A Texan's literary perspective on 2017, part 2

A bestselling Aussie author dropped in on Dallas, while a local writer revived my interest in short stories. Dallas got a new independent bookstore, and an iconic blast from the past. And I learned the literary value of theology, among other lessons from 2017.

6/22/17 Kate Forsyth’s secrets for page-turning suspense

So, the book started off great. And then . . . you as a reader found yourself flipping pages, looking for something to catch your eye until you finally put the book down. Never to pick it up again. And probably never, ever to buy another book by that author.

Kate Forsyth

Now you’re the one writing a book. And from time to time, you glance at that long-neglected volume on your shelf, and a chill runs down your back as you wonder whether readers of your book will grab it happily also, only to put lay it down well before they finish. Never to look at it, or any of your books, again.

What we need here are Australian author Kate Forsyth’s secrets for keeping those pages turning. 

Her tips, offered at a Dallas workshop, included likable (although not perfect!) characters, surprises, multiple forms of suspense and minimizing the gore. “If you’ve seen 17 characters skinned alive, what’s one more? Meh.”

7/11/17 Tall tales told briefly

I confess: after publishing nearly two dozen short stories, I’d given up. Writing workshops were starting to tell me my tales didn’t fit into the few-thousand-word format of a short story. Flash fiction, micro fiction? Forget about it!

Then at a recent meeting of the Dallas Mystery Writers, I heard short story writer Ann Fields speak on the few (but basic) principles, and thought, maybe I’ll find the courage to try the short form again. I’ll think of it as a summer wardrobe for my writing. Fewer pieces, no layering, just the basics. 

“I loved the long form, but I had a day job and found it hard to keep my focus. So, I took a detour through short form and fell in love with that form of writing,” she told her mystery-writing audience.

Her suggestion is, rather than fixating on word-counts, simply to write the story in your heart in the way that seems natural to you – and it. 

8/15/17 VooDoo and Oil: Will Clarke’s homecoming

The night at Interabang Books in Dallas looked like a home coming for author Will Clarke as he read and signed copies of his third novel, The Neon Palm of Madame Melançon to a standing room only crowd. There were a lot of hugs, a lot of well-wishing, more than a little wine flowing.

Will Clarke

Madame Melançon (and Clarke, her creator) had just received a glowing tribute from Dallas Morning News writer Robert Wilonsky. Clarke himself looked no older than he had when his first book, Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles, appeared more than a decade ago. He was all smiles at Interabang, the city’s newest (and chicest) independent book store. 

Clarke’s books are the written equivalent of a dizzying roller coaster. Which way is up, which way is down? How fast are we going? Will we survive? Who knows? All we can do is hang on. 

10/13/17 A whole lot of pages, but is it a book? 

There was standing room only this week at Interabang Books in Dallas, as writers and would be writers packed into hear a panel sponsored by the Writers League of Texas. Four North Texas authors, moderated by the League’s executive director, Becka Oliver, shared their methods for turning the mass of pages they sometimes end up into actual publishable – and published books.

“When you talk to four writers with four different kinds of backgrounds, you know we’re really going to dig in,” Oliver said, as she introduced writers Jeramey Kraatz, author of the Cloak Society and Space Runners novel series; Sanderia Faye (Mourner’s Bench); Mike Merschel (Revenge of the Star Survivors); and memoirist Sarah Hepola (Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget).

In case you don’t already know from reading these posts, where there are four writers in a room, there are will be four different methods of writing and revising that writing. I, and probably the rest of the audience, listened, hoping to find a little of this and a little of that we could put together to find our own recipe for success.

10/17/17 Flesh and blood characters for standout stories

You know how, when you’re thinking about something, everything around you seems to be that same something? For me recently, in writing, that “something” has been character. Everywhere I turn, strange, even bizarre characters have appeared. First, there’s the news, replete with characters to study. Then the writing course offered by NaNoWriMo through the online site Coursera includes a segment on character. Even when I turned to what seemed to be a delightful book about a woman and her pet bulldog, darned if the “character” aspect didn’t appear again. (For both woman and her canine friend!) Finally, half of this fall’s writing workshop sponsored by the Writers Guild of Texas hinged on the aspect of character. 

Creating fictional characters, we as human beings can relate to is such an essential element that the basic formula for story is: character + action = plot. But how to create those characters? 

