I felt especially honored today to receive a glowing review of my debut novel, We, The Watched, from Kirkus Reviews, a highly respected institution in the book publishing world.
Check out this amazing excerpt:
Fueled by a brilliantly nebulous backdrop, this briskly paced, action-packed novel is undeniably a page-turner of the highest order…
A deeply allegorical and powerfully thought-provoking dystopian must-read.
Told from the unique first-person perspective of an amnesiac, acclaimed novel We, The Watched places the reader in the shoes of Seven as he struggles to go unnoticed in a surveillance society and discover his true identity. Seven enters a dystopia where the government conducts mass surveillance and keeps a Watched list of its own citizens. The Church has become as powerful as the State, and people who resist are called Heretics and face execution.
I want to address the reviewer’s one criticism about sexism on the part of the protagonist. The reviewer makes a fair point here, and it’s something that I consciously improved upon in the sequel, Divided We Fall, and my writing since then. I definitely take these kinds of concerns seriously, and I’m glad this criticism did not stop the reviewer from recommending We, The Watched as a must-read.
Hope you enjoy We, The Watched — I can’t wait to read YOUR review!
THE CAPITAL — You see it painted on road signs and the walls of train stations and government buildings: A black visage with fiery red eyes.
The so-called “Fire Eyes,” dissident symbol of Heretics in the Underground.
This graffiti, done with a stencil and spray paint, has long fueled the Heretics’ hatred for our benevolent government. But until today we did not know the perpetrator.
Today, the administration of President William Drake announced that the Guard have learned the graffiti scoundrel’s name: Ignatius.
“We will find Ignatius,” said a spokesman for the Guard. “When we do, the Heretic will face charges of treason and Heresy. These offenses are punishable by death.”
It is not known where Ignatius resides at this time, and the street artist seems to have gone quiet of late, the spokesman said.
“He will turn up again,” claimed the spokesman. “Heretics like Ignatius just can’t resist. When he does, the Guard will be waiting.”
Set before the events of WE, THE WATCHEDand DIVIDED WE FALL, “Fire Eyes” reveals the man behind the street art seen throughout the acclaimed dystopian sci-fi novels. The story, inspired by real political street art by Banksy and others, makes a great entry point for new readers and provides new perspective to fans of Adam Bender’s books.
Like his novels, this short story by Adam Bender exposes a current political issue in an exciting speculative fiction adventure, carrying on the tradition of dystopian classics 1984 by George Orwell and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, as well as more recent blockbuster novels like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
I love films. I write novels. So I’ve always wanted to give screenwriting a go.
I began by reading some great books, including Save The Cat by Blake Snyder and The Screenwriter’s Bible by David Trottier. I soon plan to continue the learning process at the end of February through a free online course via Futurelearn and the University of East Anglia.
There’s nothing like hands-on experience, though, so while learning I figured I’d dive right in. I purchased Final Draft, which is the screenwriting software used by most of the pros.
As an author, I guess I have a small advantage jumping right into screenwriting. I’ve often been told that my writing style in novels and short stories is cinematic. I think this is because I tend to keep scenery descriptions short — just long enough to evoke an image — and then jump into action and dialog.
However, screenwriting is still a different language to writing a novel, with its own syntax, vocabulary and even indentation styles! I knew going in that the hardest part would be learning the actual style and formatting for screenplay.
Screenwriting software like Final Draft helps, of course, since it automatically keeps indentations correct and guesses when you’re writing dialog or a scene heading. But there’s still a lot it won’t automatically do for you, from things as basic as capitalizing a character’s name the first time he appears, to more complex questions like the proper style for a quick series of flashbacks. If you couldn’t spell, you wouldn’t rely on auto-correct, right? It’s much the same here — you still need to have some knowledge to be sure the software is doing the right thing.
So that I could focus on getting the format right, I decided not to spend a lot of time creating a new story from scratch for my first screenwriting effort. Instead, I chose to adapt my first novel, We, The Watched.
We, The Watched follows an amnesiac who wakes up in a dystopia. Told from a first-person present perspective, the story places the reader in the shoes of Seven as he struggles to go unnoticed in a surveillance society and discover his true identity.
It seemed like an easy one to turn into a screenplay. The way I figured it, I could basically just move the book over scene by scene. I imagined fuzzy shots through the lenses of surveillance cameras and exciting gun fights between the Underground rebels and the government police force known as the Guard.
However, when I started thinking about the movie in a traditional three-act structure, I immediately found pacing problems in my story. They were scenes that I maybe got away with in the novel, but now seemed extraneous when I was trying to cram the book into a two-hour film. In a screenplay, each page represents about one minute of screen time. So while novels can be anywhere from 200 to 1000 pages, a spec screenplay has got to be about 100 to 120. And you’re not writing with paragraphs that fill the page with text. Thanks to all the indents, loose line spacing and Courier New 12-point, there’s actually quite a bit of white space on each page!
