Mark Alpert's Blog

Very nice article about my latest novel, "Saint Joan of New York," in the Los Angeles Review of Books: http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/inter...

My latest book, SAINT JOAN OF NEW YORK: A NOVEL ABOUT GOD AND STRING THEORY, has just become available!

It's about a modern-day Joan of Arc, a 17-year-old math genius who becomes obsessed with discovering the Theory of Everything. Her name is Joan Cooper, and she’s a lonely, confused high-school student in New York City, but she also has an extraordinary gift for mathematics, and she’s already mastered the most difficult branches of geometry and topology. Traumatized by the recent death of her older sister, Joan tries to rebuild her shattered world by studying string theory and the efforts to unify the laws of physics. But as she tackles the complex equations, she falls prey to disturbing visions of a divine being who wants to help her unveil the universe’s mathematical design. Joan must enter the battle between science and religion, fighting for her sanity and a new understanding of the cosmos.

For more details about the novel and all the buy links, please go to my website: www.markalpert.com

Saint Joan of New York: A Novel About God and String Theory

St. Martin's Press has just published the first novelization of Trump's White House. THE COMING STORM, by internationally bestselling author Mark Alpert, stars an incompetent president, a self-righteous Veep, and a full cast of scheming advisers.

THE COMING STORM describes what could happen to America if Trump gets reelected. Climate change is ravaging the country. Immigrants are forced into detention zones by militarized federal police. The increasingly erratic president is diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, a hereditary illness that can be cured only through the new gene-altering technique known as CRISPR. The White House orders a secret program to test the CRISPR technology on human subjects, and the results are catastrophic.

More information about the book is available at www.markalpert.com. The buy links are at http://markalpert.com/buy.php
Mark Alpert
The Coming Storm: A Pulse-Pounding Thriller

Barnes & Noble is running a special promotion for my Young Adult novel THE SIX (the first book in the trilogy). Until Oct. 23, you can buy a Nook ebook version of THE SIX for only $2.99. They're practically GIVING IT AWAY!
P.S.: And don't worry if you don't have a Nook reader; you can download free software that allows you to read a Nook ebook on a smartphone, tablet or computer.

Here's the buy link:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/review...

My sixth novel, The Orion Plan, went on sale recently, and this made me very happy, of course. I loved visiting my local Barnes & Noble and seeing the book on the New Fiction shelf.

For many years I wrote novels that weren’t publishable. They weren’t bad books. Some were actually pretty good. But no publisher was interested in them. They weren’t going to sell, no matter what. It took me a long time to figure out why.

I finally realized that you have to follow certain rules to maximize your chances of getting a book published. Here are four of those rules:

1) Choose a Category. What kind of novel do you want to write? A literary book? A mystery? A romance? I think it’s important to choose a category before you start to write, because readers have different expectations for different kinds of books.

My first unpublishable novel was about a Southern governor who was very similar to George Wallace. I wrote newspaper stories about Wallace in the 1980s when he was still governor of Alabama and I was a reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser. I saw this wreck of a man at press conferences in the Statehouse, spouting incoherent rants from his wheelchair because he was high on painkillers, and it was hard to believe this was the same guy who became the symbol of racial hatred in the Sixties with his “segregation forever” diatribes.

I sensed that Wallace’s twisted story would make a good novel, but I wasn’t sure how to write it. I loved All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren’s amazing novel about another Southern governor, and that inspired me to write a literary book. But I also loved political thrillers, so I gave the novel a thriller-like plot. The result was a strange, hybrid mish-mash. It’s probably the best book I’ve ever written, but it wasn’t going to sell. Publishers didn’t know what to make of it. It wasn’t elegant enough to be a literary novel, and it wasn’t exciting enough to be a thriller.

A better writer could’ve made it work, I suppose. But unless you’re a mash-up genius, I advise you to pick a category for your novel and keep your readers’ expectations in mind. A thriller needs to move fast, a romance needs lovers, etc. etc.

2) Some Categories Are More Popular Than Others. I love literary novels, but I don’t read a lot of new ones. Last fall I read Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, but that book is thirty years old. I also reread Nabokov’s Lolita, published in the 1950s. And last summer I tackled Little Dorrit, the Dickens classic from the 1850s. I’ve read only a handful of literary novels written in the 21st century — Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Everything is Illuminated, Empire Falls, The Fortress of Solitude, and a few others. That’s probably because these contemporary books are competing for my attention with three hundred years’ worth of literary masterpieces.

In contrast, I read every novel by Lee Child very soon after it comes out. Same thing with Stephen King and George R.R. Martin and Neil Gaiman. And I’m not the only reader with this kind of proclivity. Avid readers get hooked on genres. Mystery fans devour mystery after mystery. Romance fans can’t get enough romance. And publishers respond to this demand by publishing a greater number of books in these categories. So, all other things being equal, an aspiring writer of genre books has a better chance of getting published than a writer of literary novels.

If your burning desire is to write a literary book, you shouldn’t let the marketplace stop you. But if your overriding goal is to get published, you should be strategic about your choices. Your odds are better in the categories where the market is bigger.

