High Flying Birds

So next week I take off for my West Coast trip. The Missus and I will be driving up from L.A. to the great north regions. I'm so looking forward to a road trip and seeing new places and old friends. There's nothing quite like a car adventure to get the creative tank refilled. 

The Pacific Coast seems especially potent to my imagination for some reason. After all, Life is But a Dream is set around L.A., inspired by my last trip out there. The Heights is set in San Fran, drawing heavily from my visit there in 2001. Dirty Liar is set in an unnamed place near Portland...but was based on my drives through Washington state a few years before writing it. We'll see what emerges this time around.

While I'm out there, I will be making a few book appearances. So if you around, definitely stop by. I'll also be making a NYC appearance when I get back. The details are listed below.

On April 18th I'll be reading & signing @ Miss Nelson's Toy & Book Shop

1030 Bonita Ave.

LaVerne, CA 91750

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On April 21st I'll signing books at the L.A. Times Festival of Books

1pm @ Once Upon A Time Bookstore's booth #774

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On May 1st I'll be making an in-store event @ Third Place Books

17171 Bothell Way NE

Lake Forest Park, WA  98155

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On May 19th I'll be back in NYC to sign books @ Books of Wonder from 12pm-2pm

18 West 18th Street
New York, NY 10011 

Peeking Under Rocks

The entertained public is a puzzlement to me at times. Routinely, the confusion stems from the unexplainable success of indescribably awful trash. Other times, I find myself amazed as to why some pre-packaged piece of trash, which all indicators and marketing experts predict hit status for, fail so miserably. Don't get me wrong, this pleases me. But I don't get it. If you liked the last turd, what made you suddenly develop aesthetics?

There are also times when the entertained public rewards something stellar. Inception is one of those times. After seeing it, part of me is thrilled that a complicated story could continue to do well at the box office. Nolan has intriguing way of telling a story that's very literary in nature, but translates wonderfully to film. It's nice to see people interested in it...even if most of them are only interested in seeing cities fold in half or people walking on walls. Which brings me to the point of this post:

I'm amazed at the overwhelming inability of many people to grasp a layered story.

In every article I've read and most online reviews, there is this prevailing theme of having to see the movie more than once to get everything that is going on. The majority opinion is that the movie is 'soooo confusing'. Huh? It was? I mean, it was complex and layered, but it wasn't confusing. If you paid attention, it wasn't hard to keep track of the plot. You had to think, but they were constantly reminding you visually or directly of where you were and what was happening. It wasn't Finnagens Wake for crying out loud!

So while the movie's success is pleasing, the revelation concerning the public's lack of comprehension skills, ability to think on multiple levels or understand inventive storytelling is very upsetting. I see this all of the time in book reviews too, where people only read the action on the surface and not any of the under layers. As someone who obsesses about the under layers, the extended metaphors, and importance of the moments in between action, this trend disturbs me.

Am I expecting everyone to see that the pace of Pure Sunshine mirrors the peaks the valleys of an acid trip? Not really. Do I think readers will pick up on the fact that the ever diverging interpretations of the same moments by Henry and Catherine in The Heights are symbolic of how fate is pulling them apart? I hope so. Did I expect people to pick up on the metaphor of the appeal of fascism in Zombie Blondes? I did and I expected too much of too many people apparently.

So while I hope that Inception's success will spawn more complex movies with the budget for visuals currently reserved mostly for garbage, I won't hold my breath. Because let's be honest, most people just wanted to see cities fold in half and people walk on walls. I will just have to take comfort in knowing that those people probably suck at checkers.

Traveling the Internet

For today's post, I want to direct you to an interview I did about The Heights. I talk about all kinds of good things about the development of the idea, how I went about tackling the task of contemporizing a classic, what I changed and why.

You can find the interview on a blog I read regularly called edge of seventeen. [link]

Also, the new paperback cover is now up, so I thought I'd share it. The hardcover painting was done from this photo test, so it's very similar but different enough to be worth a look.

I'm very happy with it. Hopefully the stores will be too. It comes out in December, so if you missed the hardcover (or didn't want to pay the hardcover price), mark your calendar.

The Heights: New Review

This was one of those reviews that as an author, I read and was said to myself, "Yes, they got it." It was especially rewarding in that this publication is all about the audience. It's odd sometimes when I think that nearly all the major review publications dealing with YA novels (and children's books) are geared towards adults. I understand it...they are the gatekeepers, either as librarians, teachers, or parents. But it's nice when something targeted to the intended audience appreciates a book. 

I suppose that's also why kid's reviews of my children's books mean much more to me than an industry journal. I liked it because it made me laugh, A LOT by an 8 year old, is a better review in my mind than all the praise that major publication could heap upon a book. 

The Heights: First Review

So the first review came in yesterday and overall, I think it's quite positive. Of course, I don't much care for the "melodramatic cliches" quip. For the record, I did a google search for the phrase they referenced, exactly 1 hit showed up, so how cliche can it really be? 

I think the reviewer really understood what I was trying to do with the book. I found the observation about Hindley's character to be interesting. I would say the reviewer's impression has more to do with the fact the book is told in observation from two other characters' points of view. His character is one dimensional per each's perception because that's how they see him. Though, when considered from the two different points of view, I think he does have more depth. 

