The Green Man Archives - Laurie R. King

(Re)Writing God of the Hive

December 30, 2009 by Laurie King 9 Comments

The first excerpt for The God of the Hive is here, to be followed by others on the 27^th of January, February, and March. For those curious about the creative process (who among us is not?) each will be followed by a post showing the first draft of that section, with brief remarks talking about the rewrite process. I will take care to avoid major spoilers, although this post contains a minor one—if you wish to preserve the absolute purity of the eventual reading experience, you may wish to stop now and just stick to the excerpts themselves.

As you can see (you should get an enlarged version if you click on the image) the working title, which held from its original proposal (in the fall of 2008) until almost the last minute (September 2009) was The Green Man. I’ve blogged about the title and the character of the Green Man several times, posts you can track down if you like by hitting that tab over on the sidebar.

However, The God of the Hive is not an inappropriate title, because the key character in the book is a sort of modern Green Man, a spirit of the woods, the most British of demigods.

Not that the book is without other gods, two of which we meet in the Preface—which was originally Chapter Four, page 19, until I realized that the image of these two antagonists worked better as the foundation stone of the story rather than another event in the march of chapters. And here lies the mild spoiler referred to above, for in the final version, I decided to keep their identities unnamed (although I think the experienced reader will guess—or rather, deduce!—the name of prisoner long before it is given, anyway.)

Then Chapter One begins, with a slight shift of wording that opens meaning. And because my first drafts are basically an outline of plot written for my own eyes, this first draft amounts to a quick sketch, waiting for the final version to find all the color, detail, and balance the reader needs: Who are these people? What are they doing? Where are they? When are we? and most important of all, Why should I care about them?

Between the version that first went onto my laptop and the one that ended up between hardcovers lay countless changes. What was originally one five-page chapter broke into two chapters (of four and three pages, respectively) as the story that began with two figures crossing a barren hill at dawn took on intimations of a far larger world: Out there lay the machinations of Empire, and the threat of loss, and the sharper threat of pursuit. The relationship between Russell and this burden she carries (adding just enough background information so a reader unfamiliar with The Language of Bees will not feel lost) is central to the entire novel, and needs to be established from the beginning. We need drama, and humor; we need attention to the pacing of the sentences so the prose becomes both invisible and inevitable; we need to fully inhabit the head of the narrator, Russell, but with this book, we need also to be prepared to shift our point of view to encompass other characters.

And finally, the Green Man himself. We will not meet Robert Goodman for many chapters yet, but when we do, his presence needs to mesh instantly with what has gone before, as if we have been waiting for him all along.

Next month, excerpt two: Inside the mind (and–gasp–heart) of Sherlock Holmes.

To everything, a season

November 4, 2009 by Laurie King 12 Comments

There are as many styles of writing as there are writers—and I don’t mean the words on the page; I mean how they get there.
I have writer friends who work set hours, every day without fail, year around, as if they were clocking in at a warehouse or office. I know others who take a similar approach with number of words rather than time spent. And a lot of writers swear that the only way to work is to start the next book on the heels of the finished one.
Me? My brain compartmentalizes, so it’s no surprise that my life is lived in chunks of intense concentration. When I have a first draft going, staring at the laptop’s screen is pretty much all I do for three months. Mail goes unanswered, dust mice become dust bunnies, appointments go unmade.
And then I finish the first draft, raise my head, and dive into a flurry of activity with broom, pen, telephone. I see friends, work my way through the stack of unanswered letters, call the contractor and the doctor and the guy who keeps the watering system in order.
And then the rewrite presses in on me, and I vanish again, not to be seen until the manuscript is ready to be sent off.
Right now, I’m in the post-copyedit stage, with the only solid piece of work coming at me: the galley proof pages, which will arrive at the end of the month. Which means that everything I’ve put off since, well, last year this time is standing at attention, six inches from my face, demanding that I Do Something About It.
My To Do list has turned to a second page, although I’m happy to say that most of the demands on the first page have lines through them—not that I’ve done them, you understand, but it means that the clogged gutters have moved from a note with a phone number to a note on the calendar, along with the gardener, the dentist, the thyroid doctor, the veterinarian, and a dozen other Real Life entities.
Central in this flurry of activity is a consideration of what we—I and my trusty e-world compatriots—want to do for next spring’s publication of The God of the Hive. Last year, we did “Fifteen Weeks of Bees” to link the anniversary of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice with The Language of Bees. In 2010, we’ve decided that since The God of the Hive is my twentieth book (good heavens!) we’ll do—ready for it?—“Twenty Weeks of Buzz.”
The planning and preparation of blogs and contests and all the fun stuff will no doubt take up every spare moment until I pick up my laptop again to write the new book, with luck in January. At which time I will disappear into the ether, and only be heard from in echoes of months past.
And now if you’ll pardon me, it’s eight o’clock and I have another line of my To Do list to cross off: a telephone call to the artist who did Russellscape #1 for The Language of Bees, for a conversation about doing a similar piece for The God of the Hive. Green Man images, anyone?

