The reason for the post is the result of a couple of things:

First, Kristin Nelson of the Nelson Literary Agency fame, updated her blog a week or so ago with a post on what authors were doing right based off of millions of readers buying their books. Specifically, she was discussing The Twilight Saga series of books by Stephanie Meyer. What Kristin said is that it is important for people who want to achieve success in their own writing to read and find what makes something else successful. In the case of her argument, Stephanie Meyer has one of the hottest teen chick-lit book series out there with the currently existing three books: Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse; recently published her first adult oriented novel (from what I hear, still chick-lit): The Host; and is about to publish the fourth book in The Twilight Saga series: Breaking Dawn; with an alleged fifth book that tells the first books story from the perspective of Edward. For some this is appealing, for many the books are absolutely have to reads; for me, I got about halfway and stopped.

Second, in a class on Deductive Logic we discussed J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series of books. The class was divided (though this division may have been three on one side and everyone else on the other) about the Harry Potter series as either good reading or bad reading. The professor indicated that a) he’d read all the books; and b) in his opinion they were fun to read but not that good. In the opinion of one of the classmates he, “…read the first couple of pages,” and then decided that all of the books were crap. Since Logic is taught, traditionally, through Philosophy departments, there was no consensus on: Is Harry Potter good or bad? which is all fine and good as I don’t think a group of people who’s collective purpose is to symbolize and then prove or disprove arguments is going to come to a consensus on something like that; but also where what Kristin Nelson had to say on success of a book or series is important applies.
What The Twilight Series and the Harry Potter series of books have in common is that both are written by female writers and both have, one more than the other, become rather large successes. The authors are rich. The books have been optioned and made into movies (or are being made). And people get very excited about the next book by either author that is being released. When J.K. Rowling releases another book, you can bet you kids bank account and college fund that it will be a media event; and you can also bet that it won’t be set in the world of Harry Potter.

(As an aside, I am actually quite interested in the kind of author J.K. Rowling is going to prove to be when she finishes and has published the next book. Though I enjoyed the Harry Potter series, I think the international success of those books clouds judgment on whether or not Rowling can really write well and compellingly.)

For most people, interest in and arguments for or against these series being good or bad won’t even register. If a book gets enough buzz, people will read it. Good and bad don’t play into the equation. However, for those who want to write, good and bad is important as is the question: What did the author do that was right?

In J.K. Rowling’s situation, she told an archetypal story where the hero (Harry) had to fight against Lord Voldemort and save the world. Quite literally, Harry plays the archetypal role of savior figure in the series of books, has to learn and grow into his powers - which literally manifest themselves through his being a wizard, and finally overthrow Voldemort through his skill, ingenuity, and humanity. What J.K. Rowling did was to take traditional story elements and import them into a well-imagined and vivid world with characters that fit into other archetypal roles and responsibilities. On top of which, she intermixed dark and lonely and the brooding of teenage angst with growth, light, humor, and humanity and the realization that in the end, though not always in the best way, things have a tendency to work out for the best.

Though Rowling never really put Harry in a literary situation where the reader was certain he would align himself with Voldemort or The Death Eaters; nor did she put him in situations where the reader had to really worry about him possibly dying or being turned forcefully; she did write a story set over seven books that told of his growth, education, humanity, and eventual success when it came to his goals in life. In that sense, J.K. Rowling told a truly magnificent story that also translated into a recognizable story throughout the world - and one that was compelling.

As a reader (or writer reader to mimic success), you can delve even deeper into the style, context, character development, story arcs, plot, sub-plot, and on and on to determine whether or not Rowling really wrote a great piece. What you will find, though, is that she wrote a timeless story, told in a compelling way, with distinctive artistic elements that passes the test of time.

As for Stephanie Meyer, she comes at the genre from a different direction telling a story of discovery that does not follow archetypal story telling patterns or practices. The hero, Bella, is not a savior character and the antagonist is as much Bella’s fears as the town, vampires (both good and evil), and her father from whom she’s been estranged, as well as her own desires, drives, and goals. In this context, The Twilight Saga is a series of books that are character driven, use a popular literary element (e.g. vampires), tells a compelling love story between two disparate individuals, and attaches itself to the heartstrings in a way that causes people to want to find out what Bella and Edward are going to do next AND whether or not Edward will turn Bella into a vampire.

