Publishing My Darlings

So anyway...

Lying in the sun on a rather cool afternoon in July, thinking about writing, thinking about trying to sell Abomination, thinking about my next project, thinking about getting ready for the school year to come and directing As You Like It and introducing a gradeless classroom, thinking about moving on to the final phase (organization and cleanup) of the home refinishing project, thinking about how bloody hard it is to find an agent...thinking that if I keep lying here thinking I might just think myself into a coma...

Seriously: too much is going on at once. I made a vow to myself to get Abomination sold this year, and everyone--all of my beta readers including the target audience--has had nothing but good things to say about it, but whenever I get it into the hands of an agent I don't find the right fit. And I keep trying, but everything has been a distraction.

The thing is, though, that I really believe in this book. I have been working on it for over a decade now, on and off. It has seen five full revisions, the latest of which involved a massive cut of 40,000 words and a complete point of view change. It terrified me, frankly, to do these things. Some of my readers told me not to, but I took the advice of a couple of agents: it was too long for the market and we needed to hear directly from Julie/Jonathan. OK: I took a deep breath, kept saying "kill your darlings" over and over again like a mantra, and wiped out scene after scene that I loved while shifting the entire book from a narrative that was mostly third person alternating with the first person commentary of Kristen to one that now is all first person, told from about seventeen different points of view at various times.

Getting each of them to sound like individual people was a pain in the butt, but I think I did it, and my readers agree. What I discovered as I did: the living souls behind my characters! Even more than I knew before, they leapt from the page for me. I gained empathy with characters I never had much empathy with before as I wrote their narratives in their voices. And since I was also shifting the book from past to present tense (hey, why not go nuts!), I also gained a sense of immediacy for each of them. It felt as if I could see the story unfold through each of their eyes.

That sounds awfully cheesy. And the characters I most desperately wanted to do this for I couldn't: to go into the heads of the "villains" of the piece would give away the mystery. But I think the reader gains so much more insight into so many others, including Jonathan/Julie herself.

All of this came at a cost, of course. There was a kick-ass Republican debate scene I had to cut entirely, for instance. That hurt. There was an entire subplot in the GOP candidate's HQ: gone. So too was a romantic subplot involving the teacher and the principal. Other things too, including a mysterious group plotting against Julie in the school. But I really think what remains makes the book better, and it needs to be read. I keep doing my research, hoping it will lead me to exactly the right agent. I have a few queries out right now.

All I can do is hope.

Romeo and Bella and Edward and Juliet

So anyway...

It's been a while, but I'm back. Lots to do in these past few weeks and I have not posted for quite some time. So, what issue of world-shattering importance drags me out of my self-imposed mini-exile? Would you believe the Twilight Saga? 

I know, and you're right: Twilight is a pretty slight entertainment. It's likely that many of you don't even like it, deeming Meyer a less than capable author, and it is also reasonable to assert that she (like Rowling before her) began with a story rather than any discernible unique skill set. Still, it's a cool story (even if these vampires do sparkle for no appreciable reason). And I am an incurable romantic--and a teenage girl at heart--so I readily admit that I read all four books and watched all four movies and enjoyed all of them.

But why bring it up now? It's over! Even the last movie is yesterday's news.

Well, here's the thing:

Bizarrely, I found myself on facebook this weekend doing something I never imagined I would be doing as a 56-year-old writer/English teacher: spending over a hour of my time defending the honor of Twilight and its characters! (I don't wish to go into the whys and wherefores here; it was a tired old internet meme that seeks to equate 100+ year old vampires protecting human girls from dangers they cannot possibly foresee with hypercontrolling, creepy, abusive boyfriends, and in my mind it is ridiculous. Edward Cullen is not Adam on "Girls.") The point is that, in doing so, I found myself actually thinking deeply--God help me--about the Twilight Saga.

And this is what I wrote at one point:

Ultimately, this is a story of the same kind of obsession that drove Romeo and Juliet. One look is all it took to seal them for life. For Bella, this may have been something in her teen nature. For Edward, perhaps it was a fragmentary remnant of his humanity; who knows? For both, it is clearly impetuous, as it is dangerous and forbidden. They should never have embarked on it, but once they did they could not stop. In Meyers' version of the story, as the dangers of the world seek to destroy them, they discover that they are the only thing each other needs, but also the only thing causing the danger to each other. 

