Category Archives: Writing

Editor/Janitor

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By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

From 1965 to 1985, the Kalispell Weekly News was great regional paper in northwest Montana. It was owned and operated by George Ostrom, a colorful character who’d been a smokejumper, mountain climber, journalist, author, radio personality, and legendary raconteur. His stories and op-eds were always entertaining and full of folksy, rustic humor.

The masthead of his newspaper read:

George Ostrom, Editor/Janitor.

That masthead always made me smile because it perfectly sums up the life of a small business owner. The title “owner” may sound impressive but that’s also the poor schlub who gets called in the middle of the night when the plumbing stops up.

Indie authors are small business owners and monarchs over their writing realm. My kingdom consists of a messy dining room table, littered with sticky notes, piled with draft manuscripts, cluttered with invoices, ISBN records, etc. My throne is a secretary chair on casters with a donut cushion. The royal duties are a to-do list that grows longer every day. As fast as I cross off one task, five more are added, each requiring a different skillset.

Today is launch day for Deep Fake Double Down, # 8 in my Tawny Lindholm Thriller series. By the eighth book, the publication process should be polished, refined, and trouble-free, right?

Wrong, dead wrong.

Each new book presents its own set of unforeseen and unforeseeable problems.

Deep Fake Double Down had its fair share of (mis)adventures.

Here’s a synopsis: A corrupt prison warden covers up the murder of an inmate by creating deep fake “evidence” against an innocent female corrections officer. The videos go viral on social media and soon every cop in Montana is gunning for her. 

Initial drafts went well with encouraging comments from critique groups.

Target release date was January, 2023. Notice the past tense.

The story was on a roll, about 75% done. Then in December, my beloved Windows 7 computer died. Here is the obituary.

Now I had to learn a new Mac computer with unfamiliar commands. At the same time, the all-important third-act climax of the story needed to be written. The process forced me to reach deep inside my creative soul…

…to come up with adequate curse words to express my frustration!

The working title “Deep Fake” was dramatic, punchy, and hinted at the story conflict. My initial research found only a few books using “Deep Fake” in the title. All were several years old, and one was categorized as “humorous erotica.” Whatever that is, it wasn’t a comparable for my story.

My talented cover artist Brian Hoffman designed an excellent cover here:

I checked off those tasks on the to-do list…or so I thought.

Now to research. Artificial intelligence and deep fakes are complex and rapidly changing. The more research I did, the more I knew I was over my head. I had to find experts to guide me. The story needed enough detail to give readers a taste of technology but without slowing down the momentum of a fast-paced thriller.

With seven previous books, I’d been fortunate to find experts easily. From drones to elder fraud watchdogs to fire lookout towers, specialists were willing and generous about sharing their knowledge.

Not this time.

I reached out to authors, engineers, and software designers whose articles I’d studied. I explained I was writing a thriller about deep fakes and asked if they’d review passages for accuracy and authenticity.

Two initially agreed. A month later, the first one ghosted me. Two months later, the other one, from a major university, unexpectedly had to clear it with the “compliance department.” She wrote back that the compliance department told her manuscript review was not permissible because they were an “FFRD center.”

What’s FFRD? I had to look it up.

Turns out it’s “federally funded research and development.” Not sure what that has to do with a fictional story but no means no. Scratch that source.

Contacted more experts in the field. No responses. Clock ticking.

Back to the title. If my book had launched in January as originally planned, the title Deep Fake would have been fine. But…

…in March, bestseller Ward Larsen released his new political thriller entitled…Deep Fake. With deep fakes prominent in the news, obviously I wasn’t the only writer eager to tackle the subject. Ward beat me to the punch and I’m glad he’s doing well with his book.

However, now my book needed a new title. I enlisted help from a focus group of trusted writing colleagues. They came up with a slew of good alternatives. Brian created a new cover with the new title, Deep Fake Double Down.

A month before release, I put the book up for pre-order, certain I could finish the remaining items on the to-do list before the deadline to upload the final manuscript.

Some parts of the process fell into perfect alignment. Steve Hooley came up with a terrific marketing idea. Recently he wrote about side hustles for writers, including his own hand-crafted legacy wood pens.

The McGuffin in my story is a secret mine of rare Montana Yogo sapphires, a treasure that’s worth killing for.

Deep Fake Sapphire Pen by Steve Hooley

Steve kindly offered to create a custom design as a marketing premium: the “Deep Fake Sapphire pen.” What a thrill when these arrived in the mail! For a chance to win a beautiful pen and a signed paperback, please visit my website.

Other marketing opportunities arose, including several speaking invitations, a magazine interview, and a radio chat with TKZ’s own John Gilstrap and his cohorts, retired Admiral Bill Stubblefield and Rob Mario.  Many thanks, John!

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking but I still hadn’t connected with any deep fake/AI experts.

Finally, an astrophysicist friend connected me with TED fellow Peter Haas, but he wasn’t available to talk until a week before the deadline. Gulp.

Peter’s input was worth the wait. He corrected info that was outdated because of new developments. He taught me cool new jargon like NerF (neural radiance field, not to be confused with those squishy game balls), Tor (a web browser that makes you anonymous), and exit node (a relay to anonymously send and receive traffic on the net).

The explosion of deep fakes has understandably led to increasing distrust of news sources. Peter talked about two groups with the mission to protect provenance of information. Content Authenticity Initiative and Project Origin are supported by Adobe and Microsoft/EDC/New York Times respectively, using digital watermarks to verify that videos, photos, and other digital data do indeed come from the sources they are purported to be from.

Don’t worry—the above won’t be on the test!

Needless to say, Peter’s input required frantic rewrites of several scenes.

At the dizzying rate that AI is changing, it’s impossible to stay current. The best a writer can do is choose a moment in time and set the story at that moment.

Remaining tasks on the to-do list:

  1. Read the entire book out loud.
  2. Final, final, final proofread (this occurs after copyeditor proofreads).
  3. Format the ebook. Here are screen shots of two formatting styles offered by Draft2Digital and Kindle Create.

Side note: you can format with D2D then upload the epub or pdf to Kindle. Although I prefer the appearance of D2D templates (this example is called “Grime”), the Amazon process goes smoother if you use Create to format the Kindle version.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 Final, final, final read-through of the preview.

5. Upload to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

6. Upload to other markets through D2D (using the Grime template).

Another side note: In a perfect world, the ebook and paperback would go on sale the same day. Rather than delay release until the paperback was ready, I decided it was more important to meet the April 25 launch date for the ebook.

  1. Format the paperback (formatting for ebook and print book are different).
  2. Upload the paperback to KDP.
  3. Order a proof copy, which is scheduled to arrive in a few days.

Two days before the deadline, I crossed off the remaining items on the to-do list except for:

10, After reviewing the paperback proof, hit the final “Publish paperback” button.

11. Order a box of author copies.

12. Stock the warehouse (otherwise known as the fireplace hearth in our home).

Yes, I proudly wear the crown of Queen in this Publishing Empire. My masthead reads: Author/editor/researcher/spell-checker/formatter/publisher/marketer/inventory control/warehouse stocker/bookkeeper/janitor.

