Review of Laydin Michaels' novel Forsaken

I decided to read Laydin Michaels’ novel Forsaken after watching this interview.

Two things intrigued me. One, I was interested in reading a novel where one of the protagonists had social anxiety, and two, I am a sucker for stories with interesting villains. I knew from the video that parts of the story get inside the head of a serial killer, so I had to give the novel a try. I’m happy to say it delivered on both counts.

The story begins as a romance between Blake, a teacher who struggles to overcome her social anxiety, and Lindsay, a state trooper who dreams of becoming a Texas Ranger. But their budding romance is cut short when a serial killer murders Blake’s best friend, badly injures both Blake and Lindsay, and kidnaps Blake. Worse, they discover that the killer travels with a young child who has witnessed his murders. Lindsay fights to track down and capture the killer and Blake vows to -- somehow! -- save the child.

The romance is sweet and cute, if a little slow-moving. Blake struggles to work through her anxiety, take initiative, and show Lindsay how she feels. Workaholic Lindsay has always put her dream before dating, and wrestles with whether to embrace her feelings or keep Blake at arm’s length.

The suspense picks up as soon as we meet our killer. I couldn’t put the book down, even though I’d decided just before that it was slow. Once he comes on the scene, things happen fast and furious.

And that’s where Blake’s social anxiety, and its effect on the story, gets fascinating. We meet the serial killer before Blake does. So when Blake goes outside on the fateful day he murders her best friend, we know something is terribly wrong. Blake feels nervous and scared for no apparent reason and quite sensibly attributes this to her anxiety acting up. But we know that, in this case, something is about to happen -- which makes the suspense more powerful than it might have been otherwise.

And which made the story into a page-turner. I was on the edge of my seat from that point until the end of the book.

I found it fascinating to experience the events of the story, which would traumatize and horrify anyone, from the perspective of a character I knew was already prone to anxiety. It kept me invested and made me want to see when and how Blake would manage to be strong, and when things would be especially difficult for her to handle.

I also liked how the story handled injuries and danger. The characters aren’t superheroes, and Lindsay gets laid up pretty seriously by a concussion. There are real consequences when she tries to ignore it and put Catching The Bad Guy over her own health. That makes the protagonists feel like real people, not just Brave Heroes. Both women are brave, as is the little girl, but they’re also regular people, clearly in over their heads.

I also liked the villain. At first I worried that he would be an uncomfortable caricature -- he’s both a veteran with PTSD and a fundamentalist Christian, and I worried about stereotypes of either or both. But his experiences, values, and ideals mixed together in ways that made him a unique and creepy character. And his relationship to and feelings about the child made him more complex than Just Pure Evil. And just like I thought I would seeing the video, I really liked seeing things from his perspective. I found that much more interesting than just watching other characters try to piece him together.

The story is weak in a few places, though. While the chemistry between Blake and Lindsay is fun and hot, the romance felt a bit clunky. I would have liked to see more of the characters growing into their comfort with one another, and to see it spread out more throughout the story.

There were also a few bits of the plot that I felt iffy about.

(spoilers below) 

For one thing, the killer disposes of bodies in a unique way. The novel nods to this by telling us the police missed it because the bodies are spread out over different jurisdictions, but I had a hard time believing no one would notice. For another, the police eventually catch the killer when the child falls ill. When faith healing doesn’t work, the killer takes her to a hospital, and is promptly apprehended.  I quite liked that his compassion ultimately triumphed over his warped “mission from God." But it also felt a bit anticlimactic.

(end spoilers) 

All in all, though, I enjoyed the novel and would recommend it. It snuck up on me and got me so invested I felt compelled to go back and read more any time I tried to put it down.

If you’re interested in a novel about cute lesbians whose romance becomes an exciting story about police catching a serial killer -- or any of the aforementioned things, really! -- go ahead and give Forsaken a read.

Press Release: Steel and Promise - Coming 2016

October 27, 2015 Announcement:  New Title from Alexa Black

Bold Strokes Books is pleased to announce the acquisition of Alexa Black’s new erotic fantasy, Steel and Promise, scheduled for release in 2016 from Bold Strokes Books.

