I always find Baldacci a bit over the top when it comes to writing plot and structure - his books are a lot like throwing noodles at a refrigerator and they all stick. But I liked this book - unbelievable as much of it was - I liked the characters, I liked their fallibility in the face of very big villains. It moved and I didn't get impatient with it as I often do. I thought the bit at the end with Oliver Stone's daughter really weak and stupid. But then I usually fault Baldacci for some unbelievable plotting.
This was a page turner. If he'd ever figure out that he could still tell a good story with half the number of characters and a more straight lined plot he would be a great writer. I think he's a great seller but I don't think he's a great writer.
However this book is worth buying.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Live Free or Die Hard Review
For me this was an exercise in excellent writing and that's always an important beginning. Contrary to most belief in Hollywood, excellent scripts are needed for good movies.
As in the first Die Hard, the whole movie is about getting two people who have become estranged back together. In the Die Hard they blew up a building to get Holly and John together. In this Die Hard they take down all the electronic systems (banks, electricity, etc) in order to get John together with his daughter - who hates her father so much she uses her mothers maiden name as her own last name.
The first Die Hard used that estrangement as the outcome of all the mayhem, the second Die Hard and third Die Hards had to do something else and they weren't nearly as good.... this one goes back to what worked the first time - even making references to the first movie that were hilarious then and remain hilarious now. It's a fascinating continuum.
The other writing rule that this movie carries off spectacularly is: "What happens when your lead character can't grow?" John McClain is already as strong and tough and invincible as he can get. So they bring in a character who can grow, who moves from utterly powerless geek to superhero under John's tutelage. It's an interesting writing trick and I thought they did it well.
Some of the special effects were outrageous and it was hard to suspend disbelief even as it was hard not to enjoy them. The villains were delightful. The humor under the carnage is fun. It was a good movie.
As in the first Die Hard, the whole movie is about getting two people who have become estranged back together. In the Die Hard they blew up a building to get Holly and John together. In this Die Hard they take down all the electronic systems (banks, electricity, etc) in order to get John together with his daughter - who hates her father so much she uses her mothers maiden name as her own last name.
The first Die Hard used that estrangement as the outcome of all the mayhem, the second Die Hard and third Die Hards had to do something else and they weren't nearly as good.... this one goes back to what worked the first time - even making references to the first movie that were hilarious then and remain hilarious now. It's a fascinating continuum.
The other writing rule that this movie carries off spectacularly is: "What happens when your lead character can't grow?" John McClain is already as strong and tough and invincible as he can get. So they bring in a character who can grow, who moves from utterly powerless geek to superhero under John's tutelage. It's an interesting writing trick and I thought they did it well.
Some of the special effects were outrageous and it was hard to suspend disbelief even as it was hard not to enjoy them. The villains were delightful. The humor under the carnage is fun. It was a good movie.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Book Review of "The First Family" David Baldacci
Review of First Family – David Baldacci
It starts with a birthday party at Camp David which turns into the kidnapping of the President’s niece. It is a Sean King / Michelle Maxwell mystery. The former Secret Service agents turned private investigators have been featured in Baldacci books before. They track the improbable story to its violent and TOTALLY off the charts unbelievable ending. Its got a few parts that move well. A few character moments that work, but on the whole this is not a well written story.
I didn't like First Family very much, but it moved well enough so that I didn’t put it down in the middle. Baldacci is very spotty for a best selling author, often because he doesn't write structure well and depends on lots and lots of confusion instead of a fluid well constructed track. The plot is definitely convoluted although given some of the strange things that have been happening in America in the last decade or so not totally unbelievable. I like the main characters although they weren't as compelling in this book as they have been in the past. It's something to read if there isn't anything else available. This is definitely not one of his better books.
It starts with a birthday party at Camp David which turns into the kidnapping of the President’s niece. It is a Sean King / Michelle Maxwell mystery. The former Secret Service agents turned private investigators have been featured in Baldacci books before. They track the improbable story to its violent and TOTALLY off the charts unbelievable ending. Its got a few parts that move well. A few character moments that work, but on the whole this is not a well written story.
I didn't like First Family very much, but it moved well enough so that I didn’t put it down in the middle. Baldacci is very spotty for a best selling author, often because he doesn't write structure well and depends on lots and lots of confusion instead of a fluid well constructed track. The plot is definitely convoluted although given some of the strange things that have been happening in America in the last decade or so not totally unbelievable. I like the main characters although they weren't as compelling in this book as they have been in the past. It's something to read if there isn't anything else available. This is definitely not one of his better books.
