Guest Blog: Why I'm not coming out of the closet

Not me!

It's dark in there. I like the dark. And when I don't like the dark, I know that Rick will be there to bring me out of the dark. The closet is warm and cozy. I sleep on the folded towels, and I love when they come from the dryer, because they are so nice to be on top off, and the warmth oozes into my body. The closet is huge, and there is so much to explore with its secret corners of stuff untouched for year after year after year. I'm tempted to chew through the lids to find the treasures within them. The only downside is that there is no food in here. Other than some chewing on the wooden shelves and drywall, the pickings are fairly slim. But, I can sleep just fine in here until I hear the writing chair squeak, and I know that Rick is working on something wonderful. That's when I scream bloody murder, and I know he will come. He always does.

Me. I am the People Whisperer!

I've trained him well. Because, after all, I AM the people whisperer.


Next week...exciting news. I can tell. He keeps me up until 2 in the morning working on something. If I could read, I'd tell you about it.

I am, Sydney!

Guest Blog: On the Value of Book Clubs, Part 2

Author Judith Stanton, in part two, tells us the other side of the story

Have you ever been a featured author at a book club? I have, not nearly often enough, and I’m afraid the opportunities to do it may be dwindling. As we shift our advertising focus to blogs, Facebook, tweets and Pinterest, it may feel like a poor investment of your time to take an evening off to talk to half-dozen to a dozen readers who just read your book. Too much time for too few sales.

Amazon Link

But if you want a rejuvenating fix there’s nothing quite like it. So here’s how, and why, to do it.

The how. If you haven’t yet made the best seller lists are won the National Book Award, you’ll have to reach out to find some clubs. Ask people you know, and ask at local book stores—chain or independent—what reading groups are near you. Don’t forget used book stores. Some owners have a good line on their local clubs. If you feel funny making a cold call or email to introduce yourself and your book, perhaps a mutual acquaintance can recommend you, perhaps even that bookstore person.

Be willing to travel, maybe an hour or two there and back, but start as near home as you can. You’re not in this for profits, but overnighting in a B&B isn’t worth it unless you and your spouse are celebrating your twentieth, thirtieth, whatever, anyway.

And keep an ear out. With my novel I met a lot of people doing field research. When I’d mention I was writing my novel, they’d mention their book clubs. I kept a little list. Some of them live farther away than I would normally go, but live close to a horse competition I need to research. Two birds, one stone.

With my first couple of novels, I visited a few book clubs. Had a grand time, and learned a lot. To my surprise, some of the most hard core readers have never met an author, and certainly not in their own home. They made me feel like a star. I started off talking about how I came to be a novelist and came up with the story they’d read, but really all I needed to do was open the floor for questions and let ‘em rip! Which character did they like best and why? What surprised them about the story? Is this the kind of book they usually read, and how did they like it?

Bottom line, with any readers, and certainly book clubbers, I make sure I say early and often, as writers we LOVE our readers. We write for YOU. We don’t EXIST without you. You bring the books of our hearts and our imagination to life.

Believe me, they will never have thought of how critical they are to the entire creative enterprise. It’s a conversation, it’s symbiotic.

And that’s an amazing bond. After that, they love to hear about nitty gritty research problems, which characters surprised you, who got away from you, who wouldn’t come to heel and so was interesting. Field trips, surprise library finds, how the Internet has transformed research. In the end, they relish our journeys, just as much as we relish theirs as they take our books in their hands or our books in their Nooks or Kindles. They take us on vacation. They take us to their doctor’s waiting room, sit by their loved ones in ICUs and read our stories. They take us to bed. They fall asleep with our books on their chests, and wake, and pick us up again, escaping to worlds we create for them.

I love my readers. Visit a book club, and love yours too, face to face, handshake to handshake, and sometimes hugs. AND SIGN ALL THEIR BOOKS. Be sure to ask how to spell their names.

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Judith Stanton - Horse Woman, Author, Editor, and Lecturer

A Stallion to Die For: an equestrian suspense

—Qualifying for the Olympics can be deadly for woman and horse.

