For today’s special Mayan apocalypse-themed post, I’ll be posing a dilemma faced by one of the characters in APOCALYPSE MOON.
(I won’t say which character, in case you haven’t read the book yet because it’s very spoiler-ish.)
When making a dash from their home to a doomsday-prepped retreat in the hills, this character brings certain books. But along the way they are robbed, have to bargain their way out of trouble etc. Sometimes books are traded for their burn value. In the end , only THREE books can be saved. In APOCALYPSE MOON, those three books turn out to be highly significant to the story.
I put that question to Anthony Horowitz, Michael Grant and Junot Diaz, three authors whose books I admire, and who’ve written (or are writing) novels featuring post-apocalyptic mayhem.
Junot Diaz replied with a charmingly mis-typed message from the Dominican Republic: Pita. In dr. No email. Typing tid on cel phone. Have to skip. Please forgive.
Duly forgiven!
So I’m stepping in as the third author to add my selections to Anthony’s and Michael’s. The only rule was this – the books you choose to save must be in your house right now.
Michael Grant
In case you’ve been living on another planet for the past few years, Michael’s fantastic GONE series features a thrilling, paranoid world in which everyone over the age of 15 has simply GONE. The kids of Perdido Beach, CA are left to duke it out amongst themselves. But the phenomenon that spirits away everyone over their 15th birthday has made its impact elsewhere too. Mayhem, action, politics and romance are only part of the result. Think Lord of the Flies meets X-Men.
Hmmm. Okay. Has to be a book currently in my house. I have a lot of my own books, but I’d burn them — they’re available digitally, plus I’ve already them. There are also a lot of my wife’s books, and I would want to be very careful about saying I’d burn any of them. Very careful. My choices are mostly about books that have taught me something and whose particular strengths I cannot match in my own writing. But the three I would absolutely not burn.
Terribly cliche answer, but TheLord Of The Rings. It’s not that the prose is particularly wonderful, it’s not. It’s pretty bad in parts. It’s the world-building. No one before, and very few after, touched Tolkien’s deep, erudite, devoted world-building.
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian. As with Tolkien, I admire the erudition, the level of knowledge. But O’Brian is a much better writer of prose than Tolkien. This is the second in what became a 21 book series, and I learned from O’Brian that there were different ways to bring a satisfying ending to a particular series book. His characters are absolutely indelible.
The City and the City – China Miéville. I have a pretty good imagination, if I may be immodest. But Miéville made me take a step back and say, “Whoa.” He’s not much for character development, but he’s a good writer with a really first class imagination.
Of course on any given week I’d have a different list.
Thank you Michael! We’re looking forward to the finale of the GONE series: LIGHT, out March 2013.
Anthony Horowitz
Again, for those currently living in the International Space Station, Anthony’s POWER OF FIVE series is a modern-day epic fantasy in which an ancient threat that once dominated the Earth now looms on our horizon. Only five teenagers – the reincarnation of ancient guardians who once banished the evil Old Ones – stand between us and oblivion. But what’s this? – the final book is titled OBLIVION. Which I guess tells us that the Power of Five needs that extra final push. I’ve been saving this one to read over the Christmas/New Year break.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – William Schirer. This is the best history of the rise and fall of Hitler and the Nazis that I’ve ever read and a vital lesson to future generations. It’s an extraordinary examination of the nature of evil and one we all have to understand if we’re not going to repeat it.
The Oxford Book of Poetry (2008). I suppose this is a bit obvious but I love reading poetry and this one book contains so much genius, so many great poets. If you want to read what humans were like – what they loved, what they thought – before the apocalypse, read their poetry.
Great Expectations– Charles Dickens. I’d save the complete Dickens if I could but if you’re only going to allow me a measly three books, I’ll keep this one, the greatest novel ever written (in my opinion).
Thanks Anthony!
Finally – my own choices.
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Would be my own candidate for the best novel ever written except for the fact that it doesn’t tell the story of one main character but rather of a whole village. I usually admit that this is my favourite book when asked and have written more about it here.
Labyrinths– Jorge Luis Borges. A collection of amazing short stories that has influenced authors including Thomas Pynchon, Umberto Eco and me. There’s more plot in many of these than in many novels, which is one reason I’d save them. Each story or essay takes the reader into a world of erudition, imagination and wonder.