Instead of a conflict of clearly GOOD and clearly EVIL (as in Harry is good, and Voldemort is Evil), what Meyer is doing is writing a story where what Bella wants, how she wants it, and the decisions that lead to the eventual and only conclusion (Bella becomes a vampire) inform who she is, what she becomes, and how that affects her mother, father, friends, and even Edward.

Again, you can dive into the books and nitpick, but the truth is that millions of readers in a wide variety of countries are not wrong about what is good and what is bad. The mass of readers indicates that the books, regardless of individual readers opinions, are good. Your responsibility is to approach the reading and then refine the content and context down to the elements that show what the author did right in order to determine what you can glean from it and apply to your own writing.

“I think you meant to say….”

With that, I haven’t been able to get Sarah Mlynowski’s book, Spells and Sleeping Bags, out of my mind.

It is not very often that I will pick up a book and begin reading it only to discover that the author didn’t know where he or she was heading. In Mlynowski’s case, she wanted to tell a story where her protagonist was meant to meet the principle antagonist and then convince her to switch bodies. However, the outcome was for Mlynowski to tell a rather vacuous story about… nothing; and only in the end and through exposition did the audience get to where the author was intending to go.

As a result of this, what Mlynowski intended to do was not what she did. Instead of going back and starting over (possibly as a result of a deadline or lack of desire on her part) the book ended up being significantly less than what it could’ve been. What should’ve happened, what Mlynowski wanted to tell was far more compelling that what she actually told.

The outcome is that the book would’ve been far better had she gone back to the outlining board and start the story from scratch.

Truth told, rewriting the story with my own characters - blatantly - would be an interesting test in writing.

To begin, I have now read the book that J.M. Barrie based off of his famous play of the same name. You know the one. A forever boy, Peter, flies into the Darling children’s window, looking for his lost shadow, finds it, tries to put it back on, wakes up Wendy, who then takes up John and Michael, and they all fly off (with Tinkerbell) to Neverland where they have adventures, begin to forget about their families, Wendy plays mother, and they defeat Captain James Hook-n-crew before Wendy, John, Michael, and the Lost Boys all decide they want a real mother and convince Peter to take them back to the Darling’s home. (Taking a big breath here.) It’s an adventure book for children - or so I’ve been led to believe throughout my life.

What I liked about the book was that there was a book about Peter Pan. For some reason there seems to be a Peter Pan revival going on. The reason for the revival might be that the rights to Peter Pan, held by the Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, are about to expire, or have recently expired, launching Peter Pan into the public domain. There have also been a series of movies, “Finding Neverland” and “Peter Pan” which have gone back to the source material for the creation of this play for children and re-imagined how J.M. Barrie might’ve created such a wonderful world.

Regardless of the play or other adaptations (Disney) what caught my attention in the book, spread about randomly, were little phrases here and there that really caught my eye and made me wonder about J.M. Barrie. For example, at one point, once the children have reached Neverland, Peter orders the Lost Boys (and John and Michael) to build their new mother (Wendy) a home. After the home is completed, complete with a chimney (that had been John’s hat), Peter guards the house, with Wendy inside, from any animal, Indian, or pirate that might decide to attack. Eventually, as boys are wont to do, he fell asleep and then along come some fairies who were returning from an orgy. Don’t know about you, but I would’ve been scrambling for a dictionary were I young enough to be reading this without knowing what an orgy is; and then I might’ve started pleading for an orgy of my own - you know, just for the experience.

The other scene that really jumped out at me was much later in the book. Peter has become depressed with the game of “Mother and Father” he and Wendy have been playing with the Lost Boys and asks Wendy if the boys think he really is their father. She says, “No,” and that game ends. However, during the interchange she begins to ask Peter if he feels alright. The author has her place her hand below his chest and then implies that it is not his belly she is touching, but lower.

As I read through the book and started to think about the subject, Peter Pan, it occurred to me that the Pan character is out of mythology. Was half man, half goat (the upper half was man) and carried around a set of reed pipes - as does Peter. This creature was also well known for his sexual exploits.