Excuse me, Her Highness must now go vacuum.

~~~

TKZers: what are your various job titles? Which is your favorite? Which is the one you dread?

~~~

 

 

For a chance to win the Deep Fake Sapphire pen and a signed copy of Deep Fake Double Down, please join my mailing list here.

Buy links for Amazon      Other online booksellers

 

Revision and Omar Khayyam

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The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

* * *

That powerful verse from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam must surely resonate with every adult of a certain age who reads it.

Fortunately for us on The Kill Zone, however, Mr. Khayyam wasn’t writing about writing. Authors can indeed go back and cancel half a line, delete a few sentences, or even start the whole darn thing over from scratch. So, let’s talk about revision.

* * *

There are a variety of opinions on the need to revise a manuscript. Here are a few:

Clearly, not everyone agrees on the need to revise, or how much time should be spent on it. But for those who do favor spending that time, how should they approach the revision process?

* * *

In my limited experience, revision is a serious part of my writing. Although I don’t keep detailed time sheets, I’m guessing I spend at least half my time revising. (When I talk about revision, I’m not talking about fixing grammar, typos, or punctuation mistakes. Those can be fixed by software and good editors. To me, revision concerns the story itself, the way it ebbs and flows, how the underlying theme plays out, and the rhythm of the words.)

My first draft is an act of getting the story out of me and onto the page. Some of it may be good, but some of it is just plain vanilla story-telling without any spice. Revision is an opportunity to transform that first story idea into an entertaining, thought-provoking novel. But it’s also a balancing act. How do I keep the voice, the tone, the essence of the thing I created while changing it? It’s like trying to make sure you don’t spoil the wine while polishing the cup it’s in.

* * *

There are plenty of books and online resources with information about how to revise, but here are a few pieces of advice I’ve found helpful:

  1. To get a clear perspective of your work, take some time off between finishing the first draft and starting the revision process. (Sue Coletta wrote a TKZ post on Critical Distance last week.)
  2. After taking the break (which may last a week or a month), read through the first draft at one sitting, if possible. Some craft experts recommend printing the manuscript so that it’s easy to make notes on the pages.
  3. Review the overall arc of the plot: I use Scrivener’s outline feature to get the number of words in each chapter, and I add a sentence or two to describe the timeframe and goal for each chapter. Then I download this to a spreadsheet and calculate the percentage through the book for each milestone. I may rearrange the chapters (easy to do in Scrivener) or even delete sections that don’t serve the story. I may add new scenes or chapters.
  4. Revisit the characters. Is the main character well-defined and can you trace his/her arc through the plot? Do the secondary characters add spice to the story?
  5. Reread each scene. Does it tell a story in itself? Does it end with a reason for the reader to turn the page? Is the dialogue snappy?
  6. Check the pacing. Does the pacing give the reader a chance to catch his/her breath after a tense scene?
  7. Back to the beginning. Review the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page of the manuscript. Will this hook a reader?
  8. Get feedback from Beta readers. Their first-time-through reactions are invaluable.
  9. Never Give Up

This list appears to be linear, but my process is more iterative. I go back through steps #3-#7 as many times as I think I need to, and I employ a developmental editor and a copy editor to help me refine my work. I also have the good fortune to have a novelist husband who listens to my concerns and helps me figure out how to solve all the little problems that pop up as I make my way through this labyrinth called Writing.

  • So, TKZers: How important is revision to you?
  • What steps do you take to revise your manuscript?
  • What percentage of your writing time is spent revising?

Brave Words of Wisdom

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In my experience, a vital part of creating a fictional narrative is being willing to screw up when writing, followed by figuring out how to fix your mistakes, as well as understanding that very few stories are truly perfect, and, finally, knowing when to trash what you’ve written and begin anew. If I’m not careful, perfectionism and fear of failure can hold me back from creating fiction.

Today’s trio of words of wisdom is about being brave in your writing (and rewriting) and being willing to embrace mistakes, fixing what you can, and learning from what you can’t fix.

First Clare Langely-Hawthrone talks about her revision process. Then Boyd Morrison explains why it is important to not avoid making mistakes at all costs when writing. Finally, Joe Hartlaub shares another author’s courage in being willing to discard a novel that didn’t work.

I view revising as adding the second and third coats of paint to a project – each layer adds a subtly and a depth to the characters, to the setting, and to the themes that swirl around the plot. What I find the biggest challenge is avoiding what I call ‘tinkering’ – changing my mind over a minute plot point only to find it has rolling ramifications and then (in total disgust) I find I have to go all the way back and return it all to the way it was. I guess this is what people call a ‘learning process’ but I seem to be a bit ‘learning challenged’ when it comes to this – and still find myself adding complexity where NO MORE is needed! ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’ is a motto I need to have branded to my forehead.

Those who want to see the writing process in action can find me sitting in my writing studio, a converted garage in the back of our house, bleary eyed at one o’clock in the morning, determined to finish the next chapter as I’m ‘on a roll’. I might be on the internet checking on a historical reference, looking up the architecture for a historic home or searching The Times database for an event the latest fashions for that year. I might even be using the delete key to liberal advantage as part of the revision process involves getting rid of all the extraneous stuff that I find stops the flow of the narrative (sometimes bringing tears to my eyes if it was a point of historical research I spent hours on!)

Yesterday I deleted a whole chapter – painful but necessary. I then merged two minor characters to streamline the plot. I decided one scene moved like molasses and I got bogged down in worrying whether the house should have gothic archways or not…Time passed. It was one am…Time to call it quits till the red pen, the axe and the delete key were brought back out to do it all again.

Ah the joys of revision. You just got to be brave…

Clare Langley-Hawthorne—September 15, 2008

 

In writing, trying to eliminate mistakes is the mistake. Yes, there are objective errors that you want to avoid in a novel. Don’t put a safety on a Glock pistol. Don’t make your continuity and timelines inconsistent. Don’t change the name of a character halfway through. These are indisputable mistakes, and yet I have seen them all in novels. Bestselling novels.

In one of my own books, THE ARK, I explained that the elevators of a slowing airplane lowered to maintain altitude. Of course, this is incorrect. The elevators should go up to pitch the aircraft up. I’ve flown planes myself. I have a degree in mechanical engineering during which I studied fluid dynamics. I know that it was wrong, and I still made the mistake. No one—including my brother, who is a former Air Force pilot—caught the error until the book was in stores. No one died, and only one reader has ever brought it up (in fact, it’s the only reason I know the mistake happened). However, the error still bugs me.

What’s more insidious for a writer is the avoidance of subjective mistakes. We want to get everything right in a story: characters, plot, twists, literary merit, creativity, emotional resonance. We want the story to be perfect, and impatient people like me want it to be perfect from the moment we start typing it.

But it never is. It can’t be. Ever. I bet you’d only be able to come up with a tiny list of  stories that didn’t have a single thing you’d change. And even then, go look at the Amazon reviews for those books. You’ll find at least a few people (and sometimes hundreds of them) who don’t agree with your definition of perfection.

