By John Gilstrap

As I read Reavis Wortham’s excellent post regarding titles and covers last Saturday, my first thought was, Hey, I’ve got a different squint on such matters. I think that’s what my post will be about on Wednesday!

My second thought was, Wait. I already wrote that post.

And, as luck would have it, on the day when I should be writing new material for this post, I’m swamped with Life Stuff and don’t have time to pen a whole new post. So, here we go with a post that first appeared on TKZ on November 4, 2020:

Whoever coined the trope that you can’t judge a book by its cover had to have been an academic. Certainly, the trope-coiner was not a reader of novels. Yes, it is true that some great novels come encased in ugly wrappers, but few of them find a broad readership.

What follows is based on zero research and even less science, but it reflects quite a few decades of personal observation.

People buy books in steps.

First, they have to know to look for it. This is the unicorn hair in the mix. I don’t know what drives me to look for a book. Certainly, there’s word of mouth, and I read a lot of books for blurbs, but I don’t remember the last time I went into a bookstore blind–without a target I was looking for–and scoured the shelves, hoping to be attracted to a cover. I don’t think I’ve ever done that in the virtual world, where online bookstores are not, in my opinion, very browsable.

Next, there has to be an instant attraction. Perhaps it’s the author’s name—which highlights the importance of “branding”. But that instant attraction is just that—instant. It’s fleeting. There and gone. This is where the cover comes in, highlighting the reason that genres exist in the first place. The title is important here, too. A thriller has to look and sound like a thriller. Ditto a romance or horror novel. In that brief second of instant attraction, the artwork makes a connection and causes the reader to move to the next step . . .

They read the plot description. In just a few words, the pressure is on to pull the reader into the story. To make them gamble their hard-earned money that the ride you’re going to provide is worth the money. How do they make their final decision?

They read the first pages. Yesterday, PJ Parrish posted a terrific primer on the elements of a good opening. Here’s where that pays off. Boom! Decision made, one way or the other. There’s neither the time nor the real estate to flub the opening and make it better later.

So, where is the cynicism?

Okay, here it is: The covers and titles needn’t have much to do with the actual plot of the book. They work together to accomplish their jobs in a glance, and then they are forgotten. They work in tandem to convince a potential reader to take a chance, and if you, as the writer, do your job to entertain, no one will notice. Some examples from my own work:

Hellfire is the Jonathan Grave book that hit the stands back in July. What does Hellfire even mean? The story is about two kids who are kidnapped to keep their mom from revealing a terrorist plot after she has been arrested. The word itself–Hellfire–is an oblique reference to an air-to-surface missile system. And it sounds cool. It positions the book properly in the minds of readers who generally enjoy the types of books I write.

The red cover makes it distinctive on the shelf–unless or until red becomes the cover du jour for the current crop of cover designers. It also lends itself well as a Facebook cover image. But if you really look at the image and its various elements, it could be for a reprint of All’s Quiet On The Western Front, or it could be a story about Satan.

Other examples from my oeuvre (today is Pretend-I-Know-French Day): The second book in my Jonathan Grave series is Hostage Zero. It’s the title that broke the series out, and the phrase means nothing. None of the hostages are numbered, and none of them launch a plague, as in “patient zero”. It just sounded cool, and that’s why we went with it. The cover of Friendly Fire features the White House, yet neither the president nor his team are involved in the story. What we wanted to do is establish the book and its author as being “inside Washington”.

My point here is that storytelling and marketing are entirely different skillsets, with only distantly related goals. As an author, my job is to entertain my readers by giving them a helluva ride. To get that chance, I need to convince them (trick them?) into picking out my book from among all the others on the shelf.

Your turn, TKZers. Do you have any tricks you’re willing to share about how you convince readers to take the plunge?

By John Gilstrap

There’s a buzz about the internet that the traditional publishing market is dying, and that the most reliable route to authorial success is through some form of self publishing. In my experience, the rumors are in large measure perpetuated by people and bots who stand to make money from frustrated authors who want to see their words in print and are willing to pay for editing and publishing “services” that suck cash and provide no guarantees.

The argument as I hear it.

The days of Maxwell Perkins and like minded star makers are long gone. No publisher (herein after synonymous with “traditional publisher”) is willing to develop young talent. Either the manuscript arrives at the transom fully formed and ready to publish, or it will be rejected.

Agents are no longer taking on new clients. Instead, they concentrate on their current stable of authors, who make sure that the doors to the publishing industry are closed to newcomers.

