Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Psychosis… Or not — The Marbury Lens

Posted on June 30, 2011

The Marbury Lens

The Marbury Lens. I’m not sure anymore who recommended it to me, I think it was on the Kobo site. In any case: I bought the book and read it.
Wow!
I love scare and horror, but this was way beyond scare and horror. This was like ending up in your very own nightmare, never to wake up again.

Sixteen-year-old Jack Whitmore celebrates the end of the school year at a party thrown by his best friend Connor, who will also join him on a two week vacation to London. It is a good party and Jack gets blind drunk. Staggering the six miles back home — that’s when you’re still happy that he didn’t take the car — he falls asleep on a bench in the park. A doctor, passing by, wakes him and offers to take him home. He seems like a friendly guy, this doctor, and Jack accepts his offer.
Wrong decision.
Jack wakes up zip tied to a bed, in his underwear. The friendly doctor turns out to be the neighborhood pervert and a serial killer. Jack’s stun gunned and drugged up. Is it sheer luck that his attacker gets called away, just as he is about to rape Jack? Whether luck or providence, Jack escapes and finds his way back to his best friend Connor.
That’s when the reader relaxes and sits back. But that’s not what Andrew Smith had in mind for us readers. Jack leaves for London, a few days ahead of Connor. In a bar he meets Henry Hewitt. Henry leaves a pair of glasses with Jack and through the lenses Jack gets sucked into a war-ridden parallel world called Marbury. Hell seems like an understatement for that white-hot murderous place where Jack is responsible for the survival of two boys. And Connor’s in Marbury, too, blood-thristy and all geared up to kill Jack…

Reading The Marbury Lens is like ending up in a nightmare, one that won’t go away once you wake up. It sticks to you like Marbury sticks to Jack. You don’t want to read on, but you have no choice. You have to go back to Marbury, just like Jack. Till the bitter end.
Andrew Smith has done an excellent job. The book is well-written and scary as hell. It will be a long time before I will be able to, again, sleep quietly and undisturbed. If ever. And it will be a long, long time before I accept a pair of glasses from a stranger.

 

Categories: Books, YA books

Tagged: , , , , ,

Necromancing The Rolling Stones

Posted on June 18, 2011

Lish McBride's DebutParanormal is a big word these days, a controversial word, if you will. There are believers and there are non-believers. Me? I am a believer pur sang. I dig the fact that there is more to this world than meets the eye. So when my friend E.D. led me to Lish McBride’s Hold Me Closer, Necromancer, I felt no objections reading it. Good choice!
It grabbed me right away or rather the protagonist Sam LaCroix grabbed me, not in the least because his full name is Samhain Corvux LaCroix. A guy named after my favorite bird? That bode well.

Sam LaCroix is a Seattle college dropout and now flips burgers at a local fast food joint. While playing a game of potato hockey in the diner’s parking lot with his friends Ramon, Frank and Brooke, they break the taillight of a shiny classic car. The owner of the car, an old guy named Douglas Montgomery, isn’t amused.
Until he sets eye on Sam.
From that moment on danger lingers in the air.

Lish McBride has written a story that is both spine-chilling and filled with the sarcastic wit so characteristic of young adults. Hold Me Closer, Necromancer slips you into a world of necromancers and wiccans, gnomes and harbingers, and Brid, a beautiful girl, and her brothers who happen to be werehounds.

Chapters start with a quote from a song lyric, quotes that shed a whole different light on those songs and when McBride lets Douglas hint that one of the Stones was raised from the dead, you know that “a brown paper bag tied with a string” will never ever be one of your favorite things again.

For the full review, Erzsi Deàk’s interview with Lish McBride and the playlist, go to booktunes.net.

Categories: Books, YA books

Tagged: , , , , ,

Trip, slip or be pushed to death?

