I’ve been a bit busy lately – Life tends to get in the way of earning a living

 

I’m sure you’ve encountered the same problems as I have. Well, most of them, anyway. Or at least some of the same problems; they’re pretty universal, unless you’re a chicken farmer in China, maybe. But even then you probably share a few of my problems.

So there’s really no benefit to any of us in my listing the number of reasons why I haven’t posted recently. It would just bore you to tears, and there’s enough of that going ‘round as it is.

My current project, “A Silent Star”, is back on track after having been derailed for a few months while I settled into life in dynamic (it’s really not) Deland, Florida. Deland is one of the more somnolent locals in a state filled with glitz, bling and glitter. But some of the locals are very fed up with the laid back, easy-going life here and are trying very, very hard to change the character of the place. I am not one of them, I am happy to say.

That said, I am looking around for a new place. Part of the problem is my budget (oh, how I wish I could afford a budget), but the major issue keeping me where I am is that I can’t find a place I’d rather be. I do know, however, that I would much prefer to be some place else. I’m sure there is a psychological name for this condition, but I neither care what it might be nor am I at all curious to find out.

So if you know of someone with a vacant apartment in or near Daytona (in a very quiet area) who would like to rent a one bedroom apartment to a published author for a few years (very poor but published author), have them contact me, will you?

But “A Silent Star” is back on track for all that. The big delay (aside from niggling little issues like paying bills, finding money for food, getting real high-speed internet access and looking for another place to live near Daytona) was in figuring out the POV (Point Of View) from which to write the tale. We (my co-author and I – not all of the other voices in my head) have some pretty solid information on what actually happened to the covert team both during and after their incursion into Yemen, but most of that information cannot be allowed to see the light of day for various and sundry valid reasons.

Which means that I have to tell a true tale, but I have to lie like a rug to do it. Well, I am a novelist, so what’s the big deal? And what’s that got to do with the POV, anyway?

I’m so glad you asked.

I didn’t want to lie. I wanted to write a true history of those events. But I was not going to be allowed to do that. I had to write a historical fiction piece, which meant that the tale had to be solidly based in reality using characters created out of whole cloth. It took me some time to wrap my pointy little head around that. Then I had to sort out the point of view.

I could have written the tale as a history, with a bit of made-up dialogue extracted from made-up reports and debriefings; but that would have been a very boring read, so that idea went out the window in a hurry. Then I thought of writing from the point of view of a fly on the wall or a ghost in the room, but I am very uncomfortable with that style; it’s hard for me to suspend my disbelief and get stuck in to the story. So then I had to settle on which character I would become and write from his (or her) point of view.

Now, I have written female characters before, with some success, but I’m pretty sure I could never pull off writing an entire novel from a woman’s POV (there are many reasons for this, but mostly it’s because I am a guy). In the end, I settled on one of the two male character in the four-person team and chose to write the novel as if he were telling the tale after the fact.

And so far it is working out very well, indeed.

If there is a point to all of this (or at least a valid rationalization for it), here it is. Settle first on the format for your tale – the style, if you will, in which you will frame your story. Then decide on the POV. After that, build your characters in your mind and write out bios for each and ever one. Keep the number of your main characters as small as possible. You are going to have to become intimately familiar with each of them, and you will have to keep them in your mind the entire time you write that tale. You have to, or your novel will suffer from “cardboardiness” (yes, I just made that one up. I can do that. I’m a novelist).

Your characters have to become real people, with real feelings and real motivations, fears, hopes and dreams. And yes, it will get really crowded in your head, too.

I will be posting a few excerpts from “A Silent Star” both here and on the “A Silent Star” Facebook page over the next several months. Your comments will always be very welcome.

On Writing

 

Writing is just about the most fun a boy can have by himself and still be able to talk about it in mixed company.

It’s also a lot of work and takes a lot out of a fellow (I’m being generic here – I mean both boys and girls, men and women).

It can drain you, right down to your toes. Writing isn’t a compulsion for me the way it is for some folks – or at least they claim it is. Some sort of poetic/prose muse drives them, they say, and it just might be so. For me, it’s more of a money thing, since I can’t seem to make a living doing any of the other stuff I know how to do.

And I’ve done a lot of stuff in my life. I’ve been a lot of places, met a lot of interesting people, and made some of them really mad at me.

Bu that’s life, I guess. You just have to take the bad right along with the good. You’re not given a choice, you see.

And Life has worn me down, some, I’ll admit it. I’m not as young as I used to be (my ex-wife will tell you that I never was as young as I used to be, and she’ll say that with a straight face, too).

I’m so worn out I expect to see bits dropping off any day now.

So I write. About what I know, where I’ve been, some of the stuff I’ve been involved in and what I think about it all. But for safety’s sake, and to make it all a bit entertaining, I turn it into stories. I take all of those characters – men and women, good and bad, mix them all up a bit and drop them into interesting plots for readers to enjoy.

And yes, some of those plots – or parts of them, at least, really did happen; in different countries, perhaps, with different people, certainly (my characters are just that – characters), but they did happen. Some of them, anyway.

But sitting at my writing desk (one leg of the chair is propped up on some old, dusty tomes because the mice nibbled it down), and looking out of the cracked and dusty window pane (the part that isn’t covered by a bit of cardboard to keep with bitter winter winds out) in my fourth-floor walk-up garret while I sit huddled in my winter coat and the quilt off my bed sharpening a dull goose quill, I half-way envy my readers – their obvious wealth (because they can afford to buy my novels) and the leisure time to enjoy them, and their normal (okay – somewhat more normal than mine) everyday lives.

Occasionally they write and tell me just how much they enjoyed what they read. And that makes it all worthwhile; it really does. And the icing on the cake is, of course, seeing a new – and positive – review posted somewhere.

Unsolicited praise is praise indeed, and all writers love that sort of thing. If it was strictly about the money there would be a glut – a glut, I say – of former writers lining up at McDonald’s and Burger King begging for a decent paying job (okay, so they’d be standing in line behind everyone else applying for jobs at those places). But it isn’t just about the money. It never way, it never will be. Writers write because they love writing.

I received such an email today, and I’d like to share it with you:

“I must tell you how much I enjoyed The Big Bend. I must admit my husband put me onto you. He said you definitely need to read this author! Which means, read everything that he has written. He reads twice as fast as I do, and always says, hurry, hurry, you won't believe what happens next! Just purchased Hog Valley and Twisted Key and can hardly wait to dig in. Please, keep writing and we'll keep reading. Thanks for making our reading time so enjoyable.”

Needless to say I have removed the sender’s name for privacy’s sake, but that is the letter in toto.

I wrote them back right away, as I do with all such emails, and thanked them profusely.

Yes, I write to make a living, but that does not mean I don’t enjoy receiving emails like that one. I live for them (just to clarify - I live by my royalty checks, but I live for those emails).

So does every other writer.

Well, that and good reviews, of course. I’m pretty sure the readers of this blog are about an even mix of readers and writers, so you understand that I’m playing straight with you (at least, I hope you understand that). Reviews sell books, but word of mouth is just as good. If you enjoy what a writer produces, let your friends know about it. Do the guy (or gal) a favor and post something on FaceBook or MySpace about what you just read and let your readers know where to find it.

Yes, I write to produce an income. I live off my royalty checks (which are not all that great, by the way). And since it takes about two years to produce one of my novels, I invest a great deal of time and money in getting them into the market.

That’s by choice,  because writing is exactly what I want to do to earn my living.

But it does get lonely here in my cold-water, fourth-floor, walk-up garret. Mice make for poor company, and lately even the pigeons on the window sill have been eyeing me hungrily. I do so enjoy company, especially when they bring food. Especially when they bring enough for the mice, and the pigeons, with maybe a bit left over for me.

Morgen Bailey

 

Morgen Bailey, located in Northampton, England,  has recently set up a new ‘Author’s Interview’s’ blog and reposted (and updated) an interview I did with her a few month’s back. Don’t let her address on the other side of the pond put you off. Her work and her blog posts are read all over the world:

http://morgensauthorinterviews.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/author-interview-no11-gary-showalter.html

But this post (this one, right here) is not so much about about that interview with me (though it does have a lot of new info in it) as it is about Morgen and what she’s up to.

If you are a writer, or you love writers and what they do, or don’t give a fig about writers just so long as you have something interesting to read (or if you’re so desperate for something to read you’re back to reading the labels on soup cans), Morgen has something to offer you.

In her own words:

“Also I’ve since had a story published in a new charity anthology and four of my free (debut) eBook short stories, a writer’s block workbook and an anthology of short stories went live on Smashwords and Amazon and I’d be ever so grateful if you know of anyone who might be interested… more (novels) to follow shortly.”

Here are a few links to get you started:

Morgen with an ‘e’

http://www.morgenbailey.com/
http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com and http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/morgenbailey

Now a new forum at http://morgenbailey.freeforums.org

And please, for my sake do repost my previous blog about the giveaway of the Kindle version of “The Big Bend”. It runs from 2 May through 4 May, and I would love to give away several thousand copies of that novel. It’s not only the first in the Terry Rankin series, it’s also the best selling of the lot ( it is a well-written tale and my personal favorite).

Here’s the link to the book page on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Bend-ebook/dp/B0035G0722/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1335612333&sr=8-3

On the Pursuit of Filthy Lucre, and other Worthwhile Endeavors

 

Let’s face it; unless you are independently wealthy, or at least supported in the style to which you have become accustomed by someone else, you need to earn enough money to keep body and soul together. And maybe pay the rent, utilities and insurance, buy a bit of food every now and then and maybe even put a bit of gas in your car/truck/van/Bugatti or at least fill your bicycle tires with air.

But you’re a writer; by trade, avocation, inclination or even out of sheer desperation (just like yours, truly) because your last your last job went away and nobody wants to or can afford to hire you.

If you write for pleasure, lucky you; you can ignore the rest of what I have to say and just toddle off down the garden path and sniff a few roses, chase a butterfly and pet your cat. But if you hope to or simply have to earn your living through writing, here’s the nitty-gritty, down-to-earth rude and crude truth about what’s involved.

