You Don't Have To Like Them and Other Truths About Characters and Storytelling

Just finished reading the very talented Julie Murphy's amazing debut YA novel, SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY. And here's the thing about her main character Alice: She is a mean girl. Getting cancer has not changed this; in fact dying has through much of the book, exacerbated her meanness. She is angry and cruel and her bucket list of revenge (it's not all revenge on the list, but a lot of it is) includes some very awful acts that she commits with pleasure. She loves a boy named Harvey but she fears--and rightfully so--that even though her disease is suddenly in remission, it will return, and so she pushes him away, cheats on his loving heart, uses him shamefully and with full knowledge of what she is doing and honestly has to think hard, once she tries to change her mindset, about what a non-mean person would do. The punishments she doles out to those who have wronged her (and let me say they've done some pretty crappy things) are as harsh if not harsher than the crimes they've committed.

I don't like her very much, not even at the end. I wouldn't be her friend. I have never understood the Regina Georges of the world. It rarely occurs to me to act in those ways and trust me when I say I'm no saint. I'm mouthy and snarky and sarcastic and I see the world through a sardonic lens most days and am happiest when surrounded by those who see it that way, too. But although I am myself a cancer survivor, I still don't relate to the way Alice acts, even if I can understand and analyze it. Almost dying--however close you get--changes you in ways you might never suspect it will. Trust me on this. Unless you've experienced it, you can't honestly say how you'd react. You really can't. It doesn't always make us noble. Even Gus and Hazel Grace in TFIOS--surely the prettiest, most articulate cancer-suffering duo in YA--have their awful moments. 

But I don't HAVE to like Alice for me to read and enjoy and savor this book. I don't HAVE to like her for me to think that Julie Murphy's written an awesome novel. I simply have to find her authentic and consistent within the fictional boundaries and character arc Murphy has created. And I do. (Okay, as someone who's spent a number of years in the classroom, I will say that my long term experience with high school is that there are fewer powerful student queen bee types in real life than there seem to be in fiction, but I'm okay with the trope. It's a decent stand in for the many nasty power mongers in the world. And interestingly, the place I see it most is the teacher's lounge, which is often a scary, angry, territorial den, a place where I was once told by someone in authority, "I don't care how smart you are as long as you're nice,"--implying that I wasn't-- but that's another story)

Still, I frequently read reviews of various books--including my own-- in which readers say, "I didn't like her/him." or "That was a terrible way to act." or "9th grade girls wouldn't swear like that." or "I would never do that to my sister. It made me hate her." And they down rate accordingly. 

Except my job as an author is NOT to make my characters all likeable. My job is to tell the authentic story of this character at this place and time in this particular set of experiences. My job is to ruminate on the nature of being human, which let's face it, is quite the journey. Some of us are awful. Some of us aren't. Some of us (even 9th grade girls!) swear like sailors. Some of us do terrible things and all of us have no idea how we would behave if our world was up-ended, or we were struggling or trapped in a life we didn't want but couldn't escape, one in which horrible things sometimes happened. If the truths we had to face felt, well, unfaceable. 

Writers are not obligated to tie it all up with a pretty pink bow, although I personally prefer a note of hope at the end, which Murphy has definitely supplied.

This means that my characters will frequently act or speak or think in ways I might not. And as a reader, I am thus privileged to safely experience worlds beyond my own limited personal experience.

 I'm hoping very hard that I have captured these things for my readers in the forthcoming FINDING PARIS (Balzer and Bray) and all its characters Leo and Paris and Max, as they struggle--not always in the best of ways-- to face their own choices and truths. 

Bravo, Julie Murphy, for being fearless enough to write a character that I don't like very much.

And if you haven't read SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY (Balzer and Bray), you need to do so.

Three for Tuesday: Copy Edits, Marketing Books, and Other stuff

And the top three for today:

1. Waiting for copy edits to come back to me from FINDING PARIS (spring 2015, Balzer and Bray).  I am both excited and nervous about this. If you're not a writer, let me explain that up until a project goes to CE, it's been just you and your editor (and earlier, your agent and before that your critique partners/beta readers). But after a while, they know your story. You know your story. And now comes this person who's going to do a thorough cold read, which means they haven't been reading various incarnations for the past year or 2. Your copy editor will (hopefully) catch inconsistencies and errors and will also give that fresh pair of eyes that we all need before book becomes 'official' manuscript and then galley.

