For my second Friday Flash Review, I have Michael Offutt's debut novel,
Slipstream. And I'm lucky enough to have Michael stop by and share a few thoughts as well.
Goodreads Description of Slipstream...
Jordan Pendragon is
crazy good at fixing situations that have gone bad. It's a talent prized
by his high school ice hockey team. However, when a car accident puts
Jordan in the hospital, he wakes up with more than just an amazing
slapshot in his toolbox. Jordan can manipulate space-time and in just a
few weeks, he'll depend on it to save his life.
My Humble Opinion...
Michael
Offutt’s debut novel, Slipstream, is
unlike anything I’ve read. It is a sci-fi mystery, adventure with a teenage
protagonist, Jordan Pendragon. The book gets its title from the physical
phenomenon of the same name, which Offutt uses as an extraordinary ability to
manipulate space-time, giving it to Jordon to discover and learn to harness.
The
story begins on Earth, where Jordon, a high school hockey star with an aptitude
for physics, learns of his ability with the slipstream. He meets a young
British man, Kolin, who is from an alternate Earth, called Avalon. Avalon is a
dystopian nightmare of megacities separated by vast wastelands, an insane
artificial intelligence who claimed the role of God, and societies obsessed
with beauty, youth, drugs, and violence. It’s like a gothic, futuristic Rome
meets Las Vegas, which I love so much. The megacities are plagued by
technologically enhanced versions of vampires, ghosts, and succubi. I find
these surgical modifications quite interesting, a cool adaptation of these common
creatures of the night.
Once
in Avalon, Jordan and his twin sister, Kathy, have to help a team of eclectic
characters to free the imprisoned half of the AI in order to get home. There
are many twists and turns along their adventure and I don’t want to slip up and
drop any spoilers. But Offutt kept me guessing as the unlikely heroes battle
corrupt and surgically enhanced people, mythologically based creatures, and
insane super machines. The multiple fight scenes are intense and really propel
the story forward. The creation of Avalon is described with in-depth quantum
mechanics and technological explanations, which I found interesting—sometimes
slightly over my head—but I feel the length of the explanations slowed down the
story at times.
Overall, I very much
enjoyed the unique story and descriptive dystopian world of Avalon paralleling
our own. Even though the adventure revolves around a teenage protagonist, Slipstream is not classified as YA,
which I agree with because it has some graphic scenes and language. Slipstream is the first novel in the A Crisis of Two Worlds Series, and I’m
looking forward to Offutt’s next installment.
A few minutes with Michael...
Thanks so much for joining me today! I very much appreciate you taking a few minutes out of your busy day to talk with me.
Where
did your inspiration for Slipstream come from?
I don't really know actually. I just had this
idea one day that I wanted to try writing a book again. I have several failed
novels that just sit in drawers or in dead computer files. I knew the story I
wanted to tell was going to be big. And I have all of these plans in my head of
things I want to do and gadgets that I want to use in later books. I wrote a
pretty detailed outline. Then I started world-building. I knew from the get go
that I wanted my protag to be a hot young hockey player because I enjoy
watching hockey on television. But I needed a story that wasn't about sports
because I didn't want to write about sports. I just wanted that to be a facet
of his personality (the same as him being gay--it's just one facet) and a means
to progress the plot. I think I had the whole "show don't tell"
mantra in the back of my head so wanted to establish that my protag was
athletic without just saying "he's athletic" so being great in a
sport was one way to do that. Then I had to decide if I was going to write in
first person or third person. That's where the biggest inspirations came from.
I turned to the works of great sci-fi authors like Frank Herbert, William
Gibson, and Robert A. Heinlein. They all wrote in third person omniscient. So
that's what I wanted to do. And I'm most comfortable with that style. I
struggled with the whole YA label because I know that YA authors tend to write
in first person. I knew that if my book got branded as YA, as soon as a girl
picked it up and saw the first line and realized it was third person, that it
was probably going to get a pass. So I really tried to impress upon people it
was a sci-fi novel first (which has more acceptance of third person omniscient
even if the hard sci-fi audience is one of the most snooty genres to write
for).
Slipstream has quite the eclectic cast. How did you build
and develop your characters?
