Why anyone can enjoy A Pius Man.

From Comic books readers and Scifi fans, to James Patterson and back. Why anyone can enjoy A Pius Man.

[Author's note: this was originally going to be a note on Marketing. It didn't turn out that way.]


What do you call a book chock full of hundred year old conspiracies, dangerous priests, psychotic mercenaries, operatives trained to kill practically from birth, international political intrigue, a terrorist plot, and a wide ranging collection of protagonists the likes of which the world hasn't seen since the team that took out Dracula?

You call it A Pius Man.

Fans of this page who remember that a contest is on will remember that there's something in it for you when you get people to join the Facebook page for A Pius Man: when the Facebook page hits 100 fans, I post and origin sotry for one of the characters. When it hits 150, I post a podcast of the prologue. When the Facebook page reaches critical mass, I post a chapter from the middle of the book, and the person who has brought in the most fans will have their name put into the novel.


Sound like fun?

Next question: who should read A Pius Man?  Or, who should you invite? 


On the face of it, it seems like yet another in a long line of bad Da Vinci Code ripoffs that have come out in legion since Dan Brown's super-hyped novel hit the scene an interminable amount of time ago. However, while my book has conspiracies and religion, that's more or less where the similarities end. There will be no puzzles, the French will not be a threat, and no one will spend dozens of pages finding their way out of an art museum.

That said, there are some people who just don't read thrillers. Understandable, it's a term so generic you can toss a net over a whole host of authors... some of whom probably should have a net thrown over them anyway, just to be safe. However, when a field is as vast as the comic-bookish feel of Clive Cussler's NUMA novels... to the theoretical science of James Rollins..... to a Barry Eisler novel, half of which takes place in the head of his protagonist, assassin John Rain..... It's almost as diverse a group as public Catholic figures—as Oscar Wilde used to say: Here Comes Everybody. Can't call it a historical thriller, because then it will be mistaken for a period peace like the Sharpe's novels of Bernard Cornwell—I wouldn't mind having his audience, but they might feel gypped to find it set in the 21st century.

So, who the hell should read this book?

Let's see....

Comic book fans: My first agent drew parallels between the team of protagonists and the Justice League.  One character has already been compared to Deadpool—of the comic, not the film. Throw in adversaries who seem preternaturally strong, fast, and trained... well, it's not like fighting the Hordes of Hydra, but my villain isn't exactly the Red Skull. Some are as serious as a police procedural, and some might as well have wanted to be Doc Savage when they grew up. One of them even works with “Middle Earth's Most Wanted Elven Assassin,” and no, I'm not kidding.

Science Fiction fans—who will hopefully forgive me for calling it “SciFi” above: Key pieces of this story involve NLW technology. Or, in standard English, non-lethal weaponry. Microwave cannons that emit plasma beams, tazer beam weapons, gases, explosives; if it's been mentioned, or appeared in a semi-realistic video game, it's probably in there. Throw in the laser-keyboards and the microwave microphones, you can outfit a small Sharper Image store.  And ALL of the technology is real.  I got it from Time magazine.

Spy fans: International intrigue? Got it. Shadowy figures? Check. Conspiracy theories? At least five of them, and three are right. We also have: the obligatory evil Cardinal; a pale, silver haired priest with commando training (not to be confused with an albino, of course); the Jesuits, the Opus Dei, and the Knights Templar all show up, just so I can play with some of the old cliches

Readers of history: Yes, A Pius Man actually has historical facts. Literally, they happened. This is a book where the history presented in its pages can be footnoted. I know this because the original draft had footnotes. It was suggested that I take them out... however, I still have a bibliography in the back.

People who like intelligent destruction: There's an assassination on page two, an explosion on page three, a wrecked car by page seven, and a mercenary with a resume that reads like scripts of the A-Team tv show. We'll ignore the shootout on the Spanish Steps in the armored SUV. Death, property damage, and utter ruination are always good for an audience. It worked for four Die Hard films.

Political folk: As much as I loathe to admit it, there's politics in this novel. It goes to motivation for the various and sundry parties. Besides: how do you negotiate being a Catholic—universal—Church? Unlike being a superpower, like the United States, you can't pick and choose who you associate with just because they're valuable to you. If that were the case, I wouldn't have a friend whose uncle is a missionary in China. And what happens when you put an African Pope who's to the right of Attila the Hun into the middle of this particular hurricane?

At the end of the day, the only people who should probably NOT read A Pius Man are those who expect a novel by way of Mitchner, or Clavell. Half of the book is filled with thoughtful, drawn out characters who are trying to think their way through the problem at hand. The other half of the book is filled with various and sundry creative ways to lay waste to large parts of Rome—from shooting up the Spanish Steps to trashing Leonardo Da Vinci airport.

And this is just the first book. Book two is the fallout, and countermoves by those bad guys who survive book one. Book three is where I recreate the Battle of Thermopylae.... if the 300 had possessed remote-detonated landmines.

Anyway, if you or any of your friends might enjoy anything listed above, you might want to join the fan page, or invite them to tag along. Or both.

“I want a hero not a weapons shop with pecks....”

1. Violence: what is it good for....

Answer, a lot more than sex is.

Last week was about sex, so violence had to be next.

I have heard multiple answers to the question: “Why put fight scenes into a novel?

David Drake, author of dozens of sci-fi novels, and Vietnam Veteran, has said that he puts fights scenes in to honor those that served, who had been there, done that.

That is a great, good, and noble answer.

I can't say I'm any of the above.

My answer is: “A is trying to stop B. B will not be stopped with words. Time to incapacitate B. Chaos ensues.”

I will not say that violence is always required. If you watch cable television, the series Burn Notice is practically built around a limited use of violence—tricks, blackmail, lying cheating and stealing, yes, but rarely violence. It is like Mission Impossible, or MacGyver for the dark side. Like with sex, violence can be a cheat, a substitute for a plot. This is more obvious in the novels where the violence is more about brutality than anything else. When you consider that the average fight may top out at around five seconds, a long, drawn out, Steven Seagal-type battle royale is more of a dance routine than anything else.

