Page Turning Books

Tips For Writing Ye Olde Historical Fiction
by N.S. Wikarski

“My God, they can’t expect to put ‘Ye Olde’ in front of anything they want and get away with it.”
If, like me, you’re a fan of The Big Bang Theory, you’ll immediately recognize Sheldon Cooper’s complaint about the historical inaccuracies of a Renaissance Faire, California-style.

As much as I’d like to distance myself from most of Sheldon’s opinions, I’m forced to agree with him on this point. As a writer, I’ve penned five books that are either historical (Gilded Age Chicago Mysteries) or have a strong historical element (Arkana Archaeology Thrillers). As a critic for Deadly Pleasures, I’ve reviewed my share of historical fiction (some good, some not) so believe me when I say that you can’t just put “Ye Olde” in front of anything and expect to get away with it. Authors of contemporary fiction have to juggle plot, pacing, and character development. Historical fiction writers wish it was that easy.

Timing Isn’t Everything
The first thing to consider as a historical fiction writer isn’t simply when something happened but what the world surrounding that event was like. We all know that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 but it’s a good bet that when he first landed in the Bahamas, he didn’t head for the closest Tiki bar to order a boat drink. Objects and places we take for granted in the 21^st century may or may not have existed in the corner of the past an author is exploring. To make that fictional world believable, the times as well as the timing need to be understood.

Clothes Make The Man (Or Woman)
Period costume is something that most historical authors (good and bad) get right. The only difference is that bad writers fail to think about the impact costume can have on conduct. For example, everybody knows Victorian women wore corsets. What most people don’t realize is that a woman who is laced tightly enough to give her an eighteen inch waist can’t bend, stretch, or engage in anything more strenuous than lifting a tea cup. Most of her conscious attention is focused on the struggle to breathe. She’s probably a very uptight, cranky creature for no better reason than that her underwear feels terrible. People who wear whalebone corsets or chain mail armor are going to think and feel very differently from people who wear sweat pants all day long.

The Past Is Another Country
It’s often been said that human nature doesn’t change over time. Perhaps not, but cultural values can shift radically in a heartbeat. The contemporary fiction writer has the luxury of writing about people who are immersed in the same cultural soup as she /he is. Not so a historical fiction author. Cultural values are absorbed much like the air we all breathe–invisibly and with very little conscious effort (unless, of course, you’re wearing a corset). The greatest mistake a historical fiction author can make is to believe that people in ancient times thought and felt exactly as we do today.

To write effective historical fiction you have to immerse yourself without condescension in the values of the past no matter how odd they might seem to a modern sensibility. So if you’re planning to write a historical novel any time soon, be prepared to walk around in your character’s high-button shoes. And if the shoe pinches, write it.

Of Humans, Chimps and Neanderthals
 
I recently saw an intriguing NOVA episode on PBS called ‘Decoding the Neanderthals’. The subject of human evolution has long fascinated me though I was never bright enough to pursue the study as a career. I stll prefer stone tools and cave paintings to the iPhone and social media.

Here’s the basic premise. The study of human evolution up until recently concluded that Neanderthals, our beetle-browed predecessors, were an evolutionary dead end. Their own ancestors had migrated out of Africa about 800,000 years ago. Until recently, it was believed that modern man followed the Neanderthal out of Africa about 40,000 years ago and that, ten thousand years later, the Neanderthal was gone, pushed or killed into extinction. But the recently completed decoding of the Neanderthal genome has proven otherwise.

In fact, most humans carry some Neanderthal DNA, a small amount to be sure– from 1% to 5%. What this means is, Neanderthal and modern humans mated. Not on off weekends either but on a regular basis. The theory then goes that Neaderthal was simply bred out of existence over a period of ten thousand years.

But I wonder. Doesn’t that leave open the question of where modern man came from, aside from the fact that we are told he or she came from Africa. Modern man could not have evolved directly from something more primitive than Neanderthal, miraculously jumping from Home erectus to Wall Street banker. Modern man, Cro-Magnon, whatever you want to call her/him, had to go through a phase just as Neanderthal did.

Perhaps, the migration of humans was an on-going affair, never stopping, back and forth for hundreds of thousands of years, with the various groups interbreeding all along, not just forty-thousand years ago. Change, the evolutionary process, is a constant trial and error process that may have produced many dead ends that we will never know about, but the process proceeded unhindered for millennia, leading to us. It is still going on. What, I wonder, will we look like in ten thousand years?

How I Became a Published Author

And now for the story of one eccentric writer who almost gave up before she started because she wrote things that no one was ready to publish….

Once upon a time, several long years ago, I wrote a book.  Or two or three.  I loved these books.  I was pretty impressed with myself that I could actually finish an entire novel!  More than once, even.  Those books came out of a very difficult time in my life, but they set me on the right path and made me confident that I could take on the world.  So I went to a local writer’s conference, learned everything I could about the publishing industry, and sent off about a dozen queries.

Once upon a time, I got about a dozen rejection letters back.  Each one, several of them personalized and not form letters, said that while they thought I was a good writer and liked my style, the concept of the book I’d submitted just didn’t resonate with them.  Hmm.  This was when I learned a bittersweet fact about the publishing industry: they have boxes.  For Historical Romance, there’s the Regency box, the Georgian box, the Victorian box, the Scottish Highlander box, and very few other tiny boxes.  If your book doesn’t fit into what they think they can sell, then they aren’t in the business of taking risks.

And so, disheartened and with a bad taste in my mouth about the whole thing, I put those manuscripts away.

Then, a couple years later, in 2011, I went to another writer’s conference.  Suddenly, an entirely new discussion was on the table, a little thing called Self-Publishing.  Self-Publishing was new, untried, and mysterious.  A few people had found success at it, but the majority of self-publishers at that time were considered also-rans who couldn’t get a publishing contract anywhere else.  While self-publishers were looked down on, the undercurrent was that there might actually be something to the whole craze.  It might just change the very fabric of publishing.

Of course, I knew the second I started hearing about it that self-publishing was for me.  Why?  Why would anyone in their right mind want to jump ship on the tried and true publishing industry to swim in the crowded, murky waters of a publishing method that was considered barely legitimate?  Well, for me it was two things.  On the one hand, I had solid evidence in my hands that the traditional publishing industry wasn’t ready for the types of things I wanted to write.  On the other, my personality is such that I have a hard time accepting authority without understanding why things are being done.  I chafe at being dictated to.  I don’t fit well with the popular crowd and I am completely unable to pretend that I do.  In other words, I am a maverick.