Steel and Promise – Coming in 2016

Courtesan Cailyn Derys serves the passions of the noble classes—but she’s never served anyone like Teran Nivrai. Everyone whispers about the reclusive noblewoman, indulging her penchant for cruel passions on a private, hidden planet. She’s even modified her body with retractable steel claws. Drawn by curiosity, Cailyn can’t resist a meeting. Is Lady Nivrai the demon everyone whispers about, or have gossip and scandal made a monster of her?

Sex and pain draw Cailyn in, but the loneliness Cailyn sees in everyone’s favorite villain keeps her there. When the ruling Councils decide to use Teran’s gift for inflicting pain—and her claws—against their enemies, will Cailyn discover that the monster is real?

About the Author

Alexa Black lives in the Washington, DC, area where she works as a peer mentor and advocate for people with disabilities. She has a master’s degree in philosophy from Georgetown University, but has always returned to her passion for writing. Though a philosopher by training, she would rather inflict complicated questions on her characters and take readers along than lecture about them. When not writing, she can be found gaming, seeking out new restaurants to try, or drinking ridiculous, fancy coffee. Steel and Promise is her first novel.

*****

Visit Bold Strokes Books Online Bookstore for this and other exciting titles.

BOLD STROKES BOOKS, Inc.

Reading and Classics

About a week ago I was reading an interesting blog post interviewing writer Jerry Rabushka about his latest novel. One tiny thing in the interview stuck out for me. He mentioned reading classic novels and learning from them, and said this:

Read, and read good stuff. Read good writers and, more importantly, read great writers. Read The House of the Seven Gables. Every sentence is like finely crafted furniture. Seriously, read it.

I love that sentence about  "finely crafted furniture," and actually commented to that effect. I'm very often drawn to classics, particularly the classics that have inspired genres that I love. Fairly recently, I read Brave New World for the first time.

I always thought that I should have read it, that I'd missed something by never quite getting to it. (Does anyone else have that feeling, hearing people talk about their favorite classics and thinking "Oh crap, I never read that one?") And when I did read it, not only did I enjoy it and like some of things it showed me about language and imagery, but I also felt like I learned something about creating worlds. And about, if you'll forgive me, being brave.

I was surprised by the very frank sexual content. Not because I was under the impression that writers  didn't talk about sex in bygone days – heck, I've read de Sade, which is about as explicit (and as  violent) as a writer could possibly get. But because it seemed quite bold to create a society where everyone has multiple partners back in that time period, and present it without apology.

Yes, the story itself actually critiques a world like that, and reminds readers of the importance of family and the purpose of monogamy (at least as the author seems to conceive of it!) So it's not taking the even bolder stance of arguing for a polyamorous society. But it is creating a rich world where characters who live in such a society are sympathetic and where mistreating them is wrong, even if their society is based on "bad" principles.

And that's a very important thing to remember when you sit down to write. When you're creating a world, even if you're creating a dystopia and you want your readers to clearly see what's wrong with it, you have to be careful to make your characters realistic members of that culture. Even if they  critique it from inside – even if they're revolutionaries and the story is all about how they change it! – they couldn't function at all if they hated everything about the society they lived in.

Which is the lesson I took from reading Brave New World. The brilliant thing (to me, anyway) about it was how realistic every character's relationship to the society was, from Bernard's half-hearted disillusionment, to Lenina's preference for one man but inability to understand or express it, to John's disgust and frantic need to flee. It all felt complex enough to be real.

I think sometimes people have a tendency to focus on what older writing did wrong. Where it got tropey, where it got simplistic, where it couldn't say some of the things we say routinely in books now.

But so much of it lasts because it's richer than we think it is, and so much of it can teach us how to enrich our very different styles now.

Another review of Downpour

User Rhayne on Goodreads reviewed Downpour recently. Rhayne had this to say:

Each of the stories in this anthology had something unique to keep the reader interested. From penguins to ghosts, magic to witty humor there's a little bit of something for everyone. While some of the stories were off the wall and hit out into left field, each one followed the theme of the book well and had it's own twists and turns.