Voltaire is considered the originator of the phrase, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” We’re afraid that if our story isn’t perfect, it won’t be good enough. The idea for a novel that we have in our minds never comes out on the page like we imagine. Sometimes we can’t write at all because we’ll be disappointed that it won’t come out perfectly formed on the first try.

What we have to come to terms with is that making mistakes is part of the process. That’s how we learn. That’s how we make art. My wife, who is sometimes frustrated when I delay delivering pages to her to edit, gave me a T-shirt for Christmas that says, “Even if it’s crap, just get it on the page.” That notion can be freeing if you take it to heart. You can’t make it better if it doesn’t exist in the first place.

I’m getting more comfortable with making mistakes, but it’s a daily struggle. The lesson slowly worming its way into my head is that to fixate on creating the perfect novel results in creating nothing. So I’m learning to focus on the right thing: getting a story out that reflects my voice, where even the flaws and imperfections are unique to me.

Boyd Morrison—April 22, 2013

 

You may know of John Clarkson. He is an extremely talented author whose novels, particularly those in his current James Beck series, stand as an example of what the job of writing looks like when it is perfectly and professionally done. John intermittently blogs and recently told a story about his current work-in-progress. I will summarize it but you really need to read John’s brief dissertation to get the full flavor of what happened. John describes the process of writing what would have been the third novel in the Beck series, and realizing, upon completion, that it didn’t work (and why). He concluded that it could not be fixed so he trashed it and started over. His account is illuminating, tragic, hopeful, and ultimately inspiring. Oh, and it is very brave, too. John, in workmanlike, understated prose gives us the reasons why what would have been his latest novel didn’t come together. Ouch. How many of us would willingly and intentionally exhibit what we perceived to be a screwup on the internet town square in a forthright manner and without reservation? I know of at least one person who would pause before doing so. He’s typing these words right now.

The truth is that John is not alone in what he went through, though he is certainly walking point when describing the experience. Not every written volume of every successful series makes it to the finish line.  They lay on the blacktop and the finish line rises up to meet them. Sometimes being successful is as much knowing what doesn’t work as what does work, and being brave enough to pull the pin, rather than hoping that no one will notice. There is a term used for these books which don’t make pass the author’s own white glove test. Such manuscripts are called “trunk novels.” I am reasonably sure that every successful author has at least one. I daresay that we will probably not walk with Jack Reacher down every mile of middle America that he traverses, or that we see the account of every mystery that Spenser or Bryant and May encounter and/or solve. What is different here is that John takes us through the process of determining whether the book goes to the agent or the trunk. It’s not a pretty sight, but it’s an informative one.

Joe Hartlaub—July 13, 2019

***

  1. Do you revise bravely? How do you kill your darlings?
  2. How do you deal with perfectionism? Do you embrace your mistakes?
  3. Have you ever had to trash an entire novel and start over? How did you handle that?

***

Brand-new librarian Meg Booker is just supposed to be checking out books.

Instead, it’s the patrons who are being checked out–permanently.

A Shush Before Dying releases in ebook on April 29, 2023, with print to follow.

Preorder from these retailers.

Your Elusive Creative Genius

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What’s the source of human creativity? Where’s the house of imagination? The plane of intelligence where endless thoughts are stored and originality is delivered upon demand?

I’m sure every writer—alive or long gone—has pondered these questions, and I’m not sure if anyone’s discovered the truth. The truth, that is, whether there’s one single answer. I sure don’t pretend to have that answer, but I’m comfortable there’s some sort of… call it a non-tangible muse.

What got me going on this morning’s piece is spending the past two months experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) as a writing aid. A creativity tool to help with writing research and, to some degree, with creative content production. The result is a new release titled OpenAI/ChatGPT—A Fiction Writer Talks Shop with a Bot.

My conclusion was simple. Although AI is a game-changer in the content writing world, it in no way comes close to what an inspired human being can produce. So that circles back to my opening questions. What’s the source of creativity, imagination, and original  thought? I’m certain it’s certainly not a bot.

I’ll defer to Elizabeth Gilbert. She’s the author of the successful (by anyone’s standards) book Eat, Pray, Love that became a movie starring Julia Roberts. I just rewatched a marvelous TedTalk given by Ms. Gilbert called Your Elusive Creative Genius. You can view it here.

Gilbert reflects on why her book was so successful. She also ponders a psychological follow-up where she felt she was doomed in never being able to produce better work. “I was afraid to top that. Paralyzed by rejection where I’d die on a scrapheap of broken dreams, my mouth filled with the ash of dismal failure.”

She felt her greatest success was behind her, and she talked of why artistry leads to anguish with so many creative minds fading away into a tragic death count.

Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the source of creativity. She talks of Greek and Roman history where the Greeks believed Damon entities inspired creativity and the Romans believed creativity dwelled with the Genius. Gilbert then speaks of the Renaissance where the enlightened were certain all human creativity existed right inside the person themselves, not with outside inspiration from their muse.

As Gilbert says, believing humans were at the center of the creative universe brought with it unimaginable expectations because the creative process doesn’t always behave rationally. Isn’t it better, she asks, to share responsibility with another force. Can we divide both success and failure with our muse and credit it when things go right and blame it when things go wrong?

Gilbert’s grasp shows as she speaks of African dancers who transcend into a detached state when inspired by a deity—an inspirational force not of this world. Then she brings it back to earth and wraps up with a look at writing reality.

To be creative and imaginative, Elizabeth Gilbert says, consistently do your job. Show up, do your piece, and the inspiration—the elusive creative genius will come to you.

Kill Zoners—What’s your creative source? Where does your creativity come from?

Finding The Beginning

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By John Gilstrap

It’s rare that the Chapter One I start with when writing a new book lives on as Chapter One in the final version. Usually, it’s a structural thing. I’ll realize after I’m a couple of dozen (or a couple of hundred) pages that I set the story up the wrong way. Sometimes, this leads me to move existing chapters around, and sometimes it leads me to write whole new sections. It’s all part of the process.

The lure of the prologue.

We all know that in the suspense genres, readers expect something big, plot-wise, in the opening pages of a book, yet as authors we have twenty pages of setup and backstory in our heads that we want to reveal so that the Big Moment will make more sense when it arrives.

“I know!” the writer says to himself. “I’ll start with a really exciting moment from Act 2 that will pique the readers’ interest, and I’ll call it a prologue. After that, they’ll endure those twenty boring pages because they know something exciting is coming.”

Sounds silly, doesn’t it? It’s the same silliness that explains why prologues are largely reviled and spell real danger coming from a rookie writer.

Action wins the day every time.

Here’s the opening (for now) of my current Jonathan Grave WIP (with apologies up front for the formatting glitch that I don’t know how to fix:

            JoeDog growled.

Jonathan Grave snapped awake and snatched his cocked and locked Colt 1911 .45 from the edge of his nightstand. As his right thumb touched the safety, his left thumb depressed the button for the muzzle light, launching an 800-lumen disk that revealed the entirety of his bedroom. If there’d been an intruder, the bad guy would be dead now.

