I write for a living and, more than that, I write because I love it. I always have: my first coherent story (a taut action-mystery-thriller in the ageless style of Alvin Fernald) is… let’s say “stored for posterity” in an old steamer chest in my garage. Handwritten, hand-bound, and illustrated in pen AND crayon – indisputably the best work I produced, circa 1979.
I’m proud of that little book, and the kid that wrote it. I’m proud of all the stories I’ve written since (even the ones consigned to my “still needs work” folder), the ones I’m working on right now, and (of course) Hidden Things. It’s a hell of a thing, to hold a book in your hands and see your words made solid in the world.
Things that make me happy.
But I’ve never quite felt I was done with Hidden Things. Not quite.
Because for me, part of a story is telling it; actually speaking the words. Putting your characters’ rage and fear and joy into the air. Making listeners laugh, or cry, or groan. It’s simple: I was surrounded by storytellers as a kid, and that was what they did.
Now, I get to do it too.
Thanks to the efforts of my amazing agent and the fine folks at HarperCollins (who returned audio rights to me simply because I asked for them), I now have the opportunity to record the Hidden Things audiobook and make it available exactly the way I wish every audiobook could be.
Take some of your own writing and rewrite it in a different POV.
Those of you who’ve read Hidden Things, pull it out and read page four.
Done?
Right. Here we go:
Mikey took the phone from me with his bad hand – the one that looked wrong. “She sounds… nice.”
I snorted, because it was funny. Ridiculous. My eyelids sagged. So tired. “Sure.”
He fidgeted, the way he used to, tugging at his clothes as if they were stuck to him. “I’m glad you decided to stay.”
“For now.” I tried to meet his eyes, but his face… The whole house, really: right and wrong. I remembered playing here, the two of us, sun fuzzies floating in the light through the window, the room so warm you’d get sleepy. No sun, now. The wind pushed at the walls, tested the windows, sent little rattling things over the roof or down through the walls — that at least hadn’t changed. “Long enough to get this straightened out.”
“You mean fix it.” His face was ugly. Ready to cry on one side, one step short of a screaming fit on the other. Ugly.
“I suppose.” I made myself stand straight — forced the slouch out of my shoulders and rolled my neck. “I made a promise, didn’t I?”
“And you always keep your promises.”
Had he always been so angry with me?
I turned away from the face. Stared out the window. “I try.”
“You try.” The thing’s voice was bitter. “Not when you won’t even look-”
“Shut…” I bit down on my own anger; on what it tried to make me say. “Just… shut up. I’m going to try. We will.” I looked back, forced myself to see him — really see him — but couldn’t hold it. “Maybe we can’t.” I turned away. The window was safer: easier to look at him in the reflection. “If we can’t, I’ll head home and try to figure something else out.”
“Head home?” I saw his window ghost hunch. Contract. “You are home, Josh.” His reflection faded. I heard the rasp of a dragging step behind me — his bad foot. “I thought you knew that.” The skittering in the walls changed – there was snickering now, and scraping, building up, like cicadas in the summer, but harder, harsher. Worse than I ever remembered.
Like him.
My heart squeezed in my chest. I turned, trying to find my brother in the dark of the room.
“Mikey?”
Thirteen seconds later, I was dead.
Ooh. File this under “I almost wish I’d done it like that in the first place.”
Is your reading group meeting to talk about Hidden Things? Are you just discussing it over coffee with a friend? Did you assign it to your Modern Lit class during a fit of whimsy? Then this reading guide (long promised, finally finished) might be for you!
… and that’s it! I don’t have much more to add to this little announcement, except to thank Edi for inadvertently giving me well over half the material for this guide. (Writers: treasure a reader who asks good questions!)
Like the title says, today (well, at 7pm central) I will be on Reddit answering All The Things during an AMA or “Ask Me Anything.”
The basic idea is quite simple. I make a post to start things off, the ENTIRE INTERNET shows up and asks me stuff, and this evening I answer their questions.
If you have a Reddit account, I’d encourage you to drop in and ask something (because five random questioners will win a copy of Hidden Things).
If you do not have a Reddit account, I’d encourage you to make one and then drop in and ask something (because five random questioners will win a copy of Hidden Things).
So: possibility of free stuff for the low low price of bugging me on the internet. WHERE IS THE DOWNSIDE?
