Thank you for patiently waiting to hear more about Beverly's experiences. No one is more excited about seeing this tale unravel further than myself, and now that certain obstacles have been removed which had deterred its progress, it may now continue as planned. In the meantime, I shall be bringing copies of my book to several places in the coming months to try to initiate more readers into the fold. First up is the Baltimore Book Expo, where I may be found at my publisher's table on Sunday, September 24th, from 11:00 AM to 2:55 PM. For more info about the show, visit: http://www.baltimorebookfestival.com/. After that will be the York Book Expo (yorkbookexpo.org/) on October 21st, where I will have my own table for the duration of the event, and a local store appearance (date yet to be determined).
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My apologies for the delay with Book Two. A personal crisis derailed my life about a year ago and is yet to be resolved, and unfortunately it has robbed me of my ability to work on it as I had been doing. Seeing my post about the book finding its bones reminds me of the great strides I had been taking, and it quite frankly pains me that I have not been able to continue as I had planned. But rest assured, the second installment IS being worked on; it is just progressing painfully slowly due to the as-yet-unresolved situation that still plagues me. Beverly Journal's tale continues!
This will probably come as a surprise to most, but I have never read the quintessential canine book, Call of the Wild, by Jack London. I read White Fang when I was young, but never this one, and I don't know why it has taken me so long to get around to it. I recently came across a copy of it, and since I have just finished reading the book I was trudging through (a lame sci-fi "epic" that ran well over five hundred pages), I shall begin this one next.
Nothing like the feeling when a story finds it bones! I was starting to worry that Book Two would suffer that literary equivalent of the "middle child syndrome," which often plagues second installments of trilogies. Then I hit upon the missing element that was needed to save it and make it stand out from Books One and Three. Now, instead of it being "that book I have to get through" to get to the one I am more excited about, I am actually enjoying the experience and look forward to getting home every night to continue work on it.
Check out this interesting article from a West Michigan news site:
http://wwmt.com/news/local/michigan-monsters-dogman-legend-continues-to-howl-across-state?linkId=24777219 Could Canis sapiens be loose among us? Right up there with “What is your book about?” the next question that is always asked of authors would be “What kind of book is it?” And while it is nice to have a simple category that adequately sums up the tone and content of your story, the answer is not necessarily so easy to come up with.
I guess there must have once been a time when a horror was a horror and a comedy was a comedy, and never the twain shall meet, but I don’t recall it. Sci-fi/horrors, paranormal romances, dramedies! Nowadays we just love to dip our chocolate in someone else’s peanut butter in the hopes of inventing a new flavor. But it’s not even intentional. Sure there are those who set out to reinvent sub-genres from the get-go, but often it is the case that an author develops a story the way he/she feels it should be, and then has to struggle afterward trying to determine what category it most closely fits into. Then add to that the problem of dealing with a series, where one installment may stray from the previous one’s prescribed subject matter. For it is as much fun for the author as for the reader to have a running character be suddenly put into a circumstance beyond his norm. Take James Bond, for instance (the literary creation, not the film series, although there has been some variation there as well). Throughout the course of his novels, he has been involved in grand espionage adventures, but there have been attempts to stray into far-flung territories that have virtually gone unnoticed under the overall guise of its spy novel roots. He has been involved in a Western (The Man with the Golden Gun, complete with shootout on a train), a science-fiction plot (Dr. No, who is more machine than man—an early Darth Vader?), an Asian-themed excursion (You Only Live Twice), a taut thriller (The Spy Who Loved Me—just Bond showing up at a hotel to protect a woman from thugs), a tragic romance (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), and more. Giving each novel its unique flavor was what helped keep Fleming’s series fresh and interesting. So how do I describe my series? I simply call it a werewolf story, but if pressed I would describe it as horror, cringing to do so because it does not exactly fit with what I consider a horror, except superficially. I almost want to call it science fiction, since to me it is more about exploring the culture of an alien (no, not from outer space) species, but I also acknowledge that Book One is very much a paranormal romance, with a great deal of it concentrating on a forbidden love affair. However, the second book is by no means a paranormal romance, and the third (not to give anything away) is actually the closest to being an actual horror story. So how do I describe the series as a whole? ...No, really, I’m asking you: How do I describe the series? Is it even necessary to describe a series? Must everything be pigeonholed for easy consumption? Don’t get me wrong; I like to know what I’m getting into when I start reading a book or watching a movie. In fact, knowing what genre it falls in helps me decide whether to read/watch it or not. But I also like a little leverage where that’s concerned. I particularly like my sci-fi and horror to blend; in fact, films of the fifties did this all the time (The Thing from Another World, The Blob, etc.). So why was it that the first ALIEN film was treated like it invented the wheel? What kind of book is it? To me it is so much more than one thing. It has horror elements, but it also has science-fiction elements. It is a tale of forbidden love, but it is also a thriller about a person dealing with emotional trauma. I find it as hard to simplify into one word as I would find it hard to describe one of my sons in one word, but nevertheless an author is expected to be able to do so with his or her book. I suppose simply saying “fiction” isn’t good enough, huh? After a writer painstakingly crafts his work with sentences that best exhibit the notions that crept from his or her mind, the next step is to go back and reevaluate them. The obvious reason for this is the hunting down of any typos or mistakes—both grammatical and plot-related—that are apparently unavoidable no matter how practiced or experienced you are. But this also is the time when certain sentences may come off sounding awkward and in need of reworking.