In A Pius Man, violence is used like in Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's novels were part of a war story. In the current day and age, much of warfare has been / can be done with Special Forces troops. A war waged with SpecOps is still a war.

And, the bible aside, there are few audiences that will allow a book to get away with something as simple as “The two of them struggled, rolled towards the edge of the roof, and the enemy fell off.” Right there is a failing grade in any creative writing class.

Jackie Chan pointed out that there is a difference between violence and action—it's hard to think of his action films as overly violent when you consider that he came out of a ballet company. When one observes the original A-Team, one of the running jokes among tv watchers is that there were thousands of bullets fired, but no one was shot. Like with Burn Notice or MacGyver, guns are tools, not solutions.

In the case of my books, I try not to have fight scenes—more like action sequences. Have two people stand there and pound on each other is boring at best, gratuitous at worst.

In A Pius Man, every fight scene serves a function. It leaves a clue, tells the audience something about the enemy, their motives, and their identity. Why would X group attack Y person? The level of force and determination can indicate the enemy's strength of numbers, the weapons they have access to, what intelligence they have access to, etc.

I tend to overthink things in my day to day life, so fight scenes occasionally get the same treatment.

I also try to have action sequences and fight scenes serve character... granted, in some of the oddest ways imaginable. For example, one thing they all have in common is that the only fair fight is the one they win. Letting the bad guys draw first is for suckers and dead men.

Individually....

Matthew Kovach: Appears briefly in A Pius Man, but is a primary character in the second novel, he's interesting in terms of fighting style. His thumbnails are grown a little long (“the better for gouging, my dear”) and his main weapon—his pens. He knows twelve ways to kill someone with a ballpoint, and several more ways to disarm and incapacitate them. When things get really nasty, he has his fountain pens. He also spends most of his time running, so he can hide and get into a good position to attack from. He's basically an academic with an odd past; as he says, violence finds him.

Sean AP Ryan: being a former stuntman, his fighting style is a little... psychotic. “Why are you using moves out of the Matrix?” Answer “Because I can do it without the wirework.” And he carries a tactical baton around with him at all times—because there are occasions when he needs to take someone alive. I only recently started taking a self defense system called Krav Maga, which is more about practical defense than anything else. Krav Maga even disdains the title “martial art,” if only because there is no art here. We practice eye gouges, train for anti-weapon tactics, guns, knives, long guns, uzis.... and any other weapon added to the itinerary. There is supposed to be a defense against a machete, but I haven't seen it yet. In the case of Sean Ryan, he has an “expert” level in Krav Maga—which means he can face multiple attackers with multiple weapons. However, he uses moves that most Krav practitioners look at and say “No. Flipping. Way.” When he is outmanned and outgunned, Sean tends to become even deadlier. There's a reason he lists his resume by property damage.

Giovanni Figlia: as a former soccer player, Giovanni prefers a good solid kick to the groin, or headbutt to the face. As well as the occasional suicide dive into someone's stomach. “SCORE!” Also, being a former cop, he believes in the power of handguns and body armor.

Maureen McGrail: elegant and deadly. For reasons undisclosed, she started taking martial arts from a relatively young age, well before she got into double digits. MMA for the dark side, she has used bits Krav Maga, some have said Kung Fu, as well as penjakt silat (an Indonesian fighting style where punch defenses equal lethal force). She doesn't carry weapons, she is the weapon. The only people she needs to kill are the ones who just won't stay down any other way. And in A Pius Man, a stake to the heart may be required.

Hashim Abasi: He is, at heart, a street cop. A street cop from Egypt, but a street cop nonetheless. While he has some experience with a sword, that's not exactly practical for carrying around in the street. He prefers using his bulk for a standard kick-punch-elbow combination, and knows most ways to disarm someone. Think of it as an abbreviated Krav Maga.

Wilhelmina Goldberg: as a 4'11” technical geek, she generally has no need for fighting skills that go beyond a punch to the groin. Though there have been instances involving a bladed weapon and ankles....

Fr. Francis X. Williams, SJ.... A Jesuit priest with fighting skills. That should look strange enough.

Scott “Mossad” Murphy—a brilliant spy, but his philosophy is that if he needs a gun, his job had failed. Also, the last time someone gave him a handgun, he nearly blew his foot off. In a fight, he prefers to use his innate ability to blend into a crowd the shadows, and anything else available. On an intellectual level, he knows how to fight. On a practical level, it's a good day when he doesn't kill himself during practice drills. When possible, he prefers improvised weapons that he can launch from a distance—the further the better. If he must go up close and personal, he prefers a heavy object he can deliver to the back of someone's head.

Manana “Mani” Shushurin—An operative from German Intelligence, she's better at fighting than the average spy. She also caries a gun, with scores on the target range that make snipers want her for her rifle.


As I said above, I tend to overthink everything, and at points, so do my characters. I have yet to have one novel that did not have a scene of analysis immediately following an action sequence. The protagonists examine the weapons used (local? Foreign? Military? Civilian? Homemade?), the tactics (professional or amateur? How many operatives?), and, if there are any survivors, the people themselves (accented? Languages spoken? Do they respond to interrogation?). You can see why a two page fight scene can be broken down into a three page discussion about the implications.

So, not only is A Pius Man a mystery with too many suspects... it's a novel where even the fight scenes are a clue.

Sex Scenes, Novels, and A Pius Man

[PG-13/ R. And, for the record, this is a completely amoral blog post—preaching morals gives me a headache and upsets my ulcer.]

1. Sex. What is it good for?

Were this a song parody, the next line would be “absolutely nothing.” But, given that I've had bad experiences with song parodies, I will forgo that.

