State of Denial: Iain Kelly’s new novel for these ‘Interesting Times’

There’s an old Chinese curse that wishes the unlucky recipient to

Live in interesting times

Now, no one – be they Brexiter, Remainer, environmentalist, climate change denier (Donald Trump, I suspect, might be all of the above, depending on what time of night he’s tweeting and how much cheese he ate before he snuggled up in his jammies) – could say the early 21st century isn’t just that

Interesting.

We have an American President who spills his scrambled brains in public at any time of day or night, who slams a free press and pulls his country back from environmental reforms at a moment of global catastrophe.

We have a British Prime Minister who behaves like a despot, illegally closing parliament when it doesn’t agree with his policies, sacking long time supporters when they do the same, is determined to drag the country towards an economic abyss because his backers have gambled big on a no deal Brexit.

We have a sixteen year old girl with Aspergers talking more sense, being a better leader to a generation than a whole room full of squirming, suited, self-serving politicians …

Interesting times indeed.

Perhaps this is why Iain Kelly’s State novels resonate so deeply.

Set in a world post huge environmental collapse, in an undemocratic state that controls every aspect of peoples lives from what they eat to how they spend their time and what medication they can take.

And yet, even here, revolution smoulders.

State of Denial (the second of Iain’s State Trilogy) is out today.

It is election time in The State, the citizens prepare to vote. A journalist from the Capital City, Maxine Aubert, heads north to report on growing resistance to the powerful ruling Party. Ex-police detective Danny Samson returns to the City he once fled, leaving behind a new found peace in the wilderness. Together Max and Danny become entangled in a burgeoning opposition movement with links to Danny’s past. Soon they learn the ruling Party will do whatever it takes to remain in power, and one life is all it takes to spark a revolution.

A novel for our interesting times.

Here’s a link to Iain’s site.

And if you’d like to read a previous interview I had with Iain on the release of the first State novel – A Justified State – see here.

Which top ten films were based on books?

Image: Pixabay

 

My son wants to go to the cinema this weekend with his pals.

He’s got to the age where he’s happy to pay to sit in a cold auditorium, his shoes sticking to the soft-drink-soaked carpet as he struggles to concentrate on a loosely-plotted, CGI laden, convoluted storyline over the sound of cola slurping, sweet-wrapper rustling and ringtones.

After years of sitting through countless animated features of widely varying quality, I’m quite happy for him to go to the cinema without me.

We did see the new Star Wars movie as a family the other week, the first few minutes of which were accompanied by periodic cussing from a drunk the staff had seen fit to allow in.

The man’s outburts were unsettling for several reasons: his language, which was bluer than the sky over the sun-soaked beaches of Malibu: the violence of execution, which was threatening and sporadic, meaning we’d have a few moments of unnerving, distracting peace waiting for the next explosion of filth (which, if it isn’t a thrash rock band name, should be): and finally, the fact that apart from the light from the screen, it was darker than a sewer in a power cut in there and the man was sitting close behind us.

So rather than wondering where Luke Skywalker had got to and why Chewbacca had aged better than Han Solo, I was left wondering if (a) the lunatic in the darkness was capable of physical violence as powerful as his verbal violence and if so (b) whether he had smuggled in a knife /machete / meat cleaver or any other such weaponry and was prone to the occasional blood-soaked rampage.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away

M***ER F***ER

is probably not the opening JJ Abrams had in mind.

Fortunately, after ten minutes or so of this, someone overcame their natural English reserve, and got up to complain that disurbingly screamed obscenities and beloved family sci-fi francises don’t mix and the gentleman in question was removed.*

Anyway.

There’s nothing as landmark-y being screened at the moment, but if the lad is off to soak up some multi-plex block buster nonsense, the other half and I were hoping to watch a film too – favourite being Leonardo DiCaprio being mauled by a bear and left for dead in The Revenant. Personally, I feel he deserves no less for Titanic – I have a long memory, people.

After seeing the book of the Leo vehicle in the supermarket today, and knowing that the boys will likely be watching Goosebumps, I wondered how many of the current top ten movie offerings at my local cinemas are based on books.