Most folks who produce material on earning a living as a writer will write an entire book on the subject, and give you lots of information on a particular segment of the writing industry, even giving you a list of contacts for submitting to agents/publishers. Check your local bookstore.

But you didn’t need me to tell you that; you probably have one or two such books on your shelf now. I’m not going to waste your time - and mine - doing your research for you. That’s your job and you will learn a great deal if you invest some time and effort in it.

I’m much more interested in discussing how you turn a talent into a skill, and how you convert that into a product you can sell into your chosen market. So let’s assume for the moment that you do have a fluency with words; you know how to organize your thinking and how to put words on paper so they will mean something to a reader.

That’s a great starting point. I really don’t care if you’re a poet at heart, or a short-story writer, a novelist or you derive great pleasure from writing travel articles or fly-fishing stories. You have a talent for expressing yourself and a marketable skill.

Or at least you think you do. Join a writer’s group. There are scads of writer’s groups, both on-line and in your area. Look into Yahoo Groups, join LinkedIn, join your local library and inquire about writer’s groups. Nobody cares what you write, only that you do.

And then submit your stuff for some constructive (if occasionally harsh) criticism. You and your writing both need and deserve criticism. Tough it out. It’s good for you and for your writing. That sort of criticism will help you to grow as a writer; until you do this, you really are working in a vacuum.

You need a plan. A marketing plan. You need to treat your manuscript as a ‘Product’, because it is. In the same way a furniture maker builds cabinets or chairs or rocking horses to sell, you write stuff. In the same way he or she has a feel for what will sell in his chosen market, so do you.

Or at least you should. There’s no sense investing time and effort in writing something that won’t sell; not if your goal is to make a living as a writer.

And you can’t convince the market to buy your stuff just because you like it. Oh, readers might invest in one of your stories/articles/novels/whatever, but if they feel disappointed in your work for whatever reason  they will never, ever buy another piece from you.

And there goes your market. You can wave bye-bye now. See you.

Get to know what’s selling in your genre today, and figure out how to forecast what will sell by the time your manuscript is ready for the printer. That may be six weeks or six months from now. Or a year or two years, depending on your productivity.

You write for a specific market, whether you know that or not.

So get to know your readers, and what they want to read. It really does not work the other way ‘round. Or at least it does not work very well. The first law of writing for a living is that you have to write something your customers want to read. If you want to sell lots and lots of books/articles/collected poems, you have to write what lots and lots of readers want to read.

It’s really rather simple, if somewhat harsh on the ego; nobody cares what you want to write. They only care that you write what they want to read.

You have to become accustomed to looking at your writing as a business. Marketing – orienting your sales toward a market, and Promoting yourself and your products – getting the right eyes on your products and convincing them to invest in your writing, is the most important part of writing for a living. If “Content is King”, as many people say, “Marketing is the Emperor”.

All the content in the world isn’t worth spit if nobody knows it’s there, and if nobody sees any value in that content for themselves, your sales will be, well, minimal.

And THAT is the key to selling your work.

You have to add value to your work. You – your name, your biography, your skill as a writer, has to become your major marketing tool. Everybody knows of John Grisham, John D. Macdonald, Carl Hiaasen, Agatha Christie, and so on. Most of those same people could not name more than one or two novels written by any of those authors, but they do know their names.

They know their names, and they trust those authors to write what they want to read. In other words, their very names add value to their work in the eyes of their readers.

You sell yourself to your market. Then your market buys your books. It’s that simple, and that important.

Write What you Know, Not what you Think

 

Just the facts, Ma’am.  Let’s preface a discussion of character description and development with a short digression on facts and the writer’s Life experience (or staggering lack thereof).

In fact (so to speak), this is one of my major gripes about some authors and what must be a pathological hatred for research (or  perhaps it’s due to a very sheltered life). I really enjoy ‘boaty’ stories; so much so that I will  do just about anything to include one or more ‘boaty’ scenes in everything I write. Admittedly, I have (so far) avoided small plastic boats floating in a bathtub, but I am tempted to slip that into my next novel. Somehow.

But some writers will go to amazing lengths to avoid researching terminology when writing about stuff they don’t know. In a rush to complete a scene they will throw terms around without any regard for proper usage, when all it would take is a brief phone call to  a friend in a relevant trade or industry to verify proper terms to describe what the author wants to include in a scene. It’s not difficult, folks. Don’t be lazy.

Readers will become so upset over improper usage of terms (nautical or otherwise) they will throw your “Great American Novel” directly into the garbage. Certainly, if they do not trash the author to their friends they will never, ever recommend him or her to anyone.

Research is King, boys and girls. Don’t assume you know what you’re writing about; KNOW it. Don’t assume that because you are you that you have all of the facts at your fingertips – you do not. If you don’t handle firearms every day or every week, don’t write about them without some serious research. If you don’t own a boat, or go boating with friends, or build boats, go speak with someone who does before you write a novel with a boatbuilder or boat owner or whatever. If you don’t know about aircraft or flying, don’t write about it.

Research is KING. Research – or the embarrassing lack thereof – will make you or break you as an author. Period.

So now we can deal with character description and character development. Believe it or not, this is very much related to my little diatribe above.

Some authors are plot-driven writers. They come up with these intricate, twisted plots and just have to put them down on paper. They become so wrapped up in their plots they have no time or interest – or space on the paper, for that matter – for their characters. As a result of this concentration on plotting, their characters appear as cardboard cutouts of human beings.

They wind up with totally one-dimensional, and intolerably uninteresting characters. Everything in the story is all about the ‘Plot’ and little or no attention is paid to the characters or their interaction with one another outside of the plot line. The reader gets the idea that the author is completely lacking in human understanding.

People are complex critters; they are driven by fear, desire, inadequacy, unthinking lust, addiction, loneliness, hopes and dreams, desperation, you name it. And all at the same time. Perhaps a little introspection is in order. Perhaps a bit of observation of the behaviour of others.

Again; write about what you know, not about what you think you know. If you don’t know about people and what drives them to make the decisions they do, or say the things they do, or the way they say those things, don’t write about people. Write tour guides, or advertising copy.

That may be a  bit harsh, but write about what you know. And if you don’t know how one of your characters should react in a scene, ask someone. Ask two or three people – of any sex – how they would react in that situation, and ask them to be honest when they tell you. I certainly am not suggesting you take any course in psychology or sociology; heaven forbid.

But don’t be afraid to reveal your characters as real human beings facing real situations. Even if your novel is set aboard a starship in the Crab Nebula (lovely place – lots to see and do there), they are still human beings (well, some of them are, anyway).

People want to read about people. You do yourself and your tale and your reader a disservice if you fail to provide enough information about your characters for the reader to see them as human beings.

I do not recommend that you describe each character in complete detail at the beginning of your tale – fifteen pages of character description is a bit much for any reader. But do provide a brief physical description, a brief revelation of what they do and where they come from (background). Just enough for the reader to build an image of that person, and that will convince them to become invested in your tale.

The reader comes to know your characters as people, and that helps him or her to ‘suspend his disbelief’. And through the course of the story, reveal – through the characters actions and dialogue – who he or she is and what drives them.

“Show, don’t tell,” is the key to interesting writing. Show, through action and dialogue what is going on, who is doing what to whom, and why. Write actively – not passively. Stay away from the ‘have had’s’  and ‘had done’s’ and ‘had been’s’. Forget passive anything in your writing.

And the same holds true with your characters. Reveal them through their actions and their speech patterns. You don’t need multiple paragraphs filled with a narrative about why someone is doing something or ‘had done’ something. Historical narrative is guaranteed to put your reader into a coma. Keep it active – keep your writing here and now. That will keep your reader involved in your characters and your tale.

A woman I have yet to meet is one of my best friends ever

 

But I am going to make a point of meeting her in the next short while.

Keep in mind that no writer works in a vacuum. You might sit in your garret room with the wallpaper peeling off, the plaster dropping from the ceiling in great sheets and the cold rain blowing in through the broken windows while you sharpen your goose quills and grind your powdered ink. You might do all you can to avoid walking down those three flights of rickety stairs to face the storm outside during the short walk to your corner bistro for a half-loaf of day old bread, but you still do not write in a vacuum.

People – real, living, breathing (we hope) human beings actually read your stuff (again, we hope). And they talk to each other, and send emails to one another about what you’ve put down on paper (or perhaps parchment or strips of birch bark).

Many years ago while I lived in Israel I published several articles and essays on Israeli politics and terror groups. That stuff is still floating out there on the web, and I still get emails from readers. No, I won’t go into details about what they say. That’s not the point here.  Good comments or bad, people read your stuff, and they occasionally (not nearly often enough) take the time to write and let you know what they think about your work.

It’s called criticism, and much more often than not it is constructive criticism. And that is a very good thing for you as a writer. Welcome it. Beg, if you have to, but make certain sure your readers understand that you really, honestly, truly want and need to hear from them.

Because you do. Unheated, damp garret rooms are very lonely places. And day old bread does not a healthy diet make.

Several weeks ago I received an email from an author I know and admire. His wife was reading one of my novels and wanted him to ask if I would mind a list of corrections, since, as she put it, ‘He writes a great story, but he really needs an editor’.

It took me less than thirty seconds to get a reply off to him. A few days later his wife sent me that list; about two pages, single-spaced, with the edits identified by page line in the novel.

Wowie-zowie! I went through her edits in about twenty minutes and republished the Kindle version within the hour. And then sent off a very impassioned thank you to the both of them.

The other day I got another email with a Word doc attached with edits for my second novel. Again, it took me about half an hour to make the corrections and  republish the Kindle version and again I sent a very warm thank you right back.

The three of us will be having dinner together in a few weeks.

Keep in mind that I use “Beta Readers” once a manuscript is complete. Several readers participate and send their corrections to me, and each keeps that copy of the MS and receives an acknowledgement in the preface to the published novel (along with a signed copy of the paperback version). What a wonderful group that is, too.

