pseudole oculum

In honor of Halloween, a haunted post of sorts...

Here's a great question a friend recently asked about The Marbury Lens -- and it's a question that nobody else had ever come close to posing before.

He asked: If you were Jack or Conner, would you be able to resist going back to Marbury?

Well, and this relates entirely to the astronaut posting of a couple days ago... yes, of course I would go back. How could I stop myself? I go back every night when I'm lying in bed, trying to go to sleep. That's what the book is really all about. [Note: I do not have to "try" to go to sleep. I have no problem doing that at all, as a matter of fact.]

The Marbury Lens isn't a story about putting on some tripped-out glasses and stepping into an alternate universe. The novel is about the inability to let go of things, the compulsion to revisit the events from the past that screw you up, wondering how different things might be if you were born someone else. And all those discomforting issues are wrapped up nicely inside a thick coating of self-doubt, teenage rage about being ignored, the adolescent wondering about sexuality, if you're normal, being afraid of connecting with someone and exposing your vulnerabilities; and all of this while imagining yourself -- as teenagers naturally do -- as the center of the universe.

Yeah... welcome to Marbury, Jack. Save a seat for me.

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first string

I've written a few times this past week about all the people involved in putting out a book like The Marbury Lens, and I want to say just a couple more things about them. First, I am certain that I've neglected to mention everyone who works at Macmillan who had a hand in this project, and, for that, I apologize. And, second, (and I think this may be unique in the writing/publishing business), I have actually, personally, met these people, and they are fun to hang out with. It's an honor to know them.

But I have yet to mention the first string on Team Marbury, the ones who play an incredibly important (and understated) role in getting the book onto the shelf. They are my wife, Jocelyn, my son, Trevin, and my daughter, Chiara.

They really do have to endure a lot, and they're usually pretty understanding about my insistence they not bother me, walk near me, or make any attempt at talking to me when I am working, which is probably way too much of the time.

And this reminds me of something, too. Just the other day when I posted something about the people at Macmillan who send me books and stuff, I got a nice big box of new paperback copies of Ghost Medicine from Jessica Tedder at Square Fish. The books are going to be released on the same day as The Marbury Lens, and I do plan on posting something about how amazing these new paperback releases of mine look and feel. But that's coming up later...

So, okay... my wife picked up one of these new paperbacks of Ghost Medicine and began reading it. Remember if you will that I've mentioned numerous times on here that nobody ever reads my stuff until it's published, which means that although I'd written Ghost Medicine in 2004, my wife and kids didn't read it until it came out, in 2008.

Anyway, as she started reading it, she said something like Hey! It doesn't say this in the original version...

And I'm, like, say what?

And she goes, The original one doesn't say it's for me and the kids.

So, I'm like... woah... my wife never noticed that my first novel was dedicated to her and our children. I say, yes... it does say that.

And she grabbed a hardback copy of Ghost Medicine to confirm it.

So she's gone all this time not knowing that. I guess a lot of readers skip things like dedications, acknowledgments, and even prologues. I don't fault anyone for doing those things, but I read everything inside books.

I just can't help but wonder if she's been seething all this time about books that I've published and dedicated to non-wife, non-child human beings.

Oh well. Like I said, they put up with a lot.

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walkabout

There are two kinds of people in this world: People who believe there are two kinds of people, and people who don't.

Do you believe that?

And among those kinds of people are people who would willingly sit in a small capsule, strapped on top of a rocket ship, and blast off for space in spite of an awareness -- a likelihood -- that they may never come back.

If there is a thread that consistently runs through the things I write, a string theory that stitches my universe together, it probably has a lot to do with that idea.

There is something self-destructive in that compulsion.

My most reluctant astronaut, Troy, from Ghost Medicine, laments about his sacrifice, the trade-offs, giving up pieces of himself in exchange for an uncertain future. Jonah, the protagonist of In the Path of Falling Objects, a kind of wandering ascetic who knows he will never come back, is definitely more resigned to the lift-off, but is prepared to make the best of his trip.

And then there's Jack, from The Marbury Lens. He's terrified of the journey, but there's no reason he can come up with NOT to go. So he keeps climbing back onto that spaceship, never expecting things to get better, and finding an element of twisted, self-deprecating humor when his expectations are unfailingly met. Fuck you, Jack, he tells himself, time and again.

They ask me this with consistency: all these protagonists are me.

I am the type of person who would willingly get aboard that rocket ship, and I would do so with a certain degree of confidence that I won't ever make it back.

I think about this all the time; even more frequently now that The Marbury Lens is just days away from its release.

Like those three characters in my first novels -- and Stark McClellan, too, from Stick, my fourth -- I have spent all this personal currency, burned off a store of propellant that I'd kept locked away, and now I can't get it back. And I can't come home, either.

Writing is probably more like disappearing, evaporating, blasting off and never coming back to where you were, than anything else. That is a conservative estimate of the truth, I think.

And there is no room for regret on a rocket ship. Troy, Jonah, Jack, and Stark would all tell you that.

What did you always want to be when you grew up?

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sea and air

There are still some more members of Team Marbury who need to be mentioned here, and I know I'll end up neglecting to name others who were involved in bringing this incredibly taxing project onto the shelf.

