Title: Mr. 8
Author: David J. Thirteen
Genre: Psychological Thriller / Horror
Psychology professor Denton Reed has been
pulled out of the classroom to find a killer. Bodies are turning up all over
the quiet town of Bexhill. They are found dismembered and burned beyond
recognition in a snow covered farmer’s field, by the abandoned mill, and under
the train bridge. The only clue linking the victims is the bizarre figure eight
patterns left behind in their homes.
Denton must use his unique profiling techniques to uncover the murderer, who
the police have dubbed Mr. 8. As he begins to unravel the mystery, a strange
pattern begins to emerge. Before their deaths, each victim was seized by dark
obsessions and inexplicable changes in behavior. Whatever strange forces are
affecting the people of Bexhill, they may actually be more dangerous than any
killer.
As a wave of insanity sweeps the town, Denton will put his life on the line to
get to the source of the madness and risk all to protect the woman he loves.
But is it already too late?
Author Bio
David J. Thirteen has studied English
Literature, Film Making, and Media Studies. He has lived and worked in the
technology field for twenty years throughout the North East, in both Canada and
the U.S. Writing has been a hidden passion for most of his life.
Mr. 8 is his first published novel and will be in stores on February 5th, 2015.
It was first written as a serial story on Wattpad, where it became a #1 ranked
feature novel. He still writes and posts new stories on Wattpad every week.
David currently lives in Toronto, Canada and lives a bright life, while
dreaming dark dreams.
Guest Post: Shifting Genres: Perils and
Lessons Learned
When
I began planning out my novel, Mr. 8,
it became obvious that the story would experience a genre shift about halfway
through. I couldn’t remove it or change it, since the plot hinged on this
twist. But I knew this would not be easy to pull off and began to worry about
dealing with it.
A genre shift is nothing original.
There are many examples in literature although it does tend to be a rarely used
device. It occurs when a story starts out fitting neatly into one category and
then because of a twist in the plot, it diverts into an entirely different set
of tropes. A classic example is Psycho
(the novel by Robert Bloch or the film by Alfred Hitchcock, take your pick). It
begins with a noir tale of an embezzler
on the run but quickly changes to horror, when she is brutally murdered. And it stays horror for the rest of the
story.
In my own novel, things start off in
the vein of a traditional crime mystery. An unlikely but skilled sleuth,
Denton, gets mixed up in a series of murders that the police are attributing to
a serial killer. But in the process of tracking down the culprit, he uncovers
something unexpected and the plot turns toward the supernatural.
There was a big risk in doing this. A
genre shift has the ability to surprise and shock an audience, but it can also
frustrate and alienate them. One of the key aspects of genre fiction is that
there are certain expectations about what can and can’t happen; by flipping
genres those expectations become subverted.
Knowing the peril of pursuing this
story, the fear of a possible negative reaction became as much a part of the
writing process as plot, characterization, and scene setting. I knew I had to
work out a way that readers would accept the twist and stay with the story. What
I started to focus on was making sure the reader was in Denton’s shoes every
step he took. Every surprise, discovery, revelation for Denton had to be felt
just as intensely by the person reading. It pushed me to look at the narration
in a way that I never had before. Getting in the head of my characters was
nothing new, but trying to glue the reader into Denton’s head was.
So what happened when the shift occurred,
when the detective story was gone and the inexplicable took over?
My main concern was that readers
would not believe it. The story had been grounded in reality up until that
point, so it seemed that introducing a supernatural element would only pull
people out of the story and cause them to scoff at the ridiculousness of the
situation. I needed to change that. I needed for the reader to accept it and to
continue on with the story. They solution ended up being simple: Denton doesn’t
believe it either. He is sceptical—despite overwhelming evidence he fights for
the rational. He fears that it might be real…but it can’t be…can it?
By anticipating a readers’ reaction,
I was able to get out in front of the problem. The identification with the main
character acquired depth from not just telling the audience what they should
feel, but by mirroring their own feelings back to them.
It was a hard fought lesson to learn, but once I got to
the end I realized that it is a lesson about good storytelling that goes beyond
just dealing with genre shifts.