Yes, I am very much aware that no amount of beta readers can ever take the place of a professional editor, but when you’re living in that garret and looking forward to your next half-loaf of day old bread, a professional editor is the very last thing on your shopping list; way down there below paying rent, covering your utility bill and that short and very damp walk to the corner bistro for your half-loaf.

Been there, and done that. Still am, in fact. My fourth novel, “Lonesome Cove” will have the great good fortune to experience the contributions of a professional editor for the paperback version (right after the last of my beta readers’ comments are dealt with). But the Kindle version, since it costs nothing to publish, will have to make do with the tender ministrations of my beta readers and the very welcome comments from the folks who pay their hard-earned $3.00 + applicable state and federal taxes to read it.

And I will welcome comments and corrections from everybody, thank them from the very depths of my heart, swear life-long love and friendship (meaning every word of it) and make those corrections to the manuscript and republish it just as quick as a little bunny.

Because I know damn good and well that I do not write in a vacuum.

I will be the first to admit that my work is not perfect; but it is ‘good enough’ to sell, and follow-on comments from readers allows me to improve the editing and re-publish a matter of hours. As I mentioned earlier, a professional editor would catch much of what I and my beta readers miss and make a ‘good enough’ manuscript into a truly publishable work. And “Lonesome Cove” will be the first of my published novels to have the luxury of a professional editor’s attention.

Let’s be honest here. I know that I am not the only published writer facing an inadequacy of income when it comes to getting my work published. Editing costs just about as much as the actual publishing of a novel. In fact, prices for professional editors run around  $5.00 – $7.00 a page. If a Print-On-Demand publishing house charges $1300.00 to publish your novel and the editors want another $700.00 – $1000.00 to edit your manuscript and you have saved up most of that $1300.00 after months of scrimping on your half-loaf of day-old bread, what are you gonna do – not publish for manuscript for another year just to get it edited first? You’ve just spent the last two years of your life writing the damn thing and another six months rewriting after your beta readers have gone through it with a few fine-toothed combs and you surely have a use for the several dollars’ increase in your treasury selling the paperback copies will generate at your local community events and even on-line.

And you know, too, that you have a lifetime’s worth of promotion and marketing to do to sell yourself as an author, and you can’t even get started on that until you have at least one novel/biography/history/chemistry text book in the marketplace. So it’s perfect. It is damn near, and that is ‘good enough’ to get started with.

You bet it is.

Purists may disagree. Just so you know, those purists can afford to pay a professional editor. You probably can’t. So do the best you can with what you’ve got, and be damn sure that every work you publish is better than the last. Pretty soon, now - meaning in a few years – you’ll be one of those purists, too. But when that day comes, just keep in mind what it took you to get to that point. Encourage new writers; don’t put stumbling blocks in their paths. Better to light the way for them.

Another Excerpt from “Lonesome Cove”

 

Terry Rankin is in Miami, looking for information on Gianni Lupo’s grandaughter, Nikki. He finds a lot more than he bargained for. But not much solid information:

 

I paid the bill and left a nice tip, then headed for my hotel a few blocks away. There wasn’t anything left to do until Petty called with some answers. South Miami is a nice place; everything is close by, the weather is nice, the people are nice. The staff in the hotels are nice. It’s all so damn nice.

On the surface, anyway. Just like most parts of the civilized world, folks are polite. It helps to keep people from killing each other over the little things. Most times, anyway. There are exceptions.

Hal Petty called while I was in the shower. So did Cathy. I called Petty, first.

“Got some interesting stuff for you. Don’t like it a lot, and I’m sure you won’t, either. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, but then there’s a whole lot in life that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

I laughed. “You’re not making much sense either, right now.”

“Okay, this is what I got. Tammy O’Shea, aged eighteen. Died in a car accident on 23 December, 2000. Sound familiar?”

Oh, crap, yes, it did. “Who else was in the car, Hal?”

“Rosa and Angelo Gianuzzi.”

“Where was their daughter, Nicola?”

“No mention of her in the newspaper report. Got a call in to the police department in Trenton who responded to the accident. No call back from them, yet.”

“What else?”

“Tammy O’Shea, of Trenton, New Jersey, has a Florida driver’s license. No violations, no wants or warrants out on her, no ‘Also Known As’ listed. She’s had the license for nine years. Clean as a whistle. Registration and insurance on the Corvette is in her name, with the address I gave you earlier.”

“Hal, you have to get me some information on Nicola Gianuzzi.”

“I’m working on it,” he said with a bit of asperity in his tone. “I’ll get what I can from the Trenton PD and the local obituary columns and work from there. Your girl would have been way too young to strike out on her own. She had to live with someone until she was old enough to join the army. If she’s using the O’Shea ID to cover herself she had to have professional help setting it up. I’ll see what I can learn.”

Gianni Lupo didn’t know that a third person had died in the accident that took the lives of his daughter and her husband. I wondered how he learned of the accident. I wondered if it was an accident. I wondered where Nicola Gianuzzi was, and why she was masquerading as Tammy O’Shea.

Then I called Cathy. I did not tell her what Hal Petty had learned, or about my thoughts. I wasn’t about to drop that on her over the phone. That was going to be a face-to-face conversation. After we said our hellos, I asked, “Did your dad stop by today?”

“Yes, in fact he’s going to stay over tonight. We’ve been all over the boat, looking at what Rolf and his crew did. Dad loves the instrumentation in the wheelhouse. Now that he’s had a good look at Nina R, he’s thinking of getting some new gear for his Riviera.”

“He’s got a real pretty boat, Honey.” Calling a forty-five foot Riviera pretty is a major understatement. Try beautiful.

“What’s new on your end?”

I told her some of what I’d learned, but not all. “I’ll tell you the rest when I get back tomorrow evening. Everything I thought I knew has been changed in just a few hours today. No idea where this thing will go tomorrow.” Oh, boy, was I right about that.

“Well, you take good care of yourself. Spike’s trying to grab the phone to say hello,” she giggled.

“Hello, Spike,” I laughed. “Cathy, tell your dad I said hi, will you? I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

Ten minutes later, things changed again, when someone knocked on my door.

I cursed myself then, for flying to Miami. If I had driven as I first thought to do I would have a weapon with me. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and a knock on the door in the middle of the night is always cause for concern. I moved to stand with my back against the wall of the bathroom and faced the closet on the opposite wall. That placed the entry door on my right side.

“Who is it?”

“FBI, Mr. Rankin,” a familiar though not quite welcome feminine voice replied. I breathed a sigh of relief, flipped the deadbolt and opened the door for her.

“I never caught your name,” I said as she and her young male companion entered. I first met her in the parking lot of the apartment hotel late one night last month. She came with a message from my government asking for my cooperation in ending the life of a very unpleasant and dangerous man.

Then after it was all over she and her gofer came to bring me a gift from my government. A gift that I quickly dropped into the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, unopened, where I hoped no one would ever find it.

She was a pleasant woman, easy to look at and obviously a very capable agent, but not entirely welcome right then.

“And how can I help you and my government this evening?” I asked as the young man with her closed and locked the door.

She brushed her shoulder length blond hair off her face and said, “Did you wonder why Mr. Lupo settled on your company to provide his protection?”

“No, it never entered my mind,” I replied as I pulled a soda out of the mini bar. It should have, though. But I’ve never been one to check the dentition of gift horses.

“I visited him while he was still in prison and recommended you.”

That caught my attention. “Why?”

Another knock on the door interrupted us. As I began to move toward the door she put out a hand to stop me. “Paul, give me your backup piece,” she said as she pushed me into the room and around the corner, out of the line of sight from the entrance. She handed me Paul’s Springfield Arms .40 semi-auto. I slipped the safety off and racked the slide to load a round into the chamber as she said to me, “Stay there.”

She took up a position with her back to the wall, her weapon in a two handed grip, with the barrel toward the ceiling. She signaled to her companion, saying, “Get your weapon ready. Stand beside the door. Ask who it is.”

The young man held his pistol parallel to the floor and pointing at the entry as he called, “Who is it?”

The burst of rounds that answered his question blew right through him, pulling a red mist in its wake and catching the woman through the sheetrock wall she thought would shield her. It didn’t. It never does.

Time slowed to a crawl.

As she dropped to the floor, cursing the pain, I moved to stand against the opposite wall where the pistol in my right hand could point more naturally down the short hall. The door eased open on its hinges; the rounds from the automatic weapon had destroyed the locks holding it shut.

Two men entered. I took one step into the hall and pulled the trigger four times, dropping them both. The second man tried to stand and bring his pistol to bear, but a fifth round put him down for good.

I stood there, staring at the mess that was once Paul. I’d never learned his last name, but he’d died doing his job in my hotel room.

Screaming from the other patrons on the floor assured me that at least one person had already called the front desk and probably the cops, as well. I pulled the pillows off the bed, stripped the cases off and moved to kneel beside the woman, where I did what I could to stop the bleeding. Two rounds struck her in the back; one through her right shoulder blade and the second lower down, blowing out through her stomach.

She was alive, in extreme agony and cursing a blue streak. Anger, frustration, and sadness mixed in her words. “That kid wanted to be an agent his whole life. He’s been with me since he got out of the Academy. I was his field training officer. My bosses thought I’d keep him out of trouble. And I just used the poor bastard as a speed bump.” There was more like that. She never lost consciousness; the agony of a round in your gut is indescribably painful.

The paramedics had her on a gurney in a matter of a few minutes. I spent the rest of the night answering questions.

It would be another week before I learned her name, or why she’d come to visit. Once the cops had me at the station I called Cathy to let her know I was okay and then my attorney, Allison Saunders, just in case.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough answers for them, though I told the story as I knew it from beginning to end half a dozen times and answered all of their questions as thoroughly as I could. The officers who interviewed me asked questions and demanded answers, but they wouldn’t tell me a damn thing.

