Are You Legit?

By Andrew E. Kaufman, author of psychological thrillers

So lets say you decide to write a book.

You’ve always been a fan of the things, had a few ideas swimming around in your head, and have wanted to take a stab at it for as long as you could remember. Now, here you are, finally connecting with the courage needed to commit those hungry fingers to keyboard, passion to dream.

After X amount of time, your novel is finished, and then, BAM! Away you go, uploading your book to the KDP platform, ready to take on the world and be the next Nora Roberts or Stephen King or whoever you think is the bomb.

First question: are you an author?

Well, technically speaking, yes, because you’ve:

A. Completed a novel.

B. Published it.

C. Can call yourself whatever the hell you want.

And really, in this era of self-publishing, that’s how a lot of established authors got their start (myself included).

Next question: are you a legitimate author?

Here’s where it gets a little murky. Back in the day, it was all so black and white, the gold standard of legitimacy being whether or not an author had a publisher. But since authors can now do that for themselves (and not be called hacks), those lines have become blurred, if not completely tossed out the window.

That begs the question: what makes an author legitimate? Admittedly, in this era of self-publishing, the question feels a bit circular, trying to answer it much like nailing Jell-O to a tree.

But just for heck’s sake, let’s give it a shot, anyway.

Does selling a lot of books make you legitimate? Well, it might, but I’ve seen some horrendously edited, grammatical monstrosities reach the top tier of the bestsellers lists. Do we get to pull those authors’ Legit Cards based solely on that? In theory, I suppose we could, but since the readers have already spoken (and since, really, the market is driven by sales), you might find some resistance from the masses who have purchased those books.

Which brings us to the next demarcation: What about writing a good book? Nope, have to shoot that one down straight away, because good is a matter left to subjectivity, and unlike sales, there’s no unit of measurement to make a determination (Okay, there are ratings and reviews, but...well, never mind).

How about a level of commitment to your craft, or even better, your passion? Again, same as above: no quantifiable way to judge that. Except… there was the whole mood ring thing, but that blew up years ago, after it was exposed as a big thermochromic, flim-flam operation (oh gawd, did I just terribly date myself.)

On my quest for a more concrete answer (and again, just for kicks) I decided to ask The Google, which in turn, told me to ask The Webster, which in turn told me this:

Legitimacy: conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards.

So there you have it, defined by Webster (the accepted authority on this sort of thing). As authors, and with respect to legitimacy, we are all hereby, created equal—that is, so long as we conform to recognized principals or accepted rules and standards. What are those? I suppose that’s a topic for another post.

As for me, I’ve taken a semi-praiseworthy crack at it. Anybody else want to give it a whirl?

In the meantime, while we wait for the comments to flood in, I've called on good buddy, MC, to  provide his spin on this weighty matter.

So without further ado, for your entertainment... It's Hammer Time! (Word).

Take it away MC!

Sexy on a Stick, or Broken and Flawed? How do you like them?

By Andrew E. Kaufman-Author of psychological thrillers

The tattooed, bad boy biker.

The sexy, iconic rock star.

The brooding detective with a tortured soul who always finds the killer.

Let’s face it, those characters are likeable and appealing, and they’ll always sell. It’s why we see them every day on TV, read about them in novels. If I’m going to be completely honest, I may or may not have even fantasized a time or two about being a few of them. Maybe even pondered the idea of changing my name to Chance, Shane, or Luke.

But those characters have never felt very real to me; in fact, other than their tough exteriors and chiseled jawlines, there’s not much else I remember about them.

When I sat down to create Patrick, the protagonist in my bestselling psychological thriller, The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted (and its newly released sequel, Darkness & Shadows), I was hoping to break the hero mold. I didn’t necessarily want perfect—I wanted perfectly flawed.  I wanted a hero who was not your everyday hero.

So how did I do it? I went against the thriller grain and broke some rules.

What I ended up with was a very un-Hollywood male lead who could still be appealing. After stripping down the tough exterior you often see with typical heroes, I allowed Patrick’s emotional vulnerability to not only be blatantly exposed, but to help tell the story and drive the plot. Yes, he’s a victim of a horribly tragic and abusive childhood, but he refuses to remain that way. He’s not out to save the world—he’s desperately trying to save himself.

To further his depth and complexity, Patrick suffers from OCD. He’s a journalist obsessed with making lists, consisting of the same words over and over, page after page. His OCD is a coping tool used to survive his unthinkable childhood. Instead of experiencing his pain associated with the abuse, he instead learned to list it. The problem? What saved him then, haunts him now.

But that wasn’t enough for me. More damage, more layers, more angst. More! I gave Patrick a disease where even the slightest cut can make him bleed to death. While this makes for some great and terrifying action scenes, it’s also a powerful metaphor that runs through these books: his childhood has left him emotionally scarred and afraid of being broken open. With his blood disease, he’s as susceptible on the outside as he is on the inside.

