The joys of travel

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by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

Well here I am at Tucson airport getting ready to fly to LAX and then on to Melbourne, Australia. After such a long time on the road my family and I are looking forward to being in the one spot for more than a few days but in many ways we all regret the end of such a fabulous journey. While I could blog for hours on the greatness of the national parks I will spare you that and resort instead to a top 5 list…at least for today.

Best family experience

Hands down our wagon train experience was the best. We all got to have a tiny taste of what it must have been like on the wagon trails moving west. My boys also got to ride horses, throw tomahawks and learn how to lasso…great skills for us urbanites don’t you think!

Best camping site

The north rim of the Grand Canyon just created a new-tent only camping site loop, and we got to put up our tent less than a hundred yards away from the rim and one of the best views imaginable. This would be the perfect campervan spot too. If you were to get stuck due to power loss you could always read this guide on the best portable generator at generatorgrid in order to be prepared for the worst. In fact, the only downside, was the ‘mum-fear’ factor as twin five year olds were like “how cool is this”!

Best wildlife viewing experience

Now this is a tricky one…do we go for the bison who calmly strolled through our campground in Yellowstone or the view of the grizzly bear across the river in the Lamar Valley? Or do we go for the view of the two black bears strolling along just past our campsite in Sequoia national park (actually this one was really just another mum fear factor moment). I think I have to go for the unexpected view we had of the alpha male of the Phantom Springs wolf pack as he bounded across willow flat in Grand Teton national park. Shadowed by two lesser wolves he was huge and could easily be seen by the naked eye. It was such an awesome surprise and, for a wolf lover like me, a wonderful moment.

Best ‘Jaw Dropping’ View

The first glimpse of Yosemite valley still cannot be beat…though there were lots of close runners up…

Best Americana moment

Attending the Caribou County fair in Grace, Idaho and watching my sons’ expressions as they watched their first rodeo. It was a classic, non-touristy event that made us all appreciate the real cowboys of the west.

So just an initial taste of some of our travels…apologies for no photos as yet but that is beyond my technical capacity at this time…and we are now onto our next adventure (though we have to endure a long haul flight before then!) I will hopefully be checking in once I arrive so post me a comment and let me know some of your top 5 camping experiences.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Home Stretch

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So I’m entering the last month on my WIP. First drafting, deadline wire up ahead. I find this horserace to be a time of great exhilaration, desperation, excitement, consternation and frequent trips to Starbucks.
Even though I’ve done this dozens of times, it never feels like, “Hey, I’ve got this so nailed. No problem!”
I’m looking at all the story threads, balls in the air, knowing the ending I’m heading for but wondering how I’ll get there. In my head, I know I will, because I always do, somehow.
But in the heat of battle, writing each day, I feel like a Spartan trying to hold off Xerxes at Thermopylae.  And I suppose I wouldn’t have it any other way (especially if I was ripped like Gerard Butler).
Here’s why I wouldn’t: to be in this battle is to be alive. As Jack London once said, “I’d rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. 
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom 
of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. 
The function of man is to live, not to exist.”
Writing well is about being alive, about being out on the wire over Niagara Falls, about jumping on the back of Bucephalus and grabbing some mane. Ray Bradbury once described his writing day as getting up each morning and exploding, then spending the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
It’s about running a race ahead of a mob of angry, torch bearing townsfolk. It’s about skiing down a mountain ahead of an avalanche.
It’s about being open to all the fantastic things you can’t control, then finding ways to form a pleasing shape out of them.
Being alive, truly alive, means a degree of uncertainty. It means risk. If there’s no risk, there’s not going to be any lasting reward. If your reach does not exceed your grasp, you’ll just keep grabbing the same old leaves.
This is nowhere more pronounced than when I’m heading home on a novel. Now is that time. I’m shouting like Slim Pickens riding the atomic bomb at the end of Dr. Strangelove.
When I am at the keys and moving the fingers, I am kicking all doubts into the pit. “This is Sparta!”
What about you? How do you usually feel on the home stretch of a novel?