Edward, being the older, wiser and stronger, tries to break it off, but in the end he is too far gone and, as do Romeo and Juliet, in Book Two they both find themselves crying and bemoaning their forced separation until, in Book Three, they are brought back together to be wed. Once wed, though, a whole new manifestation of their trouble occurs: in R & J, that is personified by Tybalt; here, is comes in the form of Renesmee. Book Four, as Acts Four and Five of the play, is the playing out of the inevitable climax of all of this drama. 

That Meyers elected to keep her heroes alive is more a matter of playing to her teenage modern audience than anything else; I would like to think that something inside of her would have liked them to die and leave the baby to Jacob and the Cullens, united as the Capulets and Montagues after the final sacrifices. I even suspect (hope?) that, somewhere, a draft of that version exists.

Now I have not read New Moon in many years, and I was utterly unaware when I wrote these lines that the novel actually begins with the following epigraph:

These violent delights have violent ends
And in the triumph die like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume.

These lines come from, of course, Romeo and Juliet.  With a bit of internet research today, I see that Meyer did in fact consciously pattern her second book after that play, even (and I did not recall this either) having Bella and Edward watch and discuss the play and its lovers within the text. I do not feel here the need to rehash what has already, it turns out, been thoroughly hashed elsewhere, so I'll merely make my own point.

Meyer has acknowledged her intentional pattern in her second novel, but I think that the entire series is built on the Shakespearean story. While one can certainly find within the plot arcs of New Moon the story of Romeo and Juliet if one wishes to do so, I would argue that it is not that simple. The fact is that it is the first novel that takes us through the first two acts of the play. For Act One of the play, you truly need to read the original Twilight, in which the dangers are established as well as the uncontrollable infatuations, as in Shakespeare. Twilight takes us through the Act Two balcony scene as well, in which they pledge themselves to each other despite all odds, though Edward remains sullen (Cullen?) even after this because he knows too much of the danger he and his life bring to her. He is in fact both Romeo and Mercutio--though he lacks both characters' wit--and he knows it. He fears the darker Mercutio side of himself and all that attends it. And then it concludes with a violent battle that signals the impossibility of the life they are planning for themselves.

The reason many people are unhappy with New Moon--and I know many who are--is that Bella spends the whole novel whining and doing little else. But if you look at this novel as a microcosmic exploration of what happens in Act Three of Shakespeare's play after Romeo kills Tybalt, but before the ultimately catastrophic plan with Friar Laurence is concocted, you might better understand it. In that section of the play, Romeo, having done that deed, is banished from Verona and his "three hours' bride," Juliet. Our lover's response to the punishment?

Banishment? Be merciful, say death
For exile hath far more terror in his look
Much more than death. Do not say "banishment." 

Meanwhile, Juliet spends her time crying so deeply that she cannot be comforted, and the excess of her tears is so dread that her father, mistaking them for grief over her dead cousin, decides to speed up Juliet's marriage to the County Paris from a month from now to two days from now, bringing about even more fits and sobbing.

Oh, shut the door, and when thou has done so
Come weep with me, past hope, past care, past help.

It is Romeo and Juliet in this mode (and this mood) that Meyer is showing us in her second novel. Once Edward decides, with finality, that they are "past hope, past care, past help," and tells her so, Bella lapses into a despondency so deep that she cannot come out of it, much as Juliet did upon losing Romeo to the Prince's proclamation. Juliet would do anything to see her lover again:

Chain me with roaring bears
Or hide me nightly in a charnel house,
 O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bones,
With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls...
And I will do it

For Bella it is much the same. She begins to have visions of Edward everywhere, but discovers that they appear to her only when her life is in danger. So she determines to put her life into more and more danger, even at one point diving recklessly from a high cliff into the sea, her actions mimicking a line of Juliet's--"O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris / From off the battlements of yonder tower"--and at the same time fooling the clairvoyant Alice into believing she is trying to kill herself and ultimately setting into motion a sequence of events that leaves Edward believing her to be actually dead so that, like Romeo, he determines to kill himself as well.

Of course this is where Meyer swerves off the Shakespearean path at very high speed in a bright yellow Italian sports car. Bella rushes to stop her lover's suicide and succeeds at the very last minute, and they both live to see another act of the saga. But this is all Meyer jumping ahead of herself: we were mired in Act Three and she simply skipped ahead to the ending of the play. Whatever happened to Act Four and the rest of Act Five? Easy: Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.