But, seriously, sex... why bother?  In the context of literature, almost any novel with a sex scene in it has been, in my opinion, a horrid waste of time, energy, and irritates, at least, this reader.

A Pius Man has no sex scenes. Why? Because I find them boring.

I am not certain how much of this is my own personal opinion and how much of it is a critique of how sex scenes tend to be inflicted on the reader.

One of my major problems is the OSS, or the Obligatory Sex Scene.

In the Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child novel Mount Dragon, our protagonists, after having found shelter and water in the middle of the desert, after nearly dying from thirst, while on the run from a nutcase with a gun.... are so happy they start having sex...

Huh? What the Hell?

The OSS I just mentioned is quick. If it's longer than half a page, I'd be surprised. But it was just dropped into the middle of the book, and was so jarring it broke the pace. It had been a nice, solid thriller, our heroes on the run from a psychotic killer with a rifle, and then.... they're stopping to have sex? Really?

Looking at it objectively, what is the point of an OSS?

“Physical intimacy shows the the relationship involved has gone to another level and has thus impacted the characters.”  Perfectly true, but does that necessitate a five page sex scene? Or even a page? If one wanted to tell the reader that, yes, two people slept together, I can do that right now: “X and Y fell into bed, kissing passionately as they stripped each other's clothes. They then turned off the lights and hoped they wouldn't wake the neighbors.”

Done. Two lines and a bit of smart ass can carry something a long way.

“Things can happen during the scene that are relevant to the rest of the novel.” True, but rarely does it necessitate going into intimate details. In fact, I would suggest that anything interesting that happened could be covered in the next chapter. “On reflection, s/he noticed something odd while lying on his/her back. S/he didn't really notice it at the time, but now that it's quiet.....”

Done.

Exceptions can be made to this rule, obviously. If the couple rolls off of the bed as someone walks into the room, be it with room service or with a gun, then that is a useful detail.

There are moments when character can be served, strangely enough. I've seen sex scenes done well. I don't mean the sex scene in the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter, where he dwells on a nice neat serial killer, his girlfriend comes in, starts kissing and disrobing him, and the next line is, literally, “How did that happen?” I mean a sex scene, rating R to NC-17.

John Ringo's “Paladin of Shadows” series (Ghost, Kildar, etc), has sex scenes and nudity. However, the point of the hero, nicknamed Ghost, is that he is not a “nice guy;” he hangs out in strip clubs, and some of his contacts are strippers... it's rather amusing reading a scene where a stripper is informing him of pertinent information during the course of her duties.

The sex scenes themselves are surprisingly thought out. The first novel, Ghost, is a series of vignettes. The second vignette is described as "two-thirds bondage porn and deep sea fishing, and who knows which is worse" (I'm paraphrasing there). Before the sex scenes take up whole chapters, the character Ghost has a discussion with the two young ladies he's dealing with... and their parents. The conversation that follows is one part dissertation on bondage subcultures, and five parts comedy routine.

After that, you can skip read, unless you really want to learn more about leather goods than you ever really wanted to.

So, here we have someone who makes sex funny without it being gaudy. In fact, the amount of thought put into his later sex scenes shows a lot of character, intelligence, and humor.

Even then, are they necessary? Surprisingly enough, some are, and two are crucial to the stories they show up in. Almost all of them impact the characters in some way. And almost all of these scenes can be entertaining for reasons that are anything but sexual.

Why Ghost does what he does (and I don't mean sexual maneuvers or positions) tells the reader more about the character than a hundred pages of sex scenes from any given novelist....

Laurell K. Hamilton, I'm looking at you.

Laurell K. Hamilton created a novel series about Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. It was a nice, solid series, set in St. Louis, with a well-constructed, detailed world, where vampires were public figures, werewolves are treated like HIV cases in the 80s, crosses work against vampires, and demons aren't the actor in a suit you see on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

For nine novels, the series went well. There was sexuality here and there (a major character was a French vampire, after all), but it never really got in the way of the story. By book seven and eight, the main character was sleeping with both a vampire and a werewolf, but the OSS's were few and far between, and they were easily skipped by turning a page. Quite painless, overall.

After book #9, Obsidian Butterfly, I was warned off several novels because they opened with a hundred pages of vampire rituals of who gets to have sex with who. I went back for book #15, because it featured the return of Hamilton's best, scariest character: a mild mannered, white-bread fellow named Edward, a mercenary who started hunting vampires because humans were too easy.

However, I had to skip a hundred and fifty pages of the novel. It was one, long and drawn out OSS. Not a menage a trois, but a bisexual sextet among Vampires and were-creatures. Much of the rest of the book had pages of Anita Blake defending her sex life. “The lady dost protest too much.”

When the author herself was asked about the overabundance of sex during a Barnes and Noble interview, Hamilton's best defense was that “I only get complaints from men. I had two reviewers tell me that they're disturbed that a woman is writing this sort of stuff. ”

Ahem...

Dear Madam. Hamilton: I get disturbed with John Ringo writing about a man and two coeds on a boat with bondage gear. For the love of all that's Holy, what makes you think that a bi-sexual sextet with were-furries would go over any better, no matter who or what you were?  So, you're going to defend yourself against criticism with some kind of strange faux-feminism based off of two reviewers?  How about "I want more plot than sex scene," are you going to blame that on me being male? Really? Really?

Again, I'll go back to John Ringo, only a different series -- the Council Wars.  One short story is seriously NC-17, and reading through it, I would be hard-pressed to see how it could be written otherwise. With Hamilton's novels, I could skip over a hundred pages and not miss a single plot point. That's screwed up.

Make it sextets with were-furries, they're even worse.

