I read Carolyn Crane’s debut urban fantasy Mind Games and loved it. So I was thrilled when she asked me to “beta read” its sequel, Double Cross, out this week. This was the first time a fiction writer had asked me to read her work prior to final edits and publication. “Just read it like you normally would”, Carolyn said, “and let me know if something doesn’t work.” I can do that, I thought.
In fact, once I got to thinking about it, I realized that I could do that and so much more.
I printed out the document, got out my highlighter, my red pen, and my scissors, and settled in for a long night. I slowly read Double Cross. I read it again, super fast. My Rabbi called on synagogue business, and, inspired, I reread it right to left, back to front. I read it while holding it up to a mirror and turning the pages slowly as I alternated crying jags with hysterical laughter. Finally, in an effort to free myself once and for all from the rigid linearity that sequentially numbered pages — and an author who perhaps underestimated my true talents, and therefore, extreme usefulness – forced upon me, I removed them one by one and tossed them around the room, looking for new and unexpected juxtapositions as they glided to the floor.
It was 5:00am when I was ready to send Carolyn my list of suggested changes, which I reproduce below in full:
Dear Carolyn,
Thanks for giving me the chance to read Double Cross. I made the following changes:
1. New title: Double Double Toil and Trouble Cross — to alert readers to the hidden Shakespearean themes and mystify literary types at the same time
2. Halloween tie in: Start with a new spookier title (see #1), and make one bold cover change: place a recently carved jack-o-lantern at Justine’s feet, to impart multiple new meanings –domestic and feminine – to the knife she wields, and to catch the eye of those Walmart shoppers searching for candy corn
3. More complexity: Mind Games introduced a love triangle. It was good, but that geometrical shape has been done to death. We need to kick it up a notch with a love trapezoid. To that end, I added a new character, Otto’s long lost twin brother, Blotto, whose personality is perfectly expressed by his nickname, “Beer Cap.”
4. The setting of Double Cross is futuristic. I like how you represent the new world with words like “highcap”, “zing”, “descrambler”, “glory hour”, and “disillusion”, but why stop at adding a few nouns and verbs? To really make the reader feel the difference, I’ve taken the liberty of eliminating all articles such as “the” and “a”.
5. Your book is written in the present tense. As luck — yours, of course — would have it, I recently found out this is no longer the thing. Doesn’t it make more sense to write urban fantasy in a future tense? And isn’t future perfect a delicious irony for a quasi-dystopian novel? And doesn’t your book need more irony, especially at the meta levels, by which I mean the levels only a dog or PhD in English can hear? I confess I chuckled to myself every time I changed a line like “It’s like cool velvet fire on my tongue.” to “It will have been like cool velvet fire on my tongue.”
6. More cucumbers.
7. I hesitate to criticize, but I think you may have taken the word “sequel” a bit too literally. Readers already know Justine as the morally tortured disillusionist. It’s old news that she doesn’t like using her hypochondria to “zing” the stuffing out of the bad guys. Readers want to be shocked. Have you heard the expression “wall banger?” Take it from me: that’s the sign you are really having an impact. So I added a chapter. We’ll call it Chapter 9 and 3/4: In Which Justine Finds Religion. She spends the rest of the book in quiet prayer and meditation, interrupted only by occasional visits to shut ins.
8. You mention that the book will be shelved with romance, despite the fact that it does not technically fit the genre definition. I am happy to report that I have added (a) special smells for both Packard and Otto (“sandalwood and highcap” and “woodsmoke and highcap”), (b) a shower masturbation scene for each major character, (c) a secret baby who grows up to be a virgin widow, and (d) 5,000 adverbs. Voila! It is now a bona fide romance!
Yours sincerely,
Jessica
Alas, my suggestions were not incorporated into the final version of Double Cross. Carolyn explained that while she absolutely loved every single one of them, her editor was being a real PITA and refused to budge. I do understand how these things happen, and can only hope that Carolyn gets a new editor with a little more insight, balls, and vision for Book 3.
Ok, seriously now, I loved the book, I was very flattered to be asked to read it, I loved being able to make suggestions, and I loved it that one or two of them were actually taken up. For folks who have read the first book, this one is faster, lighter (not in tone, but in the sense of less worldbuilding), and more romantic (no HEA, but more emphasis on Justine’s love life). The main niggle for me as a beta reader was a switch in attitude of one major character towards another that felt too quick and thus a little jarring. It’s the kind of thing that I think an author may not catch, reading the book in small pieces, but that someone reading it front to to back will notice. It’s amazing to see how just a few new lines made that problem go away completely. It was a really fun, rewarding experience, and I feel like I have a little more insight on the writing and publishing process as a result. So thank you, Carolyn!
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LMAO. Blotto? Seriously?
Okay, not seriously.
*G* I loved this book-wasn’t it wonderful????