I never thought of Hidden Things as urban fantasy (which is the way it’s often characterized) because ‘urban’ doesn’t really come into it very much, and it didn’t seem to have any of the trappings I typically associated with the genre. Vampires, sexy or otherwise, are nowhere to be seen; neither are werewolves. Ditto Chosen Ones, surly street wizards, or talking animal companions. There is magic, to be sure, but no spellbooks. Tattoos don’t factor in any significant way, and everyone’s is hair a reasonable, manageable length, and generally the right color.
My inspirations came from other areas: Hammett’s stories of Sam Spade and Continental Op gave me a frame of reference for early parts of the story, and the style and pacing of pulp science fiction and fantasy writers like Roger Zelazny have imprinted themselves on me so deeply I probably have Doorways in the Sand encoded somewhere in my DNA. Neil Gaiman’s light touch with the supernatural is something I’ve always loved, as well as Stephen King’s gift for characterization.
If you are at all on the fence about picking up the story, I suggest checking it out.
Hidden Things is out today! Here are the latest reviews (that I know of — if you spot one I missed, let me know). Let’s see what people are saying…
Kirkus Reviews, notorious purveyors of the cutting one-liner, gave the book a pretty terrific review, calling it “agreeably creepy” (which makes me smile) and Calliope a “clever, determined, dauntless protagonist.”
Though not exactly a review, the Library Journal gave Hidden Things a great shout-out in their “Hungry for SF” Genre Spotlight.
Reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s dark fantasies and the early books of Stephen King, Doyce Testerman’s fantasy debut Hidden Things (Harper Voyager, Aug.) follows a young woman as she embarks on a surreal cross-country road trip after receiving a phone call from her dead business partner and former lover. This exploration into the supernatural places that lie hidden in the American heartland was a pick of “Books for Dudes” columnist Douglas Lord at the Fourth Annual Librarian Shout & Share program at June’s BookExpo America conference.
My Bookish Ways (really gorgeous website, by the way) put up a very touching review of the ARC. The reviewer says lots of nice things, none of which I’m (quite) shameless enough to repeat verbatim, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go and read it.
Finally, if you just can’t get enough of these reviews (or want to write one of your own), Goodreads provides, with reviews ranging from five-stars down to no-stars-did-not-finish. (Hey, you can’t please everyone.)
My favorite reviews?
The ones that say “I want to know more; when’s the sequel?!”
So Hidden Things officially releases tomorrow — I’ve gotten a lot of messages from people telling me that they’ve gotten notification their preorders are on the way, which is both very scary and very exciting. There have been quite a few reviews posted already (more on that in another post), but obviously that doesn’t compare to the number of people about to put their eyeballs on the story — I really have no idea what the end result of all that is going to be, so I’m going to focus on what’s going on right now.
“Right Now” Means…
This week is going to be kind of crazy.
Today, the Once and Future Podcast has a new podcast up, and it’s me, talking about Hidden Things! Well, it’s me and Anton Stout, and we’re talking about Hidden Things, Adrift, writing, City of Heroes, Tolkein, Lord of the Rings, TheSilmarillion, MMOs, fan fiction, lego, Skylanders, tabletop gaming, dice obsessions, and pretty much every other nerdy thing you can pack into an hour and ten minutes.
Wednesday, I will be reading and talking and signing books at the Tattered Cover, a great Colorado indie bookstore. This will be my first public reading, ever, which means I will probably screw it up in some kind of hilarious fashion, and you should totally stop by to point and laugh and post pictures on Facebook.
Thursday, I will be doing an AMA, or “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit’s r/Fantasy, organized by the fine moderators of that subreddit. I will have more about this as we get closer to go-time, but as a pretty rabid redditor I have to say that I’m incredibly geeked-out and excited about this, and I sincerely hope THE ENTIRE INTERNET shows up to ask me questions about… you know… whatever. I mean, it’s supposed to be about writing, and Hidden Things and probably NaNoWriMo and gaming stuff but… whatever.
Thursday will also see me drop by for an interview with Chuck Wendig on terribleminds.com (direct link when it goes up), which will include a short story that I’ll be hosting here. Also, I’ll be countering his baseless slander and accusations with an interview of my own, with Chuck, posted up here on the same day.
Friday, I’ll be doing a reading/signing up at Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins, another great indie bookseller. I’m excited about this one as well, especially since I really have no idea what to expect from this event, in terms of visitors and audience.
