How to Write Sequels Years and Years Later

So late last week, I discovered that The Giver, one of my very favorite childhood books that introduced me (and probably a lot of my contemporaries) to distopia in fiction (and probably banned books), was not, as I previously thought, a stand-alone epic amazing book, but part one of a quartet. Yes, FOUR books, people.

Original cover art- this is the book I remember reading

I had read the follow-up, Gathering Blue, just after or during the end of college, and really liked it as what I thought then was a companion book. But it was a completely different setting, and while it had similar themes, the two would never work together to create a cohesive collection. OR SO I THOUGHT.

Y'all, Lois Lowry is a genius of YA fiction. She wrote two more books, Messenger and Son that tie abso-frickin-lutely everything together in a nice, tidy THING called a story/plotline/character arc. And holy flipping everything. Plus the cover art is really interesting.

Especially amazing given the Forest themes.  This is what you miss out on when you need the Kindle version RIGHT NOW.

Messenger is just stunning because it's clearly the sequel to Gathering Blue. So you're reading and you already recognize the main characters and you're thinking, "Nicely done, Lowry. This is cute." The she throws you the bone that everyone who ever read The Giver and also had a scrap of imagination ever has wondered about their entire childhood/adolescence/young adulthood. What the freak happened to Jonas? Found him, folks! Messenger also continues introducing sliiightly more adult themes. We all know Lois Lowry does YA fiction and that's what she does. But similar to everyone's favorite Harry Potter author, she had to have realized that her audience is a lot older now.

And then came Son. Holy everything. Hold the frickin' phone. The entire series backtracks to the original Giver story and starts over from an unexpected perspective. It's done really super well. It changes your entire perspective on The Giver. It makes you run back to reference The Giver. Multiple times. Shock. Awe. Awe of the story as well as the skills of the writer.

So thanks for the master class, Lowry. 'preciate it.

The Most Magical Night of My Year

In true fashion of like attracting like, my writerly mind has forced me to get writerly friends over the years. These are people that I can debate the merits and disappointments of Gatsby, Shakespeare, trendy books, classics, Greek lit, and anything else over the gamut of the books that plop themselves in my path and refuse to move until I've turned every page.

But Shakespeare.

Hardly any people in my circles or experience have a very polarized reaction to Shakespeare. There are parties in the camps of either it's something "so flipping boring that it will never be worth the time" (I'll place equal blame on these people as high school students AND their teachers for that one) or it's "pure magic." But mostly when Shakespeare comes up, the answer is one big "Meh." No enthusiasm. Maybe one or two plays that are awesome reads (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth... anyone else coming up with Shakespeare they've sat down to read voluntarily?).

But there's a piece missing here.

Shakespeare is pure, unadulterated  magic. Period. One day every summer, I get an especially enchanting Shakespeare treat. It has never failed to be a perfect day. It starts with getting ready and being fancy- dresses, skirts, heels (never a great choice, later), curling or straightening or otherwise heat-torturing of hair, fun jewelry, too much make-up. It progresses to a short drive to meet someone whose brain, I swear, mirrors my own. The evening starts with sandwiches. The food never matters but to act as details that I can start the retelling of the night in my head later, details that let me stretch out the wonder that is yet to come. One more short drive. Then it begins to happen.

The drive is always made at dusk or just before. We know to get there early. We pass through iron gates and by a mansion. We smuggle unopened bottles of wine and large cups in our large purses through the gates, smiling sweetly as a plastic wristband grants us admittance. "Bags will be checked" we scoff (as I sweat bullets). We walk a short path. We turn a rounded corner past a glass house adorned with colored glass butterflies. "Those are new," we remark. Every year as we round that corner, my mouth drops open. It looks almost exactly the same every time, but that has not yet failed to elicit the exact same reaction from me. The grass and trees are green. The small pond is murky. The curved bridge over the pond is a brownish red. And small, twinkling lights highlight each of those colors, combine the various textures, and throw back an image powered by my childhood wishes. Glassy water, rough wood, springy grass, all making themselves known to me at a glance. "Fairy lights," we breathe. And just beyond that bridge? A stage. Green and charcoal chairs. We float across the bridge, take our programs from a smiling employee, and find front row seats.

After a quick prance into the surrounding woods to open our wine and check out the newest art installments, we make it back to our chairs just in time for the green show. If this post is a contest to see how many times I can use the word "magic," the green show is one to see how many times the word "Huzzah!" can be uttered or cheered. The answer is surprisingly many. We sip wine, sweat, and watch this transition to a Shakespearean show. Swordplay. Dancing. Ballads and bawdy songs. Gowns, breeches, and leather boots that I covet (even on the men). "Previews" of other Shakespeare plays- Hamlet done in a minute and a half, with Hamlet's father's ghost played by an actor in a white bedsheet. Romeo and Juliet told in ten minutes with West Side Story-style dancing in place of duels and a quiet "Mar-i-a" sung every time Juliet appears onstage. We laugh until our sides hurt, amused that someone else finds this funny. The audience laughs behind us. And then, there is just one more announcement about "non-Shakespearean devices" and the play begins.

