Monthly Archives: June 2011

A Peek into The Teenage Mind (or How I Survived Exam Supervision)

Posted on by

by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

Last Thursday, for the first time in my life, I supervised a high school exam at my boys’ school. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I certainly wasn’t prepared for the bizarre teenage behaviour on display. My twin boys are only six, so I am used to Lego everywhere, Star Wars obsessions and the hilarity that seems to accompany any joke involving toilets. What I am not used to (and wasn’t quite ready to face) was the sixteen and seventeen year old inability to focus, concentrate, sit still or behave any better than…well…a six year old boy.

The exam in question was a standardized test set by the government so the rules were extremely strict – to the point that I had to read out instructions verbatim from a booklet (no paraphrasing or deviations allowed) and had to watch the clock and strike off 15 minute time increments on the whiteboard. I also had to pretend to be a really stern mother patrolling the aisles to ensure no one had unauthorized stationery…So what did I encounter (apart from all the unauthorized stationery)??
  • The boys who arrived and promptly fell asleep at his desk for 45 minutes. I had to wake him when he started snoring but I still don’t think he actually did anything on the exam. Instead he drew on his hand, drew on the desk, chewed gum, sighed, tried to sleep again, doodled all over the exam booklet and generally behaved like someone with a mental disorder of some kind.
  • Half the class who had come to an exam without pencils or eraser even though…yes, you guessed it that was all that was required.
  • The boy who constantly sniffed and made bizarre wheezy-nose noises but still refused to take the tissue I offered, despite grossing me out for most of the morning.
  • The boy at the back who decided that making dandruff pictures (a la the Breakfast Club) was the most inspired use of his time – oh, as well as cracking his knuckles. Delightful in a small confined space like a classroom…yes, truly delightful.
These were just a few of the behaviours I witnessed, and to be honest I shouldn’t have been at all surprised except that I seem to remember when I was doing exams I didn’t really have the urge to sleep but rather to panic. Perhaps what surprised me the most was that no one in the class seemed to give a toss.

So what insight has this experience given me?
  • Well, that it’s no surprise boys aren’t reading. From what I saw, it’s a miracle they can get out of bed in the morning and dress themselves.
  • That most sixteen and seventeen year olds are really young and immature (I was giving them far more credit before this experience).
  • For most boys a toilet level of humour still applies.
  • That I will never be able to describe the hairstyles that have been adopted without laughing.
  • That Twilight level romance is so far-fetched at this level it’s laughable.
  • That the gap between the maturity levels of girls and boys at this age is so vast, that I may as well forget boys as a target audience all together.
The experience was certainly ‘interesting’ and I rather liked playing the mean teacher role (hmm..what does that say about me) but it many ways this more of a reality-check for me as a potential YA author.

So…how many of you have ever had the delight of working closely with teenagers?
Any other insights you’d like to share on the shadowy depths of the teenage mind?


10 Commandments for Writers

Posted on by

James Scott Bell



Back when I started teaching writing to others, in a moment of what can only be described as great hubris, I jotted down 10 Commandments for Writers. Recently I dug up the document and took a fresh look. And you know what? I think they’re still pretty good. I’ve tweaked them a bit for updating purposes, but they remain essentially the same as when I first wrote them. And while I don’t have them engraved on stone tablets – yet – I offer them here for your perusal:
1. Thou Shalt write a certain number of words every week
           
This is the first, and greatest, commandment. If you write to a quota and  hold yourself to it, sooner than you think you’ll have a full length novel. 

(UPDATE: I used to advocate a daily quota, but I changed it to weekly because inevitably you miss days, or life intrudes, and you can run yourself down for “missing” your quota. So set up a weekly quota, divide it by days, and if you miss one day make it up on the others).
So important is this commandment that I posted a video on it.
2. Thou Shalt write passionate first drafts
           

Don’t edit yourself during your first drafts. The writing of it is partly an act of discovering your story, even if you outline. Write hot. Put your heart into it. Let your writer’s mind run free. I edit my previous day’s work and then move on. At 20k words I “step back” to see if I have a solid foundation, shore it up if I don’t, then move on to the end. There’s magic in momentum.


