L.C. Barlow's Blog

The biggest thing I’ve realized about writing recently: There is an original source of tension for the protagonist of the novel, and the novel will seem to fall off or become unwieldy/will go off the rails when you are no longer writing scenes that delve into that original source of tension, but rather create brand new sources of tension (sometimes a brand new source each chapter). The book becomes bland when you are writing scenes that don’t fully tap into that original knot/tension. In addition, not tapping into the original source of tension makes it feel abandoned or forgotten or like the author doesn’t know what he or she is doing. There is no one thread.

By “original source of tension,” I mean a knotted portion of the character. The knot has to be tight. The very thing that saves the character’s life also destroys the character’s life. Saving and destruction are the same thing in the knot. Ex: Walt’s choice to cook meth in Breaking Bad is to save his family; it also destroys his family. At the intro of Sex and the City, the bus Carrie has been waiting for that advertises her new book is the same bus that hits a puddle and ruins her expensive outfit (she is both her savior and her ruin in a cute way). In The Sopranos, family is the thing to be protected and the thing to kill simultaneously (it is both shelter from the storm and the storm itself, to use Thomas Shelby’s words in Peaky Blinders, which is also about a gang).

You can give teams/characters and plots and meanings to the saving and destruction and play around with which side is actually doing the saving and which side is actually doing the destroying (sometimes the destroyer saves, and sometimes the savior destroys), which winds the knot ever tighter. But you cannot create a brand new knot every chapter. The characters and plot will not be consistent. The book will feel unwieldy or bland.

The reason the knot works is because it most accurately represents a purified version of life. The thing that rips from us a “barbaric yawp” is when saving and destruction go hand-in-hand. The thing that saves is the thing that destroys; that is why we cannot fully reject it and cannot fully accept it. It makes our minds go round and round, until we cry out. If all of life happened in one instant, it would create this barbaric yawp, this ache.

If you can create the knot in the character and get it as tight as possible, you can approach the barbaric yawp/ache. When you forget the knot, when you veer away from the original tension, you begin to abandon the barbaric yawp, which means there is less purified truth in your book. It also means there’s not one thread to follow, and you don’t know what you’re doing.

Something I learned in grad school in reference to talk therapy in psychoanalytic theory: “How do you know you have found something that works/is therapeutic? There’s an effect.” How do you know when a book works? There’s a barbaric yawp/inescapable ache that is achieved. It means there’s a thread, the knot has been wound tight, and the thing that saves also destroys.

Peak
By L.C. Barlow

The climactic volume of Barlow’s epic Jack Harper urban fantasy/horror series boasts an irresistible logline (“Now she’s declaring war on Hell itself”) and action that backs it up. Picking up after Perish and Pivot, this Hell-storming finale delivers the goods, raising the stakes, exacting the costs of its hero’s earlier choices, settling long standing mysteries, and still managing to incorporate surprises that will catch even jaded genre hounds off guard. Series hero Jack—a hybrid “ferric” with the power to heal, resurrect, and exercise control of those she’s raised—starts this installment at a low point, poisoned and ailing, with her friend Lutin warning “You can’t stop all the evil, Jack … Not tonight. Not ever.” Still, she has a plan to finish the bloody business that she’s started.

Peak’s audacious plot will seize readers from the jump. Jack vows to harry the realm of Beretrum, home of the “great white being” ferrics call “The Builder” but whom Jack has always known as Satan. The Builder can’t be permanently killed, but Jack’s unique suite of powers, a first for ferrics or people, give her one advantage. If she can manage to kill Satan, even temporarily, she can seize control of his will. Such a cosmic quest won’t be easy, of course, and Jack will have to face characters from her past, and some of them will face urgent, even terrifying choices, all as her adversaries unleash a potent new weapon against humanity.

Barlow again proves adept at uniting character development with significant action, and keeps the story moving, even when paying off relationships that have developed over three books. Jack maintains her wry demeanor in the face of terrors, cataclysmic events, and (new this time) pointed criticism for using her power to “enslave” the hit squad she defeated in the previous book. As always, crisp prose, a wisecracking elan, and a relish for inventive action and truly weird, unsettling magic set this series apart from the pack.

Takeaway: The knockout final volume in this urban fantasy/horror series raises the right kind of hell.

Great for fans of: Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series, Elizabeth Hand’s Waking the Moon.



Once again, I am incredibly grateful to Publishers Weekly. Many, many thanks to them for such a wonderful review and for Peak being an editor’s pick.