But I knew I wanted to make my self-publishing career look as close to a traditional publishing career as I could.  The structure of traditional publishing works very well, even if it isn’t the place for me.  I knew I had to pretend that I was in a traditional contract.  My first step was finding a hard-hitting, professional editor who knew their craft and who would treat my book as though it was a submission at a publisher.  I was extremely lucky to find just such an editor, someone who worked for a well-known traditional publishing company but did freelance work on the side.

Together we worked the heck out of that book.  Under her tutelage, I learned how to gut and rework a novel, what things worked and what things didn’t.  I learned to work with deadlines and to meet expectations.  I learned to pay what things were worth too, which was the hardest lesson.  That lesson also applied to finding a cover designer.  Again, I knew that I had no talent for digital design at all, so I did my research, compiled a file of covers that I liked, found a professional design company, and worked with them to get the design I wanted.  Then I checked that design with my editor and a few others.  I didn’t take my own word for it.

Then came that day that I formatted the manuscript (which took hours), uploaded it, attached the book cover, and clicked “published”.  It was awesome!  It was also the barest tip of the iceberg of my publishing journey.  Just because a book is published doesn’t mean it will sell.  I had told myself that I would conduct my self-publishing career as if I were being traditionally published, and that meant marketing.

I have had to learn far more about marketing than I ever wanted to.  I have had to learn far more about taxes and LLCs than I ever wanted to also.  I’ve learned about investment of time and money into writing with the aim for a specific return.  I’ve hired a publicist and a CPA.  I thought I’d be a writer, but now I understand I am a small business owner.

And I love every second of it!  Best of all, I still have the freedom to write the things that the traditional publishing world just isn’t ready to invest in.  Like an m/m romance as part of a mainstream series, for example.  Or a science fiction love story that takes two books to reach its HEA instead of one.  I love being able to not only think outside the box, but to run with scissors around the outside, coming up with all sorts of crazy new ideas.  And that is what has made my publishing journey worth every step!

10 Things You Didn’t Know about The Last Finesse

1. Coincidentally with when I finally started to understand about nuclear energy, I also focussed on the fact that visionary people typically “loved” my first novel, Beyond Neanderthal and practical people typically could take it or leave it. The Last Finesse was conceived as a story about nuclear energy. It was aimed at and crafted to appeal to this latter group.
2. The more nuclear-related information my research unearthed, the more “up close and personal” I got to see the lack of ethical behaviour that pervades society – in the media, in politics, in banking and in the energy industry, amongst others. I decided to craft the storyline to address this particular issue also. In this way, like Beyond Neanderthal, The Last Finesse’s storyline evolved along with my research.
3. Luke Sinclair has a personality profile that is a mixture of characteristics that I or one or other of my friends had when we were his age, or that I admired, but I also added one or two less attractive characteristics that make him an imperfect – and believable – human. I decided not to use my own imperfections because that would have gotten me into trouble at home. I am not a playboy womaniser, and neither were any of my friends – so I was “safe”.
4. Katarina Marchetti was modelled on an ex girlfriend of mine from my distant youth. Although she had very attractive Slavic features, she looked nothing like Katie, who was more “sultry Italian”. My ex girlfriend was brilliant, spoke 7 languages, and, like Katie, was both mischievous and adventurous. Also, like Katie, she was the daughter of a mega-wealthy man and the way he treated her was much the same “my way or the highway” way that Katarina’s father treated her. Katie also had the same over-the-top bravado that masked a sense of vulnerability. Few people would have noticed this, but it was the vulnerability that I found attractive; that, and the fact that she had a front-foot sense of fun about her.
5. “There have been no deaths directly attributed to radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster” (Wikipedia). Notwithstanding, the media is still full of hysterical fear mongering about “possibilities”. The earthquake and the resulting tsunami that together destroyed or partially destroyed over 375,000 buildings and caused over 15,000 deaths have been long forgotten by those outsiders still screaming about nuclear fallout. The Last Finesse takes a high level look at this remarkable propensity of the media and others to selectively process information. Did you know that the earthquake was the fifth most powerful earthquake in the world (9.0 on the Richter scale) since modern record-keeping began in 1900?
6. The name The Last Finesse arose from my personal preference to solve problems collaboratively. Solution by confrontation is less constructive and less durable than finessing a solution that is acceptable to all interested parties. In my view, nuclear can never be “forced” on those who live in democratic countries and who are predisposed to apply prejudicial thinking to the subject.  This last sentence contains an irony, because that is not how the book itself is presented. You will need to read the book to understand the irony.
7. In order to write the scene at The Rocks in Sydney, I spent many hours casing the joint and taking notes. The dishes that Katie and Luke ordered from room service were on the actual menu of an actual hotel.
8. The navy and maritime related information was derived from several conversations with a very helpful Lt. Philip Beaver, kindly facilitated by Rear Admiral Peter Sinclair (retired), with whom I subsequently played golf a couple of times. Luke’s surname was by way of a respectful hat-doffing thank-you to Peter. If you want to write a believable novel, in my view, you may as well ensure that you don’t talk nonsense about subjects that you don’t know squat about.
9. The Last Finesse was edited twice – once by my editor and once again by me. I was uncomfortable with her preference to turn Luke into a vegan, even though we had agreed to this in discussions because she had sound reasons to do so, given the storyline. But I was happy to leave Katy as a vegan and for Luke to respect that.
10. The ultimate reason that I wrote The Last Finesse was that I am convinced the Global Financial Crisis was caused by declining net annual energy output per capita, across the entire planet, since the 1980s. There is a concept called “Energy Return on Energy Invested” (EROEI) that has not yet caught the mainstream media’s attention. If we do not address this challenge of a globally falling weighted average EROEI – and soon – the world economy will remain languishing because net energy output will in all probability continue to fall. Frankly, in terms of recent research, if we haven’t started to reverse the trend within ten to fifteen years, the global economy may continue to spiral downward and may never recover because net energy output can be expected to fall precipitously once critical EROEI evels have been passed. Fracked gas will only help us keep a holding pattern. Solar and wind have both EROEI and continuity challenges.  Nuclear has the highest EROEI of all energy paradigms and, relative to coal, it is far less threatening to the environment. Beyond Neanderthal and The Last Finesse are my humble attempts to address the 7 core issues threatening humanity (in particular, this declining net energy output per capita) via the media of their entertaining storylines.