Review: The Blue Nowhere

REVIEWS OF BOOKS YOU (PROBABLY) NEVER HEARD OF. PART 3

Devious Deaver strikes again

A book review of The Blue Nowhere: A Novel

Those who have ever read a novel set in the world of Jeffery Deaver know two things. First, he picks out an area of interest, learns everything about it, and then writes a thriller that moves faster than sports cars drag racing on the speed limitless Autobahns. With A Maiden’s Grave, he explored the worlds of the deaf and of Hostage Negotiation, and has continued to win awards, acclaim, and movie rights for his novels centered on criminalist Lincoln Rhyme.

The second element: trust no one, especially the author, because even when you know he’s going to betray you, the problem is always how.


In his latest novel, The Blue Nowhere, Deaver enters the world of the Internet. In Silicon Valley, a sadistic serial killer code-named Phate uses computers to stalk and kill his victims. His weapons are a long, curved blade, a computer virus called Trapdoor, and a sidekick named Shawn. As with any decent serial killer, each kill is a challenge, and each subsequent murder must be more challenging than the last.

The California State Police Computer Crimes Division (CCD) frees world-class hacker Wyatt Gillett from prison. Gillett can make a computer board from miscellaneous pieces of junk and then make it work. His task seems simple: discover how Phate finds his victims, and how he gets into each of their computers. However, Phate is a genius to match Gillett’s own, and when the serial killer murders one of the CCD, Gillette is left to work with Detective Frank Bishop, a man who has more forensics savvy than computer intelligence. Not only does Gillett have to deal with Phate, he also has to tangle with a past that wants nothing to do with him, people from the Department of Defense who want to question him about problems of national security, and Shawn, Phate’s mysterious partner.

And, as I mentioned, you should never trust anyone… except your book reviewer.

Even with no interest in the Internet, the sheer speed of The Blue Nowhere is enough to make an average reader lose track of time and simply fall into the book. Deaver designs his characters and his world in such a way that they are as real as any in literature. The life story of each person is utilized masterfully, as Deaver both paints the background of their lives and twists it violently enough to wrench the book from your fingers. If this novel does not stimulate you, make you forget everything around you, and make you care for the people involved, it will at least educate you in what you never knew about the Internet, and were too scared to find out. It may even make you never want to use a computer again.

I would call Deaver a master of his craft, but that would make this sound like an introduction for an award ceremony. But The Blue Nowhere is a masterpiece of a thriller, with vivid detail, description, and plot fast enough to make a sonic jet look like the traffic flow on the LA freeway.

Buy it now, here: The Blue Nowhere: A Novel

FAQ #2: Casting Call

Another FAQ: Casting Call.


Ever since I started posting photos of characters for A Pius Man, one question has been who would play what role in the movies.

I'd have to start with how many people could be cut from the film first.

A Pius Man is a novel that is over 400 pages long. There are nine characters of varying importance, and while that composes an interesting fellowship, I doubt any film will accommodate all of them. So, any film would also have less character, as well as fewer characters, not to mention no ambiguity. Figuring out who's the lead may work in a leisurely novel, but movies have to move.

Maureen McGrail—physically, if you popped green contact lenses into the eyes of Jennifer Connelly, and gave her acting lessons and martial arts training, she would be good to go for the role. However, since I have yet to see her act, someone else would probably be needed; someone with a similar coloring. Preferably, someone who can fake an Irish brogue and kick some ass. Similar coloring would imply Megan Fox... but I have yet to see her act, either.

Wilhelmina Goldberg: the short, Jewish Secret Service technical geek..... There aren't many 5' actresses, and many of those who are don't seem to be geared to play computer nerd. Short and dark... unfortunately, no one leaps immediately to mind. However, given angles of the face, and the fact that her natural hair color seems to be anything but blonde, Sarah Michelle Gellar may work, if she can speak geek with a straight face. Given the way Hollywood casts people, I would be afraid that they'd cast one of the witches of Charmed—who are also short and dark (Rose McGowan is the tallest at 5'4”).

Giovanni Figlia—middle aged former Italian soccer player, with a build to match.

I wonder, does Billy Zane have a career anymore after Titanic?

Hashim Abasi—An Egyptian policeman who is also part of a think tank, with degrees in international politics. Physically, I always imagined him as Ben Kingsley after a weightlifting regiment. With reading glasses.

Sean AP Ryan—a hard role to fill. Take someone with “black Irish” coloring (black hair, pale skin, bright blue eyes), make him 5'6”, and at least looks like he can do his own stunts. He is mad, bad, and dangerous to know, a pleasant, friendly fellow, until you piss him off and he cripples you for life..... My problem there is, based purely on that physical description, I feel like someone would try to cast Tobey McGuire or Elijah Wood in the role—both are images that seriously make me want to acid wash my brain. Can I have a stunt man who can act?

Frank Williams—I can't imagine an actor who's in his thirties with silver hair and violet eyes, but makeup can do wonders. This requires an actor with a range that allows him to be soft spoken and quiet, and can probably beat someone to death with his bare hands.... I wonder Ewan MacGregor if enjoys playing shady priests...

Joshua Kutjok—the Pope. Tall, African, a very physical Pope. I would go for Michael Clarke Duncan, but I don't know how many different voices he has in his repertoire. Forest Whitaker is also a big fellow (6'2”), and seems to have gone through a workout regiment recently, and he played Idi Amin at one point,so he's done the accent.... there are possibilities here....

Scott Murphy—Once upon a time, this would have been played by Alec Guiness, who could practically play any role he wanted, with only a smidge of makeup and new clothes, and sometimes not even that. Currently the only one I've seen who has managed the same trick has been David Suchet—he's played terrorists, policemen, biblical characters, Terry Pratchett Characters, and Belgian Detectives. However, he left his twenties far behind him... also his thirties. Good acting can only go so far in making someone look younger. However, for a slightly younger actor.... Given the various acting jobs I've seen him do, I think Alan Tudyk should probably be on call for that one: I've seen him play nerds, neurotics, normal guys, absolute sociopaths, and Joss Whedon characters. He's a solid six feet tall, but I've only seen him look big maybe once—and with Lord of the Rings, we've certain seen the games that camera perspectives can play [no, Elijah Wood really isn't a midget.... really].

