Smoke and Mirrors | Behind the Books

Smoke and Mirrors was the second novel I ever wrote, and there’s a certain amount of “sophomore slump” in its nature. If part of the problem with the first Coral Beach Casefiles book was that it had too long an Act 1, this book suffers from not having a long enough Act 1. To the point that it is, dare I say, non-existent.

This book underwent more rewrites than I think any other book I have ever written. This book was overhauled, top to bottom, at least three times and I think it shows in the final product. I think it’s more cohesive than the books that surround it, having the benefit of being re-written into adulthood even though it was first drafted when I was very much still a young adult, or even still a child.

In a lot of ways, Smoke and Mirrors sort of comes to reveal what I think about sequels. To my mind, if a primary work says a thing, its sequel should say the opposite of that thing. A lot of people don’t like that about me, and it is the source of many an argument among fans of genre works. But to my mind, if the theme of a primary work is “hope is a good thing,” than the theme of the sequel should be “actually, hope is dangerous and shouldn’t be practiced,” only for a third book to come along and say “No, actually, hope is a good thing.” In doing so it creates this back and forth rhythm, this idea that this is a conversation, not a preaching-to. I’m not holding court and telling you “hey, hope is good,” we’re exploring the issue together, I’m going to show you all sides of it, and trust me, we’ll come out of it knowing that hope is good.

I’ve danced around the issue long enough for you to maybe see the issue here: this book was written to be the middle chapter of a trilogy, but ended up being the final book in a trilogy. Smoke and Mirrors was supposed to be the second Coral Beach Casefiles book, but ended up being the third. And that changes that theme dynamic. If the first book should end on a positive note arguing for whatever message you intend, and the second should argue against it, and the third for it again… well, now I’m ending the original trilogy arguing against myself.

And in a very real way, all this comes back to Brian Michael Bendis. At the time I was writing this, Bendis was about two years into his run on Ultimate Spider-Man, and I was devouring it month after month while writing these books. I loved it then, and upon re-read, I honestly still do. It’s smart storytelling, and it bothers me when people poo-poo comics. Smart storytelling is smart storytelling, regardless of genre or medium. Stop being so ablest.  

Bendis was re-telling Spider-Man and basically ended up doing this thing where he accounted for every other minute of Peter Parker’s life. The first 120 issues of The Amazing Spider-Man covered years in the current understanding of the series, but when it was in print, it covered decades. Each issue by Stan Lee covered one day in Peter’s month, leaving the other twenty-nine untold. It was expected that Peter aged a month in between issues, but as the character stayed in print for ten, twenty, and sixty years, that became unpalatable. Bendis sought to fix this in his re-telling by drastically slowing down the timeline in which his stories took place, so that they wouldn’t have to be re-adjusted should the series achieve the same level of longevity. The first 120 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man take place over roughly a year of young Peter Parker’s life. That’s roughly an issue every two-to-three days, which is a much more decompressed timeline.

I absolutely loved it. I loved the idea of it.

When I first wrote Smoke and Mirrors, I had been enamored with the idea of “skipping time” in order to allow the characters to change and grow in fun and strange ways between the pages. I could decide what the new status quo was for each story because there would have been time enough between for things to have changed. There was a month gap placed between Black Womb and Smoke and Mirrors, and there would be a further three year gap placed between Smoke and Mirrors and the third book written, Faith.

Bendis completely upended my thinking on that, a little ways down the road. After ingesting enough of Ultimate Spider-Man I became enamored with  the idea of also showing Every. Single. Moment. of my young protagonist’s life. So I had to later go in and “fill in the gap” of a month between Black Womb and Smoke and Mirrors, and then I’d have to “fill in the year gap” that happened after it.

This resulted in a weird see-sawing of my writing ability in the early books, which had an unintended consequence of leveling out some of the bumps in my early writing. If there was a weak segment in the story, that was okay, because it wouldn’t be there for long.

All that is to explain why, and how, the second book written became the third book published, rounding out the “Original Trilogy” of the Coral Beach Casefiles series, now called Habeas Corpus.

When you know that this book was written second, not third, I feel like it makes more sense as a continuation of the same mystery as in the first. This book, to me, forms the crux of what would be a crucial part of what is a Xander Drew story: the idea that just because there are supernatural forces in the world does not mean they are always at fault. This has always bothered me about fiction. In stories where ghosts exist, the culprit is always a ghost. If magic exists, the explanation is always magical. As if the existence of magical forces somehow prevents the normal evils of man from happening.

In the original Black Womb I went out of my way to provide several red herrings as to who the killer was before eventually revealing it to be the protagonist, suffering from a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde multiple-personality dynamic that allowed him to be both protagonist and antagonist. For Smoke and Mirrors I go back on that, and say “actually, those Red Herrings were not Red Herrings, one of them was the killer all along, and the people controlling our main character merely took advantage of that fact.”

This, to me, created an interesting dynamic that takes advantage of the way sequels are typically written. Sequels tend to “Yes And” their original works: they start from the premise that the original work is correct, then say “now what?” The characters in the novel do this along with the reader, but they all end up being wrong in that assumption. The mystery at the core of Black Womb was never solved, and one of those Red Herrings was, in fact, responsible for some of what has been pinned on Xander’s shoulders.

I liked that idea. I liked the idea of a mystery that played on the assumption of the reader and the characters: the assumption that you could take for granted anything that came in the book before it as true, locked away, and that the only surprises could come in the form of new information being presented here. That alteration to normal mystery-series structure goes a long way to the surprise of the reveal.

