Barry Lyga's Blog: The BLog, page 15

After literally years of hard work by my agents in the States and some folks on the Korean Peninsula, I’m happy to announce that Korean film rights have been optioned by Page One Productions based on the Korean translations of the I Hunt Killers trilogy published by RHK Publishing.

Which means — if Page One chooses to exercise the option — there very well may be a movie. In Korean. (Subtitled elsewhere around the world, never fear!)

This, I realize, is not exactly what my English-language readers have been hoping for all these years.

But it’s pretty cool on its own, apparently a ground-breaking deal, the first time a Korean-language movie will be made from an American novel before an English-language movie.

And about an English-language movie… What’s up with that, you ask?

Beats me. Same as it ever was. If someone wants to make it, they know where to find me. There’s a chance that a good, successful Korean movie will spark some interest in Hollywood, the way movies like Old Boy and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Ring started out as overseas flicks that did well enough to attract the attention of the American movie industry. And that might get us an English-language movie.

We’ll see. Regardless, we have this super-cool and fun news! If I have any updates, I will — of course — post ’em immediately!

Many, many thanks to everyone at Page One in Korea, especially Jae Yun Chung, as well as to Eric Yang of RHK, Inc. (the Korean publisher of I Hunt Killers).

Thanks, too, to my agent Kathleen Anderson of Anderson Literary Management, to Ginam Lee of Legacy Pro Law, who truly performed heroically above and beyond the call of duty to make this happen, and to Duran Kim of Duran Kim Agency, who got it all started.

The 2017 ACLU Short Story Fundraiser continues, this month with “Trading Worlds” and a cover crafted by artist Jeff Dillon:

ALL PROCEEDS FROM THIS STORY BENEFIT THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION!

It’s September 11, 2001. I turn thirty and the world gets a little older, too.

As with all of the fundraisers, this story is only available for one month and costs $1.99. Please buy the story and spread the word!

Because I love the sound of my own voice and don’t know how to be brief1, I ran out of Q&A time during my SLJ Teen Live event.

So I asked the fine folks at SLJ to please forward the unanswered questions to me so that I can field them here. And away we go…

At what age (ish) do you feel it would be okay for your daughter to start reading your books? — Jasmine

I was going to say that it depends on which books, but the honest answer is: It depends on my daughter! Every kid is different and can handle different ideas and stories at different ages. If she seems mature enough for, say, I Hunt Killers at age 10, I’d be a hypocrite not to let her read it.

I think something else that pertains here is that it’s also probably a little odd for a child to read something written by a parent. She might be ready for something mature in a general sense long before she’s ready to read something mature that her dad wrote.

What ages do you think should read Bang? — Erica

It really depends on the individual reader. Honestly, there are probably eleven-year-olds out there who can handle it, and twenty-five year-olds who can’t. I’m really, really bad at letting arbitrary criteria (like age) dictate reading. Fortunately, I don’t have to decide! I think most kids are better self-censors than we give then credit for and would stop reading the book if it proved to be too much for them.

Is there ever coming a second part of After the Red Rain? — Amanda

Sorry to say, probably not. It was tough getting all three of us together for the book, and Robert and Peter aren’t business partners any more, so it would be even tougher to make everyone’s schedules fit.

You mentioned pizza……are we talking Dominos or Papa Johns? — Ashley

Blasphemy!!!

Do you prefer writing for adults or for young adults? — Kristine

I don’t think of the audience when I write, so I never really think of myself as writing “for” a particular group or age range. I just tell the story to the best of my ability and cross my fingers that someone out there will like it!

What type of research did you do to prepare for writing Bang? — Connie

Most of my research actually centered on Muslim-American experiences and on things like YouTube. The actual shooting itself is very simple and sadly prevalent to the point that no research was needed. I spent a lot of time reading some Muslim personal narratives and also spoke with three Muslims who were willing to offer their thoughts. On YouTube, I sort of delved into how viral videos tend to work and how the system itself works overall.

What about The Flash???? — Lisa

What about it????

It’s a dream come true, honestly. Three books, coming out in October 2017, April 2018, and October 2018. The first book is titled Hocus Pocus and its awesome comic book-y fun!

woooohoooo!!!!! — Amanda

Right back atcha!!!!!