The Publishers Weekly review of Perish is below:

Perish
By L.C. Barlow

"Barlow’s smartly constructed and chilling second book in the paranormal Jack Harper trilogy, after Pivot, continues Jack’s relentless ambition to destroy Infinitum, the manipulative cult led by the Builder that kidnaps children and endows them with the power over life and death. Jack is an eighteen-year-old woman recently freed from Louisiana cult leader Cyrus Harper, who exploited her power to resurrect the dead. Enjoying her newfound freedom in Manhattan, Jack begins receiving letters from other imprisoned children begging for rescue, revealing that hundreds of Infinitum cults infect the whole country, likely being led by her vicious brother, Alex. Jack visits one house suspected of harboring the cult but is attacked by viscous white ooze, a signature of the Builder’s demonic magic.

Barlow quickly builds the momentum and suspense as Jack gathers pieces of the Infinitum puzzle, gradually exposing the tension and corruption surrounding her. Jack survives an assassination attempt by Jonathon Roth, the leader of a guns-for-hire outfit, and after she resurrects his daughter, who was killed by Infinitum, Roth offers to combine their forces to ferret out Alex and destroy the cult, a mission brought to life with clear, quick-moving prose. Jack is reluctant to trust Roth, but her odds of success going it alone are slim. Their first stop is Lucient Laboratories, a company that manufactures white paint with the consistency of the Builder’s ooze.

New readers are advised to start with the first book, but Perish pleases with its emotionally charged story, Jack’s snappy dialog, her can-do attitude, and the few quiet moments when she muses about loss, tragedy, and the choice she faces between power and benevolence. In the words of wisdom from an attacker-turned-friend: “Where you get pleasure is in the border that divides between life and death.” This ambitious urban fantasy will resonate with readers who enjoy fast-paced thrillers and strong female protagonists who can take care of themselves."

Takeaway: Urban fantasy fans will relish this gritty sequel’s strong female lead and chilling cult horror.

Great for fans of: Faith Hunter’s True Dead, Sarah J. Maas’s House of Earth and Blood.


I cannot emphasize enough how thrilled and elated this review makes me. Many, many thanks to Publishers Weekly.

A few months ago, a wonderful friend of mine (named Lindsey, no less) sent me a picture of PIVOT in the wild! It was at a Barnes&Noble in Plano. I felt so elated.

A few days later, I went to my local Barnes&Noble in Cedar Hill and tracked it down on a shelf! So crazy! I wasn’t sure where it would be, so I asked a wonderful individual to help me, and it turned out I had talked to her on the phone two years ago about my book! What are the odds?! She asked if I wanted to sign the copies. (Of course I did!) She brought little stickers for the books to show they were signed, as well as a Sharpie. Someone nearby overheard us talking and asked about my book! What a day!

Life achievement unlocked!

Pictures are below:

Wonderful, wonderful news! PIVOT's Kirkus review was featured in Kirkus Reviews, Vol. LXXXIX, No. 13, 1 July 2021


This is just so wonderful, and I am blown away. Many thanks to Kirkus' editors.

The link to the magazine issue is above, and a picture of the review is below:

Wonderful, wonderful news! PIVOT's Kirkus review was featured in Kirkus Reviews, Vol. LXXXIX, No. 13, 1 July 2021


This is just so wonderful, and I am blown away. Many thanks to Kirkus' editors.

The link to the magazine issue is above, and a picture of the review is below:

I am a bit late in posting this wonderful news, but Kirkus Reviews has provided phenomenal reviews of PIVOT, PERISH, and PEAK that I would like to post links to here. Many thanks to Kirkus' editors. This is a dream come true.

Kirkus Review of Pivot
Kirkus Review of Perish
Kirkus Review of Peak

I highly recommend listening to audiobooks as a workaround. Studies have shown that listening to audiobooks has the same effect on the brain as does regular reading.

After I got my first masters degree in English, I was a bit burned out on reading because it was difficult for me not to tackle reading with analysis and as work. Audiobooks were my way around that, and I listen to them now while exercising, driving, or eating. As a result, I read about 14 books a year. That’s not an amazing number, but I’m also grading papers at a community college and writing fiction.

Something I have also discovered is that I highly enjoy autobiographies in audiobook form that are performed/read by their authors - such as Carrie Fisher, Eddie Izzard, Craig Ferguson, and David Lynch. I don’t think I would have discovered this without the medium of audiobooks because I primarily read novels in the horror/fantasy genre. But because audiobooks are a different art form, they might help you discover a different way of enjoying reading and, thus, different genres to enjoy.

Back in 2012, I had a very odd sore throat that would not go away. Rather than make an appointment with my GP (which I should have done), I instead went to Care Now - a place that used to be a sort of on-demand appointment medical center. I had found a white spot on my throat, and I suspected it was some sort of infection. The doctor who saw me did no tests and instead prescribed massive amounts of penicillin, which I took. The white spot did not go away, though my throat was better. I went back to Care Now and pointed out the fact that the white spot on my throat was still there. I was prescribed another massive round of penicillin.