 

3. Thou Shalt make trouble for thy Lead
           
The engine of a good story is fueled by the threat to the Lead character. Keep turning up the heat. Make things harder. Simple three act structure: Get your Lead up a tree, throw things at him, get him down.
4. Thou Shalt put a stronger opposing force in the Lead’s way
           
The opposition character must be stronger than the Lead. More power, more experience, more resources. Otherwise the reader won’t worry. You want them to worry. Hitchcock always said the strength of his movies came from the strength and cunning of the villains. But note the opposition doesn’t have to be a “bad guy.” Think of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.
5. Thou Shalt get thy story running from the first paragraph
           
Start with a character, confronted with change or threat or challenge. This is the opening “disturbance” and that’s what will hook readers. It doesn’t have to be something “big.” Anything that sends a ripple through the “ordinary world” will do.
6. Thou Shalt create surprises
           
Avoid the predictable! Always make a list of several avenues your scenes and story might take, then choose something that makes sense but also surprises the reader.
7. Thou Shalt make everything contribute to the story
           
Don’t go off on tangents that don’t have anything to do with the characters and what they want in the story. Stay as direct as a laser beam.
(UPDATE: This one seems self-evident now, but at the time I was seeing manuscripts with scenes written for their style, not their substance. Another way to put this is the old advice to be ready to “kill your darlings.”)
8. Thou Shalt cut out all the dull parts
           
Be ruthless in revision. Cut out anything that slows the story down. No trouble, tension or conflict is dull. At the very least, something tense inside a character.
9. Thou Shalt develop Rhino skin
           
Don’t take rejection or criticism personally. Learn from criticism and move on. Perseverance is the golden key to a writing career.
10. Thou Shalt never stop learning, growing and writing for the rest of thy life
           
Writing is growth. We learn about ourselves, we discover more about life, we use our creativity, we gain insights. At the same time, we study. Brain surgeons keep up on the journals, why should writers think they don’t need to stay up on the craft? If I learn just one thing that helps me as a writer, it’s worth it.
So there’s my ten. Comments welcome. Or maybe you have an Eleventh Commandment you’d like to add?

Drinking with Authors and Other Scraps

Posted on by


NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – A New York children’s author who used a curse word in exasperation during a plane delay at a U.S. airport was ejected from the aircraft for disruptive behavior.
Robert Sayegh, 37, said Atlantic Southeast Airlines overreacted to his salty language when it summoned police aboard to escort him off the Sunday evening flight at Detroit Metro Airport.

I get it. Most of us get exasperated and drop the F bomb, but not on planes. Flying is hard enough without upsetting flight attendants. Times have changed. They don’t fly terrorists, obvious madmen, drunks, or dirty mouths. If old Bob there hadn’t been a kiddie-book author it would not have been news. Kids don’t read papers, so the publicity won’t help his sales. It got me thinking about the times my mouth has thrown me into a bear stew. Roald Dahl proved you don’t have to be an angel, or even a nice person, to write great and classic kids books. But I’m sure Robert is a great guy once you’ve had a drink with him. Maybe the author was late for a conference. I bet the bar at a kiddie authors conference is Lamp Shade City.

On occasion, my social filters fail. One example of hundreds: I was in a restaurant in New York a few years ago sitting with another author and our conversation rolled around to some example of violence and gore. Conversation was purely technical, as I recall––heads of shotgun suicides that looked like day lilies, or perhaps what high-velocity rounds do to a human body. I was blissfully unaware of my surroundings until a woman at an adjoining table interrupted us to say, “Could you please change your conversation, we’re trying to eat here.” I don’t get that. I’ve been at an autopsy where the ME and an assistant were talking about cooking various venison dishes while the ME was popping out a brain, and weighing it. You get inured to what exposure to such subjects do to other people when you are always thinking and writing about it.

Most authors are curious about a wide variety of things, and they will go to amazing lengths to learn something potentially useful. Instead of having knowledge in a concentrated area, their knowledge tends to be as wide-ranging as that of a Jeopardy Champion. I once sat through an hour-long story that had no punch line at all. It was riding in a ox-drawn cart five miles across a desert only to ride off a cliff. Conversations with most of the authors I’ve met (especially in a bar) are almost always interesting, entertaining, and enlightening. It’s no surprise that authors tend to find each other’s company pleasurable. You sit having drinks, listening to people who know how to tell a good story with maximum impact¬, and it is never boring.

