Be afraid, be very afraid . . . .
Robert Liparulo is in the house.
Again.
You know the house. Yeah, that house. The one where the King family lives and the dreams--make that nightmares--dwell. The one where you step through a door and end up somewhere back in time, fighting gladiators or stuck in a medieval torture chamber.
Got the picture now? Good, because this month you can also get the book, the final installment in the already classic series The Dreamhouse Kings. It's called Frenzy, which might best describe the state of Liparulo's waiting fans--and They Are Legion--who'll be flocking to find out whether Mom King--perhaps the most famous mother in a spooky house since Psycho--kidnapped and hidden somewhere in time for five previous books, makes it back home.
Ostensibly most of those fans will be (pre)/teens but don't bet your royalties on it. While Frenzy, like its predecessors, may be shelved in the YA section of bookstores, lots of purchased copies will end up nestled in the laps of adults. And Robert Liparulo thinks he knows why.
"I believe adults like the books because I didn't try to write for kids, as much as about them," he says. "To make the fantasy part of the story--time travel--palatable, I made everything else very real. The kids get hurt, their emotions go deep, a very nasty assassin doesn't pull any punches in terms of his vileness . . . nothing's 'cartoony'."
"When I decided to try my hand at YA, I vowed to not 'write down' to young readers," he continues, adding he was also determined "not to change my style to accommodate them."
That's the style you find in Comes A Horseman, Germ and the two novels in his John Hutchinson series--Deadfall and Deadlock, Liparulo's "adult" canon to date, although he's just put the finishing touches on the next entry, The 13th Tribe, due out in 2011.
That book will be a departure, containing what Liparulo terms "light supernaturalism." But don't despair: Robert Liparulo hasn't switched genres. The 13th Tribe will be first and foremost a thriller, adhering, as do his Dreamhouse and other books, to David Morrell's definition of a "thriller," which, Liparulo holds, is "the best."
"Thrillers thrill," Liparulo, a former prolific journalist, says. "They excite the readers and move them from page to page quickly. My publisher (Thomas Nelson) calls my stories 'White Knuckle Fiction.' That's a thriller--a rollercoaster ride."
Liparulo also draws inspiration from Thomas Perry, whose writings "taught me that a story could be as multidimensional as a living person: funny and lovable, beautiful and charming, horrifying and captivating." Not surprisingly, Liparulo's contribution to Thrillers: 100 Must Reads, which will be released at this year's ThrillerFest, discusses Perry's debut novel The Butcher's Boy.
Now if all Liparulo's books share a great deal in common, what makes Frenzy and its companion Dreamhouse volumes, YA?
"Two elements," Liparulo explains. "Younger protagonists and a stronger presence of 'wish fulfillment.' In my adult novels, the goals are big--maybe rescuing a family member or stopping a deadly new virus. It takes the entire book to find out if the characters accomplish that goal. Dreamhouse, on the other hand, is laced with cool things kids wish were real: instant adventure, outwitting bad guys, a portal that whisks them to--and more important, from--school."
To that end, Liparulo follows a practice he started with the first Dreamhouse book--House of Dark Shadows: "I recruited a team of young readers to vet my manuscripts before I submitted them. They helped me with teen vocabulary and the ordinary things an editor would do."
That's nice, but perhaps unnecessary, at least to hear Robert Liparulo's wife of 25 years, Jodi, tell it. "My wife would say I'm 12 years old at heart," confesses Liparulo, 47, a self-described "insanely spontaneous" father of four with an easy infectious laugh that often punctuates his sentences. "Writing YA is a bit dangerous for me. I tend to become my characters, and since I already act young, she truly has another kid on her hands when I'm 'in' the Dreamhouse stories."
A "kid" who, despite a very active and somewhat strange imagination, also knows when and where to draw the line. "I do think a lot of YA stories have become dark, some to the point of being nihilistic," Liparulo offers. In contrast, he points out that "Dreamhouse has two primary themes running through all the books: the importance of family and the importance of doing the right thing."
Another key factor in the success of Dreamhouse Kings is Liparulo's insistence of involving his readers in his writing, inviting them, for example, to suggest where in history they wanted to send the King brothers--Xander, 15, and David, 12--and their dad in the on-going quest to retrieve Mom.
"I chose four from the thousands of ideas I received and wrote them into the story," he says. "I think everyone had a blast thinking up great places to send the Kings."
He also conducted a poll, letting readers help select which of several designs should grace the cover of Frenzy. Speaking of Frenzy, which Liparulo--a regular visitor to schools, book clubs and other reader related venues--will soon be doing a lot of, all the fast paced, harrowing adventures will finally come to a head for the Kings. Liparulo reveals that Taksidian, an assassin from ancient Assyria who became their uninvited house guest, is not longer content with driving them out.
"He wants them dead," Liparulo says. "Meanwhile Xander finds himself in the past wailing that his brother David has been murdered, only to learn that the trip to the past happens in the future and he frantically sets out to alter that destiny."
In short, it will follow the advice Liparulo offers would-be thriller writers: "Cut to the chase--sure, set up the location, introduce your characters, but get to the heart of story and the action quickly."
And remember Mom King who got everything rolling? Well, Liparulo promises that, in their efforts to find her--and get away from Taksidian--"the family travels back to a time that's going to shock readers."
Shock doesn't faze him, but Liparulo admits to being "a little worried, because I don't wrap everything up."
"Life goes on and not every problem is resolved neatly," he notes. "I wanted to reflect that in Dreamhouse's ending. I do that in my adult thrillers, as well."
That's not necessarily a bad thing since Liparulo promises that each book in his next YA series--already planned--will include a Dreamhouse Kings short story in the back. "Sort of keeping the family alive," he says. "Then I plan on writing another Dreamhouse series."
Which is why instead of the traditional "Not The End . . ." last line found in the other five Dreamhouse books, the last line in Frenzy is "The End . . . ?"
Sounds like a mystery, but then that's another story, another genre, another professional writers organization and another newsletter!
Gary Kriss's THE ZODIAC DECEPTION, about a con artist who having learned the art of illusion from Houdini is recruited by the OSS to use his skills for the ultimate deception: infiltrate the Nazi Occult Bureau and persuade Himmler to plot the assassination of Hitler, and its prequel, THE HOUDINI KILLER, will be published by TOR/Forge in 2011 and 2012 respectively. A writer for longer than he cares to remember, including a respectible stint with THE NEW YORK TIMES, Kriss now exists solely to make his lovely wife, Pat, his publisher, his editor, his agents, his dog and his cats proud of him. He still holds out hope that he can win over the dog.
