Macmillan New Writing Watch

Low Life, by Ryan David Jahn

One of the unexpected pleasures of being part of Macmillan New Writing is seeing other writers on the imprint go on to achieve critical and commercial success.  Recently Ann Weisgarber, LC Tyler and Brian McGilloway have all been nominated for major prizes.

Ryan David Jahn has now, with his second novel, Low Life, been assimilated into the mainstream Macmillan imprint.  I always look forward to MNWers' crime novels (my former editor Will Atkins is now head honcho for Macmillan crime acquisitions, such is his ability to pick winners), and Low Life does not disappoint.

When Simon Johnson is attacked in his crummy LA apartment, he knows he must defend himself or die. Turning on the lights after the scuffle, Simon realises two things: one, he has killed his attacker; two, the resemblance of the man to himself is uncanny.

Over the coming days, Simon’s lonely life will spiral out of control. With his pet goldfish Francine in tow, he embarks on a gripping existential investigation, into his own murky past, and that of Jeremy Shackleford, the (apparently) happily married math teacher whose body is now lying in Simon’s bathtub under forty gallons of ice.

But Simon has a plan. Gradually, he begins to assume the dead man’s identity, fooling Shackleford’s colleagues, and even his beautiful wife. However, when mysterious messages appear on the walls around Simon’s apartment, he realises that losing his old self will be more difficult than he’d imagined. Everything points to a long forgotten date the previous spring, when his life and Shackleford’s first collided. As the contradictions mount, and the ice begins to melt, the events of the past year will resolve themselves in the most catastrophic way.

Combining gritty noir, psychological drama and dazzling plotting, Low Life is a shocking novel that announces Jahn as a brilliant new voice of modern America.

So goes the blurb, of which I am automatically wary.  The phrase "gripping existential investigation" invites immediate scepticism, and yet this is exactly what the novel proves to be.  Jahn builds on his exceptional ability--showcased in his debut Acts of Violence--to nail urban American life in the accretion of telling detail by adding a plot of clockwork precision: few writers would have the audacity to combine hidden quantum physics with a seamy naturalism, and fewer still would be able to pull it off.  The crime field is a crowded one, but with Low Life, Ryan David Jahn proves he is working in its upper reaches.

The Dog of the North - Book Club Questions

The Dog of the North is sometimes discussed at at book clubs (don't you have anything better to read?) and on occasion I'm asked to suggest some questions.  Since I hate to disappoint an audience, I've suggested a few questions you might want to ask when thinking about the book.  If you haven't read the book yet, they do contain some spoilers.  In the unlikely event that your book club disdains fantasy literature as adolescent claptrap, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

By any normal standards Beauceron is not a "good" character.  Did you sympathise with him despite that, and if so, how did the author persuade you?

The story is driven by Beauceron's desire for revenge, but achieving his goal brings him little satisfaction.  Why do you think that is?

The story unfolds over two different time periods which only come together at the end.  Did you like that approach or was it confusing?

The Dog of the North is stocked on the fantasy shelves of bookshops.  Did it meet your expectations of fantasy fiction, or do you think the genre label limits its potential readership? What purpose do you think genre labels serve? 

Given that most of the trappings of conventional fantasy are absent, the book could very easily have been written as a historical novel set in the Renaissance.  Why do you think the author chose to write it as fantasy?

The book has a lot of strong female characters.  Which did you like most and why?

Lord Thaume is a strong and decisive leader throughout the book, but his actions become increasingly arbitrary.  Is the author telling us something about the nature of power?

The author has said that he imagined Mettingloom as a "frozen Venice"?  What did you think of this way of reimagining real-world locations?

Mettingloom is ruled for half a year each by the Winter and Summer Kings.  Did you believe that such a system could have worked in practice and if not, did you mind?

The author gives us a very detailed description of the Battle of Jehan's Steppe.  Did you find it convincing?

The male characters are consistently outwitted by the female ones.  Is the author suggesting that women are more manipulative by nature, or that in a male-dominated society they can only succeed by their wits?

Political intrigues are at the heart of the novel, but all of the characters seem to be motivated by self-interest rather than principle.  Do you find that a convincing depiction of the political process?

The characters in the story tend to use a very formal style of dialogue.  Did that help to create a particular atmosphere for you, or did it grate on you?

At the end of the book Beauceron has the chance to avenge himself on Siedra, but lets her escape so that he can rescue Isola.  Why do you think he does this?

The novel's ending implies that Arren and Eilla will never be together.  Do you think that's true, and was it an appropriate conclusion?