Guest Blog: Book Trailers - Worth the Hype

Rhonda Kay sez--

Based on recent trends by small e-publishers as well as New York’s Big Six, book trailers are becoming the “must-have” accessory for all new releases. Even Amazon threw their hat in the ring last month by promoting a book trailer contest for a novel published by one of their new imprints. The idea is definitely out there, floating in the cosmos, that book trailers are the Next Big Thing in literary marketing and promotion.

But do they sell novels?

Novel Link
Trailer Link

Authors face some rocky terrain as publishing veers into a territory with no map and very few trail markers. The success of ebooks took everyone by surprise; most of us suspected it would happen—eventually—but no one guessed that climates in the publishing industry would shift so quickly.

Now, as both authors and readers, we’re struggling to make sense of the new paradigm. With the changes from traditional publishing to small press or independent electronic publishing, authors must think about marketing, distribution, promotion—a host of things we’ve never before had to face on our own.

Here’s the catch: a writer can pay for a very effective, professionally produced trailer, upload it to their favorite hosting site, wait, and see absolutely no boost in book sales.

The reason? Book trailers are not a magic bullet. They are one more tool in the arsenal of a motivated seller. They will do you no good at book signings, local fairs, or personal appearances unless you’re prepared to have the trailer playing in a loop on a nearby screen. You can’t put them in someone’s hand, autograph them as giveaways, or slip them between the pages of library books for the next reader to find.

However, what a trailer will do is draw the attention of a reader browsing the internet, trying to make a choice between your novel and another beside it on the screen. If your novel has an effective trailer and the other one doesn’t, I’m willing to bet the money lands in your account, not the other author’s. A well-done trailer offers a glimpse into the world of your novel, at the conflicts and the very faces of your characters. It can cause potential readers to become invested in your story long before they turn the first page.

Amazon Link
Scroll down to "Check
Out Related Media"

For authors who are already doing the legwork—making the most of social media and online networking—book trailers are a sure bet as a promotional tool. Trailers fit seamlessly into the cyberscape of most web pages, and by embedding links to them in everything from email to forum and Facebook posts, you can pique the interest of people who might otherwise never search for your novel’s blurb on Amazon. A book trailer alone cannot sell your novel. But a good trailer will work for you in ways no other form of media advertising can.

For example, Ania Ahlborn's novel Seed--you can see an embedded video, which is the live action book trailer. The producer of this trailer, Vikas Wadhwa, is a super nice guy who I hope will lead the charge in live-action book trailer production.
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Bio: Rhonda Kay is a writer and machinima director living in Southwest Virginia with her husband and a herd of animals. She has penned three novels, but the emerging market for book trailers has kept her too busy lately to even think of publishing anything. An active member of both the writing and machinima communities, she is a strong advocate for the use of 3D animation as a storytelling medium. She blogs here.

Guest Blog: Does Edith Parzefall Push Her Luck?

Research Break: Sleeping with the Policia Militar

Imagine you've spent months or rather years following Amnesty International reports, reading books, watching movies and documentaries about military police brutality in Brazil. You travel to Rio, the location of the thriller you're working on, Strays of Rio. You explore life in the favelas and roam the fashionable districts of Rio. Military police is ever-present, even on the Copacabana and Ipanema (Rick note: The song, The Girl from Ipanema, is now 50; the girl 68.) beaches. The sight of these well-armed men and women fills you with unease, but nobody else cares, so you stroll on.

Plates and Numbers
smudged on purpose

Then you hop over to the Iguacu Falls for a respite to enjoy nature in the full. You've booked a nice little hotel in advance, close to the main bus terminal. After admiring the Brazilian side of the stunning waterfalls, you return to the hotel and see a military police car parked in the driveway. You pause. It's getting dark and you're tired. Chin held up high, you turn into the driveway and spot two more vehicles. Deep breath. Your bags and travel documents are in your hotel room, and there are no bullets flying yet.