I’ve never decided if conferences were profitable, but they are worth the investment simply for entertainment value and being in contact with peers. It can be expensive to attend Bouchercon, Thrillerfest, Magna Cum Murder, or any one of a hundred national, regional or local writers conferences. If you’ve never been or can’t afford $1500.00 on a weekend, what you should do, if you’ve never done one, is drive to the closest one and go to the closest bar to the conference rooms (Usually in the venue hotel), get a table, order a drink to nurse, and just sit there. When the authors start walking in and the place starts filling up, offer one a place at your table. Soon the table will be crowded with authors because they are social animals, especially after a drink or two. The later it gets the better the stories. Don’t be shy. Most authors are approachable. This will never fail, and you can decide if you want to sign up for the next one and spend the money. You don’t have to be a published author. You can be a fan of a conference’s genre, a librarian, or an accountant. It doesn’t matter at all. If you have questions, you’ll get real answers and unguarded ones at that. And you will laugh. That in itself is worth the effort and the expense.

I am a fan of interesting conversations over drinks in a quiet bar or on my deck. I am not very comfortable in crowds, but I’m okay in crowded bars filled with good people. You don’t have to be a drinker for this at a conference. A quarter of the authors in the room will be drinking soda with a bit of lime in the glass, which is, of course, a fictionalized drink.

John Ramsey Miller

Can A Bestseller Be Engineered?

Posted on by

By John Gilstrap

In 1997, a literary author named Bradford Morrow made big headlines in the book industry when he allegedly told a reporter from New York Magazine that his publisher, Viking, was trying to engineer a bestselling thriller out of his next novel Giovanni’s Gift. To support the book, and to give it a leg up on sales, the publisher spent a lot of dough promoting it. That’s a good thing, right?

Well, not necessarily. When the New York Magazine story was published, New York Times Book Review writer Walter Kirn tore apart not only the book, but also the author and publisher. Here’s a link to a piece that Salon did on the brouhaha: http://www.salon.com/march97/media/media970331.html.

While some reviews leave room for interpretation, I think intelligent minds can agree that this is gratuitously awful: “an unintentionally campy blend of artistic ambition and commercial cynicism … a case study in the novel as gilded kitsch — a book that proposes to elevate its readers even as it takes calculated aim at their presumed stupidity … a thin romantic melodrama insulated in operatic twaddle.”


Morrow’s offense, such as it was(n’t) was his decision to share with the world his desire for commercial success. (In future interviews, he maintained that he never writes for money.)


How the world has changed, huh? In a mere fourteen years, we have come to a place in history where it’s okay for an author to publicly state his desire for commercial success. (I’ve long believed that even literary writers secretly want to make money off what they write.)


Carrying on with this week’s theme of finding the right strings to pull to engineer a bestseller, I continue to question whether any individual writer can do anything to significantly influence sales. Sure, there are outliers and exceptions (paging Joe Konrath), but in Joe’s case you have to give credit to the power of being first.


Yesterday ended a 10-day run for my book At All Costs on the Kindle Top 100. (As I write this, it sits at #105, having gotten as low as the 20s.) This is great news for a book that was written in the same year when Giovanni’s Gift was released. Could it possibly be that my fan base has finally reached that self-sustaining critical mass?


Maybe. I hope so. But I have serious doubts about that. If that were the case, my Nook sales rank would be substantially lower than 10,223, which is where it sits as I write this. So, what’s going on?


The answer in two words: Paid Promotion.


My publisher is spending real coin at Amazon on my behalf for banner ads and email blasts that alert anyone who has ever bought my work or the work of anyone who writes similar thrillers that there’s a new Gilstrap eBook out there at the readily affordable price of $1.99 (down from the original $4.50-ish). I assure you that it’s no coincidence that everyone who buys the At All Costs eBook will get to read the first chapter of Threat Warning, the front list book coming out on June 28 as an eBook and July 1 as a pBook.