The Vancean Influence

David Isaak over on Tomorrowville, in the comments thread to his stimulating post on ephemerality, made the mistake of asking me to trace Jack Vance's influence on my fiction.  (This a bit like asking me to tweet about biscuits...).  The two aspects of Vance's art David doesn't notice in mine are (deliberately) overripe prose and extensive use of magic.  I'd agree in both cases: any overripeness in my prose is unintentional, and my fascination with the Middle Ages leads me to play down the role of magic in my own stories.

So what have I tried to keep from Vance?  I've always--flying against the critical consensus--enjoyed Vance's female characters, and especially the way in which they nimbly outwit the more pedestrian male ones.  (Vance himself, I suspect, picked this up from PG Wodehouse).  In The Zael Inheritance, Laura Glyde persistently befuddles Lamarck with a mixture of superior intelligence and restrained sex-appeal; while in Dragonchaser poor Mirko has to contend with both Larien and Lady Catzendralle.  The relationships are perhaps more nuanced in The Dog of the North, but Arren rarely comes off better in sparring with either Eilla or Siedra, while Beauceron's kidnap of Lady Isola hardly goes according to plan.  In an otherwise damning review of The Dog of the North, Deathray magazine described the women as "haunting", so I must have got something right.

Vance also enjoys identity games, where one character is someone other than reader thinks.  This features strongly in the Demon Princes series, where Attel Malagate, Kokor Hekkus and Viole Falushe all masquerade as other characters, but we see it too with Sir Pellinore in Madouc and, in a curious fashion, Kul the Killer in The Green Pearl.  My own fascination with identity games runs even deeper: the true identities of Laura Glyde, 'N', Beauceron and Malvazan are central to the novels in which they feature.

I've long admired the cool detachment of the mature Vance's prose (while I take David's point about the overripeness, it's mainly seen in the Dying Earth novels.  His extraordinary evocativeness is usually the result of surprising economy of method).  It's particularly noteworthy when he's describing atrocities.

The single remaining warrior rode pellmell down into the swale, where the Kaber warriors cut off first his legs, then his arms, then rolled him into the ditch to ponder the sad estate to which his life had come.

---Suldrun's Garden

The use of this tone of crisp precision, regardless of circumstance, is one of the distinguishing features of Vance's work, and which alienates many readers.  But those who appreciate it find it part of his continuing appeal.  I'm conscious that, in Dragonchaser, the early hanging scene owes much to Vance:

The crowd set up a hooting as the poisoner was led towards the platform, where the gibbets were erected at a good elevation to facilitate viewing. The prisoner cowered low as the noose was set around his neck.

“Larkas Laman,” said the Sergeant of the Constables sonorously, “you have been adjudged guilty of the heinous crime of extinguishing your wife – ”

“As we all would if we could!” called one wag from the crowd, to general hilarity.

“ – using toadstools garnered for that purpose. Your guilt is unquestioned. Do you have a final message of repentance or edification, that others might not share your fate?”

Larkas Laman seemed unwilling to draw general conclusions from his circumstances. “I am innocent!” he called. “There were no toadstools! Her mother laid an information against me, but poor Melsifar was always of a sickly disposition.”

The Sergeant was attuned through long practice to the tenor of condemned folks’ final speeches. Protestations of innocence were common, if futile, and provided neither entertainment nor enlightenment. He nodded at the hangman, who pulled on a theatrically large lever. A trap-door opened, Larkas Laman dropped three feet with his conclusions unfinished, to kick and jerk on the end of the rope. The crowd cheered this satisfactory outcome.

Next was brought forward the schismatic Clovildas Cloon. Unlike Larkas Laman, he spoke long and fervently, ignoring questions of guilt and innocence, instead justifying his acts. Mirko was no clearer as to the nature of his offence at the end of the peroration, but he recognised a fanatic. Clovildas Cloon appeared to welcome martyrdom, and at the end of the speech commanded the hangman to pull the lever “that I might the sooner begin my eternal blessings.”

The crowd had enjoyed this spirited defiance of mortality – even if, to Mirko’s eyes, religious feeling was not in great evidence – and the opening of the trap door was greeted with applause. There appeared to be little difference between the twitching bodies of Larkas Laman and Clovildas Cloon: might the latter’s eternal blessings be deferred, or even apocryphal?

Vance's related ability to extract humour from grim situations, usually through understatement, is a close cousin to this narrative detachment.

Without wishing to devalue readers' experiences with spoilers, I'd also suggest that a fondness for the melancholy, half-resolved ending is something I've taken from Vance.  Some have suggested that his endings are perfunctory, but the best of them--The Book of Dreams, perhaps, or Maske: Thaery--have certainly influenced the endings of both The Zael Inheritance and The Dog of the North.