I was a witness, a victim if you prefer, but I was treated as I had treated perpetrators through all my years in law enforcement.

It is never pleasant to be on the receiving end of an interrogation.

They released me around mid-day on Sunday. I returned to the hotel to find they had moved me to another room. I showered and shaved, packed my bags, paid the bill and drove to the airport. After turning in my rental car I checked in at the airline desk. Then I found a restaurant, had a decent meal and drank coffee until my flight was called.

I didn’t read the newspaper. I didn’t even look at it.

I’d be back in Miami, right after Gianni Lupo and I had a long and probably very unpleasant conversation.

Cathy was waiting for me when I stepped aboard Nina R Sunday night. I wasn’t hungry, but my stomach was roiling from all the coffee I’d drunk, so we put a few potatoes in the oven to bake, assembled a garden salad and steamed a few salmon steaks. The night had turned chilly so we ate at the galley table. I told her the whole story about what I’d learned on Saturday. She took copious notes, and like the investigator she is, she asked lots of questions.

“Somebody is gaming you, Rankin.”

“That’s my take, too. I’m planning to have a long talk with Lupo tomorrow.”

“You think he’s behind this? That man spent the last twenty-five years in prison.”

“And he pointed me toward Miami, don’t forget.”

“What about the Corvette nobody can find? Who made it disappear? Gianni Lupo? Even if he was the Don of Dons he couldn’t pull that off.”

“Somebody set his granddaughter up with a cover identity, Cathy, and that same somebody is protecting her, or at least working hard to make sure nobody gets past the cover to see what’s behind it.”

Cathy grimaced. “You believe that kid behind the pharmacy about the drugs he claims he sold her?”

“Two questions about that; first, if he was on the level and things went as he says they did, maybe Nikki Gianuzzi was buying drugs from him as part of a sting operation. Second, if things went as he claims, maybe she was buying them to use herself. Some people do consume illegal drugs, though it’s unlikely any DEA agent would be that stupid. Third-”

“You said two things. I get to say something now.”

I shrugged and let her continue.

“Let’s say he was on the level and told you what he thought to be true. Never mind if what he said was a hundred percent valid; he thought it was. He sold her illicit drugs and assumed she was using them.”

“No law enforcement agency in the world would put a jerk like that on the street, and nobody is that good an actor. I’m taking him as real, right along with the hairdresser and the guy in the karate school.”

“So you believe what they had to say?”

“They all reported basically the same thing, with sufficient differences to allow me to build a fairly accurate appraisal of Tammy O’Shea/Nikki Gianuzzi.”

“But the hairdresser thinks she’s a high-priced call girl, the kid at the pharmacy thinks she’s a drug user, and the karate guy thinks she’s a nice rich lady with a healthy body,” Cathy retorted.

“They saw what Nikki wanted them to see. None of them saw her.”

Cathy shrugged. “So what’s third?”

I had to think about that for a second. “Ah, the third point I wanted to make. She bought the drugs as a part of her cover. The ‘flash’ car, the party girl and the drugs, and the proven martial arts expertise all paint a picture of a single woman with big bucks and a big lifestyle. That’s what she wants the world to see.”

“Why?”

“No idea. But it has to do with where she parked the car she didn’t drive on the Tamiami Trail the day she disappeared. The car she drove when she actually went into that apartment in that upscale complex. It has a lot to do with whoever she works for, or with, and what they’re doing.”

Cathy leaned back and stretched. “And what great insights do you have on who sent those two men to kill you last night?”

I shrugged again. “Great insights? I don’t have so much as an itty-bitty inkling.”

On ‘Color’ in Writing

 

My last little snippet on the elements in writing dealt with “Voice’. Today I want to spend a bit of time on ‘color’. Let’s give Voice a short review, first.

Voice can best be described as how you present your story – it includes your attitude about the tale you tell, the point of view from which you tell the tale and your approach to your writing. It’s more than just your style – it’s you, as the writer, telling the tale.

‘Color’ in music refers to  the variety of tones used in a piece of music – it refers to the complexity of tones the composer selects for a piece. What key (how many flat or sharp notes) he or she prefers to provide the overall tone of the piece, which cords (majors, dimunitives, minors etc) are used, and so on. In other words, is the piece going to be a simple folk tune, a 1950’s romantic such as “More” (from Fellini’s movie “Mondo Cane”) or a complex classic such as Pachelbel’s Cannon in D Major, or one of Beethoven's symphonies?

You’ve heard the term,  Noir (Black), used to describe a classic detective novel, I’m sure. You know right away it’s going to be a dark tale, morbid and slightly depressing. And you’ve certainly read enough blurbs on the back’s of novels where the tale within is described as a “warm and loving family story”. Warm in this sense gives you the tone of the story.

Well, that’s ‘Color’. You as the writer set the tone of each scene long before you begin to write it. You know well in advance if it has to portray a warm and intimate scene between two people, or a caring and loving scene between a mother and daughter or a dark and forbidding scene where the hero confronts the bad guy in an alley.

You need to keep that color, that tone, in mind throughout the scene or risk confusing your reader. Once the scene is over you can transition to another tone as the characters relax or reflect or shift into another activity, but to maintain the reader’s ‘suspension of disbelief’,  keep the color of the scene clear.

The overall color (or tone) of the tale you tell will go a long way toward selling it to your readers. Many readers will never purchase a noir story simply because they choose not to be depressed by what they read. For the same reason they will choose to only read ‘A warm and loving tale of a family struggling to survive in the face of adversity’ tale.

“Voice?” What’s in a voice, and how do you find it?

 

I was speaking with my second son, Yoni, yesterday. He, along with my other three children, live in Israel and I’m in Florida. He’s studying in the Wingate Institute in Netanya, with the intention of teaching physical Education. He’s also getting married in June and had a few questions for me.

Out of the blue, he began talking about my second novel, “Hog Valley”. “It’s as if you were sitting with me and telling me the story, Dad,” he said. “Like you were right there beside me. But not everyone who read’s your books will have that feeling. Maybe if they were with you they might feel that, but what about everyone else? What do they feel?”

Beats me. I really didn’t have an answer for him, but I think he gets ‘It’. And then so did I. My “Voice” in the Terry Rankin novels is me, in a very big way. I don’t pull any punches when I write those stories. I don’t pretend to be anyone else but me. Terry Rankin tells the story of his life through me (or perhaps it’s the other way ‘round). I will admit there is a lot of me and my attitudes in Terry. Me, and some other men I have known, anyway.

Your “Voice” is what sets you apart from other writers telling pretty much the same sorts of stories as you do. Your “Voice” is the reason readers will come back to buy YOUR stories time and time again over other authors. It’s HOW you tell your tale that counts, even over and above whatever plots you come up with or characters you create out of whole cloth.

So relax, and tell your tale, and put yourself into your work. Be a storyteller. Be you, and let the chips fall where they may.

On gerunds and other new writer’s gaffs–and an announcement

 

Louis L’Amour was a great natural storyteller, but he was not what you’d call a sophisticated or even a polished writer. But because he was such a marvelous storyteller, he was able to get away with his somewhat ‘untutored’ prose.

And I will be the very first to say that I enjoy reading his stories. But gerunds really tick me off. So do repeated phrases and throwaway phrases.

Starting with gerunds, let’s get right down to it. Thinking about how to start another sentence, let’s get focused on our subject. Strapping on my hog-leg, I’ll mosey over to the word barn and see if we can sort out a few ‘issues’ with composition.

Rising to the occasion, let’s get focused on what we’re talking about.

I really, really hate gerunds.

I downloaded a free book to my Kindle the other day – it’s a military thriller by a former Marine who must have a life-long love affair with Louis L’Amour westerns, because every paragraph and nearly every sentence in that novel of his starts with, of course, a damn gerund.

Don’t get me wrong; gerunds can be useful. But laziness does not equate to professionalism, and the use of a gerund at the beginning of every paragraph is nothing but downright laziness. It demonstrates to one and all that you cannot be bothered with thinking about your craft; you as a writer see no reason to waste any time thinking about what you need to put down on paper or how to keep the flow of the tale moving along nicely. You have no consideration for your reader.

Throwaway phrases and over-used words (such as “I”) and repetitive blocking-out also display a lazy approach to writing. Having your characters drink coffee in every scene because you cannot be bothered thinking of something else for them to do should embarrass you as a writer. Remember, while ‘Creative Writing’ is only about 5% of the effort involved in writing, you still have to be somewhat ‘Creative’.

Throwaway phrases such as, “Trust me on this”, and “Hey, Baby” and “You got it” or any other such that you find yourself using in dialogue or in narrative are sure signs of a lazy – and therefore uninteresting – writer. Vary your phrasing, for crying out loud. Do yourself a favor and actually be creative in how you write. That’s why G-d invented the thesaurus.

One of the hardest things to do when writing from the first-person perspective is avoiding the use of the word ‘I’:

I got up and opened the door. Sheryl was standing there, wrapped in a long coat. But I could tell there was nothing under that coat but woman, and I knew that woman well. I smiled and opened the door all the way. I stood aside and said, “I love you, Baby,” and then I turned and followed her into my living room. When she turned, smiling, she had a pistol in her hand, and slowly raised it until the barrel was pointed right between my eyes.

“Funny thing about that, Harry,” she said as I began to shake, “I hate your guts, you cheap weasel,”

Potentially an interesting scene, but everything seems to be I, I, I, I, I etc. Rephrase it. Rewrite, it for pity’s sake. Don’t be lazy. You’re a creative writer, so be creative. Get someone – not your wife, husband or mother – to read what you write and point out gerunds and repeated words and phrases. You can’t see them yourself, I promise you, but once someone does show you these things you will catch on, though the first few minutes might well see you blushing with embarrassment. But you’ll get over it and become a much better writer than you ever thought possible.

You have to stay flexible and you have to be able to identify repeated phrases and other such things in your own writing as you continue to write. Welcome such criticism and learn from it. That’s how you grow as a writer. Study the way other writer’s work in their novels – don’t just read them, but study them to learn how they phrase things, good and bad. You’ll begin to see the good and the bad very quickly.