You enter and stare at a man in uniform, cleaning a large knife--rather a dagger really. He gazes up, frowns, and continues to make the blade shine. Then you notice the assault rifle leaning against the sofa he sits on.

For lack of a better idea, you proceed to the reception desk to pick up your key. As always, the lady smiles. From the opposite corner, two more military police officers dart you curious glances.

Edith in the Garden of Eden

You grab the key and escape down the corridor to your room, but all the doors stand ajar. A gaze to the right reveals a man in boxer shorts lying on his bed, a helmet by his feet and an assault rifle on the table. You hurry on past another open door revealing two more cops shedding their uniforms. Faster. Your room is at the end of the darn corridor. No more sideways glances! Quick. The lock resists for a moment but finally yields.

You'd planned to take a shower and then have a beer in the nice tropical garden behind the hotel. Among a bunch of ill-reputed armed guys? Maybe not such a good idea... 

Link to Amazon

The next morning, there's no sign of your infamous neighbors. You ask the receptionist what they were doing here. Smiling, she explains, "Oh, they are after drug dealers and weapon smugglers trying to cross the river from Paraguay. Nothing to worry about."

"Oh, okay." Then you remember the river and the border are only four blocks away... "Is it dangerous to walk around here?" you ask.

Smiling, she waves away your concerns. "No, not at all. Enjoy your stay."

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Nope, I didn't dare to take photos of the armed or naked police officers, and fortunately, I wasn't alone during this adventure. Thanks Monika for playing bodyguard.
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Rick asks, "So, to what lengths do you go to research your stories?"

Guest Blog: About Beauregard Shamus

I met Beauregard Shamus at the Taj Mahal of assisted living resorts in Cary, North Carolina where my in-laws currently reside. My in-laws had been telling me about him for the past several months. When I finally sat down with the youthful 98-year-old man, his life story stunned me. I concentrated on the literary aspects first. This is the very short version of what he told me. Now, I want to read all his books.

*Mr. Shamus, give me a brief biographical background.*

I'm a bastard in the most correct sense. Mom burped me out June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo. My father, Gavrilo Princip, was busy that day. I never knew him, and he died in 1919 in prison. Such is the life of patriot, hero, and assassin. His life was the backdrop for my first novel, ARCHDUKE ALWAYS. It was published on October 24, 1929 in London, where mumsy and I moved shortly after my birth. I was only fifteen. Let me tell you, writers today are spoiled with their computers and software. Imagine writing a three-hundred page novel by hand, then having to type it without error. Sometimes, I think that's why the older novels are better--more attention to craft. The reviewers loved it; however, the public was preoccupied shortly after that with the depression.

Later, we moved to Wareham. I was working at Anglebury House, when Mr. Lawrence took a shine to me. He would talk about the desert and gave me motorcycle driving lessons. He had seven of them, you know. He inspired my second book.

*MOTORING INTO MADNESS, correct?*

Yes, again I was the victim of bad timing. Mr. Lawrence had a horrendous accident the day after the book came out and died six days later, May 19, 1935. Mr. Lawrence wrote a short forward, Critics loved the book, but the public began a dreadful campaign against motorbikes. Thank God, for the book advances.

*I understand that's when you met Missy.*

Ha. Missy Chesterfield hit me over the head with an anti-cycle sign at a rally. Being a minor teenage movie star and an American shooting a movie in England, she made nice. I leveraged my swarthy good looks and the reputation-damaging photograph of the incident for a date. We fell in love. She proposed to me one day while fishing on the wharf, but it meant emigrating to Hollywood. Mom was furious, but it was love and fate.

Acting parts were hard to come by for Missy. We had a one-bedroom, cold-water flat, but space for a small garden. People don't realize how much you can save if you eat what you grow. I did most of my writing in a coffee shop near the studios, waiting for Missy and trying to make contacts. My next book, DESERT WATCH, had a lot of Lawrence in it. It was a huge hit in the Middle East until King Abdulaziz discovered oil. He decided the book was too liberal for the regime. It's still banned.