And so I'm waiting. Particularly because PARIS is a complex project with a lot of emotional twists and turns and secrets and dark stuff. 

Let me interject here that the dog is sitting at my feet whining through her big basset nose because she wants my toast. She is not going to get my toast, in case you were wondering. Nose whining is a high-pitched sound, by the way.

2. So it's a given by now that I'm reading book after book of OUTLANDER. But I am also currently reading THE INTERESTINGS by Meg Wolitzer, which I am liking very much. And a slim volume of Kurt Vonnegut's graduation speeches, which are mostly fascinating, although oddly, not always. 

3. Also thinking about marketing today. The publishing kind, not groceries. As my agent just observed, John Green is a marketing genius. But so is the team that supports him, with their clear attention to making the stars align (pun intended) for FIOS, a book that I adore mightily. It has been a prodigious campaign. As has the marketing campaign for another book I admire hugely, WE WERE LIARS, by the delightful and generous Emily Lockhart-- to whom I shall always be grateful because she loved and blurbed SWEET DEAD LIFE. The promotion for LIARS has been quite clever, with the focus being on not revealing the ending (because really, you can't with this book) and emphasizing the idea of  liars and unreliable narrators and basically putting out the tease of the mystery in all these well-plotted ways for months and months before it hit the shelves on 5/13. Of course the best type of publicity is still word of mouth, but campaigns the size and breadth of these pretty much insure that word of mouth is going to happen and won't just be something that miraculously occurs. 

Even on my smaller potatoes level, I know that the unexpectedly continual word of mouth for DREAMING ANASTASIA back in 2009 was certainly to some extent miraculous, but to an even larger extent, the work of my publicist at the time. I was his first YA book and he wanted to show that he could take an unknown high school teacher and make her book sell. Which he truly did and for which I am forever grateful. (yes, I worked very hard on marketing and still do. But he focused that work and partnered with me to make sure what I did made a difference.)

Let me interject here that one clear component for me has always been the two-pronged effects of the wonderful bloggers who support me and my books and the amazing and tireless indie booksellers who hand sell my titles. I owe them a million sparkly things. And I make my appreciation and adoration known to them regularly. Like now! :)

And then there are those--including some very successful self-pubbed authors, particularly those who write romance-- who manage those prodigious and highly successful marketing campaigns on their own.  

The truth of course is that there is very little authors can actually control in making a book successful. We can write the best book possible. We can make ourselves accessible. But for the most part, we cannot control the cover, or store placement or co-op money or whether we're going to be a lead title or whether we will be widely stocked or even where. We can simply keep writing better and better books.

So if you're reading this, your question is: What book marketing campaigns have stood out to you and why? What, beyond word of mouth, makes you take a second glance at  book and pick it up? 

Five for Friday

Can you believe that pub week is almost over? Crazy!

Here's the five:

1. THE A-WORD blog tour continues. See previous post for al the links! THANKS so much to all who are hosting/reviewing/generally spreading the word about these crazy TEXAS angels!! I'm so glad I'm starting to see some Bo Shivers love out there, too! Let me know what y'all think of BO!

2. Launch party for A-WORD this coming Saturday 5/17 at 2 PM at Blue Willow Bookshop! Cookies, fictional sibling trivia, q/a about A-WORD and COWBOY BOOT KEYCHAINS! You want to be there. Yes you do! Here's the link: http://www.bluewillowbookshop.com/event/joy-preble-2

3. Flying through Voyager, which is Outlander #3. I cannot believe that I am reading these 1000 page books back to back to back to… Well, let me say that there have been some jump the shark moments here and some places that I would honestly edit the heck out of. But still. Jamie and Claire. And Young Ian, who is stealing the show… until he gets stolen by pirates. And Jamie forgetting to tell Claire that he'd kinda, sorta married the woman who'd tried to get Claire killed as a witch. And the penicillin she's snuck back to the 1700's, along with a plastic wrapped stack of pb and j sandwiches…. I still love it.

4. Godzilla? Are we going to see it? I think I am. But it's FIOS that I'm waiting for. Because Gus and Hazel. And John Green's dialogue. And all of it. Soon.

5. Vampire Diaires season finale. DAMON!!!! OOOOOOOHHHHHH NOOOOOOO!

Happy Friday all of you! Come to Blue Willow if you're in Houston!