In terms of Structure, which I did not have a grasp of at the time but can recognize in retrospect, this surprise takes advantage of a reader’s bias towards trusting whatever they are told in Act 1 of a story. If in Act 1 you see a man working as a cop who is then given a strange case that propels him into Act 2? You’re suspect of any unproven information that comes to light in Act 2… but never the information that came before it. That, you take for granted as true. It’s a trick of the way stories are told: whatever reality we start the story in, the reader will assume it is true and assume it has been that way for some time. That is why stories that upend their Act 1 realities, like The Matrix, work so well. The viewer is in no way prepared for the truth they were told in Act 1 to be revealed to be a lie. Never are.

As a result this book kind of cheats a little? But not really. It cheats in a way I like, in a way that I think uses a loophole in storytelling smartly. You cannot trust that the last mystery was solved correctly just because I said “The End.” There might have been a mistake, and that mistake may well come crashing in half way through this story to ruin your day.

This book also, as I mentioned, helped set up the dynamic of the books starring Xander Drew going forward: the idea that the possibility of a supernatural threat did not guarantee one. The existence of a supernatural explanation to the events of Book One did not mean that there was not a more grounded reason in fact. This helped set up that dichotomy going forward: with every new mystery, whereas any other crime solving series would simply have to figure out “who did it,” Xander would first have to figure out if the origins of the problem where supernatural or natural, and then figure out how to stop it. It created an extra layer to the problem going forward, another hurdle to be overcome that was unique to my series, and (perhaps most fun of all), a dire consequence for when he assumed it was one thing and ended up being another. This would provide the possibility of amazing moments in later books to be able to happen.

I hated this book when I was writing it (or rather, re-writing it) because it was so much gosh-darned work, but now I can love and appreciate it.

That said, sliding our critical analysis hat on for some self-reflection, if the previous’ book’s main Story Circle  problem was that its Act 1 was too long, that is a problem I continue here, although it is mitigated somewhat by giving the characters things to do. Xander has a goal throughout the first part of the book, he’s trying to stop Genblade off of death row, because in his mind this will be another murder on his conscience. That works, and that could be its own book. In later years, that would have been its own book, that would have been plot enough. I would not have felt the need in later books to have a murder lurking about in the background of every book. Part of that came from the choice to show every moment of Xander’s life that I hadn’t made yet: if I was going to show every day of his journey, I couldn’t have there be a serial killer on the loose at all times. That simply wasn’t realistic, even by the loose definition of realistic I’d adopted.

The only reason this novel works is because it has two plots. I must have recognized, on some level, the issue that I had with the first book, that Act 1 took two thirds of the novel to come to a close. If we had just done the serial killer plot in this book, that same thing would have happened, with Xander being mostly incapable of action for most of the book until it was revealed, somehow, that he was not committing these murders at night in some sort of trance state, that there was instead a second killer out there… or maybe even a first killer, someone who had been to blame all along. Just like how in the first book Xander could not act until given information by an external force to propel him into Act 2, this book would have contained that same flaw. And when looking at the book through that Plotline only, it actually still has that issue.

What saves it is that that is the “B” Plot. The “A” Plot involves Xander stirred into action by the news that Adam Genblade will be put to death for murders he knows he committed, and his actions to circumvent that working with the lawyers who act in his defense. The “loose legal drama” forms the crux of the main drive of the story that the ethical 4-Corner Opposition discussions between Mike, Xander, Cathy, and each of Genblade’s Lawyers. That works, and like I said, in later books I would have had the confidence to allow that to have been the only plotline.

The book is also helped by a “C” Plot, related to both the others, in which Mike and Cathy attempt to help control Xander’s Jekyll-and-Hyde persona at night, not realizing that they are failing because that persona was not at fault, but leading to a lot of character development between the three of them all the same.

Where this book really drops the ball in Conciseness. As a result of clumsily keeping some plot points hidden, or the fact of the “B” Plot in its entirety hidden, the “point” of a lot of scenes is left obstructed. I wouldn’t have done this if I had time my time back, that would have been structured differently.

Regarding Story Circle, there’s solid structure here. 1. Introduction: Xander is introduced so distraught from the end of the last book that he’s considering self-harm. We see him first at home alone and then at school with Mike and Cathy – this works. I didn’t have this structure back then, but this is proper structure. 2. Once this status quo is set up, we reveal that Xander Wants to save Genblade from the electric chair. In order to do this he 3. Enters the Unfamiliar Situation of the legal system in Maine, something that is entirely foreign to him and, importantly, outside his skill set. He called “violence” his way out of this situation. 4. Adapts: There are ups and downs with the case as he deals with the defense council, and they (5. Get) finally think they have a winning strategy, when Genblade escapes (6. Pay). After dealing with that, we return (7) to the court, now with new representation in the form of Megan Greene, Having Changed (8) tactics. As a result in this shift, Genblade gives Xander the answers he needs to figure out the unrevealed truths about the murders these trials are about. Once the real murderer is caught, Xander AGAIN Returns to Where He started (his home) Having Changed (no longer so encompassed with grief that is paralyzes him).

That works, especially the doubling-up of the Return and Having Changed at the end. Because that change represents a shift not just in his “work” life of the courtroom, but it also reflects a change in how he sees himself, his “home” life. Because that change happens on two fronts, we need that “Return Having Changed” twice, just like how in Back to the Future you see how George is different in 1955 first, then again you see how those changes went on to affect the outcome of his life in 1985. You need both.

Smoke and Mirrors is still a deeply flawed book. There are leaps in logic that would be unforgivable to me today, waved off with nothing more than a “what do you want? It’s supernatural. Suspend your disbelief”… but I like it. I think if it didn’t work as well as it does, we wouldn’t be at thirty-plus books in this series today.