Darkly Disturbing Discoveries or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Do the Research by L.V. Pires

When researching my book, Extension (Crescent Moon Press, June 2014), I learned one darkly delicious secret – know how to be practical in your research, no matter how frightful it might be.

This is especially true when researching psychopaths.  When I first started out with an idea about a character who had lost his soul, I immediately thought of crafting this character based on a serial killer, but my knowledge was limited.

Then, one day, a friend in my writer’s group handed me Gerberth’s, Practical Homicide Investigation Handbook.  I wondered what could be practical about homicide?  The word practical felt emotionless, detached, and even cold.

I flipped open the book and then just as quickly slammed it shut trying to erase from my mind what I had just seen.

Several days later, I tried again.  From a good three feet away, I turned each page with the end of a spatula.  Mangled corpses, burned, tortured, eaten, disemboweled (sorry, if you’re eating breakfast) but it’s true – it’s out there, it’s happened, and these poor victims are proof of it. 

I managed a few more pages, taking notes on staging a body and a few identifying characteristics of a murderer, then scrounged through my house for a picture of Jesus.  I couldn’t find one, but found a picture of Noah on his ark instead, cut it out, and placed it squarely between a half eaten body and a train accident victim, and then closed the book.

It was a few days of sleeping with the lights on.  I can only imagine how difficult it must be for detectives who must see these images over and over again.

From a writer’s perspective, the point of research is to flood your mind with as much information as possible so when it comes time to write you’re ready to draw on everything you know, or wish you didn’t know, but still know anyway.  It helped, and a few scenes in the novel are influenced from my research not just from this practical guide but also from reading interviews with serial killers and watching documentaries. 

A few weeks into my research, I found myself bizarrely numb to the images.  That’s when I knew I had to stop.  Part of the reason why I kept researching was because I wanted to figure out why these events occurred.  I kept looking for reason behind the madness.  A broken family?  An abusive childhood?  A traumatic injury that damaged the frontal lobe?  But, nothing seemed to justify the deaths.  I was on a loop, searching for resolution to traumatic events.  It was time to accept the obvious – sometimes resolutions are only found in fiction.

After the book was written, the Practical Homicide Handbook went back to my writer’s group.  My browser was erased for fear someone would think I was planning something sinister and the notes were hole punched, shelved in a binder, and labeled “practical research”. 

I realized practical is the right word.  Sometimes it’s best to be practical – especially when it comes to murder.

L.V. Pires

Extension, Crescent Moon Press, June 2014

lisavpires.com

@lisavpires

Happy Book Birthday to EXTENSION by L.V. Pires

 

  

So excited for the release of my debut novel, Extension.  This novel began with an idea about life after death, but soon evolved into something much more, but none of it could have happened without the support of my fellow writers, mentors, and Crescent Moon Press.  Thank you!!

About the Book:

Everyone has a soul, right? What if two people shared a soul? This is the case in Extension. During a fierce game of basketball, seventeen-year-old Oliver has a heart attack and dies. His parents take his body to Velcron Technologies and he is cryogenically preserved until the technology is created to bring him back to life.

Flash forward eighteen years. It is now 2032 and the technology arrives. Oliver is revitalized and sent back into the world to live out his second chance.

But the revitalization technology is not perfect – in fact, it’s tragically flawed. When Oliver died his soul was reborn into a new body, Colby Patterson’s body. Now that Oliver is alive again, the soul is violently ripped from Colby and returned to Oliver, its original owner, leaving Colby a vacant, soulless, psychopath hell-bent on destroying everything around him including Oliver Conroy.

It’s a battle for the ultimate prize – ownership of the soul.

www.crescentmoonpress.com

About Me: 

Young Adult author L.V. Pires lives near Baltimore, Maryland.

She graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Master’s in Education and the University of Maryland, College Park with a Bachelor’s in English. She is currently working towards her MFA in Creative Writing at Spalding University.

Her work includes “The Portrait” (Gypsy Shadow Publishing), “Summer of Winged Creatures” (Saturday’s Child Press) and EXTENSION (6/15/14, Crescent Moon Press).

Follow her at lisavpires.com or on Twitter at @lisavpires.

Tuesday Teaser: OLIVER CONROY AND HIS REPOSSESSED SOUL BY L.V. PIRES

My name is Colby Patterson and I’m soulless. Literally. It happened one day when I was in school.  My soul disappeared. I became a raving lunatic, psychopath, craved madman, hell-bent on destroying everything in my path. 

How did this happen? 

