Sublimation: Fin

All---

Last night, I finished Sublimation.  It's hard to describe what that feels like.  I think my emotions are appropriately surreal.  Another author I directed me to this quote by Truman Capote:

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the backyard and shot it.


The same author described this as a bit of typical melodrama.

Given my own penchant for writing larger than life, it's probably not out of place to feel a bit melodramatic about completing the book.  I would hesitate to describe it as shooting a child, but I also sort of understand.

I have finished books in the past, but this is the first book I have finished with the intent to publish and a belief that it is a good book.  I'm excited about that.  I'm proud of it.  I feel a sense of satisfaction.

At the same time, as I prepare to send off a query, I'm understandably nervous.  At this point in my writing career I've gotten to a point where I can send off stories for consideration without more than a few butterflies and typically with only a little disappointment if they don't immediately find a home.  A book is an entirely different animal (as it were) and I really have no idea how my emotions are going to endure the roller coaster which likely awaits me.

I also know, being fairly pragmatic about my writing, that the form in which Sublimation exists now is not its final form.  It's a good book.  It's in good shape.  Agents, editors, and publishers will nevertheless recommend changes.  Some of those changes will be for quality, others for practical reasons, and others for marketing reasons.  Right now, the book is my work.  Before we're done, it will be much more of a team product.

On top of all that, I've spent a whole lot of life energy on this book.  And now it's done.  There will be a lot of work -- a lot of work -- but it's already time for my emotional investment to move on.  As soon as I send out my query on Sublimation, it's time to shift the energy of my writing life into Ennui and Malaise, my next thriller, which currently sits at about 40,000 words.

So, yeah, I guess in a way I understand what Capote meant.

What is Sublimation?

I'm so glad you asked!

Sublimation is a dark thriller about surreal evil, good gone too good, and a man whose twisted past just might end the world -- or save it.

Sublimation is a novel of psychological suspense, in which one man's twisted past puts more than himself at risk and one woman tries to figure out if she's too good for her own good, or her family's.

Sublimation is about what happens when a group of men start gambling for the right to set off bombs, and the only people who can stop them are their own figure head and a federal investigator who can't see past the rules.

Sublimation is the story of a man and a woman, each of whom finds past and future twisted together to keep the present shadowed in a darkness that is shadowed by innocent lives lost.

You can read a little more about Sublimation by visiting my official website.

.Nevets.

The Great Novel Rebrand

All,

First, don't forget to read my review of Cinders that was posted earlier this weekend. I don't want my talking about my own book to distract from thoughtful consideration of a book I strongly recommend.

That said, I do want to talk about my own book.

I have been focusing a lot of my energy lately on Real Stakes, because I have been more confident of its market-readiness. I believe in Ennui and Malaise, but at this stage of its development I am not sure yet how to best pigeonhole it for sale. Real Stakes, I have believed, slides neatly into the thriller genre.

Anyone who has been reading my blog for a while knows that I have been perplexed by the question of genre. Ultimately, I have decided that the best home for my writing is psychological suspense, which allows me to brush up against horror and to embrace a somewhat more literary style than a traditional thriller. That's good because my interest is really in the intersection of psychology and philosophy within the dynamic sphere of character, not really in gun play and adrenaline -- though I use both to a high degree.

And that's the rub.

I am facing down what I think of as the Elektra factor. If you haven't seen it, Elektra was a 2005 Jennifer Garner vehicle slash Marvel Comics splash. It has a lot of action, a lot of special effects, a lot of comic book villainry, and a fair amount of Jennifer Garner in revealing costumes. Needless to say, all of the above are what the critics focused on. I'm not here to recommend the movie, nor to claim it as an all-time great. But I have always felt that critics allowed themselves to get distracted by the flash and they missed a nice redemption arc told through simple dialog and solid acting.

My writing is vulnerable to the same sort of thing. If you've read much of my writing, you know that in addition to a lot of voice, there tends to be a lot of evil and fair amount of violence. In other words, a whole lot of stuff that is eye-catching and can easily distract readers away from the heart of my stories. More than I'd care to admit, my writing had been heavily influenced by the music and imagery of Pink Floyd and the story-telling style of Japanese pop culture. There is a lot of philosophy, a lot of psychology, a lot of individual angst, and it's all expressed through often exaggerated evils, both literal and symbolically represented.

What I'm now facing is the realization that Real Stakes is sitting right in that spot. It has all the trappings of a thriller, but is really exploring the philosophies of evil and obedience and how they interact with the psychologies of three very different individuals. One happens to be something of a secret agent. One happens to get pulled into a conspiracy that threatens the United States, and perhaps the world. One happens to be a criminal with a broken childhood. There is plenty of action. Plenty of subterfuge. Plenty of adrenaline.