There are no doubt many other Vancean influences on my writing, but those are the conscious ones for me - a particular take on male-female relationships, an interest in concealed identities, a cool narrative tone and a certain attitude to endings.

Sadly what I don't seem to have absorbed from Vance is his work ethic--4.4 million words over a 50-year career.  There's always something to strive for...

Also Tweets

I am now on Twitter, despite having only the haziest idea of how it works.  Follow me @timstretton  if you yearn to eavesdrop my ephemeral musings on biscuits.

Closed for the World Cup...

::Acquired Taste is enjoying some downtime.  For various reasons my creative energies are somewhat depleted, and rather than flogging a comatose horse, I'm allowing myself the indulgence of following football's ("soccer", for US readers*) World Cup.

A football tournament a month long has something in common with the great baggy novels of the 19th century: epic duration, dozens of individual stories woven into a wider narrative, unlikely heroes and predictable villains, triumph but also hubris and despair.   Like all extended narratives, it also has its longeurs (as anyone who watched Slovenia vs Algeria on Sunday will attest).

A novel cannot fully be understood until it's read: in Bleak House the reader will be following with interest the stories of Esther Summerson and Lady Dedlock, but not realising how their destinies are linked until the end.  The World Cup is similarly opaque until it's over, and we look back and reinterpret the preceding events in hindsight: in 2006, the ageing Zidane drags a woeful French team all the way to the final; with ten minutes of his stellar career remaining, he erupts into rage and charges into the gadfly Materazzi with his head, and France crumble to defeat.  For an extended period the best footballer on the planet, Zidane is remembered instead for his inexplicable transgression.  A complex man, he'd make a great character in fiction.

Where the World Cup differs from, say, Bleak House, is that whatever pattern we subsequently impose is not the result of conscious design: a football tournament does not have an "author".  That's part of its appeal: in a novel, we expect major events to have been foreshadowed, and to be able to admire the pattern once we perceive it; in sport, we never know whether there will a pattern.  In the 1994 World Cup, the veteran Baresi recovered from a knee operation to be fit for final, but the spectator doesn't know whether he will be the hero or the villain.  There is to be no happy ending: in the penalty shoot-out with Brazil he is the first to miss; and Baggio, Italy's star player, misses the last one.  We don't know until the end whether we have been watching a tragedy or a comedy.

The 2010 World Cup has failed to ignite yet, but we can be sure that, because of the structure of the tournament, drama will follow.  While a World Cup scripted by Dickens would undoubtedly be entertaining (if only for Mick McCarthy trying to get his lips around "Pumblechook"), the spontaneity is what keeps us watching.

*Those following the competition will know that I'm in no position to patronise American fans after England's unutterably feeble draw with the US on Saturday.

The Curse of Realism

Why TV cop shows aren't meant to tell it like it is

UK viewers may in recent weeks have caught the new BBC police drama Luther, starring Idris Elba (the magnetic Stringer Bell in The Wire).  It's fair to say Luther has garnered mixed reviews.  Its critics say it's formulaic, overacted, overheated, cliche-ridden, with dialogue verging on the self-parodic.  Its fans, by contrast, say it's formulaic, overacted, overheated, cliche-ridden, with dialogue verging on the self-parodic.  That's the odd thing about Luther: everyone sees the same qualities in the programme, but what enrages some viewers enraptures others.

I confess to liking Luther a lot: it's one of the few programmes that I make a point of watching.  I thought the first episode was dire, and it wasn't until the second that I understood what it was trying to achieve.  The overripeness is at the core of the delight.  Elba may not actually chew the scenery, but on more than one occasion he demolishes it; he rants his lines, swaggers across the sets as he plays the stereotypical cop with issues for all it's worth.  Elba's performance isn't because he can't act: if you've seen The Wire, you'll remember how extraordinarily understated his Baltimore drug-lord is.  The glory of Luther is that it doesn't pretend for a minute to be realistic; instead, it's half opera, half graphic novel, but with high production values and a classy cast.

Criticism seems to come largely from those who view 'realism' as a merit in itself, rather than artistic choice.  All cop shows--all TV shows--are by their nature artificial.  They are a representation of life, not life itself.  On TV, cases are solved, justice (whether actual or poetic) is dispensed, and no-one ever has any paperwork.  The criminal justice system does not deliver such unequivocal outcomes.