The entire industry is prejudiced against (depending on the perpetuator of the rumors) white people, people of color, men, women, gays, straight people, old people or young people, and about any other demographic slice that has chosen to feel oppressed on any given day.

For those authors who have found the magic string to pull to gain access to an agent and then on to a publisher, disappointment awaits. Either the selected publisher will pay too much for a book that doesn’t earn out, thus dooming the author to a painfully short career, or they will pay a mere pittance that will have no meaningful impact on the author’s finances.

And oh, the financial abuse! For every book sold, the publisher keeps as much as 90%, and of the paltry 10% given to the author, one-fifth of the amount goes to the author’s agent. When Amazon will let an author keep 70% (?) of the cover price, who would even consider a real publisher?

The evidence is plain and clear: Advances are shrinking for everyone, and the Big Five are getting smaller every day. Clearly, that’s the sign of the industry’s impending death.

One would be a fool to even consider offering their book to a publisher.

Reality as I see it.

First, a brief reminder of where I come from: I sold my first novel, Nathan’s Run, in 1995. By the time it hit the stands, I had already sold pub rights to my second book, At All Costs. Both were sold for astonishing seven-figure advances and neither earned out. Not even close. Since then, there’ve been 26 more books, with at least two more under contract.

The Max Perkins editing model died long before I joined the publishing scene, and I’ve been around since the days when query letters were sent in envelopes that contained an SASE, and manuscripts were shipped via FedEx at something like $25 a pop. That’s when I learned that only bad news came in the SASE. Good news came via phone call. Even then, the burden lay with the writer to submit a near perfect manuscript to agents who requested to see a sample. Then, as today, the easiest answer to a newbie trying to enter the entertainment business, the easiest answer was/is no. Who would want to establish a long-term relationship with someone unprofessional enough to submit flawed work as their first impression?

Then and now, overworked editors depend on agents to serve as gatekeepers at two important levels. First, there’s the quality of the writing. Without a good story that is well told, there’s no good product to mold into a better product. (There’s never been hope for ill-conceived or poorly written stories).

Second, agents make sure that excellent manuscripts go only to editors who are looking for that kind of story. When a trusted agent tells an editor, “I’m giving you a 24-hour exclusive on this story before I submit it wide,” all other work gets shoved aside for the editor to read and make an offer (or not). Publishing continues to be a relationship business.

When a manuscript is accepted by a publisher, editing is less about wordsmithing than it is about project management. Once everyone is happy with the story, the editor champions that manuscript all the way through the cover design, marketing and publicity efforts. For the record, no author in the history of the world has been pleased with their books’ marketing or publicity plans.

NOTE: First novels are in large measure author auditions. Authors who work to promote their own works, make speeches and show an active interest in the advancement of their own career will see their publicity budgets grow with time.

Now, as then, agents and editors are starving for new talent, and champing at the bit to take on new authors. The crippling problem now that didn’t exist in my early days, is email. Back in the day (Good Lord, I can hear my old man voice), the sheer inconvenience and expense of submitting via mail served as a form of natural selection. And before that–as recently as the 1980s–a new draft meant retyping the entire manuscript. Talk about a barrier to entry!

Now, each agenting day reopens the valve for a tsunami of under-cooked, ill-conceived and poorly-executed submissions overloading their email boxes. I’m talking really awful, terrible drek. New authors demonstrate a shocking lack of respect for these professionals’ time. As always, the easiest answer is no. A yes has to be earned.

But according to the interwebs, nobody needs an agent anyway. There are plenty of resources they can pay to publish their terrible work on ebook platforms.

The nightmare of huge advances

I’m not going to pad the truth here. When HarperCollins and Warner Books recognized the magnitude by which they’d overestimated the marketability of Nathan’s Run and At All Costs, my career took took a kick to the doo-dads. But I got to keep the money. Let’s call that a silver lining.

And I kept writing, churning out character-driven thrillers. I was able to build on the various starred reviews of those first books, and I found publishers who were willing to hang in there because I was willing to take advances that hovered around 2% of the news-making paydays. Audiences grew, and as they did, so did the advances.

Nowadays, I won’t take an advance that I can’t earn out within 8 weeks of publication. That frees up lots of cash to be used in promotion and marketing. Over time, as a backlist grows, it acts as a kind of annuity, rendering the advance as more of a symbolic payment.

Many aspects of the good old days never made sense.

