Shepherd (and Secret Control)

      Shepherd is a new website featuring book lists by authors recommending stories that inspired their own work, books they're fascinated by or books they just love.  Definitely take some time to explore the site, it's loaded with fantastic titles, many of which I had never heard of before, even though they're about subjects I've always loved.  My own featured book list, The Best Books About a World Under Secret Control just went live.  

Not a Dystopia

     I didn't set out to write a work of dystopian fiction.  Those That Wake was originally set in the present and the characters in it were trying to prevent circumstances which would lead to dystopia.  Market forces pushed the time-frame of the story ahead a few years, but I worked to ensure that it retained something I felt was crucial: a focus not just on how the world could be worse, but on how certain powers work to make it worse.
     We are not living in a dystopia, though the Coronavirus certainly invites comparison.  Dystopias are about living in an aftermath, dealing with the world after the disaster has happened.  The world is currently working hard to stop the dystopia from setting in (and we will, though exactly how long that will take is hard to say).  This situation is effective, though, for observing how certain powers are meeting the challenge, and also how people are contending with challenges on our own level.
     Reading is an excellent way to spend some extra time inside.  I find that reading books which allow me to conceptualize and understand the problem we're facing help the most.  Two books that get right to the heart of things are:
     Time out of Joint by Philip K. Dick - For my money, this is Philip K.'s best (no small claim in a field of forty-four novels and one hundred and twenty-one short stories).  While it doesn't appear so at first, this is very much about how higher powers deal with times of crisis.  If you believe the article linked in the second paragraph of this post is about how powerful people try to alter the narrative, or if you believe it's the people who wrote that article that are trying to alter the narrative, Time out of Joint will still resonate for you.
     The Plague by Albert Camus - A work of literature that reads like an existential thriller (at times), it has much to say about how people deal -- and fail to deal -- with the particular sort of trouble we're in now.
     Maybe you prefer books that get you far away from the problem.  I get it.  If so, have a look at this, instead.

Struggle for the Human Spirit

     Checking back in with the Internet as I do from time to time, I found this much more recent review of Those That Wake, gratifyingly headlined by the epic (and timely) title above.

New York's Angels and Gargoyles

     A recent article in the New York Times covers an obscure but fascinating element of the city's history, one that my family has been closely involved with, as the story elucidates.  Those ancient, stony faces looking down on the city in judgment were, without a doubt, rumbling in my subconscious as I imagined the tone of the future New York for Those That Wake and What We Become.  Give the story a read right here.

Checking In

     While it probably doesn't pay to become obsessed by it, it's nice to check back in with the Internet every once in a while on the subject of books you've written.  This last time around, I found two interesting sites relating to Those That Wake.  The first, All the Tropes, is similar to another site I posted about a while back, in that it applies classic themes and concepts of storytelling to the book and offers the connections in a list that captures ideas about Those That Wake in a fun and interesting way.  The other one, Prezi, is a website on presentations that offers a review of Those That Wake in the form of an unusual and kind of spooky slideshow.  

Devices and Conventions

     You write a book or two and your work can end up referenced in the strangest, and sometimes, most interesting places.  I just stumbled onto a website called TV Tropes, a wiki that catalogs "devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations."  Sure enough, there's a page for Those That Wake and What We Become.  A synopsis of both books is followed by a list of terms, each connected to specific points and descriptions from one of the novels.  It makes for a study guide or fascinating little abstract analysis; the result, I might add, of someone's seriously in-depth and insightful reading of those two books.  A fun and thoughtful site, and one I'm flattered to be included on.

Review: Those That Wake

     It's nice to browse around every now and then and turn up new reviews of my work or revisit some particularly strong ones.  For instance, J.P. Wickwire at the Daily Monocle said "Those That Wake is an exciting foray into genuinely frightening teen literature. And with the YA market being overrun with dystopian romances, books like this one stand out with their sheer originality."  While I'm generally in favor of excerpting one quote per review, I can't help but add that Ms. Wickwire also notes "Karp’s writing is striking, never sacrificing style for content (or vice versa).With deft use of subtle repetition, and offbeat descriptions, Karp constructs a story that stands on the head of a pin; a story that would not work if written in a different style."
     As you wander on through the labyrinth of your own imagination, it's good to know that you're actually reaching people out there sometimes. 
     