 

On 14 April, I will be in Ocala, Florida, at the Marion County Public Library on Silver Springs Blvd for the Author Expo. Lots of local and out-of-town authors to meet and greet, and lots of lovely books to buy (and get signed0. The Expo runs between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m on that Saturday. Stop by and say hello!

Free Kindle download of “Twisted Key” and a new “Lonesome Cove” excerpt

 

Good morning, everyone! Please pass on to your friends and neighbors with Kindles that my third novel, "Twisted Key", will be available for Free download on 7 and 8 April. Here's the product page link on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Twisted-Key-The-Bend-ebook/dp/B004YDQ5VW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1333445907&sr=8-2

Be sure to check that the 'Kindle Purchase Price' states $0.00 before clicking the 'Buy' button!

And here’s another excerpt from “Lonesome Cove” for you. This, my fourth novel, should be available for the Kindle some time in April ( yes, I know this is April. It will be available some time soon).

This scene is again near the beginning of the novel. It features Mike Banks, Cathy’s boss at the Orlando Police Department and Spike, of course. I used this scene to wrap up “Twisted Key”:

I hadn’t stopped for breakfast on the way in to work and my stomach was growling. Cathy said she was wrapped up in an investigation, so I tried her boss, my old friend Mike Banks. He said yes, provided we met at the steak house on I-Drive in an hour.

I spent most of that hour in heavy cross-town traffic.

When we were finally seated, I asked, “You hear anything about Fatima al Natsche? The DA hasn’t contacted me about my testimony.” Fatima al Natsche and her daughter plotted her ex-husband’s murder, preferably at my hands. In the end his daughter convinced three of his bodyguards to kill him.

“Won’t be a trial, son,” Mike replied. “She pled guilty and accepted a life sentence. Since she was responsible for several murders and the sentences will run consecutively, she’ll never see the light of day.” Those murder convictions resulted from a conspiracy between her and her daughter. Under the law she is held to be guilty of each murder as if she committed them herself.

“Good riddance. I’m glad it’s over.” That woman cost me plenty, including the life of my business partner and operations manager, Charley Weeks, who died on the orders of Samir al Qadari, al Natsche’s ex-husband. Not to mention all of the man-hours I would probably have to cover out of my own pocket, unless my attorney could convince the Court to issue an order of payment out of al Natsche’s bank account.

Fat chance of that happening. Her lawyer would fight that tooth and nail. That money was his.

“Cathy says you might have stepped into it again, yesterday,” Mike said with a smile. “What is it this time?”

“She didn’t give you the juicy details?”

“Don’t think she had any.”

So I told him Gianni Lupo’s story about his granddaughter and what he wanted from me.

When I finished, Mike just shrugged and said, “I know you do all right as far as an income goes, but you’d be able to keep more of it in your pocket if you opened a pizza shop. I hope you realize that.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Not all my clients are blood-thirsty murderers.”

“No,” he laughed. “But some of them are.”

I thought of Gianni Lupo’s history. He’d been sentenced for two murders only because he was never found guilty of any of the other murders he was suspected of committing during his years as a mob enforcer. Mike’s humor hit all too close to home.

I got back to the marina around nine that night. Cathy was below decks on the couch in the salon, watching TV with Spike on her lap. His fur was suspiciously shiny, and he was sporting a brand new flea collar. As I leaned over to give Cathy a kiss, he glared at me.

“What’s his problem?” I asked.

Cathy’s hand was laid protectively over Spike’s back as she said, “The poor baby went to the vet this afternoon. He had a bath, a check up, got his ears cleaned and his claws trimmed and got his shots.” She lifted up his head to show Spike’s shiny new ID tag dangling from his collar. “He’s legal now. All shiny and clean and healthy and legal.”

“And humiliated,” I quipped.

Cathy giggled. “That, too, but he’ll get over it. I bought him some fresh calves’ liver on the way home and fried it up for him when we got back.” She stroked his fur as she said, “He got over his grumps in a hurry when he smelled it cooking. He put on quite a song and dance for me until I had it all cut up and in his bowl. Just like a guy; feed him well and he’ll do anything you want.”

I had no trouble imagining that particular scene. I didn’t tell her that Spike would do the same for a Vienna sausage right out of the can.

After a quick shower and shave I joined them and spent the evening spacing out in front of the idiot box.

On Editing and Rewriting

 

Editing is a job which is best done by somebody other than the writer. And that somebody should not be one of the writer’s best friends. Unless, of course, the writer finds an editor first and then, recognizing the value of a great editor, quickly becomes a best friend. Which is a very good plan, seeing that a great editor makes for a great writer.

But rewriting is a chromatically variant equine entirely. Rewriting is what a writer does to improve the flow of a tale. Rewriting is just about 90% of the work involved in turning a decent story into a damn fine novel/short story/whatever. The other 10% is made up of equal parts of creative writing and good editing.

Rewriting is essentially re-phrasing. In many cases, the first draught of a manuscript is loaded down with fumble-fingered attempts at getting the author’s thoughts onto paper at any cost. The result is probably quite far from being ready for prime time; the resulting manuscript might well be riddled with incoherent, rambling attempts at scene description and poor if not downright non-existent character development and way too much ‘tell’ and little or no ‘show’.

That is not something you want to submit to an editor. That is probably something you would not want your psychiatrist to see, either. Or even your mother.

I write in layers, and in most cases what I described above is exactly the way my manuscripts look when I first complete them. Well, at least that is the way each chapter or scene looks when I finish it. Ant that is perfectly okay – as long as you, the author, recognize that as the first stage in producing a workable manuscript. Workable, meaning a manuscript that will one day be plenty good enough to pass on to an editor for mark-up.

Good writing IS Rewriting

There is no other way to explain this. Creative writing is a myth. Creative writing is done in the mind. What goes down on paper, boys and girls, is just plain hard work (not as hard as digging ditches or picking cotton – I’ve done both). Rewriting is a process, and it really does make up the majority of the time any author will invest in a manuscript. It has to, or you will never have a marketable novel.

Much of the first layer I produce will be narrative, with little in the way of dialogue, scene description or character development. That first layer allows me to lay out each major scene I will need to slowly expose the plot and introduce major characters in the tale I want to tell.

I suppose that now would be a good time to explain that all of my novels stem from a photograph; a single photograph of an instant in time. As any viewer of a photo, I have no idea who the characters are (if anyone is even in the photo), where they came from, what occurred just before the photo was taken or what happened to those people (if any were in the photo) afterward.

It can be somewhat confusing to explain, but the essence is clear; what story surrounds that photo in time?

That’s enough of a digression. Let’s get back to the second layer I mentioned earlier. After rereading the first run-through of the MS, the author knows what has to be done in each scene to clarify his or her thoughts about the progress of the story. The goal in the second layer is to expand scene description, provide just enough scene and character description to allow the reader to build an image of place, time and weather and just enough description of the characters to place them  in the scene. Dialogue is added or trimmed to provide information to the reader both to move the plot along and describe the characters through their speech patterns.

Narrative is added where necessary, but narrative is always problematic; it slows the pace of the story. And sometimes that can be a very good thing. I know of one author who favors short choppy dialogue with little or no narrative to create a full-length, fast-paced novel. I quit reading his work a long time ago because I couldn’t stand that pace any more. It just got plain boring.

So break it up; give your readers time to relax every now and then. Life, as you may have noticed (if you pay attention to such things) does not always run at full speed ahead. There always seems to be a bit of time to relax and unwind. So give your characters time to relax, as well. Your readers will appreciate it.

“Show, don’t Tell”

If you haven't heard that little axiom before, you must be a very new writer. Use dialogue and narrative both to show your characters doing things. Don’t ‘tell’ a tale. That is boring beyond belief. Readers want to read about people, and they couldn’t care one way or the other about plots, or, for that matter, how clever the author is about plotting.

Don’t describe a character when you can introduce enough information about him or her through dialogue or action so the reader can build his or her own image of that character.

That and a lot more is applied in the second layer of a manuscript. That second layer is where I really begin to tell the story and set the pace of the novel. Most of the scenes should be in place and at least blocked-out 9by narrative, at least) at the end of the second run-through.

The third layer (or if you prefer the third time I work through a manuscript) is all about polishing and smoothing out the rough spots.

By the time I have worked through the third layer, I pretty much have a complete manuscript. All of the scenes, if they are not complete are at least present, all of the detail is laid out (if not clear to the reader) and the pace of the story is set in stone. All of the dates and times for the scenes are fixed, so I know when, where and pretty much why things have to occur.

As far as I am concerned, the story is done. Which is when I pick up the phone and call my  Beta readers and ask them – very nicely – what they’re doing for the net month or so of their lives.

By the time I get marked-up copies of the manuscript back from my beta readers and get their comments and edits into the manuscript it is ready for an editor to look at. Note I mentioned both comments and edits from the beta readers. Comments can range from “You had so-and-so start that trip in a tan Lexus, but when he got the hotel in Miami he was back in his tan Suburban.” Big oopsie there, good buddy, to “Sheila was first described as a blond but in this scene she’s a  brunette.”  That’s called continuity, or a lack thereof. Lacking continuity in a tale is the mark of a  busy writer. Allowing it to get into the finished/published novel is the mark of an idiot.

Not every literate person in the whole wide world is good at checking continuity. And since the author is the last person who is qualified to check his or her own work, finding someone who can do this consistently is critical. Especially important is to find someone you don’t have to pay $750.00 per run-through of your manuscript.

Beta readers are also very good at finding editing issues. But they will not find all of them, by any means. Only a professional editor can do that for you (well, pretty much, anyway). Good beta readers bring out the very best in a manuscript and make publishers and professional editors look upon you with a  warm glow in their hearts.