And said this about my story, Thunder:

This story was strange and unusual in the best kind of way. It kept me guessing and left me wishing it had been just a bit longer.

I'm thrilled to hear it! I'm often going for strange and unusual, and I love when it works for other people.

As far as length, I'm working on a longer modern-day fantasy story now... ;-)

Reviews of Downpour

User Grey Liliy on Goodreads posted a thorough, detailed review of all the stories in Downpour here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1384739152

This little collection seemed to promise a little bit of everything from steamy erotica to cute fluff all dealing with Rain!! (Yay!) Between the eight stories, I'd say that was pretty accurate. Definitely something for everyone to like in here, and I ended up enjoying nearly all of the stories. Or rather, I sat down and read all eight in a row without stopping, so definitely enjoyable.

Each story is different, so I figured I'd talk about them one at a time. :3 I've listed the mini reviews in order that the stories appear in the collection, but if you're curious, these were my favorites: Shadow of Storm, Magnetism, Thunder, & Port In The Storm.

There's also another one from Christine Close here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1392449241

The 8 short stories have the link stormy weather in common. Apart from this common theme I found the range of stories very eclectic. It's the sort of collection you can dip into whenever you fancy a quick read and change of mood.

Check out the full reviews at the links, and thanks very much to both reviewers!

Downpour

The anthology with my (lesbian erotica) story in it is out today!

You can order it here: 

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Downpour-Alexa-Black-ebook/dp/B0145PWE3G
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/570459
Publisher’s Website: http://www.supposedcrimes.com/products/downpour?variant=5866987201

My story is the first one, entitled “Thunder.”

Kay is a butch lesbian with a magical power: Storms have followed her since she was small. Usually when something's important. But today, she's just going to visit her girlfriend -- and taking some lightning along.

Downpour

The anthology with my (lesbian erotica) story in it is coming out tomorrow! You can take a look and preorder it here:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Downpour-Alexa-Black-ebook/dp/B0145PWE3G
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/570459
Publisher’s Website: http://www.supposedcrimes.com/products/downpour?variant=5866987201

My story is the first one, entitled “Thunder.”

Kay is a butch lesbian with a magical power: Storms have followed her since she was small. Usually when something's important. But today, she's just going to visit her girlfriend -- and taking some lightning along.

Mad Max

I've been thinking about writing since I saw Mad Max: Fury Road. By which I mean I've been wondering about what writers might learn from it.

I've never been big on the idea that books are better than movies. I don't even default to the idea that a movie based on a book is worse than the book, because I think the two media are different, and do different things. And both of them are Art, and Art is Yay, and we should all want more of it.

And the thing that Fury Road had -- pretty much the only thing it had, if we're really being honest -- was the world it created. And not just that it created, but that it revealed with visuals and with vague hints that the audience somehow understood. (I recall reading somewhere that the movie was intended to be understood without dialogue at all, and that there is actually a silent cut of it. I am not sure if that's true, but I find it plausible.)

I have to admit I got a lot of the detail and nuance from the fandom, and might have missed some of it if I hadn't seen it spelled out. But that's actually what I've been thinking about, and what I want to say.

"Show, don't tell" is something every writer hears ten thousand times. And it's good advice. Very often it's more clear than we might realize it is what a character actually intends, or where in the world they are going, or what they actually mean to do. And Fury Road took this to an intense and magical extreme. It dropped you right in the middle of things and left you to figure out, along with the title character, just what the hell was going on.

But -- I may be damning myself here, but I think there are also times that doesn't work, even didn't work in that movie. I knew how the whole blood donor deal worked because I'd read fandom meta beforehand. I'm not at all sure how quickly I would have caught on otherwise. I found myself wondering, as I sat there, if I'd love it as much as I did if I hadn't gone in with a bit of a cheat-sheet read behind me. (The person who went with me enjoyed it as well, but remarked about how confusing it was. And when I started pointing out nuances -- most of which I caught on to because I'd heard about them already -- he was surprised.)