Upon taking the second round, I found my stomach was absolutely horrible, to the point that it was difficult to eat anything. I felt horrible, still felt sick, still had the white spot on my throat, and hadn’t been able to keep anything on my stomach. As a result, I was a nervous wreck. I went back to Care Now, and they did a mono test. Turns out, I had mono.

If one Googles the description for mono, a sore throat can occur, but it isn’t a throat infection. When I had gone to CareNow, I had actually told them, “This doesn’t feel like any sore throat I’ve ever experienced before.” I suspect that if the doctor had focused in on that, I might not have been misdiagnosed.

Because I had mono, they prescribed me prednisone to take the swelling in my spleen down. I took the steroids, and at the end of them, it was painful when I urinated, so I suspected I might have a UTI from the number of antibiotics I had been prescribed. I went back to CareNow (a huge mistake) and was met with the same doctor who had misdiagnosed me from the get-go. She prescribed me ciprofloxacin, despite the fact the test for evidence of a UTI was negative.

This would be the point - if one were reading Alice in Wonderland - that Alice falls down the rabbit hole.

I took two pills of the cipro that day. Late in the evening, I popped my jaw like I normally would (I know I shouldn’t, but I did), and pain radiated down throughout my neck, into my clavicle. It was so odd and had never happened before, so I looked cipro up online. The medication’s website said that if one’s joints start popping to immediately stop taking the medication. I considered whether to keep taking it and ultimately decided not to.

This decision likely saved me an incredible amount of pain. As it was, it took me seven months to recover from taking just two pills of cipro.

The next day, my tendons started swelling. They swelled so much that I could not walk without severe pain, could not lift a plate of food. I had to use my father’s wheelchair to make dinner and transfer the plate to a place to eat. My hands went numb from the swelling. I immediately made an appointment with a doctor, and I did not go to CareNow, this time. I went to my regular GP.

At the GP, I told her everything that was happening, and she told me that it was good I had stopped taking the medication and that they would do a blood test to determine how much my tendons were breaking down. If it was at a great rate, I would need to be hospitalized (placed on fluids) to help my tendons recover.

She wanted to give me a prednisone shot. By that point, I had been reading up on cipro, and apparently, something that had likely made my reaction so terrible was that I had been placed on prednisone RIGHT before being prescribed cipro (cipro’s effects on the body are made worse by prednisone), and so I was wary of being given a shot of more prednisone. I asked her, “What if cipro isn’t out of my body yet?” She said it should be. I said I would rather wait, so she prescribed me prednisone. I ended up waiting 48 more hours before taking the prednisone for the swelling, and I think this was a good idea.

At that time, I was pursuing an M.A. in English, and I could no longer drive myself to my grad school classes. A friend of mine, fortunately, was willing to drive me and did so twice a week, every week, for months.

One day, even after taking the prednisone and supposedly getting the swelling down, I had taken a bath and wrapped my hair in a towel. I lifted my head up, and my neck popped, and the pain that resulted felt like a tendon had broken loose. The next day, I couldn’t turn my head. I called my doctor’s office to see my GP. She was not available, but another doctor at the office was. I saw the doctor, and upon examining my neck and hearing what had happened, she said that the swelling in my tendon was the worst she had seen in her entire medical career. She said that I could never, ever take cipro again (like I would even want to) because the reaction would only get worse, and she said she was going to prescribe me an anti-inflammatory drug to take the swelling down.

I filled the anti-inflammatory drug prescription. It did take the swelling down; however, it eroded my stomach lining and caused a tremendous amount of heartburn.

By this point, I was beginning to become paranoid. Note: I was also still sick with the mono while going through this, and a man who was like a second father to me actually passed away during this time, as well. It was horrible, one of the worst years and experiences of my life.

Prior to this, I had been a runner. I ran every day for an hour or so. But with the reaction my body had to the cipro, I couldn’t do anything but sit. It was a complete reversal of how I normally lived life.

It took about seven months for the swelling in my body to disappear. Up until the later months, any time I walked, moved, etc., I paid for it with incredible pain and swelling.

Ciprofloxacin now has a black box warning on it. It should have had that warning before I was prescribed it by a doctor, even when I had no evidence of a UTI, and right after being prescribed prednisone.

Just because medication exists, it doesn’t mean doctors know how to properly prescribe it. Research research research before you take anything.

Whenever I travel, I make sure to bring my medical necklace that states I’m allergic to cipro. Also, when I went to the hospital for what turned out to be ovarian cysts, I made sure to write in sharpie on my left arm “allergic to cipro,” even despite the fact they give me an allergy warning bracelet. When a nurse saw my impromptu “tattoo,” she said, “That’s a great idea.”

Oh. And that white spot on my throat? It remained there for five years, the pain in it growing. I finally went to my normal GP to have her look at it, when the pain got to be too much. It turned out to be a cyst and was removed by an ENT (ears, nose, and throat) doctor.