I’m a teen librarian. Could never get my husband to read a YA book. Begged him to try I Hunt Killers… we now have all 3 in hardback. He wants more, but he has brain damage and can’t read print anymore. Best one to rec him in audio? — Rebecca

I’m so sorry about your husband. I’m not sure if you’re asking me to recommend one of my books in audio or just any YA. So I’ll do both!

The I Hunt Killers trilogy and Bang are all in audio, read by Charlie Thurston, who does an absolutely amazing job.

As to other books: I’d recommend Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens and Paul Griffin’s Adrift, both read by the authors themselves!

Not a question – thanks for the short stories you’ve been releasing for the ACLU. Great stories & and great cause! — Michelle

Thanks! Everyone out there, please consider buying my ACLU fundraiser stories each month! This month’s is “Bobby” and the story “Four Minutes” is still available as well.

It happens more than people think.  Many years ago our nephew and his best friend found a gun on the house when they were both 12.  They took turns laughing and waving it around.  Our nephew, Scott, was holding it when it went off and killed his friend. — Stephanie

Ouch. I hate to end on such a downbeat note, but this is the topic, isn’t it? As I said in the SLJ chat, I didn’t invent Bang — it happens all the time. Thanks for sharing your very painful story, Stephanie.

What’s that, you say? You say you can’t wait to read Flash: Hocus Pocus, the first book in my trilogy based on the TV show?

And what’s that? You say you haven’t preordered the book yet???

Gadzooks!

Let’s remedy this right the hell now! Here are handy-dandy preorder links for you. Or, of course, hie thee to thy local independent bookstore and tell ’em to put aside a copy for you the day it comes in!

I don’t typically review books, mostly because I’m lousy at it. But recently a very fine novel crossed my threshold and I thought I’d tell you about it. It will be on store shelves in September, so consider kicking off your fall reading with…

Slider by Pete Hautman

Here’s a secret I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone before: Pete Hautman (whom I’ve never met) is responsible for one of my books.

You see, I read and devoured and was forever transformed by his quite exceptional novel Godless, which is still, in my estimation, one of the best critiques of religion I’ve ever read.

In under 250 pages.

I was utterly gobsmacked by that book, by Hautman’s audacity and intellect and wit. And by the fact that he was able to establish and transform characters and offer up a scathing rebuke to religious thought, all in a little over 200 pages.

Meanwhile, I had just written 600 pages about a kid screwing his teacher. Consider me properly chastened.

I wanted to do what Hautman had done and so I wrote Hero-Type, in which I tried to apply a Hautman-esque ethos to politics. (I failed miserably, but that’s not his fault.)

Anyway, I’m in awe of Pete Hautman, so I was thrilled to get my greedy little hands on an advance copy of Slider, his new middle-grade novel.

Slider is the story of David, an endlessly hungry tween who aspires to competitive eating greatness. He can slurp down an entire pizza in nothing flat, and now that he accidentally charged $2000 on his mom’s credit card, he really really needs to win the big state eating contest…or he’s dead meat.

Throw in adolescent confusion, two best friends who seem to be becoming closer than is comfortable, and an autistic younger brother who sucks all the oxygen (and attention) out of the room, and you have a recipe for something truly different and powerful. In Hautman’s hands, that recipe ends up perfectly balanced. He deftly combines humor, pathos, yearning, and introspection, never allowing any one of them to overpower the others. You’re rooting for David all along, living in his head, and never once do you feel manipulated by authorial fiat.

Most amazing of all, Hautman makes you care about the obsessive detail of a competitive eater, even if the thought of eating more than one hot dog at a sitting makes you want to retch.

Slider has brains and heart and an iron cast stomach…and it certainly has one hell of a funny bone. You can preorder your copy with the links below.

Weird, long title, eh? Read the story — it’ll make sense. I promise.

ALL PROCEEDS FROM THIS STORY BENEFIT THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION!

With her son now in school, bored stay-at-home mom Heather no longer needs to stay at home. At the local university, she starts auditing classes, looking for something to do as her husband desperately tries to turn his garage band into something more. She studies cinema and literature and then astronomy.

Where she meets Jamie.

In the life cycle of stars, ignition is dangerous, powerful, and necessary. In the life cycle of Heather, it can be all of these, and more.

As with all of the fundraisers, this story is only available for one month and costs $1.99. Please buy the story and spread the word!

I’ve been fantasizing thinking about a Trump impeachment since, oh, November 9, 2016. And I’ve known all along that it wouldn’t happen (just as I knew the Electoral College wouldn’t actually execute its purpose and bounce Herr Tic-Tac), but I guess I’ve been in denial.