Which leads me to: I think that when you're writing, at least, as opposed to making a movie, you've got more time to show off your world, in more detail. And I think sometimes that means not only that you can allow yourself the luxury of explaining how things work. Maybe even that you're better off doing that, every now and again. Not every description of technical things in your world is going to be dry.

I think sometimes we take the -- common maxims that all writers hear, and elevate them into a weird kind of gospel. Show don't tell is the big one, and I almost feel like I don't dare pick at it, but when I was younger there were others: Don't use cliches. Use active, exciting verbs. (And the corollary to that last which seems to have fallen out of favor: Don't use "said.")

And I remember feeling like I wanted to do those things. Especially using cliches. I wanted to write whole elaborate tales that would gloriously justify whatever trope or trite little sentence I wanted to use.

And I think that's because -- there are rules, and there are reasons they exist (okay, except the stupid "said" one.) But they don't exist because it's categorically wrong to write certain things. They exist because if you're not aware of them, your writing is more lifeless.

But if you are aware of them, you can ask yourself things like, "Do I want my readers to see the scaffolding of my world? Do I want them to lose themselves exploring its intricacies, like someone playing a side-quest in a game, before I gently shepherd them back to Plot?

"Or do I want to toss them into glorious chaos, with a band of creepy-looking War Boys running after them?"

The Scarlet Gospels

I spent the past few weeks curiously awaiting Clive Barker's The Scarlet Gospels. I was a big Hellraiser fan some years ago and got into Barker's older horror, and it came to influence how I write. He mixes fantastic imagery, violence, and gorgeous turns of phrase in ways that make me feel transported into unique worlds that work very differently from our own.

I liked the visceral violence of Hellraiser, and I liked the way the demons' sadomasochism was laid right out there for the viewer of the movie or the reader of the novella it was based on (The Hellbound Heart, which I also recommend.) But more than that, I liked the way the original novella didn't just tell us "well, demonic tempters would be perverted, right?" It gave us demons whose idea of pleasure differed from our own. They were there to provide the blood and the guts and the scares, yes. But they also did some very clever things.

They tempted humans with the promise of unfathomable pleasures -- so the first thing they did, in the novella, was heighten a victim's senses so they can see every crack in their walls, smell every lingering scent in the air, feel every speck of dust or dead skin on their bodies. Then they begin their mix of pleasure and pain. 

That fascinated me, and drew me in to Barker's writing and to dark fantasy as a whole. I still love the way his early work writes visceral explicit gore as if it's beautiful and elegant, and that has shaped how I write. So when I found out he was writing a new novel about the monster everyone has grown to know from Hellraiser (usually called Pinhead, though this book makes too-abundantly clear he hates it and would rather be called "the Hell Priest"), I was -- mm.

Not quite excited. People change a lot over many decades. But intrigued.

I liked the book. I thought it was good, and recommended it to friends, who seemed intrigued by an officially posted excerpt I showed them. I didn't love it, but I enjoyed it.

The fantastical style I'd fallen in love with shone through most toward the end. The characters are in Hell -- the Hell Priest and his minion having kidnapped a friend of the protagonist, the protagonist and a motley crew of his friends having rushed after them because Oh No You Don't. There's a problem in Hell, though: Lucifer is missing.

What actually happened to the Morning Star is the most fascinating thing in the book, and I'd say really the place where Barker lets himself shine. How would an angel, most beloved of his Father and then sent away for a long-ago act of rebellion, really feel about his life? What would he do with his endless hours of exile? How would he feel about the subjects who worship him in much the same way as the angels still above worship their Lord? When Barker's answering that, he's at his best, making things weird and surreal and yet showing the sense they make. He's created a new character (or at least, one I never saw) and let himself run with the idea, and his Lucifer is a wonderful take on a few bits of loose mythology that make what's probably the richest character in the book. (Sorry, Pinhead. Sorry, Harry D'Amour.)

The rest of the time, unfortunately, I think he's a bit hamstrung by his characters. Pinhead and Harry are characters he invented a very long time ago, and Pinhead especially feels... stuck between the past of the character everyone knows and the future that Barker wants to make. He's desperate from the beginning to break free of the narrow box (heh, heh) that Hell has put him in, experimenting with human magic in an attempt to grow more powerful. He uses this forbidden magic (forbidden, I guess, because us filthy humans came up with it) to slaughter his fellow Cenobites in one fell swoop with a fascinating "working" -- a Writ of Execution delivered to Hell's monastery by animated origami cranes.