Posted on June 8, 2011

Mount Etna alive again

Sicily. An island with a rich history, not in the least because of that one mountain that dominates it: Etna.
The Arabs named it the Mountain of Fire and word goes that Zeus trapped the deadly monster Typhon underneath it. It’s easy to imagine the father of all monsters lurking below the surface of the Etna, you only have to stick your hand in one of those fuming crevices and you know he’s there, the last son of Gaia who set out to destroy Zeus. He almost got the job done, ripping out Zeus’ sinews in their first battle. But Zeus struck back, like a true ruler of the Gods should, and threw Mount Etna on him, trapping him to all eternity. Or not…

A hot and fuming crevice

My trip up Mount Etna was scheduled a mere two weeks after the southeastern crater became live again. Standing on a fuming hot volcano rocks a writer’s imagination. With my feet planted firmly in the snow at the very rim of the northern crater my mind wandered to the characters in my future books. Which one of them will end up in that crater? Will he or she trip, slip or be pushed in? What happens if you tumble into a smoldering pit? Will you survive? Burn to ashes? 

A writer contemplating the death of her characters

If you’re stuck for inspiration — and not only when you’re a thriller writer — I recommend hiking up a live volcano.

Categories: Books, The Views, Thrillers, Views Abroad

Tagged: , , , , , ,

Turn Left At the Canal

Posted on May 25, 2011
Last Friday I took my muse to the theatre, something I do way too little, but then my muse spends a great deal of his time abroad (or so goes my rather lame excuse).

Turn Left At the Canal

The title of the play, “Bij het kanaal naar links” — “Turn Left At the Canal”– was appealing enough: I used to live close to a canal and my mom was relentless in trying to keep me away from that mysterious child-beckoning waterway. Bad, bad people roamed the banks, she said, no place for children. Needless to say her warnings lured me to that baleful place like a firewall lures a hacker to a website.
The writer of the play is Alex van Warmerdam. He is a prize-winning Dutch playwright, poet, actor and scenarist. I love his quirky and brazen sense of humor that darkens the worlds he creates, worlds in which the crazy seems the accepted standard.

The play started with a warning to the audience: “I see a full house. It’s all happening outside, but you have decided to come here. I’m not sure whether that was a wise decision. I advise you to keep your expectations low.”
The warning was unnecessary. It turned out to be as absurd as I had hoped it would be. Leading Dutch actor Pierre Bokma played his character, a wheeler-dealer-turned-glue-sniffing-old-man, with such passion that it made me wonder what was really in that paper-bagged tube he kept sniffing from. When the old man tried to wriggle his way back into the enterprises of his very contained son, the son erupted: “You’re an old man! Behave like an old man! Go outside, look at the sky, count the sparrows.”
I felt my years…

Van Warmerdam compares his style to that of nature films: “In that genre you see animals mate, eat, and even eat each other. My characters do that too; they fight, mate, and eat like crazy.”

That comparison gives you quite a different view on humanity, doesn’t it?

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Amsterdam Views, The Views

Tagged: , , , , ,

The End of the World or Cows?

Posted on May 20, 2011

It’s nearing, they say, the end of the world. I have no idea who ‘they’ are, but they’re quite convinced that it/us will end tomorrow, May 21. I beg to differ. I think we have a future ahead of us and even a bright one, we just have to look for it and make it work.

Lydia Davis - The Cows

Last Wednesday Lydia Davis was in Amsterdam. Wim Brands interviewed her and had her tell us where to look.
It’s right there, she said.
And she told us about the observations she makes at home or traveling; observations that form the source of her ultra short stories. When she looks out of the window and across the street from her home she sees green hilly pastures, a red barn and three cows. She has watched those three cows closely for years and wrote about them. She cut, shaped and polished her observations into 80 gems that are collected in ‘The Cows’. I have to read The Cows again and see if she, too, noticed the curtained windows in the barn.
When she’s traveling, Davis holds a notebook close at hand. She scribbles down observations on her fellow travelers in plane and train. It always amazes me that the ordinary changes into absurdity if you take a closer look at it. Like the shoeless feet of a woman comfortably resting on the seat opposite her. Looking closer Davis noticed that the feet were turned out at the oddest angle. Or the confident business man in his fancy suit, walking down the aisle. When he turned and walked up again, she noticed the shirt, untucked and grubby, the three-day stubble. And the confidence crumbled.

