A Trick of the Light
By Lois Metzger
Published by Balzer + Bray
Hardcover: 208 pages
Available: June 18, 2013
Description
Mike Welles had everything under control.
He
was a good student, an outfielder on the baseball team, a good son, a
loyal friend. But that was before. Now things are rough at home, and
they're getting confusing at school. He's losing his sense of direction,
and he feels like a mess.
Then
there's a voice in his head. A friend, trying to help him regain
control. More than that: The voice can guide him to become better and
stronger than he was before, to rid his life of everything holding him
back. To figure out who he is again. If only Mike will listen.
Writing
with devastating power and precision, acclaimed author Lois Metzger
gives us the story of one young man's battle with his own shadows -- a
spare, stark, and vital tale of the way in which the things we build to
protect ourselves can threaten to destroy us.
A Trick of the Light is out today and I am honored to host author Lois Metzger on my blog. When I asked her to share her favorite bookstore memory from the perspective as a reader or a writer, she shared that they don't necessarily have to be separate.
Welcome Lois Metzger!!
It
was the year after college. I was living on Telegraph Avenue in
Oakland, California, working as a "temp," which meant I got sent out on a
new office job every few days. Mostly I was a typist, but I also filed,
ran errands, answered phones, took messages.
On
my block on Telegraph Avenue, there was a Laundromat I went to
regularly and, right next to it, a tiny science-fiction bookstore I
would linger in while the clothes were spinning. It was basically a
narrow horseshoe-shaped hall with books floor to ceiling; you just made
your way down one aisle and came back up the other way. There were
ancient issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Astounding, Galaxy, and anthologies such as Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions,
and musty old paperbacks, some of them Ace Doubles, which meant you
could read an entire novel, flip the book over, and then read another
novel. I don't even remember that store's name but it had a profound
effect on me.
Now, I'm a science-fiction
fan from way back. My junior year at the State University of New York
at Buffalo, my writing teacher was the legendary SF (please, never
sci-fi) writer Samuel R. Delany. He asked me if I'd ever heard of the
Clarion Writers' Workshop, which was just for science-fiction writers. I
said no. He told me to go there. So I did, for six weeks during the
summer of 1975, at the campus of Michigan State University, in East
Lansing. A new teacher came every week (my year, there were Samuel R.
Delany, Joe Haldeman, Gene Wolfe, Roger Zelazny, and the final two weeks
were co-taught by married writers Kate Wilhelm and Damon Knight). My
classmates included Robert Crais, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Gregory
Frost, who've gone on to great things (and I'm very proud and happy to
say we are still friends after all these years). I also wound up living
with Kate and Damon briefly; they had a bunch of kids from previous
marriages and I always felt like one of them.
So
for years I read a lot of science fiction, and wrote a lot of science
fiction, but there was one writer who always scared me: Philip K. Dick. I
thought he would be too "out there" for me, that his alternate worlds
and shifting realities would make my head hurt.
One
day, while doing laundry, I headed into that tiny SF bookstore. This
time, at the end of the narrow hall, I picked up an almost-crumbling
issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. There was a short story
called "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." Wonderful title. And it
was by Philip K. Dick. I bit the bullet, stood there and read it.
Okay,
I was hooked. It was so imaginative, and funny, and had so twists and
turns -- a bit dizzying, but it didn't make my head hurt. It has to do
with implanted memories, and suppressed memories, and people who are not
who they say they are. That story, later the basis for the Arnold
Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall and the Colin Farrell 2012 remake of the same title, has inspired me to this day.
My new book, A Trick of the Light,
is about a 15-year-old boy, Mike Welles, who develops an eating
disorder. He has a voice in his head. This voice urges him on to
destructive behavior. It tells him not to eat when he is famished. It
tells him to exercise when he is exhausted. It tells him to reject the
people who love him, because they are not trustworthy. This voice is the
narrator of the book.
When I started writing A Trick of the Light,
it was a more conventional narrative. Mike, from the beginning, had a
voice in his head, which interrupted his thoughts and actions, but Mike
told his own story. As the novel deepened and got more complicated, the
voice became more of a presence and took up more "air time." Finally, in
one of many rewrites, it became the narrator.
It
occurred to me that this was kind of strange, to have the voice in
someone's head be the narrator of a book. But I had read a lot of Philip
K. Dick by then, including what's now my favorite of his, Time Out of Joint,
about a man living in a totally fake environment (though it appears to
be an ordinary, dull-as-dishwater suburb), surrounded by people who are
all "in on it." So I figured, strange is okay. Strange is good. Strange
is what makes the alternate world go round. I had found the way to tell
Mike's story.
© 2013 Lois Metzger, author of A Trick of the Light
Author Bio
Lois Metzger, author of
A Trick of the Light, was
born in Queens and has always written for young adults. She is the
author of three previous novels and two nonfiction books about the
Holocaust, and she has edited five anthologies. Her short stories have
appeared in collections all over the world. Her writing has also
appeared in
The New Yorker, The Nation, and
Harper's Bazaar. She lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and son.
Heidi is the author of USA Today, Digital Book World, Amazon and Barnes & Noble Bestselling novel, Forever My Girl. 
