It showed up in my Facebook feed the other day: “Co-author a book with James Patterson!” That got my attention; although many of Patterson’s co-authors are really, really bad at their craft, you have to figure that the exposure and automatic best-seller listing have to be good for a career. Even the abysmally horrible Michael Ledwidge now has twenty listings over at Amazon (all with Patterson’s name on them as well), and I have to figure he’s doing pretty well for himself.

The man, the myth

Patterson (if he’s not being held in a cryogenic cylinder by his agents while they squeeze every last dime out of his name) seems all right with putting his name on horrible books. For that reason I’ll never pay for anything with his name on it.

But would I co-write a book with his name on it? Hell yeah! I’ve got something that would knock his socks off. It doesn’t quite fit his cookie cutter (more on that shortly), but it’s close enough to pitch.

So, knowing I was just encouraging the man, I clicked the link. The contest is open only to those who take his “Master Class” — a series of videos that costs $90. I am being asked to pay $90 to learn from the man who theoretically mentored Michael Ledwidge. Yikes. But I’m sure a lot of people will fork over their precious cash (even more precious to working writers) to chase the dream of seeing their names on the cover of a best-seller. Hell, someone is going to win, and that someone will likely produce a better novel than Step on a Crack.

Even if you don’t win, your idea might make the big-time; here’s some fine print: They can “use the content, including without limitation, the right and license to make, use, sell, offer for sale, and import any products and/or services which practice or embody, or are configured for use in practicing, all or any portion of the content…. without permission from or compensation to you or any other person.”

(Thanks, Trent, for digging that up.)

So now people are paying $90 to hand over their ideas to a bankrupt franchise. Now, that’s not as evil as it sounds. I sometimes quip (in reference to novels), “Ideas aren’t worth the paper they’re wiped on.” Novel writing is about execution. But if I saw my main character in a Patterson novel written by some (other) hack, it would tear my guts out.

I will not be participating. But I understand if other folks cannot resist the siren call. Even after that analysis, I feel the pull. It is a magnificent prize. I’d like to give those who participate a couple of tips on how to succeed. You don’t have to thank me, it’s what I do.

1) The hero is everything. He is a man. He is unbelievably awesome, yet single. In my very small sample, I have seen a cop, a father of many, watch his beloved wife succumb to cancer in the first book of a series, leaving him in need of a Good Woman, and I’ve seen a war hero who was resuscitated from death on a battlefield only to stand up and fail to rescue his buddies in a burning helicopter. I’m amazed there were no kittens on the helicopter to make the events more tragic.

So, your hero. Tough. Smart. Resourceful. Really feeling a hole in his life where a Good Woman should be.

2) That tough, smart part? Well… he doesn’t actually have to be smart; if you just say he is, that’s good enough. Somewhere in chapter two have a buddy give him shit about his physics degree and the patents he holds, and you’re good for a while. In fact…

3) The good guy can actually be pretty stupid. If he has to swallow his brain to make a scene work, no biggie.

4) Now let’s get to the bad guy. Great thrillers are built on the power of the adversary more than on the strength of the hero. On an unrelated note, in Patterson-plus-one novels a bad guy is handy. The bad guy must commit ALL the classic bad-guy mistakes:
a) create an incredibly intricate plan
b) base their incredibly intricate plan on the incompetence of the good guys
c) after that succeeds, make a really stupid mistake
d) [optional] escalate the threat as the hero gets close
e) refuse a pragmatic way to win in favor of a poetic gesture
f) confess to everything when caught

5) I’m sure I left out a couple, but I need to move on. The bad guy must be one of the smartest people on Earth. Only, as above, you only have to say he is a criminal mastermind; he’s not exactly facing Encyclopedia Brown, here, you know what I mean? Encyclopedia Brown would break the story.

5a) Encyclopedia Brown as a down-and-out detective, bloodied by life yet still standing. CALL MY AGENT!

6) The Good Woman. She’s hanging around the periphery, noticed-but-not-that-way by the hero. Maybe in the next book he’ll see what’s right in front of him. Maybe in the book after that. Treat her well, she is the avatar of the woman reading your yarn. Your contract as a writer is with her. She is, despite limited exposure, the most important character in your story. She is competent, understanding, always there to wash the blood off the hero’s face and look after the orphans he adopted for some reason. When he comes home drunk she is there (having just put the orphans to bed) and she pours coffee into him and listens to him and feels for him.

Someday, she knows, someday he will open his eyes.

7) The Bitch. Everything the reader doesn’t like about her co-workers rolled into one. Sexy, manipulative, only out for herself. In one of the Patterson stories I read, the writer couldn’t even be bothered to make her a problem. She was a bitch, then she felt bad about it and disappeared. Christ I think that lump of poo was written over a weekend. But if you want to shine in the Patterson fold, give the bitch some teeth.