The Arabian Nights – translated by Sir Richard Burton, Easton Press edition. One of several books my father let me choose from his library of leather-bound Easton Press books. (Oh the woe of not being able to save them all!) The tale of Scheherazade and her incredibly story-telling skills has always been one of my favourites. Surely the best short story collection ever?!
HOWEVER! If I also owned my father’s leather-bound collection of Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge stories, however, one of the three books above would not be coming along for the apocalypse. My sister Adriana is going to have to save that one for posterity.
I emailed Junot a photo of his book-stack and we’ve been in contact since. Recently, Goodreads asked me to suggest some interview questions for a forthcoming major feature on the Goodreads site, about Junot’s forthcoming collection of short stories, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER.
If it’s anything like as good as Junot’s debut, DROWN then I will be one happy homegirl. (Dude’s narrative swagger is infectious. He’s got me outgunned with the metaphor and wordplay though, sin duda.)
It made me realise that I’d quite like Junot to answer all of my suggestions. Very kindly, he agreed to answer by email. So, here we go!
1. You must have been asked this one a zillion times but – here goes. As a former sci-fi obsessive and Dungeon Master, I recognised Oscar, but Yunior, much less. As a fellow author, I have to recognise that most authors are writing something of themselves into every character. Either the person they think they really are, or the person they either would like to be, or fear they might become. Yunior and Oscar seem to me like they could be opposing aspects of your own character. Is there any truth to that? And if so, can you give us a percentage – how much Yunior, how much Oscar? Or could it be that you’ve concealed your true self within Lola?
Hard to parse oneself, especially when we’re talking about our fictional creations. Characters like Lola and Oscar took all my heart to write but does that mean they’re half of me? Hard to say. Though it’s true: what made Oscar and Yunior interesting is that they represent opposite sides of something that they’re each fascinated and tormented by. Yunior is incapable of dropping his social masks – he’s always putting on a persona, always passing for a male, always playing the role, never really letting anyone know who he is.
Throughout the novel we meet many of his various guises but we never truly meet the man himself. One cannot find love unless one drops all masks, all pretenses, unless one reveals oneself and makes oneself totally vulnerable to the person they seek to love. Love after all requires intimacy and intimacy is only possible when you expose yourself utterly. Like many boys of his time and place and upbringing Yunior wants to be able to find love but was raised to avoid vulnerability at all costs. He has many lifelike masks with which he tricks the women he’s with, so many masks in fact he has forgotten that he even has a real face. Oscar on the other hand is never anything but Oscar. He has no masks and therefor cannot adjust himself to a given social situation just to get a girl, which is what Yunior can do all the time. Oscar can play no ‘roles’
and Yunior can never show himself. They each have what the other wants and so they circle each other and this is why Yunior is drawn to Oscar. In him he can see what he’s missing though he’d never admit it openly.
But to answer your question most directly: Yunior is my alter ego and has been for a while. But Oscar is also my alter ego. I grew up with roleplaying games and comic books and scifi books and like Oscar I was tormented by apocalyptic nightmares. As for Lola she was inspired by the Dominican ex girlfriend of my dreams. The woman who completely changed my life. And that means she too is a part of me. How much–hard to say.
(Ooof, fascinating answers! Especially intrigued by the revelation about Lola.)
2. You’ve been writing Yunior for a long time now. We first see him as a nine-year old in DROWN and at the end of Oscar Wao he’s about to be forty. Now, in your latest collection This Is How You Lose Her, you’re returning to Yunior. It’s common for teen and YA authors to take their characters through a coming-of-age, I totally get the appeal of that. But we tend to leave them hopeful, on the brink of adulthood. What are the challenges and the appeal of returning to a character you’ve developed for so long and taking them through the experiences of early middle-age, which in many ways have so much less sparkle and lustre?
One trades the lustre of youth for the burden of wisdom, for the weight and power that comes from confronting oneself over a longer span of years, and in the process coming to terms with the consequences of all your choices. I mean, damn, if we’re lucky we all age. And what I’m discovering is that it takes a lot of courage to face the years once youth has faded. I never knew that when I was young. Me, I’m interested in making art about the human experience and this is one confrontation, with growing older, that clearly has never ceased to fascinate artists. And it certainly fascinates me. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing about young people. But as an artist one wants to be able to write productively about all the stages of life. Having insight in your work about what it means to be 44 is as important as having insight in your work about being 14.