Regardless of what J.M. Barrie added to the story, the plot, of Peter Pan that underscores what Peter is supposed to be, and the relationship he had with Wendy, the book was good. The story isn’t great and in the reading group guide for the book it describes Peter Pan as that generations “Alice in Wonderland.” Neither work is great, but both works have withstood the test of time and reader scrutiny. Like Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland has been receiving a revival of sorts. It seems that ten years can’t go by without someone trying to adapt Alice in Wonderland to the big screen in a way that is fluid and doesn’t detract from the original story. Hollywood is trying their hand at it again with a release sometime this year or early next year. Both authors loved little children and based their principle characters off of the children they adopted as their own when they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, have children of their own. In J.M. Barrie’s case, he adopted six boys after their parents died (and his wife asked for a divorce).

In all, I would say that Peter Pan is worth reading, it’s about 156 pages long, isn’t hard to read, and throws out a word: embonpoint, which had to be looked up and reminded me, just a little, why it is I write.

Reprinted from:  http://www.sw-c.com/2005/03/peter_pan_by_jm_barrie_review.html

And yet, I pursue the singular goal of writing.

I discovered an internal change the other day. You see, once upon a time I thought, “Any writing job I have will make me happy.” Not true. Several years ago I took my first full-time writing job with a company I was working for. I produced a lot of material in a short period of time. After fifteen months I realized I didn’t want to do that kind of work anymore, and not for that company so I requested that I be laid off when the company did another round… this would be the third.

What solidified, in my mind, that I could write compellingly enough for the outside world* was that another, larger, international software company almost immediately hired me up and I went back to work. I ended up writing one magazine article that may, or may not, have been published and then was, again, laid off due to the hiring practices of that company.

Since that time I have worked in various capacities as a writer from freelance to creative to poetry and have remained focused on my singular goal: writing fiction.

About eight years ago, I sat down and wrote a couple (okay, three) books. Two were submitted to a couple of local publishers and both were rejection. The rejection on the first book said, “We cannot accept for publication this book, but if you have other projects, we would like to consider something else by you.” The outcome was a first draft for a book I titled, Big Jim, Little Jim. Honestly, I never expect to see that story revisited.

What I did learn in the process was that I have a compelling writing style, though (back when) that writing style needed (and still needs, this is an ongoing process) more polishing. Though my goal was to write and be published in fiction, and though I thought I was pursuing that goal, I had not yet gotten to a point where I was telling a) a compelling story in b) a compelling way.

One outcome to this was that I pulled back. I took, on occasion, writing jobs and did them, but I discovered that a job where I am paid to write is not the same thing as writing what I want to be paid for. What I want to be paid for is fiction and the fiction I want to write is fantasy and YA.

So, writing for a living is a good thing. If nothing else were to come out of my life than that I was able to write, somewhere, somehow, I think I could find myself happy. Teaching writing for a living is another way for me to pursue a passion and desire that I have. Again, I think I could be happy. However, neither of these areas are what I want to be doing.

Time and experience has taught me that if I am patient, I work hard, and I learn all that I can and how to apply that education, I will find success in the areas I pursue. And to that end, I continue to write and work on fiction so that I can be successful where I want to find success.

–

*outside world is everyone outside of my own mind

I discovered the previous link about a week ago… at least it’s felt like a week since I saved the link.

For those who are interested it is a (slightly edited) letter to an agent that goes into a great deal of detail about why the prospective author is right about his/her works of fiction and the agent was wrong to pass on reading sample pages based off of a one-page query letter.

I can imagine, from reading the parts of the letter that are available, that the prospective author was/is frustrated at receiving a lot of passes on queries. I can also imagine that he/she wanted to take it out on someone and chose to send a very terse and vulgar letter to someone he/she doesn’t know.

The outcome, without knowing the agent, is that the prospective author, regardless of how much he/she thinks of himself, will probably find it even more difficult to get representation. I don’t think there is an active list of people for agents to avoid; I do think that this person hit the unofficial, only between agents when they talk, list of people to politely refuse and then delete any emails and burn any mail that is sent to an agent from said individual.

Seriously folks, it doesn’t take someone with a PhD and MD in psychology to realize that you get farther with people by being polite and carefully stating your case, asking for clarification or reasons, and seeking feedback on how to improve than you will ever gain by going off the handle and ranting at someone you don’t even know.

