By John Gilstrap

When Zero Sum, #16 in my Jonathan Grave thriller series hit the stands in 2024 as a “premium mass market paperback,” the paper copy retailed for $9.99 and the Kindle version cost $7.99. Fifteen books and as many years earlier, the standard mass market version of No Mercy, the first book in the series, retailed for $6.99, and for two weeks, the Kindle price was $0.00 before it skyrocketed to $2.99 after the promotional period expired*.

This coming February, when Scorched Earth, #17 in the series is revealed to the world, it will be in a trade paper format. If you’re not familiar with the jargon, trade paperbacks have the dimensions and font size of a hardcover, but with soft covers. Paper copies will retail for $18.95 and the Kindle version will cost $9.99.

For what it’s worth, I had nothing to do with this decision, and the decision itself isn’t about greed–at least not directly. Without wallowing too deeply in the weeds, the demand for mass market paperbacks has been dwindling for years, kept alive mainly by the reprints of last year’s bestsellers by big name authors. Those were the books you’d see in grocery stores and pharmacies and airports, but the real driver for the mass market were big box stores like Walmart and Costco, both of which announced that they would no longer be stocking their shelves with mass market paperbacks, with certain exceptions, including category romances.

This change concerns me. First of all, it’s change and I hate fixing things that don’t feel broken. I’ve always lived by the mantra, “Never try to make a happy baby happier.”

Trade paper has always been the format for literary fiction. At least that was the case in the United States. Thrillers were hardcover and mass market reprints. We are all creatures of habit. Will readers who generally trend toward hardcovers be more drawn to my books because they’re larger yet still softcover? Will mass market paperback readers who’ve reserved a specific spot in their briefcases for a small book be pissed off that they now have to carry something larger?

And there’s the price. Over the years, I’ve been blessed to be able to build a devoted fan base that’s willing to spend mass market prices for my stories. Will they stay with me as the price for the handheld book doubles? I guess I’ll find out. I worry less about my eBook fans because the price increase is less drastic, but it’s still change.

Now for the exciting part . . .

The format change has provided an excuse to re-release all of my Grave series in trade paper format. No Mercy and Hostage Zero will hit the stands at the same time as Scorched Earth. While all the concerns remain, it’ll be nice to see out-of-print titles returning to the shelves.

Good news for autograph collectors. If there’s one complaint I’ve heard more than any other over the years about the mass market format is that bibliophiles who collect autographs don’t like the way small paperbacks look on their shelves. I understand that, actually. And as the man signing the autograph, I confess that I will be happy to have a larger signing area on the page.

This brings us to the importance of pre-orders. I’m not a “please buy my book” kind of guy. I figure that if you have to beg, something’s wrong. In fact, I don’t even bring books with me to sell when I teach workshops. First and foremost, I’m not set up to be a retailer and have no desire to manage another layer of taxation. But also, I figure if I do my job right, people will be inspired to buy my books from a bookstore, or to borrow them from a library.

That said, if you’re inclined to buy my books when they come out, given the expanse of this change in the way of doing business, it would be extremely helpful for you to pre-order the book through your retail outlet of choice. Whether you prefer a physical book or an eBook, preorders send a message to the publisher and the marketplace in general.

So, what say you, TKZ family? How price sensitive do you think readers are? Are you going to miss pocket-size books?

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*I’m proud to note that No Mercy shot to the #1 free book on Amazon, “selling” over 60,000 copies during that time. When the price returned to $2.99 the book remained the #1 overall Kindle bestseller for the next week. That was a promotional gambit that worked better than I’ve ever witnessed.

All I can do is read a book to stay awake. And it rips my life away, but it’s a great escape. — Blind Melon, No Rain.

By PJ Parrish

There’s a drought here in Tallahassee. My lawn is yellow. My herb garden is shriveled. The fire ants mounds are two feet high. Inside my house, the lights in my bathroom suddenly died. I can’t get the microwave to stop blinking ERROR. And my laptop mouse is acting like hamster on meth.

And my brain has stopped working. I can’t get my new short story moving again. And I couldn’t think of anything interesting to write about here today either. My husband sidled in and I whined, “I’ve got nothing to write about.”

“Well, write about that,” he said.

So here we are. I don’t believe in writer’s block. I believe in the demon laziness. But after I read Kay’s post here from last Monday on gratitude, I knew I had to stop carping and do something. So I went for a walk. Walking is my mental Senakot. When I got home, I was able to at least face my short story again. Which led me to re-realize — you forget the really simple stuff at times — that I had to go back before I could go forward. So I opened up the file and look a cold hard look at what I had written.

