Patrick Bowman's Blog

In June I tried an experiment: After speaking to the John Wanless Book Club about Torn from Troy, I distributed copies of my second manuscript, The Sea God's Curse, and asked them for feedback. It was tremendously useful! Thank you to all of you who helped. Because in these insecure times people are concerned about getting their names published on the web, I can't thank anyone in person, but to all of the John Wanless Grade 5 reading club, thank you! You spotted a number of issues in the second book that I had totally missed, and the book will be better because of your input.

I had promised to send it to my publisher at the end of May, and here it is mid-July and he, er, still doesn't have it. He's a patient man but I expect to start getting queries any day now. Fortunately it's very nearly ready!

Ever seen someone walk without touching the ground with their feet? Well, you should have seem me a couple of weeks ago when I read the Quill & Quire review of Torn from Troy. Very complimentary! A few samples:

- "First-time novelist Patrick Bowman borrows adroitly from ancient mythology for his action-packed story"

- "… for all those with an interest in ancient times and a taste for adventure, Torn from Troy is a highly satisfying read"

Q&Q is the largest booksellers trade magazine in Canada. There's another review due out in June in Resource Links that is just as flattering, but since it's not out yet I don't think I should quote it.

The next step will be to get the book reviewed in the Globe and Mail's Books section. Watch this space.

A few of the comments I've gotten about Torn from Troy have remarked on the gore.  There's not that much, but yes, there are a few cases of people who have their brains dashed out, get sliced open in battle, or are just killed and eaten.

None of this violence is gratuitous.  It all serves to make a point – the casual brutality of bronze-age warfare, the unpreparedness of the Greeks at Ismaros, or the barbarity of the Cyclops and the contempt in which it holds humans, for example.

We have this notion that our children are shrinking violets who must be carefully sheltered from any exposure to bad things, at least until they move out into the real world, for which their innocent upbringing will no doubt have prepared them perfectly.

As you can tell, I doubt it.  Children aren't naturally squeamish, at least in my experience, though many learn squeamishness from their parents or peers ("Oooh!  A nice girl like you won't want to touch that yucky stuff!").  On the contrary, yucky things intrigue most children.  And why shouldn't they?  The movie Stand By Me captures it perfectly – four boys make a lengthy trip, just to go and see a dead body, and perhaps poke it with a stick.

It's worth adding that this novel covers a very violent event – the sack of Troy and its aftermath.  Bronze age warfare was brutal.  No snipers taking out people at 300 metres, or cruise missiles destroying "targets" from a hundred miles away.  Battles in that era were intensely personal – stabbing or spearing the guy directly in front of you.  Any depiction of these events that didn't have a few detached body parts would be like a description of Antarctica that didn't mention snow.

I'm quite pleased with the violence in Torn from Troy.  There's enough to give the reader a sense of the brutality of the era, without overwhelming or distracting from the plot.  I hope you'll feel the same way.

Torn from Troy Book Launch

It's official.  The book has now been launched, a month to the day after it hit the bookstores.  It was great fun!  I'd heard horror stories about book launches where the only people who show up are your parents and a wino who had to be bribed with a doughnut, so I invited quite a few people.  Quite a few.  Turns out nearly everyone wanted to come!  There were a few last-minute cancellations, naturally, but still well over a hundred people showed up.  This includes one fellow that nobody knew, who never spoke but made a beeline for the souvlaki table, but he seemed harmless, and there was plenty of food.

I should also mention the restaurant, Mykonos, just north of  Bloor on Yonge in Toronto.  Peter Koptides, the proprietor, was tremendously accommodating, and a lot of people mentioned how much they liked the cuisine.

Now that the launch is over, I have no further excuse to put off important tasks.  Losing weight, for starters … that picture is a brutal reminder that I'm carrying more than I should.  Watch this space.

Torn from Troy Book Launch

It's official.  The book has now been launched, a month to the day after it hit the bookstores.  It was great fun!  I'd heard horror stories about book launches where the only people who show up are your parents and a wino who had to be bribed with a doughnut, so I invited quite a few people.  Quite a few.  Turns out nearly everyone wanted to come!  There were a few last-minute cancellations, naturally, but still well over a hundred people showed up.  This includes one fellow that nobody knew, who never spoke but made a beeline for the souvlaki table, but he seemed harmless, and there was plenty of food.

I should also mention the restaurant, Mykonos, just north of  Bloor on Yonge in Toronto.  Peter Koptides, the proprietor, was tremendously accommodating, and a lot of people mentioned how much they liked the cuisine.

Now that the launch is over, I have no further excuse to put off important tasks.  Losing weight, for starters … that picture is a brutal reminder that I'm carrying more than I should.  Watch this space.