Why? Because they know that you are going to bring them a well-prepared manuscript and that you are a professional writer who values constructive criticism. They know that you bring them a well-prepared manuscript they can turn into a marketable product without having to put up with some damn incompetent prima-donna who thinks every word he or she ever wrote is absolutely perfect right where it is.

Another scene from “Lonesome Cove” for you

All of the scenes from “Lonesome Cove” I publish now are obviously meant to provoke a mad rush to purchase the novel when it comes out for the Kindle in April and later in the fall in paperback. But with that said, I also hope to gain some comments from my readers… so pretty please with sugar on, please do send me some comments, if only to encourage me to publish a few more scenes.

This is actually the second scene in LC, and sets up the scene I published in my previous post:

Cathy was off to work at six on Monday morning. Spike and I slept in; I was going to drive down to speak with Gianni Lupo at his home on Sanibel Island in the afternoon. Lupo owned a four bedroom, three-bath place right at the beach line, off Gulf Pines Lane.

The home was built in the 1950’s, and enclosed by a light green, six foot tall breezeblock wall, with a wrought iron electric gate. A smaller gate in the middle of the seaward wall gave access to the beach. The plot was a generous half-acre in size, with nice landscaping installed by the original owner who was somebody in the movies during the 1940’s.

Lupo had an elderly Austrian couple living on the grounds. The husband took care of the maintenance and grounds while the wife did the cooking and housekeeping. Things got done slowly but well, and that’s all that mattered to Gianni Lupo. Banana trees, Bird-of-Paradise, ferns, palms on an artificial mound in a sunny spot on the side of the house, and a few night blooming jasmine surrounded the home and dotted the grounds. The rear of the property held two large old spreading oaks to provide shade in the heat of the day.

Lupo purchased the property in the early 1980’s and hired the Austrians to take care of the place. Two years later he was arrested, tried and found guilty in a Miami court on two counts of murder for hire. Only a plea bargain and testimony against his bosses in the mob kept him off death row. The plea bargain also allowed him to keep his property and the money in his bank account, but this was never made public.

One o’clock in the afternoon saw me on the causeway to Sanibel, which meant that I should be just in time for lunch. The request for a meeting was not unusual with new clients, but I will admit that I was more than a little wary. I put those feelings down to my knowledge of the man’s background as a Mob enforcer.

My life in law enforcement carried with it a certain repugnance to take on the responsibility for protecting such a man, but it meant easy work for my teams, and the income wouldn’t hurt my bottom line. But recent experience with a few of my “High Visibility” clients put me on edge.

Sanibel Island is a great place to live and to visit, but it does have a few drawbacks for the residents. During the winter months the population of Sanibel jumps from six thousand to over twenty thousand. Getting around on the island can be trying when the tourists are in town. Public parking is expensive, but that only matters if you can find a place to park.

Once on the island I stayed on Periwinkle Way until it turned into the Sanibel-Captiva road. Another few minutes saw me turning left onto Gulf Pines drive and the short trip to Lupo’s front gate. A quick call to Steve Bennett, the site manager in the house, let him know I was approaching the gate.

One of the many benefits to living in a place like Sanibel Island is the weather. Even during the winter months the temperature during the day can climb into the high seventies, and it rarely drops below the fifties at night. Lupo chose to eat his mid-day meal on his rear patio, surrounded by greenery, with a pleasant sea breeze ruffling the palms.

He stood to greet me as I walked through the living room and stepped onto the patio. Lupo was a small man; not much over five feet, and thin, with gray hair cut short and a fringe of mustache on his lip. He was still pale from his many years behind bars. Despite the warm weather he was wearing socks with his sandals, khaki slacks, and a long sleeved white shirt under a light tan jacket.

Blackened grouper, Louisiana dirty rice, a garden salad sprinkled with Gorgonzola cheese and ice cold beer made for a pleasant lunch. We stayed away from any business and simply chatted, sharing pleasantries while we ate. Two of the three guards on duty patrolled the grounds while the third stayed on the patio behind the client.

“I was sorry to hear that your manager was murdered, Mr. Rankin,” Lupo said. “Mr. Weeks struck me as a very competent man.”

During my last lunch with Charley Weeks before his murder, we had discussed the contract proposal with Gianni Lupo. I told Charley go ahead with the deal, assuming the old mobster would want to live out the remainder of his life in peace and quiet. Charley was shot and killed later that day.

He must have read my mind, because he said, “I hope they go away for a very long time.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lupo. So what can I do for you?” The housekeeper came out with the coffee service, and both Lupo and I accepted cups.

“My granddaughter, Nicola Gianuzzi. I haven’t seen her since I was sent away. She was only twelve years old, then. I got letters from her while I was in prison. I still have them. Her mama, my daughter Rosa, kept me up to date on what Nikki was doing. When she reached eighteen, she joined the army.

“She had some skill they wanted, I don’t know what. Languages, maybe, or something to do with computers. They offered her a full scholarship, and she jumped at it. I told her mama I could pay Nikki’s college fees, but the girl refused to take it; I never learned why. Maybe she just wanted to do things her way. Young people are like that today.”

That was all very interesting, but it didn’t answer my question. So I repeated it. “So what do you need from me?”

“I got a call from Nikki on Thursday morning of the week I was released from prison. She was in Miami, and just called to say she was driving up to see me.” The bleak look on his face told me everything I needed to know. “She never got here, and I haven’t heard from her since that call. Find out what happened to my granddaughter, Mr. Rankin. My wife, Isabella, died of cancer three years after I was sent up. My daughter and her husband, Angelo, died in a car accident while I was behind bars. That girl is all the family I have left.”

Lupo’s words struck a chord in me, but I was hesitant to take on his request. Call me gun shy if you want; I am, and with good reason. “When and where did that accident happen, Mr. Lupo?

“December twenty-third, in 2000. Nikki was already in the army. Rosa and her husband were living in Trenton, and were driving to his family home in Queens for the holidays. They hit a patch of ice on the freeway.”

“Do you have an address for your granddaughter, Mr. Lupo, or a phone number?”

He dropped his head; his voice got small and quiet. He gave me the phone number, which went into the notes I was taking. He continued, “I tried calling her back later that night. I was worried she might have gotten lost, or maybe her car broke down somewhere. I’ve tried her number nearly every day since. For the first few days her phone went to voice mail and after that all I got was an out of service message. I never had an address for her.”

I wondered about that last. “When did you write her last? What address did you use?”

“She has a post office box in Miami. I never had an address for her,” he replied.

“Where was she working, then? You could call her employer, see what they know.”

“She’s still in the Army, but she never told me where she was stationed. I don’t know what she does, Mr. Rankin.”

“Have you tried the Armed Forces Locator? Maybe she was put on an emergency deployment and sent overseas?”

I was starting to wonder about this girl. Girl? His granddaughter was thirty-seven years old. She’d been in the Army for thirteen years now, doing something the old man knew nothing about. Hell, he didn’t even know where she lived. “Do you have a recent photograph of her?”

He shook his head. “No, just a few baby pictures her mama sent me.”

“Where was she born?”

“Trenton, New Jersey, or maybe in Queens, New York. I think Rosa and Angelo were living in Trenton then, but I can’t be sure.”

“Have you reported her missing? Did you call the cops in Miami?”

“The sergeant I spoke to in the Dade County police said she was a grown woman so I would have to wait forty-eight hours before I could report her as a missing person. If I haven’t heard from her in that time they’d send a patrol car around to her house or apartment.” He paused for a second and then added, “But I don’t got an address for her.”

Gianni Lupo wasn’t exactly a wellspring of information about his granddaughter. “I’ll look into this, but I have to bill you for the time and expenses. No promises, Mr. Lupo.”

“I understand,” he said. “Anything is better than not knowing.”

We stood and shook again. Then I left for the trip back to Clearwater. It was close to seven and growing dark before I got back to the marina. Normally, Sanibel is about a three and half hour drive from Clearwater, but I hit rush hour traffic when I got to the causeway to the mainland at the outskirts of Ft. Meyers, and in Tampa; the entire trip home was a nightmare.

It put me in a foul mood. Everything about the day put me in a foul mood. Right as I slipped the Suburban into my parking place near the marina office my cell phone rang.

“Yeah,” I said, none too happily. When my cell rings it can only mean more problems.

“What’s your problem, Rankin?” Cathy asked sharply.

“Sorry. Hope your day was better than mine. I should never have gone to Sanibel in the first place. Traffic was lousy the whole way back to the marina.”

“Poor baby,” she said as I got out and slammed the door to the Suburban. “What did Lupo want?”

“He wants me to find his granddaughter.” I was walking down to the dock, talking with Cathy and trying to slip my sunglasses into my jacket pocket at the same time. I managed it, somehow.

“Why does this sound so familiar?”

“Because it is. The story is much different, though. She’s in the Army; been in the army nearly twelve years. She called the day she planned to drive up to visit him the week he was released. Only she never got there.” Then I changed the subject. “Where are you?”

“At my dad’s. He’s got some old family friends over, and I’m cooking dinner. Want to come?”

Frankly, no, I don’t. “Sorry, I can’t. It’s the start of the week and I’ve still got to touch base with Cecelia and Tommy.” I had no intention of calling Cecelia or Tommy. I guess you’d call that a white lie.

She laughed. “And feed the cat and maybe trim your toenails, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t think you would. I’ll see you later tonight. Maybe you’ll work your way out of that lousy mood by then.”

Spike was waiting for me as I stepped aboard, wrapping himself around my ankles as I made my slow way to the accommodations hatch. I slipped the cell phone into my jacket pocket, got the hatch unlocked and damn near tripped over Spike as he slipped between my feet on his way into the galley.

I managed not to curse at him, barely.

Here’s a short scene from the soon-to-be-released novel, “Lonesome Cove”

 

This scene is from the first few chapters, where my intrepid if somewhat clueless main character, Terry Rankin, is just beginning his search for the granddaughter of a forcibly retired (meaning, he’s been in prison for the last twenty-five years) hit man for the Italian Mob in Miami. I hope to have it available for the Kindle some time in April. Right now the MS is in the hands of my publisher; I’m waiting for it, too…

 

A karate school, FedEx and UPS offices, hair cuttery, grocery store, several banks, a large gas station, a few boutiques, a dentist; a gold mine, in fact. Nikki’s car had been seen in the shopping center, which meant she either lived or worked in the area. Somebody knew something about her.