Which brings me back to today’s post. I know we’ve covered this a lot, but I’d like to offer up, yet again, some good ways to get yourself out of a slump:

Take a hike. Get outside and get moving. Even if it’s just 30 minutes. Which is how long it took me to go to ABC Liquor yesterday and get some Hendrick’s Floradora gin.

Write something else. I don’t have any other WIPs right now. But I have you guys. And just the process of writing this blog got my wheels unstuck from the mud. If you have other projects — a story, an free-lance article, a journal entry — switch over for a while. Fingers moving on a keyboard is a good warm-up.

Read something. For inspiration, I chose one of my favorite books, Joyce Carol Oates’ Because it Is Bitter, And Because It Is My Heart. Check out this opening paragraph:

Little Red Garlick, sixteen years old, skull smashed soft as a rotted pumpkin and body dumped into the Cassadaga River, must not have sunk as he’d been intended to sink, or floated as far. As the morning mist begins to lift from the river a solitary fisherman sights him, or the body he has become, trapped and bobbing frantically in the pilings about thirty feet offshore. It’s the buglelike cries of gulls that alert the fishman — gulls with wide gunmetal-gray wings, dazzling snowy heads and tail feathers, dangling pink legs like something incompletely hatched. The kind you think might be a beautiful bird until you get up close.

Watch Something. I get juiced by watching great movies because I learn from screenplays, specifically about how dialogue illuminates character. One of my favorites is Fargo because Marge Gunderson is such a pip. One favorite line:

Say, Lou, didya hear the one about the guy who couldn’t afford personalized plates, so he went and changed his name to J3L2404?

Take a step back. It’s vital to keep your shark-novel moving forward, lest it die. But it doesn’t hurt, when you’re stuck, to go back and re-read and maybe even re-write a little. When I faced my short story again, I realized I had veered off into a bad description ditch. I cut about 250 really lovely words. (There’s a reason they call it a short story) Pruning is vital for gardens and fiction. If you’re surrounded by briar, you can’t see the path.

Come up with an idea then do the opposite. Few of us are brilliantly original on first attempts. To get moving, we resort to stock characters, lazy description, confusing action and the obvious. If your setting is Paris, don’t authomatically plunk the hero down in the Louvre; set your scene in La Goute d’Or, the muslim enclave. Don’t make your sidekick a wizened old cop with a whiskey bottle in his desk; make her the brave tomboy George at Nancy Drew’s side. If you need a plot twist, don’t settle for smelly red herrings or cheap ticks. Oh my god, nobody shot J.R. It was all a dream! What, you mean Bruce Willis is really dead but only the kid can see him?

Phone a friend. I am lucky in that I can call my co-author sister Kelly and together we can always find a solution. Maybe your friend is a critique group pal, someone with a cold eye who wants you to suceed. If you don’t have anyone, make someone up. Picture in your head a discerning reader; would that person let you get away with cardboard characters or a cliched plot? Talk to yourself. Out loud. It’s a conversation with someone who understands you.

And finally…

Keep your butt in the chair. I am really bad at this. I will abandon my post at the first muted trumpet call of the mundane. Laundry needs folding! Dog smells, must bathe! Lights have died in the bathroom so gotta go to get a new dimmer switch! No…stay put. If you shoulder-push on that rock long enough, it will eventually start moving downhill.

Remember, no one ever finished their book while roaming the lighting aisle at Home Depot.

Dance us out, Bee Girl!

I am closing on my new home today. Yay! After which, I need to finish packing before the movers arrive. So, please excuse my reposting of an article I wrote in 2021 that still holds true today.

To master the art of writing we need to read. Whenever the words won’t flow, I grab my Kindle. Reading someone else’s story kickstarts my creativity, and like magic, I know exactly what I need to do in my WIP.

“Read” is the easiest writing tip, yet one of the most powerful. And here’s why.

READING BENEFITS OUR WRITING 

• Reading strengthens our skills and storytelling abilities.
• Reading helps us become more persuasive, which is an essential skill when pitching a book to an agent, editor, producer, etc.
• Fiction reading helps us hone the skills to draw the reader into the story and engage the reader.
• Nonfiction reading helps us learn how to condense research into an authoritative proposal. And ultimately, into a storyline.
• Reading expands our vocabulary, improves grammar, and shows how to use words in context.
• Reading helps us find the right word!