Words cannot express how grateful I am to Kensington for getting behind me and my work this way. It’s all part of a strategy that was engineered and is continually tweaked by several departments of professionals who promote books for a living. If they’re doing this for li’l ole me, can you imagine the horsepower that’s behind the likes of Baldacci, Coben and Deaver? Sure, at the end of the day, the quality of the work is paramount—an author has to entertain his audience—but a lot of the frenzy that surrounds the release of a book is bought and paid for, including much of the stuff that seems spontaneous.


I have no idea what the price tag of all of this is, but I’m going to guess that it’s significant enough to be out of range for most people I know. It’s not just the absolute value of the time and the cash that’s involved; it’s the risk factor, too. There’s no guarantee that they’ll ever see a return on their investment.


My writing career is eight books deep now—eight books published, anyway. I’ve hired two independent publicists in that time, I’ve arranged book tours, I’ve typed my fingers bloody on blog tours, yet I can tell you without hesitation that nothing I’ve done in self-promotion comes close to providing the results of what Kensington is doing for me. And it’s not just the money; it’s the know-how.


I’m the first to say that I’m perhaps overly blessed at the moment, but some really dark times preceded the last couple of years. This is a tough, tough, business, and with few exceptions the road to success—whatever that means to whoever it means it to—is paved with divots and bloodstains.


Jeffery Deaver and I used to meet for drinks and dinner every Thursday evening for five or six years, and during the darkest of the dark times he endured my pity party for a while. Then, when I asked him what he’s doing right that I’m doing wrong, he put it in perfect perspective for me: “I’m twenty books ahead of you,” he said.


And there it is: the secret to publishing success. And after the twentieth book comes the twenty-first. I’ve come a long way since that chat with Jeff, but I have a long way to go.


Finally, at long last, I’m part of a team that supports me; but part of the reason they support me is because they feel I’ve earned it, a book at a time and a fan at a time.


Can you engineer a bestseller? I believe it’s done all the time. But key elements of the blue print include an established, enthusiastic fan base, and a proven ability to turn out good work.


Can a first time author engineer a bestseller on his own? The occasional exception notwithstanding, I believe the answer is no.

The Reality of Book Promotion

Posted on by

Joe Moore’s post yesterday on the effectiveness of book signings made me think about what does and doesn’t work as far as book promotion goes. With each book release, I try new things, ditch what doesn’t work and constantly look for cost effective ways to reach the largest number of readers. For my debut young adult release, I had a marketing strategy to launch IN THE ARMS OF STONE ANGELS that encompassed four pages of a varied promo effort directed at indie stores, libraries, professional organizations, online social media, my mailing list, etc.

Book promotion has changed over the years and the developments are coming even faster as we trend up in the digital world. I have an e-reader now too, which has drastically changed how I buy books and how I hear about novels that interest me. So how does the average author today promote their own book in this evolving business?

This usually translates to online promotion since it’s free (except for the time you put into it). Focusing your marketing and branding efforts online can be an effective means to get the word out to the right people. On my recent summer read tour with fellow Texas YA authors, we had a tour blog set up a couple of months prior to our events that garnered thousands of hits and counting. Old school thinking on group signings is how many books did you sell. New school thinking is about exposure, perception, name recognition and the number of online hits you get before, during, and after the event if it’s promoted effectively online.

A book signing might have ad promo and get people to come see you, but the exposure is greater online where a website’s traffic can be hundreds or thousands of hits a day with the post continuing to get hits even after the book signing event is over. And with a reader already online, they can click on a link and buy your book, or download a sample on their e-reader that might entice them to buy the rest of your novel. This doesn’t mean the book signing is dead. It just means authors have choices on how they spend their time. And some ingenious folks have devised a way for authors to digitally sign a photo taken at the event or their actual e-book. (Here’s one LINK on that.)

Online Marketing I’ve Found Effective:

1.) A professional looking website or blog – Blogs are free if money is tight and you can share the work by putting together a group blog, like TKZ. My website designer – xuni.com – specializes in authors. For great examples of websites with cool navigation, check out her portfolio.

2.) Twitter – Get to know your regional review bloggers. They can be great support.

3.) Other Social Media – I hate Facebook for many reasons, but there are other sites that could be more effective. I’m trying Tumblr now.