The Way Inn

    Attending a conference, Neil Double checks into the Way Inn, one location of a Holiday Inn-like super-franchise.  But the Way Inn's hallways wind much deeper than anyone suspects and when Neil follows the wrong person through the wrong door, he steps into a surreal nightmare of cosmic proportions.
     Will Wiles has written a powerful rumination on the effect our modern physical and social structures are having on the world and on us.  Beyond the fact that it's beautifully written, I found that Mr. Wiles explores many of the same ideas I do in Those that Wake and What We Become, though with his own sophistication and expression, of course.  If I may be so bold as to say so without Mr. Wiles's permission, the Way Inn feels like an adult counterpart to my own young adult novels.  For this, as well as for reasons of pure quality and enjoyment, I couldn't recommend the Way Inn more highly.

The Fight Scene

      Fight scenes in movies can be exciting for a few reasons, though primarily for the physical aesthetic.  Exciting fight choreography can engage an audience just like, say, exciting dance choreography can.  In books, it's a bit different.  While an author can get a reader to picture a specific fight choreography, the more specific the description gets, the more tedious the written fight can be.  Nevertheless, a fight scene in a book can heighten the drama, particularly if the reader is already invested in the stakes.  Most importantly though, a fight scene can be a way to highlight aspects of the characters in unusual, or unusually intense, ways. 
     The fight scenes in  Those That Wake and What We Become were intended to do this, delineating traits of Mal (perseverance in the first, the fact that his intelligence and wiliness come alive when he's in conflict in the second) and, to a lesser degree, Remak (precision).  A fight scene can also help intensify the tone and create a sense of just how desperate things are getting, especially when the protagonist seems terribly outmatched or, effectively, cannot hope to win (as in Mal's fight with the Old Man in What We Become).
     A book with sharp, exciting fights scenes that illuminates character illumination is William Goldman's Marathon Man, when the secret agent Scylla fights the assassin Chen.  The way the fight ends, particularly, reveals an essential trait of Scylla's character.  Goldman, incidentally, writes great fights scenes in general, including in the novels Brothers, Control and The Princess Bride.  

The Secrets in the Chapter Titles

      A little while ago, a reader told me he noticed that the chapter titles in Those That Wake and What We Become aren't numbered.  In the interest of full disclosure, this reader seemed a little annoyed by the fact, but the uneasiness it produced in him was not completely unintentional.  I left the titles unnumbered because, like the characters within, I wanted the readers to always be a bit uncertain of where, exactly, they were in the story.
     Something else I did with the chapter titles, actually, almost no one seems to have caught onto (or at least almost no one's bothered to mention to me).  The titles of each chapter have a number of words in them that correspond to the part of the book they're in, so all the chapters in Part I are a single word, the titles in Part II have two words, and so on.  This was an attempt to carry forward the theme, central to the story,  that there are secret connections between things all around us of which we are not aware.
      The ideas of the stories don't have to end with the narrative itself, but can take a hold in the physical object that comprises them.  Now, at the risk of pushing a little too far into postmodernism, I'll point out that ideas taking over physical forms is something else crucial to the stories, as well.
    

The Cast

     Perhaps with the recent (and excellent) documentary Casting By in mind, someone asked me who I would cast for a movie version of Those That Wake.  With no limits on budget or scheduling (or era) in my imagination, my ideal cast would be:
     As Laura, Shailene Woodley
     As Remak, Michael Fassbender
     As Mike, Paul Giamatti
     And as Mal, a very young Charles Bronson.  I'm sure there's a current actor out there who understands the power of silence, who would serve the part very well, but from the moment of conception, Mal was always a young Charles Bronson in my head.

