NO GOOD ABOUT GOODBYE
Fifteen-year-old Ian Racalmuto’s life is in ruins after an embassy raid in Algiers. His mother, a vodka-drunk spy, is dead. His brother, a diplomat, has vanished. And, he’s lost a cremation urn containing a smartphone that could destroy the world.
Forced to live with his cantankerous grandfather in Philadelphia, Ian has seven days to find his brother and secure the phone—all while adjusting to life in a troubled urban school and dodging assassins sent to kill him.
Ian finds an ally in William Xiang, an undocumented immigrant grappling with poverty, a strict family, and abusive classmates. They make a formidable team, but when Ian’s feelings toward Will grow, bombs, bullets and crazed bounty hunters don’t hold a candle to his fear of his friend finding out. Will it wreck their relationship, roll up their mission, and derail a heist they’ve planned at the State Department?
Like a dime store pulp adventure of the past, No Good About Goodbye is an incautious, funny, coming-of-age tale for mature teens and adult readers. 308p.
PRAISE
“So many treats are in store for the discerning reader of CT Liotta’s brilliant YA novel NO GOOD ABOUT GOODBYE. There’s a diverse array of multi-racial/cultural characters, organized criminals with complex political goals underway, and keystone-cop humor/blunders often sparking from the evergreen enchantment of a push-pull romance between two young people, neither of whom have yet decided to identify as ‘gay.’ Rich with often realistically crude boy lingo, NO GOOD ABOUT GOODBYE is an utterly charming teenage LGBTQ falling-in-love adventure while simultaneously rocking an international crime storyline.” – C.S. Holmes, IndieReader
★★★★★ “Sharply observed and sarcastic as hell, CT Liotta’s debut is the gay teenage spy thriller we have long needed.” -Matt Harry, author of Superkid and Sorcery for Beginners.
★★★★★ I found this YA spy novel to be an utter delight! Fast-paced and witty, we traverse the globe with Ian, who just lost his mother and is charged with stopping a war with China. All the while he’s 15, enrolled in a High School from hell in Philadelphia and struggling with his identity. The author offers his own particular take on the importance of friendship and found family. He also very cleverly features different viewpoints, so the reading experience never feels stale. Honestly, I did not know what to expect going into this story – I however finished it converted into a fan! – Thomas S., Netgalley
On a Tuesday night in late August—four hours and fifty-eight minutes after the sun fell beneath Raïs Hamidou and Pointe Pascade in Algiers, Algeria—a battered, white SUV swerved from an access road and tore through an otherwise quiet olive grove near Houari Boumediene Airport. Branches snapped and scraped against dented fenders and fell under tires that upended the earth. Cracks of gunfire followed. The driver, a fifteen-year-old boy, wore a black Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap, and a weathered pair of Adidas Sambas.
He shifted into fourth gear and stomped the accelerator. His brother had been teaching him to drive, and he did not have a feel for the clutch. At five-foot-three, he was short for his age and had difficulty reaching the pedals.
He calculated the likelihood of a calamitous encounter with a tractor or irrigation wheel and turned his lights off. With luck, the ordered rows of trees would continue to the horizon. The suspension protested against the uneven terrain.
Beside the boy sat his mother, unconscious, unmistakable in resemblance. The night air caught her hair, and with it, lingering notes of Shalimar and vodka. In the cup holder between them was a SIG Sauer P226. The boy eyed it and pressed the de-cocker, fearful it might discharge in the shaking vehicle.
The rear bumper fell off. “Cosa facciamo ora,
Deena?” asked the boy, filled with uncertainty. “What now?” He liked to call
her by her first name because it irritated her.
The rearview mirror reflected the pinpoint headlamps of a pursuing Jeep. There were three rapid flashes of gunfire. “Flash-to-bang,” he muttered, remembering what his brother had said. He counted the seconds until the distant report of the guns sounded over the engine. Three seconds. Three seconds times 330 meters per second put the Jeep a kilometer away. Given wind direction and velocity, terrain, elevation, circular error probable, and handicap while firing from a moving vehicle, he knew he was beyond range.
A bullet ripped through the back window with a startling crack. The glass fell from its frame and the remains of the rearview mirror spun onto the dashboard. Air rushed in.
“This was a terrible idea,” said the boy.
The grove ended near a traffic cloverleaf. He steered onto National Highway 5 and pointed the vehicle toward the city. The engine light flickered. He shifted into fifth gear.
Welcome to the blog!
