If You're A Parent Read This ... Or Don't Read This

TL;DR … Go buy The Chain by Adrian McKinty. It's the best thriller I've read in years.

… About ten years ago, my wife looked up from the used hardback she was reading and smiled. "You'd like this. You should read it."

"What is it?"

"It's a crime novel by this guy from Northern Ireland. It's really good. You should read it."

My perpetually failing eyesight was in the grips of that ceaseless entropy. Meaning, I squinted my eyes and took in the cover. There was a gun, an ashtray, a cigarette, an arm of presumably a man. The title was small but the font looked serious.

"Dead I …"

"Dead I Well May Be," my wife said. "It's great. You'll love it."

Most husbands don't listen to their wives. Most wives don't listen to their husbands. But this was one of those rare instances where I bucked the trend. After all, my wife and I have similar tastes, I love noir fiction and film, and I'm always looking for somebody new to read.

As it turns out, I loved the book because Dead I Well May Be is a f***ing masterpiece. Darkly humorous, brooding, thoughtful, intense, it's one of those rare books that was both plot- and character-driven. I had a new favorite, and contemporary, author: Adrian McKinty. I absorbed it in a couple days, then moved on to the two sequels. Inside of two weeks (I'm a glacially slow reader, so that's fast for me), I'd inhaled this troika of crime novels starring Michael Forsyte, the Renaissance man's anti-hero/protagonist.

They say the ultimate compliment one can pay to an author is to actually read their book. That's not true at all. I've finished many books I should have quit early on. The ultimate compliment you can ever pay an author is to REread them and tell others about them.

And that's what I did. Over the years, I've probably read DIWMB five or six times cover-to-cover. It's also one I'll "just open" when I can't decide what new book I want to try, stopping at a random passage and reading for a few minutes before bed. It's like comfort prose.

I'm not one for recommending books, either. Reading a novel is quite a time commitment, especially if you're slow like me. Tastes in movies are broader, I feel, while tastes in books are much more nuanced. I don't mind suggesting somebody check out the latest Marvel flick, because hey, it's only two hours and most people will find something to like about it, but no effing way will I recommend novels or authors lightly.

These I do. McKinty's fictional world is one of violence, metaphor, existential philosophy, and a morbid wit. His prose is terse, crisp, lyrical, and intense. It's like being punched by poetry.

TL;DR … Go read The Chain by Adrian McKinty.

I came across DIWMB and McKinty not long after I had started taking this writing thing seriously. I hadn't yet found my voice (and many would argue I still haven't found it, or my niche, but that's a topic for another blog). To my incredulous joy, I found out that McKinty had a blog where he actually responded thoughtfully to every single comment left. I was soon a regular, and not surprisingly, his books and blog attracted a diverse, interesting crowd of people. Having that kind of down-to-earth access to a quality writer was a dream come true. (McKinty's blog was hacked more than once throughout the years, and so these days the blog is on lock-down. Gone are the early Blogger days where he was safely able to engage with his rabidly loyal audience.)

McKinty moved on from the Michael Forsyte series, published a few standalones, and then began a new series featuring Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop living in 80s Northern Ireland, serving on a police force that is 99% Protestant. Talk about conflict. The Duffy books are wonderful, full of personal touches that you can tell come straight from McKinty's personal history.

McKinty's career, at least from my starry-eyed and admittedly naïve viewpoint, seemed wonderful. He accumulated awards more quickly than I amassed rejections from publishers. Every time I checked his blog, it seemed his latest release or the prior release or the book before that one was short- or long-listed for this, that and the other thing. He was in stores. He knew other big-time writers. There was often talk, or suggestion, of a film possibly getting made. His books were translated into 20 different languages. I thought he had made it.

Turns out, he hadn't. He was REALLY struggling. Though garnering an obscene amount of critical acclaim, McKinty was stuck in mid-list hell, the purgatory that many excellent authors find themselves in, where critics recognize the merit of their work, but where they don't earn a living wage. This same man who had won award after award for his crime fiction, was eventually evicted from his home and had resorted to tending bar and driving for Uber to make ends meet.