There is something to be said for Shakespeare done well. When someone is on a stage in front of me dressed in knee-high leather boots, velvet breeches, and a tunic yelling "I bite my thumb at you, sir!", I am hanging in suspense to hear the retort. When Prospero brandishes his knife in preparation to remove a pound of Antonio's flesh, I notice that I am sitting as far forward in my seat as possible so as not to miss a moment. I look around and notice the same from my companions in the audience. When Portia is mocking and yelling as Bassanio about THE RING, I am laughing so hard I gasp for breath.

As much as I feel like a snob for talking about Shakespeare "done well," there is a monumental difference in watching a performance where actors stutter through the lines and place no emphasis or inflection to help the audience understand what is important or funny. That is hard, painful, and at its worst, boring. Watching a group of impassioned actors who really understand the content of the play perform it in a way that is accessible helps me to understand (all over again every year) that Shakespeare is viable and important, and still relevant in this day.

I laugh and gasp and am immersed in a story much more complex than my brain could devise. I fall in love with characters. On the drive home, we will murmur to each other, "Why can't men really talk like that? I want to hear why I'm like the moon." And that's the best part of Shakespeare for me. For a short time, I can hear men tell women why they're like the moon, and remember what romance was like long before I ever decided I desired it.

Puppy Dog Tears

So here I am, approximately one month later and still on day... 6 of my book challenge. The funny thing is that I have known what this post would be about for a very long time. I will keep at this at my own pace and see how frequently I blog.

My book challenge asks me for a book that makes me cry. When thinking about the books that inevitably make me tear up (no matter how many times I read them), I noticed a pattern. Let's see if you do, too.

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The Walking Chaos series is young adult fiction. And every now and then (or sometimes obsessively for a month), that's all I want and need to read. I find them to be imaginative and easy to understand. They are, in fact, a relief sometimes. I especially love distopias- The Hunger Games, the Divergent trilogy, The Uglies, Percy Jackson and the Olympians. My Kindle is chock full of them. The best part is that because YA lit is intended for younger audiences, the pace is consistently fast, and the worlds are broken down to be easily understood. 

They have several things in common. Factions. Districts. Pretties. All of these books divide the population somehow into labels that are more or less tangible and easy to understand. All of them have some critique on society today that you don't have to go hunting very hard to find thematically. All of them also pack the punch of themes that teens honestly must be getting sick of by now. Be Yourself. Be a good friend.  Stand up for yourself. Accept your body.

By taking the reader out of today's actual world and plopping them into District 12 of Panem, the values that make a good person are no different than here. But they can seem to be. It's all part of the mystique.

So YA books are a good way to unwind, enjoy some coming-of-age adventure, G-rated romance, and good old accept-yourself themes. Sounds relaxing, right?

Wrong. Every once in awhile, one of these books throws in a heart-wrenching or extremely violent scene. It actually surprises me that they get away with it. But usually there is some restraint shown. A girl is terrifyingly attacked, but gets away. Children die, but the object of the game is to kill each other, so everyone's dying. 

The Knife of Never Letting Go got me. It sneaked up on me with a threatening situation that had the potential to be violent. He's such a good dog, I thought. He'll get away. Nope. It broke me. It profoundly shook me up to the point that after reading the entire scene and being shocked, reading it again for clarity, I had to close the book and do something else for a time because I was so upset. Visibly upset. Crying. Books don't really do that to me, guys.

It made me most remember one of the first books that made me love reading. I read it in fourth grade with my AT class, and I remember reading ahead because I was so invested. I remember our teacher reading it to us. I remember how sad I was when Old Dan and Little Ann died.

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Yup. Dogs. When they die in books, I completely lose it. It's one of my literary achilles heels. I don't think anything can unravel me faster. I think especially in YA books, pets are either the main character's only friends or best friends. It's a very effective tool because it draws on a relationship that people can identify with. Much of iconic American culture pictures people with their pets. Man's best friend. The nuclear family. Always happy to see you. Loves you even when you're bad to them or too busy for them. Loyal to the death. Saves Timmy from falling down the well. Saint Bernards rescuing people in avalanches. DOgs swimming (because aww). Puppies.

I own a dog myself and know the many qualities that must be SO EASY, the low-hanging fruit, for authors to grab onto and pour into these books. When I see how much my two-year old lab/shepherd/question mark dog ADORES my husband, I want to write it myself. The smiling eyes, parking themselves RIGHT in front of their "person" or "master." I could go on.

But it does beg the question. In the Walking Chaos series, and many other books and series, people die. I don't bat an eye. I keep right on reading. I may even chuckle to myself or feel a sense of justice and excitement. I mean, Hunger Games, people. I loved it. I'll be the first to admit it. But by writing a book that glorifies children killing each other via a reality tv show, and then watching that book be consumed just as greedily as the fictional Capitol citizens watch the show. It asks for a moment of (slightly meta or inceptive) reflection. 

I mean honestly, I know I'm not just as bloodthirsty as the fictional bad guys, because I know what I'm reading is fiction. But what if it was real? Would I watch? Before I say no, I have to take a hard look at myself and realize that shows like Hell's Kitchen, Teen Mom, Jersey Shore, The Choice... they're very popular. And they thrive on what comes close to verbal, emotional abuse. There's even an episode of the very popular Game of Thrones that has been said to be a trigger for some because it displays some very brutal physical violence and physical abuse.

Where's the humanity?