4.) Goodreads – If you don’t have an author page here, why not? It’s free and you can link your blog to your Goodreads author page to keep material fresh without much effort. Any Goodreads member is a reader and your target audience.

5.) Amazon Author Central – Did you know that you can update your own author/book page for reviews, book endorsement blurbs, post book trailer videos, etc.? If your brand is important to you, you may want to take control of your author page.

The simple truth is that most authors won’t see a great deal of promotion dollars from their publishers. You’d think that if a house were taking on a new author and book that they would include a certain amount of money geared for promotion, but the reality is that the publisher spends generic dollars on promoting their line of books or other authors’ work and hope readers will notice your book in the process. They rely on the author doing their own promotion. It’s quite conceivable that the average author will spend more to promote their book than their publisher will, especially given that houses are tightening up on advances and other expenses.

So as authors look seriously at self-publishing and e-books, it’s real tempting to cut back on the time consuming and resource depleting efforts to promote that detracts from the time you have to write. Time literally is money in this empowering new future, but having online marketing supports your digital sales. Many might think that simply having your book available for purchase online is enough and that money will roll in. For the average author, this simply isn’t the case. You have to try things to see if they work for you. Traditional houses are watching the self-published authors with solid sales and offering them contracts because they have a readership and a marketing platform that will come along with them. When I first sold, I had no idea how important my own marketing would become. Self-published authors today will know more than I did when I sold, but they will also have to weigh how important it will be for them to sell traditionally if it means giving up control of their copy rights and business decisions.

In my opinion, the number one best thing you can do—whether you get published traditionally or go the self-published route—is to write a good book. And in either case, you’ll need to build a readership, people who like what you do and will come back for more. Online promotion on various fronts is a good way to get the word out in a cost effective manner to tap into a marketplace of the savvy readers we have today.

For discussion, I’d love to hear. How do you find out about books you want to buy these days? And how important is it for you, as a reader, to make a connection with the author either online or in person? What are your favorite ways to do this?

Specifically for authors—aspiring, self-published, or traditionally published—what methods of promotion have you found most helpful? (Yes, aspiring authors should weigh in. Having an online website/blog presence is important for you, too.)

Book tours and signings and such

Posted on by

By Joe Moore

A few weeks ago, my blogmate John Gilstrap, posted Best Advice Redux in which he said, “Standard book signings are to me a waste of time. Ditto book tours.” I left a comment that I agreed and could prove it was true, at least for me. So that’s the subject of today’s blog: are book signings and tours necessary? And in addition, are the marketing efforts of the publisher important if not critical?

First, let me start with a disclaimer. My comments here are my own opinion based on my personal experience. I fully expect that others will feel different, and have equally compelling reasons to believe that the opposite is true. That’s fine. But here’s what I believe:

You can have a bestselling novel and never conduct a book signing or book tour. I know because I’ve done it—more than once.

The first book I had published was THE GRAIL CONSPIRACY (2005), co-written with Lynn Sholes. It was released by Midnight Ink, a small Midwest imprint of a large and venerable house called Llewellyn Worldwide. We had modest domestic sales with TGC, earned back our advance and experienced an excellent sell-through percentage. Midnight Ink went on to publish our next 4 books including our newest, THE PHOENIX APOSTLES. I don’t know the numbers on TPA yet, but the others (THE LAST SECRET, THE HADES PROJECT, and THE 731 LEGACY) also had modest sales, earned out their advances, and had high sell-through.

Lynn and I did many book signings through the course of the first 4 novels (the Cotten Stone series). Some signings drew impressive crowds while others drew a handful of friends and family. Sometimes we would sell 60-70 copies while other times we would sell just a few. Our number of signings fell off over the years in part because we are located at different ends of the state with over 400 miles in between. We still do a few signings a year, mostly at conferences.

