Easter Eggs from HIGH & DRY by Sarah Skilton

My second YA book, a desert-set mystery called HIGH & DRY, comes out today, woo-hoo!

What's it about? Framed for a stranger's near-fatal overdose at a party, blackmailed into finding a mysterious flashdrive everyone in school seems anxious to suppress, and pressured by his shady best friend to throw an upcoming game, high school soccer player Charlie Dixon spends a frantic week trying to clear his name, win back the girl of his dreams, and escape a past that may be responsible for all his current problems.

"A dark, well-constructed mystery with a strong voice." - Kirkus Reviews 

To celebrate the book's release, I thought I'd share some behind-the-scenes Easter eggs with my fellow sleuths.

1) Lead character Charlie Dixon is named after Dixon Steele, Humphrey Bogart's character in the film In a Lonely Place.

2) Charlie's scheming ex-girlfriend, Bridget Flannery, is named after Brigid O'Shaughnessy in THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett.

3) Mr. Donovan is the name of a teacher at both Charlie's school in Palm Valley, California, and at Imogen's school in Glenview, Illinois (the setting of my first book, BRUISED). One of the Donovans teaches history, the other, statistics. This was simple human error on my part. OR WAS IT? Perhaps one of the Mr. Donovans is an imposter! Perhaps there are clues placed carefully throughout one or both books... You decide.

4) There are three possible references to Breaking Bad in the book. This is fairly bizarre considering I hadn't seen a single episode of the show when I wrote HIGH & DRY. Since then, I've become a big fan, which is why I noticed that...

 a) In Breaking Bad, Skyler White's maiden name (and Walter White's alias) is Lambert. In HIGH & DRY, Charlie's father teaches new media journalism at a local liberal arts college called Lambert College.

 b) In Breaking Bad, Flynn is the name that Walter, Junior occasionally demands to be called. In HIGH & DRY, a Flynn Scientific baseball cap is evidence in a crime.

 c) Breaking Bad was originally set in Riverside, CA. Palm Valley is based on locations near the same Inland Empire locale.

You can pick up HIGH & DRY at any of these fine retailers:

Barnes & Noble

Indiebound

Powell's

Amazon

Sarah Skilton is the author of BRUISED, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, and which the Horn Book called, "nuanced and honest." She lives in southern California with her magician husband and their young son.

Breaking Bad, Doctor Who, and the Mystery of Originality

Like many people, I came to Breaking Bad late, and then overcompensated by binge-watching the entire series over several weeks, culminating in a self-imposed Twitter and Facebook ban while I frantically sought to catch up to the finale without getting spoiled. (By the way, the complete series comes out on DVD and blu-ray today.)

I’m not going to analyze the ending of the show, though I highly recommend the following reads for that: Grantland, the Onion AV Club, the New Yorker, and the Cockamamie Theories blog.

What intrigued me from a writer’s standpoint was the The Washington Post’s description of the show as “completely original.” Critic Hank Steuver writes, “In a hyper-media era in which so much is derivative of something else, we sometimes lose sight of the value of the completely original epic. Breaking Bad may have drawn from the greatest tools of dramatic tragedy, but it was not based on or adapted from anything that came before…”

This article sent me into a tailspin. Was it really true? Was it even possible? Had showrunner/creator Vince Gilligan come up with something 100% original?

Doctor Who celebrated its 50th anniversary on 11/23

Likewise, an article by Jill Lepore in the November 11th issue of the New Yorker stated, “Doctor Who is the most original science-fiction television series ever made.”

But surely the show’s creator, Sydney Newman, was inspired by art, history, or media that came before, just like the rest of us. Right?

As a writer, I tend to over-concern myself with the question of originality. I worry I’ll never come up with anything that hasn’t already been done.

And then I remember that isn’t the point.

Austin Kleon’s blog-post-turned book, “Steal Like an Artist” theorizes that there’s nothing new under the sun. As writers and creators, we constantly refer to that which came before, and there’s nothing wrong with that; Kleon believes, “You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.”

