A review of Robert McCammon's THE FIVE

Reading Robert McCammon’s book The Five reminded me of the book Silver On The Tree. I don’t why because for the life of me I can’t remember the plot of Silver On The Tree. I was going to look it up and answer this question first, but thought better of it. Suffering from severe attention deficit hyperactive disorder. I have learned to let stuff slide.  So even though I don’t remember the plot, I do remember it was written by Susan Cooper. Not bad considering I read this in the late seventies! But The Five brought it back, or more accurately a memory I associate with Silver On The Tree.

I was probably 14 or 15 when I read Silver On The Tree. With severe ADHD reading was an escape and one I desperately needed. I read a library of books! But the focus of this review is The Five. So why did enjoying The Five bring this back?  I get this is a review and so I can’t give away too much.  When I was a kid my Dad had installed a motion light out back of our house. In the late seventies these were pretty rare. It came on with the passing of every large cat, a cruel joke for a kid with ADHD. We had been hit with a huge ice storm and I remember the tree directly behind my window had turned silver. On this night the light had come on collecting my attention and I looked out trying to see what had moved. It was a common game, I would see the neighbour’s cat or a bird and lay back and go to sleep. But on this day I remember seeing nothing but movement not looked at directly. That is to say I could see shadows dance on the trunk of the tree but only if I did not look directly at them. It was weird, and so I went to investigate. I slipped out into the cold in just my socks and underwear to see what was there.  It never gets really cold in BC but that night was frigid past the frozen ice on the tree. It bit, and froze breath to your lips.  Looking up into this ancient tree, I saw nothing. The shadows that had called me down were gone. Replacing them was a feeling, a terror as the seconds slid forward. Something was just on the other side of the tree, it didn’t like me, and it wanted me. I didn’t want to look around that tree either. I had come down to look. Had never before been afraid to look at anything! I was a teenager and as such was indestructible. I knew, just knew, that a monster real and deadly was on the other side of that tree. The knowledge of this was crushing me in place, forcing me to stand and stretch the frozen moments with it.

I sprinted past the tree, eyes shut, hands like claws outstretched before me. I remember being very surprised by this response. Thinking to myself I had just done the worst possible thing I could do, faced with a monster behind a tree.  I hit the back fence and turned around, opening my eyes for the first time. Nothing! I was relieved and disappointed at the same time. A very odd emotional conundrum and one I wouldn’t feel again until my first wife asked for a divorce.

The Five has been compared to Boys Life. A fair comparison in some ways yet not quite a right fit. I remembered reading Boys Life in hardcover before it was on the shelves in Canada. A relative brought it up from the States, knowing I loved McCammon’s books. I read it, jacket off, as usual and having never read the teaser had no idea where the story was going to take me. I kept waiting for the monster. I had no idea of the trials and tribulations the Author was having. I didn’t know he wanted to write outside of the ‘horror proper’. I was a kid that loved McCammon’s scary stories. It was probably one of the better-written books I had read and I moved on genre-wise with the author.

But truth be told, I wanted another scary story. I am 45 and I have wanted that scary story for 20 years. The Five was worth the wait! It isn’t ‘horror proper’, it’s better! Natural and supernatural forces woven so skillfully, that you can view this story from many different angles.  It is made scarier by what you bring to the reading. Just like that dark frozen night so many years ago in my backyard. The masterly written book takes you on a Rock Bands journey and so much more. The journey is so realistic that it makes the supernatural side much more believable. A brilliant Creepy and satisfying, work of fiction, written by a master. Dare I say “The”!

Grey Redemption paying some bills

Grey Redemption is paying some bills. That’s right I got my first royalty cheque in the mail. I wasn’t expecting one for a few more months, as they like to wait four to six for the first one to do the quasi-accounting math that is required.  It was more than I expected and less than I dreamt about but as many of you know I dream big.  Nice way to cover some of the bills doing the jet set thing around the globe.

Ever notice that the devil hangs on your shoulder much more strongly than the angel? Driving home the other day highlighted this for me.  A bear cub ran out onto the road in a tight corner while I was speeding home. I slammed on the brakes and sure enough the little angel on my shoulder did the bug splat on the window. Left with only the devil I took the tight inside line and the bitch started to protest. Her ass drifting out past the shoulder, tires ripping at the green belt along the edge of the road. I gave her a few more inches and the shriek turned into a guttural roar and she straightened out. Once again saved by the devil on my shoulder while the safer, more prudent one had to reconstitute herself.

How are these two divergent paragraphs connected? Other than being on the same page? Well in this way. If I had listened to the safer option I would never have taken the risk to write such a different book. Really? Raunchy sex in a military thriller? Are you kidding me? Yet people like it. They like that Rhys Munroe brings them along for the whole ride and not just parts of it. They like getting a peek into the alpha male world and are made more comfortable because Rhys has baggage. A plane full of baggage! Great reviews on Chapters and Amazon by people whom have bought the book and truth be told I DON’T KNOW! A few friends have said they will post a review yet only one has. Not a complaint I know everyone has very busy lives and posting a review takes some time.

I have a little more news too. The BIG official book signing for Canada will be at the Langley Chapters on 200^th street. It is scheduled for the 6^th of August. So mark your calendars and come out and say hello. You don’t have to buy the book from the store to have me sign it and I have some cool swag to give away as well. In addition to this signing I am also included in the Surrey International Writers Conference book signing as well. That is on October 22. The Book Fair is held in the Fraser Room from 5:30 to 7:00 pm on Saturday evening. The book should be available at the Chapters during the conference. You don’t have to be attending the conference to come to the book fair although I encourage you to do so if you want to be part of one of the best shows on the planet! Really! I have been to London and New York and this is by far the best!

Now to finish the Blog, on to the writing. I have wanted to catch up on some reading and I can’t write and read at the same time. So my project has been on the shelf while I finished Brett Easton Ellis’s Imperial Bedrooms and all of Robert McCammon’s books. Brett went back to his original style and voice for Bedrooms and I loved it.  Gritty and unrepentant novel that screamed Ellis. McCammon has been a little more difficult as I love his horror. In fact when I first read Boys Life I kept waiting for the monster to show itself. This is not to say by any stretch that I am not enjoying these period books as I most certainly am. McCammon is just the best horror writer on the planet and his skills in dialogue are second to none. I loved the hemp-smoking doctor and magistrate scene immensely! But my copy of Five is yet to arrive! I hope I get a first printing version! In fact I looked for it in four stores in the US on my recent trip and could find none. I was willing to buy two just to make sure I got a first printing as I am sure this will put him back on the NYC bestsellers list! Where he most certainly belongs!  

Digital Publishing and this years Surrey International Writers Conference

            This month Amazon released some numbers and a few of them might be a little startling. Ebook sales surpassed print book sales grabbed my attention. This is combined with the ongoing closure and failure of traditional print bookstores. So I poured myself another drink and thought about what this might mean to Authors and the industry as a whole. I am hardly IN the industry long enough to have a real valid opinion but I do have an interesting parallel.

            Back in the day I used to be a pro photographer. Many years ago, the digital age hit the pro photography market. I was a bit of a techno geek, more so than I am today and was ahead of the curve on that evolution. Back in those days you created an image for a client and then brought it down to the store and got your work back in 24 hours. Then you made an appointment with the client to go over the work. Took the order and then went back to the store to get the final product created. Finished product in hand you went to your retouch specialist to fix the print and in a week or so picked that up and delivered it to the happy client.  I looked at this digital specter then and thought Wow! I shoot it in studio, edit and Photoshop the image and email it to the client. Then the client makes an order and I digitally send it to the lab, and they send it to the happy client! I embraced it. Film costs drop to zero, time cut in third, and no driving around! The margin in the photo world was pretty tight so this all made sense.

            I remember being at the Professional Photographers of Canada big convention. Here were my hero’s of the image world. Outstanding artists, many having achieved Master Photographer, and other awards for their images. None of them to my surprise were really behind this new technology. This was in the infancy of digital photography. My Pro D1 Nikon camera had an amazing 3.5mp resolution, and cost twelve thousand dollars and the compact flash micro drive was a thousand bucks.  Expensive to be certain but the loss of film and paper more than made up for it in three years. So why were these leaders in the field not giving it a second look? I was young and inquiring and so I asked the questions. I remember getting a multitude of answers some made sense while others did not. What I found most distributing about some of these answers was when they drifted into the realm of reciprocity failure. “Reciprocity Failure” is a real term to describe a condition where film is pushed to far and starts to fail across the colour spectrum. But it also was used by pros to describe something else. Bullshit.  Many of these answers made no sense at all. The naysayers were scared. The great Ansel Adams could afford to shoot three hundred feet of film over the Yosemite Valley and find one awesome sunset image and now so could I. It boiled down to fear of change and fear of their market. The big image houses were being bought up by the larger and the smaller ones had already been absorbed or failed. It was a very tumultuous time in the photography world.

            So now we have Ebooks. An aspiring writer can create and edit and produce a book directly and bypass the traditional game. I remember telling a few people that Grey Redemption was being published. Some responded. “Oh you wrote and Ebook?” New to the scene I had to answer no but as it turns out Grey Redemption got three ISBN. One of them for an Ebook. In fact Steve, a friend from work, bought it on his Iphone on the day it was launched. Steve had been one of my test readers and no doubt wanted to see if I took out all the “Inky Black” descriptive, and see if I brought back his favorite character.

            I am not as much of a pro in writing as I was in photography. Actually let me set the record straight. I CAN’T WRITE! My use of grammar is sub par for the industry and my spelling is well awful. But I do tell a good story. I have always been good at telling a good yarn. Some of them are even true. But with some good editing and a great deal of awfully painful revisions Grey Redemption was born. It followed more of a traditional publish than the current Ebook scene but what about the Prequel or Sequel? Hopefully I will find some answers at this years Surrey Writers Conference. I know to whom I am going to direct my questions. From previous Surrey Conferences I know many of these people to be fearless and honest so I am very much looking forward to it. Just a quick note about SIWC. It is by far the best. I have been to the London Book Fair and the Book Expo America and they both pale in comparison. Slade, McCammon, Dugoni, Gabaldon, Whyte all off script and in person is truly a humbling and educational time. See you all in 2011!