Now, let’s shift gears. THE GRAIL CONSPIRACY was bought by a publisher in the Netherlands (same company that publishes Dennis Lehane, Clive Cussler, John Grisham, Stephen King, and others), dutchtranslated into Dutch and released. They bought it solely because they liked the story, not because it was a bestseller with high numbers in the U.S. In fact, TGC had no significant domestic track record. The only factor that affected the sale of the Dutch version was the efforts of the publisher to market it. Lynn and I never held a book signing in the Netherlands. We never did a book tour. In fact, to this day we have never communicated with our Dutch publisher. THE GRAIL CONSPIRACY (Het Graal Complot) spent 9 weeks on their national bestseller list and earned us more money than our domestic sales for the same book. And all we did was write the book.

sholes_moore_kyotovirus_08Our Dutch publisher went on to buy our next 4 thrillers. Our 4th book in the Cotten Stone series, THE 731 LEGACY (Het Kyoto Virus), also hit the bestseller list in the Netherlands and brought in more earnings than the domestic version.

The same thing happened in Poland. With no track record, our Polish publisher (Grisham, Cussler, Cabot, Tolkien) promoted THE GRAIL CONSPIRACY (Spisek Graala) right onto the bestseller list where polishit sat for weeks. No signings or book tour or any communications from us. Nothing.

Over the years, our books have been translated into 24 languages including Chinese, Russian, Greek and Thai, even Serbian. The majority of the foreign publishers have bought all our books. Almost half were hardcover deals. Many were later republished in paperback. Our foreign royalties have far exceeded all our domestic sales many times over. All done with no book signings. No tours. No communications with these publishers. How can you have a bestselling novel with no personal author involvement? I believe it’s starting with a good book combined with aggressive, savvy publishers who know how to market to their audience.

So, are signings useful? Should writers conduct book tours? Are the publisher’s marketing efforts important? I can only speak for myself, but my answers are, probably not much, no, and definitely yes.

What do you guys think. Do you tour? Do book signings work for you? Does your publisher do a decent job of promoting your books?

———————-

THE PHOENIX APOSTLES is “awesome.” – Library Journal. Visit the Sholes & Moore Amazon Bookstore.

How the dog park rescued my writing

Posted on by

A while ago, I was struggling with my writing. It required a huge effort to come up with fresh plot twists and characters–everything I produced seemed oddly familiar, a rehash of something I’d written in the past. My “boys in the back room” kept betraying me, throwing up the same old-same old. No matter how hard I worked, the results sounded suspiciously close to something I’d already written. I briefly considered suing myself for plagiarism.

In desperation, I took a few weeks off from writing. During that respite I adopted a new puppy (a Lab/Shepherd mix named MacGregor, aka “Little Mac”). Little Mac is 50 pounds of energy with the attention span of a toddler (read: none). To save my sanity, he and I started spending lots of hours at our local dog park. There, Little Mac gets to run around with other dogs, and hopefully work off some of that insane puppy energy.

At the dog park, casual conversation flows easily between strangers. The most taciturn curmudgeon will usually melt into smiles when you compliment his canine buddy.

Stereotypes break down quickly as you watch people with their dogs. Young guys who are covered with tattoos and dressed like gang bangers often turn out to be the politest people at the park, with the best-behaved dogs.

I usually sit on a bench at the dog park, so my conversations are limited to the people who choose to sit beside me. I’ve met some incredible characters this way. Recently my bench partners included: a self-described ex-hippie jazz man who teaches music in the inner city; an Air Force officer who is between engagements in the Middle East; a woman who casually mentioned that she communicates with animals and (human) spirits.

Humans reveal a lot about themselves in the way they handle their dogs. Our park is divided into two areas, one for puppies and small dogs, the other for large dogs. Little Mac quickly outgrew the small-dog side of the fence, so we roll with the big hounds. Some humans seem fretful and anxious with their dogs, while others are completely oblivious to anything that’s going on. I get along best with the medium-energy humans–they tend to have the best-behaved dogs, perhaps not surprisingly.

After a few weeks of observing people and canines at the park, I came back to writing with a renewed energy. Maybe the outings didn’t have anything to do with it–maybe I just needed a break. But I find that my new routine is helping me recharge my imagination.

Have you ever needed to take a complete break from writing? Did you find anything that helped you revive  your muse?

When is it Time?

Posted on by

An author friend of mine came to me the other day and posed a sensitive writing question that her husband had raised with her the day before, namely: “How long are you going to keep trying to get published before you give up?”


