of modern, young readers when they see the label “psychological thriller.”  Do they now expect the emphasis to be on “thriller” rather than “psychology”?  Do they expect an action-oriented piece?  Is Hitchcock even relevant anymore to young story-seekers? 

I’m also incredibly curious: How do you, as a blogger, use genre to help write your review?  Do you consider the genre (and subgenre) as you determine the success or failure of a book?  Do you review by the gut rather than the head (it either hits you or it doesn’t)? 

WHY I SUCK AT #100HAPPYDAYS—AND WHY THAT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE SUCCEEDING

I got excited when I found #100HappyDays.  Really.  It reminded me of Catherine Ryan Hyde’s #DailyGratitude.  It sounded so simple: Take a pic of something that makes you happy each day and post it online.  I’ve often tried to keep gratitude journals, but I’m terrible at journals—any kind of journal.  I thought this would keep me honest.  

Right off the bat, though, I started cheating.  I wasn’t posting photos.  Instead, I was posting a tweet describing what had made me happy that day.  But after about a week, my #100Happy tweets died.  Here’s why:

They died, in part, for the same reason my photos never quite got off the ground: because I do not do tech on my off-time.  I have a disposo-cell phone (no smartphone).  It doesn’t take pictures.  It doesn’t connect to the Internet.  It makes calls.  It has a flashlight.  The end.  I don’t carry a camera with me most times, either.  I feel incredibly fortunate to being doing what I love.  I respect my industry, which means I work hard.  I keep long hours.  But when I’m done, I’m done.  At the end of the day, I don’t want to think about Twitter or blogs or promos.  I want to enjoy a meal and good company and play with my dog and watch the sun set and laugh and unwind with some yoga and not be taken out of the moment by having to take a picture of it all and think about posting it online.  

#100HappyDays also died because bad things happened.  Okay, it wasn’t like I had to endure anything tragic, but there were definitely down moments.  For example, I broke a tooth.  I had to have a root canal.  I never got completely numb, which meant the two hours of drilling were painful.  When I returned for my permanent crown, it didn’t fit (the temp didn’t fit well, either, and had torn up my gums).  I felt it was just plain silly to find some sort of superficial happiness (why, this dental office has lovely wallpaper!) in the midst of a situation that was expensive and painful and frustrating and never ending (I’m still waiting for a new permanent crown).  Instead, I recognized the suck-factor of the situation while it was happening, and then I put the bad situation aside, and focused on the current task at hand: drafting new work, meeting bloggers, organizing a new tour—all cool stuff.  

As far as Twitter is concerned, I’m a big fat #100HappyDays failure.  But don’t my reasons for failing show that I actually succeeded?  Isn’t #100HappyDays a gateway toward the enjoyment of life?  Isn’t that what I’ve been doing all along?  Doesn’t my enjoyment show that I maybe failed at #100HappyDays because I didn’t need it to begin with?

Maybe I’m giving myself too much credit, patting myself on the back a little too hard.  Could be.  But instead of dwelling on it, I’m going to turn off this computer and dance barefoot to Will Hoge.  Because that makes me happy.

CALLING ALL GARDENERS

A question, gentle readers:

WHAT THE FREAK DOES A GIRL HAVE TO DO TO GROW SOME HERBS??? 

 

I MEAN SOME DECENT HERBS THAT SHE CAN ACTUALLY PICK AND PUT IN A DISH???

I'VE BEEN TRYING FOR YEARS...YEARS!  AND I HAVE YET TO GET A SINGLE STUPID HERB INTO ANY DISH.  EVER!  

DO I NEED A DEGREE???  DO I HAVE TO HAVE MY BLACK THUMBS SURGICALLY REMOVED???

SERIOUSLY.  WHAT IS THE DEAL???

