Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Caution / Disclaimer

The next segment that I'll be serializing from my novel Exmormon is Part III: Saturday's Warrior. This segment is the main reason why I've categorized my novel as "mature": the story deals with subjects that would probably not be appropriate for (or make sense to) small children. On the other hand, it seems a little ironic to me to label it "mature" since it's not meant to be "adult" (in the porn sense of the word), really it's about teen and young adult relationships.

On the one hand I don't want to be talking about teenagers as if they're not here (on the Internet with the rest of us), and this is a subject that young people themselves should be taking seriously. At the same time, while I personally think this story would be appropriate for mature teens, it's up to their parents to make that call if they're under 18. So I don't recommend to teens to read it without their parents' knowledge and consent. That said, it's a whole lot less explicit than stuff it will take you two seconds to find right here on blogspot/blogger (not to mention the rest of the Internet), so I assume I won't get in trouble for posting this (especially with the appropriate content warning messages). I guess I'll find out...

The novel overall inhabits kind of the same space as Judy Blume's Forever, although I think that Exmormon is somewhat less explicit. As I've said before, I'm basically shooting for "the Mormon Judy Blume" with this novel... ;^)

I hope my disclaimer isn't putting you off from reading this "very special episode" (which will be posted starting from September 18). According to my reader feedback (including from believing Mormons), this is one of the most interesting and dramatic stories of the whole collection. I don't want to bias you in advance by telling you what it's about, but you'll see that in the story something has gone wrong. My goal in writing it was to create a situation that is complex and realistic enough that different readers will have different interpretations in terms of (a) what went wrong, (b) what caused the problem, (c) was the problem solved, and (d) what might the various characters have done differently. From there hopefully thoughts will be provoked and interesting discussion of the relevant issues will insue... ;^)

Also, I hope there won't be a problem regarding the fact that I've entitled this sub-story Saturday's Warrior -- the same name as the play the characters are performing through the course of the story. All of the different segments of the novel Exmormon are named after different aspects of Mormon experience that the characters are participating in. For generation-Xer's like me (and also those maybe a little older), the musical Saturday's Warrior (and the records and later the video) played a huge formative role. In the context of the complete collection, it made sense to give this novella this particular name, but running it (kind of) separately like this makes the title seem a little weird, so I hope it won't cause too much confusion. The original title of this work as a stand-alone novella was "Like a Faithful Girl..."

7 comments:

woundedhart said...

I'm so interested in reading this. Although I must say that I finally saw Saturday's Warrior as a teenager, expecting something profound or at least marginally artistic, from how much everyone talked about it, and I was horrified at how terrible the whole thing was, complete with bad music, horrible acting, cheesy dialogue, false doctrine, and perpetuating distasteful prejudicial streotypes. I'm saddened that it ever became a cultural part of the lives of young Mormons.

I anticipate that your book will be much more enlightening.

C. L. Hanson said...

Thanks Woundedhart -- I hope you'll like it!!!

The play Saturday's Warrior is essentially a backdrop, but differing opinions about the musical and what it means to people play a part in the story.

The Sinister Porpoise said...

Sorry for making you change my link again, I was having horrible problems with Movable Type's format and had to switch to Wordpress for a reasonable way to control spam.

I also wanted more control than Blogger allows so they don't do stupid edits like changing the LDS church to the "Church of Jesus Christ" like they did to me once.

Hellmut said...

Here I am getting all excited and the thing isn't even up yet . . .

Unknown said...

I'm interested in reading this too. I have to say, I've never seen Saturday's Warrior, or its spoof, Saturday's Voyeur.

P.S. I wanted to thank you again for linking my blog. I noticed, though, that it's under "exmo/post-mo." Any shameless plug of my blog should be accompanied by complete disclosure. I couldn't really be counted as "exmo" unless "ex" could count as "extra." I was never Mormon. If this is an unimportant distinction, then I'd be honored to stay on your list. But I wanted to be honest just in case.

C. L. Hanson said...

Thanks Hellmut!!!

Hey John!!!

Yeah, from reading your post it was clear that you were never Mormon, but growing up in Utah and writing a blog called Godless on the Wasatch Front makes you seem to qualify to be in "Outer Blogness." I can move you to "Other LDS-Interest Blogs" if you prefer, though...

Unknown said...

No, "Outer Blogness" seems just fine to me. :-)