3. Like many of your readers I am dying to read your sci-fi, post-apocalyptic novel. Is it going to be called Monstro? How is it coming along? YA readers are somewhat obsessed with this subject matter so feel free to tell us as much as you can…
Well, I grew up on the post-apocalyptic. Before this current craze I was a part of an earlier far less commented upon generation of end-of-the-worlders. We seem always to live in apocalyptic times. MONSTRO is going OK. Still much work to do. But the work at least is forging ahead. I’m working on the hero of the book. A sixteen year old girl from a destitute background who ends up battling a series of godzilla size monsters and the horrible menace behind them. (I know, this sounds like something more suitable for a comic book but hey what can I say–it’s what’s calling me now.)
(Hey – I’m not one to argue. Comic books stories are the type I’m called to tell pretty much all the time…)
4. I read in an interview somewhere that you were inspired to put aspects of a telenovela into Oscar Wao. It made me smile because I remember the moment that my agent became really excited about the plot for Invisible City. He kept reacting with this kind of meh, until I just thought, OK, well let’s throw in something to this teen thriller, action-adventure novel, that would normally belong in a telenovela. And the agent flipped over it. It certainly helped me to get a debut book deal but on the other hand, I suspect it alienated some readers because of the unexpected mix of genres. Oscar Wao is a totally genre-mixing novel, which is why I adore it. Monstro sounds like it could be the same kind of genius-mix, again. Do you think it’s an inherent part of our immigrant-identity, to produce mestizo fiction? Could you ever see yourself writing a pure genre novel?
Hard to say. Much mestizaje often leads people to dream strongly about purity. Just check the countries from which we hail where the obsession with all forms of purities, from racial to class, is overwhelming. I think I’m a hybridmonger, not only because of my upbringing and my Caribbean-ness, but also by inclination. It’s how I think. I would love to write a purely genre novel. But I also have to learn to write faster, since at this rate I’ll be lucky to finish MONSTRO before I turn 60.
(Crumbs, let’s hope not, I won’t last that long waiting!)
5. Your top three tropical music nightclub recommendations, please? My top three are La Maraka, Mexico City, Casa de La Musica Galiano, Havana, El Grande @Club Colosseum, London.
You’re so much better at this game than I am. I don’t remember the names of any of the clubs I’ve gone to. There was a spot in Bogotá that I adored but whose name escapes me. There’s of course 809 in New York City which is simply fantastic. And in the Dominican Republic R there’s El Secreto Musical where they strictly dance Cuban son and in the days of my youth was about the most fun one could have in the DR.
(I wanna go to El Secreto Musical!!!)
6. Your favourite salsa band?
I’m a huge fan of Eddie Palmieri’s work and of course Hector Lavoe. When they’re on a track or an album I’m in heaven.
(Let’s take a minute to absorb the genius of Hector…)
7. Salsa, merengue or reggaeton?
I prefer the one you left out–bachata!
(OK – we need no more proof that Junot is in fact a marshmallow – bachata is verrry smoochy and romantic…)
8. Mario Vargas Llosa or Gabriel Garcia Marquez?
That’s easy. GGM all the way. There’s something cold about Vargas Llosa that has never sat well with me. But that’s just me, clearly.
(I wouldn’t agree quite with ‘cold’, but calculated, maybe.)
Thanks so much, Junot! I’m sure you’ll be doing lots of interviews now that we’re all about to read THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER. Junot has promised to get a free (hopefully signed) copy of the book to one lucky reader – if you would like to enter the draw please leave a comment with the title of your favourite short story by Junot, by August 31st, and be sure to use your real name and email address so we can get that book to you.
If you’d like to know more about Junot, you can follow his unofficial (but devoted) twitter updates @JunotDiazDaily and fan-made Junot Diaz Tumblr page.
And then today Ewan wrote another article in the Graun, rather good for a broadsheet article about the niche and wonderfully weird topic of fanfic. @MrEwanMorrison and I had a Twitter conversation about it in which I mentioned an article I once drafted in 2006, entitled ‘We’re All Writing Fan Fiction Now’.
Ewan suggested I dig it out and publish now. I must not have enough displacement activities to distract me from the WIP because I agreed.
Amazingly, I was able to find the draft of my article. I read the first page and realised why I hadn’t published it in 2006. The article suggested that both Russell T Davies (at the time, the new producer of Doctor Who, at the time) and JK Rowling were, in fact, writing a kind of fan fiction.