One of the things I have to watch for is sentence length. I do not like simple sentences. (Except, apparently, to make a grand statement like the previous one.) Compound sentences, complex sentences, compound-complex sentences… These are the types I prefer, and I frankly don’t see the reason for writing an adult-targeted story as if it were written for grade-school students who are just learning to read. Say it simply. Why? So it can sound dull? Are we really encouraging writers to simplify their text just so less-learned readers can avoid the experience of having to look up and learn a new word? What would be terrible about that? In high school I went through a period where I started riddling my speech with “fifty-cent words” (perhaps a result of all my late night reading). When this of course did not go over well, I did a complete one-eighty in college just to fit in better. But in my writing… there I stayed true to my nature. It is no surprise that writing teachers would occasionally comment on my long sentences. They were grammatically correct—in fact, I think one of the joys I take from writing in this way comes from composing a perfect sentence that links all my related thoughts together in an interesting manner while remaining 100% accurate from a grammatical standpoint. But even I will admit when a sentence gets away from me and is in need of reshaping. I just object to the notion of simplifying for no reason, when the sentence successfully does its job and conveys my idea flawlessly but is simply longer than the average reader is used to. I never emulated Hemingway. Known for simple sentences, his writing style is exemplified in classrooms as the ideal to strive for. (I am only learning now that his style changed depending on the particular book, and that he even crafted a sentence that was well over four hundred words!) It has also been argued that it wasn’t his sentences that were simple as much as his choice of wording. That’s even worse! Could you imagine how dull it would be if we were to go through life only hearing and using the same boring words? Well guess what; it’s already been imagined. In George Orwell’s 1984, which I am currently halfway through reading for the very first time, Big Brother’s society uses a technique whereby the language is being eroded away so that all concepts are represented by a few simple words. This is done in accordance with a belief that eliminating certain words altogether from a language will eliminate the possibility that its members will even be able to conceive of the notions behind them. If there are no words to convey the concepts of freedom or rebellion, how can one consider them? I don’t know if there have ever been any studies to justify this idea—or how one could even be accomplished!—but it still stands as one of the elements in the novel that one would want to avoid in real life. What a colorless world we would live in if our speech—and more so our reading material—were dumbed down to the point of lacking any interest altogether. The story alone cannot cut it; even the most engaging tale requires flavor to bring it to life. Which brings me back to the editing process, and the tightrope we walk when trying to conform to certain accepted notions of how a sentence should be while still allowing our personal flair to show through. It is perhaps the least pleasurable part of the writing process for an author, but it is also one of the most important steps, as how your narrative sounds to the reader’s ear may win or lose your audience. Is it any wonder that this topic weighs heavily on my mind? Is exposition “old-fashioned”? Why is it hated so much? I personally have no problem with it – enjoy it even – which is probably why it creeps up so much in my writing. Internal monologs that reveal motives and intentions; anecdotes about characters’ past incidents; in-depth explorations of alien societies. Often my favorite parts of books would be those sections that told us things that were not part of the story itself but were part of the world in which the story plays out. And since most of the books I read took place in imaginary realms of science fiction or fantasy, they often relied on such devices.