I knew I wanted Jordan to be smart and that I
wanted to use a lot of quantum mechanics because I find quantum mechanics and
astrophysics to be fascinating stuff. Making him gay was just because I'm gay
and well...write what you know, right? I made Kolin an English assassin because
quite frankly, my D&D days taught me that assassins were pretty sexy, and
I'm a sucker for an English accent. If you don't think assassins always look
sexy, you need to pay attention to some ninja movies or look at the demon
hunter in Diablo III. Just way sexier than the barbarian and far more
interesting to me. And James Bond can be considered sexy, don't you think? And
it's not too far to label Bond as an assassin. He has a license to kill after
all. I needed Kathy because I have this whole clever thing that's going to
happen in book 3 that has to do with the whole Excalibur legend and the Lady of
the Lake. Plus I thought that the story I have for Jordan was too big for just
himself. Dylan grew out of a desire to have a quirky paranormal character that
could do weird stuff because he has a spirit cat as a companion. And Meteora
and Chewy were both based off of World of Warcraft characters that I loved
playing with in my guild. Meteora was the best shadow priest I have ever seen
and Chewy is one heck of a warlock. Chewy consequently is played by Tomeka (one
of my best friends) and a black woman in real life as well as in game. So it
wasn't much of a stretch to make sure I had a major character that was black,
smart, and beautiful.
What is you’re writing process like? Do you have
a routine? Daily/weekly/monthly goals?
When
I do write, it becomes almost an obsession. I stay up late, get up early, and
work so hard that I actually don't like the feeling it leaves me with. So I
actually go for months at a time without writing anything except blog posts
because I know when I start my story, I won't want to do anything else, and
that's unhealthy. It's really weird to explain, but it's almost like I feel I
have to get the story out of me in order to get any sleep. And then I drive
myself crazy obsessing over words and edits. I don't plan on writing anymore
until the winter. I feel it's okay to be unhealthy in the winter because it's
cold outside and there isn't much to do.
Would
you like to share anything about what you’re working on next?
I'll
be working on the third book in the series. The second book is in the hands of
a great editor who will take the rest of the year to pore over it. Then DDP
will probably look at publishing it sometime next year or maybe 2014 depending
on how backed up they are. I know that it will be called "Caledfwlch"
which is the Welsh name for "Excalibur". The second book is called
"Oculus". In case you were wondering, there's Arthurian
allegory going on in Slipstream, and it's completely intentional. Since you
read it, I'll go ahead and tell you that "Caldefwlch" is the only
weapon that has the possibility of killing the Horcus because it isn't from
Earth. I'm going with the whole "Forged by God" thing that people
talk about when they discuss the sword of legend. I'm going to update it
though...it's not going to be some crusty medieval weapon. Jordan will be able
to transform it into anything in the Slipstream field--that includes shiny
snowboards!
Do
you have any advice for writers dreaming of becoming published?
Network with other
writers through a blog. Stop being alone. Writers can help you with advice and
by being supportive and with reviews. You want to have friends in the industry
who've got your back when the Amazon trolls start rolling in with their one star
reviews. It helps to have that padding from twenty or so bloggers who have read
your work and given you fair reviews before some jerk cruises in and says
"I never read this book but noticed all the four and five star reviews so
made a one star one to call attention to it." And trust me...this does
happen for real.
Thank you again, Michael! It has been a real pleasure sharing this post with you. Below are links to Michael's blog, Goodreads, and Twitter, and a link to get
Slipstream for yourself. Thank you for reading. I'll do my best to stop by your blogs this weekend, and I'll be right back here first thing on Monday. Have a wonderful weekend!
Michael Offutt
http://slckismet.blogspot.com/
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3099632.Michael_Offutt
https://twitter.com/#!/MichaelOffutt
Michael Offutt is a writer of science-fiction books. Depending on
when you catch him, he may also be an aspiring writer of epic fantasy,
young adult fiction, or a daily non-sequitur. He has one brother, no
pets, and a few roots that keep his tree of life sufficiently watered.
Mr.
Offutt's mother is a four-foot tall Japanese woman and his father is a
six-foot tall white man from Texas with a thick southern drawl. She
loves city life and sushi. He loves small towns with run-down pick-up
trucks and fried chicken.
When he asked his mother how they got
together, she happily responded that when she was working in the United
States Air Force back in the '50's, she used her spare time as an office
clerk at the Air Force Base to look over personnel records for a
husband. He remarks that peculiar behavior like this must have been how
people met each other prior to the influence of Facebook and Twitter.
It puzzles him whenever he thinks about it, so he chooses instead to
just love his stalker mother who speaks quite fondly of the family to
the fictional people that live in the basement.