In 2006, that might have been taken as a bad thing, so I stopped writing the article. I wasn’t yet a published author, and certainly didn’t want to annoy anyone in TV or publishing. I still don’t.
I began my writing career as a 100% fanfic author, and a co-editor of the first Blake’s 7 webzine, The Aquitar Files. So when I say that someone is basically writing fanfic, that is no bad thing.
Here’s the original article I drafted.
It’s all very well being obsessed with the characters in a TV show or a movie, but what’s to be done when the lights go dark?
No-one’s sure when written fan fiction started but as far back as the days of travelling troubadours people have been entertaining their friends with ‘what if’ stories based on well-loved characters.
Traditionally, adventure stories didn’t bother much with emotional subtext. Heroic characters, sidekicks and their shadowy counterparts in the realm of darkness would play out their roles in the fight between good and evil. How they felt about anything was left up to the imagination of the audience.
For some in the audience, however, that wasn’t good enough. This is where fan fiction really took the dive into innovation. By crossing into territory previously uncolonised by ‘canonical authors, fan fiction took on a flavour all its own. You’d never see Kirk actually fall in love, get married and have kids on ‘Star Trek’ – at least not without the famous ‘reset’ button that most long-running TV shows had at the end of arc-breaking stories. You’d definitely never see Kirk kiss Spock – ever.
When fans starting writing their own TV shows, however, some of the conceits of fan fiction began to invade the actual show. To some extent, the originators of this invasion were the creators of Star Trek – The Next Generation. Series 1 and 2 begin very much in the same vein as TOS. The first glimpse that we might see something fannish; arc-breaking and leaning heavy on the private lives of the main characters, was Data’s sexual encounter with Tasha Yar, followed by his robotic puzzlement and grief at her death.
Tasha Yar seduces Data
Ever since Russell T Davies, long-time fan of Doctor Who, became the series’ new producer, a fannish element has entered the show; the emotional life of The Doctor. Fanfic often explored the loneliness of the nine-hundred year old Time Lord, but we saw nothing more than a hint of it in the TV show. We may have suspected that Sarah Jane Smith was secretly in live with the Doctor, but with Rose Tyler, it’s not mere subtext any more.
But that’s fine too. Why shouldn’t the producers of a TV show themselves enjoy a bit of playing around in the sandbox of their own creation?
The 1980s detective-comedy ‘Moonlighting’ was a ‘shippers’ paradise (shippers being fans who obsess about the potential for a romantic relationship between two characters). More than this, it appropriated another device of fan fiction; the alternative universe setting.
Maddie and David
By experimenting with the narrative – setting the characters in a Shakespearean or a film noir context, for example – the writers effectively were writing canonical fan fiction.
Fan fiction is the open market for ideas around a popular TV show, novel or film. Everything and anything is up for grabs. Fan writers try everything and by some Darwinian process, the ‘echt’ ideas emerge. Having been exposed, as fans of a particular genre, exactly what comprise the key emotional triggers, the most appealing ‘what ifs’, today’s generation of genre screen and novel writers are hardwired to deliver the goods.
That’s why Harry Potter broods over the loss of his parents and his feelings for Ginny, whilst E. Nesbit’s adventuring children manage to brush over any grief they might have about their absentee parents. The painful emotional backdrops were always there – Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter as well as the kids from Mary Norton’s wonderful ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’ were war evacuees. They had to be running any gamut of emotions right there. It’s just that in those days, somehow, the adventure of the story was expected to be enough; the emotional stuff was left understated.
A.S. Byatt has written that it is ‘childish adults’ who read Harry Potter. As a self-confessed ‘childish adult’ and Harry Potter reader, I’ll admit that as a group we are probably responsible for the bleeding of fan fiction-esque elements into genre fiction.
Some of us even like our fiction peppered with literary references, mythology and symbolism, but then that’s geeks for you.
Henry Jenkins, author of what’s become a textbook on genre fandom, Textual Poachers, observed that fandoms build primarily around genre creations in which there is a significant mismatch between the intended audience for the ‘product’ and the hardcore fans. For example, the Harry Potter fandom was not built by 9-12 year-olds (the target audience), but (mainly) by women in their twenties. The fanfic then fulfils the unmet wants of the hardcore fans – who will likely have rather different proclivities.
