Women Showing

Thriller Guy was reading the stats concerning this blog the other day and noticed a curious thing. There was a short list of keywords that some viewers used to find the site and among them were, “Author of Sexy Page Turner” and “Library Sexy Womenshowing.” Now, TG will be the first to admit that he is pretty uninterested in the labyrinthine ways of the Interweb, but what’s up with that? Even though he knows the vagaries of sexual behavior encompass a vast land of unusual scenery, who the hell sits down at the computer and enters those two phrases looking for some fun? So TG, of course, sat down at the computer to see if he could have some fun with the two search terms.

The combination of the first words, “Author of Sexy Page Turner” resulted in the usual 3 and a half million results, but they were pretty disappointing. The top hit was for a book of erotic poems titled “Libido” by the author J.M. George on a website, the PuRR.com, hosted by PepperBrooks, who seems like an intelligent young lady who says she is a business coach. The entry about Libido is a short interview Pepper conducted with the author of the book. TG rooted around on the site but didn’t turn up much that was steamy other than the cover of the book, which TG reproduces here.

If any of TG’s readers would like to take a gander at the book, it is linked to Amazon. TG will give anyone who would like to review these poems space on this site. Good luck with the book, Ms George, and Pepper, keep up the good work! The rest of the search results were pretty damn tame, so not much fun there.

Library Sex Womenshowing heated up the search, but not nearly as much as you would imagine. The first few hits were of the scholarly/feminist variety before setting into a number of sites about women who shave their fishwhistles, bless their hearts, and like to post pictures of the results. TG decided to sharpen up his search term by separating the word “women” and “showing” and was surprised to learn that rather than making things hotter, this was a real buzz kill. The top article being a news report about a woman who was arrested for soliciting sex in the library in Tewksbury, Mass. Because of the common injunction against talking in libraries, all negotiations between the undercover detective and the prostitute (I think we can safely say that description probably fits) were carried out by passing a piece of notebook paper and a pen back and forth between the two individuals. Cost for the unspecified act was $60, which could be a real bargain or a rip-off, depending on the act. It turns out that this particular library is kind of a sex hot spot, with the emphasis on the word hot, as a homeless man was arrested there several months earlier on the same charge. Hey, Tewksbury, what the hell’s going on up there? Is it something in the water!

The rest of the results over the next three search results pages were really boring. I would counsel anyone looking for sex fun on the Internet to not include the word “Library” in his or her searches. Just a little tip from TG to his readers.

The actual topic TG had planned for this entry was sparked by a silly little article on the excellent site io9.com that reports on science stuff. The article, titled An Architect’s Guide to Famous Villain’s Lairs made TG realize that he hadn’t read any thrillers for the last year or so where the villain had a secret lair, usually an island in some remote corner of the ocean, or underwater in the tropics. This has been a fixed thriller trope forever, one that TG has grown heartily sick of and was glad to see fade out of the thriller landscape. Really, it has become almost impossible to invent one of these mad scientist laboratory hideaways without immediately thinking of Dr. Evil’s lair in Austin Powers series.

But then TG started leafing through his towering stack of old reviews and realized that the secret lair plot hasn’t really disappeared at all, though it has morphed somewhat into variations of that theme. Recent examples include Robert Tanenbaum’s Butch Karp series where one of the good/bad guys has set up shop in abandoned subway tunnels under Manhattan (a classic favorite lair setting); Apocalypse by Dean Crawford has a vast undersea lair in the vicinity of, you guessed it, the Bermuda Triangle; a recent thriller TG can’t remember the name of  houses its secret headquarters under the Mall in Washington DC; then there’s Chimera, by David Wellington about a group of genetically designed savages who have escaped from a secret laboratory prison camp in rural New York. And with his memory thus jogged, TG now faintly remembers plenty more of these various takes on the secret lair plot or subplot. So, once again, TG has proved himself wrong after actually looking beyond the surface of one of his fleeting thoughts concerning a possible blog topic.

The truth is, the Secret Lair, or Secret World, is a powerful image, one that springs from 19^th century fiction where boys, young men and older adults stayed glued to the page in rapt fascination as evil scientists and maniacal, power-mad, fiends plotted their wars on mankind from the bowels of their underground, undersea, remote mountain, jungle, lairs.

So, ok, go ahead and give us the modern equivalent, thriller writers. But be careful. The slightest misstep and the image that will come to the readers minds will be this one

 rather than a classic H. Rider Haggard novel.

TG may have spoken of Haggard before, the name and especially the novel She reminds TG of a powerful memory. At about age eleven in West Virginia TG caught scarlet fever, a rather Victorian disease, and was put to bed for several weeks. In the days before the discovery of antibiotics this was a disease that killed many. Thomas Edison’s partial deafness was thought to have been caused by scarlet fever. Or scarteltina as it was known in those days. At any rate, the young TG was in bed and bored, having read every one of the Tarzan books in the preceding weeks, when he heard his mother and aunt talking in the hall outside his room. “Do you think he’s old enough?” TG heard his mother ask. “Well, probably. At any rate, he’s read everything else in the house,” my aunt replied. So pretty soon they came in bearing a book bound in the same red binding that all the Tarzan books sported, and gave me She, which I devoured because not only was it a fabulous, exciting tale, but because I thought there must be some mystery in why one had to be a certain age, and I suspected, maturity, before being allowed to read it. Actually, it was kind of sexy, as the following dust jackets will suggest. In its day it was wildly popular and as of 1965 had sold 83 million copies making it one of the biggest selling books of all time. TG wonders, a bit sadly, if anyone ever reads it these days. Probably not, and we are a poorer world for it. OK, check out the covers, they are hot!