Dum da dum dum…

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I am writing this while sitting in a hotel located in what is known as the Central Business District of the open-air insane asylum called New Orleans. I am here for a music law seminar, listening to people much brighter than myself (and yes, a couple who, well, aren’t) discuss how to build a bigger butterfly net to use when chasing the fewer and fewer dollars that are available in the music industry. My mind was starting to wander this afternoon when one of the seminar speakers brought me back on task by saying, “And here’s another revenue stream. You all have heard of e-books? And Kindle? There’s talk of adding music to e-books.”

Whoa.

Now, newer versions of Kindle have an application which will let the user upload (download? Sometimes it’s not clear in which direction the digital river flows) music to the unit to play while reading. You connect your precious up to your computer via a USB port and uplo…er…downl…uh, transfer the music from computer to Kindle. What the speaker was talking about, however, sounds like something else entirely. This is music that would come with the e-book. As contemplated, it would be 1) genre appropriate (romantic for romance books; spooky for horror novels; and heavy metal for John Gilstrap); and 2) instrumental, so as not to distract those of us who cannot walk across the room and hold a thought at the same time.

This raises a couple of questions: 1) where is the music going to come from? 2) who is going to pay for it? and 3) will the author have controlling, or at least some, input into whether they want their precious to have musical accompaniment? It is questions 2 and 3 which should concern the wordsmiths out there. If you have signed away control of how your e-books are marketed, the answer to #3 may be “no.” And as for the answer to question 2, it may or may not be the author who is passed the check directly or indirectly, depending on how things shake out on the whole thing. Music on television and in movies and video games is not free; someone paid a lot of money to put that catchy song you walk around humming into a commercial, or at the beginning of CSI: Miami. It won’t be free for e-books either.

It is not my intent to give you something else to worry about. But authors: keep your collective ear to the ground. And you eyes open.

*****
My New Orleans sojourn is part of a ten day trip which began with three days in Franklin, Tennessee at Killer Nashville. A smaller conference which is very user friendly, Killer Nashville is aimed primarily at hopeful authors and is a wonderful way to network and learn writing tradecraft. P.J. Parrish was seemingly on every panel (that’s an exaggeration, but not by much) and showed us how a P.J. Parrish book created. Different color Post-It notes affixed to a cardboard backing are involved and it was truly a wonder to look at. It was an extremely interesting and marvelous over-the-shoulder glance at how the collective Parrish team gets the job done. Jeffrey Deaver was the guest of honor, and was extremely friendly and easily accessible to all, including his multitude on Number One Fans. He generously spent over an hour telling a jammed-to-capacity ballroom how he works his magic, from idea through completion. Jeffrey began his presentation with a basic premise that is sometimes forgotten: writing is a business. He spends eight months outlining and four months writing and when he is done and turns in the manuscript he sits down and does it all again. There is more to it than that of course but it was great to hear a strong and basic fundamental advocated so forcefully.

****

What I’m reading: THE THOUSAND by Kevin Guilfoile. Pythagoras meets a girl with a dragon tattoo who kicked a hornet’s nest while playing with fire. If I hadn’t been so busy these past ten days I would have read it in one night.

Next time: The coolest place in the world is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Seriously.

Writing As Therapy?

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By John Gilstrap

My goodness but it seems like a long time since I’ve played blogger. How’s everyone been? I’ve been typing my fingers bloody trying to meet my fast-approaching deadline for the next Jonathan Grave book. That book has a title now, by the way: Threat Warning. Look for it in 10 months.

A dear friend of mine who also happens to be a fan sent me an email a couple of weeks ago in which she wrote, “One day over some drinks, we’re going to talk about what happened to you when you were thirteen.”

She was mostly teasing, but only mostly. She was referring to the recurrent theme in my books of boys who are coping with significant danger and angst. Many of my books do in fact feature adolescent boys who find themselves in difficult circumstances. In my breakout book, Nathan’s Run, the title character is twelve. Subsequent to that, there have been 13-year-old Travis, 16-year-old Scott, and most recently, 13-year olds Evan and Jeremy in Hostage Zero.