Fan fiction isn’t new, but as audiences become wider and reach parts of the population for whom they weren’t necessarily designed, the subtext is what is exploited. If we love stories of spaceships and exploration, we can merely create our own. Why waste creative effort writing stories about characters we already know, if not to explore what the canon does not or will not: the subtext?
That’s where I stopped writing. But now that the lid has been blown on fanfic, maybe it’s time to round off my reflections from 2006.
I’m not saying that these canonically unexplored proclivities are always sexual. My own years of dabbling with fanfic were also about finding a way to exercise my writing muscles, via pastiche; Blake’s 7 stories in the style of Italo Calvino, etc. But my own fanfic was also at least 50% about the sexual relationships between the characters.
There will doubtless be protestations on the comments of his article, but I’d agree that Ewan Morrison is right that of all these subtextual fascinations, the dominant one in fanfic is sex.
If fanfic is about exploring subtext, then we really are all writing it now; published or unpublished and on screen. Sherlock, anyone? Elementary? House of Silk? Professional fanfic.
But then again, so is any version of Robin Hood.
Ewan uses the analogy of Ouroboros – the worm that devours its own tale. It’s perfectly apt. One fiction’s subtext becomes the next fiction’s text.
Just look at the genealogy of 50 Shades of Grey:
Part of the many-layered subtext of Buffy was that in her relationship with Angel, her innocence was threatened by his dark side. Buffy and Angel stories were about control, who has it, who gives it up. Twilight stripped away most of what was extraneous to the urban paranormal story of Buffy and focused on the innocent human girl’s relationship with the tormented paranormal creature: Bella and Edward. But the subtext of that story, right away, was about the older, controlling male and the girl’s subconscious desire to submit. So EL James, like many other Twiglet fans, stripped away all the extraneous backdrop of that fictional universe and exposed the subtext: controlling older male as ‘Dom’ to the young girl’s ‘sub’.
And because of that, now you may find yourself talking about BDSM to perfect strangers. Or your mum. Yikes.
It’s gotten so that once an author is aware of who the hardcore, active audience really is, they may even tailor the story for that audience. Easy to do if you’re entertaining adults – for example Torchwood, where apparently ‘the slash is canon’ (Thanks, @SympleSimon!). If your primary audience is children, you need to be smarter, but you can still manage it.
Harry Potter invites fan fiction; a smart move by someone who is surely not blind to the benefits of letting your audience indulge a mania for your invention. Just like Twilight, HP has inspired a generation of authors who cut their teeth on fanfic. So far the most successful former HP fanfic author is Cassandra Clare, whose Mortal Instruments books explore the darker aspects of YA fantasy in a Manhattan setting.
It no longer a niche thing to write fanfic, it’s become one of the best ways to make money in publishing. Ewan suggested to me that this year’s as well as next year’s biggest publishing successes have their origins in fanfic. His article suggests that we’re moving to a situation where the original creation (if anything can be said to be original at all) earns less than the fanfic it inspired. E-publishing has enabled this to happen. Are we in danger of all new creation grinding to a halt?
Firstly I’d argue that we’re not. Every iteration shifts the debate along. Mortal Instruments, a by-product of Harry Potter fandom, is very different from The Worst Witch, an earlier version of the magical kids at boarding school story. There’s enough that is new; we rather seem to like stories that are just like the one we already enjoyed.
Secondly, I’d say that fanfics have already surpassed the earnings of their inspirational texts. All vampire stories are Dracula fanfic, but Anne Rice probably earned more than Bram Stoker and Stephanie Meyer earned more than Anne Rice. EL James looks set to earn even more than Meyer. Oh well.
Where I agree with Ewan is that because of epublishing, it is happening faster.
As a former writer of fanfic, I tend to stick to the original principles – it should be free. Like many, I was baffled by the craze for poorly-written erotica, not because I doubted that people wanted to read it, but because I was baffled that people didn’t know how to type ‘free erotic fiction’ into a search engine, and were therefore prepared to pay to download it.
There’s at least one solution – flood the market with cheap, easily available erotic fanfic.
Here’s a free idea for any tech entrepreneurs out there: design a search engine to index free erotic fanfic, scrape up the content and crunch it through something which spits the text out as mobi or epub. Charge a subscription and get subscribers via Kindle, iBookstore, Kobo. The subscription isn’t for the content but a service charge for the reformatted data, so you have no content fees.