READING IMPROVES BRAIN HEALTH 

Narratives activate many parts of our brains. In a 2006 study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers in Spain asked participants to read words with strong odor associations, along with neutral words, while their brains were being scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine.

Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life. — New York Times

Whenever participants read words like “perfume” and “coffee,” their primary olfactory cortex (the part of the brain that processes smell) lit up the fMRI machine. Words like “velvet” activated the sensory cortex, the emotional center of the brain. Researchers concluded that in certain cases, the brain can make no distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life. Pretty cool, right?

4 TIPS TO READ WITH A WRITER’S EYE

1. Look for the author’s persuasion tactics.

How does s/he draw you in?

How does s/he keep you focused and flipping pages?

What’s the author’s style, fast-pace or slow but intriguing?

Does the author have beautiful imagery or sparse, powerful description that rockets an image into your mind?

2. Take note of metaphors and analogies.

How did the metaphor enhance the image in your mind?

How often did the author use an analogy?

Where in the scene did the author use a metaphor/analogy?

Why did the author use a metaphor/analogy? Reread the scene without it. Did it strengthen or weaken the scene?

In a 2012 study, researchers from Emory University discovered how metaphors can access different regions of the brain.

New brain imaging research reveals that a region of the brain important for sensing texture through touch, the parietal operculum, is also activated when someone listens to a sentence with a textural metaphor. The same region is not activated when a similar sentence expressing the meaning of the metaphor is heard.

A metaphor like “he had leathery hands” activated the participants’ sensory cortex, while “he had strong hands” did nothing at all.

“We see that metaphors are engaging the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in sensory responses even though the metaphors are quite familiar,” says senior author Krish Sathian, MD, PhD, professor of neurology, rehabilitation medicine, and psychology at Emory University. “This result illustrates how we draw upon sensory experiences to achieve understanding of metaphorical language.”

 

3. Read with purpose.

As you read, study the different ways some writers tackle subjects, how they craft their sentences and employ story structure, and how they handle dialogue.

4. Recognize the author’s strengths (and weaknesses, but focus on strengths).

Other writers are unintentional mentors. When we read their work, they’re showing us a different way to tell a story—their way.

Ask, why am I drawn to this author? What’s the magic sauce that compels me to buy everything they write?

Is it how they string sentences together?

Story rhythm?

Snappy dialogue?

How they world-build?

Or all of the above?

I don’t know about you but I’m dying to jump back into the book I’m devouring.  What’s your favorite tip?

Hope you have a nice Thanksgiving!

When I was a kid, the historical aspect of Six Flags over Texas was an absolute treat. I was a history buff even back in elementary school and absorbed everything I could find about Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and of course, local history. By the time seventh grade rolled around and I found myself in the mandatory Texas History class, I’d read everything about the settlers, the Alamo, and Texas independence.

The Six Flags theme park was based on the six nations that have governed the territory of Texas, starting with Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederate States of American and the United states. When it opened in 1961, the six nations of historical influence had their own specific areas that reflected those past cultures.

As the years passed, the park’s theme shifted in focus from historical accuracy to pure family entertainment, though the different regions still remain in place and the architecture and sense of place still remain. Until recently, a few of the original rides remained, particularly the Log Ride and the Runaway Mine train.

It was my favorite ride until I became afflicted by vertigo.

Maybe you remember View-Masters, children’s stereoscopes that were popular in the 1960s. When you were in one of the many Six Flags souvenir shops designed to separate visitors from even more their money, you could buy a set of the discs with photos of the rides.

We were in one of those shops filled with the delicious aroma of leather in the late 60s and I picked up one of the sample viewers on display. After flicking the side lever a couple of times with a forefinger, I came across a photo of my family on the ride a couple of years earlier. Unfortunately, the Old Man wouldn’t buy the set, but I remember how cool it was to know we were “famous.”

The Runaway Mine train was a small version of the popular giant rollercoaster rides at the fair, but it was an experience on steroids. While big rollercoasters’ pacing was a long, slow ride to the first big drop, the mine train started much faster, and after the initial dive, it became manic.

The turns and drops were incessant, snapping riders back and forth. We barely had time to catch our breath before something else happened. An abrupt twist, drop, sudden neck-snapping elevation to a quick, short, breathtaking plunge until, finally, it leveled off to take passengers through an “abandoned” old west town.

