Rice Krispie Treats. They are the perfect metaphor for Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, “REAMDE.” Stephenson likes to make poetic illustrations about junk food in some of his books, most famously his paean to Cap’n Crunch in the “Cryptonomicon.” This time around, it’s the aforementioned Treats, an amalgam of two fully formed foods, puffed rice cereal and marshmallows. “REAMDE” mixes the international thriller and geek gamer novels, seamlessly blending the two with only occasionally forays into obscure tech-speak.

The book, like all of Stephenson’s, is extremely character driven, flipping from one viewpoint to another, often in the same time sequence, allowing the reader to experience the action from multiple viewpoints. It revolves around a growing cast of characters, starting with former marijuana smuggler, now online pole playing game mogul, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast. He brings along his adopted niece, former Eritrean refugee — now Midwestern girl — Zula Forthrast.

The motley lot expands to include an ex-Spetsnaz security expert, a Hungarian hacker, a Hakka guide, a Chinese virus righter, a Welsh convert to Islam cum-terrorist mastermind, an MI-6 agent, and an Irish American CIA agent.

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Half a year of my life . . . wasted.

That was the first coherent thought that ran through my mind as Ali bin Ahmed Al Falah’s chest puckered into a grapefruit sized exit hole right in front of me. Scarlet and white bits rose like a cloud as he went to his knees, heart torn in half and still pumping…

What ever happened to the world of men’s fiction? In times past, there were whole magazines devoted to telling stories men wanted to read, entire shelves full of books at the local bookstore devoted to men’s fiction. Westerns, pulp adventure, post-apocalyptic survivalist fiction, war fiction, and books that combined all of the above could be found in any B. Dalton and Waldenbooks at the nearest mall.

But now in 2011, that’s all gone. The men’s adventure category has disappeared from the modern bookstore, scrapped to make room for “Twilight” and every other chick-lit paranormal-romance copycat that is glutting the market. And that’s okay. I don’t have anything against Stephenie Meyer and similar authors. More power to them. Anything that gets people away from the TV and gets their noses stuck in books is all right by me, but what about us guys? Don’t we deserve a section of our own in Barnes and Noble?

Yeah, we used to be exiled to the sci-fi and fantasy section, but the ladies are starting to love those genres as much as we do, thanks to Meyer and J. K. Rowling. Those of us nerds who used to hide out in the sci-fi section, silently browsing the shelves and never looking each other in the eye, suddenly find ourselves being overrun with noisy tween fangirls and their fangirl grandmothers scouring our sacred shelves for the next Edward and Bella to get obsessed with. It’s maddening, I say. There’s nowhere left for us to turn. No more really good Westerns. No More pulp. No more War section. Nada. This is an unacceptable turn of events.

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Author’s Note: Two time loser John Shannon agrees to go in on a robbery with psychopath Benny Torrence.  Just as they get to the money, everything goes bad—and Shannon does something that will change his life forever. 

A floorboard creaked on the landing.  Shannon tensed, his hand frozen reaching for the cash.  He turned to see Benny’s dark shape likewise frozen by the door.  In their silence, they heard light footsteps running on the hall carpet.  All the pieces—all the half-acknowledged thoughts—fell into place in Shannon’s mind and he understood:  There was someone in the house.  There had been someone in the house all along.  That’s why he’d seen a glow at the door.  The someone must have heard them break in.  The someone must have turned the light off in order to hide his own presence.  Now the someone was trying to get to the stairway and escape.

For another second, Shannon hoped things might still turn out all right.  All they had to do was let the someone go.  Then they could grab the money and get out of here before the police showed up.  Even with Benny’s supercharged engine roaring for all the world to hear, they might still get away without being spotted.

But then Benny moved—and he moved so fast Shannon had no time to stop him or even call out.  His shadow flashed through the door like a streak of black lightning.  When he flashed back he had the someone in his hands.

It was a woman.  Benny was gripping her by the throat.  He shoved her up against the wall hard, hard enough to make the room shudder.  He shone his flashlight in her face and then down the whole length of her.  She was in her twenties, very pretty, with a curvy figure pressing through her blouse and skirt.  In the outglow of the flashlight beam, Shannon could see Benny’s bright eyes and the teeth in his fierce smile as he breathed over her.  His breath was a low, laughing growl of triumph and desire.

Shannon jumped to his feet.  He shone his own flashlight on Benny, the blue beam crossing with the white beam in the dark.

“What the hell’re you doing?  Let her go,” he said in a harsh whisper. (more…)

This chapter from my new novel, Early Warning, was written well before the Times Square bomber made his abortive attempt to bring fiction to life. Remember: everything in it is not only possible but, on some level, probable.