I was curious what strange and wondrous works of art had influenced Vince Gilligan when he created Breaking Bad (about a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a meth kingpin), so I dug around online. Here’s what I discovered:

1) The logline Mr. Gilligan used to pitch the project was “Turning Mr. Chips into Scarface.”
2) The concept of using an RV to cook meth sprung from a news story and a joke with a fellow writer
3) Walt’s wife, Skyler, was described to actress Anna Gunn early on as “Carmela Soprano, but in on the crime.”
4) The finale episode, titled “Felina,” was influenced by and even partially based on the song El Paso.
5) Walt and Jesse’s last moments were inspired by a scene in “The Searchers.”

Knowing that such a wide and varied list of influences (Westerns! The Sopranos!  Music!  Film!) were thrown into the mix makes me love Breaking Bad even more.

As for Doctor Who, a British institution that concerns the fantastical adventures of a do-good time-traveler, the New Yorker article confirms that a bizarre mixture of influences went into the program’s creation. They include:

1) HG Wells
2) The Day the Earth Stood Still
3) “Sherlock Holmes with a Female Watson” (Which explains why The Doctor is joined by a young lady companion; it should be noted that this is also the premise of the CBS show Elementary, though you'd never the confuse the two shows!)
4) World War II and specifically Nazis (Which become Daleks, the Doctor’s long-running enemies.)

The above examples help prove that by enhancing, altering, combining, and changing the things we love, we turn them into new and precious compounds, as conceived through our personal lenses and experiences.

Writers, take heart: No one else sees the world quite like you do, and no matter what “mashup” you bring to the table, it will be unique.

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Sarah Skilton’s upcoming Young Adult mystery, HIGH AND DRY (April 15, 2014) -- about a high school soccer player scrambling to clear his name after being framed and blackmailed -- was partially inspired by the films In a Lonely Place and Brick, the TV series Veronica Mars, the book The Long Goodbye, two Broadway musicals, and more…

Fresh Blood: Sarah Skilton Discusses Why Mystery Elements are Vital in Non-Mystery Books

Okay, you twisted my arm. Confession: my upcoming debut novel, BRUISED (Abrams/Amulet Books) is not a mystery.*

However, it does contain mystery elements. I've come to believe every kind of book, no matter the style or genre, can benefit from the use of mystery techniques. That's because writing a page turner requires posing questions readers must want to get answers to.

Carrie Arcos' extraordinary Young Adult novel, OUT OF REACH (Simon Pulse, 2012), is about a teenage girl, Rachel, searching for her missing brother, a meth addict who has disappeared. The story isn't labeled a mystery, but readers are immediately wondering three things: Why did the brother run away? Where did he go? And most importantly, Will Rachel find him?

With only one clue to go on -- an anonymous email -- Rachel and her brother's friend, Tyler, set off on their search. The book is considered contemporary YA, and it contains excellent characters and backstory, but the mystery elements are what drive the plot.

Likewise, in Sarvenaz Tash's terrific middle grade adventure book THE MAPMAKER AND THE GHOST (Bloomsbury, 2012; out in paperback March 26), 11-year-old Goldenrod Moram has decided to draw a map of her town. While in the woods, she overhears a group of kids who are up to no good, and she needs to figure out what they're scheming or her younger brother could pay the price. Readers, too, will be curious about the gang (whose entertaining nicknames include Brains, Snot Shot, and Lint).

In my own BRUISED, a 16-year-old girl skilled in martial arts freezes up at an armed robbery and blames herself for not preventing a shooting. The incident is so upsetting that she buries part of it away so it can't hurt her. The main focus of the novel is her relationships -- with her parents, friends, martial arts instructor, and the boy who also witnessed the crime -- but readers will hopefully be compelled to discover what Imogen's missing memories are.

Using mystery elements in non-mystery books provides a feeling of suspense as well as a reason for a reader to commit to the story.

*How did my riff-raff self get invited to join Sleuths, Spies, and Alibis? The easy answer is that my second book, HIGH AND DRY, is an actual mystery.

Sarah Skilton lives in California with her magician husband and their young son. BRUISED received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and comes out March 5th, 2013, but you can enter to win Sarah's very last ARC (advance readers copy) at GoodReads right now!

If you live in L.A., consider attending Teen Author Night at LAPL.