Swiss Days 2012

For those of you who have seen the Swiss Days videos, I apologize. For those who’d rather read about my adventures (or who’d rather not hear me sing when I’m bored), I give you the C. P. White Media Blog. I recently drove more than 800 miles in less than 72 hours; a feat that favors the young (-er than I). I did it for Swiss Days. And it was pretty fun.

A good friend and colleague invited Aaron and me to pop on down to Utah from Idaho for this event, which regularly draws more than 80,000 people to the tiny village of Midway, UT. It’s been going on for 65 years, and it’s a great chance to experience a bona fide slice of Americana, with a Swiss twist. Aaron wasn’t able to make it, so I took his Honda and set off, staying at our friend’s house, where I slept on the couch and dreamt about miniature Schnauzers and talked in my sleep very slowly: “Geeeeeeeet ouuuuuuuuut,” I said at about three AM to the trespassing evil dream dog, which woke me up and probably alarmed the other people sacked out in the living room. One doesn’t expect to hear an authorial guest going on at literally all hours; I’m sure it was a little more than just irritating. So I apologize to the people I offended/ horrified, and I have a feeling there’s more of that kind of action in my professional future. Just cuz. It would figure, that’s all.

I met some outstanding people at Swiss Days this year. I signed lots of books and met tons of fans, some of whom had actually heard of the Airel saga, imagine that! One young lady just couldn’t stop talking about how much she loved Airel and Michael and how she really hates that we keep leaving the reader hanging at the ends of our novels. I’m going to blog soon about Les Edgerton’s book Hooked, which is about hooking the reader from sentence one (a great idea), but in today’s world of the series novel it’s almost as important to hook the reader at the end of books one, two, and three, assuming there’s only four books in the series—it’s really the hook before the hook. And technically, the hook at the end of book one is really the hook at the beginning of book two and so on. Anyway, this young lady was chomping at the bit for book three: Uriel, which is coming soon (hopefully before the end of the year). If you want to be in the loop, subscribe to this here blog.

I’ll be headed back to Swiss Days next year. I was stunned by the beauty of the event, and that includes the gracious people that organized it, staffed it, and attended it. I’m super impressed. I’ll be bringing my family back next year, and I probably won’t even have to bribe them with a stop off at Lagoon in order to get them to go. And I woulda stayed longer, but my oldest boy got baptized that weekend, so I had to leave early because I prioritize my fam—especially for things like that (I actually got the be the one who baptized him, and in the Boise River, no less). It was a momentous weekend for me. I’ll be sharing more of what I learned as the blog pages turn. Until then.

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.