This Book Will Light a Fire!

Reading The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow is a little like reading the grandest fairy tale only it’s real. Your imagination is totally hijacked to find out such things as we are made from the same ingredients as stardust and we contain more atoms within our bodies--so small in relation to our astral cousins--than there are stars in the universe. And it is only by this very specific arrangement of certain events, through a particularly mixed concoction of ingredients, that life such as ours is even possible. And the cosmos doesn’t have a single history but a multiplicity of histories, of possibilities. Within its potentially infinite grasp lie endless, numberless, fantastic capabilities. Okay, so maybe I’m reading my own take into what is actual fact. I don’t even pretend to understand the scope of what is contained in this book. But I loved it, every word. I wrote in the margins and on the end pages. It caught fire inside and raised gooseflesh on my skin! And the peeks of humor were a delight and unexpected, like the effect of champagne bubbles. Who knew physics could make you laugh?

You don’t have to “get” physics to get the gift from this book. There is something in the language that resonates, that automatically ignites the mind and sends it rattling down previously unknown or unseen avenues. It is a mind-opening adventure, a journey in words and ideas, a magical, mystery tour that I can highly recommend.

Ever get that feeling you're being watched? (A conversation with "Panopticon" author David Bajo)

I won't lie; I had to look it up. Turns out the Panopticon was an 18th century prison design -- basically an ingenious surveillance machine in which the incarcerated could always be seen but were never able to see the guards, who could see everything without ever being seen. David Bajo uses this metaphor to great effect in his second novel, the darkly erotic and chilling Panopticon, which is now in bookstores (deftly sucking readers' heads inside out.)

David, thanks for stopping by. What inspired this novel? Did you find it alarming when what you'd written about seemed to be becoming reality?
As a journalist, I was assigned to cover a group in southern California called Border Witness. What they did was host field trips to crossing hotspots along the Tijuana Riverbed. The group’s idea was to sit and watch as a collective the riverbed, the gathering of potential immigrants on the Mexican side, and the Border Patrol sentinels in their trucks on the US side. Everyone could see each other. With camera, I was embedded in the Border Witness group, about twenty of us positioned along a tiered embankment. Mexicans were popping through a seam in the metal wall and finding perches along the opposite bank. There was even a little food vendor near that seam, doing a tidy business. One Border Patrol truck and one Border Patrol holding van were parked on overlooks. We could hear the scrabble of their radios.

Everyone’s action was accountable. We were in a panopticon. My camera, my recognized presence as press, amplified the panopticism because it projected that accountability to a much larger audience (the city of San Diego) and over a much longer time span (the story and photos could be around forever).

As a journalist, I had to remove myself as subject and could not write about that strange, abstracted weight my camera had. But as a novelist I had to. What I wrote about in Panopticon—-people being spied upon through laptop cameras, security systems, border surveillance, disguised lenses, etc.—-already existed as an extensive part of our reality; we just didn’t notice it, grasp it. As a society, we seem to want to deny or ignore the extensiveness of it, even while partaking of it, until it directly effects us emotionally, until we see a group of innocent Pennsylvania high school students get spied on in their bedrooms through school-issued laptops. We become even more outraged when we discover that the school acted legally. I didn’t predict anything; I just wondered when we would all begin to notice.

What role do you think fiction serves now in terms of cultural commentary?
I think novels and short stories allow us to comprehensively approach the most pertinent aspects of contemporary cultural, to emotionally, psychologically, and aesthetically sift through the nuance by piquing and tweaking our imaginations. That general process is achieved best through the written word—words on surface—because reading is the most open and flexible route between the collective and individual imaginations.

Is the love affair in the novel intended to show people still matter, that real relationships still matter?
I think it’s more of an imperfect inversion of that idea; without a sense of the panopticon, without panopticism, we don’t matter. I certainly wanted to test intimacy within the panopticon and I knew a love affair would allow me to explore that and to make that exploration universal and sympathetic. By making it an emerging affair between two very different individuals, with their own unique takes on urban voyeurism, I knew I could tilt the balance of intimacy back and forth between Rita and Klinsman, never letting it become equal, always keeping it dynamic.