Until recently. Look, gang, it ain’t gonna happen. We’re stuck with him for a full term, barring some kind of health issue or assassination. Here’s why:

Image via Wikipedia

Yep, that’s the party breakdown of the U.S. House of Representatives, and it leans Republican. Republicans aren’t going to impeach Trump. Not unless his approval rating gets obscenely low, and guess what? There’s a core of voters who will believe in him no matter what.

There is literally no cliff that certain people will not follow Trump over. Amazing to watch it play out in real time.

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 9, 2017

Don’t believe me or Chris Hayes? Hold your nose and go read this essay, including the terrifying sentence “Trump is a wild card- and we like it that way. [sic]” People like this keep his approval rating from diving too low for it to spook Republicans in the House to kick him to the curb.

Also, as noxious as it seems, he has an 84% approval rating from Republicans. (Go here and check the fourth chart down.) That’s right — the vast majority of Republicans think he’s doing just hunky-dory. Paul Ryan and his unctuous homunculi aren’t going to rile the base, even if Trump parades naked to the National Mall and compares his junk to the Washington Monument.

“No kidding, Barry,” you’re saying. “We know all of this. That’s why it’s so important for Democrats to take back the House in 2018! #Actblue! #resist!”

And I say unto you… It doesn’t matter if the Dems take back the House. He still won’t be impeached.

As a wise man once said:

If you kick Trump out of the White House (as I do at least once a week in my sweet, sweet dreams), there will be a panicky white-asshole uproar the likes of which you’ve never seen. Which, hey, is fine as long we’ve won, right?

But now imagine that uproar…and Trump is still the Commander-in-Chief. You think he was pissy before? You think he was unstable and insane before? Imagine Trump after surviving impeachment and going full Vito Corleone on the entire country. No way in the world would the Democratic Party as it’s currently constituted risk that.

And that’s what would happen if the House impeached. Because impeachment is one thing, but to get his flabby butt out from behind the Resolute desk for good, you need two-thirds of the Senate to vote to impeach.

Check out the current breakdown of the Senate. The GOP is in the majority. You’re not getting a two-thirds vote to convict there.

“But, Barry!” you complain. “That’s why we need to take back the Senate, too!”

Right. Of course.

This article lays out why that’s, uh, unlikely. (For definitions of unlikely that equal “damn near impossible.”) In short: The Dems have 25 seats up for election in 2018, while the Republicans have only eight.

Eight.

Go ahead and imagine a scenario in which the Democrats somehow manage to hold onto all 25 of their seats (even though a bunch are in states that Trump won handily). And imagine they also manage to snag those eight outstanding GOP seats. That adds up to 56 Democrats in the Senate.

Last time I checked the math, that’s 11 votes short of the two-thirds needed to convict. And you’re not going to get any Republicans to flip on Trump because of the reasons enumerated above. Any Republican who votes to convict is going to be a pariah to the base and the party, and these dudes care more about their own hides than they do about you or the country.

But OK, let’s keep playing the wish-fulfillment game. Let’s say the Dems retake the House and the Senate. And let’s say some miracle happens and Trump’s base deteriorates just enough that 11 Republicans are willing to stick their necks out and vote to convict.

Guess what? He’s still gonna get to finish his term. That’s right: Even assuming enough votes in the House and Senate to impeach and convict, I predict it won’t happen.

Because the Democrats won’t push it that far.

Oh, they may talk a good game about impeachment, but they know that they can fall back on “The votes aren’t there. There aren’t enough Democrats in Congress.” It’s easy to talk the talk when you know you’ll never have to walk the walk.

I hate to break it to you, but with some exceptions elected Democrats are cowards at heart. (In their defense, most politicians are.) They have so little power (having lost most state legislatures and governorships) that they’re terrified of losing it. So they’re willing to sacrifice bits of it at a time in lieu of losing it all at one fell swoop. The end result is the same, but they delude themselves into thinking it’s not, that if they can just hold out long enough and keep their heads down then something magical will happen that will return them to power.

So, here’s the scenario: In some alternate universe, the Democrats retake the House and Senate in 2018, then Trump’s approval rating drops enough that close to a dozen Republicans would vote to convict.

The new Congress is seated in January 2019. Mere months from our absurd American quadrennial tradition of “Starting the Presidential Election Campaign Ridiculously Early.” Six months later — June or July 0f 2019 — people will already be declaring. Some Dems trying to get a jump on the early money. A maverick Republican. A couple of third partiers. Maybe even you-know-who.