Does it have something to do with the scientific experiments being conducted at Velcron Technologies?  Who is Oliver Conroy?  And, how did he steal my soul?

***

Colby woke on the cold floor. Only one of his eyes worked. The other was sealed shut. He pulled himself to sitting, feeling every inch of his body bruised and sore. An ache radiated inside of him like his ribs were broken. Blood dripped from a cut on his lip. He smeared it away with the back of his hand, then looked down at his arms and saw burn marks seared across his flesh. The same red marks covered his legs. Colby struggled to his feet and looked around to orientate himself.

He wasn’t in the room he had been brought to when he first arrived to Velcron. This room was a laboratory—a dimly lit one. The floor was smooth and polished, with a metal table was in the middle of the room. Silver chutes lined one wall, a metal door on the other. He hobbled to the door and tried the handle not really thinking it would work, but determined to escape. He had to get out.

             He remembered the last thing Dr. Wang had said. Take him to the vaporization room. Colby turned around again and saw a shower on the far end of the room—the vaporization shower. He had heard about it before. It was used in prisons to execute criminals. A prisoner would be forced into the chamber and ultrasonic lasers would shoot out of the showerhead, vaporizing the victim into oblivion. Now, they were going to try to execute him without any just cause. He hadn’t even had a trial. There was no jury, no witnesses called forth to testify, no judge to hear his version of the truth. All of it was a set-up, to annihilate him and keep him quiet, but why?

            Searching the room, Colby looked for something to defend himself with, but there was nothing. He scanned the ceiling and sides of the walls for an opening, anything that he could stick his fingers into and wedge open, but everything he touched was polished smooth. He tried to yank one of the legs off the table but it didn’t budge. Each leg was permanently secured to the floor.

A moment later the door squeaked open and the man in the white shirt appeared. “I’m glad you’re awake,” he said, entering with his baton in hand. “I didn’t want to vaporize you without having you awake first.”

            “Why are you doing this?” Colby asked, backing up.

            He shut the door. “You’re a mistake, Colby. Someone already had your soul before you and he wasn’t done with it, so we gave it back to him. That makes you a damaged psychopath. We can’t have damaged psychopaths just wandering the streets now, can we?”

            “What about my trial?” Colby begged. “What about getting to defend myself? Where are the police?”

            The man switched on the baton and laughed. “Police? Now, why would we want to get them involved? We already know you’re guilty.” He stepped towards Colby, waving the baton then prodding him towards the back wall and the vaporization chamber.

Coming Soon:

http://crescentmoonpress.com/comingsoon.html

Find out more about L.V. Pires at lisavpires.com

Cutting Characters: The Deadly Side of Eliminating the Uninvited by L.V. Pires

I think of a first draft as a wild disco party—and everyone is invited! 

My focus is on the strobe lights and pulsating music and not necessary who’s coming through the front door, although it’s hard to ignore the mobster spewing profanities and the nun guzzling a keg of beer. There are even a few walk-ons dressed in togas and one guy posed as a tree who stands in the corner angrily shaking his leaves at people who ignore him.

Trust your intuition.  Everyone is here to deliver an important message necessary to the story’s theme.  Don’t judge.  Allow yourself to be taken away by the moment.  Keeping a carefree attitude is what allows the creativity to flow.

And, suddenly, the most interesting people appear—clean-cut basketball players with sonar guns tucked into their waistbands, ruthless divas filing their nails into sharp points, and geeks with binoculars and Audubon guides asking me which way to Bloodsworth Island. 

Okay, so maybe you don’t want to attend one of my parties, yet. 

But, wait!  I’m almost done with my first draft…that’s when the real party starts.

Although writers start out with a cast of characters ready to deliver the story’s message, sometimes that message changes.  Sometimes the truth of what you want to say is hidden somewhere much deeper.  Maybe it’s much more profound and can only be achieved by altering your character’s motive, appearance, dialogue, thoughts, and what it is they truly want. 

It’s a Re-Vision, as Janet Burroway says in Writing Fiction, “Often I will believe that because I know who my characters are and what happens to them, I know what my story is about—and often I find I’m wrong, or that my understanding is shallow or incomplete” (397). 

This is when the hard work begins.  It’s time for a controlled burn.  Carefully selected prose must be torched so that your story can germinate and thrive.  

And, this, dear readers, may mean as Faulkner says, “kill all your darlings.”

I flick on the overhead lights and see a few characters passed out on my chaise lounge.  They’ve out stayed their welcome.  I don’t remember their names.  Harry?  Paulette?  Raphael?  It doesn’t matter.  I hurry them to the door – throwing their jackets at them and shouting just get out.

