Griffin Hayes: Malice and dreams

Where do writer’s come up with their ideas? I’m often asked this question and almost exclusively by non-writers. They ask it as though I were an acrobat from the Cirque du Soleil and they wanted to know how I managed to balance thirty teapots on my head without dropping a single one. The rather mundane answer I normally give has the tendency of wiping that look of incredulous awe right off their faces. For me, story ideas rarely come nicely prepackaged with a tiny pink bow on top. It’s a sloppy, Darwinian process where crappy ideas (hopefully) get munched on by stronger, more elegant ideas. More often than not, a single novel is really a series of ideas, all meshed into one. 

Predominately, the source of my inspiration comes from dreaming. These are snippets mostly. Tiny fragments which don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense on their own, but when connected to two or three other fragments, begin to take on the distinct shape of a story. 

Another place I mine for novel ideas - because mining is exactly what we do - are what I call my ‘what ifs.’ It’s something I do everyday and some of the coolest books and movies out there were born from this process. What if you were the last man on earth in a world filled with vampires? (I am Legend). What if the devil opened a shop in a small town? (Needful things). The list could go on and on.

I’ve seen this play out in my own work countless times. My novel Malice is a revenge story about a witch, condemned and executed hundreds of years ago, who has returned to even the score. The dream part of the equation came to me one night when I dreamt that an old hag was crawling along the floor, trying to get me. I could see her dirty fingernails tearing at the carpet and in her wake was a long trail of gore and revolting slime. I woke up from that one thankful it was only a dream.

The ‘what if’ part of Malice came when the following question popped into my head one day: what if someone was being hunted for a crime from another life they had no memory of committing? 

Now apart, those two pieces didn’t mean a whole hell of a lot. But together, that’s when something sinister began to take shape. 

So in a way the process is about swinging an imaginary pick-axe, scooping up the loose chunks that gather at your feet and squeezing them together to see how they fit. 99.9% of the story ideas I’ve had are terrible and rightfully end up in a sort of mental dustbin, just where they belong. It’s that .01% that I keep my eye out for and when you find those rare gems, you just hope you’re wise enough to rub away at the edges and recognize that beneath that rough surface lies something worthwhile.

 

View Malice at Amazon for Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/Malice-ebook/dp/B005QCC122

 

Link to Griffin's blog:

http://griffin-hayes.blogspot.com/

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Christopher Nolan and the Rewind Factor

I hated the movie Memento. I had to watch it, of course, because it was intelligentsia du jour back in those days. A movie should only require one viewing in order to "get it." To do otherwise is to cheat the viewer and is a sign of self-indulgent storytelling.

I merely disliked Inception, but of course couldn't confess it in a public forum because everybody either loves it or pretends to love it, because who wants to be that one dummy who doesn't "get it"? My take was, "Well, if it's a dream within a dream within a dream, why should I bother keeping track of which layer of dream we're in, because dreams aren't real?" It had cool visuals, but on a story level, I thought it was a real mess. For a mind-twisting story where reality itself was in doubt, I thought Shutter Island was far superior (Incidentally, Leonardo diCaprio is becoming one of my favorite actors, something I never dreamed I'd admit.)

When my Amazon editor contacted me about getting the rights to Liquid Fear, he said the plot had "a Christopher Nolan feel." I was horrified! In the novel, I had deliberately planted deception and unreliable narrators, and I knew it was risky. I knew I would immediately lose a certain slice of the book audience. But I wanted to do something challenging and reward those who like risks. DiCaprio is taking risks with his career, taking roles as an unpleasant and unlikable character (The Departed!) when he could have stayed the cuddly Titanic heartthrob--that's why I like him now. I would rather have taken risks than dole out disposable entertainment and sell lots of books.

I saw Nolan's first full-length film Following, a more stripped-down version of his twisting storytelling style, with a little of his signature nihilism. It's probably my favorite, although we watched The Dark Knight last night, and it only had a few "Huh, what's happening and/or whose side are they on?" moments.

The guy gives me a headache. But I keep coming back for more. And he's influencing a lot of storytellers. (I started Liquid Fear in 2006 so I am pretty sure Christopher Nolan didn't influence me. Yet.) I suppose there are worse things to be than the Christopher Nolan of psychological thrillers.

Time for me to revisit Memento and see if I'm any smarter these days.

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14 Rules for Pretending To Be a Dad

My 11-year-old daughter is hosting a couple of friends for the Ghost Train theme park, and I get to play chauffeur and chaperone. But I was also handed a list of rules on how to "pretend to be normal" so that I don't embarrass her, including not chauffeuring in my rusty Subaru or rustier truck.