Five Mistakes Thriller Writers Make

One of TG’s writer pals who is just starting a thriller requested this topic. TG is happy to oblige. First he will laugh at the idea that there are only five mistakes that thriller writers make, but to make it a bit less intimidating, we’ll start with five.

First of all, TG doesn’t need to go into the whole twin thing, does he? Is there anyone out there so deluded that he/she thinks that it would be clever to bring in a twin, known or unknown, good or evil, to solve a plot problem? Yes, I’m sure there are, but we can easily clear this one up by a total twin injunction. None. Not ever. Problem solved.

OK, the number one biggest mistake thriller writers make -- these are writers who run the gamut from unpublished to the biggest names in the business -- is introducing, or attempting to introduce, romantic elements into their story. From girlfriends, to wives, from femme fatales, to enemy agents, these ladies are always stunningly beautiful, smart and often deadly or totally naive. They are always brought in to fulfill some clichéd, supporting role. TG has always said that the most dangerous job in show business is being the wife or girlfriend of a thriller hero. Most of these babes are destined to end up tied to a pole in the grimy basement of some nutter’s killing lair while the hero dashes around trying to implement a rescue before all her extremities are cut off one by one or little holes are drilled in her head while the fiend keeps her alive and awake throughout the process. Thomas Harris pretty much invented this sub-genre, kept it alive and beat away anyone else who jumped in to copy him. And yet TG reads and reviews dozens of pale imitations of Harris’ books every year. Twenty years ago there was some room on this playing field, ten years ago you could join in if you had a brilliant twist, but now it’s just a matter of piling more crap on top of crap. (TG will admit that there a few exceptions that are good, but they are extremely rare.) So why do we keep seeing this tired plot played out again and again? TG is sorry to conclude that there are lots of readers out there who just can’t get enough of this stuff. They love it, they buy it and as long as that continues, writers will write it and sell it. So whenever a thriller writer introduces a hero who is happily married or in a solid relationship with a lovable, pretty, caring, funny love interest, TG mutters, uh oh, she’s a dead woman.

The chief function of a love interest is, as noted above, to introduce a female-in-peril element, as a ploy for sympathy for the hero when the woman gets killed, or to add some sex to the scenario. Thriller writers know that the bulk of their readers are men, and men love sex, right? So why wouldn’t they love some sex in their stories? It’s a perfectly good question, and the answer should be yes, some good sex might spice things up a bit, but the truth is that 99% of thriller sex is so badly written that it is almost always laughable and always cringe inducing. Why? Because it’s damned hard to write a good sex scene.  TG knows this from first-hand experience. TG has told this story before, but it’s instructive, so here it is again.

When TG’s alter ego, Allen Appel was writing his first published book, Time After Time (available as a Kindle here) he wrote a sex scene between the hero and his girlfriend. Appel labored over this scene until he had it finely tuned, or so he thought. One feature of the scene had the female participant repeating the word Yes a number of times, Kent Carrol, Appel’s astute editor, simply wrote the word No in the margin of the scene. Absolutely right. ‘nuf said, he spared Appel the embarrassment of reading a detailed explanation of why the scene was terrible. (Just a question here, do women really yell the word Yes! during sex, besides in movies?)

Here’s the point: most of us, and that includes TG, just aren’t good enough to write workable, exciting sex scenes. To do it well, you’ve got to be good on the order of Nabokov, Lawrence or Updike. Bad sex scenes, even mediocre sex scenes, will kill a thriller’s momentum and pull the reader right out of the story. So here’s TG’s tip: just don’t try. As many have said, the writer’s greatest tool is the reader’s imagination. If you want to have your characters have sex, fine, walk them to the bedroom, shut the door and let the reader imagine the rest. If you’ve done a good job with your characterization, it will work.

Another reason writers try to put romance into their thrillers is because they feel this will make their characters more likeable, more realistic and less one-dimensional. TG is sure that this may be true of many books, especially when the word Literature is floating around, but it’s not only not needed in a thriller, it’s a mistake. I have even heard thriller writers say that they put the romance in to attract women readers to a male-dominated field. These are the same folks who have their heroes weep. But we’ll get to that in another essay. Those tactics never work. Here’s a secret: thriller heroes, and villains, don’t need to be rounded and nuanced. In fact you don’t want them to be. You want them lean and fast and dangerous, which is exactly the way you want your plots and your writing. I would say that in any other genre you can get away with and probably even want to have more complicated characters. But not in thrillers. There you want story and speed. Leave the complicated backstories in your outlines and research and first drafts.

