For the first official post of November’s Teachable Moments feature of Straw House, Wood House, Brick House, Blow I’m excited to host author Daniel Nayeri.  In his thoughts below Daniel speaks more in depth about the genre focus of the four novellas that comprise the book.  Please join me in welcoming Daniel.

Okay. Hello? Is this thing on? Hello? Michelle? Did you turn on the Guest Post button?  What do you mean, there’s no button? I just start talking? How do people know I’m official? I’m not just some schmo off the L-train telling people—you know what, I’m just going to go right into it.

Dear People of Internet, lend me your looking.

When Michelle asked me in a super secret, very official capacity to take up the mantle of Guest Post, I first had to look up the bylaws, to make sure I could accept such a responsibility. After the background check, two late-round interviews, and a recommendation letter from my local librarian, I was given the passcodes. I’m in.

I’m a book writer. I also edit them. I’m prepared to get into arguments about pretty much anything in the comments section, so feel free to ask me about politics, religion, censorship, tattoos I think are stupid on people I personally know, or whatever.

For now, the term “teachable moment” has given me the impression that I should probably deliver some interesting and enlightening information about my book, STRAW HOUSE, WOOD HOUSE, BRICK HOUSE, BLOW.

One of my favorite aspects of SHWHBHB is that it can be used as a primer on genres. I love doing school visits and having two hundred 9th graders in an auditorium look at me like a complete crazy person when I tell them I’ll be teaching them about genres. Well, I don’t like that part. I like it when we start the conversation, and suddenly they’re throwing out their favorite aspects of a Western—gotta love the showdowns at high noon, the plucking of a steel guitar, a lonely tumbleweed rolling across the dusty plain. Or what they love about Sci-fi stories—there’s always the person who mentions alien hotties. Then we mention stories that blend the two, like “Firefly” or “Cowboys & Aliens.”

I love telling kids about what it took to write each story in Straw House, Wood House, Brick House Blow.

For the western, which is titled TOY FARM, I got into a lot of farm allegories, like Book of the Dun Cow and Animal Farm. I wanted to make Toy Farm about a teenage boy (a scarecrow) trying to figure out what it means to become a man—or rather, how to best become one.

The style has long, languid sentences, with a tone like you’re rocking in a chair on a front porch overlooking the vast prairie. And like a traditional western, it has themes like law versus lawlessness, the unforgiving landscape, and hey, you gotta have that showdown at high noon…wouldn’t be a western otherwise.

The sci-fi story–OUR LADY OF VILLAINS–is a near-future sci-fi set on the eve of “Re-Creation Day.”

In sci-fi, I’ve always been fascinated by the distinction between “near-future,” and “distant future.” There are a million exceptions, but generally, it helps to differentiate stories that are set just a little ahead of the present (think, The House of the Scorpion, I, Robot, or 1984 when it first came out) and the stories set after we’ve broken the space barrier and made contact with other life forms (like Star Trek, Out of the Silent Planet, and StarCraft). A Wrinkle in Time defies all categorization and should be grouped by itself as singular genius.

I became really fascinated with the transition between these two. When exactly do we go from dystopian fallout shelters and polluted cities to streamlined holo-decks with no homeless or hungry people because we can just materialize food and clothing? What kind of technology would we need to solve all our problems? And what price would we have to pay to get it?

The third story is called WISH POLICE. It’s a crime procedural drama about all the wishes that try to come true, but get locked up instead. The beat is the Imaginary Crimes Unit. The job is “to Project and to Swerve.”

Stories like Law & Order, Sherlock Holmes, Bones, or Castle aren’t really about each case. There’s a formula or procedure, and generally, each installment sticks to it. The good stuff is the interaction between the characters. We love watching the detectives grow, slowly, over the course of their serial mysteries and ingenious sleuthing. As for style, the hardboiled stories of Raymond Chandler are some of my all time favorites, with over the top metaphors like “it tasted like a plumber’s handkerchief,” or “as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”

In this case, Saul, Ari, and Mack are all experts in wishes. They used to grant them.

But there’s the kind you make. And then there’s the kind that appear. Like Saul says, “every wish you make comes true, except for the ones that don’t…or can’t…or shouldn’t.” Those wishes become WISHes (Wicked Ideas Suddenly Human), and it’s up to our bickering trio to stop them before they give us what we shouldn’t want.

And the last story–DOOM WITH A VIEW is a love story from Death’s perspective. So you may as well know now, everyone dies by the end (oops, err, *spoiler alert*).

Yes, a romance. But not the undulating bosoms kind, but the Stardust, Castle in the Air kind. The stories set in the imaginary Old Timey Europe where anachronistic machines can be built out of wood and rope, and love is the strongest magic around.

So there you have it, four stories, four genres. I could probably bloviate on these for WAY too long. Like, the fact that all four stories are collected under the theme of the the Three Little Pigs and share thematic connections. But I’ve probably worn out my welcome. Thank you for reading. I’ll hand the reins back to Michelle now.

Thank you for visiting Daniel and thank you to Rachel Bee Porter for the lovely book related photos.  I’m thrilled to be focusing on Straw House, Wood House, Brick House, Blow this month and look forward to sharing more.