Brent Hartinger's Blog, page 4

So I’ve been busy promoting my latest book, Three Truths and a Lie (twisty psychological thriller!). But I’ve had some help from the folks at USB Memory Direct, who sent me some promotional flash drives to help promote the book.

Pretty cool, huh? For an unusual promotional gimmick, check em out here.

And if you want one these little flash drives for yourself (and you live in the U.S.), drop me a line!

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I’m having a book launch! My new book, Three Truths and a Lie, is out now, and Seattle’s University Books (4326 University Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105) is having a little celebration, on Saturday, August 6th, 2016, at 6 PM.

Join me! I’ll talk briefly about the book, and read for a bit too.

P.S. There will be food!

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So my latest book, THREE TRUTHS AND A LIE, will be released this week August 2nd.

In honor of the book’s release, I’m sponsoring a little game. Play Three Truths and a Lie on social media, use the hashtag #ThreeTruthsandaLie and include the book jacket somewhere in your post.

Then send the post to me (via email, twitter, Facebook, or whatever!), and on August 10th, I’ll randomly select one player, and send them a $25 gift certificate to the bookseller of their choice!

How do you play Three Truths and a Lie? You make four statements, three of which are true and one of which is false. Then at the bottom of the post, reveal which is the lie.

I’ll go first:

(1) I had breakfast with Matt Bomer.

(2) I have “total recall.”

(3) I’m actually an extremely powerful sorcerer, and have defeated several powerful demons.

(4) I once lived in a tree house for two months.

Scroll down to see which statement is a lie!

The answers:

(1) TRUE: Alas, it was a press function, not a sleep-over.

(2) TRUE: At least for physical objects. I never misplace my keys!

(3) TRUE: I’m a sorcerer in the game Dungeons & Dragons (but you probably already guessed that).

(4) LIE: Nope! But it sounds like fun.

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Three Truths and a Lie, my latest book, is a change of pace for me. Part horror novel, part twisty puzzle box thriller, it’s the story of four teenagers who spend a weekend in a remote cabin in the rainforests of Washington State, and soon find themselves terrorized by some locals. Or is it the locals? It soon becomes clear that nothing in the rainforest is exactly what it appears, and none of the teens is telling the whole truth about anything.

Here’s my talking about the book:

Warning: This interview doesn’t contain spoilers exactly, but I do discuss the plot and various other aspects of the book. If you want to be completely surprised, don’t read on. (But you can buy the book here.)

Why this book?

Brent Hartinger: It was as simple as my visiting a remote cabin in a rain forest on the Olympic Peninsula near Seattle and thinking, “Oh, my God, this would make a fantastic setting for a book!”

Everyone knows what a tropical rain forest is, but these are temperate rain forests, which means they’re cold and dark and misty. They’re also incredibly lush, with ancient trees, and hanging moss. It’s like everything is growing, but nothing has changed in millions of years. Talk about a forest primeval!

Which is obviously a perfect place for a group of teenagers to be terrorized by some unnamed assailant, right?

BH: Exactly. But as one of the characters keeps saying, “Nothing is exactly what it seems in this place.” This is very much a psychological thriller.

I’m not one of those authors who says that a location is a “character.” It’s a location, not a character! Give me a break. But I’ll grant you that the location here is very specific and very important, and very much a reflection of the characters’ feelings.

Then again, that’s what I think the location should be in almost every  novel.

The book feels different from your other books.

BH: As an author, I know I’m known for more lighthearted books, books with a lot of humor. And as a person, I think I’m sort of a genial, not particularly provocative guy.

And then out comes this book that’s a dark, edgy, sexy horror/thriller novel.

It’s weird having a “brand” as an author. I think it’s easier for some authors, because they genuinely gravitate toward one particular thing.

The rest of us get put in a particular category because we have some kind of success in it. Which is absolutely fine. As a reader, I like an author with a clear brand.

But I’ve always written in lots of different mediums and genres. In addition to my books, I have four movies in development right now based on my screenplays: a black comedy, a caper story, an animated family film, and a teen drama. Go figure.

I definitely intended for this to be something truly different, both for my own career and YA books in general. I hate to toot my own horn, but I also think it might be something new for a gay teen book, partly for reasons that I can’t talk about without giving away the ending.

About that ending…

BH: I’ve always been a fan of twist endings, but only so long as the writer plays fair. You can’t just pull it out of thin air. It has to all make perfect sense in retrospect. And on one hand, that’s more difficult to pull off seamlessly than it looks.

