Welcome to the official first installment of Justin Aclin: The Newsletter. (Last week only half counts.) I’ve started this so that I can keep people up-to-date about my upcoming middle grade fantasy graphic novel with artist Max Bare, coming from Papercutz. As it happens, I have the barest scrap of news to kick off the newsletter:

We officially have a release date!

I can’t tell you what it is, but rest assured: we have it.

Obviously, this thing isn’t right around the corner, but in the meantime I hope to fill the newsletter with lots of other interesting stuff, like writing advice. This week, however, I’m actually going to be asking for your advice, in a segment I’m calling…

The Terminator 2 Problem

I’ve been catching up on the phone with folks a lot lately, and after talking about my kids, I’ll usually mention my other kid: this comic. And the other person will always say “What’s it about,” and I’ll say, “Let me tell you, because I need to practice my elevator pitch.”

I’ll then tell a version of the story (which is too long - I really do need to work on my elevator pitch) that goes through about page 46 of the book, because that’s what the book is about. The unique hook, the thing that sets this book apart from other books, happens around page 46.

But here’s the problem: ideally, I don’t want people knowing what happens on page 46 before they read the book.

I call this “The Terminator 2 Problem.”

Terminator 2 is great. Just watch the original trailer and you can tell it’s going to whip ass. And it’s got a great set-up: (Spoilers for a 34-year-old movie) Arnold is a good guy this time! He’s trying to protect Sarah Connor’s son from a liquid metal LAPD guy!

But if you watch the movie, you can see that James Cameron was trying to do something completely different.

If you’d never seen the trailer and were just coming to the movie as a fan of the first film, you wouldn’t know that Arnold was the good guy and Robert Patrick was the bad guy until the first confrontation in the mall hallway. I don’t feel like breaking out my DVD, but that must be a good 20 to 25 minutes into the film. Before that, Cameron is working hard to make you assume that Robert Patrick is in the Michael Biehn role, looking for John to protect him, and Arnold is back (like he said he’d be!) to terminate him.

I don’t suspect that anyone saw the movie and assumed that, because the marketing did a really good job of spoiling it. But imagine if you had! What a twist!

On the other hand…

…if the trailers were cut to preserve the surprise, would it just have looked like a rehashed version of Terminator 1? Would fans have been excited to see that?

I don’t think I’m going to be able to market my book without talking about what happens on page 46. It’s too intrinsic to the story. But I’ll mostly be marketing to parents, educators, booksellers and librarians. What I’d really love is for kids, who won’t be receiving the marketing, to have that moment when they discover that Arnold is the good guy. (Figuratively. I don’t think kids should watch Terminator 2 until they’re at least…oh let’s say ten and a half.)

I want kids who are picking up the book to know what makes it special, but I also want their minds to be blown when they get to the twist.

So my question to you is:

When it comes to the back-of-the-book text, which is likely all the marketing materials kids will encounter, should I preserve the surprise, or spoil what makes the book unique? Reply to this email to let me know your thoughts!

Links to Cool Things

• My buddy Alex Segura writes a ton of cool stuff, but he and his co-creators wanted to launch a comic that was uniquely their own, heavily inspired by the stuff that they personally love and obsess over, which I think is great. If you’re into superheroes, Love and Rockets, punk rock or just cool personal stories, check out The Forgotten Five on Patreon.

• Speaking of passion projects, my other buddy Brett White got tired of writing for corporate pop culture blogs and decided to start a worker-owned blog where writers can dive deep (extremely deep) into the things that they care about. It’s called Pop Heist and you should check it out and subscribe! My other buddy Sean T. Collins (I have a lot of buddies making cool stuff) is recapping The Prisoner for them right now!

• My other buddy (you see what I mean?) Alejandro Arbona just successfully Kickstarted his graphic novel Lake Yellowwood Slaughter, a mash-up of ‘80s slasher flicks and Italian giallo movies. The funding period is over, but you can still late pledge and get a copy!

• Last buddy update for now! Buddy Zach Oat published a book of his action figure photography and it’s very cool. He’s a real talent!

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading, and please help spread the word!