3) Create sympathetic characters. My second unpublishable novel was titled The Church of the Jolly Farmer. That book was just plain weird. The hero was a New Hampshire farmer who has a mystical revelation. According to this farmer’s new religion, when someone dies, his or her soul is reincarnated in someone else, but the soul doesn’t necessarily move forward in time, into a baby who’s just about to be born; the soul can also move backward in time, into a baby born hundreds or thousands of years ago. In fact, a single soul can hop backward and forward in time over and over again, until it’s occupied the body of every human who ever lived in the past, present and future. So, in essence, everyone in the human race shares the same soul. This seemed like a cool idea for a religion because it gives people a strong motivation to treat their fellow humans more kindly. You won’t want to hurt a person if he or she is really a reincarnated version of yourself.

The big problem with this novel was that all the characters were unsympathetic. The mystical farmer was simply crazy, and his followers weren’t too bright. He had a mute wife and an evil daughter who could read minds. There was no one you could identify with. And readers want to identify with the heroes and heroines of your novels. So give your readers someone to root for, someone with understandable flaws and at least a few admirable virtues and abilities.

4) Write New Novels Instead of Flogging the Old Ones to Death. Once you’ve finished your novel, try as hard as you can to sell it. Rework and revise the book until it seems absolutely perfect, and then try to grab the interest of as many agents and editors and readers as possible. What’s more, it’s never too late to revise the manuscript again if you see a way to significantly improve the book. But if, after all this effort, the novel isn’t selling and you can’t make it much better, you should move on to writing your next book. We learn more from our failures than from our successes. And a true writer never stops writing.

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I recently shared some more thoughts about writing and storytelling with awesome novelist Steven James on his radio show, The Story Blender. And if you want to pick up a copy of The Orion Plan, which has received some great reviews, you can go to the convenient list of buy links on my website: www.markalpert.com

My latest science thriller, The Orion Plan, is now on sale! Published by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, The Orion Plan is my most daring novel yet, a terrifying and yet realistic scenario of first contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence. For all the details about the book, please visit my website: www.markalpert.com

My first Young Adult novel, THE SIX, is now available! We had a wonderful launch party at Books of Wonder in New York City on Tuesday evening, and I did a reading in beautiful Isham Park on Wednesday. Plus, THE SIX is featured on the Web site of School Library Journal. (See http://www.slj.com/2015/07/interviews...)

For more details about the novel and the science behind this YA science thriller, go to my website: www.markalpert.com

From now until May 25 you can sign up to win a free copy of my first Young Adult science thriller, THE SIX, which just got a starred review from Booklist. Simply go to this page to enter the contest: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

I love Young Adult novels. For many years I read the books aloud to my son and daughter, and when my kids got old enough to read the books on their own, I would sneak into their bedrooms late at night and swipe the novels from their desks so I could keep up with them. I longed to write a YA novel of my own, and a couple of years ago I had an idea for a science thriller that might appeal to teenagers, a story about robots and artificial intelligence and whether a person’s mind or soul can really outlive the death of the body. Titled The Six, the novel will be published in July, and it’s already received some advance praise from R.L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps series (my son’s favorite bedtime read when he was a second-grader), and Michael Grant, author of the Gone series (which my kids also loved). Now I’d like to share some of the things I learned while writing the novel.

1) IT’S ALL ABOUT THE VOICE. One could argue that the best YA novel of all time is The Catcher in the Rye. My daughter, now in eighth grade, read the book for her English class this year and was completely enthralled by the adventures of sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield. It was Holden’s voice that grabbed her, the vivacious, confused, sometimes angry, sometimes wise voice that ridiculed all the phonies at Pencey Prep and wondered what happened to Central Park’s ducks in the winter. For a few weeks she adopted Holden’s voice as her own and spoke exclusively in Holden-speak, complaining nonstop about her “goddamn homework” and declaring “That kills me!” every time she saw something interesting on the street.

Of course, the narrator’s voice is important in all novels, but I think it’s absolutely critical for YA books. Young adult readers are especially eager to identify with the protagonist. They want to see the world through his or her eyes and maybe learn a thing or two in the process.

2) YA CAN BE MORE DARING THAN ADULT FICTION. Writing in first-person is a very effective tool for creating a compelling voice. The main character can quickly establish a wonderful sense of intimacy when he or she is speaking directly to the reader. The problem with writing in first-person is that it’s hard to do well. If J.D. Salinger had been less adept at it, Holden would’ve come across as a whiny snot-nose. One of the keys is balance: the narrator has to be forthright but not arrogant, courageous but not stupid, compassionate but not a sap.

Because first-person is so difficult to pull off, I think many writers shy away from it. I don’t have any definite numbers on this, but I feel confident that the overwhelming majority of thrillers are written in the more conventional way — that is, third-person, past tense. That’s the way I wrote all my thrillers for adults. But YA authors seem to take more chances. Suzanne Collins made a brilliant choice when she wrote The Hunger Games in first-person, present tense. If it had been written in third-person, I don’t think readers would’ve fallen so madly in love with an unusual character like Katniss Everdeen. And the use of present tense energized the book’s gladiatorial combat scenes.