Manana Shushurin—even though I had based this character on a real person (on the left), I don't think I could coax her into playing the part, since she has a life. Based on physical build and coloring, some have suggested Olivia Munn—both the build and coloring match, and even the facial structure works, at the right angles, but I have no idea if she could act her way out of a paper bag.

Any thoughts on any or all of these, please comment below.

Review: Always a Spy.....

REVIEWS OF BOOKS YOU (PROBABLY) NEVER HEARD OF. PART 1: “Once a Spy”

Since this is the summer, and beach reading is in fashion, I figure it's time to have a slightly more leisurely look at some of the books that are not written by King, Patterson, or Cornwell. These are books that have not had millions of dollars in advertizing dropped on them, but are suburb nonetheless.

Let's start....

Once A Spy, by Keith Thomson, opens with Drummond Clarke, a retiree lost in the fog of Alzheimer's. He spends his time making a pot of chicken and stars soup, and promptly, for reasons he can't really remember, pours it into the plant next to the windowsill. The plant is made of plastic.

Across the street, men wonder what happened to the listening device they planted in Drummond's home.

Charlie Clarke, degenerate gambler, prefers not to see his father. But, like clockwork, the day after Christmas, he gets his annual phone call. His father is seen wandering the neighborhood. Charlie hopes that this is the last time he'll have to deal with his always-distant father. He has plans to seal Drummond away in a nursing home, and use what little cash the retired appliance salesman has to pay off Charlie's own debt to some unsavory Russian loan sharks. Charlie has particularly high hopes when Drummond insists that he used to work for the CIA. Obviously, the old man has lost his marbles.

Until, that is, Drummond saves Charlie as his house is blown up, and hotwires several cars as father and son are shot at in a running chase through Brooklyn.

And now, Drummond and Charlie have the unusual experience of father-son bonding while under fire. With each new experience, Drummond has lucid moments that keep them alive, and one step ahead of their adversaries.

Now if only Drummond can remember why people are trying to kill him....

“Once a Spy” is a very well put together thriller that doesn't slow down until you finish the novel. While the fight / chase scenes are intelligent and creative, the real fun of the novel comes in between battles, in the quiet moments while Drummond Clarke is still lucid and remembers everything from his former life as a spy. This is when Charlie learns about his past, from moments as simple as why his father missed his high school graduation (Drummond was off the coast of Saudi Arabia in a wetsuit), to why he wasn't allowed to go into the local candy store (couldn't have a young Charlie ruining a covert dead drop, now could they?). The father and son moments are lightly handled, and not hitting the reader over the head with hammer labeled SUBTLETY. Instead of bonding over a camping trip, or fishing, it's over the body of a newly knocked out assassin.

The action / spy sequences are also well done. No one, adversary or protagonist, is stupid in this book. While Drummond is useful in a firefight, the adrenaline can only last so long, and so can the lucidity. It is up to Charlie in these moments, and he's being graded on a sharp learning curve.

It's certainly worth the ride.

Buy it here, now: Once A Spy

Novels to films, a brief history

I have received the question, at times, about who should play characters in a film of A Pius Man.  This got me thinking about adaptations. Given the last decade of novel-to-film movies, the question becomes more interesting.

Looking at the slew of Harry Potter films, filmed comic books, etc, I find that Hollywood has obviously hired people who can read.

Why do I express surprise? I can answer that with another question.

Does anyone REMEMBER the 1990s?

Let's look at a few authors who had their work turned into films.

Michael Chrichton:

Author of such noted works as Jurassic Park, Congo, and Rising Sun, he probably had the most good fortune of any author short of Stephen King in having his books translated by Hollywood. And that's the sad part.

Anyone who's read Chrichton's work will appreciate a book I saw while shopping in London. Star Trek as Written By Other Authors—the short story as “written” by Chrichton had five charts and graphs over three pages. While no one missed those in the film versions, I'm sure they missed a few other things.

In Jurassic Park, the novel, the differences were numerous and frequent. There were dozens of Velociraptors, and part of the problem was that raptors had been escaping to the mainland. The park staff was more than the seven people we saw over the course of the film, and security was so well armed, there were moments when it looked like it was Park security versus the dinosaurs in an all out war that included missiles.

Back then, there were few complaints because, despite all the differences, it was still a fun movie, and to create a full adaptation would have required a miniseries. Elements from the first novel would be scattered throughout the next two films.

The Lost World: The sequel to Jurassic Park, the novel, was... better than the filmed version. While the novel followed up on the original enemy from the first one (the problems of Jurassic Park were caused by industrial espionage), the movie decided to make the primary adversary was the stereotyped “Evil Businessman #1.” Someone decided that the movie needed to be made into an endangered species riff, complete with an action lead played by.... Matthew Vaughn, playing an ecoterrorist? And we're going to throw in a cute kid, just because Spielberg likes cute kids. There's a reason that the third film consisted of little plot, less character, and mostly running.

Rising Sun: Someone must have been asleep on the job when looking up their cultural research. I can only conclude that Hollywood wasn't paying attention the day that the Japanese Emperor declared that both blacks and women were “inferior”... why else would they change make one of the lead policemen of this murder mystery into Wesley Snipes?



Tom Clancy: The major problem here lies in one book, one that I'm sure everyone remembers as a film.

The Sum of All Fears: The premise of the novel was simple. Middle Eastern terrorists nuke the Superbowl in order to prompt the United States and the Soviet Union into World War III. It's up the National Security Adviser Jack Ryan to talk everyone down.

