Big news for my upcoming third novel! I’m excited to announce that Rachel Gluckstern will edit The Wanderer and the New West.
Rachel is an award-winning editor who worked more than ten years at DC Comics, including as editor of the Batman Group from 2010 to 2015. Follow Rachel on Twitter and check out her LinkedIn profile for more details. We connected on Reedsy, an innovative web platform that helps authors find freelance publishing assistance. Be sure to check out my interview with Reedsy co-founder Emmanuel Nataf.
Rachel will be doing content and copy editing on The Wanderer to sharpen my prose and, generally, to keep me from looking like a hack. I’d be lying if I said comic books didn’t influence the knockabout action in my new book, and I believe Rachel’s experience with action/adventure stories will really give the novel a boost.
I completed my own edits for The Wanderer last week, and–if you’ll allow my biased opinion–it’s a fun and topical book. The story is set in a possible future won by gun evangelists and advocates for hands-off government. Plagued by shootings, this America has returned to the ways of the Wild West, a lawless land where people make their own justice.
What, you think writers are just writing all the time? No, we read, too! And, you know … have a life outside of books … but that’s not the point I was getting at.
If you like my novels We, The Watched and Divided We Fall, you’ll really dig my first two selections — The Leftovers and Homage to Catalonia. The latter is actually a journalistic account by the great George Orwell about his true experiences during the Spanish Civil War. My third pick, City of Thieves, is another war story — this one about the siege of Leningrad during World War II — but what makes it clever is that it’s also a coming of age story. Finally, for the writers out there, I’ve reviewed Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury, a huge influence and inspiration for me.
I love stories that start with a fantastical or sci-fi premise and then take a realistic look at what would happen in the real world. That’s exactly what happens in The Leftovers. There is a rapture, but a seemingly random one with nothing to do with religion, and we see what the people in a suburban community do next.
If you’re expecting a grand sci-fi plot with an explanation for what happened, this book’s not for you. It’s more about the people and how they deal with losing people they loved. While that might sound sad, there’s actually a lot of humor that comes from the absurdity of the situation and the way people have responded.
Perrotta’s clear, humorous writing style adds to the fun. It’s effortless to read and hard to put down.
Did you know George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War? Like a lot of people, I only really knew Orwell for 1984 and Animal Farm. Reading this account of the author’s experience fighting Franco and fascism offers great context for other works while also illuminating all the confusion and propaganda from this 20th Century war. Orwell writes in an accessible way, effectively conveying his own outrage at the events of the war but also his fondness for the Spaniards. Worth a read for all Orwell fans and war history buffs.
A coming of age set during the siege of Leningrad, City of Thieves deftly mixes humor, teen angst and the horrors of World War II. The prose moves along briskly, making for a quick read that never drags. It’s also a true story, making the tale all the more poignant.
I also really liked the characters and felt emotionally involved with their highs and lows. The descriptions of the dead and the desperate are tragic, and the brutal actions of the Nazis are truly horrifying.
Looking forward to reading more by this exciting new author.
This excellent collection of essays about writing by the great Ray Bradbury should be essential reading for any writer. This book is not about grammar or stylistic techniques. It is about finding focus and setting the right conditions to allow the writer inside to come out and show what he or she is made of!
The final essay, for which the book is named, is worth the price of admission alone. Bradbury makes the case for writers to stop thinking about commercial or critical success. Instead, he argues that writers should relax and write honestly.
There are also a few essays that give insights to Bradbury’s most famous novels, including Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. These I had read before, as they were included as forewords in those novels. Even so, it’s nice to have them in a single collection.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I should get back to my writing!
I don’t play a lot of mobile games, but when I do, I look for ones that get my brain working and reduce my tension level.
Since I’m writing all the time, I like to play something that lets me exercise the logic side of my brain. At the same time, if I’m riding a massively delayed train with a ton of people complaining about said delay, the last thing I need is a game that requires me to do something complicated before time runs out. I also don’t want to play a touch screen game with a complex control scheme. Touch screens in my experience are just not as responsive as a controller, so if I have to do button combos to win at a game, well … I’m probably going to turn it off in frustration halfway through level one.
Fortunately, I have come across a few winners, all of which are available on Android and iOS. These are all beautiful-looking games with simple concepts. Most importantly, they never punish you for looking up from the phone to check why everyone is yelling “Fire!”
Monument Valley
This dream-like game by developer ustwo is all about the visuals. And I don’t mean it just looks pretty, I mean the visuals play a key part of the gameplay. In Monument Valley, Players guide a princess through an isometric world by raising and turning objects in the environment to create a path. The brilliant thing is that this world functions like an Escher painting, or those impossible shapes from geometry class, so that turning a platform on the lower level sometimes connects it to a higher level.
While there are occasional crows (possible band name?) that block your path, they don’t try to kill the princess. Players simply have to find a way around them. It’s also relaxing just to look at the game and listen to the music. The guy sitting next to you might think you’re a weirdo, but hey, that’s his problem.
My one complaint is the game is fairly short and there’s no incentive to replay completed levels. There are a couple of expansions available, but they only extend the experience by a couple of hours. Regardless, this game sticks in my memory as one of my favorites, on any gaming platform, of the last few years.
Hook
This monochrome puzzle game by developer Rainbow Train proves that a strong gameplay concept is more important than fancy special effects. In Hook, Players must find a way to remove all of the parts (in this case hooks) without bumping them against each other. It’s easy at first but gets more challenging as the game progresses.