The answer was:

The Big Short : based on a non-fiction account of the econimic crisis by Michael Lewis.

The Revenant : Michael Punke’s  fictonalised account of a frontiersman’s fight for survival.

Thirteen Hours : Mitchell Zuckoff’s non-fiction account of the Battle of Benghazi.

Goosebumps : based on the kids’ horror fiction series by R.L.Stine

Room : based on the prize winning novel by Emme Donoghue.

The 5th Wave : based on the YA sci-fi novel by Rick Yancey.

6/10 – that’s a big chunk.

Now, this is the first time I’ve done this, so it could be that in a fortnight, they’ll be no book-inspired offerings. But I doubt it, for I’m sure we’ve all noticed the feed-through.

The Hunger Games, the Harry Potters, the Lord of the Rings movies – innumerable D.C and Marvel offerings – all have started out as paper and ended up celluloid, or code, or whatever format it is filmmakers use these days.

What can we aspiring authors learn from this?

Well, that filmmakers and movie studios don’t like to risk their bucks and reputations on untried ideas and would rather writers and publishers did it first. And that if you write a book that’s at least semi-successful you’re quite likely to get a film deal out of it.

I also wonder to what extent authors now write with cinema in mind.

Maybe they don’t do it consciously. But now we’ve had several generations who have grown up with TV and cinema filling some of the imaginative voids in their heads, is it possible NOT to imagine the framing of a scene, the score, the special effects?

Come on, writers. What do you think? 

***

*The person who got up and complained wasn’t me, of course. It’s possible I would have sat there for 2 hours 15 minutes, tutting loudly as the man’s screaming grew more frenzied, only grumbling to a staff member after said loony had laid about me with his blade of choice.

How fundamentalism has helped a children’s classic to the screen

Image:Pixabay

Why is children’s and YA fiction so underrated?

It still seems to me that the general populace are under the delusion that writing for young people is somehow easier than writing for adults.

I guess I can see why to some extent.

Often in the past, the word counts have been shorter than adult books, which translates to many as less effort from the author (though this has changed over time – Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking books are chunky enough to hammer plasterboard into place). And some of the subject matter hasn’t helped as much is genre – fantasy, sci-fi, horror etc. And as we all know, ‘genre’ – whether in books or on the screen – often translates with reviewers as populist-not-really-serious-just-aiming-for-the-big-bucks rather than writing something-worthy-where-nothing-happens-apart-from-the-protagonists-growing-slightly-older-literary-fiction.

This preconception is not altogether true, of course.

Yes, there’s a fair bit of sparkly vampire nonsense out there and who could fail to notice the number of black-covered, fang-themed knock-offs cramming the bookshop shelves after the huge success of Twilight? As you also must have seen the grey simulacrums that stuffed the same shelves when E. L James was at her mucky masochistic height.

(On a side note, how quickly must publishers churn this stuff out when they spot a mega hit? It takes big publishers up to two years to get a book out in normal circumstances, yet Ninety Shades of Grey, Seventy Shades of Off-White and 101 Unhygienic Things To Do With a Handwhisk were chugging through the tills before most of us had agreed on a ‘safe word’.)*

Anyway, I digress.

A lot of serious subjects are tackled in the world of kids’ fiction. Apart from approaching heavyweight subjects such as mental illness, sexuality, suicide, the individual’s fight against totalitarianism, many are at least as well written as most ‘adult’ fiction.

Take the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Yep, they’re classed as kids books, but if you haven’t read them, please don’t let this put you off. They are well written, layered, dealing with more complex issues than 90% of the ‘2 for 1’ paperbacks in your local Tesco.

The Amber Spyglass was the first children’s book nominated for the prestigious Booker Prize – that’s how well written this stuff is.

Problem is, movie makers in their wisdom, thought it would be a good idea to take this knotty, beautiful trilogy and turn it into popcorn-multiplex fodder, as you may have witnessed in 2007’s The Golden Compass, reducing the subtle etchings of the first book into a one-note plot-driven piece (complete with new-Bond Daniel Craig) and skewing the public’s perception of the works in the process.

