Lifeblood: Darkside, Book 2 -- Tom Becker

In Darkside, Jonathan Starling discovered the existence of a secret part of London ruled by the descendants of Jack the Ripper and populated by werewolves, vampires and other creepy-crawlies, as well as human criminals of every imaginable type -- blackmailers, thieves, con men, cat burglars, bounty hunters.

Now, in Lifeblood, a gruesome murder has Jonathan and Carnegie, his PI werewolf friend/mentor/protector on the case. They quickly discover that their investigation is connected to the Ripper family and may also shed light on Jonathan's mother's disappearance twelve years ago. Just as quickly, they discover that there's someone out there who will kill to prevent them from solving the case...

Lifeblood is a strong follow-up to Darkside. It's heavy on the action, awash in gallons of blood and features a fight scene every three or four pages. The descriptions of the different parts of Darkside continue to be imaginatively gruesome and easily, the highlight of the book. Definitely recommended to fans of Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak novels.

While I've totally enjoyed both books currently available to those of us in the US, what I find most interesting about the books isn't actually the story -- it's the story behind them. According to an article I found via Oz and Ends, the storyline and the ideas behind it didn't come from the author, but from focus groups:

Hothouse uses a market research company to put story ideas to children, who are observed from behind a one-way mirror. Using dummy covers, short excerpts and blurbs to prompt conversation, researchers ask the children their opinions on which characters, plots and ideas they enjoy most. Each child is also visited at home by a researcher, who finds out what kind of books they already own and read. Drawing on this research, Hothouse commissions a team of writers accordingly.

It's similar, I think, to what book packaging companies like Alloy do, and even to what the Stratemeyer Syndicate used to do -- but it seems like Hothouse has gone a step further. I'd love to know what you all think of the idea.

Previously:

Darkside

(cross-posted (with some tweaking) at Guys Lit Wire)

Comments

[Sam Musher]

It creeps me the hell out -- kids get enough insidious targeted advertising already, and it offends my sense of the "purity" of the writing process or whatever. But honestly, if the book is good anyway... does it matter?

It reminds me of the whole kerfuffle around Sean Stewart's Cathy's Book, which had a deal to advertise a cosmetics brand in the text. I didn't even notice the advertisements until I read about them later, and the book was awesome, so I couldn't get too worked up about it.

[chrissy]

Part of me is saying "Meh, it was bound to happen, we shouldn't stress too much about it."

And another part of me is saying "Is there really this much of a lack of good manuscripts being offered to take this route? (I doubt it) Is it somehow cheaper to hire a marketing company to do this insane amount of research rather than have an intern go through the slush pile? (is that the correct term)?"

My feelings are mixed at best, and I'm having a weird day. I think there is this feeling of somehow the book industry should be free of this sort of thing and should remain pure and unsullied by this sort of marketing, but that's unrealistic. My only hope is the marketing, or whatever, won't be so obvious as to ruin a good story. So far we've seen examples of both good and bad versions.

I don't really have a conclusion to these thoughts.

[Colleen]

I posted on this over at GLW and what I'm wondering is did they just decide elements they like in stories? It seems like that is what the article is saying - the kids said they liked certain things and then "Darkside" was written to incorporate those elements. I thought "Darkside" was really well done and more importantly, well written. Correct me if I'm wrong Leila, but didn't Becker just receive some guidance on what to writie (vamps! werewolves! creepy sideshows!) and then do all the work from there?

[Leila]

As I said above, I totally enjoyed both books.

Chrissy, maybe it's more cost-effective to find out what the kids want and give it to them rather than taking a chance?

I think we're reading it the same way, Colleen -- he did all of the writing but the actual ideas for the storyline and the *stuff* (vamps, werewolves, really fun gory violence) came from kids in focus groups. Like, the kids said "we want this and this and this" and Hothouse said, "Okay, Tom Becker -- go for it!"

That is basically the same thing that Alloy does, right? They come up with the idea for a story and then farm that idea out to an author -- the difference here is that they're using real live kids in focus groups to get the ideas. I've thought about it a bunch, and I don't think that I have a problem with it -- I was just curious about what other people thought, since it seemed like an interesting (and slightly different) way of going about things.

(x-posted at Guys Lit Wire)