But I have now realized that I need to make sure that what I'm actually trying to do does not get lost in that. Domey Malasarn helped remind me of that when he remarked that he'd appreciated the philosophical digressions in my other things he'd read. That really brought it home for me, "Yeah, that's what I do." And I need to make sure that I still do that.

As such, I am re-branding Real Stakes. It is now Sublimation. It is still a thriller, but by tweaking the focus of the title I can situate the book in the appropriate context: a thriller that, when the adrenaline lets down, you're thinking about what else was going on between the lines and in the background. The real story of this book is not of gamblers and spies. The real story is about good, evil, and (to borrow a phrase from Jeeves) the psychology of the individual.

Now, I just need to rebrand the opening of the book, of which I am fond, but which I believe sets the focus in the wrong place...

.Nevets.

*** *** *** ***

Excerpt from, Sublimation, (c) 2010.

I'm not a poetic man, and while I have my attachments, I'm not given to sentimentality. Even so, if any night in history has deserved to be regarded as remarkable, it is that one. Without even knowing it, seven billion people rode into the jaws of death, into the mouths of hell.

It was a cool spring night in Denver. Overhead, a shooting star pierced the belly of a descending Orion. All about, the wind was crisp with the fresh potential of a coming summer. And in an abandoned pickle warehouse, the final battle of godlike men was about to begin. The men would not carry weapons, control armies, or conduct experiments. They would play cards, throw dice, and spin colored wheels. And their names would be Smith and Jones. I'm Alec Smith.

“Keep moving, god-man!”

“Keep on your on your feet!”

The two tuxedo-wearing gorillas were enamored of the word keep. Everything they said amounted to nonsense, but I could not escape the jarring cadence their words were given by the inclusion of that simple word in every sentence they uttered.

“Keep your eyes forward!”

“Keep going straight, god-man!”

They kept calling me that, too. It was insensible to me. It was an insult on their lips, like when you turn a self-acclamation back on someone. Way to go, Number One Dad. Tell us again how to win games, Captain of the Plant Softball Team. Smooth moves, Astaire. But god-man?

“Keep walking, god-man!”

“Keep your head about you.”

Easier said than done. I hadn't head my head about me all evening.

What I'm Working On

All,

It's been a little while since I've talked about what it is I'm actually working on, so I thought I'd mention my two major WIPs. Pardon if these summaries sound a bit like pitches. They sort of are, I suppose.

Real Stakes is a novel of psychological suspense in which an outlandish web of conspiracy ensnares an over-confident con-artist of a businessman and a legalistic investigator who holds the Law as the only ethics and morality of any meaning. The conspiracy itself is equal parts outlandish and terrifying, falling somewhere between Ludlum at his most intrigue and Koontz at his strangest. The tone and intimate portrayal of human fragility are both brutal and compassionate, in the veins of Fight Club or Candlemoth. In an abandoned pickle warehouse on the outskirts of Denver, a high stakes poker game becomes the opening foray of a battle between Smith and Jones -- a battle that the woman known to her colleagues only as The Detangler will do anything to stop. For those orchestrating the battle, it a struggle between God, the Devil, and Man. In the end, will anyone come away winning?

Ennui and Malaise is a novel of psychological suspense in which a painfully bored man who has turned to day dreams, wistful prayers to gods in which he doesn't believe, and the power of an adventurous imagination finds himself accused of murder -- the murder of a man whose death he had daydreamed. As in Faulkner or O'Connor, the contemporary work of RJ Ellory, or the cinematic work of M. Night Shyamalan, much of the real violence is psychological. His sense of self and his understanding of the world come crashing down on him, and all he has left to cling to is his own original wish that life present him with something interesting. Interesting, he now has, but perhaps at the cost of everything else.

Not truly pitches, don't worry, just done that way to try and help you get a sense of what I'm working on and where it's coming from. Each novel is is at ~ 30K words. Real Stakes will probably end up around 120K, since it follows something of a suspense thriller format. Ennui and Malaise is more like to be 80 -- 95K when all is said and done.

Rose and I are working out a system for her to act as sort of my draft manager, giving me goals and deadlines, because I really do work better when I have an external expectation to meet. We haven't gotten to specifics yet, but I am really aiming to one of the two WIP's "done" by Christmas. (Ready to look for representation.)

.Nevets.

Real Stakes, Overhaul (AGAIN?!?!)

All,

First of all, thanks to those of you who have joined in on the conversation on the last post. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do. There are some great comments from a variety of interesting authors, and I would love to hear more from others of you.