What happened next is absolutely amazing and is proof that truth is stranger than fiction. All you have to do right now is Google Adrian McKinty The Chain, and a ton of articles will pop up in the search about what went down. It makes for a Hollywood Ending, almost too good to be true.

(SPOILER ALERT - IN CASE YOU DIDN'T JUST GOOGLE)

Don Winslow, a critically acclaimed and commercially successful author in his right, knew McKinty and sympathized with his situation, having been in the very same place years before. Winslow connected his agent Shane Salerno, who is in the running for Best Literary Agent Ever, with McKinty. By then, though, McKinty had already given up the idea of writing for a living and had planned on going back to work. Salerno, however, pressed him and pressed him and McKinty pitched his idea for a thriller set in America. The rest now is history. The Chain was born.

Fast forward. The Chain is out in stores now. After years of writing excellent books and almost quitting several times, McKinty finally has a bona fide hit on his hands. There is a 7-figure movie deal in the works. I can't tell you how happy I am about this. I consider myself one of the lucky (and far too few) people who was reading him before this, back when he was writing great books that weren't selling like they should have. I occasionally emailed him to see what was up and ask for advice, and he was always quick to respond and very helpful.

So finally, let's talk about The Chain. What's all the hub-bub, bub, you're probably saying. Well, there's a good goddamned reason Jimmy Fallon is talking about it.

The Chain is a high concept, unrelenting thriller that will scare parents and would-be-parents absolutely shitless. The story opens with the kidnapping of a young girl. Her mother is contacted minutes later. She must pay a ransom and then kidnap someone else's child. Only when she does this, and the parents of the child she kidnaps have done the same thing, will she see her daughter again. And thus The Chain grows, more and more people sucked into a nightmare world where they must do the unthinkable to save the life of their own.

The Chain is 350 pages and you don't get to take a breath till around page 200. But it isn't much of a breather, because the second half of the book picks up speed just as quickly as the opening. This is the first novel in years (and one of only a handful) that I've finished in less than a day, and like I've noted several times above, I'm a sllllloooooowwwww reader.

If you've never heard of Adrian McKinty before, consider yourself lucky. He's a gifted writer I'm sure you'll like, The Chain is one of those breakout beach reads everybody will be talking about, and the best part is he's got two fantastic series and a bunch of standalones already out there.

11/9/17 and 11/10/17 Updates

In the last two days, I've written ~12,000 words. Total word count is 19,634.

I was trying to get to 20k last night but just got too tired. People have asked me what the secret is, and like with all magic tricks, the secret is kind of a let-down once you know what it is.

Finishing a book simply comes down to making the time. Ass in chair. The more your ass is in that chair, the more you write. Sounds too simple to be true, right? But that's how it works. Some days I'm more productive in 2 hours than I am in 4 hours, but for the most part, the more I'm in front of the computer, the more I will get done.

There have been days where I feel like I have nothing left to say, but still I sit down in front of the computer. If nothing comes, I think about the story in general. My mind usually drifts to the 3 or 4 really big scenes I've already planned for, and I grow excited and want to get back to work so I can get to those scenes. Sometimes all I have to do is ask myself how I can make the next part of the book the most exciting chapter ever. I resist the urge to put the laptop away or turn on the TV. Eventually I start writing and once I start, it's easier to keep going than it is to stop.

Wyetgerd's Ax is coming along nicely. The hero has "accepted" the call to adventure (right now he's doing it for the wrong reasons) and his decision will get him involved in a much larger conflict. From there, his problems escalate and, somewhere along the way, he truly accepts the call to adventure.  This change of character from reckless, self-destructive youth to young man willing to stand up against evil was one of the things that drew me to the story. The other was the initial hook.

The more I think about it, maybe that's all I need to get excited about an idea. A strong hook and a character that develops over the course of the story.

Sounds too simple to be true, right?

***

Thanks to everybody who downloaded The Stalked Girl during the promotion on Thursday. I hope you all dig it. Please make sure to tell 10,000 of your closest friends about the Greg Owen series.