Writer on the ground

September 20, 2009 by Laurie King 7 Comments

It’s always reassuring when memory and photographs combine to create a correct setting for a scene, rather than a setting absolutely impossible for what you’d intended. I finally got into London yesterday to check on the details of Westminster Bridge, which plays a major part in the ending scenes of The Green Man (name to come! soon!! I swear!!!) I started at Green Park, walking down Pall Mall (Mycroft’s home) and past the Horse Guards Parade ground and along the back of Whitehall (Downing Street is now shut to foot traffic, sensibly enough) to Parliament Square, where I was greeted by the noon strike on the Parliament clock, the four-fours of the famous striking quarters followed by twelve reverberating beats from big Ben.

I prowled around the bridge for quite some time, comparing the angles, noting the considerable rise in the middle, both lengthwise and across; the relationship between the placement of my characters; the needs of clear lines of fire from there to here. (I was grateful my thoughts could not be heard. Grateful also I was a grey-haired female crime writer rather than a young male of the species, since I’d seen no fewer than three young men being questioned by the police, their rollie-suitcases opened, their identities checked—St James’s Park is alarmingly close to Buckingham Palace for police comfort.)

One building down the Victoria Embankment from Westminster Bridge is the two-toned brick pile that was New Scotland Yard (now replaced by the modern building a stone’s throw inland, known, disappointingly enough, not as New-New Scotland Yard, but just the same old New Scotland Yard.) You may remember that Our Heroine was shot at in a window of that very building, in 1919, and the building will play a part in the denouement of the next story.

A bagpiper was playing on the north part of the bridge itself, a great temptation for a writer looking for Authentic Colour but perhaps not suited to the scene as written, which takes place not only in 1924, but at three in the morning. A juggler will have to do. And I peered across the wall at remnants of the truly ancient St Thomas’s hospital, skulking along the edges of the modern hospital and convenient for concealment of Russell’s means of escape.

And Monday? Kensal Green cemetery, site of many eminent burials and one minor (and apparently fictional) riot. And an evening event with my friends at Heffer’s in Cambridge, and then an attempt to cram all the books purchased on this trip into a suitcase, and away to home tomorrow.

The Green Man flies

August 21, 2009 by Laurie King 14 Comments

The Green Man–rewrite finished, although never to my complete satisfaction–has zipped its electronic way across the country and landed in my editor’s computer. 427 pages, some of which are not at all bad. Look for it, and its author, in your local bookshop in June 2010. Not under that name: I hope to have its definitive title next week.

My own children didn’t have their names for nearly a month each, while we decided which of our chosen alternatives seemed to fit their infant personalities better. Drove the local registrar nuts, I thought they’d assign us one, or come and repossess the kid.

Name that baby!

August 1, 2009 by Laurie King 223 Comments

You thought that once the Fifteen Weeks of Bees were over, we’d be finished with contests, right? Ah no, we’re just beginning.

