So Much Stuff I Can't Recall

I had the pleasure of meeting author Brandilyn Collins at the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference in Mount Hermon, Calif., earlier this month. In addition to receiving some wonderful criticism on my work-in-progress manuscript, I had lunch with her and her husband and daughter (and four other conference attendees). Was the meal burritos? The conference is still a blur. Anyhoo, a wonderful time was had by all, even Brandilyn's daughter who dealt magnificently with mom trying to set her up with writers from the teen track.

Brandilyn's latest book is Web of Lies, the fourth and apparently final (though WoL demonstrates that there may be some wiggle room here) book in the Hidden Faces series. Joining Annie Kingston in this outing is Chelsea Adams (a character readers said goodbye to in 2002's Dread Champion). When a killer strikes in broad daylight, the pressure is on Annie to help stop him before he kills again. The adrenaline spikes when Chelsea brings Annie a vision of a sadist with a penchant for spiders. And then a skeleton turns up practically in Annie's backyard. And then ... no, that would spoil the fun.

And fun it is. Web of Lies is a well-crafted and -characterized novel. Heck, after Chapter 15 I had to remind myself to b r e a t h e (the tagline for Brandilyn's brand of "seatbelt suspense" is "don't forget to breathe" -- she's not exaggerating). There were a couple moments when I felt Annie was getting a bit angsty and victimy about the treatment she receives for being a Christian, but it didn't detract from the flow of the story (and was not outside of Annie's character, either). Longtime readers will no doubt be anticipating the "final twist" and they won't be disappointed; this one's a doozy -- it's burdened by some of the problems of a sci-fi time travel plotline, but it holds up well under analysis.

Prior to this I'd only read the first book in the Hidden Faces series, but WoL doesn't seem to have spoiled my future enjoyment of the intervening novels. If you haven't read any of the books (or the Chelsea Adams series), don't worry. Just fasten your seatbelt and keep your arms and legs inside the cabin until the ride comes to a full and complete stop. And that breathing thing? Seriously. Pack an oxygen tank or two.

As part of this month's Christian Fiction Blog Tour, Brandilyn Collins answered a half dozen questions for me. Read on:

1. (with apologies to Steve Martin) We met at Mount Hermon earlier this month. What was it like meeting me for the first time?
   
   Quite wonderful, naturally. I had the honor of critiquing your manuscript, talking with you personally, and generally getting to know you a little bit. It's great to meet someone like you who's talented and working hard on the craft, and is receptive to new ideas.
   
   And--if you don't mind my saying so publicly, I was MOST impressed after Mount Hermon to receive a thank you note from you. Wow. Most females don't send thank you notes via mail anymore, must less a male. I read that card and thought, "Impressive. Somebody raised this boy right."
   
   [Far be it from me (and my tenuous place in the will) to diminish the effort my folks put into my upbringing, but the thank-you note idea came from Terry Whalin's blog, along with the notion of handing out business cards at conferences.]


2. I always like when a DVD includes deleted scenes and outtakes. Were there any things in Web of Lies that were cut or didn't work out right the first time around?
   
   Nothing that was cut. I have lots of problems with writing, but one thing I don't do is write a scene only to cut it later. Seems like a royal waste of time to me. If it ain't needed, it ain't created in the first place.
   
   What did change was the Point of View. At first the entire story (well, other than the "bad guy" third person POV) was written in the first person POV of the protagonist, Annie. I just didn't know if I could mix first person and third person POVs for the various lead characters. But the story didn't work right without these other POVs.
   
   In the end I learned even more emphatically what I already knew: STORY RULES. Yeah, the "writing rules" say don't mix first and third POVs, esp. for your protagonists, but if that's absolutely what you must do for the story's sake, the reader's not gonna care. The reader cares about the story working.


3. Detective Tim Blanche is going through life with a feminine surname. How much of a factor does that play in him being a jerk? (Not that people with feminine surnames are all jerks, but the man has issues.)
   
   Sheesh, Chris, leave it to you to think of this. I never even thought of his last name as being feminine. He's certainly not a feminine character. He's just . . . arrogant. And in Web of Lies he gets caught up in a situation that only makes his arrogance rise to the top.
   
   That's the problem with arrogance. When you think you have all the answers and are better than those around you, you end up focusing too much on yourself--to the detriment of others. Then if you're caught in a mistake, it's all the harder to admit. Tim Blanche is involved in a highly watched case, and he knows he has to make the right decisions, or he's really gonna be fried in the media. As a result, he ends up perhaps protecting his own reputation at the cost of doing the best for the investigation.


4. You've done a great job of creating Barrister Court, but your description of Redding is pretty generic. What is the likelihood that real-life places like Whiskeytown Reservoir, Turtle Bay Exploration Park, the "big box" developments on Hilltop, houseboating on Lake Shasta, will provide "local flavor" in future books?
   