When you are looking for an agent you are asking someone to help you succeed. Yelling at someone, no matter who, is not a way to influence people to want to help you. An agents greatest successes don’t come from people who think they are great, it comes from people who they can work with and who write well.

If you want help writing query letters, Kristin Nelson has a blog (Nelson Literary Agency) that offers a lot of usefully good advice on that process and she just finished with a whole series of entries on how to write that pitch paragraph to quickly entice prospective agents/editors by getting to the heart of the project.

nuff said.

Still, work is work is work is work. That is a long run on sentence that doesn’t really qualify as such; but then, I am recovering from having to deal with teachers all day. Teachers are inconsiderate and rude and they don’t give a golly-gosh-damn that people know it. On top of that our Borders had a couple of folk musicians playing in the café, they were loud, I wasn’t impressed, and I was happy to see the couple go.

Now for the fun of what I am doing: Another book review. I borrowed, yesterday, a copy of “Bras and Broomsticks” by Sarah Mlynowski. This is yet another young adult novel, though this time I was not attracted to two pumpkins being held in front of a balerina’s chest whilst she danced across egg shells (don’t think I added that last part in that review). Instead, I was drawn to the book by the name and the dust jacket which outlined a book about Rachel who has a sister named Miri, 14 and 12 respectively. They live with their divorced mother, dislike their divorced father’s fiancé, oh and Miri has recently discovered that she’s inherited the witch gene from her mother and now has the ability to cast spells.

The book was pretty good. Not too long. Like I said, I borrowed it last night and returned it today. However, regardless of the overall length the story was actually well done. Apparently Sarah Mlynowski has been writing professionally for several years now and has done a few books in the chick-lit category. This is her first foray into teen lit and covers several months in the life of Rachel, Miri, their mom, the STB, (Jennifer the soon to be step mother) and others.

Almost immediately the reader is dropped into the realm of magic as Rachel discovers that she is wearing a pair of green tennis shoes her mother told her she couldn’t buy. Thinking that her mother was making amends for… something, she borrows her friends, Tammy, cell phone and calls her mother who immediately interrupts Rachels plans to go hang with the “A-list” crowd at some pizza place. Rachel is a typical teenage girl who wants to be popular and feels that she isn’t for all the wrong reasons (like she has a flat chest, is a whiz at math, and her old best friend Jewel got into the A-crowd and forgot all about her). Upon hearing about the shoes Rachel’s mom tells her to come home so they can talk and she begins to imagine the worst.

As a counterpoint to Rachel is Miri. Miri is twelve, not in high school yet, doesn’t like the same things as Rachel, and doesn’t think the same way about popularity. She is outlined as taller with a better body, bigger breasts (that Rachel want), and now the responsibility of magic. Magic that is passed from mother to daughter but occasionally misses a child or a generation here and there (the mother is also a witch and chooses to live the life of an ordinary human because… well, the author really doesn’t tell us why). In short Miri is now being trained in magic by her mother and is instructed not to use magic for any reason until after the period of training is over.

Throw in some good Star Wars references, add a dash of 12 and 14 and puberty, a guy, a dance group with tryouts, and absolutely hating the STB and you have the mixture for magic, wish granting, and eventually disaster. Without giving away too much, the girls eventually cause their father to call of the wedding, Rachel gets on the team and then totally destroys the dance routine she was so wonderful at, and Miri is reminded of the adage, “With great power comes great responsibility.” (That’s from Spiderman in case anyone is interested and I am formulating in my mind a piece on the problems with comic books that I plan to write.)

Anyway, this was a really good book. I was impressed with the way it was written, all first person and all from the perspective of Rachel - and when the author decides she needs to add in the STB’s thoughts or Miri’s then it’s a spell gone horribly wrong that tells us what they are really thinking. The book is, at the same time, funny and interesting and worth picking up if you have about 16 extra dollors… or waiting for if you don’t want to spend that much to get the hardcover.

reprinted from sw-c.com

Essentially, this is a series of books about a teen girl, Rachel, her younger sister, and their mother and life after divorce with a little bit of magic thrown in, just for good measure. Before reading the series, or even the first book (Bras and Broomsticks) you should know that Rachel is shallow, self-centered, egocentric, complains about her lot(s) in life, and wants to see her parents back together. On top of that, her younger sister, by two years, develops magical abilities in the first book, leaving Rachel as a normal human being; and Rachel uses Miri (her sister) to get what she wants.