Luther has recognised and embraced this.  It manages at once to parody the formula cop show and itself.  And while you're enjoying it being hip and self-referential, it sneakily makes you care about the characters: the wholly unexpected death of one of the major players in this week's penultimate episode was as shocking a TV moment as I can remember.

Luther  reminds us of two things: true realism is neither achievable nor desirable in art; and you should only judge an artistic endeavour in terms of what the artist is trying to achieve, not what the recipient thinks it should be.

If anyone else has been watching Luther, tell me what you think - particularly if you hated it...

The Name of the R'Ose
What to call your fantasy characters

David Isaak had a predictably stimulating post over on Tomorrowville about how difficult it is to find just the right name for your characters. If you haven't read it, you might want to now, as I'm going to explore the question in the specific, and potentially treacherous, field of fantasy fiction. Val Kovalin treats a similar topic over at Obsidian Bookshelf so thoroughly that I'm not going to retread that ground. Instead I want to look at how I go about choosing names for my characters, and what I hope to achieve in my choices.

My first aim when choosing names is to create a sense in the reader's mind of a coherent underlying culture. I'm looking for names which are 'the same, but different'. In The Dog of the North, for instance, I'd conceived Mettingloom as a frozen Venice, and I wanted the names to reinforce that. It wasn't a great leap from there to employ Italianate names (which also, for some readers, gave these episodes a Shakespearean feel, which can't be bad). So I ended up with names of my own devising, like Fanrolio, Tardolio and Goccio. I also researched Italian names in use in the Renaissance but which aren't popular today (Davanzato, for instance). Then I played with Shakespeare by Italianising some of his names (Laertio, for example). The result, I hope, is a set of names which not only looks consistent to the reader, but also carries some of the connotations of the source culture. It's a short-cut to helping the reader understand from the start that Mettingloom is going to play out like Renaissance Italy.

I also want my names to look good on the page, and to be pronounceable. Using real, or minimally adapted, names helps here (Jehan and Enguerran, for instance); if real people had the name, someone must have been able to pronounce it. In Dragonchaser, I gave a lot of characters Lithuanian names like Giedrus and Skaidrys - these names have a latinate feel (it's only a slight oversimplification to describe Lithuanian nomenclature as latinised Polish) without the overfamiliarity of actual Latin names. I love the look of Polish names but I would never use them because they are just so difficult--and often counter-intuitive--for Anglophone readers to pronounce.

Sometimes there are difficult choices to make. For The Last Free City, where the inspiration was Renaissance Dubrovnik, I wanted to use names with a Serbo-Croat cast. Some of these names are unproblematic (Todarko, for instance, provides no difficulty of pronunciation) but others are trickier. Many Slavic names end "ic" but are pronounced "itch": I chose to avoid names structured in this way. On the other hand, I did retain the "ij" spelling where the "j" is essentially silent: there is a danger here that the reader will pronounce the "j" in the character I've called "Zanijel". I think it's worth it for the look of the word.

I tried to add an additional layer of subtlety in The Last Free City by giving the houses (essentially the family names) an Italian feel, so that they felt different to the personal names: my intention here was to imply a cultural richness and evolution over many centuries. If it works, great: if not, the reader is no worse off.

Sometimes--I freely admit it--I just like to have a little bit of fun. I spent a long time alighting on a suitable name for the eponymous "Dog of the North". I wanted to have something with a French feel (because he comes from the Emmenrule, where I'd used largely French nomenclature) and eventually settled on Beauceron--which, pleasingly, is a breed of dog...

Everyone has their own method for naming their fantasy characters; some are more successful than others. My last advice on the topic is that if you want to use an apostrophe in the name, think very very carefully. The odds are your name will look better, and be easier to pronounce, without it.

The Treacherous Tool: Coincidence in Fiction

Novice writers are invariably advised to steer away from building coincidence into their stories, for good reason. Unless it's handled deftly, coincidence can break the reader's belief in the sequence of events, or even in the writer's competence.

Conventional wisdom would have us believe that coincidence is permissible in only two circumstances: as the event which initiates the story, or to make the protagonist's situation worse. So in The Prisoner of Zenda, the reader is not alarmed by the resemblance between Rudolf Rassendyll and Prince Rudolf because it is a given at the start of the story; but if Rassendyll were to appear halfway through the novel and, oh, look! he's a dead ringer for the Prince, the reader might understandably strain at that. (In this case, the coincidence is explicable because the two Rudolfs are related, which also helps). Thomas Hardy built a career out of the kind of coincidence that makes the protagonist's task harder: in one of the many examples in Tess of the Durbervilles, Tess has split from the monstrous Alec, only to encounter him again in his new guise as hellfire preacher while she goes about her business. Their encounter drags her down to her ruin.