Times Square -

Jake Sinclair’s face was forty feet high on the Jumbotron above Times Square, smiling at some private joke only he was privy to.  Since he pretty much owned the media in the U.S.,, that was not an outrageous supposition.  Underneath his picture, the Zipper was proclaiming to the world: “WITH BLAST AT TYLER, SINCLAIR HOLDINGS SELLS MANHATTAN HEADQUARTERS TO GERMAN MEDIA CONSORTIUM.  CORP. HQ TO RE-LOCATE TO LOS ANGELES.”

Those who looked up at the Jumbotron at that moment would have seen Sinclair, speaking now, praising Tyler’s rival in the upcoming election.  “The Tyler Administration,” he was saying, “has forfeited all claims to credibility.  The attacks last year on the homeland — the first since September 11th — proved that this administration is not to be trusted with our national security.  Despite his gross and flagrant violation of civil liberties, President Tyler has not kept us safe and, in my opinion, it’s time for a change.  That’s why every patriotic American should send a message to Tyler and his part at the polls this November.  Not just ‘throw the bums out,’ but hell yes, throw the bums out.” He smiled the oleaginous smile that had made him a favorite of most of the media, for Jake Sinclair had long ago learned the first and most important lesson of Hollywood, which had since translated to journalism: if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. (more…)

Big Hollywood is a unique and long needed institution – a place where conservatives can gather and talk about pop culture and entertainment, the ultimate goal being, as I understand it, to encourage conservatives to engage in the culture war through the arts.

While the best tactics to achieve this goal are open to debate, its ultimate worth and necessity are indisputable – for too long, conservatives have ceded the most influential segments of society, from academia to Hollywood, to the Left with nary a fight.  The current sorry state of our movement is in no small measure the result of this refusal to engage the battle of ideas where it impacts people the most- the culture that they absorb every day through radio, Internet, television, and movies.

The piece which will appear in eight installments, one chapter each Saturday and Sunday, over the next four weeks, however, will deal more specifically with the literary world, and the conservative’s place therein.  For contemporary literature (by which I mean drama, poetry, and written fiction) is also more or less the exclusive province of left-wing thinkers and practitioners.

Some may argue that literature these days is not nearly as influential as movies, say, or television, and therefore perhaps not as worthy of conservative efforts to engage.  On the face this is true – far more people watch Sex and the City, for example, than read The Kenyon Review.  But in a larger sense, this argument misses the point and dangerously underestimates the influence of literature as a vehicle for poisonous ideas to enter the cultural mainstream.   (more…)

The primary attraction to any Andrew Klavan novel is a well-constructed, breathlessly paced story that grabs hold within a paragraph and never lets you go. In this respect, Klavan’s a narcotics dealer, a deliverer of addictive, satisfying escapism created to transport you from reality — which in a way makes his latest thriller, “The Last Thing I Remember” a gateway drug for young adults.

Opening sentence: “Suddenly I woke up strapped to a chair.”

Strapped to that chair is Charlie West, a typically bright and motivated high school student who has no idea how he got there. The last thing he remembers is a good though unexceptional school day but nothing that connects to the where, how or why of his present and immediate circumstance. Not only has he been tortured, but voices in the hall have just decided to kill him … slowly.

From here Charlie will have to escape, out run and out-wit his deadly, resourceful captors and unravel what happened in-between scoring a first date with his dream girl and waking up in, well,  an Andrew Klavan page turner. The plot never stops moving or thickening and as the pieces come together, Charlie finds himself the only hope between … and that’s all you’re getting from me. (more…)

At the dawn of mankind our ancient ancestors huddled around campfires and told stories to entertain each other. But the smarter ones realized there was a way to make the stories more effective for the audience. And that was the origin of storytelling technique.

Any artist wants their work to be appreciated. And most artists want to leave a lasting impression. In order to do that, you are either naturally gifted and can do that through your instinctive performance, or you can do it through an understanding of the driving forces that make it happen.

Most people fall into the second category. That does not make them lesser artists. Even the people with natural talent can improve it by honing their craft and learning new tricks.

Where all this falls into the realm of this discussion centers around what I call the point of a story.

Think of it like the business end of a sword. If a sword is dull, it has less a chance to do its job effectively. Of course, most of us writers don’t want to hurt anyone with our work. We want to entertain. Enlighten, if possible. But some have lost track of why they’re doing this. Whether intentionally or not, they are hurting people with their fiction. They are doing harm. Their sword is being put to bad use.

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