Heck, on the Interwebs, someone is probably already building it.
Like most however, I do believe that author worth their salt ought to work on something at least slightly original. And the authors I most love and respect are some of the most original; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Haruki Murakami and Junot Diaz.
In fact, I was lucky enough to get Junot to agree to a brief interview for this blog. Junot Diaz is at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Saturday. Check back here on Friday for the interview, to find out about Oscar, about Yunior, and about Junot’s favourite salsa band.
I’ll bet there aren’t many fans of the adventure genre who don’t owe a huge hunk of debt to one of the greatest fictional characters of all time – Tarzan. When it comes to strange exotic lands, jungle adventure, action, mystery and fighting the good fight, Tarzan has it all. So how great was it to hear that children’s author Andy Briggs was bringing us an authorised re-imagining of Edgar Rice Burrough’s classic character?
Here’s my reaction to the first book in the series, TARZAN – THE GREYSTOKE LEGACY:
CRACKING jungle adventure with the one and only, all-time best eco-warrior, Tarzan. It took me right back to Saturday mornings watching Jonny Weismuller. Gritty, realistic with its portrayal of the forces of guerrilla politics and greed in the heart of the African jungle. Modern, yet fully authentic Tarzan.
I’m delighted to invite Andy Briggs to be interviewed here about Tarzan, as part of his blog tour for the second book: TARZAN – JUNGLE WARRIOR. Exciting things are in store for young Lord Greystoke, who’ll be taken on some modern African adventures.
Q1. Tarzan is very much a man of his time. What made you decide to modernise the character?
Tarzan was a man of his time when he first leapt onto the pages of The All-Story magazine, 100 years ago. He was an instant icon – the perfect symbol of physical perfection and a decisive hero, meting out justice while fighting for the underdog. That was a century ago. Most characters age with time and become less appropriate, but Tarzan has bucked that trend and become the more relevant now than ever before.
Edgar Rice Burroughs created the world’s first eco-warrior. Now, I know that term comes with a lot of baggage these days, but let me explain. In 1912, you and I could travel to the Dark Continent, whip a few locals and bag an elephant or two for sport and nobody would think it unusual. Of course, attitudes have changed these days and the animals and the indigenous people that Tarzan fought to protect are now, slowly, enjoying our protection. The apes that raised Tarzan were an unknown species – no doubt Burroughs based these on the legends of the man-like apes in the jungle. Mountain Gorillas were only discovered in 1902 and when Tarzan was created nobody knew anything about them. With all these elements in play, I felt there was room to expand this into a contemporary setting.
The last Tarzan movie to hit the big-screen was in 1999 and only 2 of the 26 Tarzan books Burroughs wrote are wildly available – yet he still burns brightly in popular culture. I discovered that in a room of 100 children, 99 of them knew the name Tarzan, that he was raised by the apes and lived in the jungle. But only half of them had seen a movie, and a handful had read the Disney book tie-ins. When I asked the other half of the audience how they knew Tarzan I was met with shrugs. They just do. He’s part of our collective culture. And, since he has had a quiet decade, I thought it was time to bring him back. The audience was waiting.
Q2. What are your favourite original Tarzan books?
Tarzan of the Apes was the first book, and the one that got me hooked on Tarzan. However, most people’s perceptions of Tarzan are tainted by the movies. Few people realize that, by the end of the first book, Tarzan is a civilised man about town who drives a car to rescue Jane from a forest fire in Baltimore. A far cry from the jungle warrior we all know and love.
Burroughs only got Tarzan firmly back to his roots in the jungle with the third book, The Beasts of Tarzan, which is my favourite. After that book, Burroughs primarily kept Tarzan in the jungle because that’s where the public wanted to see him.
Now, Orion is publishing the first 6 Tarzan books together in a collected Centenary Edition, and I had the pleasure of writing the foreword. I can’t wait to re-read them again!
Q3. Who is your favourite screen Tarzan?
Now I am going to be a bore and have to say it is Johnny Weissmuller, only because those were the movies I used to watch at home during the summer holidays and they have stuck with me.
(I’d have to agree with Andy, for exactly the same reason!)
However, one of the more accurate portrayals of Tarzan comes from Christopher Lambert in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan. A great performance, and the first half of the film is probably the closest adaptation of Burroughs’ book. The second half does wonder a little off the rails though.