How I came to write my novel Tranquillity Initiative.
I came to write Tranquillity Initiative, my novel that is coming out this fall, because I picked up a fascinating little book on Techno-Terrorism. At the time I wanted to write an action movie. I was a few years out of Paramedic training and fascinated by emergency medicine, so I decided to write about an anthrax attack on New York. This was well before 2001. I wanted my villains to drop a bomb containing anthrax off a building where the germs would spread in the worst configuration possible – so I chose the World Trade Center. The twin towers were still standing at the time and were perfect for my requirements.
Several drafts later I showed it to a friend. “You can’t have the worst possible thing happen at the beginning of the book,” he said. “The whole script goes downhill from there. I went back to the drawing boards.
How would I structure the release of the Anthrax so that everyone in the city would know it was there, and still have something to be scared would happen at the end? The answer was two bombs. One opened by mistake and distributed into the city at the beginning, one to be properly deployed from a tall building at the end – with everyone painfully aware of the consequences. To point out some of the things I didn’t approve of that were going on politically, I made the bombs American issue, stolen off one of our bases.
Next, I had to decide where the accidental distribution would take place. Why not Times Square? There were old buildings on the west side of the square that would do well for immigrant housing. Lots of people from all over the world travel to the Square. Later in the tale, I could still have my battle on top of the twin towers, which remained the best place from which to deploy weapons grade germ warfare armament. Actually, in one early draft I had made the germ warfare contagious, but it rapidly became clear that I could wipe out the human and animal populations of the world so I switched to a deliberate decision not to make the spores transmit human to human. Of course that discovery was made when I was still using optimal deployment off the North Tower at the beginning of the story.
The story became good enough and solid enough to transpose into novel form so I spent months expanding the film. I was now working with a movie and a novel. That’s a wonderful exercise because you learn so much about your film characters in the process. Then came 9/11 and the loss of the optimal buildings on the west side of the City. I went back to the drawing boards. I needed another ending. I needed another building. This time I had to rewrite both a novel and a movie.
I’ve always loved Grand Central Station with its whispering corners, countless entrances and exits, bookstores and junk food, the feeling of history that treats the eye with every glance. While my villain settled on the magnificent Chrysler building for his final deployment, my imagination traveled to the dark tunnels of Grand Central and the ending fairly wrote itself.
A visit to the Chrysler building was a complete surprise. I had walked past it all my life without going inside. I was unprepared for how beautiful the lobby was. A quick study of its history and the way its construction played into my plot was an unexpected bonus. I spent months and months rewriting, using the Grand Central tunnels I remembered all the years from early childhood riding the trains out of the lower level on the New Haven and Hartford line in the years before Amtrak.
And now, after a zillion changes, my novel is almost ready to be released and I’m thrilled. Look for it in your bookstores this fall. Tranquillity Initiative.
Several drafts later I showed it to a friend. “You can’t have the worst possible thing happen at the beginning of the book,” he said. “The whole script goes downhill from there. I went back to the drawing boards.
How would I structure the release of the Anthrax so that everyone in the city would know it was there, and still have something to be scared would happen at the end? The answer was two bombs. One opened by mistake and distributed into the city at the beginning, one to be properly deployed from a tall building at the end – with everyone painfully aware of the consequences. To point out some of the things I didn’t approve of that were going on politically, I made the bombs American issue, stolen off one of our bases.
Next, I had to decide where the accidental distribution would take place. Why not Times Square? There were old buildings on the west side of the square that would do well for immigrant housing. Lots of people from all over the world travel to the Square. Later in the tale, I could still have my battle on top of the twin towers, which remained the best place from which to deploy weapons grade germ warfare armament. Actually, in one early draft I had made the germ warfare contagious, but it rapidly became clear that I could wipe out the human and animal populations of the world so I switched to a deliberate decision not to make the spores transmit human to human. Of course that discovery was made when I was still using optimal deployment off the North Tower at the beginning of the story.
The story became good enough and solid enough to transpose into novel form so I spent months expanding the film. I was now working with a movie and a novel. That’s a wonderful exercise because you learn so much about your film characters in the process. Then came 9/11 and the loss of the optimal buildings on the west side of the City. I went back to the drawing boards. I needed another ending. I needed another building. This time I had to rewrite both a novel and a movie.