Descriptive text bores me. I don’t care what color the walls are. I don’t want to read an entire page about the weather. “Show, don’t tell?” What is this, a movie? Even movies lately suffer from an overabundance of showing without telling, as filmmakers imitate Ridley Scott and treat their films as paintings that need no explanation. I’m sorry, but a story is not a painting. A painting may speak a thousand words, but the words are different for each viewer. A story – and movies are stories just as much as books are – should show things in a definitive manner, not just leave it to the viewer to interpret what he or she wants. That is not how you tell a story. That may work for music videos, but not for narrative fiction. Back to exposition. I had heard so many complaints against expository writing that I’m constantly paranoid and forced to second-guess my own writing because of my predilection to incorporate exposition on a regular basis. And yet as I read older books – and yes, I do still find myself often reading books from the early half of the twentieth century – I am made very much aware of all the exposition involved. How can teachers rail against such writing and then include classics on their students’ “summer reading lists” that are perfect examples of them? “Like what?” you ask. Well, I had never read George Orwell’s 1984 in high school, opting instead to read Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. I had recently become curious about the other classic that I had neglected, and so I requested it from my library. Eighty pages in, and it dawned on me. Hardly anything has happened so far, and most of the book is exposition. I’m not complaining! It is exactly the type of situation that calls for it. How else can you plumb the depths of a fanciful society that exists only in the author’s imagination than through constant asides and historical footnotes about fictional events that make up the backstory of its world? I am beginning to come to the conclusion that teachers – and readers as well – who complain so much about exposition do not readily read fanciful fiction and instead prefer reading stories that take place in more reality-inspired settings (what to me would be “the boring real world”). Not that I do not occasionally read books of that nature. I have enjoyed Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, and (another high school reading list classic) Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline. And I am a huge fan of Ian Fleming’s series of 007 adventures. But rarely do I place my own stories in such a “normal” realm. Is my writing in an “old-fashioned” style? Does that make it outdated, or just different? I could accept the latter, especially since it is the secret goal of all writers to have their work stand out from the masses. As I struggle to stay true to my vision of how my stories should be, I pray that my audience will also share my taste for the anecdotal text that works to enhance the setting while it attempts to complement the narrative storyline. It is my hope that I am not alone in this appreciation of a style that seems to have worked so well for authors in the past who are universally revered as literary geniuses. I’m not looking to be counted among them; I simply don’t want to be ostracized for not playing by modern rules. Tonight I'd like to address some of my literary inspirations, especially those who have written werewolf stories. As for those who haven't, I am a longtime fan of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Richard Matheson, as well as the controversial John Norman, but there are certain werewolf tomes that stand out in my mind as being the pillars on which my book rests. I am in no way comparing my work to these, or myself to these authors; I simply acknowledge their contributions to the genre in general and to myself as a writer. First and foremost is the Howling trilogy by Gary Brandner, although I must admit that it was the Joe Dante movie that inspired me most. In fact, it doesn't take much to realize how that film helped mold Canis Sapiens into what it became. In fact, I will readily admit that when I close my eyes, I envision one of my characters to look exactly like a character from that film. Of course, storywise they are not alike, except in a very basic sense. For those who like their tales to be epic in nature, S. P. Somtow's Moon Dance is a sprawling adventure spanning generations and incorporating other supernatural elements not usually linked to the werewolf theme. I have always considered it to be the Gone with the Wind of werewolf stories. The next book is the second installment of a trilogy that is almost entirely unknown. Wake of the Werewolf, by Geoffrey Caine, is sandwiched between a vampire novel and a zombie one, and each one is an iconic, worthy tribute to its corresponding sub-genre. Finally, even though Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville series was written after I had already composed my first draft, reading it inspired me in a different way. Finding her style to be similar in tone to my own, I felt a strange kinship in this other werewolf-loving contemporary author and felt hopeful that there just might be an audience for my work too.
I encourage others to check out these predecessors, and I thank them for figuratively letting me stand on their shoulders. |
AuthorCreator of the Canis Sapiens series, Anthony Regolino created this blog to discuss his work, upcoming projects, and writing in general. Archives
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