Turning, I spot twins standing at the dessert table.  I demand to know if they’re just going to stand there and eat all my cream puffs or did they bring something with them to my fabulous party.  

They flounder with excuses.  One whispers in my ear—she knows who killed Sam. 

I step back.  “Sam?”  I ask.  “Who’s Sam?” 

They simultaneously lift the tablecloth to show me Sam’s body, stabbed clean through the heart.

“Lower the tablecloth,” I say, acknowledging their purpose, but not before I merge them into one—twins are so overrated.

“Sam can stay, too,” I say. “And, the clown in the corner with the kitchen knife.”

By this time gypsies and fortune-tellers are fleeing from my party, taking with them ballerinas and baton twirlers.  And, that’s fine by me.  I only want the characters who really matter—the guy dressed as a tree is carried off by a lumberjack and there’s now just a few of us remaining.

It’s morning.  Daylight streams through the open windows.  The fresh smell of ocean air carries off the last of my charred prose.  I’m getting closer to what it is I want to tell you. 

Oh, yes, here it is, a second time, for emphasis—kill your darlings.  Leave only the ones who will tell your truest story.  It is, after all, your story.  Only then will your tale come alive and fresh, interesting and new. 

And, don’t worry about the others you’ve sent away—they always come back for a good party.

 

 

Find out more about L.V. Pires at lisavpires.com

An Unexpected Journey to Publication by L.V. Pires

Oliver Conroy and His Repossessed Soul was my second completed novel and the first novel I sold to Crescent Moon Press. 

And, how I sold it is a story itself.

Flashback:  Autumn, 2011.  I had just given birth to a beautiful, baby girl and was, for all intents and purposes, couch bound for the next nine months. 

Those days, weeks, months passed by like a purple haze, minus the psychedelics — daydreaming — swooning in and out of a postpartum drift, reading, watching TV, movies, and sleep.  I laughed at those who held normal waking hours.  My clock was set to my daughter’s.  Schedules were impossible to keep, so I gave up trying.   

As ideas merged and fell apart, story lines formed and unraveled, I found myself one day reading an article about cryogenics.  It interested me and triggered a concept. 

What happens to the soul when a person is cryogenically frozen – does it become suspended, too?

And, what if the technology works?  What if, in the future, frozen bodies are de-thawed and repaired—brought back to life?  What kind of soul will reenter that person?  His or her previous soul?  What if that soul has already gone on and been reborn into a new person?

Enter Inspiration:  The clouds broke apart and a golden light shone down dousing my aura in heavenly gifts.  Okay, it wasn’t that dramatic, but a story line did emerge. 

Two voices.  Teen boys.  One living.  One dead.  And, a cryogenic experiment gone terribly, terribly, terribly wrong.

The story wrote itself.  I had a first draft down in four months.

 

Paris:  Yes, Paris.  I began my second year as a MFA candidate through Spalding University and the program took place in Paris.  Working with the brilliant, Susan Campbell Bartolletti, I was guided through revision after revision, restructuring, rewriting, re-everything, for one year until exhausted, and with a pretty bad case of carpel tunnel syndrome, I closed the computer and said, enough.  

The story was written.

Winter-Spring, 2013 – A weary author (yes, me) sat patiently at her computer, formulating the perfect query letter.  Sweat beaded her brow as rejection after rejection dings into her inbox.  Some agents are kind.  Others are callous.  One wants the full manuscript.  The battle-hardened author perks up and orders half a glass of champagne.

Only to be followed soon after by - rejection, rejection, rejection.  Partials and fulls are requested here and there, but time ticks by, as if the script fell into a black hole of cyberspace.  Was anyone reading it?  Anxiety set in as I wondered whether it was sent it to the right person.  Should I nudge?  Should I wait?  Should I take up crocheting?

Enter Low Point:  After fifty submissions, sent out in batches of ten at a time, over several months, a few other agents appeared somewhat interested.  One wanted the actual hard copy (who does that?)  Twenty dollars worth of printing later, the manuscript was sent off via snail mail.  Only to be followed a short week later by a rejection in the form of a post card. 

Publication:  A few weeks later I decided to try going with a small press publisher.  I sent out only a few query letters to publishers directly and waited.  It was in April of 2013 when I heard back.  Two full requests.  And shortly after that, I received a message in my inbox…

“I have personally read your submission, and I must say I was riveted.  

I would like to offer you a contract for your consideration

 if you are still interested…”

..and, I was.

 

Find out more about L.V. Pires at lisavpires.com