And last, but certainly not least—because he’s never had it—Patrick wants desperately to be loved. And he wants to give love. This is his journey in life, and much like everyone else, he has to find himself first.

Typical? Well, not so much, I guess, when you consider the gold standard for some fictional heroes--but I wasn't going for the standard. I was going for flawed. I was going for vulnerable. 

I suppose it was only after I’d completed the first book, that I became a bit worried about how Patrick might be seen by readers who were hoping for a more archetypal male lead, but I write from instinct, not logic. Was it a risk? Sure, but I'm a firm believer in taking them when instincts dictate, and it seemed to have worked. But even today, I still have difficulty breaking him down and capturing his appeal.

So for balance, I looked for a female point of view. My friend and fellow author, Jessica Park, had this to say:

“Look, I’ve read about the hot, perfect, studly leads. In your books, you give us a character, Patrick, with all his raw, emotional, tortured pain. And you also give us Patrick as a hopeful, determined, insightful, and beautiful person. Female readers fall in love with him because of his willingness to examine his own damage, to tear apart his years of hurt, and to battle against the past so he can find a better future for himself. It’s in his pain, and in his fight, that we see meaningful bravery and strength. That makes for powerful, intoxicating reading. And that also makes us want to scoop up that hottie and take him home with us.”

Authors and readers:  How do you like your heroes? Tough as nails? Sexy on a stick? Metrosexual? Self-actualized? Really, there is no right or wrong, and when I think about it, maybe we actually need them all.

Happy Thanksgiving,  everyone!

That Evening I Spent with a Hooker

By Andrew E. Kaufman, bestselling author of psychological thrillers

Before becoming an author, I spent several years working as a broadcast journalist. I loved television news. It was exciting, fast paced, and packed with second-by-second, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants energy—something I’ve thrived on since childhood (read: adrenaline junkie).

Besides experiencing the joy of being at the center of all the energy and feeling the pulse of the city pounding in my head, I got to see a side of life few ever do on a daily basis.

The underside.

Photo courtesy: Kay Chernush for the U.S. State Department

Which for some reason has always fascinated me. This is likely why, after finally leaving the news business, I went on to write thrillers (once an addict, always an addict, you know?) On some
unconscious level, I probably took a lot of what I saw during those years with me, using it to add depth and dynamics to my characters and stories.

And no joke: I saw it all.

From homicide scenes, to filthy meth labs, to blazing fires, to dead bodies sprawled across freeways. You name it, we chased it, and after that, served it up at eleven.

Oh, yeah…the part about the hooker.

In all my years as a journalist, there’s a defining incident that I don’t think will ever leave me.

One evening, we were out on an undercover story about prostitution. This was at the very start of my career, so some of the details are a bit sketchy. I can’t even recall what the actual story hook was (sorry, wasn’t trying to be punny, there), but I think our goal was to find a prostitute so she could help us attract Johns. Of course, with an eleven o’clock deadline, we only had a few hours to accomplish this.

Long story short, we found our girl, and a young one at that, maybe eighteen, maybe younger, wearing tattered shorts and a t-shirt that didn’t look clean. Frizzy hair with hardly any makeup. She leaned in through the window, smiled at us, and then surprisingly, obliged to help us out. Soon after that, she was in our car, and away we went.

As often happens in the News Biz, our John angle ended up falling flat, but what I remember most wasn’t that—it was what she said to us pre-interview, agreeing to do it with one caveat:

“You have to block out my face, because my mother watches the news.”

As soon as those words left her mouth, mine dropped open.

I know this is probably going to sound terribly naïve, but I hadn’t envisioned her as having a mom that she still maintained contact with, let alone being worried about her finding out she was a prostitute. I suppose that on some level I was aware it could have been possible, but in that instant she became so much more layered and dimensional to me, no longer just a nameless street hooker living out a life of destitute. She was a real human with real feelings, just like the rest of us.

And I wondered what happened to this woman. What drove her into this sort of life? And going even farther back, what life events set her up for this. Was it about the drugs? Maybe something from her childhood?

Unfortunately, I never found those answers. She got nervous about her pimp, cut the interview short, and within minutes, was back to walking the streets.

Everything after that became a blur of hurried commotion. It was getting late and close to deadline, so we pieced what little we had into a story, then fed it back to station live in order to make the eleven o’clock show.

But I’ll never forgot that evening I spent with a hooker.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

At some point while writing a novel, the author has to decide whether to use real cities, real streets, real places, and real things. I’ve often thought it would be fun to create a whole new world such as fantasy or science fiction writers have to do. But since I’m not ready to embark on that journey yet, I just need to decide how much of the real world to use.