During the Coursera lessons, novelist/instructor Amy Bloom noted, “Most of us have enough trouble being ourselves, without having to then take on the task of (inventing) other people. But when you’re a writer, that’s the job. You have to enter into their body, into their soul, and see the world as they see it.”

So no wonder that after bestselling romantic suspense author Cindy Dees, who taught the WGT workshop, confessed that character development isn’t her strongest point, she developed an entire course on the subject to help her compensate,

Voodoo and oil: Will Clarke’s Dallas homecoming

Saturday night at Interabang Books in Dallas looked like a home coming for author Will Clarke as he read and signed copies of his third novel, The Neon Palm of Madame Melançon to a standing room only crowd. There were a lot of hugs, a lot of well-wishing, more than a little wine flowing.

Will Clarke

Madame Melançon (and Clarke, her creator) had just received a glowing tribute from Dallas Morning News writer Robert Wilonsky. Clarke himself looked no older than he had when his first book, Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles, appeared more than a decade ago. He was all smiles at Interabang, the city’s newest (and chicest) independent book store. Even the low-hanging thunderclouds outside couldn’t dim the luster of the occasion.

Clarke’s books are the written equivalent of a dizzying roller coaster. Which way is up, which way is down? How fast are we going? Will we survive? Who knows? All we can do is hang on for the ride.

His talk was the verbal equivalent of that roller coaster, as he treated the audience to reading, to slide projections, to a discussion of a book that includes the darkly comic philosophy of Kurt Vonnegut.  (A character in The Neon Palm channels Vonnegut, and is even a former clarinet player like Vonnegut.) Then there’s a British Petroleum-like oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and of course, the city of New Orleans. And a character who’s just looking for his mom, the Madame Melançon of the title, “a crime boss of sorts,” who’s gone missing.

Inspired by Vonnegut’s late-life essays about the future, Clarke launched into that topic.

“How this book got started was as a TV show,” he told his audience. “I used to go out to LA and sell all these really bad treatments. In 2010, there was the BP spill. When you watch what happened in the Gulf, you see the future.”

Not that he sees it as impenetrably dark. “I’m an eternal optimist,” he said.

But why oil spills? audience members asked. Why New Orleans? To answer the first, he noted that his interest in oil stems from his father’s work as a petroleum geologist, his interest in New Orleans because he’s from Louisiana and after all, why not New Orleans, with its legacy of corruption and death, beauty, music and magic.

As to why put all this in a story instead of, say, journalism?

“Our operating system is actually stories,” he said. “Think about the narratives you’re telling and the narratives you’re exposing yourself to. (They) can create a road to follow.”

I first heard Clarke speak at the Dallas Writer’s Garret, when it was housed in an upstairs room at the old Paperbacks Plus store in East Dallas. He was the hot young Dallas writer who first two self-published novels, Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles and The Worthy, had been picked up by a major publishing company. Clarke read from his second novel, The Worthy. That must have been about 2007, after the novels had just been published on his own Middle Finger Press. Clarke appeared to be making notes to himself as he read. And although we would-be writers in the room hoped the press might be available to publish our books as well, it turned out at the time to be dedicated solely to Clarke’s work, and would no longer be needed, as his books had just been picked up by publisher Simon & Schuster. (Clarke has since revived Middle Finger to publish The Neon Palm.)

The local press loved him, Rolling Stone gave him favorable reviews, there were Hollywood movie options. There seemed no way to go except up. Then came 2008, with its meltdown of all things that needed financial backing.

I heard nothing more about Clarke until about three years ago, when I met a woman at a book review discussion in Klyde Warren Park. Her last name didn’t register with me until the Dallas Morning News editor we had gathered to hear mentioned that she was Will Clarke’s wife.

The Will Clarke? Yes, she said. They were back in Dallas, and Will was writing. And he has.

Want more Will Clarke? He’ll be appearing at another independent bookstore, The Wild Detectives, 314 W. Eighth Avenue, Dallas, at 7:30 p.m. this Thursday, August 17, as well.

And for something different tonight, check out the 48 Hour Film project, starting at 7 p.m. tonight (August 15), at the Angelika Film Center, 5321 E. Mockingbird Lane.  It’s a series of short (really short – 4-6 minutes!) films from 10 indie film companies, all written and filmed over a single weekend (which explains the 48 hours part). Disclaimer: Frank St. Claire, a friend from the Dallas chapter of Mystery Writers of America, has a hound in this hunt, and gave me the info when we met again at Clarke’s reading.