Every now and then you read a novel that has you glued to the story because the action is moving at warp-speed and you’re swept way not wanting to stop reading until you know how it turns out.
The tension rises and you ride along with the characters feeling every blow right up until the climax.
In my opinion, the main ingredient in a great thriller is emotion. If you feel the story in your heart and gut then the author has done his or her job.

A great thriller is unpredictable. What if the FBI agent leading a murder investigation is the killer?

A great thriller has deadlines—the ticking clock. Will the FBI agent be caught before he kills again?

A great villain is a must-have in any thriller—a villain that stirs feelings of hatred, fear, disgust and sometimes empathy in the reader.

A main character who is worthy to fight the villain and hopefully win.

The setting and the action must also be believable for the reader because if the reader doesn’t believe, the story will end.

In Lethal Journey, my heroine Lauren Taylor, is a New York district attorney. She’s taking on the most important and dangerous case of her career, prosecuting mob boss, Gino Valdina and it’s not going to be an easy journey for her. All she has to do is stay alive!

As the story progresses, it’s unpredictable, has deadlines, a villain who evokes fear, hatred and empathy, and a heroine and hero who are physically and emotionally worthy to battle the villain to the end.

How to Make Your Characters Believable

I think to make your characters believable you have to believe in them. They have to come alive in your mind. So that you can see them, hear the way they talk, and smell their scruffy clothes. There are plenty of techniques to do this—you could write down everything you know about your character. His likes, dislikes, fears, hatreds, loves, personality type, and more. These are excellent ways of learning about your character, and are a great way to flesh out the details, but I think that the first step is to see the character in your mind’s eye.

Once when my wife and I were taking a trip and she was driving to let me work on a story, I read the portion of what I had written to her. In the process of reading, I got choked up at what was happening to the character. She looked at me in disbelief and said, “You’re acting like the character is real.” And my response was, “He is, to me.”

I could feel his pain and his anguish at what I, the author, was putting him through. And I gave the character free reign to lead me into the story. Often the characters behave in a way I don’t expect, but I have learned to let them tell the story, not me. I believe only someone who has written a book of fiction can possibly understand an author feeling this way.

Easy Does It 

For Hemingway, the secret to effective writing was to forget about the flowery prose of the literati and keep your writing simple, short, and clear. When he went to work for the Kansas City Star in 1917 he was given four rules for effective writing, and he stuck with them his whole life. Here they are:

1. Use short sentences. 2. Use short first paragraphs. 3. Use vigorous English. 4. Be positive, not negative.

If you add to these suggestion, the Elements of Style mantra, “cull the unnecessary words”, you are bound to write in a more effective, more gripping English.

Vigorous English is also what other writers mean when they say avoid passive sentences: have your subjects prominent and perform the actions rather than showing the objects enduring the actions by some obscured subject. Easy? Look for how many times you use construct that say ‘something was <acted upon> by <a poor weak subject> and you’ll see what weak is and reverse the phrase to show a strong acting subject.

Enter now Elmore Leonard. In his “Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing“

Leonard suggests that writers:

1. Never open a book with the weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said.”
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Same for places and things.
10. Leave out the parts readers tend to skip.

Of course rules are to be known so that the writer that has a precise scope and violates them, he does it without falling into a trap, but circumventing rules for the right effect. Rules 3 and 4, when violated, are the mark of the amateur, or so say editors and agents; the seemingly nice “she said softly, he replied sternly, she asked angrily” and so on. Avoid them at all costs. Rule 6 is the obvious don’t use clichés, you’re a writer after all. It makes it so… sloppy writing.

Rule 8 is something that comes natural to me. I only sketches my characters, sometimes giving a trait here or there but never fill a paragraph describing the look and dresses in detail. You’re writing a novel, not a fashion magazine article. And 9, same for place and things. Leave room for readers’ imagination, they will become part of the story that will grow and take life in their mind. Rule 10 is golden but difficult. Which are the parts that readers skim? the boring ones. Your editor will point them to you and tell “this scene doesn’t advance the story!” That is, either it is there, or not, the story is unchanged, and if too long you risk to loose your readers. I sometimes err into failing with Rule 10, but my editor saves my derriere with his demonic skills.

Another author you might have encountered is Kurt Vonnegut.

In the preface to his short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, he gives us eight basics of what he calls Creative Writing 101. They are:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. 8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Rule 5, remember he’s talking short stories  On 6, I sometimes ask my characters where they do NOT want to go, for fear terrible things to happen to them, explore all the bad turns and twists, promising I’ll never force them there, then the next scene takes place in that horrid (for them) place. You’re god, but have no mercy. Rule 7., it can be your wife, as for Stephen King, or yourself seen as a reader. It matches the “write the story you’d like to read.” Of course, you can do that only if you’ve read a lot yourself before writing, otherwise there is little to invent or innovate there  Number 8, I think Kurt is once again talking to shorts. I am on the fence there… as soon as possible? How soon is it, and can it be too soon? Tough call. For readers to have complete understanding so that they can skip the last pages? Uhmm, I’m not there (yet?) with you in that, Kurt.

And you, do you have your own rules, do these ones resonate with you? I avoid like the black plague the use of -ly words and other adverbs in anything that is not dialogue. To me they undermine the “Show, Do not Tell”. What does your experience tell you?