Tease VI

     With less than a week before its release, here is a final tease from What We Become.  This is a line spoken by the Old Man, the story's main antagonist, in a climactic moment.

      "Yes, run.  Run if you want to live just a little longer.  Soon, I will be everywhere." 

A Solid Idea

     Jim Holt, author of the fascinating Why Does the World Exist?:  An Existential Detective Story, was a recent guest on NPR's Radiolab.  The subject of the short episode is nothing less than the very nature of existence, which is not bad for a podcast that runs less than fifteen minutes.  The discussion centers on how solid reality is at its most basic level or whether it is actually comprised of fields or rules.  Essentially, it is asking the question, is reality made of stuff or is it made of idea?  This, of course, is a subject of great interest to me, as Those That Wake will attest.
     You can hear the entire episode here.
    

Thanks 2012

     As Thanksgiving seems like the right time for traditions, with this second post on the subject, I hereby create a yearly tradition of listing a few things I'm thankful for.  As was the case last time, this is not meant to delve into the really big stuff -- family, friends, opportunities -- but rather to offer a few suggestions based on the art and entertainment that is enlightening or enthralling me around now.  Nevertheless, given the position many people in my corner of the world are in at the moment, it seems criminally frivolous not to mention how thankful I am to have a roof over my head, a hot meal on the way and a healthy family to share it with.  There are many ways to assist those who are not so fortunate.  If you are of a mind to help, here is one of many spots you can look at for ways to do so.
     In the meantime, here is a short list of things you might have a look at in between assisting with the debris clearance or donating to Red Cross and settling in for the Turkey.

Hard Times on DVD - Set in the 1930s but made in the 1970s, when they really knew how to shoot a fight scene, this is the story of an itinerant bare-knuckle boxer and his stopover in New Orleans.  Starring cinema's toughest tough guy, Charles Bronson (as well as a charming James Coburn) it is both tough-as-nails and yet also curiously melancholy and heartfelt.  And incidentally, the character of Mal from Those That Wake and What We Become, owes more than just a little bit to Bronson's character Chaney.  In fact, I always imagined Mal's father Max (brief though his part was), as more or less being that guy.

Mind MGMT by Matt Kindt - A writer searching for the reason why an entire plane full of people have lost their memories makes it a great mystery.  A secret organization of spies hunting down their greatest agent, who has gone rogue, makes it a cracking espionage tale.  That the spies are all psychics, each with a unique skill, makes it a thrilling and exciting Sci-Fi yarn.  Kindt's graphic story-telling skills, breathless pacing, sharp ideas and highly distinctive and engagingly idiosyncratic art makes it a great comic book.  Not just great, in fact, but with loads of bonus materials in each monthly issue that will not appear in the collected edition, it may be the single best value for your comic book dollar out there.

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart - Four children must complete a series of difficult tests before embarking on a secret mission to a bizarre boarding school.  I haven't even started this yet, but it sure sounds good and, because it was highly recommended by my nine-year-old daughter, I can't wait to get going.

     Happy Thanksgiving.  Make sure you bring a good turkey joke to the table.

Title Quotes

    Those That Wake took its title from (and was preceded by) a quote from a poem by the English diplomat and poet Matthew Prior.   It is a quote intended -- out of context as it is -- to sound somewhat menacing.  In context (an excerpt of which appears to the left of this very post), it goes like this:

     When all seems lost and tomorrow feels like a long journey ahead
     It is hope that sparkles like a flickering flame inside of our hearts.
     For you have a destination far beyond where you stand today,
     And hope is but a dream of those that wake.

     Clearly, my ultimate intent by using this quote (and in writing the book itself), was to suggest a sense of hope.
     What We Become, the sequel to Those That Wake, takes its title from (and is preceded by) a quote from French critic and essayist Charles Du Bos.  Also intended to conjure an uneasy feeling, excerpted as it is, in its entirety it reads "the important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."  Again, my ultimate goal (with the quote and the book) is to suggest the idea of improvement, of becoming something better than we are, though the evolution might require that we give up a certain part of ourselves.  Conveniently, it also conjures the notion of sacrifice, a theme that plays heavily into What We Become.