All corners of the entertainment business are driven by significant egos, all of which need stroking. Big name editors are stroked by their own imprints, authors with book tours and big advances. The huge names in this industry never earn back their advances because much of their value lies in being among the authors published by the publishing house. Ninety-nine percent of book tours lose money for the publisher, but the loss is justified by the bragging rights.

Or, so it has been for generations.

I think the most critical element in the slow implosion of the Big Five is the fact that they are now owned and run by people who don’t particularly like books or publishing. Once acquired by mega companies, publishers become another profit center among dozens of other profit centers whose profit margins are much higher than that which is possible in the book biz. The last couple of years has seen countless big-name editors released and replaced by lesser editors who demand lower paychecks. Publicity, distribution and copy editing are routinely sourced out to freelancers who have no emotional tie to the companies who hire them or the authors they edit.

The stage is set for great things.

The ossification of the Big Five is creating tremendous opportunities for new authors and new publishers that exist because they like the business of producing books. My own publisher, Kensington, remains privately owned and thriving. Newcomers like Blackstone and Source Books are making great strides in taking on new and orphaned authors and turning profits at the same time. New publishing companies are opening their doors every week, it seems.

But with new opportunities comes a shift in the author-publisher paradigm. It’s expected now that authors understand that they are small business owners and therefore responsible for a solid percentage of their book’s success in the marketplace. Writing is becoming more of a team endeavor.

By John Gilstrap 

WOODBRIDGE, VA–SUMMER, 1995. Nathan’s Run was a done deal and the marketing push to launch it was beginning to spin up. The pressure was on to submit my next book (as yet untitled) before the February, 1996 publication date as a hedge against a reality check that Nathan might not perform up to expectations. (Advances are often higher when reality is not a factor.) I was pounding away on the thriller that would become At All Costs, in which Jake and Carolyn Donovan had been exposed as longtime fugitives and now needed to flee for their lives while finding a way to prove their innocence.

In one of the early chapters, I needed an FBI agent for what I call a utility character–a walk-on that does the job required and then retreats to the literary union hall to await their next gig. I named the character Irene as a nod to my bride’s deceased mother (whom I never met). I gave her the surname Rivers because I needed a name and that was as god as any.

Those were the days when I pretended to outline my books with the result invariably turning out to be rambling, over-complicated plot lines that also invariably straighten themselves out and convinced me that I’m not an outline kind of guy. Irene Rivers ended up with a much larger role than I’d anticipated, and by the end of the story, she’d killed off a deputy director of the FBI. Cool stuff.

FAIRFAX, VA–SUMMER, 2008. With Six Minutes to Freedom in the can, and freshly inspired by all the research into Special Forces operations, I started hammering away on No Mercy, which would become the first of my long-running Jonathan Grave thriller series. I needed Jonathan to interact with a malleable but deeply honest FBI director. This character would know that Jonathan doesn’t play by the rules, but that he always finds himself on the side of the angels, so the FBI director would grease the wheels a bit for him from time to time.

I needed a name until I realized that I already had a name. Irene Rivers had fallen off the page for a decade since At All Costs, so why couldn’t she have become the director of the FBI? So now Irene, call sign Wolverine, spent 16 books lending aid to Jonathan Grave–and receiving considerable aid from him in return. In the novella, Soft Targets, I even show how Jonathan and Irene came to know each other and why they trust each other so much.

BERKELEY COUNTY, WV–SUMMER, 2023. In Jonathan Grave’s world, where time neither advance nor retreats, Anthony Darmond has been president of the United States for all 16 books. He’s beyond corrupt, and when people cross him, people disappear. Irene Rivers can’t take it anymore. Though it will likely cost her the job she loves, she conspires with Jonathan to take the Darmond administration down.

But as Emerson said, when you come at the king, you must kill him.

Now unemployed and disgraced, Irene Rivers decides to leave the Washington rat race and retire to he family estate in . . . wait for it . . . West Virginia. But she has a past that won’t go away, and she no longer has the security detail that will protect her and her family from retribution.

Which is why I just signed a two-book deal to launch a new series centered on Irene’s efforts to assimilate into her new surroundings and deal with threats that are both old and new.

The funny thing about playing with your imaginary friends is that they don’t always go home when you tell them to. I’m really excited about this. Look for the first Irene Rivers thriller in early 2025.

What about you? Do characters and story lines you thought you’d finished with find their way back into your new stuff?

