Cat Killer?

OK Junkies, I need some help.  I'm stuck.  All because of a cat corpse.

At our last meeting, my critique group hated the chapter I'd submitted.  I've never received such a negative response.  You see, in the chapter they read, a little girl accidentally kills her cat.

"You can't kill a cat!"  They shouted.
"Do you have to describe the cat corpse?" They asked.
"Really?  A dead cat?  You really want to do that?"

I didn't understand.  What's the problem?  That same night we read about dead grandmothers, suicidal rock stars, and murdered scientists.  Why couldn't I have a dead cat?

They informed me that people will hate me and hate my book if I kill a cat.  This seemed to be a basic rule of good craft everyone knew but me.  Show, don't tell.  Omit needless words.  No passive voice.  And don't kill any cats.

Basically, by killing a cat, I was killing my writing career.  They told me there's even a book on screenwriting called Save the Cat!  The book states that all you have to do to sell your screenplay is not kill any cats.  (I haven't read the book, but I'm pretty sure that's what it says).

I tried not to get defensive.  I tried to listen to their feedback, to process it, to see which direction my revisions should take.  And then I realized it.  I kill TWO cats in my WIP.  (And a baby bird, but I'm sure there's no rule on baby birds).

Well, I decided to stick to my guns.  I blew off the advice of my critique group.  They're probably all just crazy cat people or something.

Then I went to another meeting, with a different group of writers.  We discussed the atrocities of dead dogs in children's literature.

One writer even talked about an appalling scene in an adult novel.  She mentioned an extremely popular adult trilogy.  "I almost had to stop reading when they killed the cat!  It was just awful!"

I happened to have recently read the book she was talking about.  You mean the same book where the main character is raped and tortured in a graphic scene that has NOTHING to do with the plot?  You mean the same novel where dozens of women are raped and murdered, but the characters are more concerned about the Swedish stock-market?  You almost stopped reading because of the dead cat?

What's wrong with these people?

Then last week, I read Mockingjay.  SPOILER ALERT!



Of all the characters Collins killed, she saved the cat.  Buttercup survived.  Maybe there's something to this Save-the-cat theory.  After all, Rowling killed Hedwig but spared Crookshanks.
END SPOILER


It's not like I'm some sadistic animal hater.  My dog and my cat are my only children.  I'm a freakin' vegetarian!  I don't eat animals, I just kill them in my fiction (but for important plot and character reasons, I totally swear.)  I just don't get why people seem to be more sensitive to the death of animals than to the death of humans in fiction.


So what do you think Junkies?
Do you hate books with dead cats?
Can anyone explain this never-kill-a-cat rule?

Is my WIP doomed if I kill a cat?  If I kill two?
Could I change my dead cats to dead dogs? dead babies?

Well, I might keep my dead cats because when the rejections for my MS start rolling in, at least I can blame it on the dead kitties, right?

*photo from here

Some spoiler-free thoughts on Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

So, I feel like I can't really do Mockingjay justice in a review, and I don't want to give away any spoilers.  And more than writing a review, what I really need is a freakin' therapy session after that speed train of emotion.

I think Mockingjay is by far the best book in Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy.  The three books ask: what does it do to us when we kill another person, even in self-defense?  The Hunger Games touched on this theme, Catching Fire pushed it a little further, but Mockingjay blew it wide open.

As another character points out, Katniss is not the same girl who volunteered to take her sister's place at the reaping.  She's permanently and irrevocably scarred by the violence she's experienced and produced.  What I love is that even though she has nightmares and is sometimes "disoriented" she is in no way a victim.  Katniss is traumatized not by what's been done to her, but by the choices she's made.  I don't think she regrets any life she took to save herself, but that doesn't mean she sleeps well at night.

All the Victors are a wreck.  I love how in the beginning of The Hunger Games, Katniss views Haymitch as this pathetic creature who hides from life in the bottom of a bottle.  In Mockingjay, Katniss and Haymitch don't seem very different, Katniss even wishes for her own bottle at one point.

I thought Peeta's character arc was brilliant.  So much more heartbreaking than a typical love-triangle or the who-do-I-save dilemma I thought it was going to be.