Now before we all jump in and scream at the guy for being an unsupportive #$&@ to even ask such a thing, I guess on one level, he has a point. I mean, in his mind, he has been watching his wife put in hundreds of hours of effort and, thus far, to no avail (well, publishing wise, not writing wise, she has completed three manuscripts). She has had an agent for a couple of years now, but he hasn’t been able to place her work…so she has (with her friends’ support) continued to try and write full-time while juggling being a mum (and I know all about how hard that juggling process can be!)


At first her husband was really supportive, especially once she landed an agent, but, as the years passed and the rejections mounted up, I could tell he was starting to get antsy. I’m not sure whether he doesn’t want his wife to waste her time or whether he thinks she should use that time on a ‘real paying job’, but I do know that he finds all the angst that accompanies his wife’s ‘hobby’ (his words, not mine) unnerving. I think he worries that all his wife’s hard work, anxiety and pain will never pay off.

I’ve tried to tell my friend that there are countless examples of great writers who took years to get published and many who then went on to be very successful…but, she countered, exactly how long should I wait before I give up on the dream? 5 years? 10 years? 20? I couldn’t answer – except to point (rather lamely) that there are a multitude of ways writers can now get their work out into the public domain. My friend is, however, a traditionalist and is hanging out for a traditional publishing contract. I also suspect she feels that her husband won’t really accept anything else as ‘success’.

So how would you answer my friend? How long should she continue to dedicate the hours in pursuit of her publishing dream? Would your answer be any different if she had been published before (perhaps many years ago) and was still finding it hard to get the next contract? What advice would you give her (or her husband:)!)…

The Writing We Leave Behind

Posted on by

James Scott Bell

Something got me thinking about what I’m leaving behind as a writer. It was the death a few days ago of a dear friend, the novelist Stephen Bly.
Steve and his wife, Janet, were two stalwarts in a group of novelists I’m part of and a lovelier couple you will never meet. They had been together since high school in Visalia, California, where they sat next to each other in a first year English class.


Steve was a man’s man, John Wayne-size. He was a real westerner, and came by his cowboy hat honestly. He was born in 1944, grew up on a farm and ranched a good part of his life. But he also graduated summa cum laude in philosophy from Cal State University, Fresno, and went on to earn an M.Div. from one of the premier theological seminaries in the country, Fuller. He had a deep, resonant voice, the kind that made you sit up and listen.  He was an ordained minister and served as mayor of the small town in Idaho (pop. 303) where he and Janet lived.
I heard a story about him once that went something like this. A woman called his house late at night. She was distressed because her water had been shut off for lack of payment to the water company. Steve said there was nothing he could do and that the bill would have to be settled.
She huffed at him. “That’s not what I expected to hear from a minister.”
Steve said, “Oh, you’re calling the minister? I thought you were calling the mayor. I’ll take care of it for you.” And he did. That was Steve Bly.
He loved to write, especially about his beloved West. He was a stickler for authenticity. Once, when we were at lunch together at a writers conference, I mentioned one of my favorite films, Shane. Steve didn’t care for it (he thought, for example, that Jean Arthur shouldn’t have been wearing pants). “Them’s fightin’ words,” I said and stood up. Steve stood up across from me. We looked like we were going to draw on each other. Then we cracked up and so did everyone else.
Several years ago, at a writers retreat, Steve talked about why he wrote. First and foremost, he said, it was for “Jannie-Rae,” his wife and partner. Then, he said, it was for that single mom who has put in a hard day at work. She picks up the kids from day care, brings them home, feeds them, gets them washed and in bed. And now she has a few moments to herself before falling asleep, and picks up a book. If it was his book, he wanted it to be an uplifting story, fully captivating and life affirming. Reminded me of something Dean Koontz once said: “I write to entertain. In a world that encompasses so much pain and fear and cruelty, it is noble to provide a few hours of escape.”
That’s a great testimony for a body of work, I think. Our sojourn on this earth is brief. It’s good for a writer to stop every once in awhile and ask, What sort of writing do I want to leave behind?
Steve’s writing and life were noble in the truest sense. People who came into contact with him personally, and through his books, were the better for it.
I’ll remember Steve as a consummate professional, the kind of workman I admire and try to be myself. He’d been in a battle with cancer for several years, fought a good fight, then took a turn for the worse a few weeks ago.
Even so, Steve kept writing. Right up to the end. His last post on Facebook, a week before he died, was this: “Despite being poked, prodded, tossed and turned every hour by numerous nurses while I bide my time in a quarantined hospital bed, have managed to complete 5,700 words rough draft on Stuart Brannon’s Final Shot. Only 69,300 more words to go.”
Well done, good and faithful servant. 