Given such a focus, I see how one might assume that I am using fiction to work through my own childhood issues. Honestly, I don’t think I am. Fiction is fiction, and that means it’s all made up. I’ve never killed anyone, and have only been shot at once, and that happened when I was nearly twenty. To my knowledge, I have no demons to exorcize.

I do, however, have nightmares just about every night, and not infrequently, my dream-screams wake my wife, who mercifully talks me back to the present. In one hundred percent of the dreams that invade my real world like that, I am a child and I am terrified, but I never know what the source of the terror is. It never materializes for me in the dream. Once the adrenaline rush subsides, I just fall back to sleep.

Should I consult a shrink to get to the bottom of the dreams? Probably, but it’s not going to happen. I think I bring these things on myself by writing stories about people in jeopardy. Call it an occupational hazard. Maybe romance writers are constantly ripping bodices in their dreams. If the dreams are more than that—if they are representative of some repressed violence from my youth—then I’ll gratefully listen to the subconscious brain that was courteous enough to blank it from my memory. If I’m a neurotic, at least I’m a functioning neurotic, so why rock the boat?

I write about children because families in peril are a recurring theme in my books. I write about boys because that’s what I was, and our only child is male. Write what you know. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Am I kidding myself here? Am I delusional? As a writer, does your made up world ever pay unwelcome visits to your real world?

After a certain amount of time and a certain number of books, does a novelist give attentive readers an accidental look into his subconscious? Or is it all just, you know, made up?

Summer Vacation Reading List

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by Michelle Gagnon

This post is coming in a bit late thanks to United airlines and their travel delays- apologies for that.

In my last post, I asked for advice on what to read during my vacation- and got lots of great tips. Thanks to the abrupt failing of my first generation Kindle the day before I left, what I ended up reading turned out a bit differently than planned. So below, find a brief description of each book (excerpted back cover copy), along with my impressions:

THE HARD WAY

Lee Child

Jack Reacher was alone, the way he liked it, soaking up the hot, electric New York City night, watching a man cross the street to a parked Mercedes and drive it away. The car contained one million dollars in ransom money. And Edward Lane, the man who paid it, will pay even more to get his family back. Lane runs a highly illegal soldiers-for-hire operation. He will use any amount of money and any tool to find his beautiful wife and child. And then he’ll turn Jack Reacher loose with a vengeance — because Reacher is the best manhunter in the world.

I enjoyed this one. Not my favorite Reacher book (which remains the one that follows, BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE), but solid. There were a few glitches, mainly in terms of the fact that yet again, Reacher takes longer than any reasonable human to figure out what’s really going on. But THE HARD WAY was a perfect beach read.



STAR ISLAND

Carl Hiaasen



An actress secretly stands in for a derailed pop star and finds herself stalked on South Beach by a crazed paparazzo – and befriended by an unhinged hermit who was once the governor of Florida.



I’ve always been a big Hiaasen fan, and this book didn’t disappoint. Our current tabloid culture is laid bare, in all it’s ugliness, the main character a thinly-veiled stand in for all the Lindsay Lohans and Britney Spears of the world. To love Hiaasen requires being a lover of the absurd–his books always read like modern-day Moliere farces. As that, I enjoyed them. Some of his old standbys appear here, although I have to confess some of them appeared in earlier books that I barely remember, so it was hard at times to keep track of references to what they’d been/done in the past. The ending was a trifle flat, compared to other works like SKINNY DIP, which still stands as his best work IMHO.



THE STRAIN

by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

They have always been here. Vampires. In secret and in darkness. Waiting. Now their time has come.

In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country. In two months–the world.