Thanks for reading.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Becoming a Published Author
By: J. L. Lawson
When I was in my late twenties, in between contracts in California, and only had an old Remington typewriter, loads of copy paper—“borrowed” from a previous employer—and my local Boulder Creek Library as my tools for writing—there wasn’t a world-wide web or extensive internet yet—my first forays into putting together entertaining, evocative narratives based more on fact than fictions was tedious to say the least. There followed a lot of just plain life for many years before I finally, actually, started writing as a vocation. That was by then rather late in life, relatively speaking. By that time, well after the advent of the internet, POD, social media and other such marvels of industry, getting published had become a relatively simple matter of formatting one’s materials properly, choosing a reliable and efficient printer and bam, you’ve got a book published. But that’s not the end of it by any stretch—unless one is content to merely have one’s own shelves populated with one’s own books and have no exposure or audience beyond that.
TEN: Do your research. No matter if you’re writing about totally imaginary worlds devoid of seemingly any touch with reality, in order to connect with an audience you’re going to have to get your facts straight. Even if you are making them up as you go along, everything needs to be at least internally consistent. Most fiction and all non-fiction, however, requires a more constant reality check. In my youth it was the library that stood as the bastion of facts and data, history and general information. With a laptop and the web, constant trips to the local branch aren’t the impediment to sound research any longer. But you must still check and cross-check your data. Just because there’s a lot available out there doesn’t mean it’s all valid, even correct.
NINE: Make sure you say what you really want to say. That may sound obvious, but unless your thoughts are clear in your own mind, what comes across to the reader will be a fog of notions. Take the time to hash out your ideas, opinions and most importantly: storyline, so that there are no loose ends, no internal inconsistencies, no circular logic sabotaging your best efforts to bring your story to an expectant audience. See my blog: Preparing for Interviews, How Writing is Therapy… section.
EIGHT: You gotta have style. You can put one word after another in a convincing manner, but would the average reader recognize your writing from, say, their own or some other writer’s hand? I will not encourage anyone to adopt the bon ton paradigm of the day: the overpopulation of crude language, steamy and out-right explicit sexuality or the omni-present tone of disdainful cynicism that appears to pervade the marginalia-made-book-form of some contemporary ‘literature’—Unless that’s actually your chosen genre! What you must attempt to cultivate in any event is your own voice. Your writing style will follow as surely as night follows the day.
SEVEN: Nothing new under the sun. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but whatever astonishing “new” idea you have for your “best-seller” has very probably, most very likely been written… many times before… to death. Cold facts. But here’s the kicker: Shakespeare didn’t come up with anything new either! His plots were already old and moldy before he picked them up. What breathed new life into that staleness was: HOW he filled them out; WHO his characters really were; with WHAT cleverness, depth and flow he imbued their dialogues and soliloquies. So take heart. Even “Boy-Meets-Girl” can come to new life in your hands—just make it your own.
SIX: So you have your narrative. Your friends and family grudgingly read through it and are pleasantly surprised that it doesn’t stink. Then the other foot falls: you need some editing—not just proofreading for typos and the odd transposed word or out of place homonym—seriously cut, move stuff around Editing. If you’re brave (or masochistic), you can post it on your blog and open it up to readers’ comments. Probably better however, and less demeaning, is to have a professional dispassionately make your work shine as it was intended. It may cost a bit, but what’s the price of avoiding Professional Embarrassment?
FIVE: Judging a book by its cover. That little phrase is still with us because it’s more than a splinter of truth in this business—it’s axiomatic. I assure you that I have built my own covers, was pleased at how they appealed to my eye, but set them up next to others in their genre and they were the red-headed step-children. Sad, disheartening, but true. Look at what’s catching the eyes of Bookstore customers—brick-and-mortar stores or the on-line variety—there’s always a “Here’s what others are looking at…” section to be inspected. What catches your eye as you look at those shelves? That should be a clue.
FOUR: Knock on the biggest door. Unfortunately, major publishing houses, almost without exception, do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. You’ll need an agent to go there in your stead. What? Not enough budget for hiring and retaining an agent? How about a publicist, a marketing analyst, a distribution agency? No? Don’t give up just yet. How about utilizing an indie press and taking on the marketing, sales and distribution with your own sweat and tears? It has been done successfully. In fact, that’s likely why you’re reading this right now—you ARE using the available means at your disposal and spending as little as possible to make your title a household word.
THREE: Location, location, location. It’s the marketing of published work that creates the greatest challenges and forces the most attention and creativity an author can muster. There are now an over-abundance of resources and advice out there. Let me offer a shamelessly promotional example: I am writing this now, because I am part of Orangeberry Book Tours because Pandora Poikilos has connections and know-how I don’t. I have contracted with Substance Books for other branding and marketing efforts for the long haul because Hajni Blasko has the experience and expertise I don’t have.
I work at Voyager Press who utilizes: KDP, iBooks, Bowker, CreateSpace, for print and eBook production, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, GreatReads and many other outlets for distribution—including their own online VPDirect Store. For Industry exposure they contract with the Jenkins Group and Combined Book Exhibit, as well as those firms affiliates. The gist of this note is that networking with those who have the know-how, the connections and talent is how to put together a winning team.
TWO: Which brings us to the penultimate Need-To-Know item in Publishing: It takes a Village!
Just like raising children or getting a mom-and-pop store out of the red, getting a book into the hands of potential readership takes all the talent, experience and relationships you can garner and gather around yourself from the very beginning. Anyone who thinks they can go it alone in this most highly interconnected world village of today is either fabulously wealthy already and can buy their way into a reader’s hands, or is, as was suggested at the outset of this article: “…content to merely have one’s own shelves populated with one’s own books and have no exposure or audience beyond that.”
ONE: Simply put: In the end, a writer has to make informed decisions and never let loose of her/his pursestrings all too easily for un-researched, un-validated, un-verified printing, editing, developing or marketing avenues constantly bombarding email portals with wildly fantastic claims for success. Keep it Simple—Read, Research, Review, Write, Re-write, Request—those are the new R’s of publishing success in this day and age. But be prepared: Change is always a day away—it wasn’t long ago there was no interweb…

Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

Practical Advice for Beginning Fiction Writers

The truth of the matter is a full length manuscript is nothing more than an expanded short story.

And a short story is a blown up account of something that interested you over coffee, or in a pub,
or a musing on the way to work, a joke, an anecdote, a newspaper article, an idea of what you
might have done if you’d won the latest lottery (we’ve all been there). The source is endless.

But whatever it is you come up with, it should have a beginning, middle and an ending. Obvious
maybe, but having a complete idea of what you want before putting pen to paper is important.

