I have come to the conclusion that writing a novel is pretty easy.
Image from here.
I have also come to the conclusion that crafting a novel is one of the most difficult things you can undertake.
Writing a novel is like going to the playground for a day. If you have imagination, time, and have read a hundred novels, you can write a 50,000 word draft, no sweat.
Crafting a novel is like trudging through an endless desert. You inch forward, questioning every comma, deleting every bit of preciousness, weighing every character motivation. And all with the fleeting mirage of publication on the horizon.
I was reminded of these truths ever more forcefully by Shane and Tristan Lindsay’s “Raiders of Castillo del Mar,” a YA novel submitted to the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest, and now available on Kindle.
“Raiders” has not found its way through its entire crafting desert, with apologies to the authors for all the work they have already put in to this thing.
It is alive, like a big, overgrown, slobbering puppy. It’s full of rambunctious potential in an in-your-face type of way. And if you don’t mind the lack of discipline, you will have fun with it.
The novel tells two stories in parallel fashion. The first is about pirates in 1746; the second, set in 1954, is about Johnny Socko, a superhuman teenage detective and all-star football player with Betty and Veronica-style girlfriends, a dog who likes to fetch bowling balls, and a magnetic attractor gun he sent away for in the mail.
Johnny's story is a postmodern romp through all the clichés of 1950’s teenage boy wonder novels, something that would absolutely make sense for the Coen Brothers to do (and maybe will, since this novel started out as a screenplay, according to the Lindsay brothers). I love the part where Socko and one of his girls, Vivian, break into a museum storeroom and meet “Hardy,” the scholarly character who will fill them in on the pirate mystery Socko is pursuing. “I know you,” says Johnny. “You’re the professor.”
The pirate story, for its part, is darker, gore-filled and heavy with sailing lingo and dreadful description (“A crisp scent of danger lingered on the breeze”). In this one, the superhuman pirate lady Anne Dubois falls in love with the English first mate turned pirate E.F. Titus as they seek a mysterious treasure that seems to recede ever farther away as the plot complications and new characters pile up.
For me, the self-consciousness wackiness of the Socko story clashed with the overwrought pirate yarn, making for quite an uneven read, especially at the end when the two threads get woven together in a burst of unlikeliness. There is a lot of imagination and cleverness here, which could be restrained and refined in a revision.
But maybe a revision is not in order. "Raiders" is very comic-booky, and it might do well as a graphic novel. There’s plenty of action, and I think it would be easier to take visually than written.
As a movie? Call the Coen Brothers. I'm dead serious: they really need to take an option on this one. The combination of period gore and affectionate, twisted nostalgia is absolutely up their alley.
Good luck, Lindsays. Tell me what those other brothers said.
PS: You have a Kindle novel you'd like to get virtual ink? Send it my way. I still have $6.02 left on my Kindle budget this month.
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