With the Volturi now a huge threat, Bella and Edward must marry, so the third book is a giant tease, making it a perfect metaphor for Act Four, which in any Shakespearean play is the Great Holding Pattern between the climactic Act Three and the denouement of Act Five. During Eclipse, events (intense though they may get) just play out to get everything in place for the monumental occurrences of Breaking Dawn, when all hell will potentially be unleashed.

So now we are nearing the end, and we finally get the big bold wedding that Romeo and Juliet never received, complete with invitations to the Capulets (Jacob/Tybalt and the werewolf clan).We've momentarily jumped backwards in the play to that brief scene before the lark sings its morning call and disrupts the young married couple from their one blissful night together, which I suppose is fair since New Moon jumped right to the end of the play. After giving them their bliss, though, a new enemy arises, and it comes from within: Renesmee, the baby who at first threatens to kill her mother from the womb and then threatens to kill all of the Cullens through her mere existence.

Death does indeed take our young Juliet--as it does in the play--as she attempts to give birth to her half-immortal baby. It is only through the supernatural interference of vampire blood that she is saved, and her salvation is uncertain for awhile--as is the case in the play as well. Our despondent Romeo, though, this time has his family with him as well as his new baby, so he is safe at least for the moment. And besides: Meyer has already played out that ending and has a completely different one in mind.

She has carefully set up two possible scenarios: one in which Bella and Edward do not survive, and one in which they do. (Giving Jacob his own narrative section in the final book was perhaps the best authorial decision Meyer made in the entire saga.) But, as this is a commercial and not an artistic series, there is really no doubt as to which she will choose. As I said in my little blurb above, I really hope that somewhere there exists a version of the end of Breaking Dawn in which the fight with the Volturi that we witnessed in the film (the stand-in, of course, for the chaos that reigns at the conclusion of Romeo and Juliet, but which this saga is missing) actually happened, and Edward and Bella die valiantly in it, leaving Jacob with his child/lover and the knowledge that

A glooming peace that morning with it brought.
The sun for sorrow would not show his face.
The internet would yap of what was wrought
Some wishing Jacob could take Edward's place.
There'd never be a tale with more tears shed
Than this of Bella, and her vampire Ed.

writing update

So anyway...

News from the wonderful world of Trying To Become a Published Novelist:

Well, I have completed my first Destructively Insane Short-sighted Game of Unholy Senseless Truncation (DISGUST). By eliminating three entire storylines, I have taken my novel from 150,000 words to 133,000 words, which of course is still way too freaking long. One character is all but gone now, and the book is the poorer for it. Two characters no longer fall in love; that's fine, for the book can handle that without too much loss and I had already been thinking about that anyway. But one character's backstory's disappearance hurts a lot: it set up a growth for her that basically turned her into one of the book's main characters, and without it she now slips deeply into the background.

I have also taken the hatchet to the specific political scenes. As much flavor as they added to the book, I figured that they ultimately were going to have to go in any edit that chopped the book down close to 75,000 words, so why not just do it now? There is still the national political story--the book's situation depends upon that--but specific scenes are fewer and mostly involve the kids directly instead of behind the scenes stuff.

Still, I need to cut far more if I am to bring this thing in under 80K. Basically, I need to cut 1/3 of all remaining words. And I need to do that without the direct truncation or elimination of any major aspects. So...

It is time to pick up the Insane World's (most) Extreme Edit Pen. (I WEEP)

Oh, there is another piece of news:

The novel has had an official title change!

I've been looking all along for a better title than Parkland, and I have finally found one. I am going to call it Abomination, a title that will pick up a word used several times in the text, an event that occurs in it, and (one would hope) the reader's reaction to that event.

So that happened. Until next time...

prologue

A cool breeze taunted the few plants that somehow managed, despite the altitude, to flourish on the outcropping where she sat. Winter’s chill had relented long ago and the cliffs and crags no longer held any remnants of the snow that, only months before, had helped to shield her from outside view. Not that she really needed help; she could easily manage to stay hidden. In all of these years, that at least was something she had become very, very good at.