2015 Production Schedule

They say it's good to have goals. So here are mine. I hope to release these books in 2015:

Solo Projects:

• OtherWorld
• MG Fantasy (have an idea but no title)
• The Skim (noir)
• The Dream Machine (Unearthed #6)
• The Missing (Unearthed #7)
• The 8th Man (new sci-fi, mystery series)

Tomahawk & Saber series with Nate Green:

• Language of the Bear
• Through the Narrows
• #3

Looking this over, I realize this production schedule is totally unrealistic. But I'd rather try to do too much instead of not enough. Better to always be pushing.

It's going to be an interesting 2015...

Hilarious Review of Morale Was Down

Normally I'll pull one or two quotes out of a review when posting here or on Facebook to give readers a general sense of the reviewer's thoughts. But last night I read one of the funniest and most creative reviews I've ever encountered.

Big thank you to Steve from Silver Screen Videos for taking the time to craft this postmodern (!) review-within-a-short story written in the second person. Steve is an expert on all things cinema, so if you're a movie buff make sure to check out his website as well. (We had a brief chat over email, for example, during which he pointed me to an early noir film shot entirely from a first person POV!)

Here is Steve's unabridged review of Morale Was Down:

"NOTE: The author graciously provided me with a copy of this book and requested that I write a review.

You're at work one day wondering how to kill the hour you have left until you go to lunch. You could start work on that big project the boss gave you but you realize you won't be able to figure out what's going on until lunch time anyway so you might as well not start. You've checked your e-mail and your Twitter account and your Facebook page and your e-mail again and there's nothing new. And you've gone past your boss's office for coffee three times already this morning and you don't want to give him any ideas that you're spending time at the coffee machine instead of working on that project you've told him is well under way even though you won't even look at it until after lunch. Then you remember that story called "Morale Was Down" by Evan Ronan that you bought on Amazon primarily because some guy wrote a review in the second person that he claimed was just like the style of the story and he said it was about an office just like the lousy one you work at and it's about a boss who's just like your lousy boss.

Anyway, you remember that according to the review, one of the employees brought in a Stromboli for lunch and then said someone stole it. So the big boss at the company orders the jerk of a middle manager boss who's just like the lousy middle manager boss you work for to find the Stromboli because it will help morale at the office, which had been down lately. And, according to the review, the boss spends most of the day looking for the Stromboli except when he gets distracted, which happens a lot just like you get distracted a lot when you're at work. So, you say, what the heck, you might as well spend that hour reading "Morale Was Down" and then saying you were doing research on improving your leadership skills.

And you start to read and you start to think this guy Evan Ronan really knows what it's like to work in an office. And his descriptions of all the different types of employees sound just like the ones you work with, only funnier. And that story. Wow, that boss is even lazier and knows more ways to waste time than you do (of course, you take notes in case you ever have to use some of these tricks). The boss in the story also takes notes but they're not very good notes, and, in fact, most of what he does to figure out what happened to the Stromboli doesn't work out too well either.

So you start to grin. Then you giggle. Then you giggle some more. Then you burst out laughing when that guy Ronan writes about the fake Amber Alert reporting the missing Stromboli that someone posts on the refrigerator door. And that's when you decide this guy Ronan really knows what it's like to work in an office, and his description of office politics is quite astute and hilariously funny to boot. If fact, it's funnier than the cat video you watched six times on YouTube this morning.

And before you realize what's happening, you've finished the story and you look around and everyone's gone off to lunch except for that one guy who's staring at you wondering just which cat video you're looking at that's so funny. So you put your Kindle away and decide that since you've spent all that time doing research, you'll take your full lunch hour anyway. And you also decide you need to do some more research so you decide you'll read "Morale Is Down" again this afternoon instead of working on that project that's not going anywhere anyway.

And you read it again. And again. Because "Morale Is Down" is so funny. And so realistic, like your own office. And that writing style of Ronan's is so fast paced and breezy and tongue in cheek that it even gets the Amazon reviewer to write a review in that exact same style. And you realize it's just so easy to just sit back and enjoy Ronan's clever dialogue and enticing style. And that writing style will stay with you a long time because you're going to remember this story and the missing Stromboli for a long, enjoyably long time. And no matter what happens to the lousy boss in the story, you know that your morale is up, way up, and it's going to stay way up even when something really lousy happens in your real life office. Because that's just the way the story is."