I will usually grant a lot of leeway to people who adapt a screenplay. A lot. The previous film had been several years before, and Harrison Ford had moved on to other things. It would have been reasonable to have gone onto later novels, changed actors, and move on. Alec Baldwin had played Jack Ryan in the first film, The Hunt for Red October, I would not have objected to bringing him back. And they had already skipped one novel—The Cardinal of the Kremlin—due to the fact that there wasn't a Kremlin anymore. Taking the character of Jack Ryan from his post as CIA director (from the previous film, Clear and Present Danger) and making him NSA director (in Debt of Honor, the first post-Cold War novel), would have been nice and easy.

Instead, the film for Sum of All Fears was a series reboot about shiny new CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck), going up against.... wait for it... Neo-Nazis. Most of whom were taken out in an ending sequence reminiscent of a Godfather film.

So, wait, the movie comes out after 9-11-01, and for some reason, terrorists from the Middle East are inferior villains? Hollywood's racism is astonishing; somehow, European bad guys are superior to any other flavor of bad guy, especially if the Europeans are evil Nazis.



Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

The Relic: The first book in their series about mysterious FBI Agent Prendergast, who seems to specialize in X-Files quality strange, without the space-alien level stupidity. The Relic was a thrilling tale about a monster in the New York Museum of Natural History. When the book was first written, the museum in real life looked like a great setting for a horror film. Part of this team consisted of a graduate student Margo Green, her wheelchair bound mentor Dr. Frock, and, of course, Special Agent Prendergast. The mystery starts with what, exactly, could have killed a museum security guard in two blows—one to rip open the chest, and one to smash the back of the head clean off.

The adversary of the novel was a genetic mutation that was about eight feet long, like a cross between a panther and bug... it had an exoskeleton like an insect's chiton, only bulletproof. It survives an encounter with a SWAT team with full assault rifles and a grenade launcher.

The film... eliminated multiple key characters (one being Prendergast, goodbye series), killed off several who were necessary for any possible sequel, replaced everyone remaining with pure cliches, and made the creature a thirty to sixty foot monstrosity. This extra large beastie is supposed to have slipped into a small employee restroom to kill a guard, when it couldn't even fit into the hallway leading to the restroom. It manages to kill an entire SWAT team because they all run like scared rabbits—possibly frightened by the horrid graphics—and it starts bleeding because it took a few rounds from a .9mm handgun (to quote the governor of California, if it bleeds, you can kill it). But, no, in this film, they had to try blowing it up with bad CGI fire.



I'm going to cheat for the next few books. They are not the nineties, but they are film adaptations that went horribly sideways.



F. Paul Wilson—The Keep.

This one is interesting. F. Paul Wilson, Fordham graduate, agnostic, and all around interesting person, who even created a character with a rabid following—one so rabid Stephen King is President of the fan club.

One of his earlier books was called The Keep. It opens in 1943, with the German High Command getting a communication from an outpost in Transylvania: “Something is killing my men.” In another area of Europe, a man awakes, and knows he has to get to The Keep before everything ends. It essentially starts out as Dracula and ends as Lord of the Rings.

Enter: the movie. The author himself has concluded that the set of The Keep had a lot of white powder going up a lot of noses. Frequently. Not even Ian McKellen could save this train wreck. The synopsis of the film is as follows: creature kills Germans in WW2; a professor in the Keep makes deal with creature. Professor's daughter sleeps with guy who comes out of nowhere. Creature kills everyone in the Keep. Guy who comes from nowhere has an entrance with lots of light, creature goes away. Credits roll. Audience goes “huh?”


Clive Cussler—Raise the Titanic!

Before there was Indiana Jones, there was Clive Cussler. His main character is Dirk Pitt, one part old fashioned swashbuckler, one part nautical engineer. You may have seen the movie Sahara, made from another of his books—not a great film, but a decent popcorn movie. Better than this one.

Premise: there is an element that might be able to power a sonic-missile shield for the United States (this is the 70s). The only known sample was on board the Titanic, so, we—guess what—RAISE THE TITANIC! (this was before anyone knew how badly the ship had been totaled, so go with it). The book had everyone sail away on the resurrected vessel after a tense shootout with Soviet agents who had found out about the plan and tried to steal the precious material.

The movie, of course, had to have the Soviet bad guys come on board, and our hero scuttles the ship to make sure they don't get it. No victory, just a draw.

Movies of the day suffered from the Hollywood's idea of detente—there are no victories, only draws. If that was the only problem Raise the Titanic suffered from, it might have been salvageable. Instead, Hollywood took a fast paced, tightly written book, and turned it into a slow, ponderous mess. To tell you how bad it was, Clive Cussler saw Raiders of the Lost Ark and cried—mainly because it captured everything that he put into his own writing.


Today, I look at several adaptations—if you have major kvetches, I suggest holding off of them until my conclusions.

Lord of the Rings: Scenes lifted directly from the pages, dialogue from the novel, subplots taken from the appendix. You don't get much better than this. The major quibble I can conjure up is the buildup to the climax of the second film, The Two Towers—and I can blame that on the director's fondness for the buildup in the film Zulu, which felt like nothing but screaming “WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.” Aside from that part of one film, I couldn't complain even if I wanted to.



Harry Potter: I read the books. They weren't bad for YA novels, and a nice parody of the English school system. The more you know about British culture, the funnier they were. Frankly, I thought the films improved on some things. Granted, some of what was left out of the films confused me... in movie three, there's no explanation for a major device of the film, or how another character knows of it. In #4, our protagonist asks why something went odd with his wand, and no answer is given. I say its odd because both “problems” could have been corrected with about three lines of dialog each. And, while confusing, no big deal. The end.



Comic books.

These are clumped together, and easy.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: For a film that was studio mandated, it wasn't bad. Originally wanting to make Frank Miller's storyline about the mutant with anger management / memory / family issues, the people who did the film were ordered to make an origin story. Considering that the details of everyone involved in Wolverine's past were essentially turned into memory goulash, it was possibly the most comprehensible version they could come up with. I'm still confused about complaints that “Deadpool wasn't done well. He was just Ryan Renolds.” Considering that Deadpool wasn't the main character, and had, maybe, five minutes on screen, I don't think you can do anyone well in that amount of time.