But if anything, he succeeds too well in breaking free from what he was. In the original stories, the fascinating thing about the Cenobites was the juxtaposition of pleasure and pain, the way they tempted people with heightened sensation and only once the gate to Hell opened showed them what "heightened sensation" really meant. In this book, he carries his usual implements of torture on his belt and uses his usual hooked chains, and we're Told But Unfortunately Not Shown many times how skilled he is at slow agonies. But most of the time he's using his newfound magic, and the few times he does stop to deliver a beating, usually to Norma, the old, blind woman he's kidnapped (a powerful medium with a wonderfully ascerbic wit, so not just a victim by a long shot), he does it with fists and feet, or commits a rape we don't see. (Which I'm grateful for, but which also seems odd from someone famous even in Hell as a sex demon.) It feels so far distant from what he once was that the evolution is hard to see.

It might just be that I miss the version of him in my head, but I don't think so. I think just a dash more connecting Pinhead Then to Pinhead Now would sell the long evolution in him over countless human lifetimes.

I think that's the biggest problem with the book. I read some bits of interviews that hinted that the original draft was more than a thousand pages -- and the volume in my hand (okay, okay, my iPad) was 360something. It felt like huge chunks had been gouged out of it, and a lot of those chunks had been character development it wouldn't have bored me at all to see.

The protagonists were similar. I felt I had a good sense of Harry, the hero, and the way dealings with the supernatural had shaped his life from the time he was young. His gang of friends/Harrowers of Hell (another odd nickname; they go to Hell, but they don't pardon anyone or sanctify them) are all similar in their connections to the supernatural. One tattoos magical wards on most of the others' bodies. One follows prescient dreams. One finds herself frequently possessed by ghosts. Norma is blind to the everyday world but has seen ghosts all her life.

Each of those things is unique, and could offer an interesting way for the character's experience of similar "stuff" (the supernatural) to vary from the others'. But we get so little detail that they start to feel like copies of one another. These three have tattoos. These three are "a magnet for the supernatural." But only Harry and Norma were drawn in much detail, which made the story suffer.

Similarly, I loved that three of the Harrowers were gay: two, a couple that convincingly (and adorably, amid all the blood and guts and despair and general apocalyptic everything) fall for one another as the tale progresses, and one a big strong butch woman who I found a refreshing break from Fainting Horror Girl. But the two lovebirds often sounded like one another to me even though they were supposed to be different. 

And the butch, who I was elated to see because characters like her are so darned rare in anything at all, was perhaps the most sketchily drawn character of the whole book. Sometimes, she seemed like the group's muscle. Sometimes she seemed far too easily terrified to have ventured into Hell voluntarily. (This could have been done well -- "she's tough outside because she's been used as a vessel so often by malevolent ghosts" -- but it wasn't clear enough, if it was the intent.)

(I also feel obligated, since I'm talking about LGBT characters right now, to mention that there's a brief appearance by a trans woman, who is quickly revealed to have villainous intent. I was glad to see her, but I felt like the narrative didn't treat her particularly well. The heroes mock her identity when they find out she's betrayed them, which is realistic in that... actual people being sold out to demons would probably be mean in any way they could. But since she was the only trans character, it made me wince.)

And that nagging bit of disappointment sums up my reaction to this book: It seemed unfinished.

Reading Barker's older work, I felt almost like Barker was compelled to share the horrifying and brutal, yet mystical and beautiful, worlds his imagination dragged him to. Reading this, I felt like he was driven by a different, but still intense need: to draw things to a close, to share how age and time had changed him and the people in his head.

Which didn't give the reader quite enough time to learn the names and histories and shapes of all these people, much less their particular links to the dream world their lives are all so closely woven with.

So I recommend the book. I like it, as the closing chapter it's meant to be. Barker was very clear that Pinhead Dies In The End, and this book makes that feel right, not cheap.

