Brent Hartinger's Blog, page 6

In our latest Media Carnivores podcast, Erik and I discuss the advice that we wish would could give our younger writing selves (and that we’d offer to all writers).

Give it a listen!

The latest Russel Middlebrook book, The Road to Amazing, will be out March 15th. And it’s now available for pre-order! (At least the e-version is. The print and audio editions will be available for pre-order very soon.)

Pre-order it by clicking on the jacket below, then following one of the links to wherever you buy your books:

“I think gay guys like weddings more than anyone. And it’s not because we want to destroy marriage, like some people say. It’s because we really, really want to get married!”

Russel Middlebrook is gettin’ hitched!

The wedding is taking place in a remote lodge on an island in Puget Sound. Russel and his husband-to-be have invited all their close friends to spend the whole weekend together beforehand.

And for the first time in his life, Russel is determined to not be neurotic, and not over-think things.

But that’s before things start going wrong. Who expected a dead killer whale to wash up on the beach below the inn? And what’s this about a windstorm approaching? Then there’s the problem of Russel’s anxious fiancé, who is increasingly convinced the whole thing is going to be a disaster.

Meanwhile, the wedding is taking place near the ruins of a small town, Amazing, where, a hundred years earlier, the people supposedly all disappeared overnight. Why does it feel like the secret at the end of the road to Amazing has something to do with Russel’s own future?

Can Russel’s friends Min, Gunnar, Vernie, and Otto somehow help him make it all make sense?

The Road to Amazing, the final book in the Russel Middlebrook Futon Years trilogy, is a story about endings and beginnings, and also about growing up and growing older. But mostly it’s a story about love and friendship—about how it’s not the destination that makes a life amazing, but the people you meet along the way.

PREORDER HERE

So my upcoming book The Road to Amazing includes a new song by Otto Digmore called “This Time and Place.” As chance would have it, a friend and I wrote an actual song to go along with the song in the book. And now I’m going to record it.

What the hell am I thinking?!?

The truth is, I’m not a singer. But I have enough talented friends that I’m hoping they came make me sound not-incredibly-embarrassing. And, well, I do think the song is kinda sorta okay.

Bigger picture, I’ve had “Release a Top 40 Single” on my bucket list ever since I was teenager (who hasn’t, right?). I’m not expecting this song to make the top 40 — the music industry is too different now, and I’m releasing it as a YouTube video, not an actual single anyway.

But it still counts!

Look for the video of me singing my song in March or so. The book itself it out March 15th! (You can pre-order it now.)

I confess, this post over at Mother Jones (entitled “Is Being a Modern Teen Really an Endless Slog of Existential Angst?”) made me smile:

I was just at the bookstore, and on a whim I browsed through a bunch of “Teen Fiction” titles. Good God. I’ve never seen such a pile of depressing writing in my life. Everyone is sick, abandoned, kidnapped, bullied, overweight, comes from a broken family, survived a school shooting, or caught in the middle of a gothic horror. The horror books actually seemed the most uplifting.

I dunno. Maybe they all have happy endings? In any case, if these books are typical of what teens read these days, I’m halfway surprised that any of them make it out of adolescence with their psyches intact.

I know that every time YA books are criticized in a high-profile, but general way, there’s always a furious push-back from the YA community (and the push-back usually includes many excellent points, often pointing out that there are many, many exceptions to whatever “rule” someone is declaring).

And yet.

I gotta say, this blog post resonates with me more than a little bit. I’ve always had a very low threshold for angst and despair. I have read some wonderfully angst-y books, and I’m sure I’ll read more in the future. But for the most part, the world seems bad enough to me without dwelling on how hopeless and terrible it all is.

Part of the reason I wrote Geography Club (in the 1990s) was that I soooooo tired of depressing teen stories, especially stories of gay teens where everything was always so tragic. (I confess I was really disappointed when I first saw the cover that HarperCollins had chosen for the book: the model’s face was so dour and gloomy! I felt like it didn’t capture the humor or the impishness of my book at all. Why couldn’t he be peeking out of that classroom smiling a little bit?)

And, of course, anyone who knows me knows that I thought dystopian teen fiction become very, very tired around, oh, say, 2006.

One of the reasons I loved the movie Tomorrowland was that it directly took on our current fascination with the doom-and-gloom (targeting YA books in particular). I also liked The Martian because it showed us a world where problems were solvable, and our leaders were not all corrupt and inept (which, frankly, I think is more accurate).

I know YA is now a massive genre, and there are lots of exceptions to the “everything is depressing!” rule (including, ahem, my own books). But I still think there’s truth behind what this blog post is saying.