Hurricane Sandy

     Much of New York is experiencing a power outage right now, including pretty much all of downtown Manhattan (where, incidentally, I live).  The reason: Hurricane Sandy, or “Franken-storm as the press has dramatically dubbed it in its inimitable style, caused an explosion at the 14^th Street power station.  It happens that in my book, Those That Wake, there was a two-week power outage in downtown Manhattan brought on by an explosion at the 14^th Street power station.  I’m not claiming any sort of prescience here – in my book it was the result of a terrorist attack . . . maybe – but I will say it’s rather surreal to be suffering the consequences of an event that, until three days ago, had been purely imaginary.

     I wonder if, years from now, when people read the book, they'll think I got the idea from when Hurricane Sandy blew through.

Just Right

     Reading reviews of your own work is a mixed bag, to say the least.  If you let yourself get carried away, even the good reviews can drive you crazy if you feel like something crucial was misinterpreted.  Sometimes, though, someone writes a review that makes you feel like she got exactly what you wanted her to out of the read.  I've learned not to pursue reviews of my stuff too closely, but this one came my way and I appreciated it so much, I couldn't help but link to it right here. 

The Idea of Langoliers

     You hear often enough about where ideas come from, but where exactly do they go?  Or, more accurately, where does your memory of where they came from go?  I happened upon The Langoliers the other day, a TV movie based on Stephen King's novella from Four Past Midnight.  I hadn't seen it since its original airing in 1995, but watching it again, a gust of memory blasted out of a dusty, cobwebbed corner of my mind like someone had just opened a window in the attic.
     Much of The Langoliers is concerned with a group of people trapped in a familiar place (in this case an airport) that is somehow not quite right.  The signs of what is wrong (things have no taste, there is no smell, flame won't light things on fire) and what eventually proves to be different about the place had a fairly huge impact on me, I realize as I look back.  I never even read the original story, but the ideas in the filmed version stuck with me enough that I built a fairly pivotal segment of Those That Wake from similar building blocks.  That same idea (the Forgotten Places, as I call them in my book) has another crucial part in What We Become.  Incidentally, the Langoliers themselves are a momentously sinister and ghastly monster creation, though rendered in early and somewhat rickety CGI, as well as the most maniacal and lunatic performance of Bronson Pinchot's career (which makes for an odd selling point, I grant you).
     It's no big news that we form new ideas from ideas we experience.  I was just struck in this case how those ideas become a current in the giant ebb and flow of our personal rivers and, if we're lucky enough to stumble upon it again, how surprising it can be to rediscover the source.

Tease II

     The last time I teased an excerpt from What We Become (the sequel to Those That Wake), due out February 2013, it was on the spare side.  I'm going with something slightly longer this time.  The "he" in the passage below refers to Mal.  The "she" refers to . . . someone else.

           “I’m going to take you somewhere safe,” he said.

            “And then what?”

            “I’m going to get what they want.”

            She looked down.  Partially visible, her fragile features held no doubt.

            “But you’re not going to give it to them, are you?” she said.

            The darkness pressed in on them, held back only by the meager glow of the tiny lamp.

            “No.”

Tease

     What We Become, the sequel to Those That Wake, is due out in February of 2013.  That's just under a year, and yet the book is by and large ready.  The editing is finished, the proof reading done, the flap copy approved.  The paperback of Those That Wake (due out imminently) will mention the sequel's forthcoming release, but a year's a long time.  Over the course of the year, I'm going to try to throw out a tease here and there.
     Here's a line, completely out of context.  I can't even disclose who's saying it for fear of giving too much away.  But that's the idea of a tease, after all.

"Tell me, Laura, what is your life like now?"