But I want to know so much more about so many of the characters, and so many of the places. Including how Pinhead got where he ended up.

Neuromancer and "Writing Strong Women"

Some months ago I finally read Neuromancer for the first time. I'd always heard it was good, and friends had always recommended it to me. I enjoyed it a lot -- though it took two thorough reads to fully understand -- and meant to blog about it, but somehow, that didn't end up happening.

I want to talk, though, about the character of Molly Millions, who appears to be the foremother of characters like Trinity from the Matrix and a bunch of other ass-kicking sexy women in science fiction.

I've seen a lot of talk lately about the limitations of "writing strong women." The idea seems to be that authors, particularly male authors, assume that a "strong woman" is a woman who fights in battles, has a no-nonsense attitude, and probably looks amazing in skintight leather. (In a way that doesn't look "too muscular" for insecure straight fellows who would find a very buff woman "ugly" or "unfeminine.") People who critique "writing strong women" say "write women instead." Which is meant to encourage authors of all genders to write different kinds of women characters.

And to just plain make sure our stories include enough women that one major character doesn't get taken as "what we think of women." Because if there are lots of different women in our stories, they're easy to take as individuals. But if there's only one woman in the main cast, it looks an awful lot like she's what we think women should be. Like we're trying to make some kind of statement about Women that we're usually not making about Men, because there are usually more men than women in our cast of characters and they usually do lots of different things for lots of different reasons.

And I get that. I do. But at the same time, when I was young, I looked up to those "strong women" and yearned to be like them. I didn't key on the sexualization or the pandering to male fantasy. I'm sure I sometimes noticed it and sometimes disliked it, but it wasn't a big deal to me. Being queer, I probably thought "ooh, pretty," with a few "that's unrealistic" or "how does that stay on, exactly?" or "she must be really agile to fight in that and not have lots of scars" caveats. But mostly, I looked at these characters and saw fearlessness.

I wrestled with anxiety as a youngun. And I had limitations due to disability that made me scared to do a lot of things other people did all the time. Those characters were an escape for me and a source of hope for me. In them, I saw something I wanted to be.

So I get the critique, but I'm biased in favor of those characters, despite their flaws.

Which brings me to Molly, and the things I like about her. One, that she's one of those kinds of characters. And two, that she does, in fact, have a flaw.

Or at least, that she does, in fact, fail.

Those of you who've read this book will know what I'm talking about. She's the muscle for a group of... I'll just call them hacker-thieves, to avoid doing too much explaining. Toward the beginning of their mission/adventure, she sneaks in to a corporate warehouse and steals a digital copy of a dead hacker's personality.

And catches some heat and breaks her leg.

And for the whole rest of the novel, she has this broken leg to deal with. It's repaired, and she goes about her badass business, but it hurts and it limits her and, in the end, her Crowning Badass move when she finally confronts the antagonists fails. Not because they're more badass than she is, but because her leg can't take the strain and breaks again.

At first, I didn't like that. At first, I found it frustrating as all hell. She's already a supporting character, as so many Badass Ladies are, and she's foiled by a broken leg that wasn't set right? The guys have to come save her? Bull pucky!

But the more I sat with my frustration, the more I liked it, because it made her human. She wasn't just wish fulfillment, whether for the male author who wanted a sexy badass to drool over or the me who wanted someone to want to be. She was a person, who did lots of amazing things, and who had a dumb setback at the end for dumb reasons. Just like so many of us do in real life.

So what's the connection I'm drawing? How would I like other people to write women? How do I want to write women myself?

I'm not entirely sure. (And honestly, there are some passages in Neuromancer where for some reason I think Molly sounds "too much" like a man. I can't quite say why.) But I think they're connected because, personally, I don't want to see the Badass Lady die. (I'm not sure anyone else does either. I'm just saying.)

I guess if I want anything, I want to see her change. I want to see things happen to her that no one expects, and I want to see how she handles them, and how others support her, whether male friends or female friends or male love interests or a sweet homebody of a wife she really wants to go home to at the end.

And weirdly enough, flawed as it is, I think this one old example has a bit of what I want to see in it.