Secondly, it's time for another overhaul in Real Stakes, one of the two novels I'm juggling right now (click on the tag for background on it). The short life history of Real Stakes looks like this:

• Began as a short flash fiction (at flashyfiction.blogspot.com).
• Expanded into a story.
• Expanded to a novel-length concept, multiple third person intimate POV.
• Completely overhauled ~10K words (if I remember right) to a first person intimate POV in order to better communicate the psychology of the story.

It was a fun challenge to try and communicate the same plot points that had once covered at least three characters in three different locations with limited interaction, but I pretty much pulled it off and the novel is sitting at ~25K words in that format.

Unfortunately, as I was looking at my outline and recalling some of the things that I wanted to accomplish, I realized that while I was getting the plot-points of the other characters across pretty well, I was not getting their psychology in the same way.

The conversation about evil and violence in writing and entertainment was making me a little extra conscious about what people were going to walk away from the book with. As I considered it, I realized that as it stood Real Stakes would be a good psychological suspense novel, but that I would be missing the entire point of the book, which is a bit more significant and meaningful.

Oops.

So now I'm looking at the option of juggling multiple first person POV's as a compromise. It might only be two of the characters. There is some value in the third of the original viewpoints, but I want to minimize confusion and I think the theme can be managed by two.

Thing is, I'm not sure how well I can keep up the pace of a psychological suspense novel with this literary device. I know the multiple first person POV technique can work, but I've usually seen it in much more deliberately paced literary works. I've had a few recommendations, but if anyone else has any thoughts or ideas, please let me know!

.Nevets.

First Person Transition

All---

I apologize that I've continued to be so sporadic the past couple of weeks. The upside to having a straight job is paying bills, taking care of family, things like that. The downside, especially when it's a management position, is that sometimes it eats up too much of your time and energy. That said, I think it's starting to calm down a bit again, so here's the much-promised post about my thoughts on the transition of Real Stakes to first person.

To bring everyone up to speed, Real Stakes is a novel of psychological suspense. Stylistically, it is a psycholgically and philosophically driven thriller, more in the horror side of the genre than in the literary side. While there are dark happenings, the tension of the story lies more in the characters' internal response to those events than in the events themselves.

In its original conception, Real Stakes was about two high stakes gamblers and the investigator who pursues them. It was told in an intimate third person, most POV's over the the shoulder of those three characters but occasionally over another tangential but important player in their drama. The main scenes focused on Smith (Gambler #1), Jones (Gambler #2), and The Detangler (the investigator, known only by codename).

When I decided to try converting the story to first person, I had about 16K words in and was a brief way into the third chapter.

The change was intense.

I chose Smith as my first person narrator, and so the passages focusing on him were largely a matter of shifting perspective and tweaking voice, but my intimate third person is only a hair's breadth from first person anyway, so it wasn't too terribly difficult. The bigger challenge was what to to with the major passages that were from the POV of characters who were not near Smith. While I could have simply cut those passage (and I did this in one case), there were not only major story elements in those sections, but also some important ingedients of the drama and suspense.

As I worked to find other ways to bring my new first person narrator in contact with those events from afar, at first I was afraid of making it "newspapery." Instead, what I found was that I could have Smith feel the shockwaves of events that were remote to him, and that this was, in fact, more intimate and impactful.

In the end this has meant that, despite the challenges involved in bringing events happening literally hundreds of miles from my main character into the new first person POV, the writing is better.

A few take-aways that may be worth your considersation. I would never suggest that this experiences means everyone should write first person. That's absurd. But the reasons that the writing is better can translate over into your experience. The writing is better because...

1. It's in a more natural voice for me to write the genre I'm writing in, so I'm more comfortable with it.
2. A lot of the context is now shown by its effect, rather than explicated through simple narrative passages.
3. The character has been forced to have a more intimate and more impactful relationship to story elements that essentailly used to just happen elsewhere.

.Nevets.

The Heart of My Struggle

All---

(Psst... If you haven't read it, please check out yesterday's post to understand what I'm talking about today.)

So, here's the good news. I've rewritten the first 2+ chapters of Real Stakes. Somehow, despite massive overhauls and deltion of humongo passages, I've ended up at 15.5K words, which is within 500 words of where I was before the rennovation began. Not what I expected.

Another day I'll talk about the translation of the work into first person, because there's actually quite a bit to see about that process. I learned a bunch, and while I encountered a few definite obstacles, I think over all the writing is much, much stronger now.

But here's the other thing I did: I dialed up the scary crap.