Below her, a seasonally sporadic line of cars traversed the meandering roadway that cut through the mountains toward Ostbergen and Aldamia Castle. Tourists, she thought, and wondered for perhaps the millionth time why Myra permitted it, why indeed Myra had arranged for it. Wouldn’t St. Aldamia’s be better served if its location had remained a secret, if the castle had remained, as it was for centuries, closed to the public? But ever since Myra, with her ridiculous ideas, had ascended to the leadership of the Council, things had been…askew. If she had been the chair instead…

But that was not the way it had played out. And now diminutive Myra was running the show. How long had it been now? She couldn’t quite remember. She stared down at the tiny cars, like so many ants winding around the long, twisting road whose only destination was that tiny mountain hamlet. These cliffs were no good for skiing, and she had made darn sure they were unattractive to mountain climbers, though she supposed Myra too had taken precautions in that area. So Ostbergen’s only charm was its remoteness, its quaintness, its authenticity, and…the castle.

For centuries only her people had known about its existence, and it should have stayed that way. Now it was an elite tourist destination, not very accessible but highly desirable, and for the several months of the year in which the roads up to the town were passable there seemed a never-ending stream of people coming to fill the small town with visitors and the castle with…what? History buffs? Architecture fanatics? Art lovers? Thrill seekers? Surely Aldamia Castle offered something for all with its centuries-old, complicated, highly unusual structure and the rumors—patently untrue but fostered by the villagers—of ghosts.

She had to give Myra one thing: it took brass balls to invite the world right into the building that housed both the school and Council headquarters and still manage to keep both hidden from them. There had even been that BBC documentary on the place, “The Hidden Beauty of Aldamia Castle.” She laughed aloud at the thought of it. They had no clue what they had not been able to film. Like, for example, the dragons that were housed in the rear of the castle grounds. That might have made a fun bit of footage. But there had been no great winged beasts on the BBC; the documentary had instead focused on the castle’s mysterious and shrouded history and some of the incredible artwork that lay within its walls. It was just as well. Let the dragons alone. They didn’t ask to have the bloody world brought into their private space, after all.

She had not been on the Council when Myra opened up the castle, though she understood that it had been, to some degree, a reaction to her mistakes. Interaction with the rest of the world, the new Council leader had said, will help us all to become better citizens of that world. As if we ever had existed outside of the “rest of the world,” she thought. Their people had been a part of all of world history, had played prominent roles in much of it that had usually gone pretty well undetected, as Myra still decreed that they should. So what was the big deal?

Myra had changed the school calendar to make sure that all children were educated in their home country in whatever was the normal way for their cultures and spent only a fraction of the year at St. Aldamia’s. And even while they were here, outsiders were around. They were never as insulated as they once had been, as she had been, as Myra had been. And their world was suffering as a result. She had seen it, watched it happening now for years. The signs were everywhere.

The “rest of the world” was imploding. Surely Myra could see that. Surely she knew and understood that. And surely she knew also that the magic was not strong enough anymore to do anything about it. It had been spread too thin. If she had been successful on that day, so many years ago, if she had managed to consolidate the powers of the magic, it all could have been so much better. She could have seen to it. But not Myra with her egalitarian insanity. She was destroying everything.

The cars slid silently along the road into Ostbergen. She allowed her eyes to follow the little dots back along the trail as it made its way through the mountains. Finally, her long gaze found what she was looking for. There, she thought. That would be one way to do it.

Smiling, she stood up and moved back up over the outcropping to a ledge near the top of the cliff face on the other side. She looked across the great chasm that divided her from another wall of rock, pockmarked with small craters from what appeared to be hundreds of direct mortar hits. Nothing was stirring on the other side. Withdrawing a small wooden wand from her cloak, she casually flicked it in the direction of the wall. A flash of light flew from its end, hurtling across the divide, opening yet another hole in the rock face. Nothing was there, but that didn't matter. This time, she was just taking out her aggression.

The wand disappeared back into the cloak in a movement so subtle as to be almost invisible. Then, turning, she waved a hand at the face of the cliff on her own side, and a large section of the granite faded into a shimmering red before vanishing altogether, revealing the mouth of a hidden cave.

She looked back at the pockmarked cliff opposite her. “I will find you,” she snarled. “I’m closer than ever.”

The cliff made no reply. She spun back around and walked through the opening, waving a hand behind her as the shimmering rock face faded back into a solid wall once again.