By John Gilstrap

We talk about treating the process of writing as if it were a job a job, we talk about quotas, we talk about pressing through to completion on a project. As November approaches, bringing with it the stress of NaNoWriMo to compete with the other stresses of what for many is the most stressful time of year, some of you will be pounding your fingers bloody on the keyboard in effort to produce the 50,000 words that Club Nano has declared to be the goal of the 30-day writing spree.

What we don’t talk about very much is the need to enjoy the ride. It’s important to set goals and achieve them, but it’s also important to cut yourself a break and realize that life happens. If you’re adhering to the adage to treat writing as if it were a job, remember that most desk jobs bring the perquisites of sick leave and vacation time. Meeting a self-imposed deadline is nowhere near as important as attending your kid’s soccer game or giving the puppy a half hour of Frisbee frolic.

If you’re not under a legal contract to produce a work by a date certain, then a date approximate is a fine substitute. Yes, it’s important to plow through the muddled middle to complete your project, but if your February 1 deadline slips to March 15, so what? If you look back on the week and you find that you only wrote 300 words–or no words at all–of your 7,500-word goal, the Earth will remain on its axis. In fact, the world will be a better place if those squandered words paid for a smile from a family member.

I’m not suggesting laziness or sloth. I’m suggesting balance.

Fifteen years ago, more or less, I sat on a panel at Magna Cum Murder in Muncie, Indiana, when the rookie writer to my left–a practicing psychologist, no less–told this room full of aspiring scribes that in order to succeed in the publishing business, you have to be willing to sacrifice everything. Specifically, she spoke of missing family events and vacations. Failure awaited any writer who looks away from their publishing goals even for a moment. When she was done, every molecule of happiness had disappeared from the room as the newbies furiously took notes.

Mine was the next turn to speak, and I started with, “For God’s sake, it’s only a story. We’re not curing cancer here, we’re making stuff up and playing with our imaginary friends. It’s not worth sacrificing any of that. The instant that make believe feels more important than real-life relationships is the instant you need to stop writing and re-evaluate your choices.”

It’s no secret that creative types frequently eat shotguns and down piles of pills. I can’t speak to the reasons behind that, but damaged relationships are often contributing factors. If you’re a spouse, you have a commitment to the relationship you chose. If you’re a parent, you have a commitment to a human being you created. Those come first. Hard stop.

If you’re a teenager or young adult, you have an obligation to yourself to live more of your life out in the word than inside your head. Collect experiences that will serve your writing well into the future.

When you do sit down to write, enjoy the experience and celebrate what you accomplished. Don’t get distracted by what you didn’t do on the page, and instead concentrate on what you did do in the world.

By John Gilstrap

It’s been nearly 45 years since Avram Davidson, writer-in-residence at the College of William and Mary told me at the end of two semesters of toxic mentorship that I had no talent and that I should not bother to pursue my dream of becoming a writer. He was old and cranky then and he didn’t have the decency to stick around on the planet long enough for me to gloat at him.

I wish I could say that I shrugged off his cruel dismissal–well, I did eventually, I suppose–but it took more years than I care to admit. Upon publication of Nathan’s Run, one of my classmates from that workshop gave me a heartwarming plaque that hangs in my office in clear view as I write this.

I’ve written about this experience before, but it was brought back the front of my mind by a fictional confrontation that occurs in the excellent Netflix series, “Sex Education.” (Lest there be any doubt, this is not one to watch with the kiddos.) The scene in question occurs in the show’s fourth season, when our heroine, Maeve, has come to America from England to attend a college workshop conducted by the famous and fawned over literary genius, Thomas Molloy, who spills out quotable nonsense about how writing should take something from the writer. This is an exercise in suffering for one’s art.

While the other students in this workshop are bowled over by this pretentious twit, Maeve is more circumspect, sharing with him that she preferred his first book over the second one that won all the prizes. He’s impressed, he says, and then he tears her work apart under the guise of helping her tap that deep vein that makes writing hurt. When she finally pens her new first chapter, he tells her–wait for it–that she does not have the talent to make it as a writer.

Yeah, I had a flashback. I haven’t finished the season yet, but I can only hope that Maeve will be able to rub the asshat’s face in it before the final credits roll.

There’s an X Factor to teaching that I don’t pretend to understand. The best teachers in my life found a way to be thoroughly honest in their assessment of my work, driving me to be better without breaking my spirit. The problem with assessing art is that creativity is by its very nature relative. There is no objective standard, yet we all know bad when we see it. And then, in the truly confusing circumstances, we see stories and art that we know is objectively bad yet it still moves us. Those pieces are victories for the creator.