A few people, not least my publisher, were curious about why the fabled Trojan horse doesn't appear in Torn from Troy, other than a single indirect reference.  The simple answer is that this book is through Alexi's eyes, and he didn't happen to see it.  Troy's a big place, and he was elsewhere.

The standard images you see of the Trojan horse are silly.  In 2004′s movie Troy, the Trojan Horse looks like something a child slapped together with bundles of sticks.  Now, the Trojans weren't stupid.  They had successfully resisted a gigantic Greek army for ten years (okay, a lot less in the movie).  Even if the horse looked absolutely perfect, it's unlikely that the Trojans would have gone for it.  And the idea that they would take in something slapdash that looked more like an insult to the gods than a gift is really unlikely.

In the sequel, The Sea God's Curse, we will hear more about the story of the Trojan horse.  I won't say any more about it, except to remark that history, as the old saw goes, is written by the victors.  The true story of the Trojan horse, as related to Alexi by someone who was there, is very … different.

This touches on a broader issue.  Odysseus was known as the "man of a thousand twists and turns", a man who made stories up regularly for his own advantage.  And much of the original Odyssey is told "by" him.  Given that, and assuming it to be a historical document rather than just a flight of fancy, how much should we trust its accuracy?  Not much, is my guess.  Nonetheless, I have tried to follow a rule: I don't contradict what's in the Odyssey.  I add a lot, and I leave out things that aren't significant to my books, but I don't contradict.  Mostly.  There are a few spots where the Odyssey says things that aren't consistent – e.g., the six-week storm, as discussed earlier – and I've felt free to change those to make them a little more believable.

There are plenty of blogs with advice on getting published, many written by people who know more about it.  This is my perspective, as a recently-published author.  There are five steps or decisions to make.

1. Write something.  No publisher will publish a new author who has only the concept for a book, unless you've got a real hook (say, you're the daughter of dictator Salvator Allende, or you shot JFK).  You've got to write the best thing you can, up front.  Publishers are busy.  If your manuscript looks like it's got buried potential but will take too much work to dig it out, they won't bother.  I should add that Ronsdale, once they took me on, took a lot of care polishing and cleaning up my manuscript.

2. Submit it to the right publishers.  When you hear about an author who was turned down forty-three times before getting published, chances are they were submitting to the wrong places.  Most publishers do only certain types of books: westerns, say, or books about the east coast.  Figure out your genre and submit only to publishers who actually do it.

3. If you're Canadian, as I am, try Canadian publishers first.  Canada Council grants are available to publishers who do Canadian authors, which means that if you submit your manuscript to Canadian publishers, they'll look more favourably at it.  It still has to be good, mind you.

4. Should you get an agent?  Gosh, that's a toughie.  Wouldn't you rather know the meaning of life?  But seriously: it's hard to say.  Nowadays, interesting an agent is just about as hard as interesting a publisher, and for the same reason: neither wants to waste their time on something unpublishable.  On the other hand, if you can interest an agent, you'll find doors open to you that wouldn't be otherwise.  Many larger publishers only take stuff that comes through an agent, using the agents to filter out the dross.  But agents – or so I'm told – can be even more hardnosed than publishers, who may occasionally take a risk on something offbeat that strikes their fancy.  And while you have an agent, you can't bypass him and go to publishers directly.  Big no-no.

5. Manuscripts or query letters?  Publishers invariably put their submission guidelines on their web sites.  Obey them.  If they say they want three sample chapters, don't send them the whole MS.  On the other hand, I sent query letters to several publishers who said they didn't take unagented manuscripts.  Okay, it didn't work, but it was worth a shot.  And Random House sent me the very nicest rejection letter I've ever received, which was very sustaining.  Besides, they often say they don't take unsolicited manuscripts, in which case a query letter is technically permissible, even though they usually mean they only work through agents.  Oh, that's right: a query letter is just what it sounds like: "Dear Mr Publisher: I've written this butt-kicking book about kicking butt.  Would you like to see the manuscript?"

I went almost entirely with query letters.  Why waste my time and money mailing manuscripts to people who won't read them?  A query letter is much faster for them and me.  Keep it down to a single page, preferably half, that makes the best possible case for why your book is a perfect fit for that publisher.  Look at what else they've published – their titles will all be on their web site – and point out what's similar to yours.  Publishers tend to want something that is both utterly fresh and unique, on the one hand, and identical to everything they've ever published, on the other.  Not the easiest requirements, but your query letter should explain why your MS meets them.

6. Can I send my manuscript to multiple publishers at once (multiple submissions)?  Short answer: sure, but tell them.  Publishers are busy and slow.  If they don't take multiple submissions and you still want to go with them, set a timeframe – perhaps a month or six weeks – for them to get back to you.  They can't reasonably demand that you submit only to them, and then sit on your MS for three months, especially when the odds are they'll reject it.