After lobbying from Christian fundamentalists in the States, the film had a disappointing box office and the sequels went unmade.

However, thanks to our beloved BBC, all is not lost – at least for those of us living in good old Blighty. For Auntie Beeb has commissioned a series based on the trilogy. So over several hours, we can hope to see something closer to Pullman’s original idea realised.

So, hurray for Pullman! Hurray for the Beeb! And hurray for intolerance!

For if there had been no anti-Golden Compass lobby, all three books may have been made into less than adequate films, thus making another adaptation redundant.

Do watch the BBC adaptation if you can – but read the books first, as a reminder of how great some children’s literature can be. 

***

 

*Don’t search Goodporn for these titles – I made them up. As I made up Goodporn. Or, at least, I hope I did.

The novels’ calling card: What makes a good book title?

The four oldest Bennet sisters relaxing at home

What do The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Pride and Prejudice and the Zombies, One Hundred Years of Solitude and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People have in common? 

They’re all on Barack Obama’s nightstand, just waiting to be read come the end of next year when he’ll have a bit less on his ‘to do’ list? Maybe.

They’ve all been adapted for TV or film? Close, but Pride and Prejudice and the Zombies hasn’t quite made it to the screen yet. It’s due out next year, which kind of scuppered my petitioning of the BBC, who I hoped would finally pay attention to my ( hundreds of ) emails and put their costume drama budget where their mouth is. Sunday nights after Antiques Roadshow is surely the best slot for a blood-soaked Elizabeth Bennet giving the zombie hordes the ass-kicking of a Regency lifetime? Alas, it was not to be.

Anyway, have you guessed the link yet?

A gold star and a sticky bun* if you guessed they all appear on the Goodreads Best Book Titles list, alongside To Kill a Mockingbird, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and my personal favourite Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank: A Slightly Tarnished Southern Belle’s Words of Wisdom.

Some of these titles are so familiar, they’ve passed into our cultural landscape. In fact, they’ve not only passed into the cultural landscape, they’ve been eroded by cultural wind, rain, hail and snow until they’re now merely molehills in the lawn of language. What I mean is, although the books are still strong, the very ubiquity of their titles has lessened their impact.

But look at them with sparkly new eyes and a brain fresh from a cotton wash cycle, and you’ll revisit their power.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In a phrase of genius, Douglas Adams has summoned every dogeared travel guide you’ve ever seen tucked down a backpacker’s jockeys, taken us by the hand and opened up a universe of adventure and Vogon poetry. You know what the book’s about before you’ve read a word.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. A spin on Dale Carnegie’s  self-help guide How to Win Friends and Influence People, you just know this is the loser’s guide to gaffs and social faux pas on a heroic scale.

I could go on, but I can sense your attention drifting and if I don’t make my point soon, I fear you’ll skip to that video that’s trending on You Tube – you know, the one with the juggling bears and the armadillo in a track suit.

My question is, what’s in a name? And the answer most definitely is a damn lot, thanks for asking.

I can’t say I agree with all of the choices. For instance, in pole position on the Best Titles Grid is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick. Now, for a serious sci-fi novel which dissects the very concept of what it means to be human, I’ve always thought it was a clunky, rather jokey title. Although, it is an intriguing one and at least hints at the contents more than the catchier Blade Runner, which was what Ridley Scott renamed the story when he adapted it for the screen.

Would How to Win Friends have been as popular if it hadn’t referenced the title of another book that’s passed into common usage and put a darkly twisted, low beat spin on it? Would One Hundred Years of Solitude have become one of the classics of  twentieth century literature if it had been called ‘The bloke who built a shiny city where  generations of his family suffer weird misfortunes?’ Well, probably, yes, assuming the contents of a book is still the most important thiing.

But Gabriel Garcia Marquez might have found his task more difficult if he hadn’t devised such a beautiful and evocative title for his novel.

So even if the title doesn’t have to sum up the plot of the novel, it has to intrigue us just enough to scan the blurb, to make us open the cover and dip our toes in a new world of words.

The title is the fishing hook, the calling card of the novel.

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What’s your favourite book title and why? 

*Sticky buns not provided.