What's next?
I’m thinking a lot about William James’ essay “The Hidden Self,” and I’ve found a very entertaining way for me to consider it in light of our contemporary culture. I will probably compose that way as a novel, as something for others to see, but right now it’s just for me to play and work with. Fashioning things into stories has always been for me the best path toward understanding. Even immediate events automatically turn into stories within me; this probably makes me slow. When I was a kid I thought I might be crazy because I thought this way. Then I read an interview in Time where John Irving admitted he would drift out of lively conversations, spinning them into stories inside his head instead of listening to and reacting to what was actually being said. The picture on the magazine cover made him look reasonably sane, so I felt a little better about things in general.

Visit David Bajo's website

Read an excerpt from Panopticon

Four Quick Cures for Your Story's Tension Headaches

We all know tension when we see it. From that perfect pause before a first kiss to the ominous music when the horror movie's designated sacrificial victim climbs the staircase to the impeccable timing of a comic genius, we recognize and respond with a sigh, a scream, a peal of laughter.

A lack of tension in our own stories may not be as easily diagnosed. But we can recognize it in our own reluctance to complete the project, beta readers who take forever to get back to us, a lukewarm response from an agent, or that special brand of "didn't love it enough"/"wasn't as captivated as I wanted to be" rejection - when one isn't getting the pre-printed form variety.

Here are a few quick tips I've found helpful for upping the ante in a story's tension. Try taking two, then call me in the morning.

1. Accentuate the differences between characters. Polarized pairs highlight each other's attributes. Felix wouldn't be half so interesting without Oscar (The Odd Couple.) Luke Skywalker's youthful earnestness is especially endearing, juxtaposed as it was with Han Solo's roguish cynicism (Star Wars.) Opposites don't really attract, they clash, but wouldn't you be more interested in watching a Youtube vid of Barack Obama trapped in an elevator with Sarah Palin than seeing either of them fawned over by one of his/her supporters?

2. Force proximity. Now that you've notched up the tension between your characters by accentuating their conflicting qualities, you need to prevent them from simply repelling each other. This is the stuck elevator from the previous item. Whether characters are forced by circumstance to work together or made to duke it out in uncomfortably close quarters, find some way to keep the story's most dramatic conflict on stage as often as possible. And never summarize the cool stuff; that's often a sign you're trying to avoid the hard work of putting strong emotion on the page.

3. Make the protagonist's decision tougher. Instead of forcing her to choose between good and bad, it's much more interesting to give her a couple of lousy options, each one its own little morality play, to decide between. Make the reader squirm and ask himself, "What would I do here? What's really the right thing?"

4. Make it matter more. Whatever character goals are in the pot, toss some extra wood on the fire underneath them whenever the plot begins to cool. You can do this by shortening the ticking clock's time, making the outcome affect someone beyond the protagonist (an innocent party works well), or even blowing the initial goal out of the water. Rather than giving your protagonist the "magic amulet," try letting the antagonist come across it, or take away your hero's fall back position. Whatever you do, don't allow the stakes to remain at the same level throughout your story. Think of your readers as famished guests, forever wanting more.

I hope you'll find some of these tips the right cure for your story's tension headaches. Do any of you have additional tips to share on the subject?

Dr. P. and Mrs. Evil: A prison student's take on Jekyll and Hyde--and me

This semester, I've been using Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a way to get my prison students to connect their backgrounds as behavioral science majors to the reading and analysis of literature. I've had all sorts of interesting responses to the novel, including this gem, from a student's homework. All the student had to do was write a one or two paragraph response to a question about duality, but this student decided to have some fun--and I loved it so much that I got his permission to post it here. Hopefully you'll love it too:

The meaning I perceived from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that there is always an opposite extreme to anything, whether it's a situation, an institution, or a personal characteristic. An alternative way of framing this work is described below, in the form of an example. The example shows that a person's level or extent of happiness that's expressed with a smiling face can certainly conceal the opposite extreme beneath it, and when given the opportunity to be exercised, this extreme will reveal itself.

For example: "Mrs. Dr. P. and Mrs. Evil," by J.S.

This situation recently occurred in room full of men convicted of an assortment of violent crimes. One little bitty, teeny tiny, kind, polite angel of a lady--whom we'll call Mrs. Dr. P.--spooked the heck out of them all to the point of paralysis, when she metamorphed into a monster. I was there! In my mind, I yelled "Oh my God! What the hell??? Who is that mad woman?"