The Democrats aren’t going to want to make the 2020 election about impeachment. Win or lose, convict or not, if they impeach Trump, 2020 will be all about the ramifications and consequences. Town halls and campaign rallies are going to be overrun by Trumpies with an axe to grind, and even if you’re the kind of politician who’s not afraid of that, you still have to acknowledge that it’s not the best way to get your message out. You want a clear platform.

And hell — you want to run against Donald Trump, an historically unpopular president! You have a much better chance running against Señor Pussy-Grabber than against…

Mike Pence.

President Mike Pence. A dude who looks like what Central Casting thinks a President should look like, and is the soft-spoken yin to Trump’s bombastic yang. Yeah, I know Pence is just as dangerous and insane as Trump, but he doesn’t seem that way, and if he plays his cards right, a post-impeachment President Pence could play the old “let me reunite the party and the country” card to great effect and score some serious votes.

“Clinton’s ouster would bestow on the Vice President the advantage of running in 2000 as an incumbent, and as the man who helped the nation get over Monica.”

That’s what some Republicans feared during the Clinton impeachment, and Democrats would have the same fears post-Trump impeachment. Read the following sentence to yourself and think of today’s Democratic Party:

“Trump’s ouster would bestow on the Vice President the advantage of running in 2020 as an incumbent, and as the man who helped the nation get over Trump.”

You can see it, can’t you? Commercials with avuncular Mike Pence regretfully sandbagging Trump, promising the world and America that it’s a new day, that the Presidency has been reborn. (Extra points for the whistle to the evangelicals.)

A tough opponent.

Look, I think Donald J. Trump is a loathsome human being1 and I truly believe that he has committed offenses that demand impeachment. I believe that the House should impeach him whether or not there are enough votes to convict, not because I enjoy tilting at windmills, but because it’s the right thing to do.

I also believe, though, that the nature of politicians (and of the current Democratic Party) is such that it will never happen. I would love to be wrong, but I don’t think I am.

So, strap in for four years of lunacy, idiocy, and high blood pressure. And do whatever you can to support the opposition. Because it’s not about flipping the House or the Senate or your local government in order to get rid of Trump. Put that thought out of your mind.

It’s now about making sure something like this can’t happen again.

Of the six stories published thus far for my series of ACLU fundraisers, the one that’s gotten the biggest reaction has been April’s “Four Minutes.”

As a result, I’ve decided to put it back on sale for the foreseeable future, so that people who missed it can have another shot at it. The new price is $2.99, to give even more money to the ACLU.

Download it, read it, and spread the word!

ALL PROCEEDS FROM THIS STORY GO TO THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION!

The place: The suburbs.

The time: Tomorrow, maybe.

The situation: Ray is just trying to get by in the newer, greater America. With a wife and a new baby, he can’t afford to get mixed up in politics or the fight for civil liberties. But as the world shrinks and darkens around him, Ray finds that the safe harbor he’s crafted for himself and his family may not be big enough or strong enough to stand.

And then one night, there’s a knock at the door. Now there’s nowhere to hide, and soon Ray will have to make the hardest decision of his life.

With cold, relentless precision, Barry Lyga explores a future that is too close for comfort in what might be his darkest, most disturbing work to date.

“Four Minutes” may, indeed, be the most brutal thing I’ve ever written. And that’s saying something.

You can find “Four Minutes” here:

My editor, Alvina Ling, and I spent some time chatting on the Little, Brown Podcast. The topic? Bang…and guilt.

Listen to it here.

Here is June’s fundraiser short story for the ACLU:

ALL PROCEEDS FROM THIS STORY GO TO THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION!

A young man celebrates his eighteenth birthday with some drinking. Who could get hurt?

Susan Ann Marchetti, that’s who. Killed in a drinking and driving accident. And now the young man who killed her will grow to adulthood visiting her each year, as the anniversary of his birth becomes the anniversary of her death. Ten birthdays at a grave could harden anyone; who will he be at the end of this decade?

Set in the same world as Bang, Boy Toy, and other Lyga novels, “Her Decade” forms a crucial backdrop to those stories, opening up new details as it reveals a powerful history for the town of Brookdale.

As with all of the fundraiser stories, “Her Decade” sells for $1.99 and will only be available for one month. Please buy the story and spread the word!