Rather than freak out about all this, however, I looked at the project as a fun puzzle … and an opportunity! We, The Watched was my first novel, and while I am proud of it, there are things about writing stories now that I did not know then. So it was actually great fun to analyze each scene and pull out only the most essential details and dialog.
I ended cutting a few scenes and even a few minor characters (sorry, Eric). I also massaged the logic of a few bits, like how the hero meets the Underground for the first time. It wasn’t all cuts and edits. I added a few bits between characters to add more tension and amplify character emotions.
Another challenge was that I didn’t want to use voice-over narration, even though the novel is told in first-person present tense. I had to think of ways to convey the hero’s emotions through his expressions, actions and dialog. While inner monologue can totally work in a book, it can come off as a bit lazy in such a visual medium as film. This proved not to be an impossible task; I just had to be creative — which is the whole point, right?
While I ended up having quite a bit of fun every time I sat down to write, I must admit that I had trouble keeping on track. For most of this time, I was simultaneously writing a novel (also coming soon!) and working full-time as a journalist. I’d given myself a loose “finish by end of 2015” deadline, but I discovered this wasn’t great motivation for most of 2015.
What ended up really helping was finding a competition in which to enter the script. It was December when I learned about a “first ten pages” contest. The script was mostly done, but I hadn’t spent much time reading through it to work out the kinks. When I heard about the competition, I thought to myself, “Hey, I can definitely spend time polishing up the first ten pages of my script!”
Lo and behold, just focusing on tidying up the beginning motivated me to get the rest of the screenplay in order, too. You know what? I have no idea how well I’ll do in this competition, but it doesn’t really matter. Having a formal deadline gave me the encouragement I needed to finish.
Well, anyway, thanks for reading my ramblings! Happy to answer any questions in the comments below, and I hope to share the screenplay (and hopefully one day a movie!) with you soon!
Library Journal and Biblioboard have selected my second novel, Divided We Fall, as a featured indie novel in its curated SELF-e Select module!
This means my novel will soon be available to libraries all over the US through BiblioBoard Library. In addition, Divided We Fall will soon be available to readers throughout my home state of Pennsylvania in the Indie PENNSYLVANIA module as a highlighted selection.
The idea behind SELF-e is to expose notable self-published eBooks to readers around the country who are looking to discover new authors. Libraries can make ebooks available for free with no requirement to return the book and no multi-user restrictions.
Libraries are a perfect place to discover new books, and I’m super excited that both of my novels will soon be available for free to this large audience of hungry readers.
Divided We Fall by Adam Bender
In Divided We Fall, Elite Guard Eve Parker must arrest her fiancé after he loses his memory and becomes a revolutionary called Seven. But when Eve learns more about the President’s plan to broaden citizen surveillance, she begins to question what she’s always believed to be right.
Seven runs, but in his flight realizes that losing his memory may not have been enough to erase his feelings for Eve. Unable to escape his past, Seven determines that he must come to terms with the man he was if he ever wishes to win freedom.
You can buy Divided We Fall today as an eBook or paperback from Amazon and other major online retailers.
Join my mailing list to get a free eBook edition of the first book in the series, We, The Watched.
I’m excited to say that my dystopian novel We, The Watched will join SELF-e, a select list of self-published eBooks curated by Library Journal and Biblioboard!
This means my novel will soon be available to libraries all over the US through BiblioBoard Library. The first Library Journal SELF-e curated collection is expected to be available to libraries in mid-2015.
We, The Watched will also soon be available to readers throughout my home state of Pennsylvania in the Indie PENNSYLVANIA module as a highlighted selection.
The idea behind SELF-e is to expose notable self-published eBooks to readers around the country who are looking to discover new authors. Libraries can make ebooks available for free with no requirement to return the book and no multi-user restrictions.
Hugh Howey, author of the sci-fi series Wool and a major advocate for self-published work, has had some great things to say about SELF-e.
“The number one challenge any author has is building an audience,” he says on the BiblioBoard website.
“Once they have an audience, they have an opportunity to grow their work professionally. Librarians can be a powerful marketing force for emerging authors, especially if they can promote the books without fear of success. The SELF-e approach to curation combined with simultaneous user-access will encourage books to be discovered and even go viral.”
In We, The Watched, an amnesiac struggles to conform in a surveillance society he doesn’t remember. Resistance is heresy and punishable by death. But some seek to ignite a revolution.
You can buy the novel in print and eBook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and other major online bookstores.
Head over to Kirkus to read the full review! Then, if you haven’t read it yet, check out this page for a list of stores to buy We, The Watched in digital or paperback. You can also get the eBook for FREE by joining my mailing list!
Library Journal and Biblioboard have selected my second novel, 