But the room was empty, save for Jonathan and the ever-flatulent 65-pound Labrador retriever that shared his bed tonight.

I write every series book with the assumption that it is the first time a reader has encountered Jonathan’s world. At this stage, the action of the scene is everything. Readers don’t need any of the backstory. They know that there’s a guy who’s cautious enough to sleep with a loaded pistol on the nightstand, likable enough to share his bed with a big dog, and that the dog senses danger. If the first paragraphs drive readers to read the succeeding paragraphs, they have done their job.

Lessons from Harry Potter.

An exercise I love to lead when I do seminars is to ask students to tell me when Harry Potter’s story begins. (Spoilers ahead for the 5 people on the planet who’ve neither read the books nor watched the movies.) Hands shoot up and invariably, someone says the story begins when Baby Harry is delivered by Hagrid to the doorstep of the Dursley home.

Nope.

Okay, then it begins when Dumbledore sucks the light out the street lamps with his magical Zippo.

Nope.

Those events do, indeed, mark the beginning of the book and movie, but not the beginning of the story. The story begins 10 years before Harry was born, when James and Lilly Potter–Harry’s parents–were mean to a teenage Severus Snape. The backstory that emerges from those bygone years ultimately have a massive impact on the overall plot, but Rowling had the good sense not to start with that backstory.

In Medias Res

A quick peek into Encyclopedia Britannica, in medias res translates from Latin as “in the midst of things.” It’s a phrase used by every writing instructor as the place to begin a story for maximum impact on the reader. It’s worth considering. If you hook the reader at the beginning, and you keep the journey interesting, readers will follow to wherever you want to take them.

What say you, TKZ family? Does the proper beginning elude you at times? How do you find it?

How To Tell Someone
That Their Baby Is Ugly

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“I love criticism just so long as it’s unqualified praise.” — Noel Coward

By PJ Parrish

So your friend whips out the phone and before you can slither away, out come the pictures of the new baby.

“Look at that face! Have you ever seen a prettier little girl?” new dad beams.

She looks like Karl Malden. What do you say?

  1. “What a beautiful child!”
  2. “Yup, that’s some baby you’ve got there.”
  3. “Are you still within the return period?”

I ask this today because a good friend of mine has an ugly baby problem. The son of her best friend has just published his first book, a sci-fi thriller about the world maybe sorta coming to an end. She read the book while here and says it is terrible. Like terrible in cardboard characters and incomprehensible plot. And now she has to go back and face her friend. Avoiding the writer’s mom is no-go because they play pickleball every week. She asked me what to say because she knows I’ve done a ton of manuscript evaluations and I once made my living as a dance critic.

What did I tell her? I suggested that she say that the genre was not her cup of chai, and thus she isn’t the best person to judge. Which was a true lie. She never reads crime fiction, and the idea of the world ending in ether gives her the creeps. Just to be safe, I read the first couple chapters, and yeah, the book is awful. So I think I told her the right thing. I dunno. I hope so.

I have been in her position. Over the decades, many friends and co-workers have asked me to read their mystery manuscripts, and while none were butt-ugly, not a one was publishable. I gently told them their work needed work before it could be seen in the harsh light of day. (This was mainly in pre-self-pubbing era). Most took it well. Some kept trying, a few quit, one guy never spoke to me again. A good friend, who was trying to write a mystery about retired NFL players, switched to non-fiction and got published by a good small press to great blurbs and national reviews .

Ugly Dog winner Phoebe with proud parents

Brief digression. I don’t have any ugly kids. I have an ugly dog. So ugly she won the Ugly Dog Contest in Williamston, Michigan. First prize was three bags of golf-ball sized kibble, which I donated to the police canine unit. I also won a gift certificate to J&B Boots, which got me a nice pair of Italian kicks. They wrote a story about my dog in The Williamston Enterprise, which hangs framed in my office.

Giving criticism is a fine art. Our own John Gilstrap wrote about his adventures in critique groupland recently. Click here. It’s a little easier when the person you’re critiquing is a stranger and there’s no face-to-face time. But the basic rule still applies: You need to fair and you can’t crush someone’s spirit. I think about this every time I do a First Page critique here at The Kill Zone. I have a process I always go through:

  1. First, I read the whole 400 or so words quickly, without any eye toward editing. I try very hard to read it as only a reader would who has just bought the book. Does the opening pique my interest?
  2. Second, I ask myself: Do I have any prejudices against this TYPE of book that would make me unduly negative or even ignorant? For instance, I’m not a big sci-fi fan, and I’m clueless about what works in YA these days. So I read such submissions with that caveat.
  3. Next, I ask myself if the submission has something to teach all our readers. It’s not enough to just red-ink grammar mistakes or such. I look for a larger issue in each submission that can help all our writers learn.
  4. Sometimes, you get a submission that just isn’t up to snuff enough to critique. The writer hasn’t yet gotten the basics of the craft down. I decline to do these.
  5. Finally, I do a submission only if I can find something good to say about it.

That last one is important. Because I remember how hard it was to get any feedback when I was trying to publish my first mystery back in the late 1990s. Even though I had had four romances published by a big house, I was clueless about mysteries. When I showed my agent my freshman attempt, she told me I didn’t understand the unique structure of a mystery. “Go home and read,” she said. “Start with P.D. James and Michael Connelly.”

Today, when I do a critique, I use the Hamburger Method:

  • Start out by staying something nice.
  • Insert a big juicy slab of criticism.
  • End with saying something encouraging.

A few other things I’ve learned about giving criticism:

Resist the urge to fix the problem. Unless you really have the solution, it’s not a good idea to offer up the answer to another writer’s problem. You don’t know their book; you’re not inside their head. They have to find their way.
Watch your tone. Being snarky is, unfortunately, encouraged in our culture today. Be firm but kind.
Don’t take out your frustrations on someone else. Your own WIP is falling apart. Your plot has more holes than a cheese grater. Your Acer died and your geek can’t do a data retrieval. Don’t take it out on someone else’s baby.
Don’t boost your own ego. Don’t go all alpha dog, using criticism to show how sharp you are. Nobody likes a bully.
Be empathetic. You’ve probably had the same problems the other guy is having. So tell him how you fixed your book’s issues.

Okay, so you’re done reading a friend’s manuscript. Or you’ve been doing your part in the weekly critique group. You’ve been kind, you’ve been constructive, you’re offering up suggestions that you think might cause a light bulb to go off over the other writer’s head. And then…

They turn on you. You don’t understand their genre. You’ve missed their plot points. You’re supposed to hate their protagonist. You’re just biased against second-person omniscient. I call these folks the Yeah Buts. “Yeah, but if you keep reading, things will get clearer.” “Yeah but if you read more dystopian Victorian zombie fiction, you’d understand what I’m going for.”

You can’t help a Yeah But. They don’t want to hear anything except how great their stuff is. Don’t get angry. You did what you could. Smile and walk away. Sometime, an ugly baby is nothing but an ugly baby with an ugly parent.

 

The Big (or Little) Screen

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Based on my experience, when a collection of writers gather around drinks or the figurative campfire talking about books, current projects, and other authors, the conversation eventually gets around to movies.

