Showing posts with label Harlan Coben. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harlan Coben. Show all posts

Monday, November 30, 2020

Mr. Critical


 By Thomas Kies

I tell my Creative Writing students that once they’ve taken the class, they’ll find themselves being much more critical of the novels that they read.

I know I am.

I recently read Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen.  I absolutely loved it because it’s a complex current satire that’s laugh-out-loud hilarious.  Mr. Hiaasen writes about the rich and the ridiculously rich in Palm Beach, Florida, boa constrictors terrorizing the area’s country clubs, crooks, killers, cops, and a POTUS nicknamed Mastodon by the secret service. 

Needless to say, I enjoyed Squeeze Me very much. 

About a month ago, I finished reading Harlan Coben’s mystery thriller, The Boy from the Woods. The story begins thirty years ago when the police discover a feral boy living alone in the wilds of New Jersey.  The kid grows up and becomes a reluctant investigator looking into the case of a missing high school girl that no one seems to be too concerned about.  The book moves fast and is a cracker jack mystery.  My one complaint was the book never explained how the feral boy came to be in the woods in the first place.

I guess Mr. Coben wanted to leave room for a sequel.

I’m currently reading Brad Parks' newest mystery Interference.  In it, a brilliant physicist is working on the Entanglement Theory of quantum physics.  This is where two particles can be born with intrinsic connection to each other. You can separate the particles across galaxies and the connection remains: poke one and the other feels it. Immediately. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.”

The physicist goes missing and the suspect in a possible kidnapping might be a reclusive billionaire. 

This book moves really fast.  The chapters are short.  I’m loving it.

My only complaint is most of the book is written in the third person.  Except for the physicist's wife who is written in the first person.  I find it distracting. 

Now, I have some criticisms for a couple of authors that I will not name.  One sent me his book to read and I loved it, right up until the end when I found a plot hole large enough you could drive a truck through it.  

One recently sent me a book he’d written asking me to critique it. He’s already got a publisher for the book.  It had been professionally edited so there were few distracting typos and the plot hung together pretty well.  There were about three chapters early on that I thought could have been cut, but the characters were well drawn, and the story held my interest.  I even wrote a blurb for his book cover. 

A few weeks ago, I visited one of my favorite bookstores here in our area and there was a delightful lady signing books that she had written.  I like to support local authors and plunked down the money to purchase her novella.  

I couldn’t finish it.  I couldn’t keep the characters straight, they didn’t seem to act true to the situations they were in, and the plot seemed muddled. 

That being said, I recently read a book by one of the biggest names in the mystery business.  After I finished the book, I felt mildly dissatisfied.  I took a look at some of the professional reviews.  One of them described the author as telling the story without breaking a sweat.

To me that meant that the author had mailed this one in.   But honestly, can anyone really crank out two or three books a year and stay sharp?

Let’s change the subject.

Since we’re in the season of giving thanks.  I’d like to thank my agent, my editors, my publisher, and my readers.  When I go back and reread some of my early work, I shake my head and wonder how I finally managed to write something that anyone would want to read let alone publish.

While I was talking to my publisher a few weeks ago, I told her that she’d changed my life.

She told me that it was me who had changed my life.  

I’ll always be grateful to the people who held my hand along the way, and I especially want to give a huge hug and shout out to my wife, who never let me give up and kept telling me that I was a good writer.

Even when I wasn’t.  Cheers and Happy, albeit belated, Thanksgiving.

Monday, August 24, 2020

Writing Distractions and Building Tension

I have a confession to make.  Other than this blog, I haven’t written a word in three days.

I’m easily distracted and the last few days have kept me from being creative.  First of all, the obvious distraction is the pandemic…and the upcoming election.  The Democratic Convention was this past week and that kept me glued to the television. 

Well, that and the new Perry Mason reboot on HBO.  I highly recommend it.

Then, on an upside, I received an email from a former student who told me I’d inspired her to finish her novel. She told me that after finishing the class, she went back and completely rewrote her first chapters.  Then she asked what her next step should be.

I gave her my phone number and told her to call me.  I advised her to get a beta reader to take a look and then, if she can afford it, a professional editor to help find typos and punctuation mistakes.  Then I told her how I found an agent.  I also told her to keep in touch. 

That was a nice distraction.

Then on Thursday, I got up at 4:30 to take my wife to a surgical center for a minor procedure.  They said it would take about three hours and they wanted me close by so the instructions were that I should stay in the parking lot.  I brought a Harlan Coben mystery to pass the time. 

About a half hour into my vigil, sitting in the North Carolina heat and humidity, I went to start my car, a hybrid, and discovered that my battery had died.  Calling my mechanic, he told me that the soonest he could get a battery for my car would be a week from then.

I was feeling the tension.

I called an Uber, went home, and got my wife’s car.  An hour later, I was driving her home.  The rest of the day, I forgot about my car and looked after her recovery.

The next day, I called Triple A, gave them my information, and they told me to call them again when I was in the same place as my car.  I drove across our high-rise bridge to the mainland and back to the surgical center to find that the road was blocked off with police officers and ambulances everywhere.  I could see that my car was the only one in the parking lot, because the center had been evacuated.  Police barriers prevented me getting anywhere near my car with a tow truck.

A police officer told me to come back in an hour. 

More tension. And a plot twist.

An hour later, they had extended the lockdown area and now there was a SWAT team onsite.  When I again asked an officer about my car, he told me it wouldn’t be before tomorrow.

Even more tension.

But out of adversity comes opportunity.  I have a work in progress and I’ve been a little dissatisfied with it. 

That’s when it came to me. It needs more tension!

And I need fewer distractions.

So, on Saturday, I had my car towed, the mechanic told me I might get my battery much earlier than he had predicted, my wife is recovering well, and I’m writing again.  And the SWAT team thing?  The press release was maddeningly vague.  Someone had threatened themselves with harm.

And they lockdown four city blocks? And have a SWAT team onsite?  That individual must have threatened to harm themselves with a nuclear weapon.

Just kidding.  It all ended peacefully.  Happy ending.