The first two books (Bras and Broomsticks and Frogs and French Kisses) cover Miri’s growth in magic and Rachel trying, very hard, to spell, trick, of flirt her way into her main crush’s heart, aka Raf. On top of Miri casting a spell (difficulty determined by number of brooms 1 broom is easy, 5 brooms is extremely difficult) that allows Rachel to dance (she can’t normally) causes Raf’s brother Wil to fall in love with her, and pretty much messes up everything – because magic has its costs.

One of the conceits that Mlynowski uses, in these books, for magic is that a request for something through magic takes that thing (say a pretty dress) from somewhere, taking something you have (say, the clothes you are wearing right now). Your item is deposited wherever the object you wanted it taken from and people are confused.

At the end of the previous book, Rachel discovers that she has the magical gift-slash-talent as well when she stops it from raining on a moved Senior Prom which leaves the reader dangling as they wait for the next book to come out.

In Spells and Sleepingbags, Rachel and Miri continue on with their lives. It is the summer after Rachel’s Freshman year of high school, and they have been sent to spend their summer at a sleep away camp called Camp Wood Lake. This is where Wil, Raf, and their older brother all go for the summer, with Wil and the oldest brother working as camp counselors. The outcome, Rachel has determined to fix her mistakes in the last book and finally hook up with Raf.

The problem in the book, though, is that Mlynowski spends an inordinate amount of time reinforcing that Rachel is very shallow and self-centered with her looking, immediately, for a new BFF (best friend forever, note, BFF’s are best friends forever) and finding one, immediately, on the bus to Camp Wood Lake. What she does not do is set up the story she is trying to tell. Instead, she sets up the story that she never bothers to tell. As a result, reading the first eighth to a quarter of the book ended up being a bit tiresome. The same was true in her second book as well (I recall really enjoying the setup in the first book).

As a reader you have to get almost to the end of the book before you actually get to the plot of the book. Sure, there are elements and hints toward where Mlynowski is attempting to take the story; but she never actually sets it up. Instead, we deal with Rachel and her vacuous nature while she attempts to get a new boyfriend and not be the girl all the other girls pick on.

Enter the dragon, very quickly, Mlynowski hints at Liana, the proposed antagonist to the story. The problem with Liana is that she has such a small role in the book until (nearly) the very end, and Mlynowski gets rid of Rachel’s new BFF in a bass-akward way that it felt rushed and forced. Like the three Star Wars prequel movies. George Lucas, in all his wisdom, introduced the world to a kid named Anni. This, by the by, was the proto-Darth Vadar. The problem with the Prequel movies is that Lucas waited until the third movie to tell all three movies he wanted to tell. No one really cares about Anni. People did care about Anakin Skywalker and how he was already a good pilot when Obi Wan Kenobi first met him and how, at that stage in life, he rose to prominence and then fell from grace. Episode 3 should’ve been broken into three parts and told as three different movies.

Like Star Wars, Mlynowski waits until the end of the story to introduce what she is trying to accomplish. Liana wants to be Rachel. Therefore, Liana has to make Rachel’s life so hideous that Rachel doesn’t want it anymore. However, this is done, rather poorly, by keeping Rachel from kissing Raf and in the end having Miri choose Liana over Rachel. Had Mlynowski provided the proper clues in the beginning of the book, Alison is potentially the bad guy or Liana is on the bus already when Rachel gets on; Liana introduces herself as Rachel and Miri’s cousin early on; events are made to look like coincidences rather than deliberate attacks on Rachel; Rachel and Miri’s relationship begins to deteriorate slowly; and Rachel has to deal with her new powers all the time knowing who Liana really is makes a more compelling story.

OR, Mlynowski was pretty desperate to get Liana and Rachel to trade bodies and as a result, having Rachel accept that in response to the rebuff she feels from Raf as a result of her dating Wil (previous book) and then spending the book in Liana’s body with Miri not noticing and, as a subplot, trying to figure out what is going on with Liana and Rachel, everyone already knowing that Liana is their cousin, would’ve also been a more compelling story and more to the point of what Mlynowski may have been trying to accomplish.