On the other hand, once I had the central conceit of the book, it was very clarifying. This is one of those books where almost everything that happens, definitely every scene, relates directly to that ending, and to the book’s theme. So in a way, it was a very difficult book to write, but in another way, it was very easy.

Incidentally, as my great editor, Michael Stother, and I were revising it, part of me kept thinking, “This is so obvious! Everyone will guess the ending!” But so far, no one has guessed correctly, and no one feels cheated. So hopefully I did my job well.

Let’s talk about the sex.

BH: This is a psychosexual thriller. I’m tempted to say, “The sex is all integral to the plot!” Which it is. But even so, I surprised myself by how it turned out, how dark it is, even a bit shocking at one point. I’ve always said before that I’m a “fade to black” kind of writer when it comes to sex. But this story seemed to call for a different approach.

The book is not a romance, and it’s not “realistic” fiction. It’s not about “issue sex” — I’m not making a greater point about some aspect of teen sexuality, except maybe that teens are sexual beings. I’m also not necessarily trying to “empower” teens.

No, I’m using sex to explore darker themes, like domination, and jealousy, and secret desires, and even the connection between sex and death. These themes are right in line with the genre I’m writing in, but they didn’t seem like things that I usually read in YA, at least when it comes to sex. For that reason, it seemed like an interesting place for me to go.

Another part of me is sort of pinching myself, because the sex here is gay. And yet the book was written for and is being marketed to a mainstream audience.

Fortunately, the YA readership is increasingly open to new voices and ideas. Teenagers today are so much more sophisticated than when I was that age. Anyway, this is how things change: what was shocking or controversial twenty years ago is often accepted as a non-issue today.

How has the market for teen fiction about gay teens changed since you started writing it?

BH: Well, now there is a market.

I wrote the first draft of Geography Club around 1993 or so, and I, and then my agent, spent almost a decade trying to sell it. A lot of editors really liked it, and some of them took it to their acquisitions departments. But then they’d come back and say things like, “We don’t know what to do with this.” Or, “There’s no market for a book about gay teenagers.”

I often wonder: Were they right? If the book had been published back then, would it have tanked?

All I know is that when HarperCollins picked it up in 2001, no one expected it to do anything. I mean, everyone in-house liked it and was rooting for it, but no one expected it to sell. But by the end of the second week of publication, we’d already gone into a third printing.

The conventional wisdom couldn’t have been more wrong. But the even better news is how much, and how quickly, society has changed since then. And of course that’s reflected in YA literature. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.

I also think it’s interesting how the success of YA literature predicted the success of gay TV shows like Glee by half a decade or so. I’ve always said, if you want to know what’s going to be happening on television in five years, you should be reading YA literature now.

This feels different from most gay YA, because it’s not “about” being gay.

BH: I’ve been saying for years that the next wave in gay teen lit was books where being gay is completely incidental to the plot. I’ve also been eager for more gay genre books — science fiction and fantasy and suspense and horror, and all the rest.

I think that’s finally starting to happen, which I think is pretty good indication that gay literature has become almost completely mainstream. Being gay really is becoming a non-issue.

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So I have a new book out (on 8/2/16) called Three Truths and a Lie. It’s a twisty YA psychological thriller (with gay teens!).

Erik and I talked about it in the latest episode of our podcast.

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My 2006 novel has been completely revised and rewritten, and it’s currently FREE as an ebook!

Check it out!

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I’ve been watching the AMC mini-series The Night Manager, and for the most part, I’m loving it. Great characters, an interesting set-up, terrific acting (especially by Hugh Laurie!). But with all the plot-twists, my husband Michael and I keep looking at each other, saying, “Well, that was convenient, wasn’t it?”

Even though we love it, we’re picking the plot apart.

And it got me thinking: what is it about plot-heavy works that makes people be ultra-critical?

It’s funny, because I actually love plot. I get quite frustrated when a book or movie has a lazy, meandering plot, or when a project is over, and I’m left thinking, “That’s it? What was the point to all that?” It’s part of the reason why I’m not a big fan of literary novels: oftentimes they almost seem hostile in their refusal to let anything actually happen, or to have their main characters be, you know, active. And I love an ambiguous ending, but I hate a lazy, non-ending that doesn’t really say anything.

And yet, here I am watching The Night Manager, a plot-heavy TV series I really like, and I find myself being ultra-critical of the plot. What’s that about?