Roxie’s Hair Cuttery was on the left wing of the shopping center. They weren’t doing much business, and I needed a haircut. An older black woman escorted me to a chair and got right to work. “You got a fine head of hair,” she said. “I just love black curly hair.”

I laughed. “All I do is wash it.”

“Well, whatever you’re using on it is working. Nice and thick, too,” she said as she snipped and trimmed.

“Tell me, I’ve seen a real pretty bronze Corvette here a few times. I dinged the driver’s side rear panel a few weeks ago. I couldn’t find the owner, so I left a message on the windshield with my name and number. Those fiberglass bodies are a bear to fix, but the owner never called me about it. Have you ever seen him in here?”

She laughed a deep, rich laugh. “Her. And her name is Tammy O’Shea, or so she says. She claims to be Black Irish, but if she’s not Italian right down to her socks, then I’m a white girl. Got a beautiful head of black hair. She keeps it too short to my mind, but she likes it that way, I suppose. Easier to care for, anyway. I wouldn’t worry about that car was I you, Mister. That girl makes so much money she probably bought herself a new one the very next day.” She went right on clipping and trimming.

Black Irish, I thought. Black meaning the color of the hair inherited from Spanish soldiers washed ashore from ships wrecked in the storm that destroyed the Spanish Armada in 1588.

I chuckled, saying, “Nobody makes that much money. That’s an eighty-thousand dollar car.”

“Don’t matter none to folks like her. That one’s a party girl, if you know what I mean, and she wouldn’t bat an eye at replacing that pretty car of hers. I done her hair a dozen times over the last few years, and alls she talks about is this party or that john. Me, I ever had a car like that I’d be afraid to drive it.”

“Well, I’d like to talk to her about it, anyway. It’s been bothering me that she never called. Any idea where she lives, or how I can contact her?”

She turned the chair around and looked at me. “I haven’t seen her or that car in about a month, come to think of it. Mister, you seem like good people. You just stay away from women like that.” She started trimming my sideburns and forehead.

“I’m engaged to a very nice lady cop up in Orlando. We’re due to get married at the end of June. I just want to square things about the damage to her car, is all.”

“Orlando? So what you doing bumping into expensive cars way down here in south Miami?”

I laughed again. “Business. I run a protective service. We have jobs all over the State.”

“Protective? You mean you’re like a bodyguard or something?”

“Like that. I own the company, so I don’t have to stand posts or anything. You got any idea how I can contact that girl?”

“She’s no girl, I’m telling you. She’s a hard woman who’s been around the block a few times in her life, if you know what I mean. No, I got no idea ‘bout how to contact her.” She turned the chair around, cleaned up the back of my neck and removed the sheet. “That’ll be thirty dollars.”

I paid her and added another twenty for the aggravation I caused her.

She thanked me and said, “I know she lives close by. I see that car around here two or three times a week. But you mind me and stay away from her.” She took a brush and cleaned the loose hair off my shirt and neck. “You take good care of yourself, and you mind that girl you’re marrying, you hear me?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said.

The Difference between Literature and Life…

 

…is that literature has to make sense. We want endings to the tales we read that wrap up the story neatly. We want to understand how all of the details the author presented to us in the story conspired to bring about the ending.

We, as readers, have to come to expect literature to explain our lives to us. I find that rather humorous, since Life almost never makes sense, endings are rarely happy and the good guys almost never win (though we always seem to muddle through somehow).

But we expect the stories we read to make sense. Perhaps because that gives us some hope that we can organize our lives in the same way that authors lay out their novels. You know, create an outline for our lives and then just stick to it the way a really good author sticks to his (or her) outline.

And if we can do that, why, of course our lives will come out just the way we expect them to.

Yeah, right. Sure, it will.

Not bloody likely, Mate.

I stopped writing like that way back in the tenth grade. Right about the same time I realized my life was not what I wanted, at all. Right about the same time I began to read biographies and histories (and not the ones our teachers made us read for class, either).

Life, just in case you haven't looked out a window recently, is chaos. And here’s a real  shocker for you - it always has been. The old saw about how “The only constant in life is change” is all too true.

Write about Life, and about how your characters react to the changes in their lives. Good or bad, write about how the decisions they make affect their lives. Write about how decisions made a thousand miles away affect their lives. Write about how a hurricane in the Caribbean and a transportation strike in Cleveland, Ohio, affects the life of a Frenchman in Berlin. Life is chaos. Really.

Write about how your characters deal with harsh reality and still manage to find love, still manage to keep their friendships strong, still manage to smile at the birth of a grandchild, still manage to hope that tomorrow will be better for their children and grandchildren.

Even though they know their children and grandchildren will face the same pressures they do, will have to make the same decisions they did, and make the same mistakes they did, and smile the same smiles and hope for the same things for their children and grandchildren.

That’s jut the way things are.

There is a place for fantasy in our lives, and in the books we read (but do remember that Grimm’s Fairy Tales – in the original versions, anyway – were truly grim and very, very scary). That is ‘escapist literature’, and I really do enjoy it from time to time. And if you do write fantasy, keep it real. Fantasy? Reality? Keep it real? Who said that?

I did. Even in fantasy stories you are dealing with people and how they react to their environment. Keep it real.

Every action has a reaction. And every decision has its unintended consequences.

Pandora’s Box was opened a long time ago, boys and girls. But there’s till hope in this world.

Write about Life, as it is. And about people, and how they cope. Dashiell Hammett was right. People want to read about people.

I will, please God, be in Green Cove Springs, Florida, on Saturday, 3 March, for their “Railroad and History Festival”. It will be held at the Clay County Historical Triangle, 915 Walnut Street, at Hwy 16 (Ferris St) between 10 am to 4 pm.

I hope to see you there.

It’s Friday night, and I’m Beat

 

“lonesome Cove” has gone out the door – twice, in fact, because I had to add some stuff to the ending. Now I’m thinking of adding more, but I’m afraid my publisher will go into a hissy fit if I send her another version before the second is even edited. That’s a good reason to do absolutely nothing on LC until I hear back from the editor, I guess.

But the ending does bother me…

Yesterday I started on that novel I’ll be co-authoring with Tony Attanasio. Tony’s got quite a background – he served in the Marine Corps, worked as a detective sergeant with NYPD in their Organized Crime Unit, spent ten years with DEA where he worked in a lot of the trouble spots and acted as the DEA liaison with the CIA on some very interesting cases.

He’s been declared an expert in international drug trafficking by the New York State Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court in Miami and by the German Supreme Court in Bavaria.

He’s written several books and worked as the organized crime advisor ton Robert De Nero’s movie, “Ronin”. He’s received numerous awards in the field of law enforcement and government, including seventeen awards for valor from the NYPD and from several foreign governments as well. Tony is a certified Florida Department of Law Enforcement Criminal Justice Instructor. If you want to know more about this very interesting man, check out his web site at:

http://www.s2institute.com/content/_pages_about/_instructors/attanasio.php

I’ve spent the last two days going through the material he sent me on the novel we’ll be co-authoring. It’s titled, “A Silent Star”. I’m not going to divulge any of the details at this stage, but I will say it covers what happened after the attack on the U.S.S Cole (DDG-67), one of the Arleigh Burke class destroyers.

A 35-foot boat laden with the explosives RDX and TNT with two bombers on board rammed the USS Cole port amidships while it was refueling in Aden harbor, ripping a 32-foot by 36-foot hole in the hull and causing extensive internal damage. The ships crew lost seventeen dead and forty-seven injured.

The attack occurred in the harbor of Aden, Yemen, at eleven twenty-two on the morning of October 12, 2000.

Our story will be about the lives and actions of some of the people involved in the search for the perpetrators following that attack. From what I have read so far, it is going to be a very interesting story, indeed. It is a novelization, and names and circumstances will be changed to protect their identities without diluting the harsh realities of these valiant individuals.

With any luck at all, it will be released later this year for the Kindle. I have no idea of a publication date for a paperback version, but believe me when I say this one will be out in paper, as well.

“Lonesome Cove” is in my publisher’s tender care

 

And will soon be passed over to her editor, who’s hands are not so tender. But at least the manuscript is out of my hair. I spent most of the previous two days in a final round of editing and a bit of rewriting and expanding descriptions and dialogue to clear up a few issues in some parts.

Once again, I am exhausted and suffering from a male version of post-partum blues. Two years I carried that thing around with me. If I wasn’t actively writing in the MS I was sure as hell thinking about the next few scenes or researching or daydreaming (yes, damnit, daydreaming) about how the plot was coming along and where it had to go next.

Nine months? Give me a break. I wish my novels only took nine months to assemble. Of course, I don’t have pain in places where I don’t have places (being a guy and all), and I’m sure as hell not going to get up in the middle of the night and feed the manuscript or pat its little back until it burps or change its dirty book cover after it craps itself.

Have I mentioned to you that I am so very, very glad I am not a woman? I was present at the births of all four of my children and shared as equally as possible in their first ten years of so; I’ve changed any number of diapers and had my shoulders covered in baby puke (and other stuff). I’ve paid my guy dues a few times over.

But still, both the baby raising and the manuscript are over and done with. Until the kids come to visit and my publisher’s editor sends the MS back with her markups. Let’s hope they don’t get here on the same day.

In the meantime, I’ll be starting serious work on a new novel I am co-authoring with a gentleman who has very deep knowledge of organized crime, gangs and the DEA and CIA. It’s based on a true story  and should make a fast-paced and very interesting story. And it should be done and ready for the publisher in six months.

But I am becoming very aggravated with Microsoft over their new web site hosting service Office 365. It is a muddle, and none of the tech support guys have a clue about how to straighten things out for the thousands of small and middling businesses struggling to move their web sites over to the new platform. And little old me is right in there with them.