   Web of Lies is the last book in the Hidden Faces series, so there won't be any additional "local flavor." There's a bit more in book #3, Dead of Night, which features different surrounding areas and some roads. But I actually kept the city setting pretty generic on purpose, mostly because I wanted to focus on the immediate world of Annie's neighborhood.
   
   You raise a very good question, Chris, because this is an issue I go back and forth on. Where does an author leave the real world and jump into fiction? In my first two suspenses featuring Chelsea Adams, (Eyes of Elisha and Dread Champion), I created a fictional town smack in the middle of the California Bay Area. I did this because I didn't want to be bound by the police force in a real Bay Area town--everything from the color of the carpet in the station to the picky little details of how they, as opposed to their next-door city, would handle a case.
   
   Now with the Hidden Faces series, I've chosen a real city, but the action doesn't really take place in the city as much as around it. And "around it" is my fictional part, to a big extent. So what I ended up doing is creating the fictional world within the real world that I needed to best aid my stories, then including a bit of "disclaiming" in my notes to readers, saying what's real and what isn't. As a result, people who know Redding and expect to find a lot of local flavor aren't going to find it. This may be disappointing. The majority of readers, who don't know Redding, won't know the difference.


5. Annie chalks up a lot of her conflict with Blanche to her Christianity (he doesn't like/respect me because I'm a Christian) as opposed to the fact that she's a woman, she's from out-of-town, she doesn't have his education--as well as simply his own ego (which does get brought up). How much of that is a) accurate and b) Annie projecting others' expectations and then finding ways she doesn't measure up? Do you see her maturing in this area (gaining a broader perspective of Blanche's prejudices and/or not caring what he thinks)?
   
   Another great question. Annie has not had a problem gaining respect from local law enforcement, so the question of gender or being from out of town really doesn't come into play. Annie sees Tim Blanche accurately--because he hasn't bothered to hide his cynicism about her faith. At the same time, as the underlying character arc in Web of Lies shows, Annie does have trouble understanding and believing her own sense of worth, and this, she needs to overcome. She does learn about herself in this book, but again, with Web of Lies, I ended the series, so we're not going to see her further growth. All in all, Annie's character arc from book #1, Brink of Death, to book #4, Web of Lies, spans about four years and takes her quite a ways in her maturation as a divorced mother and as a new Christian (in Brink of Death, she's not a Christian and has little understanding of Christianity).
   
   A series with character arcs in each book presents quite a few challenges. First, there's getting the balance just right as to how much the character grows within each book, and what weaknesses to leave for the next, and then there's the challenge of ending the series as a whole. The books generally end upbeat, but I'm not going to "fix" everything, even in the last book. The character's still got to have weaknesses, still have much to learn--because that's reality--even while my aim is to satisfy the reader with the growth to date.


6. I've heard that you have to be really, really smart to write suspense fiction. What's your educational background/how did you learn to write, and what's your recommendation for those of us just starting out?
   
   Oh, ha-ha. Let me guess where you got this. Could it be our good friend the Snyde Guy (Mike Snyder) who royally put his foot in his mouth by telling me he wasn't "smart" enough to write certain other kinds of fiction so he thought he might try suspense? Now of course, his take on this conversation is a bit different. His is a conglomeration of much red-faced backpedaling after I blinked hard and suggested he might want to rephrase his opening line.
   
   By the way, the Snyde Guy IS smart, and he's written a great story. And no, it's not suspense. But it does have a clairvoyant dog.
   
   On second thought, maybe he's not all that smart.
   
   SG, that is. I'm sure the dog is brilliant.
   
   As for my own journey toward learning how to write, best thing is to direct you to the "How I Got Here" story on my blog, dubbed the NES for "Never-Ending Saga," as it took over 60 posts to tell. It's become quite infamous in our little blogdom world. Long? Yes. Smart? You betcha. Entertaining? Sure. With melodrama, cabinet-kicking, hopes shattered, dreams pursued, hooks at the end of chapters, and so much more. (This beginning to sound like one of those TV buy-now commercials.) You'll find the first post on Thursday, February 24, 2005.

To read Brandilyn's current blog post, visit Forensics & Faith. Enjoy!

(Now through April 30, Borders Rewards members (free membership) can save 30% off Web of Lies--or any other novel--at Borders, Borders Express, or Waldenbooks with this coupon. Non-members can still save 10%; so if you're in the witness protection program--or on the run from aliens that track you through corporate databases--you're in luck, too! Amazon has the book for 23% off, though you'd have to buy two and a half copies to qualify for free shipping.)

Labels: Book Chat, Book Reviews, Brandilyn Collins