Thursday, September 6, 2012

From Self-Published to Published in under Six Months!



2012 is turning out to be a stellar year for me. First, my self-published novel Angel of Highgate received an “Editorial Recommendation” from Kirkus Reviews.
Now I am thrilled to announce that I just signed a five-figure, two book deal with Keith Kahla at Minotaur for the publication of The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an historical mystery series pitched as a volatile cocktail of Sherlock Holmes-meets-the-X-Files with a dash of steam punk and a whiff of London fog.
Scheduled for publication in Winter 2014, The Revenant of Thraxton Hall is the first in a series of Casebooks where two of the most creative minds of Victorian England, Arthur Conan Doyle and the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, solve bizarre murders, unravel diabolical plots and unearth long-buried mysteries—each with a paranormal twist.
The deal was negotiated by my super-agent, Kimberley Cameron of Kimberley Cameron & Associates (world). Kimberley conducted the negotiations from her Paris office, which necessitated many 4:00 a.m. (Paris time) phone calls to New York publishers. I signed with Kimberley as recently as February 12, 2012. We went through a few (relatively minor) edits of the book before she began the submission process. I must note that Kimberley is my second agent, but the first to sell a book. Her ability to land such a major deal for a first-time author in this economy is a testament to her reputation with the major publishers. I know I am extremely fortunate to be teamed with her.
A five-figure, two-book deal is truly amazing for a debut author. But it gets better. The Revenant of Thraxton Hall will be published first as a hardcover(!) and will receive international distribution! Wow! My head is still spinning!
 (Okay, I’ll stop now. I have just used up an entire years’ allotment of exclamation points.)
My wife Shelley and I recently jetted down to San Francisco to meet Kimberley and her husband David who graciously chauffeured us around Napa Valley where we stopped at the chateau at Domaine Carneros to crack a bottle of celebratory bubbly. Below are some photos from that sublime day. I can still taste the Tattinger.
Thank you again, to my wonderful agent, Kimberley Cameron. 

Below: Agent and Writer pose on the chateau steps. (Kimberley is the pretty one.)



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.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Book Review: The Open Curtain by Brian Evenson


It’s not often that I stumble upon a writer who blows me away not only with his/her storytelling, but also with his/her prose style. Recently, however, I discovered the short stories and novels of Brian Evenson.

I just finished the THE OPEN CURTAIN and am currently reading through two of Evenson’s short story collections: FUGUE STATE and WINDEYE. Evenson’s fiction is classified as Horror, but this is not the horror of shambling zombies with a bad case of the brain-munchies, or sparkly vampires with supermodel cheekbones. In the 21st century, believing in monsters requires a willing suspension of disbelief; however, Evenson draws upon the all-too-believable bogeyman that has haunted humanity since the earliest days and still retains its ability to terrify—the monster that dwells within us all, that which is cruel, violent . . . and inhuman.

In his short stories and novels, Evenson evokes the existential terror that results from the collapse of consensus reality, a recurring theme where the hapless protagonist finds himself flailing in a familiar world turned suddenly alien, where personality disintegrates and time becomes as fractured and non-linear as a dream—or, more accurately, a nightmare from which the dreamer cannot awaken.

Evenson was brought up and educated in the Mormon religion. Although he has since left the church, THE OPEN CURTAIN draws upon his experiences and knowledge of the violent history and arcane practices of the early LDS Church. The protagonist of the novel, Rudd Thayer, becomes embroiled with his shady half-brother Lael, who exerts a hypnotic influence over him. The two begin an investigation of a vicious murder committed by a grandson of Brigham Young. They soon discover that the decades-old murder may be tied into a ritual blood sacrifice of atonement. As they continue their pursuit of the truth, the novel steadily darkens as Rudd’s grip on reality loosens. As the end of the book looms, the protagonist is trapped in a waking nightmare. In a deeply disturbing fashion that only fiction can achieve, the images continue to play out behind the reader’s eyes long after the book has been closed.

Be warned, this is not a light beach read. Evenson submerges the reader in the murkiest depths of the human psyche. It’s a week now since I finished the book, and I still have a bad case of the bends. 

Tuesday, June 12, 2012


Welcome to my writing blog. Here you can read about works in progress, as well as novels already launched or about to launch. I am exploring a two-pronged approach in my novel-writing career: self-publishing some novels while going the conventional publishing house route with others. It’s an uncertain time in writing and publishing. Some see doom and gloom in the digital publishing revolution, while others see enormous opportunity. I personally think that change is good. Stasis is death. And the future happens regardless.

 First, I must pause to say a few words about this gorgeous website created by Maddee James of www.xuni.com. Maddee has truly captured the personality and emotion of my writing with her skillful use of imagery, color palette and texture. Maddee also created the stunning cover of my gothic suspense novel, Angel of Highgate. Truly, the girl has mad skills.