The lectern is a powerful thing. To stand there behind the mic is to be perceived as an expert by the people in the audience who are looking back at you. This is an opportunity to inspire. Or foment anger. Provide hope or project pessimism. If you’ve been to a writer’s conference, you’ve no doubt encountered the speaker who has experienced only failure, and whose mission seems to be to make the dream of publication seem hopeless.

Even if it were true, what’s the point of making people feel sad? Everybody knows that writing is hard and that getting published is even harder, yet people succeed at it every day. Why not concentrate on the probability of success–however much smaller than the probability of not-success–and fire people up to keep going?

I think there’s a special place in hell for people who try to ruin other people’s dreams.

What about you, TKZ family? Did you have teachers or coaches or bosses who inspired you to do things you never thought possible?

By John Gilstrap

Back in 1994, when I was putting the finishing touches on the manuscript that would become Nathan’s Run, I followed a self-imposed rule that as I read through the final draft, if I came to a substantive change–something other than a typo or minor grammatical thing–I would make the change and then go back to the beginning of the manuscript and read it again, up to and beyond the point of the substantive change. When it happened again, I’d repeat the process. I think it added up to something like 30 editing passes.

After my final pass, I fired up by brand new HP inkjet printer (agents wouldn’t look at dot matrix submissions), and I watched as the manuscript printed out at the blistering rate of six pages per minute. In the end, the book launched a fun career, though I’m not sure those last five or six passes had anything to do with it.

My agent at the time, Molly, told me a story that altered my view of the editing process. A neighbor had a friend who had written a book that the neighbor thought was fantastic. Would Molly give it a look? I imagine this happens a lot in the life of a literary agent. With more than a little hesitation, Molly agreed to give the manuscript a look.

When the neighbor delivered the goods, it came as a stack single-spaced type-written pages (typewritten, as in, clackety-clack, ding) on erasable bond paper. Remember how dirty your hands felt after handling erasable bond? When she was done, Molly was moved to tears, and she instantly took on that brand new author, whose name turned out to be Frank McCourt, and whose manuscript became a little runaway bestseller called Angela’s Ashes.

The guy had broken every rule, yet somehow his talent won the day.

Welcome to the capricious world of the entertainment business. Happenstance and serendipity play huge roles, but such is the case in every professional endeavor. Many a career is launched by an introduction at a party or a business conference. The business world calls it networking. But the seed that makes the serendipity function is the underlying talent of the individual, and that individual’s willingness to work hard to improve.

A number of the regulars here at The Killzone have expressed their frustration with the editing loop. They can never get their chapter to check off all the boxes in the rule books that purport to know more than perhaps they do. This is why I profess that there are no rules to this game of writing fiction.

Of course first impressions matter, and as such, you want every manuscript to be as clean as possible, but if the story is there, it’s there in spite of a misplaced comma. If the characters are compelling, their personalities will transcend the prologue that may or may not survive through publication.

The Forbidden City of traditional publishing, as Brother Bell calls it, is not forbidden at all. Its gates stand wide open for new and experienced talent, and as I have demonstrated several dozen times now, it is not necessary to thoroughly understand how commas work, or the difference between that and which. All that is necessary is good story that is well told.

Plus a willingness to seek opportunities to spark the serendipitous event that can make it all happen. You’ve got the talent and the skill for writing, right? You’re happy with your recently completed manuscript? It’s time to network!

By John Gilstrap

Imagine a classroom filled with creative writing students. They have just finished their semester on poetry and studying the text, “Understanding Poetry” by Dr. Evans Pritchard, once made famous by Professor John Keating in “Dead Poets Society.” Now they have moved on to my unit on writing novels.

A student raises his hand. “I want to write a story but I don’t know where to start.”

“Sure you do,” I say. “You pick up a pen or put your fingers on the keyboard and you start writing. It’s really that simple. Ba-da-bing! You’ve started your novel.”

“But what about my outline? My character journals? My story web? Those aren’t done yet.”

“What a relief!” I say. “Think of all the extra time you have to play with your imaginary friends. They’re ready to go. They’ve been waiting for you all this time.”

The student looks confused. Maybe a little panicky. “They’re not ready. I don’t even know who they are yet.”

“You’ve got an idea for a story, right?” I ask.

“Yeah. Well, I have a premise.”