This gave riders a break in order to catch our hearts slow down, dizziness to pass, and to catch our breath. The train cars went through a haunted saloon, complete with cowboy skeletons playing cards and a few leaning against the bar. Humor designed to give the passengers a rest.

Then came an abrupt, steep drop, a bend, another turn, up, down, and finally, the long, slow level track to our starting point. A quick internet search revealed the ride was only one minute and fifty seconds. And for that, we stood in line upwards to two hours.

The ride was all about thrills, and pacing, which brings us (finally) to my topic of the day, pacing, or the speed at which a story unfolds. You, the author, are in control of your reader’s experience, be if fast or slow.

I prefer fast-paced books, but that’s today. Back in the Olden Days–––

When was that, Grandpa?

––– in the 1960s and 70s, when I was reading Robert Ruark (1950s-early 60s releases), K.B. Gildner’s Hurry Sundown (1964), any James Michner (1960s-80s). Those old classics didn’t develop quickly, and readers waded through a hundred pages of setup and backstory before the plot accelerated.

Times and tastes have changed, and today’s authors are in a gunfight for attention due to the enormous volume of releases each month, so we need to advance our pacing. That comes through structural choices such as the length of scenes and sentence structure, and of course, timing.

Many authors begin their novels in the wrong place, as has been discussed at length in forum. Too much setup at the outset can lose readers faster than a toddler will get lost in Walmart.

We can increase pacing through dialogue. Read Elmore Leonard for tutorials on past-paced action scenes and snappy dialogue. Think about it, when you see pages of long, long paragraphs, you mind natural slows you down. With quick dialogue and lots of white space and a page visually less dense, the eye blazes across the written field and soon the reader is absorbed into the exchange that feels as if we’re there in the room with those characters.

This is a perfect time for character development.

The first sentence sets the tone, (that first breath-taking drop on the runaway mine train). Start your story in the middle of the action to hook the reader. Imagine you’re standing in a bookstore and pick up a Michner novel (and I love the guy, so not taking any shots here) and a modern thriller. Micher has a long setup. Today’s authors start with a gunshot, or in the case of a C.J. Box novel, two rednecks and a rocket launcher.

Boom. There it is.

After that, the rhythm and flow pulls us into the narrative. A quick burst of action is followed by narrative, character interaction, and the chapter(s) which establish the storyline. Now we’re on that runaway mine ride.

Another drop, something exciting happens, and our protagonist is thrust into danger, or a dangerous situation. Tension rises, (another expectation of acceleration as the chain rattles beneath the mine train on the lift hill) dialogue brings us backstory and the characters’ motivation. A character arc rises, and readers become engaged in the plot and motivation.

We’re almost to the top of the crest.

If the pace slows too much there, be careful, or you’ll lose your reader engagement.

Another breath-stealing drop. An action-packed scene, and quick-moving plot points create urgency and excitement. This is a great time for humor to give us a rest, not unlike the abovementioned haunted saloon. (Please attempt humor only if you’re good at it).

The story builds again, another rise, (we look forward to see nothing but sky on the next lift hill) and we know another stomach-rising drop is coming soon.

The second act is always a challenge to write, so authors build even more tension here and find reasons to push the protagonist forward. The use of longer, descriptive scenes builds tension (anticipating the next downhill plunge) and more character development leads to an increasingly hair raising emotional impact.

Then, comes the third act and the final build toward the huge acceleration that should be followed by a sharp turn, or twist.

It is there that my own chapters shorten, a trick I learned from my first editor. Short chapters increase the pacing and keeps the reader turning the pages. You wouldn’t believe how many readers tell me they stay up late with my novels, thinking they’ll read just one more chapter and then realize it goes by so fast they want to read just one more.

Then another

Then another.

It’s like eating potato chips, the chapters are quick and satisfying.

Short sentences. Fast dialogue. Action packed scenes. Here there’s no relief! No long smooth track through the ghost town. We’re on the downhill nose-dive, folks, and we need the payoff now!

Then the reward. The final descent. For those of you who like casinos, think the slot machine rattling silver dollars into a metal catch pan designed to amplify the noise. Check the clock. Midnight? Wait! Only two more extremely short chapters!!!??? I can finish it tonight!

Sigh. Close the book. Put it on the nightstand. Click off the light. Ahhhh. Relief and satisfaction.

Here, there be rest.