1. Do not say howdy.
2. Do not wear sweatpants.
3. Drive Lexie's car.
4. Carry a cell phone at all times.
5. Do not say stupid stuff.
6. Act like a banker.
7. Do not make alien noises.
8. Do not fall asleep.
9. Do not wander around aimlessly.
10. Do not talk to my friends except saying stuff like "Did you have fun" or other 'normal' things to say.
11. Do not wear strange things from dumpsters.
12. Make small talk.
13. 'Organic' and 'natural' things are banned.
14. Only drive where we tell you to drive.

I can hardly wait!

P.S. She also gave me a script of what to say to the moms of the girls who called asking about the invitation.
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Bad Blood: A vampire thriller by Scott Nicholson, J.R. Rain, and H.T. Night

My first literary menage a trois is now out: BAD BLOOD, a collaboration with bestselling authors J.R. Rain and H.T. Night.We alternated chapters on this vampire thriller, editing each other's work, and I am pleased with the blend of darkness, humor, romance, and action. I also got to research Mystical Mount Shasta, California, the land of the Lemurians. We're planning to continue the Spider series next year, if you like it well enough! Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and coming soon to other markets.

I've also released The Vampire Shortstop as a standalone short story, which won the international Writers of the Future award waaaay back in 1999. It's free at Smashwords, BN.Com , and other markets, and I hope Amazon matches it, too. It's currently 99 cents at Amazon, so please help by clicking the link on the book's page that says "Tell us about a lower price." It's probably my best story, so I not only want people to read it and try my other books, I just want them to share the feeling. It's the only one of my stories that I like to re-read, and it makes me misty-eyed every time.

I'm considering releasing a few standalone short stories this month. It feels like 99 cents is too much for one story, since many of my story collections are 99 cents, but other writers accept it as a standard. I am putting out some other content, too, continuing the age of experimentation. How do you feel about 99 cent short stories? Too expensive, or a fair price?

I hope your Halloween season is off to great start! Let monsters and mayhem rule! And candy...don't forget the candy.
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The Bitter End: Mark Chisnell

The End. It’s a hell of a way to start anything – but the end is only secondary in importance to the beginning of a story. If the opening ‘hook’ is the thing that draws you in, and keeps you reading those early pages, then the end is the part that most readers are likely to remember.

 

Sometimes the story even starts with the end; Henning Mankell once commented that he’s occasionally begun with a final scene and then written towards it. If it’s good enough for the creator of Wallander, then it’s good enough for me. I began my first novel with the climax.

The rest of the process of writing The Defector - all eight drafts of it - was figuring out who those people were and how they got there. But the question I’m really interested in here is not whether anyone should start writing a book from the final scene, rather; it’s what do we, the reader, want from the end? The normal answer is that a good ending should make sense of all that went before, and in the words of the screenwriting guru William Froug; ‘It is that which nothing need follow.’

Endings tend to come in two parts, starting with the climax that any good book has been working towards. In the thriller or mystery genre that I work in, this is almost invariably some sort of action scene; the classic version being one where the hero battles the villain and wins (happy ending) or loses (sad ending).

The climax is followed by the denouement, where the plot is resolved and the loose ends are tied up – this is the bit where sense is made of all that went before. In a mystery novel we obviously need to know who did it, but many people will also want to know how they did it, and why they did it. And maybe we need to know why the girlfriend helped or betrayed them, or why the best friend or mother protected or abandoned them...

It’s a slippery slope and the classic storyteller’s error is too much denouement, particularly when it comes via ‘Basil Exposition’. This is the over-familiar scene where the police detective or private dick explains to a room (conveniently filled with everyone involved) all the various plot strands.

The upside of this sort of ending is that all the i's are dotted and all the t's are crossed. There’s no frustration, no looking for more explanation where there is none. Unfortunately, there’s no surer way to kill the emotional impact of a good climax than too much denouement, particularly if it comes with too much exposition. So for me the tricky part of Froug’s ‘that which nothing need follow’ is figuring out precisely where that point lies.

I’m of a minimalist tendency – I like to be left with a few things to ponder. If I’m still thinking about a book a couple of days after finishing it, then to me that’s the clearest indication that it was a good one. And that’s unlikely if everything has been tidied up into a neat pile, and then wrapped in silver paper with bows on it.

In both of my own thrillers I set the main character a moral dilemma, presenting them with a decision, one that threatens the people that they most love. The hero spends much of my first two books trying to dodge or wriggle out of making the critical choices, but ultimately (and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything for anyone here) there’s no escape.

And once that final decision was made, then as far as I was concerned you could stick a fork in it - the book was done. The denouements in both books are short and to the point. I felt that there was little more to say – the central character’s climactic choice said it all. Everything else flowed from there - but that’s just me and it’s not to everyone’s taste, including my original editor at Random House. Oh, the battles we fought over the end of The Defector...

So, cryptic, explicative or somewhere in between, how do you like your books to end?