What do you guys think?

Most authors I know get depressed about piracy. I make my living from my books, and if people don’t buy them, I simply won’t make enough money to keep writing them.

It doesn’t help that piracy is basically impossible to fight, because the torrents pop up so quickly, and those torrents make it as difficult as possible to get your stuff taken down (seriously! It’s crazy).

(Yes, I know there’s a spirited debate about whether piracy ends up helping some authors, or is at least a wash in the end, but I am extremely skeptical. Piracy has already destroyed the music and journalism industries, eliminating countless jobs, so I don’t see why it couldn’t kill my job too.)

Anyway, that’s why it was such a pleasure to get this email over the holidays:

To Brent. Hi, I decided to write you this to apologize. You may ask for what and you also may not know what I’m talking about. I pirated some of your books over the summer . I wanted to read them really badly and I didn’t have access to get them the proper way. So for that I apologize!

For Christmas I received gift cards. With them I purchased all of your books that I got originally illegally. I know it won’t make up for what I did and I know book piracy hurts the authors so that’s why I wanted to write you myself and apologize.
I’m a teen and I write as well (obviously not as good as you xD), so I felt extra bad since I was technically stealing from a fellow author. So for that again I’m sorry…

Doesn’t that restore your faith in humanity a little bit? What a good guy! Since I believe honesty should be rewarded, I offered to send him some signed copies of my books.

P.S. One of the many ironies about piracy is that I’m happy to send free copies of my books to people who want to read them but truly can’t afford them. I do it all the time, especially to teenagers and folks in poor countries. In return, I ask the recipients to “pay it forward” at some point in life, extending their generosity to someone else.

Most authors I know get depressed about piracy. I make my living from my books, and if people don’t buy them, I simply won’t make enough money to keep writing them.

It doesn’t help that piracy is basically impossible to fight, because the torrents pop up so quickly, and those torrents make it as difficult as possible to get your stuff taken down (seriously! It’s crazy).

(Yes, I know there’s a spirited debate about whether piracy ends up helping some authors, or is at least a wash in the end, but I am extremely skeptical. Piracy has already destroyed the music and journalism industries, eliminating countless jobs, so I don’t see why it couldn’t kill my job too.)

Anyway, that’s why it was such a pleasure to get this email over the holidays:

To Brent. Hi, I decided to write you this to apologize. You may ask for what and you also may not know what I’m talking about. I pirated some of your books over the summer . I wanted to read them really badly and I didn’t have access to get them the proper way. So for that I apologize!

For Christmas I received gift cards. With them I purchased all of your books that I got originally illegally. I know it won’t make up for what I did and I know book piracy hurts the authors so that’s why I wanted to write you myself and apologize.
I’m a teen and I write as well (obviously not as good as you xD), so I felt extra bad since I was technically stealing from a fellow author. So for that again I’m sorry…

Doesn’t that restore your faith in humanity a little bit? What a good guy! Since I believe honesty should be rewarded, I offered to send him some signed copies of my books.

P.S. One of the many ironies about piracy is that I’m happy to send free copies of my books to people who want to read them but truly can’t afford them. I do it all the time, especially to teenagers and folks in poor countries. In return, I ask the recipients to “pay it forward” at some point in life, extending their generosity to someone else.

Back in 2005, I wrote this YA psychological thriller called Grand & Humble. It sold well, a lot of people liked the twist ending, and it even won a couple of awards.

Flash forward to last year when I decided to adapt the book into a screenplay. After that, I was going to try and pitch it as a film project.

Incidentally, there is a very strong bias in Hollywood against authors adapting their own novels. Most producers think (correctly) that most authors don’t have enough “distance” from their own work, or that novelists don’t understand how completely different the mediums of books and film are. So most producers (much) prefer to hire professional screenwriters, so the producer can more closely control the adaptation themselves.

As for me, well, I think I’m the exception: a novelist who’s also a pretty decent screenwriter.

My way of thinking is that by adapting my own work, the project can be pitched two ways: as a book, by my book agent and her screen reps, and also as a completed screenplay separate from the book, by me or a film agent. If a producer likes the screenplay even before knowing that it was originally a book, that tells me I did my job right, by making a project that is truly independent of the source material. Plus, it guarantees that I’ll be kept as a screenwriter on the project, at least for a while. (Screenwriting is where the real money is, but also what I really enjoy, even more than writing novels.)

Anyway, I’ve sold multiple projects to Hollywood both ways, so I think I have a pretty good system.