I was happy with Lydia Davis’ reminder to keep looking. Writers should! It’s no use sitting inside staring at the empty page. Now I only need to find a way to make it work and convey my observations as concise and sharp as she does. I still have a long way to go and that’s why I need a bright future and not the end of the world.

Categories: Books, Thrillers, YA books

Tagged: , , , , ,

New horizons in writing

Posted on May 13, 2011

Last August was my first time at the annual SCBWI Summer Conference. SCBWI stands for the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators. It’s a mouthful and the acronym is not much of a help, but notwithstanding the name, the society itself is a gem. I had never seen so many people together (over 1,100) working towards that same goal: writing and/or illustrating the best possible book.
Overwhelming as it was, I let myself go with the flow and learned more in those four days than in the past couple of years sweating at my desk, working on new manuscripts. Needless to say, I left the conference with dozens of ideas for new books, and with dozens of new friends, writers and illustrators from all over the world. And all thanks to this amazing British translator who set up the Dutch chapter of SCBWI and made it possible for me to find this inspiring group of colleagues: Laura Watkinson.

SCBWI 40th Summer Conference

This year will be the 40th anniversary of the SCBWI Summer Conference. The conference program is every writer’s and illustrator’s dream. The faculty consists of seasoned writers, illustrators, editors, agents and teachers. Scheduled are keynotes by writers like John Green and Jon Scieszka, workshops like The Five Things Your Manuscript Needs to Succeed, or Pitching Your Work in the Global Market by my own agent Erzsi Deàk.
On Monday there is a day filled with intensive workshops for members. I’m going for Liesa Abrams’ session Conflict and Character Development in Plot and for Krista Marino’s Perfecting Your YA Voice. Both intensives require a full manuscript and that’s why I’m writing my fingers blue on The Weed Man, my first YA thriller written in English. I hope that with their help and guidance that manuscript will be the best I have ever delivered and that it will make my agent proud.

If you’re interested in writing, illustrating or both, check out the SCBWI website, join us and come to the conference if you can. If you’re from the Netherlands or around: the Dutch chapter of SCBWI will be organizing a one day conference on November 5 in Amsterdam. If you’re interested, keep an eye on this blog or join our Facebook group!

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Thrillers, YA books

Tagged: , , , , , ,

The Empire State Building punctuated

Posted on April 26, 2011

It was a gorgeous summer day in Paris, even though spring only just knocked on our doors, chasing away the winter gloom.

The Empire State Building

Punctuated by Société Réaliste

I was preparing for a party at my agent’s, Erzsi Deàk of Hen & Ink. Her quarters are in the always buzzing midst of Paris, a stone’s throw away from the Jardin des Tuileries and the famous Louvre and a stroll away from Place des Victoires.

The summery temperature held me away from the Louvre and its hordes (actually, almost everything keeps me away from the Louvre hordes, not just the sun). I strolled the streets and ended up at the much more exciting Jeu de Paume, in the northwest corner of the Jardin des Tuileries. Nothing can keep me away from this small haven of contemporary art: no hordes, no cramped rooms, no stuffy atmosphere in this former tennis court.

Again, it didn’t let me down. The first exhibition I entered was that of the Société Réaliste: Empire, State, Building. The name of the exhibition brings the mythical New York skyscraper to mind, which has inspired so many artists ever since its completion in 1931.
What grabbed me was the punctuation play of the artists. The simple addition of two comma’s shakes off the customary connotation, leaving you disoriented. A decreasing scale that brings a grand conception back from an empire, to a state to a mere building. It shows how influential this tiny mark, only a slip of the pen away from a dot, is. And it gives an idea why writers never stop fretting about the use of what people sometimes erroneously regard as inconsequential members of our script.

The exhibition is worth a visit, not to mention an excellent preparation to a Hen & Ink party.

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, YA books

Tagged: , , , , ,