I decided to write The Six in first-person, present tense, and I think it made a world of difference. The book’s narrator, Adam Armstrong, is a seventeen-year-old suffering from Duchenne muscular dystrophy. He’s been in a wheelchair since the age of twelve and his heart is starting to fail. He has less than six months left to live. And yet he’s also a bright, funny kid who writes virtual-reality programs and loves the New York Giants. I don’t think I could’ve successfully portrayed this character if I wasn’t inside his head, telling his story in real time and talking directly to readers.

3) YA IS USUALLY SHORTER THAN ADULT FICTION. A hundred thousand words is LONG for a Young Adult novel. Cut as ruthlessly as you can.

4) IT’S GOOD TO HAVE BOTH BOYS AND GIRLS IN THE STORY. What’s Harry Potter without Hermione? What’s Katniss without Gale and Peeta? One of the things I really liked about Rick Yancey’s The 5th Wave is that it’s split almost evenly between female and male point-of-view characters.

My YA novel focuses on five teenagers besides Adam, three girls and two boys. They’re all terminally ill, which makes them eligible for an experimental procedure that scans their brains in such detail that the full contents of their minds — all their memories and emotions and virtues and flaws — can be digitally recorded and stored in advanced electronic circuits. I call the six teenagers the Pioneers because some futurists believe that all people will be able to make this leap from biological tissue to computer processors, perhaps by the year 2050.

5) GIVE THE KIDS SPECIAL ABILITIES. Those abilities don’t have to be supernatural or futuristic powers. Maybe one of your characters can have a fantastic memory or an amazing pitching arm or a remarkable singing voice. Special talents are actually pretty common among teenagers. If a kid has a passion for something, he or she will practice constantly and get absurdly good at it in a relatively short amount of time.

Growing up is the subject of most, if not all, YA novels, even the most fantastical ones. I remember when my daughter was a toddler she had very poor balance and was always slipping off chairs and benches. One day we were sitting on a bench on a concrete patio, and she started tipping backwards. She would’ve hurt herself very badly if I hadn’t swooped my arm around her, grabbing her in midair just before her head hit the concrete. It was really no big deal, one of the routine things parents do everyday, but at the time the thought occurred to me: To her, I am Superman. I have powers of speed and strength and agility that are far beyond her poor childish abilities. But when she becomes a teenager, she too will gain those physical and mental powers, and she’ll have to learn how to use them. Then I understood why I enjoyed the Harry Potter series and all the other books about teenagers struggling to control and take advantage of their newfound abilities. They’re all metaphors for the primary challenge of growing up.

6) GIVE THE KIDS SOMEONE TO LOVE. Teenagers fall in love all the time. When I was seventeen I fell in love with a different girl every week (and ninety-nine percent of them were blissfully unaware of my passions). That’s one of the charming things about teens: most of them haven’t been really hurt yet, so they’re still willing to open their hearts. And that’s why love triangles are so popular in YA novels. These kids don’t know what they want yet. They’re still experimenting.

This experimentation often involves sex, and the best YA books don’t shrink from describing sexual situations (I’m thinking of Holden Caulfield’s sad encounter with the prostitute in Catcher). In my YA novel the relationships are a little more unusual because the teenagers are transformed into giant clanking robots with bullet-shaped torsos. This is an advantage in some ways; the robots lack sexual equipment of any kind, so I don’t have to worry about disturbing younger readers (and their parents) with any graphic descriptions. But even though my teenagers are trapped inside machines, they still find ways to experiment. Adam figures out how to share circuits with one of the female Pioneers, and while they’re occupying the same machine each teenager has full access to the other’s memories and emotions. It’s a romantic connection that’s actually much more intimate than ordinary sex.

7) DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK. Authors of YA novels no longer have to avoid the more upsetting aspects of adolescence. You can delve into heavy subjects like suicide and drug addiction without alienating your readers. Teenagers are talking about these things anyway and learning about them in their health classes. If a YA novel treats these subjects with the proper sensitivity, then reading the book might help kids make better decisions.

I was a somewhat morbid teen, appalled by the inevitability of death. It seemed ridiculously unfair. In The Six, I tackle these fears head-on by describing the death of Adam’s body. The teenager dies and is reborn as a machine. Then he and his fellow Pioneers must confront an even greater threat, an out-of-control artificial intelligence that’s seeking to exterminate the human race. If our species goes extinct, what was the point of all our struggles? Yes, it’s a dark thought, but teenage readers can handle it.

8) ABOVE ALL, HAVE FUN WITH IT. Even the most serious YA novels have some humor in them. Kids are amused by the absurdities that adults have stopped noticing. The other day my son told me, “In a hundred years, people will be living to the age of 150. That means there are fifty-year-olds today who will still be alive a hundred years from now. So cheer up, Dad. You might be one of the lucky ones.”

It’s a funny quote, right? I’m going to try to fit it into another YA novel.

My latest novel, THE FURIES, goes on sale today, and it just got a great review from the Associated Press, which called the book "an unexpected journey into dark fantasy." To see the full review, go to http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/w...