*And that's when the Big Five befriended you.*

Yes, William Faulkner, Humphrey Bogart, and Howard Hawks took me under their wings along with the Hustons (John and Walter). God those guys could drink. They pushed my writing, but weren't very generous with sharing credit. I should have had partial credits for Jezebel, Juarez, and Angels with Dirty Faces. Bogie told me that I was too lyrical. "Fish or cut bait," he said to me. Missy wasn't getting any roles so we went to New York where she got steady work on the stage. But the Big Five experience generated two of my best books, THE CUCKOOS and IN THE BOTTLE. (He laughs heartily.)

*Is that when you met Albert Einstein?"

England...Europe was at war. I wanted to go back, but Missy got pregnant--not mine I found out forty years later. I couldn't leave her. Pressure was on for me to become a citizen. New York City seemed a likely war target should America be dragged into the war. We needed to get out. That's when I dashed off ENEMY ON THE DOCKS about espionage. It didn't sell much, but the movie rights were snatched up and butchered into several war time movies. With the movie rights money, we moved to Lawrenceville, New Jersey, near Princeton, and I taught English at a private school. During a Sunday outing, Einstein and I crashed bikes together at a blind corner. He was funny. "In all the dimensions in all the universes, you come smashing into mine." We had some drinks, and we ended up in the same class for citizenship, which we achieved on October 1, 1940. I talked to Michael Curtiz, another friend of the Big Five, about meeting Einstein. Watch CASABLANCA and see what he did to Einstein's line. He even got me a bit part, handing Captain Louis Renault, Claude Rains, a note. Claude was the nicest guy.
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His story goes on and on. He published twenty-five novels, knew seemingly everyone, and is working on his memoirs. His generosity with helping other screenplay writers, often without recompense, is supposedly legendary. And to his friends, enemies, and strangers alike, he will always be known as BS.
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Still looking for more guest bloggers. Email me.

Guest Blog: B.F. McCune on Paths to Publication

Authors quickly learn that they are responsible for a great deal of marketing and promotion, no matter if they’re represented by a major publisher or have self-published. Book signings are chancy; no one wants to sit alone at a table in a bookstore, looking ignored and neglected.

A Saint Comes Stumbling In

Another option to consider is creating a program for the public, combining entertainment, education, and marketing.  I participated in an event earlier this year, shortly after the publication of my first novel, A Saint Comes Stumbling In.  And if the program includes several authors, there’s even more benefit.

Our program was entitled “Paths to Publication:  panel with Mystery, Humor and ROMANCE.”  The organizer was my friend and critique partner Suzanne Young. She assembled a diverse panel. We knew that some potential audience members would be interested in mysteries, some in romance, some in nonfiction. She also insured that the panelists had a variety of publishing experiences. One is with a traditional small publisher, one was self-published electronically, I’ve gone with an electronic publisher, and Suzanne has switched to electronic self-publishing after being with a small press.

The event was relatively easy to organize. Steps included:

* Find a good venue/sponsor, preferably one with a membership and ways to reach out to those members and the public (we used the Denver Woman’s Press Club).

* Select a date and time (not too late at night) that most people will favor.

* Divide responsibilities for sign-ins, refreshments, books sales, etc.

* Insure the program provides equal opportunity for each speaker (NOT just reading from our books) as well as questions.

The challenge, as usual, was marketing. With four speakers, we were a step ahead of the game. Each of us has separate elists, mailing lists, and other contacts. Those of us with connections to the media or additional organizations, took responsibility for reaching them.

The response in terms of audience was excellent--an attendance of about 45 on a hot summer’s day. About half of those left their emails for future contacts. Book sales were moderate, but that wasn’t the main motive for the event. We found that electronic self-publishing was the primary interest from the audience. And for the speakers, we gained experience in making public presentations and tailoring presentations to potential writers.

c. 2012, all rights reserved, contact author for permission to reproduce.