HAHAHAHA! I laughed so hard while reading this I almost woke up the kiddies.
I agree with the more cucumbers part and I loved the pic of the “beer cap” and the name Blotto.
Really, I loved the title! “Double Double Toil and Trouble Cross” is absolutely brilliant! Everybody at Random House thought so! I don’t know why they didn’t go for it. I think they are trying to steal it for Johnathan Franzen’s next novel! I am sure of it!
Future tense…Blotto…Oh, if only I had had more time to perfect it this book! According to your plan!
LOL. Okay. OMG> I am just laughing.
I was expecting a Justine cucumber kabob sandwich. But Carolyn didn’t seem to go for it when I suggested it.
Bring on Book 3!
Team Gumby
PS: Hot shower masturbation scene will be expected in book 3.
I must say, I’m not sure I would have read this book if it actually qualified truly as a romance. smexybooks got me hooked on the first one, and there was nearly bloodshed when she tried to keep the sequel away from me! If you liked the first one, you will LOVE the follow up! The colliding forces within this book made it nearly impossible to put down once you dropped into the running storyline -and it was a truly suprising ending that left me needing more! Get #3 out there before an angry mob starts tossing bricks around. I guess they would be called, “the nerds”. Hmmm maybe that’s too inclusive of me… But since “the dorks” was already taken…. Hmmm book three could be revenge of the nerds? Seriously awesome read, a true pillar of the craft!
And thus ends Jessica’s short and glorious career as a beta reader…
Hmmmm. Methinks I should read this.
Jessica, I was also really grateful that you had me cut the subplot where Justine is shocked to discover that Otto has a secret Panda baby that he had been hiding under his shirt all during book #1. You felt that was a poor motivation for conflict. You are the best beta reader EVER!!
Seriously, that main niggle Jessica refers to in the last para, that she pointed out and we discussed and fixed, its importance cannot be understated (or described without a spoiler). So grateful!
!!
Read the first book and happily awaiting the sequel. Re point 4 of your beta reader advice Jessica, the blog ‘science in my fiction’ had stuff about crafting languages a while back re point 5 yes to more irony especially meta irony that excludes the reading masses…. thanks so much for making me laugh! Yay for, wit and intelligence and humour and panda babies.
Thanks for getting the joke, people. I was a little worried actually.
@Chris: Really? I was so going to hang a shingle.
I’m too close to the book and to Carolyn to review it, but it’s no conflict of interest to state honestly that I loved it as much as I loved Mind Games, which is to say, a heck of a lot. There are loads of proper reviews around the internet, but I was too lazy to link to them.
Carolyn — No I did not mention Otto’s panda in this post, because I felt there were some things that should never see the light of day.
@Merrian: Really? I will look around for that post.
@Mr Smexybooks: I felt the romance subplot was very strong, and more than enough for readers of romance to enjoy the book, but you are correct, it is not a romance. In particular there is a fantastic cliffhanger ending which is not typical of most romances (Diana Gabaldon’s Jamie and Clare being an exception).
All books should be written in future perfect from now on.
@Victoria Janssen:
By god they will have been!
LOL! Love the future perfect; you will have been absolutely right about that as the best tense for futuristic fiction.
I am disappointed to hear about the lack of cucumbers. I’m only about 1/3 of the way through the book, so I was hoping that all the tubular vegetation was in the 2/3 remaining.
In the two places I’ve seen this book, it has been shelved with sci-fi/fantasy, not romance.
http://crossedgenres.com/simf/2010/09/09/how-linguistics-can-help-you-part-3-syntax/
I hope this link works for ‘science in my fiction’. There are 3 parts to the linguistics discussion. The comments are interesting too. Especialy noting the links between Klingon and border ballads and Elizabethan rhetorical styles….
Just finished Double Double Toil and Trouble Cross, loved it (LOVED it, Carolyn!), and love it all the more now that I can see your critiques at work, Jessica.
And perhaps it is because I am putting my PhD in English to work teaching a class on the “meta” at this very moment that I have particular sympathy with your point that it is a register which maybe my students can’t hear. (Actually, I think it’s because they were born in the 90s, and thus irony and meta are so totally over. Isn’t there something postpostmodern we could be talking about instead?)
Lastly: I think chapter 9.75 would really have added an interest fillip to Justine’s character. It could have inaugurated the new Jane Eyre shift in her narrative – allowing her to consider (conflictedly) a life spent in prim missionary dutifulness, far away from the site of all previous strife, in contrast to the prospect of returning to take charge of her wounded, abject beloved. (Wait – which side of the love triangle is Rochester in this tortured allusion? Curses!)
@SonomaLass: Interesting data about shelving — Carolyn, are you reading?
@Merrian: Thank you!
@Ariel/Sycorax Pine: God. Wait a minute while I pause to let “born in the 90s” sink in. What you should be talking about is Jersey Shore, I think. Glad you loved DC!
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