Poor, poor, pitiful me.

But I am a writer, and I’ve got a blog…

Yesterday was absolutely Wonderful, and Today is ramping up to be just as Nice

 

I got up at 3 AM yesterday and left the house for the drive to the Inverness Book Festival. I live in Deland, Fl, on the East coast just inland from Daytona. Inverness is on the West coast. You know how some people 'hunt & peck' on keyboards, right. Well, that's how I navigate Florida roads...

Inverness finally showed up in the windshield at 7:30. I checked in with one of the boss ladies, found my table and spent the next forty minutes getting all my little rubber duckies in a row. Between catching up with a few of the other authors I knew from previous events and meeting lots of new ones (and drinking another much needed cup of coffee), I was ready a few minutes before the hordes of readers started to trickle in. And we were all busy for the rest of the day.

Not only was the room packed with authors and readers, there were two rows of marquee tents set up outside. It was one of the very best-organized events I have been to in the last few years.

Inverness, in case you are not familiar with it, is a small town  just inland from the West coast of Florida, close to Homosassa Springs, It is also the center of several retirement communities in the area and folks over there just love to read (oh, goody!)

Kathleen Walls, my tent mate at several events last year, is not only an author, she is a publisher of other authors. I was able to get into the Inverness Book Festival through her connections with the festival. Thank you so very much, Kathleen!

Kathleen is also going to be my publisher for “Lonesome Cove”.

One of the first visitors to my table spoke with me for a few minutes and then wandered off to look around for a bit. I suppose there were thirty authors in the room with me; authors of books on  living a spiritual life, poetry, making a business out of your music, historical fiction, mysteries, how-to politics and so on. quite an eclectic groups, actually.

Well, that lady I mentioned above came back about half an hour later and bought all three of my novels. That one sale covered the cost of my trip across the State. Then all I had to do was sell one more book to cover the gas back to Deland and another to cover my lunch and I’d be all set.

By the time I left Inverness that afternoon I not only covered the cost of the day in Inverness; I came home with plenty of cash.

I stopped in Silver Springs on my way home, to see the cover art for “Lonesome Cove”.  Mickey Summers is an amazing fellow; former educator (art) in the Marion County school system (30 years), former Ranger with the Florida Park system, naturalist (he spends every minute he can outdoors, and in Florida that means walking in forests, swamps and bogs) and he knows the history, geology and ecology of Florida better than you know the back of your hand. And he paints, too. He is a naturalist painter who can tell a very long story ( a picture is worth a thousand words, you say? That’s nothing to Mickey’s paintings) with a single picture.

Well, I didn’t have my camera with me, so the cover art is now here in Deland, waiting for me to pull it out of wherever it got packed for the move down here. It’s here, somewhere. I know it is. And I also picked up the MS for “Lonesome Cove”, as well. Mickey not only does my cover art; he is my first line of defense against my own stupidity in things like ‘choose’ instead of ‘chose’ and ‘bored’ instead of ‘board’, and having a character driving a red Ford pickup in one para and then putting him into a gray Buick sedan in the next.

Mickey checks dates, places and timing with a calendar, map and stop watch. And then he’ll draw a sketch, if he needs to, just to figure out if my descriptions of the layouts of scenes, rooms and the movements of characters is a bit too confusing for him. No kidding. he has saved my butt this way too many times to count.

So I’ve got my work cut out for me for the rest of this week; review the editing and make corrections, and then get the cover art photographed (yes, I can do a pretty good job with a camera and some photo editing software).

Then I print out a hard copy of the MS and get it up to my good friend Lesley in Jacksonville for a second look-see before sending it off to the publisher, who will have her own editor go over the MS before they start pre-production work

Have a great week. Oh, yes. I forgot. For those of you who plan to watch the Super Bowl today, I do hope you enjoy the game and the commercials. I’ll be sitting on the couch, too. And my team is guaranteed to win, so there (and no, I’m not going to tell you who that is).

I’ve posted a few blogs about moving my web site over to Microsoft’s Office 365 servers, so here is the very last on this issue: my new web site is finally up (www.garyshowalter.com) and everything – including my business email, works just fine, thank you so very much. At least, I think it does, which leads me to a request I have for you.

If you’ve stuck with me so far, please do me a very big favour ; on my web site there is a “Contact the Author” button on the left side of the window. It opens a short contact form where you can enter your name, email addy and stuff like that, and add a little note. Please do that for me. I

f you would like to be kept abreast of the progress on “Lonesome Cove: and further writing ventures I have lined up via a Notification List of readers I maintain, please let me know that specifically in the text box provided on the form.

If you do not make that request, I promise I will never send you an email for any reason (not because I do not like you and appreciate you, because I do. But if you do not request to be added to that notification list, I will not harass you with unwonted emails).

On my part I promise to never, ever, buy, sell or trade your email address to any person or agency or otherworldly being for anything, including gold, silver or Cheetos. Ever, I promise.

“Lonesome Cove” is finished!!!

 

"Lonesome Cove" is finished, for the most part. I typed the last word not ten minutes ago. What a relief that is. I put in eleven hour days for the last five days and produced on average 4500 words a day just to get it done, damnit.

But they are GOOD words, and in the right order, and I promise you'll enjoy reading it as much (and hopefully more) than I enjoyed writing it. I've got another day or so of rereading and adding a few bits here and there before I send it off to the editors, but it is done!

And man, was that a tough gig. I am wiped out. My back hurts, I’ve had no exercise and it seems even my dreams conspired to keep me pumping out the words. I didn’t have to spend much time thinking about what I was writing; in fact, it was just the opposite. I had to slow my typing way down or waste a lot of time going back to correct typing errors.

The words were already written, somewhere way in the back of min lizard brain. I just had to let them out slowly so my fingers could keep up with the flow.

It’s a fine story indeed, and I am tickled pink to know that had a hand in writing it.

Two very long years of writing, and a long, hard slog at the end to get it all down on ‘paper’ (sic).

But it is done, now.

As I mentioned earlier, I still have to reread it, make a few corrections, fill out a few bits here and there and then write the Dedication, Acknowledgements and Author’s Note pages, but the story itself is done.

On Writing for a living (or not)

 

I write novels. I could as easily have chosen to write advertising copy,  greeting card jingles, movie scripts, plays, articles for travel magazines, column inches for a newspaper or any of a dozen other lines of work in the writing world. Heaven forefend, I might even have stooped to writing speeches for a politician (but I have a soul, thank you very much, and a conscience, and want to keep them both clean).

But I chose to write novels. Mostly because I enjoy reading novels, and the genre doesn’t matter as much to me as does the quality of the writing. But there was a short time several years ago when I despaired of finding something I wanted to read. Lo and behold, I decided that I would write the sort of novel I wanted to read.

Two years later (gasp), it was done, and edited (more or less), and after spending a year searching for an agent willing to take a chance on me, I decided to self-publish. And I am glad that I made that decision.

And before you ask, no, I am not one of the top ten writers in my genre, or even one of the top one-hundred. But my novels (three of them to date) do sell, and those folks who read them seem to enjoy the experience. So I’ll keep on writing. Rich? No. Well off? No. Satisfied with my lot in life? Not really, but I’m working on that.

And I’m working on my fourth novel.

Actually, I’m rather tied up at the moment (actively avoiding working on my fourth novel). Life has its ups and downs, and it seems to take great pleasure in coming up with perfectly acceptable reasons for me to do anything  but work on my fourth novel.

And that has to stop, now. I’ve got less than a week’s work left to get the MS on the way to the editor, and an even dozen things that have to be done before I can clear my head of all the odds and sods that clatter and clamor for my attention. I’ll try to do that tomorrow so I can wrap up the novel by the end of next week. I promise. You can believe me. I’m a writer. Would I lie to you?

I want to see it available for the Kindle by April, or May at the latest, depending on how long the editor takes with his end of things (Oh, how I love the sound of deadlines as they go whooshing by).

Truth to tell, anyone with half a brain should avoid writing for a living. You make more money cutting lawns, and folks don’t mind if you date their daughter.

Writing well takes enormous mental effort and self-discipline. Keeping all of the characters true to themselves and moving the plot along, providing a decent and interesting (but not too interesting) amount of background  information takes a determined effort on the part of the writer. Not allowing yourself to fall into the traps of the more common mistakes of writing like getting lazy and failing to provide sufficient information to carry the tale along, reusing phrases, starting a sentence with a gerund and such like, ending sentences with participles and so on seems like very basic stuff.  Until you reread what you wrote that morning and find that you have to throw half of it out because it’s such utter garbage that it would get you shot at your writers group.

There really is no such thing as “Creative Writing”. It sounds lovely, true, but the ‘creative’ aspect of writing fiction is only about ten percent of the job; the rest is rewriting, and rewriting and more rewriting. The occasional burst of pure genius aside, good writing is rewriting.

If you can’t do that, if you can’t bring yourself to act brutally against your own ‘creation’, you probably shouldn’t even think of writing fiction for a living. Or have a garden, or throw pots on a potters wheel (you will occasionally actually have to throw a pot or two into the garbage).

“Creative Writing” is not only a misnomer; it should be a misdemeanor under the law.

“Oh, I have a story in me, but I don’t have time to write it. Shall I send you my idea?” No thanks. I have plenty of ideas all my very own, thanks ever so much. Ideas are so cheap they’re free, folks. Writing is tough. Writing a novel is just about the toughest thing I’ve ever done for a living. Writing well is hard work. It is self-imposed drudgery; self-abuse of the very worst sort.

And for most writers, there is no profit in it.

That said, it’s just about the most fun a fella can have by himself and still talk about it in mixed company.

Because at the end of all of that drudgery, you have a well-written, readable and enjoyable novel. And not many people can say that.

Unfortunately, what you actually have in your sweaty little hands is a ‘Product’.

You have just invested two years of your life making that product. Now what?

I’ll give you the answer to that question next week.