ThomasLitchford

Here’s the hook I sent in for Miss Snark’s Crap-o-Meter. It’s number 492 on the list, so it’ll probably be Thurs. or Fri. when she gets to it, at the earliest. I’ll post a link.

The day after Mark Roth graduates from the University of Washington he reads about the murder of his mother in the newspaper. He hasn’t seen her in nineteen years.

His mother, Marianne Caxton, was a celebrated author. She was also an untreated manic-depressive who destabilized every situation in which she found herself — and she never stayed in one place for very long.

Marianne abandoned Mark at the age of three to be raised by his father, a winemaker in Washington State. All Mark knows about her is what he’s read in newspapers and magazines. However, while visiting her last known residence to settle her affairs, Mark finds thousands of pages of writing from which he hopes to reconstruct her life and learn how it came to such a violent end. As he works to untangle the mystery of Marianne’s life, he entangles himself in two simultaneous love affairs and fights through a depression of his own.

Mark tells his story in three parts, which correspond with the cycles of manic-depressive illness. Part 1 (”Depression”) tells Mark’s story, Part 2 (”Mania”) tells Marianne’s, and Part 3 (”Lithium”) provides conclusions to both. Part mystery, part coming of age tale, “Lithium” is a novel about the radical ups and downs of American life.

The hard part about writing a hook was that everything I wrote sounded a little stilted. A hook requires economy. Style just gets in the way.

But then how do you keep it from sounding like a cheesey movie trailer voice-over?