Cripple Creek

Cripple Creek by Douglas Hirt is billed as a "Western" but now that I've read it I tend to see it more as an historical novel. I suppose all westerns are, in essence, historical novels but in my mind they tend to be more or less confined to the years immediately after the Civil War and on up to the end of the 1880s or so. And they tend to be about cattle drives, the Indian wars, frontier justice and the like, usually with one main hero. Cripple Creek is not really about any of those things but rather about the birth and first six years of the boomtown of Cripple Creek, Colorado.

My family has lived in Colorado Springs off and on for about 17 years, depending on where my military assignments have led us and we've decided to make it our home now that I've retired from my military career. I've known the town of Cripple Creek, nestled up in the mountains to the west, as one of several historic towns in Colorado to be allowed limited gambling. I've always known it had begun as a silver mining town but didn't know the real history of the place. So when I saw this book at the used bookstore I just had to grab it.

The novel itself is an easy read but is a very good novelization of the area in the early 1890s. There are several main characters but chief among them is Casey Daniels, a mining engineer who runs afoul of one of the prominent mine owners of the region. There are quite a few story lines that interact among the many characters, lending a bit of a soap opera feel to the story but what I enjoyed the most was the large numbers of real historical figures. Some play major roles in the novel, including Winfield Scott Stratton, the "Three Jims", and of course, Bob Womack, the first man to discover the riches underneath the mountain. Many historical novels would stop there but in this one every major mine owner, hotel operator, saloon proprietor and whore house madam that plays a role in the story is a genuine historical figure. It was fun to see their names as well as the landmarks and relate them to some of the prominent street names and public buildings that exist today in Colorado Springs.

It occurs to me that while all of these familiar character names makes this a fun novel for me to read, it may have the opposite effect on those who do not live here or know the surrounding area. I noticed several times where we meet people for very brief moments and who have very little impact on the story, almost as if the author just wanted to make sure they made an appearance. That could be a problem for some. But overall I thought it was a nice story, albeit somewhat predictable. The characters were also a bit two dimensional and seemed to come straight out of central casting but something about this novel drew me to it and I definitely wanted to keep on reading, even past my bedtime.

Sphere

This is another of my "December reads," that is, books that have been sitting around on my shelves for years, just waiting for a chance to be read. Michael Crichton is one of those authors that, for me, always has a good premise for a plot but sometimes falls short in the execution. Sphere definitely falls within those parameters.

This is an alien contact novel; at least it would appear so at the beginning. A major discovery has been found in the South Pacific, about 1000 feet below the surface of the ocean. It appears to be an alien artifact, perhaps even a spaceship of some kind. Since the author was a doctor himself he often uses scientific protagonists and this time it is a psychologist. As such we do get a little different perspective on the other characters as he examines their motivations along with their actions. Refreshing, really. The plot is written in typical Crichton style, a scientific scenario that deteriorates into horror, much like Jurassic Park. The main problem I had with this one was the lack of resolution to the Sphere itself. We get a lot of speculation and theory on its origins and we certainly get the impact of it being disturbed by the investigators (thus the horror aspects of the novel) but we get no resolution on where it really came from or what it truly is.

All in all I enjoyed reading this book and will continue to read the remaining Crichton books on my shelf although it’s quite possible they will wait until next December.

Writing the Blockbuster Novel

About 20 years ago, I began to work more seriously toward a lifelong goal: to write and publish a novel. I invested in subscriptions to "Writer's Digest" and bought quite a few books on how to write novels, how to publish them, etc. I read many of them in those first few months, enough to get a good grasp on the ins and outs, but always realizing that this would be a continuous learning experience. Now, 20 years later, I've read the last book that I bought from those days. Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Albert Zuckerman is not for the absolute beginner but rather for those that have a fairly good grasp of how to write and how to publish.

Al Zuckerman is a very successful literary agent who has worked with some of the biggest name authors extant. He uses five major works as examples in this book: The Godfather (Mario Puzo), The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough), Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell), The Man from St Petersburg (Ken Follett), and Garden of Lies (Eileen Goudge). I have read three of these books and so found the material easily relevant. Much of the book is written as a sort of textbook and I do recommend reading these five books first in order to get the most out of this one, especially the Ken Follett book. Of special interest to me was seeing how The Man From St Petersburg changed from first draft to subsequent drafts. I certainly know how writing a novel can be lots and lots of downright hard work but this really brings that point home.

Obviously, this book is not for every writer. If you are interested in writing short stories, or aspire to the smaller, more intimate books, children's books, etc, then this one can still be read just for expanding your knowledge and insight of publishing, marketing, or even some of the basic chores of writing like outlining or re-writing. However, if you are looking for the big commercial success, then this one is ideal. Zuckerman lays out his value criteria: "high stakes; larger-than-life characters; a strong dramatic question; a high concept; a farfetched plot premise; intense emotional involvement between several point-of-view characters; and an exotic and interesting setting."

Overall, I thought the book was well done even though I no longer see myself as writing hugely commercially successful fiction. In fact, this book helped me to focus my own writing efforts; just what I had hoped for when I first opened it up.