So unless you’re a real master at it, and TG is here to tell you that you probably aren’t, leave out the romance. You can’t go wrong if you leave it out, and you can go very wrong if you put it in.

Now that all that has been said, TG admits that he has read many books, and thrillers, that include women as solid characters who add to the richness of the story and the complexity of the plot. After all, you can’t write a convincing book without women. Well, you can, but the world is half women so why would you want to? The problem comes when men writers try to write about the physical and spiritual elements of love. Most are just not any good at it. So why try to cross that particular minefield unless you absolutely have to?

Boom!

A Correction and Big News

In Thriller Guy’s recent review of 50 Shades of Grey he stated that after the first big sex scene (which occurred on page 112, not on 120 as he mistakenly reported) there were only five or so more sex scenes in the book. After reading other reviews of Shades, TG has found there were 15 more sex scenes, which is a number significantly higher than five. TG regrets this error and admits he may have been reading rather hastily and hopes that those seeking a heap o’ sex scenes in the novel didn’t pass it up just because TG said there wasn’t all that much more meat in the freezer. (Meat in the freezer? Where the hell did that image come from?) But onto The Big News…

TG is announcing that he and his alter ego Allen Appel have put up a New Website, The Appel Store, where readers and writers can find a plethora of goods relating to Allen Appel, his writing and his rants. At the store, visitors will find a list of Appel books and novellas now available for purchase and access to writing services provided by Appel and Thriller Guy. If you’ve got a book that you want to write, a book that you’ve already written that you’re not happy with, or other writing projects that you need help with, this is the place for you.

Why The Appel Store? We’ve all seen the stories: Unknown author writes book, puts it up on the internet and makes a gazillian dollars. Hmmm, that pretty much describes 50 Shades of Grey right there. There are other stories, though, about authors who have published successfully in the industry in years past and now are rejected because they weren’t successful enough (meaning they didn't sell enough copies) to keep publishing with the big boys, writers who have a large backlist that they put up as Kindles and find new life as eBook authors, tales that fuel imaginations and give hope in an industry where there is precious little hope. But are these stories just anomalies, or is there really a future for writers outside mainstream publishing? Thriller Guy decided to work up an experiment and see what’s truth and what’s pie-in-the-sky. Enter, The Appel Store.

So check it out. Buy a book. Buy a novella. If you need first class help in your writing endeavors, contact us. Let us know what you think. Thriller Guy will keep a running diary of how the enterprise fares and try to discover just how the eBook, independent publishing business really works, if it works at all beyond putting up vanity works. Check it out, there's some excellent stuff here.

THE APPEL STORE. 

Gore Vidal and an Unrelated Sex Story

Most of the quotes you’re going to read from Gore Vidal are snarky comments about politics. Thriller Guy had to search to find one that was about writing.

"How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself."

Thriller Guy now adds Vidal to the list of recently dead writers. Unfortunately, TG has little good to say about the man. He was an OK fiction writer, though TG didn’t read all that much of his work, mostly the American history fiction, 1876, Burr and Lincoln. As all the world knows, TG’s alter ego Allen Appel has his own Lincoln books, first, the time travel adventure, Book Five of the esteemed Pastmaster series, In Time of War, soon to be available in eBook format, (place your advance orders now) and the already-in-place eBook, Abraham Lincoln: Detective. The point here being that Appel and TG know a hell of a lot about Lincoln and Vidal’s book had some outright mistakes and included a lot of material that is now considered not historically accurate. And TG must add, the style and writing of the book was “popular” to the point of sounding both unoriginal and pedestrian. So, rather than go on about the matter, TG will just say that perhaps the man’s essays were his strongest point. TG will also refrain from pointing out (you know how TG hates to speak ill of the dead) that over the years Vidal had turned into something of a conspiracy crank and his pronouncements on American politics became more and more ridiculous.

TG will just sum up this way: Gore Vidal was no Harry Crews.

But you are saying, “How about the sex story, TG? You promised us a sex story about a famous publishing professional.” OK, Here you go. I originally told this story in a blog entry several months ago, but I decided, probably wisely, that the time was not right to tell it so I never put it up. Is it true? I have no reason to think it’s not.

Several months ago TG noted the passing of the famous Grove Press publisher, Barney Rosset. If you don't know who Rosset is, check him out here. He was a giant in the industry for many reasons, a giant and hero in our popular and literary culture. An editor of mine once worked with Rosset at Grove Press. Every year the staff had a tough time coming up with a birthday present for Barney, he had been everywhere, done everything, and had everything he seemed to want. So one year, here’s what they came up with.

After work on his birthday the staff, or some of the staff, told Barney they were going to take him to his birthday present. This was in New York City. They left the building where they worked and went to a street in the West Village, stopped in front of a brownstone and handed the birthday boy a key. They told him to go into the house and upstairs to the master bedroom. He had the place for 24 hours and he could do anything, anything at all to what he found in the bedroom. They left him there, standing outside on the sidewalk.

Inside, in the bedroom, was an incredibly beautiful African American woman, naked, chained to a huge wheel that was affixed to the wall.

Happy Birthday, Barney.