I talked a while back about the realization that I don't write procedurals or traditional mysteries well. I worked at removing those elements, and still wasn't quite "feeling it," as the kids say. So I've been really thinking about what I do write well.

This led me to comments I get here and elsewhere about my writing. One word kept coming up in relation to my strengths: horror.

Egads. I'm not a horror writer. At least, I don't think I am. And I don't want to be. I think. But the word has a lot of negative connotations for me that I'm sure I understand quite yet. I certainly do admire character-driven horror. Stephen King's Carrie is an obvious stand-out in that way. Just the same, I'm always worked hard to distance my own writing from that tag.

Why?

I really don't know.

As a genre, I'm still not sure I fit in there. There are a lot of things I just plain don't do that are common in the genre, and I won't belabor them here. I think psychological suspense is still my best market niche at this stage. But I'm trying to embrace my inner horror-writer a little more.

The moment I did, I've gotta admit that Real Stakes started and flowing and clicking. I knew what to do to punch up the dry sections, I knew how to get rid of the last traces of procedure, and I knew how to make it a good story. So I'm going with this for now.

If you have any insights into my I might be having this struggle, or any perspective on the horror genre that might help me understand better what I do and don't have in common, I'd leave to hear from you. Also, please do keep the reading recommendations coming. I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm the first person to write the kind of stuff I write. I am, however, arrogant enough to think that other people who write the kind of stuff I write have been previously published so I can check out how they did it...

.Nevets

How To Ruin Good Cooking

All---

I don't know how many of you cook, and by cook I mean prepare meals from scratch of your recipe and design. I do cook, and I've learned something very important about cooking. You can have a great meal in mind, and have all the right ingredients, but it you start with the wrong part, the dish can turn out to be crap.

For instance, when stir-frying Asian-style, you need to follow this basic order:

1) Oil with many of your spices.
2) Onions that you want to carmelize.
3) Meat.
4) Veggies that you want to pick up the flavor of the dish.
5) Veggies that you want perfectly crisp and fresh.

If you put the onions that you want to carmelize in too late, they're going to not carmelize, or everything else is going to get burned. If you put the crisp, fresh veggies in too early, they will soften and pick up the flavor of the dish. You have to start in the right place.

And that's what I've blown on Real Stakes. I think I have a pretty good story, and I am convinced that I have some awesome characters. But I started at the wrong point.

If you've been reading the blog, you know my WIP started with a piece of flashy fiction. It was not a character-driven piece at all. It was pretty much 85% intrigue, 10% plot, 5% character. A neat little snippet that showed promise for bigger things.

So when I decided to expand it into a novel, I began crafting the characters who would get caught up in the story.

See what happened there?

One of the key differences between traditional suspense and psychological suspense, is that traditional suspense starts with the story, but psychological suspense starts with the people. And that's not what I did. And that's why I'm unsatisfied with my first 15K words, even though they're pretty good words.

Fortunately, unlike a meal, a piece of fiction can be retooled. I need to spend some time thinking exclusively about my characters, and then I need to figure out how to bring them to the table and then throw the story at them, laying out the plot and then throwing some characters into it. It's a subtle distinction, but it can make all the difference in the world.

Everybody's style is different, and every genre is different. Hopefully, fellow writers, you can learn from my bad example and take the time at the very outset of your work to make sure that you're starting it where you want to, and not jumping ahead on your crisp, fresh veggies.

.Nevets.

The Benefit/Danger of Being Self-Aware

All---

So, a few days ago, I got most of the second chapter of Real Stakes on paper (so to speak). I felt a little dissatisfied with it, and as I started to re-read, I found I was too bored with my own writing to even re-read it.

In case you're wondering, that's bad.

Oh, and when you're writing a suspense thriller, psychological or not, that's even worse.

Fortunately, at this point in my development, I'm pretty self-aware and working on becoming increasingly willing to be honest with myself. That's a good thing, I promise, but it's also painful sometimes. Here's how it went down this time:

The first chapter of the book is all about the gamblers. It reads at a pretty good piece for the opening of chaotic suspense novel. The second chapter includes, among other things, the introduction of The Detangler, the investigator who will be pursuing the gamblers. It reads like a masters thesis on highway construction. Interesting enough if you're into it, but tedious for 95% of the readership and the author.

As I thought about it, I realized my problem is that whenever I write investigation into a story, it is very much like writing a mystery. I like my mysteries to be extremely tidy. They can be convoluted, but the reader's gotta have a fair chance, the cloues have to add up, and the interpretation has to be logical and reasoned out. In my hands, that ends up reading like science. And it's just not interesting.

What a revelation to have!