All in all...a good start :)

Updating a Classic (2)

-Everyone always says San Francisco is so romantic . . the Paris of America . . they only say that because they don't hear the song this city really sings. It's the sound of something beautiful dying . . the last breath of an angel before the ocean swallows her . . before an earthquake breaks it off from the rest of the world and drowns it. Really it's the romance of saying good-bye forever- page 197-98 The Heights

The setting of a novel often acts like another character. It influences the action in subtle ways, helping to guide and shape the story. I've written before about how the main character is always the first thing I think about as I start gathering ideas for a book. There's a voice that I want to explore. Well, setting works in a similar way for me. There's places that I've been that I want to incorporate into a story. Choosing which depends on what the setting needs to be, but in the end, my books are usually just as much about the place as the characters.

Pure Sunshine is about Philadelphia. 

Tomorrow, Maybe and Thief are about New York.

Perfect World is about the town I grew up in.

Zombie Blondes is about the kind of small New England town in which I now live.

For The Heights, the setting is San Francisco. It really needed to be. Fog and mist play such an important role in the original, which was set in the lakes region of England. I visited that area the month before writing The Heights. It's the place where Wordsworth wandered on his long walks and became the father of Romanticism movement in British poetry (my favorite period). There was a mysterious charm to the area that made it feel like you weren't there even when you were. San Francisco had a similar feeling for me.

I spent a long weekend in San Francisco in 2001. I was living in NYC at the time, and it was one month after September 11th. The plan out there left from Newark and was the same flight as one of the hijacked ones. There were four people on the plane, so already it was a strange trip. I was visiting a good friend out there. I arrived on a Thursday night and he had to work on Friday. So Friday, I woke up, got stoned, and wandered the city for the whole day. 

I got on a bus and got off a mile or so from the Golden Gate Bridge. I spent most of my time walking that area. There was a strange feeling about the place. It felt almost like part of me was becoming a ghost. I didn't know it at the time, but six years later, that day would serves as the basis for The Heights.  San Francisco captures that tragically romantic feel for me that story needs. 

Updating a Classic (1)

When I took on the task of writing modern version of Wuthering Heights, there were several things I had to come to terms with before I began. This biggest of these issues was my hatred of Heathcliff's character. 

There are few characters in literature that I've encountered with the power to make me physically angry, Heathcliff is one of them. I clearly remember at one point wanting to throw the book across the room because I found him so despicable. 

My sympathy for him and his plight had been exhausted by the second third of the book. I couldn't believe that this was the character that I'd seen so frequently show up on online threads about "The character I would want to fall in love with." Frankly, it appalled me how romantic he was considered. For most of the book, meaning the last two thirds, I saw him as nothing more than the typical abusive boyfriend. 

I struggled with this conflict for quite some time as I was thinking about The Heights. I realized that the reader's sympathies for Heathcliff would have gone much farther with his contemporaries. A lot of the things he did which I would consider abusive, were more accepted practice in Victorian times. (It still doesn't explain why anyone today wouldn't find him repulsive, but hey, to each their own).

I concluded that the intent was for him to be that romantic character and decided that was the character I was going to create. In my opinion, his character was certainly the major component of the book that needed updating. Sympathy for Heathcliff's character need to run deeply throughout the book. This is the key to his and Catherine's love story, to any love story really. If you don't want the two characters to be together, then you don't have much interest in whether they are or aren't. 

My Heathcliff is named Henry in the book. His actions and situations are strongly related to the original, but his motivations and intentions are softened in a way as to fit our expectations of somebody in that situation today. I hope he can be seen as a more acceptable suitor...though don't expect Hindley to see it that way. 

Anticipation

With the new book only a month away from being in stores, it's around that time again when I start nervously searching the internet for first reactions. It's not that I live and die by reviews, or that I even write with any conscious thought of trying to please anyone other than myself. But that doesn't mean I don't care. I just believe that any artist's first aim must be to satisfy their own expectations. The hope is that what pleases you will be appreciated by others. There's a huge difference between that and actually setting out to please everyone else first and foremost.

So, if that's the case, why do I bother searching out what readers have to say? The easy answer is that I, of course, want everyone to like what I've done. It might not be the reason for writing it in the first place, but once the book is done, it most certainly becomes my focus. I've heard other writers describe the publication of a book to be like a parent sending their child off into the world. You no longer have any control over what happens to it. It's on its own and so you just hope you did right by it when it was under your care. 

I know their are writers who swear they never read any reviews. More power to them, I could never do that. It's reviews and reactions that keep the book alive for me. Otherwise, it's just another item checked off on a long list. It's also a way to revisit a book for me. Typically when a book comes out, I've been finished with my revisions on it for about a year. Waiting for reactions has a way of bringing it back to the present like nothing else.

As for The Heights, it's showing up a lot on people's list of things to be read. But I still have yet to discover that first review anywhere. Though, I did have one very positive email which was encouraging. Thanks again Lewis and Maddy :) 

Until that first review shows up, I'll keep searching with my fingers crossed and that first-day-of-school feeling in my stomach.

My New Book

My new book The Heights comes out next month and I'm really excited about it. It's a retelling of Wuthering Heights, set in San Francisco. Heathcliff (named in Henry in my novel) and Catherine are teenagers and I chose to tell it in alternating first person from each of their points of view.  Since the original was written in third person, from the point of view of an observing character, I thought this was a way to bring something new to the story. 

As I was reading Bronte's book, I found myself imagining what Catherine and Heathcliff were thinking. She wrote it in such a way that you can't help but do that. The voices I gave them are what I imagined their inner personalities be like. 

The challenge was to get their voices to be very distinct. They both have such unique perspectives and it had to come through in the way they thought. It became almost like writing two novels at once. I went through many drafts of rearranging things and breaking things down. It was frustrating, but by the end of it, I felt like I accomplished what I wanted to do. 

It was a great feeling.