How creative are you feeling? Well, sharpen those pencils and wits, kids, because Laurie needs a title. That’s right, The Green Man just doesn’t do it. As a working title, sure, because it’s about a man who lives in the woods and is a little bit of a Trickster—but this is New York publishing we’re talking about, not some New Age, Burning Man, hippie crap.

What’s wrong with “The Green Man”? I’m glad you asked (because you can bet I did.) To quote: It doesn’t have the layered nuance of The Language of Bees. It doesn’t seem either upmarket or suspenseful. It’s not tantalizing.

In other words, a mix between * yawn * and Huh?

So here’s your chance to name LRK’s next baby: The Adventure Formerly Known as The Green Man. You can hit the tab over on the right to follow what I’ve had to say about it, you can check out the Wikipedia article on the Green Man, and I’ll tell you that it’s about Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes and Mycroft (lots about Mycroft) and spies (spies are important) and the Green Man—aka Robert Goodman—and Damian and Estelle from The Language of Bees and boats and planes and trains and cars and…

And since any contest needs a prize, let’s say we’ll put the author of the winning suggestion in the book’s Thanks page, and send him or her a signed ARC as soon as we get them.

Any thoughts? These are titles that have already been yawned and Huh?ed over:

The Green Man

The Man who Spoke in Leaves

Eyes in the Green

John Barleycorn Must Die (yeah, sure)

Jack of the Wood

Eyes in the Green

Voice of the Green

Speaking in Leaves

A Man of the Green

Are we having a good time yet?

Breathing in and out

May 28, 2009 by Laurie King 4 Comments

Following a tour, I set aside days to breathe in, and breathe out.

I tidy and scrub, I unpack my suitcase and shove it into the back of the closet, I wander out to the deck with a cup of coffee and reflect that I really should do something about the weeds. I go to a movie with the family. Maybe even two movies.

I do not write. I do not open the folder with the printout of the next book, although I may touch it as I unearth my writing space from its heap of accumulated debris. I do not hold editorial conversations with my editor. I do not pass GO. And I do not collect my $200.

I have been home for five days now. My suitcase is mostly empty, although not yet back in the closet. The various objects I promised to mail are in a neat stack on the pool table/work surface. I am down to my last half-dozen unanswered emails, my last two inches of unread Time and Newsweek magazines, my last four days of unread newspapers.

Today I will finish the emails, carry the various packages out to the car for mailing, empty the suitcase, and shove it into its space in the closet. Then I will make myself a cup of tea, climb the stairs to my study, sit down, and pick up a pencil, to open the folder with the 340 existing pages of The Green Man.

Writing with a bulldozer

April 17, 2009 by Laurie King 2 Comments

I had some questions about the seder songs I talked about last week. My son-in-law’s sister tells me she took them from here and here, so now you’re all set for next year, right?

*****

This week I sent the first draft of the next book to my editor. The Green Man is nothing near finished, but my editor is one of those old-fashioned editors who likes to work on a book alongside the author, and I am one of those old-fashioned writers who appreciates all the help she can get. So I give her my early drafts, even though reading at this stage is a bit like trying to drive on a stretch of freeway that has the bulldozer work done and patches of base rock, but no bridges across the chasms or overpasses to connect the parts: the going is rough, but you can at least see where it’s leading.

And that for me is a necessary part of the writing process. The book is bad and incomplete and frustrating and, well, not a book, really. But now, particularly with this enforced break of five weeks while I’m first catching up on life, then flying off on tour, I have a chance to let the story bubble away on the back burner.

I’m already noticing things about it that I hadn’t planned—other than its inadequacies, that is. For example, although I had from the beginning intended it to link closely with The Language of Bees (many of the characters continue into The Green Man) I am only beginning to realize how it is true on a deeper level, how the themes and interests I wove into Language of Bees are central to this book as well—family ties and the ancient gods of Britain being but two.

When I return to the manuscript in May, and read it with fresh eyes, those themes are what I will be looking to improve. Along with the plot, of course: crime fiction rather requires a plot that makes sense. And when The Green Man comes out in 2010 and you see how the arcs of the two stories tie together, you’ll think I’m a liar. You’ll think I knew from the beginning precisely what I was doing.