PLOWING UP MY CORN

As other bloggers have discussed at my MG blog, Smack Dab in the Middle, creative work is really tough to measure.  Sure, when you finish a book—or better yet, when a book is on the shelves of a library or B&N—and you’ve got something physical to point to as you say, “This is what I’ve been doing for the past two [or four or—ahem—ten] years,” people respond positively.  They’re impressed.  During that decade when you’re sitting in a pair of ripped jeans, ponytail hanging crookedly from the top of your head as you stare for hours into a computer screen, people who don’t know better tend to treat you as though you’re not doing much.  Or—as often happens when you’ve nixed the idea of any kind of employment in order to pursue writing full-time—they tend to look at you the same way Kevin Costner’s neighbors did in FIELD OF DREAMS when he plowed up his corn.  Like they can’t believe you’ve just thrown away something so incredibly valuable.

I’ve heard it all in the eleven years since I became a full-time writer—all sorts of unthinking reactions to what I do with my days, especially during periods when I didn’t have something physical to point to as I said, “This is what I’ve been working on.”

The thing is, though, some of the harshest words a writer can hear about how hard they’re working can often come from his (or her) self.  I’ve certainly gone through periods when I put myself through the wringer, especially when my rejections were piling up, or when I didn’t quite meet my own self-imposed deadlines or word count goals.

Not too long ago—maybe a year or so—I freed myself from my own internal nagger.  And I did it by counting everything.

For example: It’s so easy for me to get tied up in my daily word count (especially when drafting).  But I no longer count simply the number of new words I put in my manuscript.  I count everything.  Notes to self down margins.  Post-it scribbles.  Emails to my editors or agent. 

Ditto for time limits: After eleven years of full-time writing, I’ve got a pretty high endurance level.  I can work for eight to as many as twelve hours a day on my current project.  But when I say that, am I only pounding out chapter after chapter on my computer?  No.  I’m writing outlines in longhand.  I’m researching.  I’m bouncing new ideas off on my mom—who has always been my first reader on any new project.  And, when a book is nearing release, I count time spent on my promo work—whether that’s putting together a new print ad, scheduling a video chat, or writing up a new guest post for a blog tour. 

It’s become my new mantra: It all counts.

The thing is, there are always going to be people who fail to recognize just how much work goes into a creative job.  (And creative jobs really are some of the toughest around…I always say that writing a novel is every bit as exhausting as building a house.)  But I’ve learned that you can’t go looking for happiness outside of yourself.  Happiness is internal.  And if I take the time to recognize and respect the strides I’m making (even if those strides are internal and not measurable by a word counter or an impressive new advance), if I’m taking the time to be satisfied with and proud of my own progress, the voices of those who might try to talk about how I “plowed up my corn” always tend to fade right into the background.

'TIL SUMMER

It's most definitely the end of summer here in southwest Missouri...as I type this, I'm wearing a flannel shirt over one of last summer's tanks.

I've also been thinking ahead a bit lately, toward possibilities for trailers for both of my forthcoming books (the MG from Dial and the YA from HarperCollins).  Which means that I've been pretty seriously in-tune with what visuals do for a song as I watch CMT.  (The station's been something of a long-time weekend ritual, along with a big breakfast...The older I get, the more I gravitate toward bluegrass; with a semi-professional bluegrass musician in the family, I tend to think of it as a genetic predisposition.)

I was struck this morning by how really perfect the visuals are for this one.  The scenes match the song and are a perfect match for the feeling I've had the past few days, as my own Missouri summer comes to an end.

 Now if I could just somehow channel that when I sit down to put together my next trailer...

FRINGES

Brainstorming topics for this month’s theme at my YA group author blog (characters on the fringes), I instantly thought of a recent clip from CBS This Morning. In talking about her latest release, WHERE WE BELONG, Emily Giffin mentions returning to her journals to get in the right mindset to write a younger, teenaged character.

The results? She was shocked; her teen years were happy and stable, but as she says in the video below, her journals were still filled with angst:


Which makes me wonder—has there ever been a teen who hasn’t felt on the fringes for one reason or another? Don’t we all, as our own toughest critics, lug around our own lot of insecurities?

The MCs from both of my own published books are also definitely characters who feel on the fringes; in A BLUE SO DRAK, Aura feels outside the boundaries of “normal” life as she cares for her schizophrenic mother. In PLAYING HURT, Chelsea’s accident ends her basketball career, making her suddenly feel on the fringes with her former teammates.