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B.F. McCune, author of A Saint Comes Stumbling In, lives in Colorado. Her newest publication is IrishEpisode. Email her at Bonnie@BonnieMcCune.com or visit her website. She has been writing since age ten, when she submitted a poem to the Saturday Evening Post. Immediate rejection. This interest facilitated her career in public relations and also in freelance news and features. Her true passion is fiction, and her pieces have won several awards. Her other fiction credits include publications in Infectiveink, women’s anthology Calliope, Overtime chapbook series, On the Premises, and the website Alfie Dog.  In fall 2012, one of her stories is to appear in Best New Writing. For reasons unknown (an unacknowledged optimism?), she believes one person can make a difference in this world.

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A SAINT COMES STUMBLING IN

Tagline:  Can a discarded wife find confidence, success and even a new love?  A patron saint might help.

Blurb:   Thirty-something Joan Nelson has more to contend with than a biological clock or an identity crisis, for her husband of twelve years has fled.  Despite her ardent belief in a conventional marriage, she finds herself deserted for a younger, slimmer woman. Lacking any skills or education, she's thrust unprepared into the nightmare challenge of making a living for the first time in her sheltered existence.

     A job as a receptionist in a law firm is the first rung on the ladder to her independence.  Yet the taste of success sours when Joan considers the emptiness of her personal life.  How can she reconstruct her damaged life and heal her bruised ego?  Ill-equipped for the singles scene, she embarks on a confusing, sometimes frightening, lifestyle.

     But when Joan stumbles on a crime perpetuated by a charming cad, she must defy her boss, jeopardize her newly won stability, and reject her friends.  Her namesake, Joan of Arc, provides a model of courage and insight.  If she risks danger and uncertainty, will she discover that independence and adulthood can be both enjoyable and fulfilling?  Does optimism beat pessimism?  Who would have dreamed her final victory could solve a childhood puzzle while it brings her true love.

     A Saint Comes Stumbling In features a strong, down-to-earth heroine full of hopes and dreams who unexpectedly and humorously becomes the heroine of her own story, in the manner, if not the scope, of Saint Joan.

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Want to be a guest blogger? Email me at anilyb@earthlink.net. That's what B.F. did.

  

Guest Blog: Building Character Quirks by Amber Colleen

Pieces of You…Pieces of Me…  Building memorable character ‘quirks’

There are many ways to create a memorable characters, one of them is to give your characters interesting ‘quirks’. Where do you find unique and believable personality traits to implement into your character profiles? Start with yourself, your family, your friends and people who catch your attention in everyday life.

Yourself – How do you know if you have any quirks worth writing about? That’s easy. These are the things about you that family members will joke about, tease you about, find irritating or funny and are mentioned over and over. As my son and daughter lovingly point out, I often make jokes that nobody else thinks are funny, and I laugh and laugh at my own humor. In one of my novels,  the protagonist has this same trait and her quirky way of dealing with intense situations through humorless jokes is a big part of her character and also enables me, the writer, to express her thoughts in a engrossing manner.

Another tactic is to incorporate your own hobbies into your characters as long as it adds to the story. For example, my son and I trained for 6 years in martial arts and are both black belts. The main character, Mallory, in my novel Premonitions, also has trained with her son in martial arts. While in most aspects of her personality, she is a regular mom, this gives her the tools she needs to fight the terrorists when she finds herself trapped in a locked down elementary school. Her actions are believable, because she has this background, and I can write intelligently about it because I know it.

Family Members – There is an endless supply of personality traits and quirks within your own family! Every family has those crazy characters that make family dinners and events entertaining or dramatic. My son, age 13, is a quirky kid. He is very smart, but common sense is not among his finer qualities. In the novel I am currently working on, No Such Thing As Coincidence, the protagonist is a super-genius that can hardly function in the world outside his brilliant mind. I took my sons lack of common sense and exploded it into this characters personality. Finding a fun quirk among family members and blowing it up is a believable way to embed interesting personality traits into your characters. Be mindful to make sure the quirks you choose for your characters enrich your story. The super-genius based on my son uses this quirk for intense concentration he needs in his medical research to cure diseases.