The truth is, a good plot is hard. Fiction is an approximation of real life, but it’s most decidedly not real life. Real life doesn’t come with act breaks, and it isn’t driving toward any particularly satisfying or interesting conclusion. We writers are faking it for entertainment purposes.

Every book or movie requires some degree of contrivance, but the skill comes from the writer’s ability to disguise the artifice, to make everything that happens look seamless, like something that could actually happen. Characters need to act the way the situation (and their characterization) requires, not what is most convenient for the purposes of moving the plot forward. And then, of course, it all needs to be leading to a completely unexpected and wonderful and surprising ending, but that ending also can’t come out of the blue. It needs to proceed logically from everything that came before.

Whew! That’s quite an undertaking!

I actually think that “plot” is the most difficult part of writing, hands down, which is why I wish it got more respect from critics (in books, they love poetic language; in movies, critics love arresting imagery and show-y acting). If writing came with a degree of difficulty, I think the twisty, plot-heavy books and screenplays would be the ones with the highest number.

And I think readers and audiences love plot. The fact that we all take it so seriously — that we get so annoyed when something feels false — indicates just how much we care about it.

I’ve been thinking about these things a lot because my latest book, Three Truths and a Lie, is probably my most intricately plotted book ever. It’s a puzzle box thriller with a “twist” ending, and almost every single sentence in the book is there for a specific reason.

Did I pull it off? Does the plot all hang together?

I think so! But, of course, you have to be the judge of that.

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I was pitching projects today, and I was reminded of something that might help aspiring writers: Being prolific will serve you really, really, REALLY well in your professional career.

I absolutely believe that every project needs to take exactly as much time as it takes, whether that's six months or five years.

At the same time, I have been reminded so many times in my career that sometimes, for whatever reason, certain projects don't sell. You can get a sense that certain projects will NEVER sell, that there's just something "off" about it. Sometimes the project itself is not ready, and you, the creator, can't see it. Just as often, there are market forces at work: there's a glut in the genre, or the genre is suddenly dead, or the editor or producer you most trust has a competing project in the works.

If you've spent five years on this one project, you're screwed. Seriously. Even a year is A LOT of time to spend on a single project, as least if you're doing it on spec.

I have many writing friends who have spent years writing and rewriting the same project. On one hand, I appreciate how hard it is to let things go. On the other hand, well, this seems self-defeating. It feels a little bit like what gamblers say: "If I keep plugging away, it HAS to pay out eventually!"

But most gamblers lose, literally by definition. The house ALWAYS wins.

I think a much smarter strategy is to (a) never get too bogged down on any one project, and (b) always have as many projects in the works as possible. In the world of screenwriting, a lot of agents won't talk to you unless you have AT LEAST four completed (and quality-vetted-by-others) scripts.

In writing circles, there's a lot of talk about your "writing process," and I always find these conversations interesting (because the process of no two writers is ever the same). And I don't really want to wade into the thorny thicket of "outlining" verses "plotting by the seat of your pants" (which, honestly, is a term that drives me crazy, because it implies a certain carelessness. No writer would ever say they create characters "by the seat of their pants," because character and voice are really, really important, and it requires precision and care and craft. Well, so does plot, damn it!)

But I will say, whatever your process is, unless your name is Thomas Pynchon, it's really important to be able to produce lots of quality content very quickly.

Similarly, once you're a professional writer, you'll be forced to pitch IDEAS, not completed scripts or manuscripts. This is actually a great thing, because it can save you a ton of time, selling a project before you write it.

But this means you have to have multiple semi-realized stories stored in your head (and on paper). The more realized your story is, the stronger your pitch will be.

Long story short, successful writing means learning to focus, and to use that focus to create as many realized stories as possible. "This doesn't work for you? Well, how about this? Or THIS? Wait, don't go, there's one more project I've been working on that'll knock your socks off!"

People often ask me for writing advice. Learning to be prolific would be high on my list of the most valuable writing skills a professional writer can have.

Some friends and I are in the process of putting together a little preview video for my upcoming book Three Truths and a Lie (a YA psychological thriller due in August). Check out these photos from the set!

(Needless to say, I’ve taken to heart the old adage that “sex and violence sells!” But it’s all very tastefully done, I promise.)

Look for the edited video in just a couple of a weeks

 

 

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So I previously mentioned how I had written and recorded a song to go along with the release of my latest book, The Road to Amazing.

Now that song is for sale — on iTunes, Amazon, or wherever you normally buy music!

Once again, here’s the story behind the song, “This Time and Place.” And if you’re curious to hear it, and also see the video we put together, check it out below:

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