Thanks so much for having me! Most interviewers want to talk about YA LGBT books or young adult spy novels off the bat. I’ve never analyzed page one, so this will be fascinating. Betcha I’ll write more about page one than what’s actually on page one!
The first page is perhaps one of the most important pages in the
whole book. It’s what draws the reader into the story. Why did you choose to
begin your book this way?
One of my very favorite movies is The English Patient, directed by the late Anthony Minghella. In the opening scene, an antique DeHavilland biplane flies low over the dunes of the Sahara Desert. A woman, in the front, appears to sleep against the bulkhead. The pilot, in the rear, is getting somewhere fast. Then, Germans shoot the plane from the sky.
Who are these people? How did they arrive at this moment? By the time we understand, we’re heartbroken.
I wanted my first pages to echo those opening moments. Subsequent rewrites weakened the tea, I hate to say. I wish that element had worked better than it does, but I remain happy it’s there in some form.
The opening page introduces us to our protagonist, 15-year-old Ian Racalmuto. He has clear judgment in a precarious situation. He knows how to operate the gun beside him in the shaking car. He’s focused on a task, abandoning moral questions and, clearly, his emotions.
One of my beta readers said it reminded them of their conservative uncle’s Clive Cussler stories, not of Ally Carter or Chris Ryan or other young adult spy novels they’ve enjoyed in the past. Teen reads, after all, are about vulnerability. Vulnerability is a mainstay of LGBT YA books, but even readers of YA spy books expect their heroes to be wrecked with confusion—not generic derivatives of Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne. In the best YA spy/mystery book series, writers usually devote book one to how a teenager becomes a spy. I open in medias res, and, even worse, I do it in third person omni.
Smarter readers know to forge ahead. First appearances are incomplete pictures. Competence in one theater of operations does not assure competence in others—especially if you’re a teen male action hero and you fall ass-over-teakettle for another boy.
Do I lose some readers by opening with emotionally detached action? Probably. They’re usually the ones who prefer quieter LGBT fare, like early Adam Silvera books. I don’t care. The vulnerability comes later. People can read the back cover if they want to know where it’s all headed up front.
In the course of writing your book, how many times would you say
that first page changed and for what reasons?
The story opens with Ian cutting through an olive grove outside Algiers to reach a highway on the other side. I told early versions of the story from the point of view of the olive grower, a punctilious man with sciatica named Adenan Benboulaid who knows every olive on every tree. An American driving an SUV, and a carful of gunmen in pursuit, then wreck his ancient family grove.
In how many action movies that take place overseas does the American hero cause massive property destruction and leave the locals to pay for the mess? I thought it was a great concept to explore, and I wrote it well, but it confused a minor character with the protagonist. My editor redlined it, and that was that.
Was there ever a time after the book was published that you wished
you had changed something on the first page?
If I look at any page for any length of time, I convince myself it’s garbage. I have to outline, keep writing, power through, do some edits, and pass it on to my editor to make sure it makes sense. My two front-burner questions are always “is this comprehensible?” and “is it entertaining?”
What advice can you give to aspiring authors to stress how
important the first page is?
Read the first pages of books most like the ones you want to write. If you’re writing LGBTQ YA fiction or spy novels for teens to be praised by PW and endorsed by librarians, read from Elizabeth Wein or Mackenzi Lee. Listen to me if you want to write gimcrack pulps you can read while you’re waiting for the dentist to finish drilling the guy ahead of you.
Think past the opening line. The first page is a billboard. It’s the biggest advertisement you’ll produce for your story. It conveys a tremendous amount of information: writing style, point-of-view, cadence, pace, and tone. After the first page, people will ask “am I in the mood to read something like this right now?” It’s how your audience will find you.
CT Liotta was born and raised in West Virginia before moving to Ohio for college, where he majored in Biology. He now uses Philadelphia as his base of operations. You can find him backpacking all over the world.
Liotta takes interest in writing, travel, personal finance, and sociology. He likes vintage airlines and aircraft, politics, news, foreign affairs, ’40s pulp and film noir. He doesn’t fear math or science, and is always up for Indian food. His favorite candy bar used to be Snickers, but lately it’s been 3 Musketeers. He isn’t sure why.
He is author of Relic of the Damned!, Death in the City of Dreams and Treason on the Barbary Coast!
No Good About Goodbye is his latest book.
Visit him on the web at https://www.ctliotta.com.
Sign up for Liotta’s newsletter at https://ctliotta.substack.com.
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