Ghosts in the Machine

Posted on by

It has been a lousy two weeks, one that has challenged mightily my natural good cheer. I won’t even go into the worst of it, at least right now. Maybe next time. No, for now let’s just concentrate upon the merely irritating.

Technology — my friend, my lover, my goombah, my bro — turned around and snakebit me last week on two fronts. The first was my laptop. I was in the middle of a story, working toward a deadline, when things started to…freeze up. Everything. All of my efforts to correct were rewarded with an electronic megabit middle finger salute in the form of a series of pop-up boxes with cryptic error messages along the lines of “the application at 0xc000000005x4l would not register because you are an assh…” or words to that effect. I called a friend of mine, one of the most brilliant minds on the planet in terms of computers and writing code, and he patiently walked me through a test or two (“How comfortable are you with removing a memory chip from your computer? Hello? Hello?”) and determining what the trouble was (Computer Alzheimer’s = corrupted memory). I got over my aversion to unscrewing the back of my laptop (I use a screwdriver to retrieve paperclips from the keyboard, and pick my teeth with a safety pin, so hey, why not?) and found out that you can actually remove one (but not both) memory chip from your computer at a time. And, you can even write on an otherwise useless computer, utilizing safe mode. I’m doing it right now as I’m waiting for my laptop’s new memory chips to arrive.

The second was related to my home’s air conditioning system, which was newly installed three years ago. I turned it on this past week when the temperature hit ninety degrees, and it responded by serving up a big foaming mug of “F@#k y#$, Fatboy.” The repairman who installed it has been out four times since then and it still will not work properly. The outside compressor continues to run after the inside blower motor stops. This causes ice to form on the compressor wires, quite a sight when it’s 89 degrees in the shade. Sometimes the blower motor will start up for a few seconds, then shut down, even when the system has been turned off. Haunted. I got online (with my smart phone, since the computer is not working) and discovered that I have plenty of company, consisting of folks who bought the same unit I did from the same manufacturer, and who are having the same problem. I won’t say the manufacturer’s name, by the waym but if you were to guess that it is the antonym of “bad guy,” and is the same as the last name of a well-known actor, you wouldn‘t be wrong. When I purchased the system three years ago, seldom was heard a discouraging word. Now? There are a bunch of angry people out there, and that guy in the front of the pack, with the pitchfork and the torch, knocking on the castle door with the big ‘G‘ on it, would be me. If you need a new unit, and your repairman, when discussing a replacement, mentions an air conditioning/furnace unit manufactured by a company whose name is the generic term for a hero, run.

So what does any of this have to do with a blog titled The Kill Zone? Simple. It’s 90 degrees in the house, and I’m ready to commit murder. Actually, what this has to do with a writer’s blog is that you can’t rely on technology. Air conditioning aside, back up your work. If you are an aspiring author, back up every word you type to an external hard drive and do it weekly. A 1T external hard drive can be had for less than one hundred dollars. Better yet, back your work up on a thumb drive daily. Thumb drives can be had for the price of a paperback. It doesn’t take all that long to do either back up; take the time to do it and do it. I have manuscripts and documents and legal forms and almost 100g of music and another 50g of pictures and video, much of it nigh on replaceable, and I have everything backed up twice on two separate external hard drives. I was able to reboot a New Orleans musician’s career because I had all of his music — every one of his compositions — backed up. When he called me in tears after Hurricane Katrina flooded his home and ruined his computer, his CDs, and all of his cassette tapes,including dozens of compositions that we was working on for soundtracks and commercials, I was able to give him one bit of good news: his work of some fifteen odd years was preserved. Don’t lose yours. It could be the most important few minutes of your workday and workweek that you spend.