You will get rejection letters.  Don't get discouraged.  The worst one I ever got made me laugh out loud.  It was a badly photocopied sheet with a checklist of possible rejection reasons.  They had checked off Your subject and/or main character does not hold our interest. Ingrates.  No vision.

And sometimes you won't hear back at all, although most publishers are good about that.  I still have one major Canadian publisher who I submitted a manuscript to through their "friends and family" channel but have never heard back from, despite four follow-up letters, five emails, and numerous phone messages.  Since it's been 3 1/2 years, I'm pretty sure I won't hear from them now.  No, I won't say who they are.

If you've written something good, it will eventually get published.  Now, making money off it … that's a different question.

Why did I choose a recreation of The Odyssey as my first book, instead of something easy, say, summarizing the Encyclopaedia Britannica?  I've asked myself the same thing quite a few times.  I started with the Odyssey because it's a great story, but one that hardly anyone ever reads any more, except in university.  I wanted to create a version of this ancient classic that people would actually like to read.

I don't mean to trash Homer, or his many excellent translators.  It's wonderful lyric poetry.  It's just that lyric poetry (that is, poetry meant to be sung or chanted to a Greek harp or lyre, from which we get the word lyrics, incidentally) doesn't turn most people's cranks any more.  So I thought I'd take the Odyssey and turn it into an adventure novel for teenagers, especially boys, something that they would read just because they wanted to.

Girls are likely to enjoy it too.  From my own experience, girls are way more willing to read books where a boy is the main character than boys are books written around a girl.  Go figure.  I seriously considered making Alexi, the narrator (and a slave of the Greeks, if you who haven't read it yet), a girl, which would certainly give her a dangerous secret to hide from a boatload of sailors!  I wanted this to be realistic, though, or at least as realistic as a story with one-eyed giants and whatnot can be, and there's no way that a girl could hide her gender on board a small ship packed with men.

The other reason I chose the Odyssey was because I was really, really naive.  I looked at the translations of the Odyssey, and figured, hey, they're one book, I guess I'll create one book as well.  I won't make that mistake again!  The Odyssey is mostly written in narrative mode, without much true dialog, backstory, subplots, character development, etc.  For example, the episode with the lotos-eaters only gets about ten lines in the Odyssey; it's a whole chapter in Torn from Troy.

When you turn it into a novel and add in all these things, it's a bit like unfolding one those origami cranes.  The original  sits nicely in your palm; unfold it and you've got a piece of paper a foot square.  I was maybe a third of the way into the book when I realized that there was no way it was going to fit into one book.  Or at least,  not a book that any publisher would touch unless my last name was Rowling.

So do I regret starting with something this ambitious?  No way.  Writing Torn from Troy has been a blast.  And the second book, The Sea God's Curse, has been just as much fun.

Homer – or whatever oral tradition he was cribbing from when he wrote the Odyssey – didn't always pay attention to details.  This has been a big challenge while trying to write a more "rational' or at least consistent version of the Odyssey.  For example, in the original Odyssey, after they escape the Cicones, the Greeks encounter a six-week storm.  Six weeks?  That's half a season!  On top of that, Greek vessels at the time probably weren't meant for extended sea voyages, but for putting in to shore every night or two.  They wouldn't have carried anything like enough water for fifty men for six weeks.  So I've cut the storm down substantially, and even then, they come close to running out.

An even more interesting example is near the end, with the Cyclops.  Here we have a creature that, in the original, throws a huge rock far enough out to sea to create a huge wave that washes the Greek ship back to shore.  At the same time, it can milk goats.  This would be a lot like us milking mice!

Coming at it from another direction, the Cyclops eats four men in a day.  Assuming them to be 180 lbs apiece, that's 720 lbs of meat (and bone, etc) that the Cyclops eats daily.  If a regular 6′ 180 lb man on an all-meat diet eats about 1.5 lbs of meat a day, that means the Cyclops must be about 480 times the mass of a man.  Assuming he's essentially a really big man, and applying the square-cube law, the Cyclops is about 47 feet tall.

After struggling with this for a while, I removed the whole thing about milking goats that was in the original.  Although I left the cheeses.  Okay, so I'm not totally consistent.  I guess this is just one of the things that you run into when you're stealing from, sorry, adapting ancient sources.  On the other hand, I get a ready-made brilliant plot, so I can't complain.

One question that keeps coming up is "why does your About the Author page in Torn from Troy say that you have no dog?  Are you one of these dog haters?"  Actually I love dogs.  I guess I wanted to distance myself a bit from these self-laudatory author pages that you see sometimes.  "The author lives on Vancouver Island with his two dogs, Coochie-Poo and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in a log cabin that he built with a bent fork.  They spend their days farming organic shallots and diving on U-boat wrecks off Clayoquot Sound."

Okay, so maybe I haven't seen one quite that bad.  But I'm sure they're out there.