The Story: A writer formulates a tale from a basic idea and helps it grow; no one sees every
word, line, or chapter of their text in the preamble of thought. At some point it might take on
a life of its own where you feel your hand is merely being guided, but that can’t happen until
you’ve made a start. Write your idea down in its simplest form. As I said, it needs a beginning,
middle and an ending. Beginning; Tom falls for Mary and she likes him too. But Mary is seeing
a boy called Harry. Middle: Harry is a bully and Mary has been afraid to break up with him for
as long as she can remember. Tom is no hero but feels compelled to be with Mary. Ending: Tom
is forced to stand up to Harry. Things go wrong; Harry gives Tom a good thrashing. But this
gives Mary the strength to dump Harry and go off into the sunset with Tom… Not a blockbuster
in the making, I’m sure, but you can see where I’m going. Those few short sentences provide a
skeleton to put flesh on. Now you have your own idea written down, think about it before going
further. It’s better to rearrange the bare bones before you have to start pulling flesh out the way
to get at them.

Research: Okay, the words flowed, your ideas were brilliant – but were they accurate? Unless
you’re writing something like Sci-fi or fantasy there is a high probability that your narrative will
incorporate real events – make sure what you write is correct else the reader will lose belief in
your ability: try to use more than one source to verify your work.

Patience equals quality: You finish your tale, great, you’re excited, the world of readers must
see it, and they must see it now. Nope! From my own standing, you must complete at least 4
drafts – up to you, but that’s my unwritten rule. Done it, good, but you’re not finished. The
work should be edited by a pro, and that even goes for the pro editor who writes; it is too easy to
overlook your own mistakes. You’ve got it back from your editor – rewrite. Do not look at it and
say they were wrong. They might be, but their interpretation is how they understood your written
word, so if they didn’t get what you meant then you probably didn’t make it clear. Accept the
criticism, that’s what you paid for.

Finished: Not yet, you’ve rewritten the book and you love it. It couldn’t be better. So how
come it isn’t finished? Well, it might be, but you’ve just messed about with work that has been
professionally edited and the quality might have taken a dip. Pay out to have it copy-edited/proof
read. The few extra pennies you spend will be worth it.

Done it all? Great, you’re finished – good luck with the next steps.

I was sitting under an apple tree and an apple fell from the tree and struck me rather soundly on the head. It was a revelation. Shit fell down! I was about to tell someone about this amazing discovery when I realized that Isaac Newton was sitting beside me and saw the whole thing, and he was writing feverishly about laws of acceleration. I only thought it neat that apples fell towards the earth and not in the other direction, and how difficult making an apple pie would be if the reverse were true. I had nothing.

So I was flying a kite with a key on a string on it in a lightning storm with a friend named Ben, and he was prattling on about wood stoves and bifocals, and just as I was hoping to get hit by lightening and put out of my misery, I was hit by lightening and…

What is wrong with me? A perfectly sensible question like, “What inspired you to write “Icarus Rising”?” and I am taking you on a demented adventure through history.  What inspired me to write “Icarus Rising?” I was thinking of growing up and all the many times I pleasured myself to grainy bootlegged VHS copies of Madonna videos when I realized… that didn’t happen either but I bet I put an image in your head, didn’t I? I apologize; this is not a very good post. Read “Icarus Rising”. It is much better, I promise.

The simple, and honest, answer is two characters came almost fully developed into my head, a world renowned female rock star and an infamous “bad boy” abstract artist. It seems our culture is fascinated with celebrity to such an extent we build them up and almost worship them like a golden calf. I was hoping to get inside my creations heads, to show that they have vulnerabilities and insecurities too. That they are human with human failings like everyone else, but they are in the position where their lives are under constant scrutiny. In “Icarus Rising” the media constantly watching as an almost villain is a theme I begin to explore.

In the second book, “Icarus Ascendant”, the media is a much more oppressive enemy of my two characters, and that will continue and intensify in the final book of the trilogy. I guess the answer to the question, “What inspired me to write Icarus Rising?” would have to be: one day these characters sprang to life and I wanted to tell their story. I wanted to step into the skin of a couple of fictional pop icons and see how they lived, see how they filled the minutes of their days, and see how one would live without the constant shackles of monetary worries. And the reverse of that as well. What could a suitor do to woo a woman who would be somewhat jaded and not easily impressed? I also wanted to tell a great love story and I hope I have succeeded in that.

Or was I inspired when I was with a pal, George, and he chopped down a cherry tree and tried to blame it on me?!

 

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Genre – Erotic Romance

Rating – R

More details about the author and the book

Connect with Rob Manary on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://robmanary.com/

Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

Curing Writer’s Block With Strawberry Shortcake

by Mark LaFlamme

The evening was a disaster from the start.

It was midnight and I’d just sat down to write the final chapters in my novel “The Pink Room.” I was writing in my usual spot, but the snow globe was nowhere in sight. It wasn’t on the shelf where I’d left it, it wasn’t on the desk next to my keyboard.

Catastrophe!

Panic rising, I searched the house, eventually turning to ridiculous spots like the refrigerator and the toaster oven. Astoundingly, the snow globe wasn’t there.

I woke my wife, desperate like a junkie looking for his stash.

“Code red! The snow globe is missing! I repeat …”

These are the household emergencies wives solve without waking all the way up. There was no problem here. A niece had been playing with the snow globe, a little pink number featuring Strawberry Shortcake smiling atop a piece of fruit. I was directed to the living room where I found it on the floor.

Crisis averted. Back to work.

A good therapist would have a field day with my writing ritual. I surround myself with trinkets, simple items that have come to represent various works of fiction over the years.

There’s the heavy metal cog I turned to while writing “Worumbo.” There’s the fabric flower with the demented smiling face that served as avatar for “Vegetation.” There’s a baseball, a bottle, a box shaped like a book, and a stuffed chickadee that makes realistic bird noises when you squeeze its belly.

Trinkets and treasures – stuff that would fetch a combined five dollars at a flea market and yet to me they’re priceless. Without those items, I’d freeze at the keyboard, my hands hovering over the letters, the page blank white, until someone comes to cart me away.

It’s superstition, no different than a baseball player pulling on the same crusty pair of socks before game time. I sit down to write, touch the item that represents the book du jour, and I get rolling.

And yet, it’s more than that. When I touch that slightly rusted cog – or the stuffed bird or the tiny plastic shovel that represents my fourth novel – it’s like pressing the “on” button. Once that simple act is behind me, I know it’s time to write. Permission has been granted, a few thousand words are demanded before I can leave my desk again.