The book took me about a quarter to get into and start enjoying what I was reading. I picked Liana out of the crowd as the bad egg from the beginning and as a witch and as a cousin. The book was not groundbreaking, it was interesting, but it didn’t do enough in the beginning to cause me to really get a grasp on where the author was taking the reader; and it felt like Mlynowski was trying very hard to use her setup from book one all the way through book three… and her dialogue felt more kitschy than catchy and more adult than teenager. Plus, honestly, with all the people I talk to and all the people I associate with of all age levels, I don’t think (outside of a cellphone commercial) I’ve ever actually heard any girl refer to another girl as a BFF or multiple girls all referring to their group as BFF’s.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens with the next book… through, there is a teaser for it at the end of the Spells and Sleepingbags and I am a little worried it will ultimately end up more of the same.

What does this mean? Let’s take another look at Cassandra West:

Cassandra is a young girl who is pulled out of her body and placed into the body of an older woman… herself, ten or twenty years older.

This is an idea. And it is where the idea for Cassandra West started. But it is not a significant plot description about what the stories (and book) is about or where Cassandra will end up. Because this is true, understanding that there is more to an idea than merely the nexus that begins the formation of a story is essential… and then gathering the parts of that story together in a way that makes sense to you is also important.

Because this has been discussed before, I have shared aspects of the brainstorming idea that comes with this story. There are multiple characters:

• Thomas - horse, familiar
• The Reverend Bubbha Thomas - pastor
• Roy Bean - western judge, mage
• Cassandra’s father - ???
• Cassandra’s mother - normal human being, might’ve been a prostitute
• Housekeeper,
• various witches, wizards
• and etc.

Characters help me to build around the concept. If I have a central character (protagonist) and supporting characters including an antagonist, then I can begin to see how various parts of my idea are going to come together to form the greater story. Thomas is important, in part, because he is also the king of all horses. He and Cassandra have a relationship that has lasted for a long, long time. The outcome is that when Cassandra is pulled into her adult body, Thomas is there waiting for her.

One question that was asked, in an early iteration of the original Cassandra West story was, “Does this story deal with time travel?”

The answer to that question is no. Time is static in this universe, Cassandra is taken from her 11 year old body and placed into her older body. The date has not changed. One result of this is that Cassandra is constantly trying to get back to her home. However, (story element) she cannot cross a certain river in her adult body and must find another way to return home.

Since I know that Cassandra will repeatedly deal with different characters, as well as the ramifications of her being made older through magic, her father’s involvement in things, who the housekeepers in her parent’s house are/were, and other aspects to the story, having gathered a cast of characters that all have different responsibilities helps me focus on the idea of the story and to see if it begins to tell me different things about the background and history of the world, the other indigenous peoples, other events that might be taking place, and more.

Though the Cassandra West story is, in part, character driven, the story is more plot driven which means gathering ideas about plot elements or points to the story are also essential. Knowing what needs to happen at different points of the overarching story helps to determine what is happening now and what will be happening in a chapter or two.

Continued next week.

Part One: Working Through the Concept
Part Two: Working Through the Concept - part II

Poison Sleep follow Pratt’s character Marla Mason, the chief witch of the city of Felport. Pratt’s first book takes place in San Francisco as Marla and her partner Rondeau are there attempting to find the Cornerstone, an extremely magical piece of stone that can change or alter reality. She needs this to… it doesn’t matter. Read the book, the previous review, or the first chapter.

T.A. Pratt follows up Blood Engine with Poison Sleep. This book is set about two months after the first and takes place in Felport. Instead of dealing with a crazed magician’s… oh wait, dealing with more crazed magicians, Marla begins the book by racing to a hospital for the magically insane. One of the craziest of the witches in the hospital escaped from her cell and was trying to escape. As a result, another patient woke up and disappeared, leaving orange blossoms behind and a giant hole in the wall.

Marla returns to Felport (the criminally insane and patients are outside of the city) realizing that she needs to interview and hire a Love Talker, needs to find an assistant who can keep her life in order, and has to take care of Susan Wellstone’s holdings in the city (see previous book for why), divvying them up among the other leading witches and wizards. However, the story is never as simple as what needs to be done. The escaped patient, Genevieve, has created a reality that is alongside the one Marla lives in. One of the problems that Marla encounters is that people, ordinaries, are being pulled into her world.