I may be able to write suspense, but I can't do cops and detectives, at least not in any traditional sense. Crazy. Especially since one of my main characters in my WIP is just such a person.

I was chatting about this dilemma on Frances Garrood's blog and she suggested changing the cat in my cat and mouse to someone other than a cop. That seemed reasonable, so I threw the question out to Rose: "Who chases after bad guys?" Her top three answers:

1. Police officers.
2. Detectives.
3. Their ex-wive's.

Ah-ha! There was an idea... And thus I am in the process of transforming The Detangler from a married man who gets into the case because of an array of clues that lead him there into an ex-wife who gets intot he case because of personal ties to someone on the "other side."

Much more psychological, much less detectivey.

I'm breathing easier and actually much happier with this direction, but I will admit that it was a mini-crisis getting there.

Any of the rest of you run into those kind of revelations suddenly in the middle of something you were working on and thought you had planned out and under control?

.Nevets.

More about Real Stakes

All---

I wanted to tell you some more about Real Stakes, and Jennifer White started a WiP Meme yesterday that I thought would make a good vehicle for doing so.

1. When did you start writing your current WiP?

Roughly December 1st as a novel. I spent a couple days on part of it last spring, trying it out as a short story concept. It's also inspired by a piece of flash I wrote for Flashy Fiction on 9 May 2009.

2. Where does your WiP take place?

All over the United States. A lot of the early action takes place in Denver, Laramie, and Iowa City. The later action... You'll have to read the book to find out.

3. Who is/are the main character/s of your WiP?

The main characters are two gamblers and an investigator known as The Detangler.

4. Describe your main character(s) in one word.

Gambler #1: Private
Gambler #2: Obsessed
The Detangler: Lawful

5. Open up your WiP to a random place and copy the first sentence you see.

He didn't know what the speaker was up to, but the man's breath smelled too much of French onion dip to be taken seriously.

6. If you were going to have lunch with one of your WiP's secondary characters, who would it be and why?

I'd probably want to have lunch with Allie, the Detangler's daughter. I'd love to find out what it would be like to grow up with such a legalistic rule-monkey for a father. That's partly because, as anybody form whom I have been dungeon or game master can attest, I'm a bit of a rule monkey myself. Be good to find out what my kids are going to be in for.

7. What do you consider your WiP's theme song and why?

In a way, every thing I write has, “Mad World,” as its theme song. When I first heard the original Tears for Fears version, I really clicked with it, and I have over half a dozen different covers in my library now. Most of my stuff boils down, in some way, to the disconnect between what people think the world is, what they discover it really is, and how we all end up running in circles because we don't really know what else to do.

8. What do you consider your main character's theme song?

Gambler #1's theme is probably “Wake Up Time” by Tom Petty. If I got into why, I'd be revealing too much about his back story. Just take the mood from it and go with that.

Gambler #2's theme has to be “Guns and Cigarettes” by Atmosphere, because he's all about obsession and drive. You'll know that as soon as you meet him if I did my job right, so I'm not giving away any secrets there.

The Detangler's theme is probably “Gabriel's Oboe” from the soundtrack of The Mission. I hadn't really thought about it until now, but there's a bit of Father Gabriel in The Detangler's devotion to doing the right thing by the Law.

9. What's your favorite thing about your WiP?

I think it sort of redefines heroism, and not in any of the cliché ways that everybody redefines heroism these days. It's not about unexpected heroes or the dark side of good people, or the secret nobility inside of evil people. But I do think it's a pretty honest picture of what real heroes are like, and what constitutes true heroism.

10. If you're WiP were to be made into a movie, who would you pick to play your main character? Your villain?

My key villains are always among my main characters. I'm an equal opportunity author that way. Either that or the lines are just sorta clurry. But here's what I might cast:

Gambler #1 – Maybe Alan Cumming
Gambler #2 – Zachary Quinto
The Detangler – Wil Wheaton

That's all for now, but stay tuned for more information later!

.Nevets.

Real Stakes by C. N. Nevets

Real Stakes is the tentative title of a novel-length work in progress by C. N. Nevets, author of psychological suspense. It is the story of high-stakes gamblers who finds themselves caught up in a shadow Armageddon, and of the investigator known as The Detangler, who must give up everything to stop the final roll of the dice that may just end the world.

"The final battle of godlike men began in a pickle warehouse on the fringes of Denver, Colorado on an crisp, early spring night marked by the overhead passing of a single shooting star through the descending constellation of Orion. They did not carry weapons, control armies, or conduct experiments. They played cards. And their names were Smith and Jones."

The stakes are everything and the House still wants its cut.

Writing begun December, 2009.