The problem? Whenever I adapt a published novel as a screenplay, I soon start to see all its structural flaws. And this is a guy who (I think!) is a pretty careful plotter of novels.

By the time I’m done with the screenplay, I often think, “Oh, MAN, I wish I could rewrite that book! It would be so much better now!”

That’s a real problem if the book is already published.

Lately, however, I had an opportunity to rewrite Grand & Humble, top to bottom.

Is it a “perfect” book now? Nah, there’s no such thing as “perfection.” But I do think it’s quite a bit better than what was published in 2005, and also a lot closer to my original vision.

I can’t wait for people to read it!

So a few months ago, I revealed the cover to my next novel, The Road to Amazing (out in March 2016). Now I can reveal the cover to the book after that, Three Truths and a Lie (out in June 2016).

Here it is:

I’m pleased to report that Three Truths and a Lie is being published as a lead title from Simon & Schuster (which is actually kind of a big deal. I’ve never been a lead title before — that means it’s one of the very few books the publisher has big plans for and is really pushing hard. Honestly, I’m not sure how many gay teen books have ever been lead titles).

What’s the book about? It’s a very dark and twisty (and surprisingly sexy) psychological thriller, unlike anything I’ve written before.

Here’s the blurb:

Deep in the heart of the forest, four friends gather for a weekend of fun.

Truth #1: Rob is thrilled about the weekend trip. It’s the perfect time for him to break out of his shell…to be the person he really, really wants to be.

Truth #2: Liam, Rob’s boyfriend, is nothing short of perfect. He’s everything Rob could have wanted. They’re perfect together. Perfect.

Truth #3: Mia has been Liam’s best friend for years…long before Rob came along. They get each other in a way Rob could never, will never, understand.

Truth #4: Galen, Mia’s boyfriend, is sweet, handsome, and incredibly charming. He’s the definition of a Golden Boy…even with the secrets up his sleeve.

One of these truths is a lie…and not everyone will live to find out which one it is.

Every year for Christmas, I buy copies of my favorite novel of the year and give them to my friends.

Unfortunately, I have a problem this year: my favorite novel, BrotherBrother by Ania Ahlborn, is probably the most graphic and disturbing novel I’ve ever read. It doesn’t exactly scream, “Merry Christmas!”

Brother is the story of 19 year-old Michael Morrow, who was kidnapped at age four and is now being raised by a family of serial-killing sociopaths, led by Mother, driven by her regular lust for the torture of young women. Michael accepts the murders as inevitable, mostly because he’s never known anything different.

But things are changing in the Morrow family. Michael’s older brother Rebel is becoming more disturbed than ever. And Michael is changing too, trying to decide how, and if, he fits into this family of monsters.

As my friends know, I’m a pretty picky reader. I read constantly, but I’m usually disappointed (I believe in Sturgeon’s Law, that 90% of everything is crap). But I found Brother to be one of those extremely rare creatures, the flawless novel.

It’s genuinely chilling and disturbing, but it’s never exploitative, and it doesn’t feel nihilistic or amoral (like, say, Brett Easton Ellis or Eli Roth — writers who seem to love violence and gore).

The structure and plotting are amazing. This book doesn’t end where you think it will, but I guarantee you’ll finish it and think, “That was the perfect ending.” (It also has the perfect title, as you’ll see.)

The characterization is excellent. I love that Michael is nineteen. If he was ten, he would be a victim of his circumstances. If he was thirty, he would be a villain — too old to continue participating in such brutality and not be somehow responsible. But at nineteen, he’s in between, not quite a victim, but maybe not yet a villain. He’s the perfect literary character! (Or is he a villain? That’s the whole point of the novel.)

If I ever go back to teaching creative writing, I will be using this book as an example of everything I think writers should aspire to (despite the fact that it will probably get me in trouble with the administration!).

Check out Brother by Ania Ahlborn

So here is the cover of my next book, The Road to Amazing, coming in March 2016. It’s the third book in my latest series, Russel Middlebrook: the Futon Years, and it takes place after Barefoot in the City of Broken Dreams.

What’s The Road to Amazing about? Well, I don’t want to give too many spoilers, especially if you haven’t read Barefoot in the City of Broken Dreams yet. But I can say the book takes place over the course of a single wild weekend, there’s a mystery element, and Russel’s friends Otto, Min, Gunnar, and Vernie Rose are all back with plenty going on in their lives.

Look for The Road to Amazing in March 2016.

Oh, and now that all the book covers in the Futon Years trilogy are done, check out how they all look together: