Characters in Torment?

Of course. That's why they call it fiction. I can do all sorts of mean, nasty, hateful things to them, and they just come back for more. Gosh, I just love it.

As a writer, I know that I have to throw a whole bunch of problems at my characters, otherwise my fiction will be boring. The secret of failure as a writer is to try to please everyone, especially the characters. Oh, those people in my head may want happiness, but there are huge obstacles in the way, obstacles which can thwart those characters, making their lives pure hell. Without realistic conficts, the best characters and beautiful landscapes are about as entertaining as a painting. You may look, but you won’t hang around.

Talented writers of novels and of screenplays know this, and they compose their conflicts every bit as well as they build their worlds and describe their characters. What is so entertaining about stories? Nowadays, much of network television is populated by far more “reality series” than stories, so are stories now passé? Not if you look at the movies, and not if you peruse the shelves of a library or a bookstore. Nope, people still like stories.

As a writer of novels, I do realize that I have an uphill battle. Whatever else has been said about this country, seldom has it been described as a nation of readers! However, fiction writers have plenty of tools available to give readers what they want. Not the boring, not the mundane lives we often lead, but rolicking adventure and many problems to solve.

My most recent release, Trinity on Tylos, has a main character who has many dilemmas, especially those posed by the malevolent alien presence hovering beside her ride through the galaxy. This book has its roots in those space operas which I have enjoyed since I was a kid, with elements of space travel, advanced weapontry, and robotics, but it has a very human side, when my main character Venice Dylenski is forced to choose between losing her life along with all of her colleagues or saving her people and embarking on a first contact adventure which probably won’t have a happy ending. Venice has many problems, her companion has a problem, and her captor has a really big problem, so there is conflict galore as each person attempts to bring the conflict to a resolution which makes him or her the winner.

In my previous novel, The Gift Horse, the main character has so many problems that I've sometimes been accused of being mean-spirited. Nope, not really. I just wanted to see how far I could push the characters and how many times I could shock my reader without ever getting really graphic. The Gift Horse was an experiment in creation of suspense, and I've had some readers tell me they finished it in twenty-four hours, which I consider success. Indeed, two people told me they finished it the night they began, albeit having very little sleep. After all, it is almost three hundred pages long.

I don’t like stories without character development, and in order to get to know characters, an author has to throw impossible tasks and heart-wrenching dilemmas in their way. Only then can readers and viewers see how these folks deal with adversity. That’s why you have to torment your characters to create memorable stories.

The Gift Horse video is now on YouTube

I’ve noticed that some of my favorite authors have their latest book offerings advertised on YouTube via short videos. Some of these are professionally produced, while others are “homemade and handy” but either way, readers now have even more ways to see what favorite authors are doing. This is really an interesting idea, and I have wondered if there is any return on investment for those authors who are paying marketing firms to produce their trailers.

My efforts are lower tech and much lower in cost. Indeed, the one for Trinity on Tylos was basically free, since I used photos which were released as a service to the general public by NASA, and audio from one of the “podsafe” sites where indie artists post their tracks.

Since The Gift Horse is contemporary suspense, I purchased royalty-free stock pics and used another freebie audio track.

To see the video for The Gift Horse, please follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD0Q1LWVDm8
To see the video for Trinity on Tylos, please follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ASi97ljokg

And while you are there, check out your favorite authors, or simply search for book trailer and browse away.

Enjoy!

The Gift Horse

In the two plus years it has been available, I have had quite a bit of feedback from The Gift Horse, far more than I’ve gotten from Trinity on Tylos, and much of it has been positive, but not all, of course. At the end of each calendar year, I think about canceling my contract with Booklocker. Oh, it isn’t really expensive to keep it up— less than the price of a meal at a good restaurant— but having my “self-published” title still in print sometimes makes me feel like a lesser author. While I believe that there are some really good self-published books out there, the stigma does exist.

However, the business person in me insists that as long as there are people interested in buying it, I should go on another year. A fellow writer suggested that I get the rights back to The Gift Horse and market it in tandem with another suspense story, a Work in Progress, but one fairly close to being finished, to an epublisher. Since it only sold two copies in eBook form (and one of those was to me) that would be a new audience, I suppose.

I’ve been fortunate, in that the owner of a gift shop here in town bought twenty five copies of The Gift Horse early this year, and Living Jackson Magazine chose to review it recently. For whatever reason, this somewhat outlandish but very suspenseful tale continues to be read, enjoyed, and occasionally spark controversy.

More than once, I’ve been asked what these books have in common, since they do reflect differing genres of literature. Both of these books have heroines who are willing to sacrifice something of themselves to be what someone else wants them to be. In our society, people profess to be liberated and self-motivated, but that is a fallacy. If you don’t believe me, go to any place where young people gather and watch them act like the folks they see portrayed in various media. Some will play sluts, some act and dress like rappers and pimps. Oh, the gods of our age come to us via small rectangular boxes— television, computer screens, and the like. But they are perhaps more demanding than those who dwelt on Mount Olympus in the days gone by, who only wanted an occasional sacrifice. Nowadays, bowing to the god of media is a 24/7 duty.

Love it or hate it

I’ve chatted with a few folks over the past few weeks, trying to talk up my new novel, Trinity on Tylos, but of course, people want to talk about the book they have read rather than the one they haven’t, so I’ve heard quite a bit about The Gift Horse.

Living in the South is a huge advantage in this business. All southerners were told as children, “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.” That means that people who didn’t like The Gift Horse are usually too polite to say so. Therefore, some readers say, “I just loved it. I couldn’t put it down.” Others just have a tight, polite smile. I guess they are the ones who hated it.

I went to a family reunion last weekend, and while I was there, one of my second cousins said she just loved my first book and can’t wait for this new one. Then she told me that her mother (my first cousin) was a bit shocked by The Gift Horse. I do understand that. The Gift Horse really isn’t for the faint of heart. When I wrote the back cover copy, I said something about taking a wild ride on The Gift Horse. And I wasn’t kidding.

Readers who love it usually cite the suspense, or simply mention how different it is. There are rules for writing fiction. When I wrote this novel I threw several of them out the proverbial window and told Angie’s story the way I saw it. In romance novels there must be a happy ending, in suspense novels the hero or heroine must overcome evil and have the opportunity for happiness. Only in literary fiction is a less than happy ending acceptable. However, in the world I see around me, not too many people enjoy the happy ending that is a prerequisite for winning the hearts and minds of the average reader. In some ways, The Gift Horse is outlandish, but I think it reflects the uncertainty of modern life.