Luck Shines Brightly on a Day Like Today

In my own personal warped religion, 11:11 am or pm is a sacred time when all wishes made will eventually be granted, provided they are made with sincerity. Given the date today, this figures to be one of immense good fortune for all fellow believers.

As readers of my books will know, I'm a firm believer in luck. It's a trait I often pass onto my characters. In my novel Thief, I invented a form of wishing for the main character where she writes her wishes on a piece of paper, drops them in the Hudson River to allow them to float out over the ocean, waiting for the day when seagulls will carry the wish back to her. One of my readers once told me they began practicing this ritual with her daughter. I felt honored to have contributed to the pantheon of good luck.

I'm also a devoted follower of the moon and often direct my concerns to it. Over the course of my life, I've noticed how my dreams are more involved and extremely vivid leading up to the full moon. Last night was a full moon...on 11-11-11. Good omens abound and I wish you all the best on this rare holiday.

In the Realms of the Unreal

Henry Darger spent nearly his entire life writing and creating art for his novel, In the Realms of the Unreal: The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. At over 15,000 pages, it is believed to be the longest novel ever written, though it has never been published, excluding excerpts to be found in many of the wonderful books of his artwork.

I've been fascinated with this story since I first encountered it as a college student. Along with the artwork, it's been one of the major influences on my imagination over the last fifteen years or so. Darger's work showed me how it was possible to stretch the imagination without limits. Elements creep into my work frequently, appearing in odd ways, most notably in Thief and my upcoming book Life is But a Dream.

Another aspect of In the Realms of the Unreal that fascinates me is Darger's real life obsession with a missing photograph that weaves its way into this brutal playland he creates. He had once possessed a newspaper clipping with a photo of a murdered Chicago girl named Elsie Paroubek. Somehow or other he lost it and spent years afterward trying to track it down. He prayed daily to find it again and grew angry when it never materialized. He was so angry with God that he wrote himself into the story on the side of evil.

After encountering the story, I set off on my own search for the photograph. Even in the digital age, it wasn't easy to find. Librarian friends of mine searched with no avail (though they did manage to get me the actual article that accompanied the photo). A few years ago I met someone who worked with one of Darger's biographers and she was able to send me the picture.

It's haunting.

Elsie has since influenced quite a few of my character since.

Through the Woods Safely

In a wave of energy at the end of last week, I finished the manuscript I've been writing for the last month and a half. The story moved so easily through the last sixty pages. The threads began to weave together on their own without my manipulation. As any writer will tell you, the story benefits from that. Writers tend to get in the way with all of our words.

I read through the draft yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed what I had written. For a book that came about sentence by sentence, it surprised me how effortless it sounded. As I was writing, I felt myself becoming a bit of a perfectionist with each phrase. I've written like that before. Dirty Liar and Thief were written that way. But I haven't written in that mode for a while and was afraid it would feel too forced. It didn't and I'm very pleased with the results.

Hopefully I'll be able to share more details soon. For now, the illustration above captures something of the mood of the ending.

Picture That! Picture Book of the Week

This week's featured Picture Book is one that's very important to me personally. I came across this book when I was in college and it heavily influenced my own writing. In fact, the very first draft of my novel Thief included an opening scene where the main character discovers this book in a book store and steals it (she's thief after all). I ended up cutting the scene early on, but the spirit of this book's main character can be found in mine. So, I'm pleased to share with you this little known book in honor of the first flurries fluttering outside my window today.

The First Snow by David Christiana

(Scholastic Press 1996)

A long time ago, Mother Nature was just a little girl who loved summer. She loved it so much that she never wanted winter to come. "I hate Winter," she would say. "And that friend of his, The Wind, is a monster." She decides to try to scare off Winter, but every season must have it's turn and eventually Winter comes.