Clenching our desks with sweaty palms, no one uttered a single word as she prowled through the aisles of the classroom, resembling a starving, rabid lioness in the midst of 16 delicious looking "innocent" baby antelopes. (That is exactly what we became. In one instant, the roles and labels in our lives were altered, from former hunters to the hunted. And we sat in total silence, eyeing the beast seeking to devour us.) Every guy just stared at one another, bewildered. Just as Utterson in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde beheld something "abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced" him, I entertained similar thoughts, when Mrs. Dr. P. revealed her dual personality, the evil incarnate Mrs. Hyde, also known as Mrs. Evil.

Mrs. Evil roamed to and fro, fists balled tight and eyes blazing. But no drinking of any elixir nor concoction was ever necessary to vanquish Mrs. Evil, because just as fast as she appeared, she disappeared. Then we were once again staring at the happy-go-lucky Mrs. Dr. P., who'd continued to teach as though nothing had ever happened. But it did happen, so it was too late. For we'd all witnessed Mrs. Evil, and those flaming eyes would forever be seared into our memories. Moments passed, and everyone still sat stunned, believing their eyes had deceived them. What triggered Mrs. Evil's abrupt appearance and departure? It was a photo of a frenemy, in a magazine. I now know that "hell truly hath no fury like a woman scorned." My eyes have seen the coming of the wrath of the Lord. Mrs. Dr. P.'s opposite, Mrs. Evil, became the shining epitome of that wrath.

(For fear of his safety from Mrs. Evil, the original observer has fled into the mountains of Europe and remains secluded inside of a cave, now living as a hermit. Before fleeing, the original observer gave the author consent to write this story of his experience in the first person narrative. Also, all names appearing in this work have been changed to protect the identity of Mrs. Dr. P./Mrs. Evil, and for the author's own safety against her--if you'd have seen Mrs, Evil's eyes ablaze, you'd do so too!)

Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the NYT Book Review on the evolving lists...

Buy This Book: Panopticon by David Bajo

Buy from B&N

Buy from IndieBound

Read an excerpt

Quickly rising to the top of my TBR pile is David Bajo's tantalizing Panopticon fresh out a few weeks ago.

From the flap:
As the California borderland newspaper where they work prepares to close, three reporters are oddly given assignments to return to stories they've covered before -- each one surprisingly personal. The first assignment takes reporter Aaron Klinsman and photographer Rita Valdez to an abandoned motel room where the mirrors are draped with towels, bits of black tape cover the doorknobs, and the perfect trace of a woman's body is imprinted on the bed sheets. From this sexually charged beginning on land his family used to own, Klinsman, Rita, and their colleague, Oscar Medem understand that they are supposed to uncover something. They just don t know what. Following the moonlit paths their assignments reveal through the bars, factories and complex streets of Tijuana and Otay, haunted by the femicides that have spread westward from Juarez, the reporters become more intimately entwined. Tracing the images they uncover, and those they cause and leave behind, they soon realize that every move they make is under surveillance. Beyond this, it seems their private lives and even their memories are being reconstructed by others. Panopticon is a novel of dreamlike appearances and almost supernatural memories, a world of hidden watchers that evokes the dark recognition of just how little we can protect even our most private moments. It is a shadowy, erotic novel only slightly speculative that opens into the world we all now occupy."

PW called Bajo's first novel, The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri, an "intriguing debut, a love story wrapped in a bibliomaniacal whodunit with a hall-of-mirrors bow on top." Sounds promising...

Watch this space tomorrow. David Bajo stops by to talk about the sex, spyware, and the genesis of his mind-bending new novel.

John Scalzi opens up a can of whoop @ss on James Frey, MFA programs, and clueless cleverati students

Had to stand up and cheer for John Scalzi's Open Letter to MFA Writing Programs (and Their Students), which comes in the wake of this New York Magazine article about James Frey's...I don't even know what to call it. It's kind of like Amway, only books instead of laundry soap and vitamins. Scalzi and other writers have spoken out about the oppressive contract terms and general uncoolness of the whole thing, but Scalzi reserves some mamaslap for college writing programs.

Saith Scalzi:

I don’t blame Columbia University’s graduate writing program for inviting James Frey over to talk to its students about “truth.” ...It’s always a joy to see how a master of bullshit spins himself up; publishing and literature being what they are, the students should probably learn to recognize this species sooner than later, all the better to move their wallets to their front pockets when such a creature stands before them.

...Frey was no doubt counting on the students being starry-eyed at the presence of a real-live bestselling author (even a disgraced one) who was waving a movie deal in their faces, but one reason he could count on it was because he was speaking to an audience whose formal educations did not include learning how to spot a crappy deal.

