Michael, Book II in the Airel Saga

I’ve been privileged to work with Aaron Patterson for a couple of years now, co-writing and brainstorming with him on a few ideas that have proven to be more than worthwhile. I can state now for the record that we work well together.

And I hope when Michael releases on May 17^th that you agree.

Fans of the Airel Saga won’t be disappointed. Book I, Airel, ended with a big bang and our intent all along was to follow that up with more of the same. Michael opens with the long-awaited explanation of just what the heck happened up there at the top of the cliff, though of course we take our time revealing all the consequences of that as the story unfolds. I don’t want to spoil anything for those of you who have yet to read Book I, but you can bet you’ll find plenty of drama in these e-pages.

You’ll also find new characters. We introduce a go-getter FBI agent and her rookie assistant, Harry, to the story. Naturally, in a missing persons case the authorities would nose their way into the situation. What they find at the bottom of their investigation is quite a shock. We also decided that we had to give Airel’s parents a little of the stage, so they make a cameo or two. But two of my new favorites are Ellie, a brass knuckles badass kind of girl who carries a mysterious accent and an even more mysterious past, and Mr. Emmanuel, who wears a white fedora when first we meet him and who has… let’s just say… a way about him. Whatever the case may be, and I’m not making any specific statements about any of these characters (you’ll just have to read the book), but I just adore a good villain. Let’s just say that chameleons can give a guy lots of character ideas. Plus it was really cool to dip into African mythology. Beyond that, I cannot go here.

I had lots of fun writing this one. If Airel bore more of Aaron’s imprimatur, Michael bears more of my own. Aaron and I tried changing up the nuts and bolts of our creative process for this one, and it shows in the final product. When we decided to collaborate on Airel, the rough draft had already been completed and edited by the time I had a crack at it, so I didn’t intrude much. But Michael was rather formless and void, a book with which the creative process was far more open-handed between us. Aaron delivered it to me in four sections over the space of many months, so when I made certain tweaks I wasn’t sure necessarily where he was going with some ideas. By the time we got down to the fourth section (Part Eight in the Saga), I found that I had a lot of catching up to do in order to reconcile our work. In the final analysis though, it just flat works. And well, I think.

We’ve pulled out all the stops on this one. When Aaron and I first started talking about Michael, we decided that we had to really go for broke on the setting. From the beginning we’ve been thinking about the Airel Saga in terms of high production value in regard to what the “camera” sees; we look at the storyline as if it’s a storyboard for a movie in a lot of ways. We want to write something that might translate well to the silver screen, in other words. We therefore decided to incorporate dynamic and sweeping visuals into the story, utilizing all the imaginative tools in our kit. The action scenes in Michael go beyond what you’ve seen in Airel. Where the first book had plenty of awesome Old World epic battle scenes that were a total blast to write, the second is a study in contrasts, not only to the first book but also in comparison to each other right inside Michael. There’s a high speed car chase in the rain at night, the blending of high tech weapons with swordplay, and two gorgeous places: Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, and Cape Town, South Africa (I actually spent six months there in 2002, so I was itching to write a bit of that into the story line from the get-go).

If you’re craving romance, Michael delivers on that front as well. As I said earlier, I don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s a scene with Airel and Michael in a torrential downpour that ought to spark something in you, at least if you’re not dead inside.

But that doesn’t compare to the scene near the end where one major plot twist comes finally unraveled with Airel and Kreios. That one is my favorite.

As always, the intent with the Airel Saga has been to provide a little something for everyone: drama, romance, action, adventure, intrigue, suspense, even some light humor. Michael delivers all of these and more. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

To all our fans: thank you so very much. We couldn’t do this without you.

How to be a Good Writer, Part 7: Plot and Characters

For the rest of the week I want to feature plot as a theme. I’ve posted other things about this subject (Archetypes), and that’s because it bears study. A good writer is one who understands at least the basic elements of plot. For me, plot = characters in a lot of ways. But first, plot.

A good story has a skeleton in good order. If you break out the major events in any well-written story, you can build an outline around them. Sometimes we get a look at it in disjunct ways, a la LOST or The Prestige, which are great stories that keep us guessing—but they’re organized quite well in the final analysis. In other words, whatever happens in the storyline has a reason for happening (the fictional past) and a consequence as well (the fictional future). That’s what I mean by a skeleton in good order.

Good stories have certain elements that are universal, too. It’s been that way since the dawn of time. If a crowd can relate to part of the story, they buy in. And if it’s a book, they buy it. That’s the goal here, folks, and it doesn’t require selling out or ignoring/forgetting your principles. Contrary to popular belief.

Take a look at any Sherlock Holmes story. I still stand in awe of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s knack for this. I always wonder which part of the story he wrote first; as if he wrote it inside out and backwards, because how can anyone do that?! It's crazy good writing, with lots of layers, lots of interdependencies; like a combination lock on a safe.

A good plot has lots of layers, interdependent interactions between the characters and the story—because really, the characters are the story. And ideally, as we read, we shouldn’t be able to notice the plot happening. It should feel just like life; like we’re voyeuristically observing the characters moving through their virtual world. In other words, a good plot shouldn’t be noticeably fictional. You’ve gotta have real and believable characters. In other words, they’re flawed. They have issues. And those issues, which go hand-in-hand with a good plot, are compounded by the issues that are created by that plot.

Bills are hard to pay in real life, for example. People get divorced and their kids pay the price in one way or another for the rest of their lives. Parents raise kids that become psychopathic in spite of their best efforts to the contrary. Young people get shipped off to combat and come back changed. If they come back. Accidents happen. Factions within families grow like a malignancy. And still the world turns. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to have some unexplainable time travel event or some impossible meteor hurtling toward earth in order to write a good story, or even tell one. You just need something for the reader to hold onto. And arguably, the closer to home it hits (depending upon a lot of other variables) the more books you’ll sell. And that's the goal, if you're making a living as a writer. Ironically, the more successful you become, there's a danger of being more insulated from good material for inspiration.

I think that’s one reason why some writers at the beginning of their careers can produce better work than those who are a commercial success: they draw from real poignant conflicts, through which they have had to live. that's not to say Stephen King is an idiot. But Jane Austen was never "discovered" in her lifetime, and her work is delicious as a result. Real people live real lives that are marked and shaped by conflict, and they will be more apt to enjoy reading stories that have an air of familiarity, even if the setting is exotic or fantastic. We all want fiction to feel like the truth at its deepest levels. Remember V for Vendetta, where we heard the line, "writers use lies to tell the truth." Fabulous.