The outcome is… well, less than I expected.

I started reading Pratt through his book The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl. I fell in love with this book and looked forward to reading more of his work. As a result, I’ve read some of his short stories and then, excitedly, picked up Blood Engine. My chief criticism of the previous book was the use of sex and sexuality to illustrate the movement in the book. Though I didn’t mind reading through that, the addition of that material seemed… out of place with the book as a whole. However, knowing that information and some of the details added in the first book allows the reader to realize backstory with Marla and, even though not something I would’ve added to the book, allows a greater understanding of the character.

As a result of Rangergirl and Blood Engines I was excited to see what would happen next… especially when you move Marla out of San Francisco and back into her base of operations: Felport. The outcome was less than I was expecting. Rangergirl was a really good story that caught my attention and suggested that Pratt was going somewhere. Blood Engine carried this forward buy setting up the potential for a really good series of books. Poison Sleep, though, doesn’t match up to the previous two books. Granted, you read a book for the author, and you read a story to see what commentary the author will make; and Pratt does tell a good story, but in this case I wonder if this was a good story poorly told or a poor story told exceptionally well.

Truth told, I didn’t feel as though this was a continuation of the Marla Mason stories. Yes, I expect to read the  next two books (planned) in the series and look forward to their coming out; but I don’t think that Pratt told an exceptionally compelling story in this book. The saddest part of the book, to me, was the rather … predictable and odd way the story ended. I don’t think that the resolution to the story matched the buildup to the end. Sure, Pratt is writing stories where the fate of Felport - and by extension the world - is in jeopardy; but on the flipside of that, at no time did I really feel like the story had created enough conflict or danger where the world (or Felport) might actually be in danger.

I think that Pratt needs to write a more compelling story where he either deals with Marla (protagonist) in danger and the depth of the story and all action surrounding the ancillary characters, deals with her being in mortal danger. Otherwise, the world affecting danger should actually deal with the potential of actual world destruction.

Truth told, I appreciate Pratt as a writer and look forward to reading the next book in the series, Dead Reign.

Authors will tell you that finding an idea is not the hard part - rather, working through the idea is the hardest part in writing a book or story.

Writing a book is a long, lonely, and arduous task. Some people have the ability to do this process very quickly, Stephen King, T.A. Pratt, Orson Scott Card, and others. However, this is merely the process of writing and not determining whether or not the concept is worth working through.

Getting an idea is relatively simple.

You can get the idea walking down the street. For me, the ideas I am working through started in various ways. Cassandra West came (in part) as a result of reading The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl. What that book did was return me to a city I really enjoyed living in in my early twenties, and to show me the opportunities of writing sword and sorcery stories set in the Old West. The concept is relatively easy to come by, though as I (occasionally) work through the various aspects of the stories, I find new things about Cassandra West, the world she lives in, the various towns she deals with, and the people she comes in contact with. One of the coolest additions to the story came, in part, out of a conversation with my wife, named, The Reverend Bubbha Thomas.

However, characters and settings don’t a story make. You have to have a reason for those characters to be in those settings and for everything to work together in a way that allows the final product to be a compelling story. The reason you read a book is in part because you enjoy how the writer tells stories; and in part because you want to see what the author has to say about a particular subject. In many cases, even candy stories, mass market publications (old dime store novels), have something to say about some subject.

Because subject matter is (relatively) important, publishers often deal with specific subject matter. This is called genre. The popular genres are: Science Fiction and Fantasy, Romance, Thriller, Mystery, General Fiction, and more. Each of these subject’s can be divided even further. Sci-Fi and Fantasy are a part of Speculative Fiction. General Fiction also includes Literature as well as Candy Lit.

This is important because, as an author, you will be writing toward a specific audience. That audience will be reading toward a specific theme. And that theme will describe what genre you are writing in. Granted, a Romance can deal with multiple other themes, fantasy, sword and sorcery, and others, but the main theme of the story is romance and love.

Having the theme of the story, what it deals with, helps determine how you will work through the concept.