Q4. There can be said to be three different ‘classic’ Tarzans. There is ERB’s original character; a highly intelligent man who spoke various languages, including the language of apes. Then the movie serial Tarzan – the strong, quite simple man of few words, and finally the comicbook Tarzan, who was more like the original character from the novels. Which of these Tarzans does your 21st century character most resemble and why?
My Tarzan slices through all the previous variations. When I started writing the books I ensured they were a re-imagining of the story and characters. This is something we don’t see much of in literature, but it happens all the time in the movies – most recently with Batman and Star Trek, which had excellent reboots. I felt the key was to capture the public image of Tarzan, while keeping him grounded with Burroughs’ original intentions.
Weissmuller’s Tarzan speaks in Pidgin English, which has become something of a Tarzan trademark. However, Burroughs had a complicated arrangement for the Ape Man. Tarzan taught himself to read English using a picture book, but then was taught to speak French by D’Arnot – very confusing! I didn’t want to use either incarnation, so my Tarzan starts off speaking Pidgin English, very Weissmuller like, but slowly improves his grammar the more he speaks. My reasoning behind this was that when he meets Jane, he hasn’t spoken to another human for several years. The words are thick on his tongue and he has trouble communicating – he’s still very smart, just hamstrung by language. Over the course of the book he improves, albeit marginally. By the second book, TARZAN: THE JUNGLE WARRIOR, Tarzan’s skills improve and he eventually slowly stops referring to himself in the third person.
The movie versions of Tarzan also made him more civilised. He lived in a tree house and respected human society. I tossed all that away. Tarzan is a primal creature, raised by wild apes. He eats raw flesh and can’t stomach cook food. The world is black and white to him, he can laugh one moment and snap into a rage the next. Social structures, human laws, and manners – they’re all trappings of a world he doesn’t understand. When Jane tries to explain the concept of money to him, it’s an uphill struggle – money is a meaningless construct of our artificial world.
Q5. On translating the world of original Tarzan – to modern day. ERB’s Africa was a to a great extent fantasy version of the real Africa of the early 20th century. After all, information didn’t travel as widely and easily as it does now. How far is your novels’ Africa a fantasy-version of real Africa? It seems to me from reading the first book that you’ve attempted to ‘keep it real’, which was part of the appeal for me. However, the fantastic has a firm place in Tarzan lore, so I’d personally love to see you use that too.
When Burroughs created Tarzan he had never travelled to Africa and accurate information about the world was difficult to come by. In fact, when Tarzan of the Apes was published in The All-Story magazine, Sabor was a tiger – until somebody pointed out that there are no tigers in Africa. Burroughs’ fantasy comes from his lack of available knowledge.
My Tarzan is set in the real world, amid real situations, but I don’t feel that lessens the fantasy aspects of the stories. I am still a firm believer that, even with all our modern technology, the world still has its secrets waiting to be discovered.
In the third Tarzan book I am bringing back the lost city of Opar, which lies deep in the jungles of Africa. Our modern understanding tells us that there are no lost civilisations in Africa – yet just a year ago a new tribe was discovered in the Amazon who had never made “civilised” contact. Mountain Gorillas were only just shaking their image as a cryptozoological species when Burroughs’ wrote about his apes. There is a lot we don’t know, and plenty of things are still waiting to pass from the realm of fantasy to reality.
I’ll cut to the chase. The reboot of the pre-existing Alternate Reality Game brought about 50 ‘likes’ to The Descendant facebook page, where you can read about the competition to win a Kindle Touch. Based on views at Where is Gabi Beltran? and its Youtube channel, I can see that about a hundred people were following the story, at some stage.
This enhanced content around THE DESCENDANT certainly increased the extent of THE DESCENDANT‘s Internet footprint. That is, when you type ‘the descendant’ into a search engine, results that are relevant to this book appear in the top ten results. Not easy to maintain given that in 2011 a major Hollywood movie (‘The Descendants’) and a major Malaysian, Chinese language TV drama (The Descendant, 2012) of the same title are competing for space in those results.
A big Internet footprint won’t sell books – directly. It may, however, contribute to credibility.
In summary, all these promotional activities, including me sending out emails to my mailing list, resulted in sales of around fifty ebooks/books in about four weeks.