Yesterday I finished Iain Pears' recent novel Stone's Fall, a mystery of betrayal and identity mixed in with banking and espionage unfolding between the 1867 and 1909. Until the last 20 pages I would have recommended it unhesitatingly: it's immaculately plotted, beautifully written and highly atmospheric. The central character, John Stone, is a rapacious capitalist; the novel begins with his death and then spends the next 600 pages explaining it. Pears is an experienced writer of detective fiction, but in this case, the solution to the mystery is a coincidence of such crass implausibility as to wholly devalue what went before. It's a coincidence which makes things worse for the protagonist (it leads directly to Stone's death), so it fits the received wisdom of acceptable coincidence: but it is so overblown, so utterly improbable that the reader can do nothing but recoil. Clare Clark, reviewing Stone's Fall in The Guardian, was similarly dismayed:

It is regrettable, then, that the urge to contrive a final twist to the tale proves too great for Pears to resist. This sprawling, unconventional, occasionally dazzling novel ends with an unconvincing and unnecessary denouement which serves only to undermine the foundations of the elaborate edifice he has worked so painstakingly to create.

Pears is a talented writer; I greatly enjoyed An Instance of the Fingerpost and would read more of his fiction. If so accomplished a writer can be betrayed to his doom by the treacherous allure of coincidence, the rest of us should beware of the risk.

The Burble of Blurble

I don't know about you, but as a reader and as a writer I dislike the blurb that you find on the back cover of books. The blurb acts as a marketing tool to capture the reader's attention and persuade them to read the book. To do they need to be snappy and engaging, and there are two main ways techniques: to oversimplify the book to grab attention, or to give away key plot details. As a writer I can't say either thrills me, although as a self-publisher I've had to write my own. While a blurb may convince you to buy a book, it also weakens and cheapens the reader's experience.

Consider this:

Winter on the lawless plains of the Emmenrule. En route to her wedding in the fortified city of Croad, the beautiful Lady Isola is kidnapped. What is worse, her captor is the infamous Beauceron. But, ruthless as he may be, Beauceron is no ordinary brigand: it is his life's ambition to capture Croad itself – and he will stop at nothing to achieve it.

It's the start, of course, of the Macmillan blurb for The Dog of the North. As blurbs go it's not bad (and I was consulted on it) but it does give a carefully-crafted opening chapter away. Blurbs invariably do; the writer who tries to ensare the reader by creating and resolving a mystery in Chapter One is often undercut by the blurbmeister. It doesn't make too much difference to The Dog of the North, but have a thought for Ryan David Jahn:

Katrina Marino is about to become America’s most infamous murder victim.

This is Katrina’s story, and the story of her killer.

That's the whole plot of Acts of Violence given away in two sentences. It's a book I greatly admire, but how different would my reading experience have been if I hadn't known from the outset that Katrina Marino would wind up dead (especially as it takes her most of the book to die).

The question of blurbs was brought about when I read the first chapter of Neil Gaiman's American Gods online: divorced of blurb. I had the experience--almost unknown today--of reading a first chapter as the writer intended it to be read, uncorrupted by publicity. Had I chosen to read the blurb first, it would have said this:

After three years in prison, Shadow has done his time. But as the time until his release ticks away, he can feel a storm brewing. Two days before he gets out, his wife Laura dies in a mysterious car crash, in adulterous circumstances. Dazed, Shadow travels home, only to encounter the bizarre Mr Wednesday claiming to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America. Together they embark on a very strange journey across the States, along the way solving the murders which have occurred every winter in one small American town. But the storm is about to break... Disturbing, gripping and profoundly strange, Gaiman's epic novel sees him on the road to the heart of America.

Two points here: first, I wouldn't have bought a book based on that flaky-sounding blurb, but I was captivated by the first chapter; and second, the build-up to Laura's death is effectively controlled and shocking to the reader (and we don't learn about her adultery until about Chapter Four). That shock would be rather less for the reader who has read the back cover. You'd be left admiring the writer's skill rather than experiencing an emotional reaction.

Blurbs, I suppose, are a necessary evil. But an evil they remain.

Seven things I've learned so far

These valuable insights, arcane wisdom gathered over many years of midnight toil, are not to be found on this blog. Instead, you have to point your browsers over the Atlantic (or keep them there, depending on location) to Chuck Sambuchino's excellent Guide to Literary Agents. Why not hop over and scout around? Chuck's site is about far more than literary agents and you're sure to learn something--even if not from me...