Last August, I briefly touched on movie deals in my discussion titled, Those Little (and Big) Disappointments. When I was a green as grass author, my first novel attracted enough attention for a producer to reach out and offer a movie deal. The production company wrapped up filming Winter’s Bone liked The Rock Hole, and called me direct to offer a movie deal. However, my starter agent (which I fired not long after that offer) started playing games with the company and they quickly threw up their hands and backed away from the project.

At that time, I didn’t realize how lucky I was for movie people to consider my work, and for that, I’m honored. Other writer friends have movie deals, have seen their works turned into movies, and even have television series. Like books, film is another form of entertainment and all of us who write would like to see our projects on the big, or little, screen. Some are lucky and occasionally, lightning strikes twice and they get both.

Good for them!

Other friends receive option money each year, and it’s significant in most cases. These books are in the chrylaslis process of evolving into screenplays, or are under discussion. As I watch these colleagues twist on the hook I’ve come to understand this part is tedious and frustrating to most of those involved.

As my old man said a thousand times, “Almost, but not quite.” He also said, “Well, dog my cats,” when he was perplexed or frustration, which I’ve used on occasion to my daughters’ consternation.

A few years ago I wrote the screenplay for The Rock Hole, and that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Distilling 90,000 to 100,000 words down into 120 formatted pages that are mostly dialogue almost made my head explode as I worked to preserve the tension, character arcs, sense of place, and relevant dialogue that made the book successful.

I read William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade and it was fascinating. Full of advice and anecdotes, it helped me get over the hump of finishing my own project because it has the complete screenplay of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In addition, a friend gave me a copy of the Lonesome Dove script back in 1990, and I spent a considerable amount of time comparing what was included, and excluded, from the novel.

With those guides in place, I hammered out the screenplay, and finished with the understanding that if it ever reaches filming, it’ll likely have someone else’s name on it, but at least I can see the characters I created moving and talking (hopefully) as I see in my mind.

At this writing, The Rock Hole is under consideration of an indie producer and we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about the mechanics and funding for this future project. Am I excited. Nope. I don’t waste time on what if, but I continue to hope something will happen. Will it ever happen? I’m not holding my breath.

I ‘magine all authors would love to see their books on the screen. It would expand their exposure a thousand-fold and sell more books. But we can’t spend too much time on that possibility. We need to write instead and dream at night. It’s today’s project that requires the majority of our attention, not those finished titles on the shelf.

But good lord, be proud of them!

But back to writers’ conversations, we always express frustration that so many good books out there that could make excellent movies, yet Hollywood (an all inclusive term for movies filmed everywhere) continues to concentrate for the most part on superheroes.

Maybe it’s my bias against movies in which these characters just fight all the time, destroying cities and buildings, but not harming each other in any appreciable way. I’d like to see a bloody nose from time to time, at least, but I am of a certain age and grew up loving movies full of well-developed characters and believable plots. I doubt in my lifetime I’ll ever meet someone impervious to bullets, or can fly, or swing from spider webs, or ride on surfboards…

I don’t get it, but don’t get me wrong. I cut my teeth on comics and superheroes, and a few movies in that vein, but I’d dearly love to see original ideas.

I want great characters, interesting plots, and sweeping camerawork with inspiring music written specifically for the movie. Maybe like Last of the Mohicans, A River Runs Through It, Legends of the Fall, all based on books or novellas. Good lord, even thrillers like the original Indiana Jones movie, Alien (Aliens), Star Wars, or any others too numerous to list make me want to watch them over and over again.

But others pull me in again and again. Grosse Point Blank, because I just love that one. Tombstone, which might be an all-time favorite because it was one of the first movies the Bride and I ever saw on a postage-stamp-size screen in Arkansas, or Junior Bonner, which changed my life. They have something that hooks me every time, and this is the crux of our discussion over drinks. What is it that strikes a chord with us.

On the opposite side of the coin, Hollywood Reporter has an article I’ve pasted below that outlines the dangers of original content. Am I missing something here? When you’re hitching onto the train, maybe trying to recreate a series like Lord of the Rings (which of course was a novel) with another title including Rings, then you’re simply not getting it. Maybe if we had executives and producers who aren’t twelve-years-old, we might find adventurous souls who would like to branch out and produce movies with finite beginnings and endings, we might find something new.

Like 30 Days of Night. A vampire movie with an excellent twist.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/inside-amazon-studios-jen-salke-vision-shows-1235364913/amp/

What about you?

Why do you think authors are so interested in discussions as these when we get together?

Is it for the love of entertainment, or something else?

Or maybe we simply like quality movies and that’s all. Let’s talk about it at Bouchercon in San Diego. You’ll find me in the bar…

 

An Interview with Narrator Steve Marvel

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An Interview with Narrator Steve Marvel
Terry Odell

Actor Narrator Steve Marvel head shotI’m pleased to have Steve “Captain” Marvel, the narrator of my Mapleton Mystery series, as my guest at The Kill Zone today. We’ve been working together for eight novels and a three-novella bundle and since I’m virtually clueless about how someone works with voice rather than fingers, I asked if he’d share a bit about himself and his process. He said he’d check in from time to time, so if you have any questions for him, ask away.

A little bit about your background qualifications as a narrator.
I studied Acting at a renowned university Theatre program and have had a four-decade stage career since. That time in the theatre has taught me how to create distinguishable characters, which lends itself very well to audiobook narration. Shortly after I started narrating, I won Audible’s Audiobook Narration contest. I’m only one of four narrators to have done so. I suppose you could say I’ve developed a skill in storytelling over the years which is serving me well in audiobooks.

How long have you been narrating audio books?
I started narrating audiobooks in 2013, although I had a regular job narrating a weekly financial newsletter for four years before that. So that’s about fourteen years, all told.

What other projects do you undertake?
For audiobooks, I go for titles that seem well-written by authors who like to collaborate. I tend to work mostly in detective fiction, thrillers, and sci-fi/fantasy, although I’ve done some fascinating non-fiction work, including a chronicle of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which is surprisingly popular, and a history of Star Trek, in which I voiced the words of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. That was a hoot.

Where other voiceover is concerned, I do a fair number of video games, mostly of the lighter-hearted, more tongue-in-cheek variety. I’ve voiced a lot of silly characters, including a series of fish and one fully non-verbal game in which I played five different monkeys. Those are fascinating challenges.

What made you decide to become a narrator?
Demand rarely exceeds supply within the acting business, but I discovered audiobook narration at a time when their popularity was exploding and publishers were actively seeking voices with acting ability behind them that could effectively portray characters and not just read copy. Audiobook narration also presents the actor with the opportunity to be not only the lead of the story, but every subordinate character, as well. He often functions as director, too, so the opportunity to exercise one’s creativity is greater than in just about any other area of the business.

How do you decide what projects to pursue?
Besides the qualities I look for in both book and author that I mentioned earlier, economics play a role. I take projects that either pay an attractive rate (as a member of SAG-AFTRA, there’s an established minimum I’m allowed to accept), or which show prospects for royalty-share income adequate to compensate me for my time as a professional. Choosing the right book is part art and part science.

