Waiting for final reviews of “The 29th Day” and starting to plan out “Viral Hatred” (novel #2)
I have finished working on The 29th Day and will be waiting to hear if the book is good enough to send to an agent. I will be relying on input from three final reviewers … my trusted advisor (you can probably guess who) and my two fiction-phobic sisters (as other family members have said to me, “If they like it, the book will make a million bucks!”)
In the meantime, I have started researching and planning out my second novel,Viral Hatred. Having gone through the arduous process of multiple re-writes with The 29th Day, I have been checking into outlining techniques. Terry Fallis, author of The Best Laid Plans and its sequel The High Road (coming out around September 2010) uses a system of bullet points for each chapter (http://terryfallis.com/2009/01/11/how-i-write-outlining) which seems to work pretty well for him - The Best Laid plans is super funny and such an easy read. I have found a series of questions on how to write an outline in 30 minutes that I will try to go through to prompt some thoughts: http://www.sff.net/people/Alicia/artout.htm .
The planning will be essential for this second novel as I am going to try more advanced techniques. The 29th Day is a story told from the perspective of Annika Nilsson, a Swedish academic, and is located primarily in my neighbourhood, The Beach. In contrast, Vital Hatred will have shifting perspectives, multiple characters and locations around the globe (including the US and Canada). I will read Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, which seems to be a masterful example of how to use multiple perspectives … and I am sure there are many other good resources (please let me know if you have come across anything particularly helpful).
I will also have to do a fair bit of research for this 2nd novel and have started with neuropsychology, brain anatomy and immunology. I did a course on immunology as an undergrad and was fascinated by the concepts. However, I had killer courses in cell biology and organic chemistry at the same time (as I recall) and did not have a chance to really marvel at what I was learning. Now I can.
As with The 29th Day, though my second novel will be somewhat complex thematically and factually, I hope it will still be engaging and easy to read. I like books and movies that have layers to them – you can enjoy them as entertainment but there is also meaning to them. I would put Don LePan’s Animals in this category (see my December 2, 2009 interview with him). Margaret Atwood is the most skilled writer I can think of in this regard (see for example, The Edible Woman, Alias Grace, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Year of the Flood just to name four of my favourite books). I also love movies or books that have plot twists or where your frame of reference shifts at the end. In literature, my favourite example is A Prayer for Owen Meany – if you have not read that book, well you must! In terms of movies, I am inspired by The Others by Alejandro Amenábar and The Sixth Sense by M. Night Shyamalan.
I tried to achieve these objectives in The 29th Day but most of all I wanted to explore the power of the word. I wanted to take readers through every emotion and make them uncertain about what was really happening at various points in the novel. I worry that I have been too manipulative in experimenting with people’s feelings but early feedback indicates that people enjoyed being provoked to feel/think things at certain points in the book.
My neighbour read version one of The 29th Day (or The 29th Day Hypothesis, as it then was). When I did not hear back from him, I feared that he did not like it. I was thinking about how I could let him off the hook – not every book is for everyone. But then he returned it with a lovely note and an A++. I was so excited about seeing that A++ that I asked if I could post it on my blog. I was particularly pleased with this as it suggests that my book can appeal to men and women, and I am honoured by the comparison to Jonathan Goldstein. I have blocked out the personal parts of the letter. The current version of the book no longer has the chapter titles, interactive elements and dual endings that this reader referred to but I believe the good parts of the material remain. I have worked quite hard to address the slow beginning, and am encouraged by early reports from my book-hating sisters – one read the first half of the book on a week’s vacation with a two-year-old, and the other read the first 34 manuscript pages in one sitting… but then has since needed a week to recover).