To circle back to the title of this episode: the best way to win is to not play. But if you must play, remember that there is a formula for success. And remember also that you can write to a formula and still be good. Hell, many of my favorite stories are formulaic. So don’t let that stop you. But you actually have to write a good story. That’s the lesson Ledwidge never learned, despite the stature of his mentor.

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Sweet!

Thanks!

Many of the things Everyone Knows are in fact, false. We are told time and again that socialism is shared misery. Misery is hard to measure, but the assumption is that workers are less productive in a socialist economy. The everybody-knows explanation is that socialism rewards slackers.

That is an assertion that can be tested, given enough data. The theorem is, then, that productivity is lower in socialist economies. Anecdotal evidence abounds. Many socialist nations have crashed in horrific failure. Need we look any further?

Well, yes, because the burning question is, “was it socialism that killed them?”

Let me tell you, when I started reading up on this stuff, the water got deep, fast, so there’s a pretty good chance my summary of economics is even less precise than Carl Sagan’s parables about physics. But here’s what I managed to glean:

1. All things being equal, socialist societies are more productive.
2. Corruption is the soul-sucker of an economy.
3. Socialist societies are more likely to be corrupt.

So if you can create a nation where workers can work, confident that their families will be cared for, knowing they are secure and need not fear catastrophic medical bills, things can go really well. IF (and this is the giant IF) the government doesn’t siphon off the fruits of their labors to cronies, or undermine the rule of law. If, in other words, the government isn’t organized crime. Russia’s socialism was pretty much organized crime, and cratered. The former socialist republics of Eastern Europe are all examples of horrible socialism.

But walk with me here, as we explore the idea that corruption is the soul-killer of a society. Corrupt socialist nations fall. But so do corrupt capitalist nations.

Here in the United States, we have already grown the corruption of a socialist nation, without any of the benefits.

Exhibit A: Boston’s “Big Dig”

Let’s compare the Big Dig in Boston, a fine city in a fine capitalist nation, to the Big Dig in Barcelona, where socialism runs wild in the streets. While it’s impossible to say the projects are equivalent, they were both giant public-works projects that involved tunneling under cities. They both cost a shit-ton of money. The estimated cost before ground was broken for both projects was similar.

Both went over budget, but the Boston project went way, way over budget. And then required remedial construction. In the end, the Barcelona project cost a lot less.

Why did the Boston’s big dig cost so much? Let’s round up the usual suspects. Unions? Ahem. We’re comparing ourselves to Spain, here. Environmental regulations? Again: Spain. They’re pretty tough about that stuff, too.

Corruption? Bingo. The way public works projects in the United States are bid and managed is an open invitation for grift. Building a simple bridge now costs taxpayers ten times what it used to. Our tax money just vanishes into the dark unknown. Since ALL public projects are ridiculously inflated, they all seem normal. Barcelona’s cost overruns were about half Boston’s. Corruption there too, but less.

Exhibit B: The F-35 Flying Turd

Mention this weapon to any senior military man in the US and listen to his teeth grind. It is a terrible airplane, designed by politicians; the only mission it does well is to cost money. My money. Your money. Money that could be spent on airplanes that don’t suck. The men in Washington who keep this project alive are criminals, and they profit handsomely.

Exhibit C: Health care

While we argue endlessly about how expensive it would be to provide health care to everyone, a lot of other countries in the world manage to do it for a fraction of the cost. How? In our country, where does all that money go? There are some reasonable answers for some of that cost (we are not willing to accept any failure rate; our costs fund research that would not happen otherwise), but let’s face it, we could do almost as well for a fraction of the cost. Masses of money just disappear in a health-care black hole of bureaucrats and malpractice premiums.

I’m sad. Socialist nations fail because they invite corruption. We are already corrupt, and we’re not even socialist yet.

1

Sweet!

Thanks!

I’m sorta-kinda-not-so-much watching a soccer match right now. As the teams came out of the halftime break the cameras showed the English team huddling and psyching each other up, then they cut to one of the US players, alone on the pitch, with a disturbingly intense look on her face. Whoever that was, I wouldn’t want to mess with her. So now I’m paying a little more attention to the game. If the US loses, will there be violence?

Also, I’m saddened by the vast, mostly-empty stadium. This game is in many ways superior to the men’s version (far fewer flop artists, less corruption in officiating), but this is still a novelty league in footie-loving countries.

But tonight, the game is on, and it’s pretty good, now that I’m paying attention. Athleticism vs. structure. Somewhere out there on the pitch is a woman with murder in her soul, so I hope we win.

Sweet!

Thanks!

I had in these annals a commentary on Apple and the FBI fighting over privacy issues, but after some reflection I took it down because some asshole out there would ultimately dig it up and use what I said as if it were an official Apple press release. My employer prefers that its people not go muddying already treacherous waters.

So I’m going to have to let others do the talking on this one. Too bad, too, because there was a nugget of a nice debate taking shape.

2

Sweet!

Thanks!