My books are set in San Diego with streets and buildings that many people recognize. I think that was a wise choice as I often receive comments from readers who have visited my city and they tell me how fun it was to read about places they had frequented. I make every attempt to describe these settings accurately. On occasion, I need a restaurant or some other building that requires a different exit, different lighting, or whatever. When that happens, I choose to make up the whole setting rather than distort the real one. I have one such restaurant in my first book, but most of my places are very real. All the other restaurants are genuine, the courthouses are genuine, and the streets and highways are all real.

My “legal” mind says “don’t distort the facts.” But then I remember I’m writing fiction. Hello. I’ve already made up a whole book, what difference does it make if I make up a set of stairs, or an information desk, or another exit? I realize, of course, that many people wouldn’t know the difference, but what if they do?

What do you do as an author? Do you use real places? If so, are the details accurate? As a reader, which would you prefer, or does it even matter? 

Teresa Burrell

Author, Attorney, Advocate

www.teresaburrell.com

How to Write a Sex Scene

By Andrew E. Kaufman

A while back, I did a post about sex scenes: I said they had no place in thrillers. I also said I’d never put one in my novels.

Then fate gave me a double-barreled shot of whoop-ass, when I realized I needed to have—you guessed it—a sex scene in my upcoming novel. There was absolutely no way around it. Darkness and Shadows is a psychosexual thriller, and you can’t have seduction without sex. It’s kind of like a cone without the ice cream. Won’t work. 

The whole point of the scene is that the protagonist’s love interest becomes emotionally vulnerable after their encounter and reveals something about herself she normally would not. This sets up the premise for the entire plot.

After realizing there was no way to avoid this, my next step was to write the scene without losing my reader (and my credibility). When I finished the chapter, however, I was surprised to find it actually worked. Here’s where my learning curve took me. I'm fully aware this is going to sound like an instruction manual, but I'm keeping it as clinical as I can, folks. 

  

If you’re going to add sex, it should be crucial to the plot

There has to be a specific purpose for a sex scene. Why? Because anything less will come off as gratuitous, if not pointless. Much like violence—or any other element, for that matter—if an action doesn’t drive the plot forward, it’s excess weight on the reader's mind. I know my sex scene was necessary because I ran hundreds of other scenarios through my mind (I was earnestly looking for a way out), but none came close to being as effective. So perhaps a good question to ask yourself when considering whether to add sex to your novel would be: is there a better device I could use to make my point? If the answer is yes, lose it—if not, go for it.

You don’t have to name every part

At first, my scene was just one big hot mess. Seriously. I don’t need to give the details here, but what I realized was that none of the explicit details were necessary; in fact, they undermined what I was trying to accomplish. Since we’re talking about plot/character-driven elements (i.e.: purposeful), the scene wasn't about what the characters were actually doing—it was about their individual motivation. It was about the people, not the parts. Which brings me to the next point.

Focus on the emotions

Since the purpose of the scene was to advance the plot, what actually mattered was what the characters were feeling and thinking. The act itself was a vehicle—not an actual road. So, when I revised the chapter, I focused instead on what was going through my protagonist’s mind (since we’re in his POV) as well as the words and actions of his love interest, so I could set up for the big reveal when she finally pulled back the curtain and uttered those ominous words.

Keep your characters in character during sex:

Yes, people do act and speak in ways they normally wouldn’t when they’re sexually aroused, but we’re talking plot here, not real life, and it served no purpose to have my characters express themselves this way during my scene—in fact, it would have only distracted from the point I was trying to convey in the first place. Another thing I had to pay attention to was my narrative (which again, is from my protagonist’s POV). Using explicit language in my prose would have been out of character for him, and in effect, would have bumped the reader out of the story.

Sex is generally fast—the scene should be as well.

Yes, I know there are exceptions, but if you’re writing a thriller, everything has to move quickly, and this kind of action is no exception. Since the scene occurs as a flashback instead of in real-time, I didn't have the luxury of going on and on (and on). Memories are fleeting. Even memories about sex. 

And after polling my readers, I found that most don’t want sex scenes in their suspense novels, but most stated they could tolerate one if it didn’t go on for pages and pages. So my scene moved rapidly but realistically. I made my point, made sure the reader got it, then I moved on. The entire scene took up three-quarters of a page.

It's not always what they do—it's what they don't do

In other words, sometimes it’s not what’s actually written on the pages—it’s what stated between the lines. The reader will get it. They’re smart. In addition, if there’s a budding romance between characters, the tension building between them can be even more provocative than actually having them fulfill their needs. If you write it correctly, the reader will feel it as well.

Deep breath.

I think writing this post (and avoiding the inevitable innuendoes) was more difficult than writing my actual scene.

What are your thoughts?