The Spider-Man Films: The comic book career of Peter Parker looks like a rubric to diagnose bipolar disorder. Check. The whole Goblin family drama—mostly. Check. Parker puts on the black suit and turns from nerd to.... evil nerd. Big check. Though he could have taken tips from Neil Patrick Harris on being an evil nerd.

The biggest complaint has been about Spider Man 3, particularly on the character of Venom... well, as Sam Raimi said, “I had never read Venom in the comic books, since they came after my time. Because of that, I didn't have a natural inclination toward him. And when I read those comics, at [producer] Avi Arad's urging, I didn't understand where Venom's humanity was. I know that kids think he looks cool, and they think he's a good villain for Spider-Man. I actually didn't. What was it about Peter's own makeup that this villain represented some weaker or darker side to? Just looking like a dark version of him is not enough for me. The more I read [Venom stories], the less interested I became.” So, I get that. Though I wonder why he bothered putting Venom in a film if he didn't really like him.

Aside from that, there could be aesthetic quibbles—why they felt they had to make the Green Goblin look like a power Rangers, I don't know.


Batman Begins: I've had some people complain about the opening of the film, and how Bruce Wayne had been trained to become Batman. My usual response is that, if you read the comic books, the way it was done in the film contained the simplest, least convoluted explanation, as well as introducing the primary villain. And if there are any complaints about The Dark Knight, the best I can come up with is that the movie should have left off with catching the Joker, leaving Harvey Dent / Two-Face to be an ominous thread to be expanded into another movie. The last fifteen minutes felt odd, but having one of your key actors die in the middle of shooting can mess up a schedule a bit.



Now, aside from the above example, I will not say that modern day Hollywood adaptations are all perfect. That would be impossible. However, without lingering on minor quibbles, I can point you to several movies made recently that were based on books and made into something... different.


Shooter, based off of Stephen Hunter's novels about a marine sniper who had been framed for murder, turned into the usual conspiracy theory film about evil government employees messing around in Africa for one natural resource or another. That it starred Castro fan Danny Glover was a hint that the book would be rewritten.


[NOVEL SPOILER ALERT] The Bourne Identity was based off of Robert Ludlum's novel of the same name. A tv miniseries was made in the 1980s, starring Alan Chamberlain. The CIA had sent operative David Webb, war veteran, after assassin Carlos the Jackal, seeming to be another assassin and competitor named Jason Bourne. During the operation, he is shot in the head while fleeing a ship at sea, and awakes with amnesia. In piecing together the story of his life, he believes that he really is an assassin, the CIA thinks he has gone rogue, and the assassin he's hunting is returning the favor, and a civilian he saves from being gunned down in the crossfire is a female accountant who grows attached to him.

The movie: Boat, amnesia, perfect operative, check. Carlos the Jackal is replaced by African Dictator #1 from the nearest cliché yard, and the CIA isn't interested in listening to what happened to him, they all just want him dead. Period. Everyone involved on the CIA end dies, except for Julia Styles, using her amazing blonde powers. Bourne hooks up with a backpacking, gypsy-like female with no discernible education, intellect, or personality.

The Bourne Supremacy – The novel: elements in the government want to use David Webb to flush out another assassin, only this one has taken over the name of Jason Bourne. So, they kidnap his wife, the accountant he saved in the first novel, leaving clues that end him after this new Bourne. The CIA isn't the bad guy, but they are manipulative, which pretty much goes with the trade. Webb's other friends within the Agency lend him aide as he tries to find his wife.

The film: Still on the run as Jason Bourne, his girlfriend gets her head blown off by a Russian assassin on orders from a CIA administrator left over from an X-Men film .... Start your average revenge plot. Kill more CIA agents. Throw in some Russians, because they are obviously still the massive, intimidating threat that they were when they had a working government, now that they're taking orders from us, somehow.... huh? Julia Styles still manages to survive.

The Bourne Ultimatum—the novel is simple: Revenge of Carlos the Jackal. The film: obviously not, because they didn't have Carlos in the first film anyway.


In short, Hollywood has apparently become literate since the 90s—or, at the very least, is CAPABLE of adhering to source material such as novels and comic books. I'm certain that part of it has to do with a director appreciating the source material (Lord of the Rings), or a horde of slavering child fans who will tear them apart if they screw up the movie (the whole Harry Potter / Twilight franchise), or having the Intellectual Property owners run the studio (Marvel / WB). When you consider what has come in the past, things have improved.

Though, apparently, all bets are off when a film include Matt Damon or his clone (Mark Wahlberg). Still, even those films at least resemble the books they were based on to some degree. So, whenever you have a quibble about your favorite character in a novel / comic that's been adapted to film, or that elements had been changed, shifted or modified, always remember one very important lesson that I have learned over the years.....


It can ALWAYS be worse.

And if you don't believe me, ask the hordes of video game fans who have ever gone to see a Uwe Boll film of their favorite game.

Terrorists are stupid.

Yes, the title is exaggerated, but you're reading, aren't you?

I must say, though, for the most part, terrorists are not the brightest lights in the night sky.

Think about it. I can plan a better terrorist attack than any of these bozos. So could you.

For example....You want terror? Screw blowing up the World Trade Center—over fifty thousand people worked there, and the WTC could have upwards of 100,000 visitors per day (the magic notebook sees all and retains all). Infect all of them with the bio-weapon of your choice. A little smallpox, for example, maybe plague in the HVAC system. Have it running all day, and you infect both employees and tourists. They, in turn, infect people while going to lunch, on the subway, the ferry, their families, and when tourists go home, they bring it back with them. Being a smart terrorist, you tell the states friendly to you that they should really restrict travel to and from New York, and possibly all of America, period.