Essentially, The First Snow is a new imaginative myth. It takes an element of our world that we take for granted and views it in a unique way. It's also a very creative way of presenting a story of compromise and making new friends. Through sparse dialogue and brilliant illustrations, the two child characters come to life and feel incredibly real in their stubbornness, confusion, and ultimately their compassion. An absolutely beautiful book perfect for early elementary school children.

Inspiration

So now for something a bit lighter....

There are so many details that go into making a novel feel complete. These details come from such a wide range of places and experiences. I usually keep several notebooks of random thoughts and pick through these when I find myself in need of something.

Here's a list of some of those details (plus some other random facts) as far as Thief is concerned.

• Dune -- This character's name came about one day while I was working in a cafe in Woodstock. There was a little boy in the cafe running ruckus around the place and thereby forcing his exhausted mother to continue hollering his name..."Dune! Come back here!" My ears perked up. I thought it was an interesting name and stole it.
• Butterfly Wing Imagery -- The imagery of butterfly wings is part of the extended mythology Elizabeth's mother has saddled her with (see previous post). In the novel, Elizabeth holds this belief that one day she'll grow butterfly wings which serve as a metaphor for strength in her mind. This idea came from the Vivian Girl characters in Henry Darger's In the Realms of the Unreal. They are these magical girl creatures with giant butterfly wings who swoop down and save the other children in the story at times of peril. 
• Alexi's wanting "to be so skinny that she would rot from view" is a direct ode to Richey James Edwards' lyrics on the Manic Street Preacher's song 4st 7lb.
• The mall where Elizabeth and Dune end up at is based on the Cherry Hill Mall in New Jersey. 
• My working title for the book was Hey, Kid.
• The store where Elizabeth attempts to sell stolen CDs is based on Norman's Sound & Vision on 3rd Avenue, just around the corner from St. Mark's Place.
• The store they stole them from is based on a store on Philadelphia's South Street that no longer exists. But I put the store mentally where Bleeker Street Records is in NYC...only on the other side of the street...why the other side of the street? I have no idea, but that's how I pictured it in my head. Perhaps because the store in Philly was on that side of the street.
• The subway stop where their house in Queens is the 36th Ave stop on the N train, where my friend Dan used to live.
• The quote at the beginning of the novel is from the Sunset Rubdown album "Shut Up I am Dreaming"...one of my favorite albums of all time.

The trick of writing is to take all of these scattered elements and weave them into a character and story in a such a way that connects them. Finding the inspiration is the easy part...putting it altogether, that's work.

Thief Part 2: This World We Live In is Full of Fiction

"My mother used to let me throw wishes into the river. I'd scribble them on tiny pieces of paper and cry as I watched them float away. She'd put her head near my ear . . whisper softly . . tell me how the seagulls would keep my wishes from drowning . . carry them off to the end of the world. One day all the wishes would come back to me on shooting stars." Thief page 18

As children, our parents give us answers to our questions and we believe in them. If we're told that thunder is only God bowling, we believe that until we're told otherwise by someone else we trust. This concept was one that I was thinking about a lot while working on Thief. Our way of perceiving the world is shaped in those early years and by those early stories. A great example of this is any religious text. Those stories are used to shape a view of the world. Later in life, we often question those perceptions, but in childhood, we truly see the world through the lens that is given to us. So what if that lens was blurry, or cracked, or tinted? How would that affect our view of the world? This was the question I had in mind while creating Elizabeth's character.

Elizabeth's mother in the story is someone with obvious mental illness and I wanted to examine how that might play out in this idea of shaped perception. The stories her mother told her would be filtered through her illness but Elizabeth wouldn't have had any other frame of reference, therefore, she would believe in them. At the time during which the story takes place, Elizabeth is old enough to realize the fiction in her mother's stories, but the impact of them is still woven into her personality. She struggles to see reality in the way the other characters around her do. This becomes a source of friction between her and the people she cares about. 

By the end of the novel, she never truly gives up these beliefs. They've warped, changed, and evolved, but they are still there. That's because I don't think we ever completely abandon those things we learn at a very young age and I don't think we should. Those are the ingredients that give us all a unique view of the world. It's what makes the world a more interesting place...something more mysterious than just scientific facts and mathematics.