Sure, there’s angst in my books, to use Giffin’s word. But there’s also, I’d argue, a sense of acceptance by the end of both novels. In BLUE, Aura is learning to accept both her family’s history of madness and her own creative impulses. In PLAYING HURT, Chelsea is finally accepting the end of her own playing days, while looking forward to a life returning to the game she loved in another capacity—her new dream, by the novel’s close, is to become a sports psychologist.

Maybe that’s a big part of moving from adolescence to adulthood: acceptance of oneself. Mistakes, flaws, warts and all. It’s being able to sing off-key in traffic and not caring that the windows are down. It’s finding a sense of humor about oneself. It’s that perspective Giffin mentions—it’s knowing I’m not perfect, but neither is everyone else. It’s knowing in some way or another, we’re all on the fringes.

MILES TRAVELED

This summer, the journey I’m taking doesn’t really have to do much with packed bags and playing Punch Buggy in a backseat.  Instead, this summer, I’ve been doing some genealogical research, tracing the miles my ancestors traveled.

It’s been fascinating, actually—I’m amazed at how much you can learn about a life simply by solidifying two or three major dates (usually birth, marriage, and death, or, as one genealogist recently phrased it as we chatted, “hatched, matched, and dispatched”). 

I’m especially intrigued by the women; right now, I’m trying desperately to trace my matriarchal line, straight through my grandmothers.  I’ve made it back to my great, great, great, great grandmother, who was born in the late 1700s.  This is where the trail gets foggy (I’ve yet to figure out her mother’s name).  I do know, though, that this is the ancestor who officially brought my family to the Midwest; I’ve discovered that while my roots are thick here in Missouri (I’ve got a line, through my maternal grandfather, that runs six-generations deep in Southwest Missouri), I’ve also got equally thick roots in Tennessee, thanks to that four-times great grandmother (I’m pretty sure I’m related to the entire county of Putnam). 

I wish I could get all those women on the family tree in a room, wish I could listen to them tell their own stories.  I’d love to hear just how they felt, what they went through in-between being hatched and dispatched.  I’d love to get the truth: love to hear all about those miles they physically traveled in their own lives. 

But the more I dig, the more blanks my what-if brain wants to fill in.  And it seems that those are miles, too—miles you travel in your own mind, thanks to your imagination…

E-GAD!!!

Yep, I’ve done it. Me—Lil’ Miss Pen ‘N Ink. Ms. I-Loathe-High-Tech. Our Lady Of The Spiral-Bound Notebook. Moi.

I bought an e-reader.

I’m more than halfway through my first book on the Kindle (an adult thriller), and I have to say, it really is fun to read on…

…So much so, I’m already wondering what I’ll read next on the little gadget…

Whoulda thunk, eh?

LITERARY SALT

I’m not really sure when a book can be considered worth its literary salt…I only know when I’ve personally fallen in love.

I mean, sure—some spines on my bookshelf get sold, traded, given away, like trinkets from long-lost exes. But a select group of special others get held onto long after their paperback covers, stained with sunscreen and melted lipstick, have warped, then curled in on themselves like hair taken straight out of a hot roller.

What amazes me are those books that manage to strike such a loud, vibrating chord with so many readers…as a person, we daydream about that special one who falls for us. But there are some books out there that have managed to get thousands to open their hearts and give in. It’s pretty spectacular, when you think about it…

WHAT IF EMILY DICKINSON HAD BLOGGED?

Seriously. What if the supposed shut-in had chronicled her life online in utterly exhaustive, meticulous detail?

What if F. Scott and Zelda had exchanged “love tsunamis” on Twitter?

What if we had all watched Poe stagger, drunk, into a gutter on YouTube?

Would any of it seem romantic anymore? Would we still troll their pages, mining each passage for clues as to who these poetic giants really were? Or would our literary heroes have been reduced to the train-wreck status of a Lindsay Lohan?

I was just wonderin’.