And then he goes on to tell us how he really feels. (Read the rest here.)

How to Get Back to Writing

So interesting to read Colleen's post, below.  After weeks on the road lecturing and leading workshops, giving my guru-energy to others and gently and generally setting writing aside for a time so that the work (and I could) rest and recharge at the well of human contact, the voice inside me (as I said it would in this post) told me that it was enough.  Time to begin again.  Time to sit and write and revise again.  And so I did, beginning a few days ago.  How good it felt.  The back of my chair.  Wing of cherrywood.  The heart, the keys ready to take the punch again.

And.

There are habits I've developed over the years to get back into writing when I've been away from it for a spell.  One is not to make too big of a deal of it.  Don't start on Monday.  Pick a casual day of the week (I chose last Thursday), and if possible go back and revise something that has already been written (you see it so clearly now, don't you, you can get a handle on it, whereas a month ago it was ice at the bottom of a very deep bucket).  Slash and burn with delight (keep a copy of the original document because you may get a little overzealous at this point, what with all that recharged energy scraping the letters off your keyboard.  Will someone please invent a keyboard that doesn't succumb this way?).  If you are beginning something new, give yourself some time to prologue (log in) and  preamble (ramble) and clear your throat with sentences or lines of poetry you're probably not going to keep anyway, but will get you in the mood again, will remind you of how fun and wasteful creativity can be (not everything is precious) and how wonderful it feels to be doing doing doing until the moment something clicks (this will feel like the right color crayon levitating out of the box).  And there you are.

Try not to go until you are completely spent, that first day or week.  Save a little, hold back.  There's plenty more where that came from.  This is not Black Thursday.  The store will not run out.

And finally, no deadline, not just yet, please, at least.  It's all right to play, for a little while.  To remember why you started puzzling over words in the first place, how odd and flimsy and feisty they are, to remember how they sink on you and then suddenly bob up again, to remember the slipperiness, and laugh.  Shiny, funny things.

Back to writing.  Back to chair.  Back to life.

--MD

The Limitations of Mountaintop Gurus

I believe there is a kind of writer's karma, where every act of generosity attracts positive energy to the giver. Whether it's pouring hours into judging contest entries, helping a newer writer vet an agent,understand a contract, or improve her craft, or reading a critique partner's manuscript, doing good feels good. So good, in fact, that some writers stop taking risks (including submitting their own manuscripts) and instead pour all their energies into helping others. After all, guru-dom is so much safer and emotionally rewarding than periodically having one's heart torn out and stomped on -- which is something publishing is bound to do from time to time.

Gurus know all, where working authors come to realize that writing and publishing are unknowable.

Gurus offer wisdom from on high, where writing and publishing all too often toss one down the mountain.

But unless the guru is still out there risking failure, he/she forgets what it's like to work for weeks, months, or even years without knowing whether the product will be acclaimed or reviled. The guru's wisdom becomes dated, since the realities of the business change from day to day. And all too often, the advice offered is composed of complicated checklists and exercises designed to stall the emerging writer's journey, because once the trigger's pulled, the target is either going to be hit or missed - but there's no taking back the submission.

What a working writer knows is that you have to keep reloading, refining and firing off products until you finally hit the bullseye - or at least come closer to your goal with each attempt. Your own creativity will provide the ammunition, so don't be so gun-shy. Or too quick to listen to the guru who's retired from the field.

Buy This Book: Happiness in a Storm by Wendy Schlessel Harpham, MD

On her blog this weekend, physician, lymphoma survivor, and bestselling author Dr. Wendy Harpham marks the 20th anniversary of her cancer diagnosis and takes a moment to ask "Why me?" -- but not the way you think. Wendy says:

I feel humbled by the great mystery of my survivorship. In the course of my 20-years-and-still-counting journey, I've lost friends and family -- many of whom were diagnosed after me. I can only wonder why Wendy Schlessel Harpham is still walking, talking, writing, speaking, eating, loving and...living. Why me?