I’ve always loved Grand Central Station with its whispering corners, countless entrances and exits, bookstores and junk food, the feeling of history that treats the eye with every glance. While my villain settled on the magnificent Chrysler building for his final deployment, my imagination traveled to the dark tunnels of Grand Central and the ending fairly wrote itself.
A visit to the Chrysler building was a complete surprise. I had walked past it all my life without going inside. I was unprepared for how beautiful the lobby was. A quick study of its history and the way its construction played into my plot was an unexpected bonus. I spent months and months rewriting, using the Grand Central tunnels I remembered all the years from early childhood riding the trains out of the lower level on the New Haven and Hartford line in the years before Amtrak.
And now, after a zillion changes, my novel is almost ready to be released and I’m thrilled. Look for it in your bookstores this fall. Tranquillity Initiative.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Book Review of "The Wrecker" Clive Cussler
Review of
The Wrecker
Clive Cussler and Justin Scott
At the turn of the 20th Century trains were the planes and the telegraph was email. Detective Isaac Bell takes on a brilliant, wealthy and diabolical adversary bent on destroying Osgood Hennessy, the Southern Pacific Railroad's self-made president, who is constructing a short cut through the Cascade mountains in Oregon. The stakes are high. If the ruthless and brilliant villain is successful he will be able to take over the Osgood’s national railway and become immensely wealthy and famous. If he wins he will destroy Hennessy and own his railroad. Isaac Bell, the Van Dorne Detective Agencies top agent, is pitted against a villain almost as smart and ruthless as he is. In the beginning I thought this story was for men mostly – although I love action films I’m not crazy about cars and I can take or leave trains – but once the story got going it was riveting. Cussler has a talent for description that takes the reader right into the action. He also creates characters you care about whether it’s to like them or dislike them. His villains are nasty, his heroes principled. Don’t plan to be doing anything else after you’ve hit the last third of the book.
look for my book "The Tranquillity Initiative" this fall
Joan Meijer
The Wrecker
Clive Cussler and Justin Scott
At the turn of the 20th Century trains were the planes and the telegraph was email. Detective Isaac Bell takes on a brilliant, wealthy and diabolical adversary bent on destroying Osgood Hennessy, the Southern Pacific Railroad's self-made president, who is constructing a short cut through the Cascade mountains in Oregon. The stakes are high. If the ruthless and brilliant villain is successful he will be able to take over the Osgood’s national railway and become immensely wealthy and famous. If he wins he will destroy Hennessy and own his railroad. Isaac Bell, the Van Dorne Detective Agencies top agent, is pitted against a villain almost as smart and ruthless as he is. In the beginning I thought this story was for men mostly – although I love action films I’m not crazy about cars and I can take or leave trains – but once the story got going it was riveting. Cussler has a talent for description that takes the reader right into the action. He also creates characters you care about whether it’s to like them or dislike them. His villains are nasty, his heroes principled. Don’t plan to be doing anything else after you’ve hit the last third of the book.
look for my book "The Tranquillity Initiative" this fall
Joan Meijer
Book Review of "Gone" by Jonathan Kellerman
This is another Alex Delaware mystery. In this story Hollywood wannabes are showing up dead or missing. Eventually the tracks lead to an acting school and a family trio.
I kept hoping this book would get more interesting - I had started it and put it down before because it wasn't engaging. This time I was determined to finish it, but it was an effort. It's slooooooow.
I can tell you immediately what I disliked most about it. Every time you meet a new character you are subjected ad nausium to physical descriptions. I enjoy picking up one or two interesting points about physicality that crop up time and again to advance the plot, or give us more information about the character or quickly remind us who the character is if he or she hasn't shown up in awhile. Kellerman's use of description is more like name dropping than true characterization. I don't care about name dropped shoes if they aren't essential to the story. In Kellerman’s case it’s shoes, jacket, pants, hair cut….and on and on and on.
Kellerman is a good writer as far as technique is concerned but in this book he doesn't have much to work with. It's a weakly plotted book.... no real surprises, a few twists - I wasn't expecting a torture chamber at the end, the chamber was gratuitous anyway. The major problem with this book is that you don't care enough about anyone to get exercised about their demise other than in a general way, like reading about inconsequential strangers in an obituary. The villains are not very interesting, the missing people aren't all that interesting, Delaware's personal life isn't that interesting - there's some threat to his life but that is an obvious diversion rather than integral to the plot, his relationship with his detective friend is okay. I think the book is 2/3rds fill because there isn't really enough of it to have justified writing it.
