The Next Big Thing
So, apparently, I’m the Next Big Thing. Or, rather, one of many – part of a cross-promotional pyramid scheme that’s rolling through the genre writer underworld lately.
Here’s the deal, in case you’re out of the loop: I got tagged on The FaceBook by Jimmy Callaway, himself a big thing. Rule is, I’ve got to write about what I’ve got going on. I’m duty-bound to talk up the projects I wedge in between work hours, sweating the rent and trying to balance football season with maintaining my classic svelte figure. It’s expected that I threaten you with some literary A-bomb about to go off right in your grill.
Okay. Let’s have at it.
1. What’s the working title of your current or next project? Sick House
2. Where did the idea come from? My girlfriend lived in a house with toxic mold – a “sick house” – on an untenable mortgage managed by backbiting, lawbreaking lenders, in a town ruled by the Tea Party and run on a covert dope trade. Tens of millions of others do too. This writes itself.
3. What genre does your book fall under? Thriller. Possibly Young Adult Thriller, given that the principal narrator is a sixteen-year-old girl.
4. Which actors would you choose to play the parts of your characters in a movie rendition?
Brie, our wallflower heroine, Elizabeth Olsen. Don, the overburdened dad, Michael Shannon. Rose, his haywire wife, Deborah Kara Unger. Noah, their misfit son, Nathan Kress, provided he starved himself like Bale did for The Machinist. Isaac, the baby son, some pair of babies.
5. What is the slick, one-sentence synopsis of your book? A desperate family moves to small town, USA, to start anew, only to be imprisoned by crushing debt, crazed politics, crooked townies and a house that holds a monstrous, maddening disease, turning these extreme pressures into an explosion.
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? I’m represented by Stacia Decker of DMLA. She’ll turn my straw into gold.
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft? I’m halfway through, thanks to a 6-week break. I aim to be done come February.
8. Which other books would you compare this to in your genre? The Siege of Trencher’s Farm by Gordon Williams. Or so I would assume; I’ve only seen the film adaptation, Straw Dogs. Also, possibly, We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book? My experiences with my girlfriend and my constant saturation with America’s cultural woes. Thanks, social media monitoring day job.
10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interests? Besides an excruciating study of the failure of the American system? Well, it has glossolalia, Mean Girls, recipes for bombs, electrocution and social media slut-shaming. If that still doesn’t light your wick, you can skim it as a solid resource for learning air-conditioning installment and repair.
For next week, I’m tagging:
