::Acquired Taste

Review - Acts of Violence by Ryan David Jahn

I don't keep up with all the Macmillan New Writing releases but I was determined not to miss out on this month's publication by the American writer Ryan David Jahn. Acts of Violence recounts the events of a single night in early 1960s New York. Inspired by a true story, the spare narrative unfolds as young woman is murdered outside her apartment block; her death, drawn out over several hours, is watched by her neighbours, all of whom have their own reasons for not calling the emergency services. Jahn shows us the lives of doomed Kat Marino and her neighbours, while at the same time painting a portrait of a time and place. He shows us racism, child abuse, infidelity, homosexuality; but never telling the reader what to think. His background as a screenwriter is apparent in the economy of the prose, the details freighted with significance. Nothing is spelled out; everything is implied.

An American writer of bleak, visceral crime fiction will inevitably make the reader think of James Ellroy, and the similarities are certainly there. He has more in common, though, with RJ Ellory, in that while the story is superficially a crime novel, that's simply the vehicle it chooses for a wider examination of its themes. The author has already been signed up on a longer deal by Macmillan and its easy to see why. Ryan David Jahn is a real talent and it wouldn't surprise me if he was soon a household name.

Also reads books

Having wearied my readers' patience with maps, maps and more maps over the past couple of weeks, it's with some relief that ::Acquired Taste returns to the business of books today. I've read a couple of crackers over the past week, and I like to share...

The first was the recent Macmillan New Writing title The Incendiary's Trail, by James McCreet. This Victorian melodrama owes much to Poe and Holmes, but also to Dickens in its depiction of the seedy underside of London life. The plot is lively and enjoyably lurid, with vividly-drawn characters. Reviews I've read of the book have not been especially favourable--many comment on the overly intrusive authorial voice with dismay. In this, though, McCreet is merely being true to 19th century sensation novels he clearly admires, and the device allows him to play some interesting games with the reader. Modern readers have become used to unobstrusive third person narratives, but done well, the engaged third person can be a treat. There is a second novel in the works and I look forward to reading it.

Even better was A Quiet Flame, the fifth in Philip Kerr's series of novels about the career of Bernie Gunther, the German private detective we first met in 1930s Berlin. Gunther now finds himself, courtesy of an unwilling spell in the SS, in post-war Argentina under an assumed name. Co-opted into the Argentine secret police, he finds his new home all too similar to the one he fled. Kerr handles the dark themes of the period with skill, and the Marloweque Gunther makes enough of a connection with the reader to avoid charges of stereotyping. Kerr has a problem in extending the series in that, for a tough guy, Gunther is now getting old (internal evidence suggests he's in his mid-50s). Much of A Quiet Flame is told in flashback to 1930s Berlin, and the sixth novel in the series seems to employ the same device. Much as I enjoy these novels, I do hope that Kerr remembers to quit while he's ahead. Regular readers will expect me to mention Patricia Cornwell here, and I like to oblige my readership...

Meanwhile, I have had an Amazon splurge and treated myself to two eagerly-anticipated works: Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (always a sucker for the Tudors) and the latest Macmillan New Writing release, Ryan David Jahn's Acts of Violence. Mantel has a bestseller by virtue of winning the Booker Prize, but the buzz around Acts of Violence gives us hope that this could be the first MNW title to join it.

If you believe that playing around with maps is a displacement activity from the reality of writing, then I haven't put the past couple of weeks to good use. If you think they're a good way of developing a fantasy world, which is not a five-minute job, then the conclusions are more hopeful.

Yesterday I expanded my map a little further by adding some names, as well as getting to grips with some software techniques to make the map more attractive.


I've narrowed down my field of operations to a single portion of the larger Azundel map (the top right corner of the original) and put in some drop-shading on the landmass to give a three-dimensional feel (this looks even better with the map blown up to full size). But the real development is place-names. Adding these moves us from a doodle to a real map. Next we may add some cities to populate our fictional "commonwealth".

Once again I have been thinking about, and making, maps. Matt commented last week on the photorealistic quality of the map of 'Azundel', and clearly the style of the map influences to a large extent the way in which the observer responds to it.

I find a photorealistic map is very useful in determining 'what goes where' but it is not the kind of thing you would reproduce in a fantasy novel. I've done some work, instead, in making the same terrain into a more inviting style of map. The blues and yellows of a traditional atlas can be a good starting point, as in this version:


On a practical level, the colour scheme of this map lends itself to lettering, but it feels too modern to be a true fantasy map. To give a more antique feel, I often fall back on browns, and a grained paper surface, as in this version:


This produces a striking and decorative map, although not one which lends itself to easy lettering (imagine trying to show the names of cities against this background). Different maps, even of the same terrain, have different uses.

The next stage is to start to put cities on the map. This is where a world starts to find its feet; if you call a city "Z'Gnarth" (writer's hint: don't), it creates a different resonance in the reader's mind to "Azundel" or "Xhendelesse". At the moment I am enjoying the sound and feel of Dutch place names, so these are likely to influence the next version of the map. Who can fail savour real names like Medemblik, Zwaartsluis, Coeverden? I've always liked the look of Dutch names (who, except the Dutch, can actually pronounce them?) and the Emmenrule in my Mondia stories comes directly from the Dutch football team BV Emmen.

My next iterations of the map, therefore, are likely to place and name some cities: the point at which a map starts to become a world.

More on Maps

I've been playing some more with maps this week (that's why they give me a lunch hour). The first is a refinement of one we saw last week.


This is created with a lovely piece of software called Fractal Terrains Pro. I've enhanced it from last week's by taking a bit more care over the colours and textures--plus, of course, giving it a name. It's easy to produce high-resolution images which means I can zoom in on smaller sections of the map. A map like this can be sweated to yield a lot more detail and hence imaginative stimulation. My Mondia series was kicked off with a map generated by FT Pro.

The second map is perhaps not as impressive, but took only seconds to generate with an application called Greenfish Relief Map. Once output it's not quite so versatile, but it cleverly decides where the towns go, even naming them using parameters you've supplied. I fed in some French, Greek and Arabic sounds to get the ones shown on this map.


Clicking on either map should produce a larger image.

None of this counts as real writing but it does start to provide some raw material.

Maps

One of the things I always like about fantasy--and I acknowledge charges of nerdy geekishness here--is the maps. They can't redeem a bad book, but a fantasy map can be a thing of beauty. I'm sure most readers of The Lord of the Rings have pored over the iconic maps of Middle Earth at some time or other.

Creating maps can be a fine way of stimulating my imagination if I'm trying to think of a new story. They can act as a kind of Rorschach inkblot: the shapes, and particularly their inter-relationship, present all kinds of intriguing possibilities.

Take the two maps below, from a number I've dreamed up this week:
Each map presents a different set of possibilities. The first has many small land masses, peppered with even smaller islands. The inhabitants of these places might find their cultures more distinct from their neighbours because they present a series of discrete environments; and they would be less amenable to central control. This is a place of vibrant, individual cultures which would surely clash when they came into contact. Seafaring could form a major part of a story set here.

The second map has fewer, larger, landmasses. While there would no doubt be regional variations, it's easy to imagine a more homogeneous culture and a stronger, more authoritarian rule. The conflict inherent in such a place would be more likely to be internal: palace intrigues or dynastic struggles. There are also large internal lakes or seas on two of the islands; unusual topographical which again provide story-telling opportunities.

These maps, which exist in much more detail on my computer, are not in themselves stories: they contain neither plot nor character. But nonetheless they provide a hint of a framework (study the more detailed ones closely and you can work out where the cities might be).

There are stories in both of these places. Maybe one day I'll tell them.