The object of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge is for participants to read at least 12 debut novels during 2012 – one from each month of the year though you may read them anytime between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012.
(Last week, Hidden Things won the Qwillery’s 2012 Debut Author Challenge August “Cover Wars”, which I’m really happy about even though I had nothing to do with it — it’s just cool that other people liked it as much as I do.)
That’s it for now — I’m still trying to sort out September events coming up, but stay tuned.
So, as a lead in to this, let’s take a look at the cover of Hidden Things. Because I want to.
Is she not lovely?
Now, it’s hardly a secret that I love this cover, in part because I had a lot of input into the sort of elements I thought should go into the thing. My understanding of the publishing industry (confirmed by many) tells me that having anyone ask the author what they think the cover should look like is a pretty unusual thing and I sent a lengthy email capitalizing on that chance. Thus, I am doubly lucky, first to have been asked, and then to have my input interpreted by someone who is very clearly pretty damned good at their job.
So that may make this contest seem a bit crazy and stupid, to which I can only reply: “It definitely is, and it definitely is not.”
The Contest:
Here’s what I want you to do.
Design a cover for Hidden Things.
That’s it.
Any style, any medium. It can be something completely different, or more of an homage to the official design, or whatever. Sculpt in clay. Use mad Photoshop skills. Snap a picture of a chalk drawing on the sidewalk with your smart phone — I DON’T CARE.
It certainly doesn’t have to be serious — I have a cover already, people — in fact I might give a special prize for the funniest and/or very worst submission. Have some fun, people: make something.
My agent talked me out of submitting this redesign, incorporating my favorite part of Maureen Johnson's blurb.
Once you’re satisfied, email me a picture (or video, or flash file, or… whatever) of your submission to doycetesterman@gmail.com or post it to my Facebook wall or on G+ or on Twitter, and draw my attention to it somehow.
You have until August 18th.
No, that is not a lot of time. Yes, that means it can’t be perfect. That is rather the point.
But wait…
Many of you will be saying “Um… Doyce? I don’t know anything about the book, really.” And you’d be right.
So here’s what I’m going to do.
At the end of this post, I will include the exact same email that I sent to my amazing editor when she asked me for cover ideas. If that isn’t enough for you, ask questions in the comments section.
I will have at least three ARCs to give away for this (including ‘cover that made me laugh hardest’), so your odds are… not terrible!
And Now, the Email
Hi Guys,
I’ve attached some images to go along with various thoughts I’ve had about the cover. I see a couple ways it could go (and I’m sure there are many others), so here are a few photos and ideas.
1. Creepy Abandoned House
This is the idea where the cover shows us the setting for some of the significant scenes, and focuses on creepy, melancholy abandoned farmhouses. Bob Merco is a photographer from Colorado who likes to do these sorts of shots, and while I’ve never met him, I imagine we’d get on fairly well — if nothing else, I like his photos.
2. Long Road Home
In this concept, the focus is on the open stretches of the midwest and the long road home, but still with a bit of a focus on potentially surreal imagery. Only one image here, but I think it conveys the general idea.
A potentially interesting thing here it to take the basic picture and kind of cover it in scribbles that suggest an entirely different landscape.
3. Modified Map
Graphically, this is the hardest to do, I think. The idea is to take a basic road map and scribble over it the same way as [SPOILERS] just before Calli [SPOILERS]. I’m no good at graphic design, but I’ve included a map that looks ripe for scribbling.
4. Word Puzzle
On it’s own, I don’t know if this conveys the feel of the story very well, but I still really like it and the scene it’s from, and if it’s not the cover, I would LOVE for it to be the interior cover page [Doyce’s Note: It is!] , so I can scribble on it and circle important words when I sign books. Which important words? Well, there’s twenty-three in the puzzle, all related to the story in some way.
5. Word Puzzle plus an Image
Now, while the puzzle itself doesn’t make a terribly compelling/accurate cover by itself, I saw a movie poster not that long ago that gave me an idea for taking some other image and overlaying that over the text, which I think actually WOULD be kind of cool, if the image behind it was appropriately creepy/spooky. I’ve attached the movie poster, so you can see what I’m talking about.
And aside from that? Sidewalk chalk drawings. Creepy kid’s crayon sketches… there’s lots of different things that would work, depending on what your art people are into. I’m open to whatever, as they are undoubtedly much better at this than I am.