I know some people are disappointed with the ending, but frankly I think those are the same people who are disappointed with life.  Collins's world and Katniss's story are so devastating because they are so real.  Collins doesn't pull any punches.  Katniss is, above everything else, a survivor.  And just like President Snow, Collins pushes Katniss to her breaking point.

I white-knuckled it, holding on with Katniss through her harrowing journey, not knowing what to even hope for at the end.  But some damage cannot be undone.  We still pick up the pieces and salvage what we can of our lives.  If reader's don't like Mockingjay's ending it's because it's too true.

The story is so critical of war and vengeance that I cried not just for the characters, but for humanity.  We sacrifice our children to overthrow dictators, only to replace them with more dictators.  We kill a few to save the many, over and over, and over again until we can't remember who we're saving and who we're fighting.

This book is amazing, but it drained me.  What are your thoughts?  Anything light and fluffy to recommend for recovery reading?

A taste of middle-child-syndrome with CATCHING FIRE by Suzanne Collins

OK Junkies, confession time: my first couple of years teaching were so awful that I had to break up the school year with little things to look forward to.  I'd count the weeks/days/hours until each holiday.  Oh what, you think that sounds normal?  I'm not finished.  In addition to counting down to holidays, I'd also count down the days and weeks until other moments of joy.  I would know at any given day, how many months until the next Harry Potter book came out, or how many weeks until the next Lemony Snicket installment, or even how many weeks until the next Harry Potter movie was released (in theaters and on DVD).   I told you, I'm an addict.

Well, in an attempt to ease some of my bitterness at having to work on Presidents' Day, I've decided to reinstate the countdown.

As of today, there are exactly:

• 4 weeks until Spring Break
• 16 weeks until summer vacation
• 27 weeks until the release of Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins!

But Junkies, let's back up a second.  Before we can get all giddy about the third installment in the Hunger Games trilogy, we need to talk about Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games.

SPOLIER ALERT

You know that family member who yells at the TV during a sports game, or worse, the news?  Yeah, that was me while reading this book.

"No!  We can't go back into the arena.  Come on, Katniss, escape, revolt, go light stuff on fire with Gale. No!"  and "The watch!  Katniss, you saw the watch-with the bird, hello? Doh!" 

Suzanne Collins has created a great character with Katniss Everdeen.  Katniss is passionate and courageous.  She acts on instinct, but she can also be a little naiive.  None of these are great qualities for planning a secret revolution.  So Catching Fire is full of behind the scenes planning that Katniss is not aware of.  Unfortunately, because she's the first-person narrator, this means that the reader is also unaware of it. 

We get a few clues that Katniss doesn't understand the significance of, which can be a tad frustrating.  But, the thing is, Junkies, even though I shouted at the book and rolled my eyes a few times at Katniss's obliviousness, Collins knows what she's doing.

While The Hunger Games was full of physical suspense--is she going to die?  who is she going to kill?  Can she save Peeta?
Catching Fire is all about emotional suspense--what will she do?  When will she figure it out?  Who does she love?  Why won't Haymitch throw her a bone?

The middle book in any trilogy is tricky.  It struggles to compete with the excitement and originality of the first book, yet it has to continually build up to the climactic events to come in the third book.  It's like the middle-child-syndrome.  Or, I like to think of it as The Empire Strikes Back syndrome.  And like The Empire Strikes Back, in Catching Fire we spend a little too much time in the snow waiting for something to happen.

But in some ways, Catching Fire did surpass The Hunger Games.  Suzanne Collins is a genius at crafting characters and Haymitch and Cinna come alive in the sequel.  And we thought we knew Katniss and Peeta in the first book, but the second book really lets us see who they are, what they live for, and what they're willing to die for.

I do wish we got to know Gale a little more in this second book, though.  Because really, if we're going to have a love triangle, I need to know WHY Katniss loves Gale.  So as of right now, I'm in camp Peeta all the way, baby.

So, although I don't think it lived up to the awesomenes of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire is still a badass book and I can't wait until Mockingjay is in my hands 27 weeks from now.