I don’t generally partake in the vampire/zombie books that are so ubiquitous these days. But this was a standout (and, more importantly, the only non-bodice ripper on the shelf in the local drugstore). So I gave THE STRAIN a chance- and wow. This was a thriller of the first order. Apparently the first in a trilogy, it details in unnerving detail the extent to which a pandemic could rapidly seize hold if the powers that be are more concerned about containing public panic than stopping the virus. A co-written effort between director Del Toro (PAN’S LABYRINTH) and Hogan, it was tightly plotted, believable, and extremely unsettling. On a side note, the opening scene involves the stalling out of a jet on the taxiway immediately after landing. What happened to the passengers wasn’t pretty, so I don’t recommend reading it the way I did- on a plane endlessly circling SFO.



So now that we’ve reached the dog days, what have you all been reading lately? I just started WOLF HALL, which I confess I’m having a lukewarm reaction to- the writing and plot strikes me as extremely disjointed, and I’m having difficulty understanding what all the fuss is about.

Yeah, I write like that famous guy

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Do you think you write like Ernest Hemingway? Or maybe Stephen King? Now you can find out. Sort of.
 
Public discussion about a new tool called “I Write Like” made the rounds of the cyber-sphere while I was away on medical leave, so I’m sure I’m the last person on Earth to discover it.  It purports to be a “statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of famous writers.”

Even though IWL has been mocked by many in the media, the idea of comparing one’s own writing to famous authors is actually appealing. It’s as if we could run a DNA test of our writing. Who is our real parent: William Shakespeare, or (gasp) a James Patterson clone?

When I ran the first page of my WIP through the tool, it said I write like Dan Brown. I was actually shooting for something closer to Michael Crichton in my current work, but okay, no complaints from me. Then I ran a few paragraphs of an earlier draft through the program, and it told me I write like Arthur C. Clarke. That’s closer to Crichton’s neck of the solar system, right? I got stoked about that result. Until, that is, I read someplace that Lindsay Lohan also writes like Sir Arthur. And unless her writing shows depths not heretofore displayed in her public Tweets and twitterings, I think there may be a fundamental problem with the IWL’s algorithm.

Heck. I don’t care if it’s accurate or not. I can dream, can’t I? Give me Clarke’s reputation with Brown’s sales, and I’d be one happy camper.

Have you tried IWL? What was your result? 
     
— KL

The Homeward Stretch

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by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

My family and I are on the homeward stretch after visiting over ten national parks in the West over the last seven weeks. We’ve made our way from Yosemite to Yellowstone and are now in Denver en route to Tucson. Hard to believe, but this time next week we will be on a plane crossing the Pacific on our way to Australia (!). We are certainly on a huge adventure but, as we still have only limited internet connectivity, I will have to wait until next week’s blog to give a full round up of the trip. Suffice to say we had an incredible experience and one that I hope my twin boys will never forget. They have some fourteen junior ranger badges to remember it by at least! So stay tuned for my full account over the next few weeks…

In the meantime, a question for you – what was the most unforgettable journey you have ever taken? How has it influenced you as a writer? Is there a trip you would love to take and, if so, where? I have warned my husband that Africa is next on my list but I have to say I would be quite happy to retrace our steps from this trip – the national parks are awesome and a true reflection of this amazing country!

Writing Quote for Sunday

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Hope you’ve enjoyed our week of writer quotes. We’ll return tomorrow with our regularly scheduled blog. Feel free to revisit the quotes we’ve put up since Monday and add to the conversations.

Here is today’s quote, from that fellow pictured on the right.
“I write to entertain. In a world that encompasses so much pain and fear and cruelty, it is noble to provide a few hours of escape, moments of delight and forgetfulness.” – Dean Koontz
Source: How to Write Best Selling Fiction (1981, Writer’s Digest Books)

Writing Quote for Saturday

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Here is today’s quote. Would you give this same advice to someone?
“If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass. If the feeling persists, you probably ought to write a novel.” – Lawrence Block
Source: Writing the Novel (1979, Writer’s Digest Books)

Writing Quote for Friday

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We are taking the week off, but each day posting a quote about writing to spark discussion. So discuss!

“You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you afford the time to take the chance to write what you wish.” – Irwin Shaw
Source: Writers on Writing (1990, Running Press, ed. John Winokur)