We don’t judge anymore.  We compare judgments.

Increasingly, nuanced justifications of our evaluations are rare as sushi in Swift Current.  Instead, we make our assessments according to a two-step formula:  1) What does the Machine think of it?, and 2) Do we like it more or less than the Machine?  In the name of attempting to position ourselves outside the dominant opinion-making machinery (you know, the people who aren’t you and your two or three super-smart closest friends, the zombie-like hordes of numbskulls who do what the marketing departments tell them to do), we can reassure ourselves that we’re better than that, we haven’t been tricked, we’re of our own minds.  I thought The Avengers was way over-rated.  See?  Nobody can tell me what to think!

The problem with making Over/Under the only game in Culture Town is that it relies on a fallacy of the “mainstream” (and how we can choose to be “outside” it).  How a given work is assessed by the rest of the world is a moving target, and depends on where you look and for how long.  But what’s even more limiting is that saying a thing is over- or underrated just doesn’t say very much.  Reacting to reactions divorces us from our experience of the work itself, leaving us as falsely rebellious voters casting our ballot in order to alter a snapshot poll result instead of expressing a belief of our own.

In practice, it doesn’t quite work that way.  That is, outside of the Author Interview where such pronouncements can have at least a ring of syrupy credibility, it never works that way.  It’s just another of those romantic conceptions of how Good Writing Happens that, in the real world of the grease-and-tear-stained desk, do more harm than good.

Another one?  ”The first line of my book came to me before I started writing, and it never changed.”

People like this kind of stuff.  I like this kind of stuff.  Believing that ideas can come to our minds, whole and perfect, before our even knowing what they are, before testing them, has an appeal as potent as life after death.

Trouble is, the first line of a book is often given more weight than it can bear, and writers can be stymied by trying to nail it and then never moving from it, as though a tablet they’ve had to drag down a mountain, one they’d be struck down by lightning if they dared doing a little editing job on.

I thought I had the first line of The Demonologist, the novel I’m now editing, right from the get-go.  Deceptively simple, thematically suggestive, stark, dramatic.  Beautiful.  It was, for every draft of the many drafts until today’s, always a single standalone word:

White.

And then my editor suggested starting the book with…something else.  Something else? Blasphemy!  But my first line had always been the First Line!  You don’t mess with that kind of voodoo!  What could be better than what I’ve always had?

What I have now.

The field of study today is movie trailers.  Specifically, how this increasingly decisive aspect of the moviegoing process can be done skilfully – even artfully – and how it can also make you want to stick chopsticks in your eyes.  I have selected, for the purposes of comparison, two upcoming, mainstream, popcorn Hollywood flicks (so as not to apples vs. oranges things with, say, Transformers vs. There Will Be Blood).

The first is for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus which is, according to the protestations of its producers, not an Alien prequel.  (Side Note:  Why bother denying the obvious fact that it is an Alien prequel?  Especially when the movie looks as promisingly awesome as it does?)

Prometheus trailer

Now compare to Chernobyl Diaries, a new horror movie from the people that brought us Paranormal Activity (I’m a fan, BTW), about a group of young “extreme tourists” who get stranded in…Chernobyl.

Chernobyl Diaries trailer

Okay, maybe that wasn’t fair.  Or on the other hand, maybe it was.

Yes, Prometheus likely had ten times the budget of Chernobyl Diaries.  But that’s still no excuse for a trailer (presumably composed of the movie’s best bits) showcasing an idiotic premise (“Screw Moscow!  Let’s hit Chernobyl and get cancer instantly!”), laughable dialogue (“I’m not leaving without my brother!” etc., etc.) and worst kind of horror movie cliche after worst kind of horror movie cliche (the false shock at the pond, the van that won’t start, the dragged-off girl, the camera held by someone suffering the DTs).  As a horror fan, this sort of thing breaks my heart.  I’m not kidding.  It.  Breaks.  My.  Heart.

But there’s still Prometheus to look forward to…

Anyway, it’s been announced in Publishers Weekly today that my forthcoming novel, The Demonologist, has a new publisher for all of North America in Simon & Schuster.  The Demonologist is something of a creative departure for me – or perhaps more an escalation – and so it feels right for it to have a new home.  I’m inspired by the brainstorms I’ve already had with my editor at S&S, Sarah Knight, and hope this is the beginning of a long, happy marriage.  Like Fonda and Hepburn in On Golden Pond.  Or something.

Here’s the piece in today’s Publishers Weekly:

The Demonologist – Publishers Weekly

I’d like to lend a shout out to my excellent agents on their swift campaign, namely Howard Sanders at UTA in Los Angeles, Stephanie Cabot at The Gernert Agency in New York, and Anne McDermid here in Toronto.  May I pick up your tabs at our next half dozen meetings.

The Demonologist – Deadline Hollywood

However, if I were to do a Shit Writers Say, we would come out looking worse…

Shit Agents and Editors Say

Please, come on by.  I’m at @andrewpyper  And I’ve made punch!

To all those living in or traveling to Britain in the coming days, keep an eye out.  If you happen to see copies in a store somewhere, let me know.  Better yet, read it.  Satisfaction (or at least some seriously twisted dreams) guaranteed.

The Guardians – UK Mass Market Edition