Not too spectacular. But then, I doubt any single Joshua Files book sold much more via Amazon, during the same period. Certainly THE DESCENDANT often ranked at a higher level than any of The Joshua Files Kindle books.
I was aware, by then, that discoverability is the be-all and end-all of sales at Amazon. Other self-published authors had been reporting via their blogs that advertising and blogging, Tweeting and posting in Kindle forums etc, was having minimal effect. The only marketing tool what appeared to have any effect was the Kindle free promotion, available to authors who had enrolled in the KDP Select program.
We geared up for a two-day promotion by scheduling the following:
Pre-notifying sites like Pixel of Ink. If you fancy paying for an advert on Kindle Nation Daily, there is that too. (We didn’t)
Prepare an email for any mailing list
Schedule regular tweets. However, be aware that if your project is heavily retweeted, as THE DESCENDANT was (for which many thanks, guys!!!), some people are going to see a lot of tweets about your freebie. It may tip into spam… On the other hand, advertising gurus tell us that in these times of information overload, we need to see something twenty-odd times for it to register. One person’s spam may be another person’s vague awareness of your books’ existence.
Ask any influential contacts to retweet your freebie. I’m massively grateful to Chicklish and SFSignal for their power tweetage of THE DESCENDANT freebie. Once those guys were on board, the book really began to shoot up the charts.
Line up some kind of online news/promotion for when the free-promotion ends. I’d arranged with YA author Luisa Plaja,one of the creators of the popular Chicklish blog, to have an interview about THE DESCENDANT appear on Chicklish on the Monday after the free weekend. I’d also written a blog post for the Demention Blog, about my favourite post-apocalypse novel. That’s more of a Joshua Files tie-in, but still – on Amazon, all my books are linked.
The free weekend went pretty well! By the last six hours THE DESCENDANT on Amazon UK had shot to #1 on the Free Kindle action & adventure chart, #2 in the thriller chart and at its peak reached #14 in the overall Free Kindle chart.
Which means that for that time, and for all the time it was in the top ten (which was all of the 2nd day), THE DESCENDANT became visible to anyone browsing the top 10 of Action & Adventure and Thrillers.
Amazon UK Action Adventure chart June 18 2012
Things didn’t go as well on Amazon US, where it only reached #633 in the overall free chart and #17 in Action & Adventure.
The numbers:
Amazon US – 580 free downloads
Amazon UK – 2118 free downloads
What’s the point of giving your book away to the only people who might have bought it? Seems counter intuitive, right?
However, my approach is that your email and Twitter contacts deserve a little something for bothering to keep in touch with an author. If they manage to grab a book they’d like to read while it is free, more power to ’em.
Meanwhile, the Amazon free Kindle promotion acts like a catapult. It shot THE DESCENDANT from a rank of #70,000 overall to #14 (in the Free chart, but that’s a lot of visibility).
Once the promotion ends, Amazon takes around an hour to calculate its new position in the Paid Kindle chart. Amazon watchers are guessing that recent algorithms count free downloads as 1/10 the ranking value of paid downloads.
(A few months ago the Amazon free Kindle catapult had a more pronounced effect, because the free books were ranked 1:1, but those days are gone. Easy living lasts for so little nowadays…)
THE DESCENDANT hits #191 on Amazon UK
On the Monday after the promotion, THE DESCENDANT ranked at #3266 in the paid chart. However! Then the real sales catapult began! Now priced at 99p, the rank rose throughout the week. By Friday it had peaked at an overall rank of #191.
Just to stress how unusual that is for me, I have NEVER seen any Joshua Files book at a higher rank than 450 in the Amazon UK chart.
From #191 the book has begun a dignified slide down the chart. At the time of writing it is now #1307. The paperback version is also selling, albeit in very modest figures.
As of now, THE DESCENDANT is my best-selling book on Amazon. Selling even better than APOCALYPSE MOON – which only came out in April.
THE DESCENDANT sold 400 copies (about 380 ebooks, 20 paperbacks) in a single week. Not earth-shattering but not nothing either, and lot more than Amazon sales of The Joshua Files during the same period.
The question is – how to sustain that? This will be the next challenge.
MG Harris books ranked on Amazon UK in bestselling order
Michael Grant
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Would be my own candidate for the best novel ever written except for the fact that it doesn’t tell the story of one main character but rather of a whole village. I usually admit that this is my favourite book when asked and have written more about it here.