As Oscar Wilde famously said: “I have the simplest of tastes; I am always satisfied with the best.” My tastes precisely echo Wilde’s. In my opinion, Maddee is the best: a visual magician, easy to work with and a true professional.

The same is true of the literary agency I am currently signed with, Kimberley Cameron & Associates. Kimberley is a terrific agent—wonderfully kind, supportive and responsive. Conventional publishing is weathering a stormy time, and I consider myself fortunate to be teamed up with a seasoned pro with a terrific track record in order to navigate the choppy waters.

In addition to updating readers on my writing adventures, I also plan to give back to the writing community by creating blog entries with tips on novel writing and fiction technique.

Bookmark this site, I plan to post frequently. Once again, welcome, fasten your seat belts, and I hope you enjoy the ride.


Genre-Bending or . . . Paradigms Lost

That’s genre-bending, not gender-bending. (No Boy George references here, thank you.) Much of today’s cutting-edge fiction is a volatile admixture of two or more established genres combined to create something new. Of course, this kind of practical alchemy is precisely what agents and publishers have been admonishing writers not to do for years. Conventional wisdom has always urged writers to being by determining “where in the bookstore your novel will be shelved.” That is, unless your novel can be pigeonholed into a traditional genre: mystery, horror, literary, etc.—it will not find its target audience.

I’m sure many brilliant novels have been lost to literary history, rejected out of hand because they ignored this literary shibboleth.

But writers, being the unruly, creative types they are, have proved unable to resist the urge to build a new beast by cutting-and-pasting disparate elements into new forms. That, after all, is the definition of creativity. Sometimes this leads to a Frankenstein monster, but it can potentially spawn a modern Prometheus.

In recent times, the blurring of boundaries, once a slow, steady creep, is now landsliding onto on the bookstore shelves aisles and into the great wide open of self-published eBooks. Many genre-benders have not only been best sellers, they’ve accomplished the unthinkable by forcing bookstores to relabel their shelves and agents and publishers to accept the legitimacy of new genres. Hence, we now have urban fantasy, where the creatures typically confined to a fantasy world—wizards, warlocks, werewolves, dragons and demons—now lurk in the shadowy alleys of large cities, or hold down day jobs as parking meter attendants or may even be the kid in the drive-thru window asking “would you like fries with that?”

The huge success of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series has led to the creation of an entire “time-slip” genre. More recently we have entered the age of the literary mashup, with Regency heroines doing battle with zombies and sea monsters, and hard-boiled detectives and their vampire sidekicks cruising L.A. freeways chain-smoking Marlboros while solving murders.

One of the masters of the mashup (arguably, the earliest exemplar of the form) is the British writer, Kim Newman. Typically pigeon-holed as a “science fiction writer”, Kim’s novels feature a mélange of literary classics, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes mysteries, sixties British TV superspies, historical fiction, historical fantasy, and whatever else fell to hand when Newman was cooking up his mashup mulligan.

A perfect example is one of Newman’s most recent novels, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles. The title alone gives the reader a wink and an elbow in the ribs and foreshadows the literary hijinks Newman gets up to in a novel where “The Napoleon of Crime” and his head henchman serve as an inverted Holmes and Watson. Moriarty’s sidekick, Colonel “Basher” Moran, supplies a first-person narrative voice that is bitingly British and howlingly funny. I snortled from beginning to end.

My own novel Angel of Highgate (which I describe as a “Victorian suspense novel”) received a dance-on-my-desk-and-whoop-with-joy review from Kirkus Reviews in which the reviewer described it as:  “a romantic, mystical tale of adventure set in Victorian Britain that seamlessly blends elements of history, fantasy, and horror . . .”

Uh . . . okay . . . whatever. I’m not sure I would have gone as far as horror (which for me conjures images of ghosts, werewolves and similar supernatural beasties) but I’m not about to quibble with such a stellar review. Still, I think it illustrates that modern fiction, like Alice, has stepped through the looking glass into a realm where genre boundaries are as porous and shifting as panes of mist.

So my advice to new writers formulating novel ideas? I would argue that you can never go wrong staying firmly in the established genres. By doing so you stay within the comfort zone of agents and editors. Alternatively, if you produce something wholly original that fits in no established genre, you face a very hard sell. I have committed this sin myself with novels that are gathering dusty bunnies under the bed right now. Agent-Speak for this is: “I love it but I don’t how to sell it.”

That said, if you were the kind of child whose crayon invariably strayed outside the lines, flex your creative muscles, but remember that editors and agents want familiar materials with a unique twist. Good luck inventing the “next hot thing” in literature.