Elizabeth Fithian, Jessica Tedder, and Ksenia Winnicki are my big go-to people when I need a favor and don't know who else to ask, like sending out some books to me or to deserving folks out there in the blogosphere and other alternate universes. And I know how hard they work, just based on the hour of the day when they send emails to me (we are on opposite ends of the country).

There is a name at the very back of the book that makes me feel a little sad and nostalgic: Allison Remcheck, who has moved away from New York and gotten married to some incredibly fortunate person. Allison will always be known as my "first fan." I think she was the first person in the Flatiron Building to read my debut novel, Ghost Medicine. But, more than that, any time I felt particularly crazed, like I do right now, I could send her an email and she'd know exactly how to talk me in from the ledge.

Then there is Dave Barrett, the managing editor, who is really funny and cool and should have no patience at all with people like me, but always manages to make me laugh about things in his limitless enthusiasm for letting people know exactly how he feels. He must be a real kick to work with.

Things wouldn't happen if you didn't have people like Nicole Liebowitz Moulaison, production manager, working on the team. And production also relies on the terrific contributions from Kathleen Breitenfeld and copy editor Anne Heausler (who occasionally comments here, and who, I like to think, finds copyediting my manuscripts to be as easy -- and thrilling -- as stumbling on an escalator).

I hate escalators.

And when I really need something, really fast, like revision pages or galley proofs and stuff like that, it always gets delivered to my door with Holly West's name on the package. Sometimes, when I panic about things not arriving on time (because I live in another century), Holly will look things up and make sure they're actually not lost in some great vacuum.

Phew. I'm not done yet.

See? People. It takes the entire seventh floor of a landmark Manhattan building... Which reminds me. The last time I visited, the security guard in the lobby told me and my wife to go to the Seventeenth floor. So, we got stranded on the wrong floor, in a lonely hallway with doors that only opened from the other side.

I could write a book about security guards, escalators, and underground parking facilities.

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the words and the pictures

Whenever I speak to kids, it seems they're fascinated with the cover art of my books. In fact, I am frequently asked questions about cover art. Usually, people want to know if I design my own covers, or if they don't ask that, they'll ask how much input do I have in cover art design.

These kinds of questions have come up even more than usual in regards to the cover art of The Marbury Lens, because the cover is so damned gripping.

I like to think that I had a LOT to do with the cover of The Marbury Lens. I hope the inspiration for the striking imagery that wraps around the book, including its inside jacket flaps, teaser page, title page, and even the composition of the section headings and typeface were all inspired by reading the book (which, I think they were). But beyond that, I didn't do anything, except write this book.

The cover, title pages, and jacket design were all principally the work of art director Rich Deas. Usually, along the way to publication, I receive drafts or sketches of cover art. But not this time. I think Rich locked himself in his artist cave and just went to work. So the first thing I ever saw was the finished cover that just magically appeared in my email in-box one day, and I was totally blown away by it (like most people are).

When I went to New York last spring, I visited Rich and I heard a little bit about how the photograph was taken, and who the boy who modeled for "Jack" on the cover is, and these are still more fascinating backstories about how the cover came to life.

To be honest, even if this wasn't MY book, I'd have to say it's one of the coolest looking book designs I have ever seen.

Rich is quietly amazing, and he keeps getting better and better.

I can't wait to see what the team comes up with for next year's Stick.

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twin star

I have a few more names to talk about on Team Marbury, but I wanted to share some nice news here that I posted on Facebook yesterday.

In yesterday morning's edition of Publishers Weekly, The Marbury Lens received its second starred review. Naturally, coming from PW, and with two weeks left before the book arrives, crashing into bookstores, a second pre-publication starred review from a well-respected source like PW (the other came from Booklist) is huge.

Here's the text of the review from yesterday's Publishers Weekly:

Thank you very much, Publishers Weekly.

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last look

One last thing about some names mentioned in The Marbury Lens.

The first two names listed in my acknowledgments are Craig Morton and Dean Shauger, guys I've known for a few years now. When I started writing The Marbury Lens, I knew I was getting into unfamiliar territory for me as a writer.

I really wanted to accomplish two things: I wanted to write something that was really scary, and I wanted it to be a kind of psycho-speculative work that was different from everything out there in fantasy/horror/science fiction. Avid readers of speculative fiction/sci fi are a tough lot to convince, so I needed to talk about Jack's universe, how it's built and held together -- Jack's laws of physics, as it were -- with smart young guys like Craig and Dean who really know this stuff.

So I talked to them for a couple hours one day while I was writing the book, laying out all the mechanics of Jack's layer-upon-layer universe, and just talking out the story and the structure helped me see that what I was imagining could be possible, and could be pulled off under the scrutiny of a couple guys who are very well-read in the broader genres into which The Marbury Lens overlaps, and they're smarter than I am when it comes to physics, too.

Research is the backbone for any believable story. It isn't only a necessity for nonfiction writers. It's also a pretty fun thing to do for fiction, especially when it involves travel and getting into the worlds of your work -- like spending time in London and Blackpool, or riding around on British Rail, for example.

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