I kept hoping this book would get more interesting - I had started it and put it down before because it wasn't engaging. This time I was determined to finish it, but it was an effort. It's slooooooow.
I can tell you immediately what I disliked most about it. Every time you meet a new character you are subjected ad nausium to physical descriptions. I enjoy picking up one or two interesting points about physicality that crop up time and again to advance the plot, or give us more information about the character or quickly remind us who the character is if he or she hasn't shown up in awhile. Kellerman's use of description is more like name dropping than true characterization. I don't care about name dropped shoes if they aren't essential to the story. In Kellerman’s case it’s shoes, jacket, pants, hair cut….and on and on and on.
Kellerman is a good writer as far as technique is concerned but in this book he doesn't have much to work with. It's a weakly plotted book.... no real surprises, a few twists - I wasn't expecting a torture chamber at the end, the chamber was gratuitous anyway. The major problem with this book is that you don't care enough about anyone to get exercised about their demise other than in a general way, like reading about inconsequential strangers in an obituary. The villains are not very interesting, the missing people aren't all that interesting, Delaware's personal life isn't that interesting - there's some threat to his life but that is an obvious diversion rather than integral to the plot, his relationship with his detective friend is okay. I think the book is 2/3rds fill because there isn't really enough of it to have justified writing it.
Monday, February 1, 2010
The Hazards of Writing a Cross Over Book
In the late 1980s, my sister, Suzy Prudden, was very famous as a Fitness Expert. She had 8 national tours behind her, had appeared on all major morning shows and on a thousand radio and television shows. What neither she nor I realized at the time was that she was totally burned out. She had discovered metaphysics, she was fascinated by the body-mind connection and she wanted out of Fitness. Shortly after Suzy and I became writing partners Suzy became friends with Louise L Hay of Hay House fame. Suzy had been talking for some time about combining her love of metaphysics with her fame in fitness. The result was MetaFitness: Your Thoughts Taking Shape. Suzy and I wrote it in the late summer in her marvelous little guesthouse in Topanga. I had flown in from New York for a two week writing intensive and the book just flowed out of us.
It came out in a variety of formats a year later. Suzy and Louise had created an exercise video with Suzy doing the exercises and Louise reading affirmations. They had created tapes with the same thing. They had combined metaphysics, physical exercises and body-life information in the book. Oprah plugged it on her program and it took off and became an overnight best seller. Then it died.
Oprah may have liked it, but the rest of the press didn’t, and the market wasn’t happy with it at all. People who liked fitness hated the metaphysics. Metaphysics people didn’t like the exercises. In Tampa one radio host screamed at Suzy, “There’s a serious problem with fitness in America, have you ever heard of hypokinetic disease?” My response was, “Yes. The term was coined by Dr. Hans Kraus and Bonnie Prudden, our mother, in our living room in 1956 shortly before the two of them presented their work to the AMA which led to their presenting their work to President Eisenhower at the White House and the founding of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.” Of course we knew about the trouble with fitness in America, but we felt that combining the body and the mind in sports activities was part of a solution. I think our presentation was a little light on that connection.
We followed MetaFitness with Change Your Mind Change Your Body a Harper SanFrancisco publication which, once again, didn’t satisfy either market.
As I moved on in my writing career and started teaching, I came to understand the hazards of the crossover. We had not prepared the market – either market – for these books. We were a good ten years ahead of where the market eventually went. Being avant garde is all well and good, but then you have to take the fact that you are well ahead of your time into consideration and focus on links that the different markets can relate to. I think if we had focused on the fact that using affirmations during exercise protects against injury and enhances performance might have helped with the Fitness market. I think focusing on the fact that your body is the house your spiritual being lives in and must be nurtured and cared for might have helped in the metaphysics area, but those are two different books.
My students see cross-eyed when I bring up marketing and selling, but publishing is all about selling books. It’s not just about writing them. You must identify a market, a place in the bookstores, people to talk to questions they have, things that might help them relate to your books and then write your book. The problem starts with the bookstore. Where does your book fit on the shelf? Look at the problem for the MetaFitness book in the bookstore. MetaFitness had Suzy in a pink leotard on the cover. Hay House always had their books in the Self-Help section of the bookstore. In the late 1980s, when the book came out, Self-Help people wouldn’t look at, let alone buy, a book with someone in a leotard on the cover. Fitness people, who would, didn’t go into Self-Help. The bookstore wouldn’t double the books exposure by putting it into two sections, that’s a waste of valuable space. And, we had written the book more for the spiritual people than for the fitness people. When we got around to Change Your Mind Change Your Body, I argued for a more spiritual cover – no leotard. Harper SanFrancisco compounded the problem by putting ten pictures of Suzy in a leotard on the cover. So, where did this one go in the bookstore and who did it satisfy? It went into Self-Help and it didn’t sell.