As a cure for writer’s block, it’s unbeatable. “Well, I don’t feel like writing today, but I already touched the (your item here) so I better get to it. It would be bad juju not to.”

When other writers ask me how to fight back against dry spells, I advise them to get a trinket. It doesn’t have to be much – a little something out of the 99 cent bin will do. Keep it nearby, touch it when the words won’t come and bam! It’s go time.

By the time you have a few books under your belt, you’ll have an impressive collection of souvenirs to mark your time. Your writing room will look like the “win these prizes!” booth at the carnival. It’s a beautiful thing.

Get rid of the crusty socks, though. Those things are starting to reek.

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Genre – YA / Thriller

Rating – PG

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Connect with Mark LaFlamme on Facebook

Website http://marklaflamme.com/

How to Make Your Characters Believable

Characters are, disputably, the life and breath of any story. Unless, of course, you are purposely wasting paper just to describe things, such as an era or certain scenery. However, these in no way can be considered stories, for stories, as most will stubbornly agree, must be about something. Preferably, beings who think, feel, and live in the harsh environment known as the world, or even other worlds. In stories, there is what happens, and then there are those whom it happens to. The most effective way to connect with readers is when they can relate to the person, or animal, robot, what have you, the story centers upon.

Making characters believable is a constant plight for writers. Usually, the easiest tactic to employ is to model the character’s personality after someone they’ve met or know in real life, so that there is a credible reference out in reality. This has been done countless times, and tends to result in character favorites among readers. Characters based on real people always seem to leave an indelible mark, mainly because their realness radiates so strongly.

However, what if you create a character out of pure, thin air, with nary an existing relation or acquaintance to mold him or her after? What does a writer do then? The obvious would be to take cues from real-life examples. For instance, how would a regular person react to discovering a seven talon claw sticking out of the bedroom wall? In this day and age, where people are both reasonable and stupid, it could all boil down to the specific personality of the person. A reasonable person might run away, issuing squeals of terror, while a stupid person would unavoidably approach the claw because it looked cool.

But the initial reaction of the reader would be to think, “What’s this dude’s problem? Get away from there, you dolt!” It could easily turn into a case of the reader thinking that the author made the character choose to do that in order to create conflict. And while, yes, stories are driven by conflict, and therefore will never be fully realistic, since there aren’t too many adventures occurring on a day to day basis in the world, readers still relate to characters who handle the conflict in a way that they might themselves.

By giving your characters all the elements of a real person, such as fears, doubts, confusion, emotions, bodily reactions, it makes them feel authentic and substantial. There are many instances where the author neglects to mention these aspects about a character, and while the character is fun to follow and cheer for, there is always this sense of fantasy that accompanies the reading. Sometimes it is borderline fakeness. Such as an impenetrable cowboy hero, or an extremely clever sorcerer who is always one step ahead of his adversaries. These are engaging characters that can carry a story, but they fail to convey a believable, real quality.

In order to construct believable heroes, heroines, foes, monsters, mentors, side-kicks, they have to be multi-dimensional in the same way non-metaphysical folk of flesh and blood are. There must be a competent mix of psychology, philosophy, mentality, emotions, and motivation. On and on. All the real injected into the fake.

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Genre - Young Adult Fiction

Rating – PG

More details about the author

Connect with Emily Kinney on Facebook & Twitter

 

Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

10 Things I Wish I Knew About Being an Author I Didn’t Know Before

Clicking the publish button on Amazon’s Kindle publisher was one of the most exciting experiences of my life not to mention one of the most nerve racking. From the moment I received the coveted “your title is ready for purchase” email I knew that it was the beginning of a long process filled with several professional and personal highs and lows. At that very moment I was not only agreeing to the terms of service set forth by Amazon but opening my work to ridicule, praise, critiques, and if I’m extremely lucky potential rewards all for the sake of sharing my imagination to the world.

Self-publishing a book is nothing short of a major risk but the bigger the risk the bigger the reward at least that is how the saying goes. As with anything, educating yourself on the industry you are entering can save you time and money both of which you can never have enough of. Although I read extensively about self-publishing a year and a half before I actually published my first book there are some things I wish I knew about being an author that I didn’t know before.

1.) Writing requires discipline – I had the perfect scenario for writing my first novel. I would sit down every day write about 4,000 words in order to have it completed in about 30 days. Then reality hit me, with a full time job, working on my Master’s degree, and somewhat of a social life it became more and more difficult to reach my writing goal without seriously setting aside time to write. Writing may come natural to some but even the most talented writer needs time set aside to focus solely on writing.

2.) Mistakes cost – The cost that I am referring to is not primarily monetary. As an author time is your greatest asset. Readers are now accustomed, thanks in part to technology, to receiving information fairly quickly. Because of that one mistake my delay printing for days or the availability of your book for download for hours. Readers are then forced to move on to the next book. If at all possible reduce the amount of errors prior to submitting the final product.

3.) Writing is addictive – while writing my children’s book I quickly found out how addictive writing really is. I instantly got several concepts of other stories and wanted to begin those projects immediately. This leads to the next point.

4.) Writing takes focus – In order to ensure you are channeling all of your creative energy focus on one story at a time. Am I saying don’t work on two books at one time? No but focus solely on one book and if you get writers block move on to the next.

5.) You have to make people support you – Okay you’ve finally written the novel, short story, novella, etc. You’re excited, thrilled, and proud. Unfortunately those feelings don’t transfer to other people. You have to let them know how exciting you are and how great your story is. Your enthusiasm will transfer over to them as curiosity and excitement which is the first step in acquiring a new reader.

6.) Timing isn’t everything, IT’S THE ONLY THING – Launching a book themed around Christmas during the summer may not be a good idea. Ensure your deadlines are aligned with what is currently happening in the world. You may have an advantage to waiting a couple weeks to debut your new novel.

7.) It okay to not be perfect –Even if you have the best editor and proofreader on the market there will still be mistakes in your book. That’s okay. Nothing on this planet is perfect including you. Don’t get bent out of shape if an error is brought to your attention. Correct it and move on.

8.) Trust yourself when all men doubt you – People often are unable to see what they themselves cannot become. Don’t allow someone else to dictate or plant seeds of doubt in your head. Always go through with what you believe to be a good idea.