"I never liked making wishes in fountains too much. It takes longer for them to come true . . at least that's what I always thought when I was little. My mother said those wishes had to wait their turn . . sit there and rust until the fountain emptied its water into the ocean . . that it could take days or even years . . that only the fountain could tell when it was full.

I never wished for anything big or important in a fountain.

Now I dig through my pocket and pull out a quarter. I close it tight in my hands until my palms get sweaty. I figure without the river close by I'll have to get used to fountains . . even for important things." Thief page 223-224

Thief Origin Story

Though I'm not one to usually start at the beginning a story, I will make an exception here and relate to you all how the idea for this book came about. Thief is nearly a direct response from fan reaction to its companion book Tomorrow, Maybe. 

I'd been working with interconnected characters for three books prior to Thief.  There's direct character links from Tomorrow, Maybe-to-Perfect World-to-Dirty Liar. Thief continues this idea by returning to Elizabeth, the younger girl in Tomorrow, Maybe. Elizabeth had always been one of my favorite characters. In Tomorrow, Maybe, I had expected readers to care for her the way the main character did. In the pivotal plot moment of that book, I thought readers would be heartbroken by Elizabeth's actions. And though most readers who wrote to me were saddened to an extent, they were more angry at Elizabeth than anything else. As the writer, it was such an interesting response. It was completely unexpected. 

I started to feel like I'd done Elizabeth an injustice. Like most writers, I feel a sort of fatherly obligation to my characters. I'm responsible for putting them in these situations and responsible for their reactions to them...all the while trying to create a desired perception of her at the outcome. I felt like I'd failed Elizabeth in that sense. So the idea of telling her story was born.

To redeem her, I had to somehow find a way to get her off the hook. Many readers blamed her character for the concluding events in Tomorrow, Maybe. That had never been my intention. But nevertheless, I needed to repair a trust between her character and any reader that read Tomorrow, Maybe. 

As I mentioned, I'd already been playing with interconnected characters and overlapping events told from different perspectives. As I began working on Thief, I started thinking about the role first person perspective plays in this process. I realized that readers had felt so close to the narrator of Tomorrow, Maybe that they couldn't help but choose sides and dislike Elizabeth by the end. Then I started thinking...what if that character was wrong? What if things didn't really happen the way she related them or perceived them?

When we read a first person narrative told from a character we like and trust, we naturally begin to accept their version of events as indisputable fact. Though, as all of us know, our version of what happens in our lives is never exact and very skewed. That was the starting point in the conception of Thief's plot. If the main character of Tomorrow, Maybe was wrong, then suddenly Elizabeth becomes the victim. She is the one who was wronged. In the end, I think the outcome was very powerful. The resentment readers may have felt for her suddenly shifts toward guilt that perhaps they judged her too quickly. In a strange way, I think some readers will feel as though they had let her down too. 

I just found out that my novel Thief made the 2009 ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers list. I'm very pleased that the book was recognized. The book came out last summer within days of my other book Zombie Blondes, which, like a ravenous zombie, stole most of the attention. Don't get me wrong, I love Zombie Blondes, but Thief is a book I'm extremely proud of artistically. 

I will post more about this book in the coming days, try to give some insights to certain aspects of the book. In the meantime, here's the Amazon summary:

"Elizabeth is a pickpocket and thief living on the edge in New York City. She and her foster sister, Alexi, are living with Sandra--a modern-day Fagin who takes in foster children and then forces them to steal things for her. Even though she's sick of it, Elizabeth doesn't really question her life...until Sandra takes in a third foster child, this time a boy. Dune is a completely lost soul, and Elizabeth begins to see the limits of her life. Sandra is not going to let her go easily--but Elizabeth knows she has to find a way out. With brutal honesty and striking lyricism, Brian James has created a character you'll never forget, trapped in a situation that's frighteningly real."