Links:

http://www.markchisnell.com/

The Defector:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Defector-ebook/dp/B004NBZE76/ 

The Wrecking Crew

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wrecking-Crew-ebook/dp/B004NEVYVI/

Kindle Fire and Netflix: A Match Made In Electroheaven?

As news of the Kindle Fire kicks around the Internet. I don't think I will be an early adopter, since I am not a touchscreen fan, but I am really interested in the Prime subscription, especially since Netflix has hit the skids. One of the rumors floating around is that Amazon will buy Netflix, at least the livestream half, which supposedly is one reason Netflix split into two divisions and separated its mail-order DVD service.

Here are a few Kindle books and news sites I've discovered recently:
Kindle 3
Kindle Dark on Facebook
Kindle Surprise on Twitter

I am going to experiment with putting out a few individual short stories for Kindle. I've put out entire collections for 99 cents, and even novels for 99 cents, but many authors believe 99 cents is a good price for one story. I like giving people a lot for their money, but a dollar is a dollar. I am also going to be raising my novel prices in line with what Amazon decides to price the Liquid Fear books at for Dec. 20 release. So if you like bargain prices, you better grab me now while I am "el cheapo."

There is debate about whether 99 cent products lead to a sense of entitlement among consumers, or that they expect a low-priced product to be crap. I have noticed my cheaper books and freebies tend to attract more one-star reviews, which kind of blows my mind. While the work should be judged on its merits, I would never dream of slamming something I got for free--I would just quietly move it to the side and forget all about it.

Others believe higher prices make the reader value the product more, because they feel good about it and assign more worth and quality to it. There may be a psychological impulse at work, but I don't understand it, because I value a book I check out from the library just as much as I do one I paid $25 for in hardcover. At any rate, the customer is always right, and you are my customer, so I trust you to tell when my prices are too high--hopefully BEFORE you stop buying them!

Anyway, Amazon and Netflix--here's the second leap on that rumor. If Amazon is moving to a subscription model for books (which I would bet a house on) and are becoming a publisher, what's to stop them from developing their own movie production company? Nothing.

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Ebook subscription models? Book It

Big news bubbling about Amazon's moves for Christmas, including the new Kindle Fire tablet and possible $99 Kindles, as well as a Touch Kindle. I'd never own a touch screen of any kind because I don't like greasy smears on my screen, but others like them. And I am not a techie by any means, I just want what works at a low price and doesn't give me headaches. IreaderReview is one of my favorite places to follow such Kindle developments.

But for readers and writers, the real issue is: What does this mean for ebooks? I've been predicting for about a year that Amazon will soon be bundling books into a "Netflix" model, where you get all the books you can eat for one monthly fee. Amazon already has the model in place, and they just announced new additions to its Prime offering. It's never really been a device war in the long term--iPad and Kindle never were direct competitors for the ereading audience. Just ask any author who has access to their sales numbers (and don't believe what you hear from publishing companies, who are still desperately trying to spin their Apple agency pricing as a win). People reading on iPads are using the Kindle or Nook apps. Apple maybe has 2 percent of the book market. Probably less.

The cheap Kindle will pretty much lock up Amazon's crown as the content king. At least for five years, which is eons in the technological era. Look how many different devices have come out in just the last three years. Yet Amazon continues to be the content king, with at least 70 percent of the ebook market. (Again, if you look at publisher data, publishers will claim BN has about 27 percent of the market, but their data is incredibly skewed--don't forget these two are joined at the hip through the physical bookstores.) And Amazon is rapidly expanding its world markets.

BN's problem is the weight of those physical bookstores. It's difficult to promote the Nook while still paying lip service to paper books and investing resources in managing the bookstores where books are an ever-lower percentage of their floor space.  Kobo will be lucky to survive another year. Google is still freighted with its illegally scanned books, plus they don't really have a device out there. Sony will ride the Pottermore wave until those buyers realize they really don't have a very good bookstore selection after Harry Potter.

I don't know the pricing structure of the Prime books model. I only know it's coming. It's not only inevitable, I would be shocked if it didn't happen by next summer. Amazon has already been sending out feelers to publishers, and the Kindle library lending is a big step in mainstreaming ebooks. We still don't know how authors will be paid--presumably enough to keep writing, making less per book on a higher volume of sales. And Prime is a natural fit for rolling in advertising which means even lower prices for devices and ebooks.

Is it a win for everyone? It certainly is for Amazon. And I signed a book deal with Amazon, which is where I am putting my chips. What's funny is that BN was uniquely positioned to become a publisher a decade ago, and even put out a few books under its own imprint. And traditional  publishers never built ebook stores where they could control their own catalog and peddle their own subscriptions. Probably it was the shortsightedness of having to show investors a nice return every three months.

Bottom line looks like: cheaper, faster, more. I don't know what the future holds, but I'm holding on for one hell of a wild ride!
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