9.) Market a lot- Research shows that people make a purchase after the 7^th time they have seen an ad. One mention on twitter isn’t going to be enough to get readers to believe in you.

10.) Have fun! – Writing should above all else be fun. It’s the one thing in this world you have complete control over. You are able to create whoever you want, they’re able to live wherever you want them to and they can be whatever your heart desires. From a superhero to a single mother you have the power to entertain someone so get

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Genre - Children’s Book, YA

Rating – G

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Connect with Adrian Powell on Facebook & Twitter

How to Overcome Radio Stage Fright And Prepare for an Interview

I began working as an Internet radio host in October 2010. In three years, I have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work in creating a good show for listeners. The first year, I had significant fear around being on the radio, so when I hear my guest’s voice shaking, I get it.

My advice is to take a deep breath and to pretend the radio interview with the host is simply a nice chat with both of you talking about what you know: your book! It’s natural to be a little nervous, but after you’ve done many interviews, it becomes very easy to talk about your book during a podcast or live interview.

Another tip to overcome radio stage fright is to have a small snack beforehand and to be in a comfortable area of your house or office. Most interviews are over the phone or on Skype now, so sit in your favorite room where you can look around at familiar furnishings and wall decorations. This can help you feel a sense of calmness.

Having a pre-interview chat with the host can help alleviate fears as well. Maybe you’re nervous because you don’t know what the host is going to ask or how they’ll come across in the interview. If you’ve written a memoir with sensitive information, you may feel a bit apprehensive about how the host will talk about your book. Dialoguing with the host ahead of time can help you ‘feel’ that out in advance and prepare for the interview.

As a radio host, I always have questions prepared ahead of time for my guest. I usually ask my guest to prepare for me a few questions as well. This gives me a feel for what they want to discuss during the interview. It is wise for an author to generate five to ten questions they can give to a radio host as possible questions to ask. The host may or may not ask these questions, but it can create an outline for you. When you interview, you want to be prepared with your answers without sounding like you’re reading off a script.

Something I really appreciate from my radio guests is their preparedness and concise answers. Sometimes a guest does not really answer the question, but goes off in left field. As that is happening, I’m mentally thinking of how to bring the guest back on track and answer the question. In two worst-case scenarios, it was so bad I either scheduled to re-do the pre-recorded interview or I did not post it at all. For me, this is very rare.

Simply prepare an outline of conversational direction, perhaps listen to a couple of past interviews, get comfortable and have fun!

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Genre - Memoir

Rating – PG-13

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Connect with Tami Urbanek on Facebook & Twitter

Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

Developing A Writer’s Platform

by Tamara Hart Heiner 

What is a writer’s platform? It seems to be a hot topic. All the agents and authors are talking about how important it is to have a platform. How it’s critical for getting published, and after that, for getting an audience. But whaat is it?

Basically, it’s your special angle that sells you. Not necessarily your book (because you’re an author and you write lots of different kinds of books), but you. And in selling you, the book will naturally follow.

It’s the special angle that will get you into schools, libraries, luncheons, firesides, anywhere where you can go and talk to people. But remember: you’re not going to plug your book. You’re going to plug you.
For the longest time after I wrote my first book, I wracked my brain to figure out what my platform was. It’s not a non-fiction book, and I’m not a highly qualified expert with years of experience to extol. It’s not a novel about Girl Scout adventures, so I can’t pull out all of my GS paraphernalia and relive the glory Brownie days. It’s not about religion. It’s not about high school. It’s not about teenage pregnancy or abuse.

But it does have bits and pieces of many of these things. It’s a book about overcoming adversity. That’s not really a platform, though. It’s a suspense novel, a thriller. I suppose I could’ve learned to dance like Michael Jackson…no, bad idea. Should my platform be about writing the book? Believing in yourself? Should it be about who I am? A young mom who carves time to write while sitting on the couch and the kids are sleeping? Should it touch upon the religious aspect of the book? About believing Christ even when it seems like God’s abandoned you? Should I focus on the teenage aspects? The fears, the fights, the crushes, the self-doubt?

It worried me not to have a solid platform. I saw these questions on many publisher sites: “What makes you qualified to write this book?” Um…I’m the one who has the story in my head? What was Stephanie Meyers’ platform? “How to Survive a Vampire Bite”? When I walk into a high school and ask if I can speak to the student body about my book, what am I going to say? “I was a kid once. So I want to talk  about this book I wrote.”

Surprisingly enough, that ended up being my platform. Being a (former) teenage writer was my special angle.
How do you find your special angle? Sometimes it’s easy and obvious. Answer these questions:

What kinds of books do you write?

Who is your audience?

Why do you write what you do?

Who do you hope to impact?

What is your long-term goal?

In answering those questions, you’ve started to come up with something to talk about. But now you need a one-sentence ‘mission’ that kind of encompasses you as a writer the way a query hook encompasses your book.

If you’re like me, you can’t think of anything because you keep thinking about your book. That’s the thing: LEAVE YOUR BOOK OUT OF THIS. Of course it’s going to be a part of it. But only because it’s a part of you.

Look up a list of adjectives. Just Google them, you’ll find lots. Now look at the good ones (hopefully you won’t have anything negative to put as your special angle) and pick 3-4 that mean something to you. Here are the ones I chose: Reach, Empower, Elevate. These three words describe what I would like to have happen to people.

Now you’ve got your adjectives. Think about something in this world that you are passionate about and would like to do something about. This can be anything, though if you write non-fiction, it will very often be your book topic. Think now. Is it political? Financial? Educational? Be specific. “I want to change the way our president is voted into office.” “I want to make the public education system safer for inner-school kids.” Mine was: “I want to create stronger families and more confident teenagers.”

Okay. You’ve got your issue(s) and your adjectives. Now you are going to combine them. Attach those adjectives in however way you can, and you’ve got a strong, passionate mission. Here is mine: “Reaching teens, empowering women, and elevating families through writing.”

My platform doesn’t have anything to do with the subject matter in my YA books. But it does have everything to do with WHY I write about what I do. And it has everything to do with how validated I feel as a woman, doing something like writing. And I can’t think of a better way to help families than by helping the wives and children that are creating future generations. (The husbands just kind of get included in there.)