Wendy's first two books (published at exactly the moment I needed them) take survivors by the hand, addressing the hard information that needs to be dealt with in an accessible Q&A format. Both Diagnosis: Cancer: Your Guide to the First Months of Healthy Survivorship, Expanded and Revised Edition and After Cancer: A Guide to Your New Life were tremendously helpful to me and my family. But my favorite of Dr. Wendy's books is Happiness in a Storm: Facing Illness and Embracing Life as a Healthy Survivor. Oddly enough, this is one of the books that helped me cope with the slings and arrows that come with life in the publishing industry, because it's about letting go of the mindset that mires in "it's not fair!" and embracing a mindset that laughs and loves life for what it is: a hot mess.

Meet our new blog crewmate, PR diva, author, PW contributing editor Lucinda Dyer

Delighted to introduce our newest BoxOcto crewmate, Luncinda Dyer. I can't improve on the bio she sent me (chick's in PR, and it shows) but I can add that she impressed the heck out of me with her seasoned, even-keeled view of industry trends, and I'm looking forward to hearing what she has to say about marketing, emerging authors, books she loves, and whatever else comes up in conversation.

From her press kit:
Lucinda Dyer has been publicizing books and authors since Oprah hosted a local talk show in Baltimore and authors (even ones who weren’t tabloid famous) were regularly invited to sit on the “Tonight Show” couch.

Over the last far too many years, Lucinda’s freelanced for all the usual publisher suspects and done national media campaigns for authors ranging from Pulitzer Prize winning reporters to eHarmony.com founder Neil Clark Warren and Arctic explorer Helen Thayer. She’s promoted non-fiction titles on everything from worm composting and homeopathy to UFOs, Dean Martin and the creation of the Thighmaster and novels about falcons, lost tribes, South American angst and a Texas cheerleader gone astray.

Before she accidentally stumbled into becoming a book publicist (a fairly convoluted story involving Shari Lewis, Lamp Chop, publisher Jeremy Tarcher and a move to Los Angeles) Lucinda did publicity for the Dallas Symphony and the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas.

After one too many earthquakes, she settled in Nashville with seemingly everyone from LA who didn’t move to Seattle. Lucinda is a longtime contributing editor at Publishers Weekly magazine and has recently become an author herself, turning her lifelong passion for horses into books -- Back to Work: How to Rehabilitate or Recondition Your Horse and Eco-Horsekeeping: Over 100 Budget-Friendly Ways You and Your Horse Can Save the Planet.

And the Promise Goes On

Dr. Wendy Harpham, author of the blog, "On Healthy Survivorship," sings the praises of Promise Me.  Harpham writes today of our blogmate Joni's work with Nancy Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure:

"We have front-row seats to everything . . . from Brinker's family joys and travails to her rise from retail clerk to CEO of a foundation that has contributed more than $1.5 BILLION for research and community programs. . .

"I will never look at a pink ribbon or the SGK logo in the same way again."

Buy it this holiday season for a woman you love!

Get this Book: Oxygen by Carol Wiley Cassella

Oxygen - everyone needs it. In the novel, Oxygen, by Carol Wiley Cassella, Dr. Marie Heaton is the expert anesthesiologist who delivers it. And then the day comes when an eight-year-old girl is delivered into her care, the mentally fragile, precious only child of a woman who has already suffered her share of losses in her life, her share of hard knocks. The mother searches Marie’s face; she’s looking for reassurance, a way to trust. A wilted daffodil is pinned to her pocket; there’s another, also wilted, woven through the eyelet of her daughter’s blouse. You can see this: Marie crouched looking up into this mother’s anxious face, wanting her to find the reassurance she needs to give consent for what should be routine surgery. Your mental eye fastens on that poignant detail: the twin daffodils. It is so significant of the mother’s deep love for her little girl. You know something terrible is going to happen. When the nightmare becomes the reality, Marie is horrified, bewildered; she is crushed by guilt and self doubt. She is also targeted by the hospital and many of her colleagues. The ensuing investigation threatens the career she loves. By now you feel the weight of disaster in every word. Author Carol Wiley Cassella wastes none of them. Each one winds a tighter coil of suspense. But there is so much more than the sharp-edged suspense to recommend this novel. There are the relationships: Joe, the former lover, now friend and continuing mystery of the heart, and there is Marie’s sister and the dilemma they share regarding the care of their ailing, aging father. Each of these relationships has its complexities, its foibles that are so real and richly layered. And again, there is such beauty in the language and in the clear rendering of the details, the whole thing about how real life never stops in deference to calamity. The bills have to be paid, the trash taken out, former lovers and aging fathers tended to.

And in the end, sudden, blinding, and cruel, a revelation simply waits.