We had by now identified the problem but we still had a problem. Suzy was still recognized as a fitness expert and our agents would go to publishers and talk to them about Suzy the Fitness Expert. Publishers would come back that yes they wanted a fitness book and we would talk about spirituality. It was a complete mismatch.
So what do you do when you are prematurely in a mixed field? I would suggest focus groups. Who can you reach best in your two groups and how can you reach them? If they won’t buy what you want to write, what will they buy? Which part of the bookstore will you be in and how will your market find you there? How do you prepare your market to receive your information?
Constant focus on the market may seem very boring to the creative mind, but it’s the path to publication and success.
It came out in a variety of formats a year later. Suzy and Louise had created an exercise video with Suzy doing the exercises and Louise reading affirmations. They had created tapes with the same thing. They had combined metaphysics, physical exercises and body-life information in the book. Oprah plugged it on her program and it took off and became an overnight best seller. Then it died.
Oprah may have liked it, but the rest of the press didn’t, and the market wasn’t happy with it at all. People who liked fitness hated the metaphysics. Metaphysics people didn’t like the exercises. In Tampa one radio host screamed at Suzy, “There’s a serious problem with fitness in America, have you ever heard of hypokinetic disease?” My response was, “Yes. The term was coined by Dr. Hans Kraus and Bonnie Prudden, our mother, in our living room in 1956 shortly before the two of them presented their work to the AMA which led to their presenting their work to President Eisenhower at the White House and the founding of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.” Of course we knew about the trouble with fitness in America, but we felt that combining the body and the mind in sports activities was part of a solution. I think our presentation was a little light on that connection.
We followed MetaFitness with Change Your Mind Change Your Body a Harper SanFrancisco publication which, once again, didn’t satisfy either market.
As I moved on in my writing career and started teaching, I came to understand the hazards of the crossover. We had not prepared the market – either market – for these books. We were a good ten years ahead of where the market eventually went. Being avant garde is all well and good, but then you have to take the fact that you are well ahead of your time into consideration and focus on links that the different markets can relate to. I think if we had focused on the fact that using affirmations during exercise protects against injury and enhances performance might have helped with the Fitness market. I think focusing on the fact that your body is the house your spiritual being lives in and must be nurtured and cared for might have helped in the metaphysics area, but those are two different books.
My students see cross-eyed when I bring up marketing and selling, but publishing is all about selling books. It’s not just about writing them. You must identify a market, a place in the bookstores, people to talk to questions they have, things that might help them relate to your books and then write your book. The problem starts with the bookstore. Where does your book fit on the shelf? Look at the problem for the MetaFitness book in the bookstore. MetaFitness had Suzy in a pink leotard on the cover. Hay House always had their books in the Self-Help section of the bookstore. In the late 1980s, when the book came out, Self-Help people wouldn’t look at, let alone buy, a book with someone in a leotard on the cover. Fitness people, who would, didn’t go into Self-Help. The bookstore wouldn’t double the books exposure by putting it into two sections, that’s a waste of valuable space. And, we had written the book more for the spiritual people than for the fitness people. When we got around to Change Your Mind Change Your Body, I argued for a more spiritual cover – no leotard. Harper SanFrancisco compounded the problem by putting ten pictures of Suzy in a leotard on the cover. So, where did this one go in the bookstore and who did it satisfy? It went into Self-Help and it didn’t sell.
We had by now identified the problem but we still had a problem. Suzy was still recognized as a fitness expert and our agents would go to publishers and talk to them about Suzy the Fitness Expert. Publishers would come back that yes they wanted a fitness book and we would talk about spirituality. It was a complete mismatch.
So what do you do when you are prematurely in a mixed field? I would suggest focus groups. Who can you reach best in your two groups and how can you reach them? If they won’t buy what you want to write, what will they buy? Which part of the bookstore will you be in and how will your market find you there? How do you prepare your market to receive your information?
Constant focus on the market may seem very boring to the creative mind, but it’s the path to publication and success.
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