“If you’ve got a premise, then you’ve got a compass point to head toward. Just start walking. Your imaginary friends will find you. They have to. Otherwise there’s no story. You know what they say about necessity and inventions, right?”

“But I don’t know where the story is going to go.”

“How could you?” I ask. “You haven’t started playing with your imaginary friends yet. Once you get in their heads and in their space, things will happen. Trust me on this.”

“Suppose it’s no good?” the student asks.

“Who cares? If you’ve come this far in your writing journey–Lord, I hate that phrase–you’ve got all the basics. Everything else is subjective. Just sit down, try to ignore everything you’ve learned in classes before this one, and try having fun with your characters.”

The student’s face is a mask of confusion. “One of my problems is structural. My critique group tells me I can’t have a prologue.”

“Do you like your prologue?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a good prologue? Necessary to the story?”

“They think it’s not.”

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s both good and necessary.”

“Then tell your critique group to kiss your hind quarters. They can do it individually or together with one giant pucker.”

Another hand goes up. It belongs to a young lady with purple hair and a pound of steel hanging out her ears and nose. “Excuse me, Professor Gilstrap,” she says. “You seem to think that anyone can write a story.”

“Yes.”

“You mean anyone who’s trained for creative writing, right?”

“Nope. I mean anyone. Just as anyone can sing Irish ballads on St. Patrick’s Day.”

Purple Hair scoffs, “A drunk on a bar stool isn’t exactly Pavarotti.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “Maybe he’s only Frank Sinatra. I’ll bet Little Boy Frankie started off singing because it was fun. I’ll bet he was singing even before he knew what an F sharp or B flat were. I’ll bet he sang because it gave him pleasure. Just like the guy on the barstool.”

“I call bull fritters on that,” Purple declares. “There’s only one Frank Sinatra.”

“There’s only one you,” I say. “And only one me. Only one Michael Bublé, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand or Justin Bieber. In each case, I’ll bet that their fame and fortune began with the simple enjoyment of their art.”

Another hand. Given the curve in his nose, I’m betting its owner plays rugby. “Most of us could sing all day and study our butts off in music class and we’d never be a Pavarotti or a Sinatra.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because they were born with a gift.”

“What gift?” I ask. “I’ve got a larynx and a set of lungs just like they do. If I wanted to, why couldn’t I go to music school, learn breath control and diction and be a gifted singer? I did a lot of musical theater in high school.”

“It’s not that kind of gift,” Rugby Boy says. “Crooners like Sinatra made the words of a song come alive. It’s like he lived the songs he wrote.”

“Kind of like he saw the world in a different way?” I ask. “A unique way?”

“Exactly,” Rugby Boy says.

“Suppose I went to Julliard and studied the performances of the masters of music?” I ask. “Couldn’t I do just like them?”

“A paint by numbers Rembrandt will never be a real Rembrandt,” says the student who started this.

“You make a good point,” I say. I’m enjoying the Socratic exercise. “Now, remind me which music schools Sinatra and Streisand went to. Did they even have art schools when young Rembrandt was causing trouble?”

The class stares back at me.

“Here’s the thing,” I say. “While anyone can write, not everyone can capture the hearts of readers. The mechanics of writing can be taught, but the soul of the story must flow from the soul of the writer, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call talent. So it is with all of the arts–acting, singing, painting, sculpting, and, yes, writing. Writers born with talent can be coached to hone it and improve it. But no amount of training and schooling can create talent where none exists.”

“Are you saying that some of us are wasting our time here at school?” Purple Hair asks.

“Only you can answer that question,” I say. “But you’ll never have that answer unless you write, and you’ll never have the stamina to produce the required number of words to make it matter unless you write because you love the process.”

Okay, TKZers, I know there’s red meat here for some of you. Have at it, but please be polite. And as an aside, I am on vacation as you read this, living in Zulu time. Maybe Zulu+1. I’ll be monitoring the responses, but my own responses will be oddly timed, I’m sure.

By John Gilstrap

First things first. As I write this, it’s Book Launch Day! Harm’s Way, the 15th entry in my Jonathan Grave thriller series drops today. In this story, Jonathan is summoned by FBI Director Irene Rivers to rescue someone special from the grips of a drug cartel that has taken a group of missionaries hostage in Venezuela. Once the team arrives, however, they discover trouble far more horrifying than a standard hostage rescue. When the first book in the series appeared in 2009, I never would have thought it would have the kind of legs that it has.