By the time the penny drops at the CDC, most of New York City now needs to be quarantined. The economy starts drying up, slowly. Tourism is dead. Fifty thousand jobs in the two buildings are lost, assuming that the employees are not all simply dead.

And I'm not even thinking hard.

Ironically, despite the Wyle E. Coyote explosive in Times Square, the attack itself was the right idea from their point of view. If terrorists want to inspire terror, then small, but frequent, attacks are the way to go. People are scared, frightened, uncertain about what may come around the next corner.

However, a word to al-Qaeda, et al, upon looking at the Time Square incident: when you're acquiring explosives, avoid the ones marked ACME....

As I was saying—thus far, when terrorists can't come up with ideas that I can in my spare time, they should probably reconsider their career goals.

And they are not necessarily uneducated. Osama bin Laden, last I checked, had a degree in engineering—and if I'm mistaken, his family is fill with engineers so he should have some idea. Mohammed Atta, one of the 9-11 pilots, had an upper middle class education in Egypt.

Though it does make me wonder why, thus far, a lot of the terrorists coming our way seemed to have come out of the Wyle E. Coyote school of home explosives.

The Underwear Bomber whose bomb caught fire without going off.

The Times Square bomber, with a Rube Goldberg timer.

The best answer I can come up with is that we're getting all the cannon fodder, who seem as bright as cannonballs. Not to mention that they have few experienced fighters—when you encourage martyrdom in your ranks, you have few people around who can share hard won combat experience. It didn't work well for the kamikaze, I can tell you that.

If I were going to do a terrorist attack....

The Mind of the Maker... or: Characters can get away from you...and they will.

It has been mentioned a few times that the reader should trust no one while reading A Pius Man.

Obviously, there are some reactions that go somewhere along the lines of “What the hell....?  What do you mean we shouldn't trust anyone?  Who's the main character?”

Christopher Reich once noted that, in a thriller, the reader should always be prepared for anyone to “get it in the neck” at any possible moment, from any possible angle—including behind you.

I started writing in 1998, before there was a television show called 24, where the only one you trust is Jack Bauer. Back then, there was an author named Jeffery Deaver, whose writing style led you to trust everyone... and then stabs you in the back so firmly, the knife blade jams there. Sometimes the killer that Deaver shows you isn't the killer you have to be wary of; usually the shadowy looking figure who lurks in the background and mysteriously disappears turns out to be something different from what you expect (a victim, a cop, an ally that no one knew they had).

It's actually a tradition that goes back to murder mysteries. Agatha Christie has had as murderer: the detective, the narrator, the sidekick, a corpse, and everyone; in “And Then There Were None,” I don't think was really was a main character. There are “police procedurals” where the murderer is someone who was never introduced in the novel, and the last page is filing a warrant for his arrest.

I didn't intend to go to either extreme when I first started—and I don't think the "trust no one" paranoia lasts TOO long. Obviously, there will be people readers can trust during the book... eventually. By page 50 or so, every reader will probably make a decision on who to focus on as “the hero(ine).” And every reader will decide when and who in the story they think is the hero.

It's easy to look at Papal Security Commander Giovanni Figlia and decide that he's a great lead: he's got a wife, two children, a long, established career. And then to look at the “security consultant” Sean Ryan and decide that this guy's nuts: a mercenary who talks about the people he kills with no sign of remorse, puts body counts on his resume, and seems to like what he does far too much. What one does with a Pope that's to the right of Attila the Hun probably depends on one's political leanings.

Funny enough, when I started writing the novel, I simply wanted it clear that trusting someone implicitly was not a good idea. The more characters who slipped their way into the book, the more paranoid it started to seem. Writing Sean Ryan from the point of view of someone who knew nothing about him made him look like a future mass murderer. Seeing a priest with SEAL-level training seems sinister when the reader doesn't know where he got it from. The more they showed to the reader, the more each of them looked like they could be great suspect material.

In the first draft, the whole book started to spiral out of control due to that.

Yes, you read that right, my characters nearly took the book away from me.

There are some authors who have described writing as either schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. If an author does the job well, the characters you read should feel real to you. In some cases, that's because the author has so well fleshed out the character, the character is alive, and can often make moves that surprise the author. Author Dorothy Lee Sayers wrote an entire book on the subject, using insight as a writer to look at creating worlds from the viewpoint of God—if you ever thought that writers were megalomaniacs, well...in their own little worlds, they are god.

I can only hope that any actual deity finds life far less frustrating than trying to tame characters.

In the original draft, when it was one book and not a trilogy, I had started with a plan of: dead body → conspiracy → stopping conspirators. Simple, straightforward, and very basic.

Enter characters who don't know their place.

My villain had a very well thought out plan. In fact, it was so well thought out, nearly everything the protagonists did only served as speed bumps. Unlike some villains I had used in previous manuscripts, this guy would simply not be a good little psychopath and stay down. I did everything but drop a house on this guy—and in one manuscript, I imploded a building with him in it—but he kept finding ways around it. I considered having someone kill him up close and personal, but every fight I came up with ended in a draw.

So, I let the story play out so I could see what it took to stop this guy.... 200,000 words later, I found out.

The story became: dead body → conspiracy → stopping conspirators' gunmen → fallout → conspiracy contingency plan A → stop that plan → fallout → contingency plan continues with slight modification → help, we're going to die → let's go down fighting → fallout.

So, because of one highly obnoxious character, instead of having a simple novel that was completely contained in Rome, A Pius Man becomes a world-spanning trilogy that all starts because one man found something he shouldn't have, and ends with a recreation of Thermopylae, with claymore mines..

The next time you see a line noting the paranoia in the book, you can at least understand where it comes from. It comes from the same place as an antagonist who just won't die no matter how hard I try to ram a stake through his heart. It comes from fairly strong characters who are, in some cases, slightly more crazy than the author.