Importantly for one’s tension level, no one yells at the player to finish in a certain amount of time. Just keep at it until the puzzle is solved. The very basic graphics and light music also keep things mellow.
And no, Peter Pan is not involved.
Blip Blup
https://youtu.be/IzPTwoGsxg8
While it may not look quite as pretty as developer ustwo’s other game, MonumentValley, this puzzle game is another interesting concept that starts out simple and gets increasingly difficult as the player goes on. Blip Blup presents players with a grid that they must fill with light. When the player touches a square, light shoots out in all directions, but obstacles can stop the light from reaching every square of the grid. The idea is to cover every bit of the grid in as few moves as possible.
Like the other games in this list, there’s no time limit, and players can keep trying until they get it right. The music’s pretty relaxing, too. It also has a bit more replay value than the other games on my list because, while a given level might be passed in three moves, Blip Blup gives extra points for doing it in two.
So that’s my list! If you have any recommendations for other relaxing mobile games, please sound off in the comments. I’m eager to give it a try to calm my shattered nerves! Oh, and don’t forget to check out a game I made called Watched Sweeper. I don’t know if it’s clever or relaxing, but it is a game!
Editing is more than fixing typos. Over the past few months, I have gone into detective mode — reading and re-reading my story and taking notes about what I need to add, what I need to cut, and what I need to reorder. Writing a novel takes a lot of time, and a lot of things — including characters and writing style — can (and should) evolve as you write. Sometimes as I write, I know that a scene doesn’t quite work, but don’t have an immediate solution. Rather than bash my head against the wall, I just move on to the next scene, because in my experience the perfect solution often comes along later when I’m solving something else.
Sometimes, editing feels like this. But it’s worth it! Credit: @GUARNIERI / ELLO
Cutting scenes can be hard. One of my problems is that I’ll write a joke or a bit dialogue that I believe is terribly clever, but in fact does nothing for the story. Usually my wife and editing ally Mallika calls me out on (and ruthlessly chides me for) such passages. It’s hard to hit the delete button, but in the end it’s better for the overall story. This is why I always am wary of new editions of novels or movies that restore previously cut material. In most cases, scenes or chapters are cut for a reason.
While I have cut some unnecessary segments in The Wanderer since the first draft, I’ve also added a few chapters in the middle to fill what I saw as a void in the plot. Without giving much away, there’s a part about two-thirds of the way through when the heroes decide to go stop the bad guy. In my original draft, however, there didn’t seem to be quite enough pushing them to make that decision beyond my fervent wishes as the author. As I went to work coming up with a new episode, I inadvertently addressed a few other weaknesses along the way (remember what I said before about waiting for the perfect solution?). I didn’t just fill a plot hole; I created one of my favorite sequences in the novel!
Editing is hard. It takes a lot of time. But it’s also a lot of fun. And when you read the end product, I think you’ll agree it’s worth it.
I am happy to say I’m getting close to the finish line for my edits, but of course, that will only mark the start of the next challenge: getting the story through someone who does this for a living — a professional editor! How’s that going to go? Stay tuned!
I am not one of those authors who writes on a typewriter. How do you delete?! No, I need tech to keep me organized and to give me the flexibility to jot down ideas or do actual writing on the go.
Here are the apps and gadgets I currently rely on the most for writing:
Evernote
Logo credit: Evernote
I often get ideas for my stories when I’m riding a subway or walking in the park. I can either keep reciting the idea in my head over and over until it was pounded into my memory, or I can just make a quick note on my phone using Evernote. The app syncs notes across all my devices, so when I get back to my computer at home, it’s right there and ready for me to act upon!
Scrivener
The corkboard view in Scrivener keeps me organized. photo Credit: literature & latte
Look, Word is a great app and I still use it for short things like letters and news stories. But novels, which can be 80,000 to 100,000 words, get unwieldy real fast. If you need to refer to some detail earlier in the story, you’ve either got to do a lot of scrolling, or try to remember a specific phrase and search for it in the text. If you realize Chapter 8 should really be Chapter 6, you’ve got to cut and paste (and it’s scary to do a Ctrl+X on an entire chapter), and then renumber all the affected chapters.
Scrivener does all of this for me and I don’t have to panic. It puts each of my chapters and each of my scenes into notecards that I can reorder at will through drag and drop. It all displays a list of everything in a convenient sidebar that I can use to jump around my book at will. And it backs up everything, so if disaster strikes, I can restore my project! I can even take snapshots of scenes I’m about to massively revamp, just in case I change my mind later. Brilliant!
Microsoft Surface 3
Surface 3. I don’t use it to research plant cells, though. photo Credit: Microsoft
This is my latest tool, and I’m already loving it. I needed something light and portable so I could write on the go without feeling like I was carrying a bowling ball in my backpack. I also needed something with a decent battery life. Finally, and this is critical, I didn’t want to pay heaps of money for a Surface Pro 3.
Surface 3, the Atom-based cousin of Surface Pro, meets these requirements handily. It’s a beautifully engineered device that’s perfect for writing at the café. cases. It’s not my main PC, so I didn’t need it to be super powerful. I just needed something with a clear screen and a decent keyboard that runs Scrivener okay. Sold.
My only complaint is that Microsoft totally gets you with the separately sold keyboard and pen. These things are essential to the experience, and you end up paying almost $200 more than you expected. I know, I know, I could have gone Macbook Air, but I’m stuck on Windows.
Oh well, at least it’s kept me writing! Time to finish that novel…