Thanks to everyone who has shown support over the years. Hopefully, there’s much more to come!

Which brings me to the topic of today’s post: What does retirement look like for a writer?

Over the weekend, a friend (Jim) and his wife visited the West Virginia Compound for a good old fashioned cookout. As the meal was being prepared, Jim announced that he has finally made the decision to retire from the sales position in which he’s thrived for well over a decade. An affable guy, and very much a people person, he seems to me to be a perfect fit for the high-end products he sells, and to be honest, to the outsider (that would be moi), he seemed to make a really good living by not doing very much. He’d built his base of customers over the years, and now he just worked the phones for a couple of hours every day, and then he was done. He could have retired some time ago, yet chose not to, so “Why now?” I asked.

Management had changed, the compensation package had changed, and bottom line: his give-a-damn quotient had been met. He just didn’t want to do it anymore. Hey, I can’t think of a better reason to punch out and explore the rest that life has to offer.

Not long into the discussion, Jim turned the conversation to me. “How long are you going to keep doing this writing thing? Every time we talk, you’re on some deadline. You’ve got close to 30 books out there. When do you close the computer and retire?”

I confess that I didn’t have an answer. Sure, there are current contracts that need to be fulfilled, but that’s very short term. All it would take to walk away from the writer life would be a telephone call to my agent with the announcement that I don’t want to pitch another contract.

But I don’t think I could do that. It wouldn’t be a problem financially (though more is always better than less), but I think I’d have trouble with it emotionally. While being a writer is not a critical part of my identity in the psychological sense, it is the best job I’ve ever had. I’ve worked hard to build the “brand momentum” that I have, and I know that such momentum is not recoverable once I take my foot off the accelerator. That’s the practical side, reminding me that you’ve got to be very, very comfortable with your mooring location before you burn the lifeboats.

I enjoy the company of writers, and I love having a key to the clubhouse door. Back in the early aughts, when my career took it’s monumental dip and I didn’t have a book either recently released or even in the works, I felt like an outsider among my friends at conferences–like I was watching people enjoy the banquet while not having a seat at the table for myself. That’s all on me, and much of the angst was driven by the fact that I was not in charge of my situation. Being dropped by a publisher is an entirely different world than choosing to walk away. But still . . .

I don’t have any hobbies to speak of. The world of plants and vegetables considers me a mass murderer as I try my hand at gardening, I’d rather put a fork in my eye than chase a little white ball across a field with a golf club, and there are only so many holes to poke in paper from 50 feet (or 300 yards) away.

And let’s be honest. What I do for a living is what I used to do in my spare time before I did it for a living. I enjoy the process of writing, and I love seeing books with my name on them. I don’t enjoy deadlines, and as I’ve written here before, I can’t sit and type for long periods as I used to.

I can think of very few things in life that trigger the same sense of contentment that comes from creating a scene or an exchange between characters the is just right, just what I wanted it to be.

So, no. I’m nowhere near close to burning the lifeboats. In fact, I plan to start yet another thriller series.

What about y’all? What does retirement look like for you?

By John Gilstrap

When I first started down the path of what would become a long writing journey, the act of sitting down and making stuff up was a guilty pleasure. Our son was young, I had a fulltime job–in fact, I owned the company–and life was packed with semi-mandatory activities. When I carved out 15 or 30 or 45 minutes of writing time, I had to be focused and efficient.

Those stolen moments mostly came in the evenings. At home, they were wedged between our son’s bedtime and the final hours of the day when Joy and I would settle in for an hour or two of evening television. On travel (I spent most of my Big Boy Job years as a road warrior), I would write my way through dinner, often not leaving my table or barstool until the staff was doing their final cleaning before locking the doors. This explains why large portions of my first drafts were handwritten. (I think it’s rude to clack on computer keys while the people around me are trying to enjoy an evening of dining and conversation.)

In those very early days–pre-Nathan’s Run–I was driven by the dream of possibilities. Then, after the unimaginable success of that first novel, I rode the wave of affirmation that I actually had the skills and talent to legitimately call myself an author. Truth be told, it was many years before I used that word to describe myself. Poser syndrome and all that.

Now, nearly 30 years later, the motivations to sit down and write are . . . different. With over 3 million words in print, I’ve proven everything that I set out to prove–if not to others, then to myself. My deal with my publisher allows me to write pretty much whatever I want with the promise that they will publish it. All the conflicting pressures are gone. I no longer feel guilty for the stolen writing hours because writing is what I do for a living.

