April 12, 2006
I have a disease. I'm not sure what it's name is--Mimeticitis, perhaps. You see, I like a wide variety of books within the mystery, thriller, suspense, procedural, crime genre. I like funny cozies. I like full-blast thrillers. I like police procedurals. I like capers.

And sometimes when I read one I particularly like, I think: "I should write a book like that. That would be fun."

Today's is a little peculiar. Rick Riordan, who writes PI novels, also writes Young Adult novels about Percy Jackson, a demi-god. The second book, "Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters" has just come out and my son will be picking it up Friday, and I'm looking forward to reading it. I loved the first book, "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief."

But this isn't a new thing. I read something by Janet Evanovich and think, "It must be fun to write these kinds of books. You should try writing something like that."

I'm reading "Oblivion" by Peter Abraham right now, a thriller that's clearly a stand-alone, and I think, "Something along these lines would be cool to write.

I've had similar reactions to the novels of Karl Hiaasen, David Morrell (who is a major influence), Joe Waumbaugh (specifically "Finnegan's Week"), Robert B. Parker, Stephen King (who got me into writing in the first place), Lincoln Child and a bunch of others. Not everything I read, just those that seem to really catch my imagination.

Maybe it's Otherauthoritis.

Yeah, I like that: I've got otherauthoritis.

I think I especially have attacks of otherauthoritis when I read a book that I think is particularly fun--something funny, like Evanovich, or something that has a sort of lightness at its heart like the Rick Riordan books, which have some similarities to the Harry Potter novels, which also give me a bout of otherauthoritis.

In some instances otherauthoritis can be a good thing. It can inspire you to reach, to look for what that element is that's really catching you and incorporate it into your own work.

At the same time, sometimes it inspires me to want to work on a book that is an inappropriate book for me to write. Not that it's necessarily a bad idea or would be a bad book, but that I'm not well-suited to write it. Twice I've tried to write a book about a couple bioprospectors on a trip through the Congo in a race for a mysterious lizard whose venom may have significant, even magical, recuperative qualities. Both times it died, although the second time because I showed it to my agent who hated the 150 pages I had written. It was partially inspired by Michael Crichton's "Congo" and by Douglas Preston's "The Codex" and James Rollins' "Amazonia," all books that I enjoyed a lot and gave me cases of otherauthoritis.

But perhaps what I need to take from these books is a fast pace, a certain exotic quality to the science, and tough, scientifically-oriented main characters. Which, when I think about it, pretty closely describes the Derek Stillwater novels. Hmmm...

To thine own book be true, folks. Write your own damn books.

Best,
Mark Terry