For audiobooks, how do you determine the voices for each character?
I look for clues within the book’s text. Obviously, gender and nationality (accent) factor prominently. Age and attitude can also come into play, as can physical characteristics—is the character described as rotund or slight, healthy or wan, etc.? The body affects how a person’s voice is produced fundamentally, so I use all clues to feel out the character’s spine, both literally and figuratively. I often adopt that physical posture as I voice the character, which changes the voice without my having to rely strictly on auditory memory.

How do you keep all the voices straight?
I typically concoct and record all the major character voices for a book after I’ve read it through and before I begin the narration. I keep a file of those audio clippings open on my computer as I record the narration and refer to it as needed to remind me of my choices for each.

How closely do you work with the author?
That tends to vary by author and publisher. For major publishers, one doesn’t always have access to the author (especially, as was the case in a narration last year, when the author had been dead for a decade!). With independent titles where author and publisher are typically one and the same, some authors are very “hands off” and only have something to say about the narration at the beginning and end of the project, and then usually about logistics. Other authors give feedback as chapters get recorded, generally about characters and specific line readings. I’ve been very fortunate to work only with authors who mostly give me creative freedom and intercede only when something really jumps out at them.

I always try to keep in close touch with the authors I work with and keep them in the loop as to my progress and any questions I might have.

What are your biggest challenges?
The sorrow of seeing worthy audiobooks go unnoticed. Many authors struggle to market their work effectively, and I feel for anyone who’s poured so much creativity into a project only to see it languish in the marketplace. Digital items can live a long time online, though, so hope springs eternal.

Steve Marvel, audiobook narratorWhat’s the favorite part of the job (not counting getting paid!)

Connecting with the characters and the story and performing an interpretation that comes out of my own creativity. Reading alone in the booth, in the dark, can have a decidedly meditative quality to it. As someone who enjoys spending his vacations on silent retreat, I find that aspect of the process very appealing.

What’s the least favorite part of the job?
Like many narrators, I find editing the audio tedious. I don’t mind voicing the edits, replacing a word or phrase here and there. What I do mind is the process of cutting out the “bad” sections to replace them with the “good.” I’m actually quite good at it, but it’s extremely time-consuming. I’d rather be narrating!

How long does it take you to record a “typical” novel?
My average audiobook runs about 10 hours in finished length. Figuring about four hours of recording/editing time per finished hour, a book takes about 40 hours of work to produce. It probably takes me another 10 hours to read the thing through initially and make notes.

As an author, I compose my manuscripts at the computer, using Word. I’m always moving things around, finding better words, and fixing mistakes. With a word processor, it’s a very simple task. I have copy, cut, and paste commands at my disposal. I can highlight a sentence or phrase and drag it somewhere else in the manuscript, or delete it altogether.
What do you do with the first narration of the manuscript before you return it to the author? Do you hire out to have someone clean up the sound quality? (And could you describe what kinds of things have to be cleaned?)
Because my recording environment is particularly quiet (I have my own “isolation” booth at home), I generally don’t have to do much to the audio before I send it off to the author. I edit out mistakes and misreads as I go along, using a technique known as “punch and roll” to erase the unwanted audio and replace it with the proper reading as I continue on with the narration. When I finish each chapter, I run the audio file through what we call an “effects chain”, which is just the software taking out any low-level hiss and normalizing all the volume levels in the file.

What about matching the narration to the manuscript? Do you have someone else take a pass through the manuscript to avoid as many missed bits as possible, or do you rely on the author for that step?
I tend to work with a proofer to check my audio after I’ve recorded it against the manuscript. That person specializes in proofing audio, so she picks up the vast majority of glitches and misreads. I’ve tried to do it myself, listening to each file after I’ve recorded it. I can say without qualification that I’m now happy to pay someone to do that for me.

Then, the bigger questions. If there’s a notation that you read a word/sentence wrong, what’s your process for fixing it? Can you drop in or replace a single word? Do you go back and re-read the sentence? The paragraph? Would you be willing to walk us through your process?
As I mentioned before, if I catch a mistake as I’m narrating, I immediately correct it and move on. For mistakes the proofer catches, it can be time-consuming to match newly-recorded audio to the old—distance between mouth and microphone and the condition of the voice can vary between recording sessions—so I prefer to re-record as little as possible to replace misreads or bad sound in a file. That means I typically re-read just the phrase containing the wrong word—that is, that part that falls between breaths, as those are natural pauses. So I tend to replace phrases and rarely whole paragraphs. Occasionally, I’ve re-recorded a single word, though mostly when the word stands alone for some reason. More common than replacing a single word is removing an extraneous one without having to re-record the whole phrase.

Also, rather than re-record a correction multiple times, I’ll sometimes “tweak” the correction I’ve read with a software tool—raising or lowering the volume or pitch slightly, for example. Over the years, I’ve developed a number of tricks I can use to reduce my editing time. One still has to listen to each edit itself, of course, to make sure it’s acceptable.

Audible doesn’t require a 100% match of audio with the ebook. Do you grumble when an author asks you to fix minor glitches, like “a” for “the”, etc.? Or do you discuss whether it’s worth changing with the author?
If the sense of the writing doesn’t change due to an omitted, added, or altered small word, I tend to leave it alone and try to prevail on the author to let it be. There is a cost, in time, to editing. Editing audio takes a surprisingly long time, due largely to the need to match old and new sound, as I mentioned previously. If I’ve requested the author to leave an “alternate read” as is and she pushes back, I go back and make the edit. Perhaps I’m lucky, but I’ve never yet worked with an author whose requests I’ve found to be unreasonable. Perhaps I’m also easy to get along with!

What about the less obvious parts of the narration? I know you and I talked about some of the characters and what they should sound like before you began the narration. But what if there’s a difference of opinion about things like inflection, or emphasis on a word when the author listens—things that aren’t obvious when you read a manuscript. Does it bother you to have to go back to fix those types of narration?
It’s funny—there’s a great deal of talk about “micromanaging” in the online narrator forums. Possibly due to luck, or possibly because I do so much preparation with the authors I work with beforehand, I’ve never had such a difference of opinion with an author that there were very many things to change. It’s rare that authors I work with request very much, so with what few requests for such changes I get, I’m usually happy to comply. You and I have had a discussion or two about pronunciations of certain words, which I believe we split about 50-50 to change or to not.

(An aside from Terry: An example from my work. “either” (and “neither”). I prefer “EEther, but Steve had recorded “EYEther” and I didn’t make him go back and change them.)

I think things also come down to a matter of confidence. I’ve narrated enough books to feel very confident in what I’m doing—and I’ve had a decades-long acting career to bolster the performance aspect—so I assume that confidence suffuses my dealings with the author. Having confidence tends to make one more accommodating, because he isn’t threatened by disagreement, and it also makes him sensitive to others’ wishes, because he’s not caught up in defending his own. Confidence tends to be contagious, so I suppose because of that, again, I just don’t encounter very many differences of opinion with the authors I work with.