Now when I answer all of those questions above, I can think of my platform while doing so. I can target each group, depending on who my audience is.

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Genre – YA

Rating – PG

More details about the author

Connect with Tamara Hart Heiner on Facebook & Twitter

Blog http://tamarahartheiner.blogspot.com/

Why Blogging Is Important?

Why is it not important? That would be a better question. If you are not blogging I would recommend you stop reading this and go start blogging…ok, maybe you should finish this first.

Blogging was my salvation and way to get my swag back as a writer. I know writers who talk all this stuff about branding and business stuff, and yeah that is important but that is not what bogging is about for me. Blogging is really important for me to improve my craft of writing; I know that will make a lot of literary writers cringe but it is a way to always be writing.  If you write a failed novel (which I have) the best way to get your confidence back is by blogging. It is like the minor league of writing but hey there is nothing wrong with training camp.

Blogging is also a way to have fun and experiment, what you might not be able to do for a publication. You can just say what is on your mind and not worry. It is your word playground.

I have a weird view of writing; it is very sacred almost spiritual to me yet I see it like a muscle and know I must do all types of ‘exercises’ to be a strong writer. It is very much like going to the gym and feeling good after a good work out.

Blogging is for you; forget about an audience. It is your territory, you can write whatever you want. You can’t be indulgent when writing your book, but you can when blogging. It is not about publishing or marketing, and any of that crap it is about having a place test things out. It’s an open mic for writers.

Blogging should be like a punk rock show, it shouldn’t be or doesn’t have to perfect but it should fun. Blogging is practice for the big game, it is a way to keep you sharp and it is one of the few ways to procrastinate while being productive. There have been times I have not wanted to work on a project so I blogged instead. It got me in a groove and I went back to that project and took care of business.

I have three books out and two on there way, but I still blog a lot, hell my first book was really a bunch of blog posts that got revised into a solid comedy collection. Blogging feeds my writing and vice versa and it is a place to put rejected work that should have a home. I had a short that I thought was pretty good but it got rejected. So I put up on my blog.

I think in the end writers shy away from the blogging because of the freedom of it. It can be an overwhelming thing, to get all Dostoevsky ‘all can be permitted’. It is true you can do whatever you want but if you embrace that freedom and harness it you can end up not just writing blog posts but creating art.

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Genre – Fiction, Humor

Rating – PG-13

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Connect with Christoph Paul on Facebook & Twitter

 

Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

Dos and don’ts of critique groups
1. Always start with the positive.

2. Always end on a positive note.

3. Do be honest but tactful.

4. Ensure you are using proper English. The Chicago Manual of Style is an excellent reference book used by professional editors.

5. Ensure your work is fairly clean grammar-wise before submitting.

6. Focus on craft for a critique.

a. Goal/Motivation/Conflict.
b. Ensure each scene advances the plot.
c. Character arc.
d. Escalating plot.

7. Don’t nitpick. Make your point and move on.

8. Offer to brainstorm with your critique partners.

9. Don’t stay in a group that is overly critical. Writing is subjective.

10. Do look for other critiquers who take their craft seriously and are trying to get published.

 

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Genre - YA Paranormal Mystery, Romance

Rating – PG-13

More details about the author

Connect with Chris Myers on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.chrismyersfiction.com

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks for having me guest post on your blog.  I appreciate the opportunity as my 51^st title, The Green Berets: Chasing the Lost is now out and #1 in Men’s Adventure, even though a woman is at the core of the story.  Aren’t they always?

A Day in the Life of Bob Mayer

I wake up with my wife and two hairy yellow labs shoved in between us:  Cool Gus and Sassy Becca.  I can teach labs how to sleep very well.  Which actually, isn’t that hard to do.  I grab a cup of coffee, go downstairs and turn on the computer.  I’d like to say I had the self-discipline to write a thousand words before checking email, but show me someone who really does that, and well, they’re weird.

Let me back up.  First I take the dogs outside for their morning ritual (TMI?) and walk up the stone walkway to our mail box, which is a workout by itself, and get the NY Times.  My wife will then read the entire paper.  I mean the entire paper.  She’s a walking font of useless information.

Until I need that information as she’s my “story whisperer”.  She can ‘stream’ story to me when I need it.  She also always has the remote control when we sit in bed in the evening and watch whatever it is she decides I need to watch.  I’m much smarter because of that.  For The Green Berets: Chasing The Lost, I had a really cool ending, which had a great twist.  I was talking to her about the story one day, and she took that great twist and took it a step from awesome into totally wicked.  Readers seem to agree so far from the reviews and emails I’m getting.

Anyway, I then bring up what I wrote the previous day and start there.  I always have what I call a story grid; an excel spreadsheet.  The first column is chapter #; then start page #; end page #; then location, time and date, and a brief summary of action in a scene.  Thus each line is a scene.  This is not an outline.  It’s a summary of what I’ve written so far because I am terrible with details.  I need that sheet to remind me what I wrote.  My wife knows she can hide something from me in the fridge simply by putting it behind something else.

I split my time between writing, promotion, and running Cool Gus Publishing.  I broke from NY Publishing in 2009, because I looked forward three years and saw the landscape being very different.  And it is.  I have over fifty titles now, and by publishing them through my own company, I do so much better than I ever did even when I was hitting the NY Times Bestsellers list.  We also work with a handful of authors and are looking to sign two or three more (We’re publishing Jennifer Probst’s new series early in 2014) authors who have a following.

I work seven days a week and rarely take time off.  I traveled all over the world when I was a Green Beret, so my traveling days are done and I’ve used up all of my adrenaline.  I let my characters in my books use the adrenaline.  In this book, Chasing the Lost, my hero from my first six Green Beret books, Dave Riley is now retired and living on Dafuskie Island (where Pat Control taught school) and my hero from Chasing the Ghost, Horace Chase, moves into a house on Hilton Head, one I actually lived in for a couple of years.  The story has a woman at the center and works on the theme of how far should one be loyal?

It’s a great read, at least that’s what readers have been saying, with a hell of an ending that you won’t see coming, because I didn’t see it coming until my wife gave it to me.

Hope you enjoy and feel free to visit us at CoolGus.com

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Thriller

Rating – PG

More details about the author & the book

Connect with Bob Mayer on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.bobmayer.org/