But now, my distractions have become more interesting. The new house in a new state with a new puppy and a new radio show*, coincide with the slice of life when the hours of protracted isolation that I used to crave are mine for the taking. Why, then, do I often have to force myself to take them?

To be clear, I am observing here, not complaining. I am fully aware that I am gifted to be living my lifelong dream, and for that I am grateful every day.

I think maybe I’ve entered that sleeve of time in life when I’m paying the price for the indiscretions of my youth. Four vertebrae in my cervical spine have been surgically fused, and the rest of my spine features more damaged disks than healthy ones. Arthritis has started to invade my hands and feet and knees. To tame these maladies, nothing works better than activity. Wielding a shovel or swinging an axe is far better for me than sitting at my desk in a hunched writing position. These days, it takes 60 seconds or more to stand straight and walk normally after a 3-hour writing session.

At 66, I am already at least one year past the age I’d planned to retire back when I entered the workforce at age 15. Back then, I had no idea what I really wanted to do with my life, but I knew that after doing it for 50 years, I’d be ready to do nothing but relax.

It turns out I was wrong. As a storyteller, the spigot of story ideas and plot points has no shutoff valve. I can either write them down or they can keep me awake. Fact is, I love being an author–having a key to the club I always dreamed of belonging to, in the company of others who are far more talented than I, yet still consider me to be a peer.

But such benefits don’t come without the continuing effort to earn them. And so I continue to play with my imaginary friends whenever I can. Maybe it’s not as exciting as it used to be, but it’s still the best job in the world. And it’s fine to take time to split some wood, take a walk, or play Frisbee with Kimber.

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*Speaking of the radio show, here’s a link to our interview last week with our very own Reavis Wortham.

By John Gilstrap

I returned to my home last Saturday after spending the better part of a week at the Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie, Indiana, where I was part of the faculty. MWW is one of my favorite “working” conferences–that is, a conference dedicated specifically to writing technique, as opposed to other confabs that are weighted heavily toward social interaction. When you sign on to teach at MWW, you’re signing on to work. This was my fourth or fifth tour with the conference, and I’m anxious to go back when invited.

As part of my duties, I agreed to review ten, 5-page writing samples and discuss them with their authors, which I hammered out back-to-back in half-hour increments. I mentioned here last week that I’d noticed an overall decline in quality from my previous experience with MWW. None of the samples I reviewed were truly awful or beyond redemption, but none of them jumped out as sparkling with potential.

The experience did, however, provide me with the topic for this week’s TKZ missive: How to make the most (or trigger the worst) out of manuscript reviews. Presented in no particular order . . .

My opinion of your writing is merely my opinion. It’s the opinion you paid to hear, and the one that I am obliged to give. You are free to dismiss any bit of guidance that I provide. The opinions from your friends, family and beta readers, while in opposition to my own may very well be definitive. Go with them–with my blessing–but know that the fact that your Aunt Betty was an English teacher and says your characters are vivid and exciting will not cause me to change my assessment that they are neither.

If you listen to anything I say, listen to everything I say. The positive things I note about your work are every bit as honest as the negative things. I understand that we don’t know each other very well, but those who do know me will assure you that I am not a blower of unearned sunshine. Give yourself a break.

“The first five pages” actually means the first five pages. Of the ten manuscripts I reviewed, three of them were hunks of story excised from the middle of the novel, in each case chosen because the author thought those pages represented their “best writing.” Yeah, let that settle. None of the good writing happens before page 48 (and presented to me either as unnumbered pages or as “page one” of the sample). Let’s save that rant for later. Assessing a manuscript is more than just copy editing. In fact, copy editing is the last thing this kind of assessment is. If I’m going to evaluate your story, the elements of plot, setting and character all have to make sense. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I cannot think of a simpler, more understandable way to issue the instruction to “submit the first five pages of your work.”

Quit worrying about someone trying to steal your idea. If you want my help, you’re going to have to share critical elements of your story. In many years of doing this, I’ve never once heard a premise that was truly unique. I’ve seen a thousand different squints on romances and mysteries and murder weapons, but never a plot point that was unicorn-unique. When you demand that I sign a non-disclosure agreement before you allow me to dedicate my time to your writing, you double-dog guarantee that I won’t look at a word, and won’t lift a finger. Well, maybe I’ll lift one finger.

Okay, Killzone family, what’s your experience with giving or receiving critiques. Did you enjoy the experience? Hate it? Have any more tips to add?