Steve recently completed the narration of Deadly Relations, my newest Mapleton Mystery. You can listen to a sample on my website (upper left), and find buying options here.

For more about Steve, visit his website.

Cover image of Deadly Relations by Terry OdellAvailable Now in digital, paperback, and audio formats

Deadly Relations.

Nothing Ever Happens in Mapleton … Until it Does

Gordon Hepler, Mapleton, Colorado’s Police Chief, is called away from a quiet Sunday with his wife to an emergency situation at the home he’s planning to sell. A man has chained himself to the front porch, threatening to set off an explosive.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”

First Page Critique – Special Agent Jonas Stone

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Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

 

By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Welcome to another Brave Author who’s submitted a first page for critique. The story is untitled so I used the name of the likely main character.

Please read and enjoy then we’ll discuss.

~~~

2 years ago, Port of Chicago

“All positions report in,” Special Agent Jonas Stone released the transmission button on the communicator attached to his wrist.

“Sierra 6, good to go,” the team leader of the Special Weapons and Tactics Team sounded off from their tactical vehicle.

“Sierra 3, on station and sighted in,” the sniper team responded.

“Sierra 5, off the shore and set up in case they try to break out of the port,” the Marine Unit called in.

The rest of the perimeter posts completed their check in.

“That’s all of them,” Jonas looked over at his partner in the passenger seat of their SUV.  Special Agent Michael Lock had been with Jonas since the beginning of their time together with the Secret Service.  These last twelve years Mike had become like a brother, something Jonas missed from his time in the military.

“Let’s just hope everything is going as planned for Eddie,” Mike said, the worry etched on his face.  “I don’t want to face the wrath of Linda if something happens to him.”

Jonas shook his head thinking about the firecracker that was Eddie’s wife.  The old adage of Murphy’s Law, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” reared its ugly head right from the beginning of the operation.  The transmission wire set up on their snitch, or confidential informant as Mike liked to correct Jonas when talking about Eddie, completely malfunctioned.  Mike had a soft spot for Eddie, more so than even Jonas.

“What time is it?” Jonas asked.

“2200 hours.”

Eddie has always been reliable.  When it came to snitching, he was the best Jonas’ had ever worked with, the gold standard.  Some of the biggest cases in the Chicago Field Office, dealing with everything from counterfeit U.S. currency to child pornography cases, were thanks to Eddie.  Jonas and Mike looked out for him and made sure he got paid handsomely for his contributions over the years.

“It’s been over an hour, and we haven’t heard any word from him,” Jonas pressed, knowing the success of the operation will come down to the signal from Eddie.

This wasn’t just another case for Jonas.  This was personal.

“It’ll work out, Jonas,” Mike seemed to pick up on his anxiety.  “Eddie will come through, he always does.  Today, we will take down the bastards that killed Jade.”

Jonas’ eyes misted over, and he couldn’t speak.  He had investigated this human smuggling ring for the last six months.  They had been responsible for his daughter’s disappearance and heinous death, but the evidence was lacking.  The case finally got a shot in the arm thanks to Eddie.  He had provided information that there was a vessel in one of the harbors of the Port of Chicago that was going to be loaded with two CONEX boxes containing local kidnapped girls bound for New York City.

~~~

Okay, let’s get started.

2 years ago, Port of Chicago – This is evidently a chapter heading for what appears to be a prologue. It suggests within a few pages the story will jump forward to present day.

Some readers love prologues, some hate ’em. I don’t care either way. But consider deleting “2 years ago” and just use “Port of Chicago.” Then, if the story does jump forward, the heading of the next section could be, “Two years later.”

This story is about human trafficking and features a Secret Service team poised to arrest perpetrators in the Port of Chicago. The subject is timely and compelling, making it a good choice for what sounds like a thriller or police procedural.

Featuring the Secret Service as the lead agency is another good choice because it hasn’t been used as frequently as the FBI and other police agencies. That makes it stand out among other books in the genre, especially if the Brave Author adds fresh insights to the Secret Service’s particular duties, like counterfeiting and child pornography, that are also mentioned.

The Port of Chicago is a dramatic setting because it offers plenty of dangerous backdrops for action to unfold.

I had to look up CONEX boxes but that’s okay because the use of a specific type of shipping container lends authenticity.

When balancing between too much description vs. not enough, I believe it’s better to err on the side of not enough, especially at the beginning of the story, to not slow the action. However, BA might consider adding more setting details a bit later to bring the locale to noisy, colorful, smelly, vivid life.

BA selected an effective point to begin the story. The agents are in the middle of a tense operation, in media res, and they have a problem—their most reliable snitch hasn’t been heard from. The success of the mission rests on him and his wire isn’t working. The stakes are upped even higher because the villains are responsible for the death of the daughter of the POV character, Special Agent Jonas Stone.

Good job setting up the story problem and stakes!

A small aside: names that end with “s” can be inconvenient. You have to decide if the possessive is Jonas’s or Jonas’ (either is correct) then remain consistent. Also, it can lead to unneeded apostrophes such as the best Jonas’ had ever…

One last consideration: this might eventually become an audiobook. Jonas Stone is a mouthful for the narrator.

This doesn’t mean BA shouldn’t use the name, simply to consider it can add small problems.

Let’s look at characterization. Jonas Stone has been partnered for 12 years with Mike Lock and they are like brothers. Jonas was formerly in the military. Jonas cares about his “snitch” Eddie but not as much as Mike does. Jonas lost his daughter Jade to the traffickers they are now targeting.

This is all good background information, but it is TOLD to the reader, rather than SHOWN. Showing engages the reader more with Jonas.

Use the first eight lines then try reworking their conversation. Here’s a sample of SHOWING (in blue) more than TELLING.

“Everyone’s checked in.” Jonas glanced at Mike Lock, his partner of twelve years, sitting in the passenger seat of their unmarked Secret Service SUV. Jonas gnashed his chewing gum. “Still, this operation has Murphy’s Law written all over it.”

“Tell me about it,” Mike answered. “If something goes wrong, I don’t want to be the one to explain to Eddie’s wife that his wire didn’t work.”

“Yeah, he’s helped us close a lot of cases. Best snitch I ever worked with.”

Mike looked down his nose. “That’s confidential informant.”

“All right, all right, I get it,” Jonas snapped then regretted his sharpness.

Mike was right—some of the biggest cases in the Chicago Field Office, everything from counterfeit U.S. currency to child pornography cases, were thanks to Eddie. Jonas and Mike made sure he was paid well, and he always delivered.

After a few seconds of silence, Mike’s elbow nudged Jonas’s shoulder. “You OK, buddy?”

“Yeah.” No, Jonas wasn’t OK. This case was personal. These same traffickers had murdered his daughter, Jade.

“Eddie will come through for us. He always does.” Mike cuffed Jonas’s arm. “Today we’re gonna get the evidence to take the bastards down. For Jade.”

Same info but it’s SHOWN with dialogue, tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, and internal monologue.

To ramp up an already-tense situation, consider adding a ticking clock. For instance:

Jonas asked, “What time is it?” 

“Twenty-two hundred hours.” 

“Wonder how long those kidnapped girls can survive in CONEX containers. Aren’t they air-tight?” 

A few typos and minor nits:

“2200 hours.” – Spell out numbers in dialogue: “Twenty-two hundred hours.”

Eddie has always been reliable. – Change of tense. Eddie had always been reliable.

…the best Jonas’ had ever worked with – delete apostrophe.

…word from him,” Jonas pressed, – pressed isn’t a normal verb to describe speech. Maybe stick with said but add a physical gesture like: Jonas clutched the steering wheel. 

…the operation will come down to the signal from Eddie. – change to the operation would come down.

Brave Author, you chose a timely crime with high stakes. The story starts with action, tension, and suspense. Putting your characters in the Secret Service offers a chance to explore their special duties that aren’t widely known to the public—a value-added bonus for the reader.

The main character has an urgent, driving need to put his daughter’s killers behind bars. If BA moves a little deeper into Jonas’s head and heart, the reader feels his loss more intensely and roots harder for his success.

This is a strong start that can be improved with minor tweaking. Good work and good luck with this, Brave Author!

~~~

TKZers: What suggestions do you have for the Brave Author? Would you turn the page?

~~~

 

Deep Fakes are illusion but death is real.

Debbie Burke’s new thriller Deep Fake Double Down launches on April 25, 2023. Available for pre-order now at Amazon.

Landing the Novel – The Story of the Gimli Glider

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“If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it’s an outstanding landing.” – Chuck Yeager

* * *

In July 1983, Air Canada Flight 143, a Boeing 767 airliner, took off from Montreal to fly to Edmonton with an intermediate stop in Ottawa. The trip ended somewhat prematurely.

Now, when you get ready to take a road trip, how do you handle the fuel? I’m guessing you go to the gas station and fill your car up, even if it’s a short trip, right? But airlines don’t do that. It’s common practice to load enough fuel into the plane to get it to its destination, and then on for another 45 minutes or so, to take care of any unforeseen circumstances. The reasoning is that filling the fuel tanks all the way adds a lot of weight to the plane, thereby making it more expensive to fly. There are tools to determine the amount of fuel to add to the plane before take-off.

That’s where the problem for Flight 143 began.

The fuel quantity indicator on the Canadian airplane was found to be defective, but there was no replacement available, so the crew manually determined the amount of fuel needed to fly all the way to Edmonton. This involved measuring the amount of fuel with a floatstick and doing some mathematical calculations and conversions. Mistakes were made. The plane took off on its journey and made the intermediate stop in Ottawa. As it departed Ottawa, no one knew that it didn’t have enough fuel onboard to make it to Edmonton.

The Boeing 767 is a two-engine aircraft. Flying toward Edmonton, it was at an altitude of about 41,000 feet when the left engine fuel pressure alarm sounded. The cockpit crew assumed it was a fuel pump problem and silenced the alarm, knowing the system was gravity-fed in flight. A few seconds later, the right engine fuel pressure alarm sounded. The crew decided to divert the flight to Winnipeg, but still had no idea about the real problem they were facing.

As they began their descent, the left engine stopped functioning. The crew began procedures for a single engine landing, but almost immediately, the right engine also failed. Air Canada Flight 143 was now a glider with a crew that had never been trained on a total engine-out emergency. The 767 emergency manual had no information on an unpowered landing.

Giving out of fuel in an aircraft at 35,000 feet is a problem. You can’t just pull over onto the nearest cloud and think things through. You have to land the plane. Whatever it takes, wherever you are, you have to put the plane on the ground, preferably in one piece.

Fortunately, an aircraft that has lost all power will not just fall out of the sky like a rock.  Even in a heavy airliner, the wings will provide enough lift for the plane to glide, however clumsily. Fortunately, the pilot of Flight 143 was also an experienced glider pilot, and he calculated what he thought was the best glide speed at 220 knots. That would give the plane a glide ratio of around 12:1, meaning the plane would fly forward about twelve miles for each mile it lost in altitude. Flying at 35,000 feet, they had a radius of around 80 miles to find a place to land.

The pilot instructed the first officer to locate the nearest airport.  They decided on the Royal Canadian Air Force base at Gimli. The base was closed, and the runway had been decommissioned, but the runway still existed. What the crew didn’t know was that the runway was used by car enthusiasts for racing, and there was an event in progress.

As the plane approached Gimli, the pilot realized they were coming in too high and too fast. One way to handle that in a normal airplane is to go around the field and approach at a lower altitude, but without power in the aircraft, the pilot didn’t think he had enough altitude to execute a complete turn, so he opted to perform a forward slip to land. This maneuver requires the pilot to cross-control by turning the rudder in one direction while the ailerons are turned the other way. The result is the aircraft continues its forward trajectory, but the nose is pointed at an angle to the side. The air hitting the fuselage will slow the plane and cause it to descend rapidly. The pilot will undo the cross control just before landing so the plane will be back in its correct configuration. It’s a maneuver that’s well-known to pilots of gliders or light aircraft, but is rarely to never performed in a passenger jet.

Fortunately, the people on the ground saw the 132-ton silent behemoth bearing down on them and were able to scramble clear of the runway in time.

Although the crew managed to get the landing gear down, the nose wheel did not lock in place. That turned out to be a bit of luck because, when the plane touched down, the nose wheel collapsed, and the friction helped slow the plane to a halt. It did not run off the end of the runway, and there were no serious injuries.

The aircraft was repaired and put back into service where it flew until its retirement in 2008. That airplane would forever be known as the Gimli Glider.

That was one awesome bit of flying by Captain Bob Pearson and First Officer Maurice Quintal. They deserved a medal for their piloting skill and calm in the face of imminent disaster, and they got one. In 1985, they received the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Diploma for Outstanding Airmanship.

* * *

There are similarities between flying an airplane and writing a novel. In order to fly an airplane, there are two things you have to do:

#1 – You must take off

#2 – You must land

According to Heinlein’s Business Rules (and I hope Harvey Stanbrough is reading this) there are certain things you must do when writing a novel. The first two are:

#1 – You must write

#2 – You must finish what you write

But whether you’re flying or writing, there can be some turbulence and maybe even a few surprises in between those two steps.

The writing journey will certainly include a months-long effort of plotting, drafting, outlining (or not), editing, revising, and getting feedback. But eventually, the writer has to bring the novel in for a landing.

The checklist for putting it down safely may be long. There are final edits, cover design, formatting, endorsements, copyright, ISBN, Library of Congress, and so on. It may be stressful, but at some point, you just have to let go and land the thing.

Several of us are on final approach or have recently landed our novels. Terry Odell just published Deadly Relations and Debbie Burke’s Deep Fake Double Down is available on pre-order now. My novel Lady Pilot-in-Command is in the hands of the copy editor, and beta readers are sending me feedback. Other TKZ authors have recently touched down or are approaching the runway.

Whatever the status of your work, I wish you a good journey and a happy landing.

* * *

So TKZers: Have you ever run into problems with a novel in mid-flight? How did you solve them in order to land the book? Are you on final approach or have you landed a novel recently? Tell us about it.