Keep your eye open for unique ‘quirks’ among your friends and people you see every day. There is endless material everywhere  you look!

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Amber Collen mothers, thrives, and writes in North Carolina and can be found on her website, Facebook Fan Page, and on Twitter via @amber_colleen

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Want to guest blog on this site? Contact Rick at anilyb@earthlink.net .

Guest Blog: Fishing Stories & Fiction by Kim McMahill

Marked in Mexico

Fishing stories. You’ve heard them, and the concept has become synonymous with exaggeration. Not in a malicious way, may I add, but rather an innocent event that after countless retelling and time has morphed into something much more interesting and exciting than the original.  The three-pound fish that took five minutes to reel in eventually evolves into a ten pound fish which battled valiantly for nearly half an hour before conceding defeat to your superior skill.

Reality can make...

This is how many of my real life adventures have sneaked into my romantic suspense novels. I’ve explored numerous Mayan ruins tucked into steamy bug-infested jungles in several countries, yet I’ve always managed to avoid ruthless kidnappers; I’ve pondered the current of the Rio Grande, sticking my toe in to test the waters, but have somehow suppressed the urge to jump into the churning mud and attempt an illegal border crossing; and I have ridden horseback down a terrifyingly steep slope while I clutched the horn with all my might and scenes from Man From Snowy River flashed through my mind, all without a single gunshot from a foreign enemy aimed at me or my trusted steed.

...for a great story.

So, file them away, every last one of those adventures, big and small, and maybe one day they will resurface and after enough repetition become the fodder for that next great thriller or epic adventure novel.

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Kim writes romantic adventure and suspense novels. For more on Kim and her work visit www.kimmcmahill.com or follow her blog at www.kimmcmahill.com.

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Want to be a guest blogger, email Rick .

Guest Blog: George Bush - Zombie Zapper

No one wanted to guest blog today. Shame. I guess everything important about writing has been said, restated, and reworked. I guess bloggers now will have to resort to shock value and the ridiculous.

Jeremiah was a bullfrog, but I bet you didn't know that he is a second cousin to Kermit. They used to go jumping and fly catching down in Alabama for years. They got into a snit about a pig once. Kermit lost. Jeremiah hopped away. Kermit got the pig. Years later, my girlfriend served me bacon-wrapped frog legs. It was delicious.

That's all I've got. I guess I'm allowed an off week once in a while. It's not like I'm a politician and have to be responsible all the time. I think I'll go and work on my next novel now. Y'all write well.

The title for today's blog. Yeah, well, remember that shock value and ridiculous thing I wrote about.

Guest Blog: Author Judith Stanton on Researching

Before the Internet revolution I did academic research in major archives and rare book rooms in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain. Archivists became my best friends. Then I published six historical novels, and loved researching them too. For my seventh novel, a contemporary equestrian suspense, I thought I knew the sport of three-day eventing. But now that it’s done, I could footnote several things I found or verified by research on nearly every page. Research is like a mine shaft, and you dig down to find your diamonds. A few carets (or carrots if you want to feed the horsey):

First, JFGI—Just Google It. Google brings a world of knowledge to our fingertips in the blip of a picosecond. If the answer’s not on the first page, you probably need to refine your key words. But powerful as Google search engines are, be sure to keep an open mind. Late in my new novel, an emergency medical helicopter lands in a pasture to evacuate a gravely injured rider. Thwomp, thwomp, thwomp the rotors go. Very dramatic. Googling helicopter landing behavior, I found that their “sliders” touch the ground on landing. I popped in the word, proud to have uncovered a term of art. Not so. In a final proof before publication, one of my readers, a former U.S. Air Force pilot, gently told me they’re not “sliders” but “skids.” Sliders are horizontal gizmos on the control panel that allow the pilot to adjust for trim.

Second, do old fashioned research. Release your inner OCD. Check out books. Subscribe to magazines or on-line blogs for in-depth history and up-to-the-minute research. If your gig is fashion, hook up with the fashionista blogs, the fall and spring designer shows, Vogue, W, Elle, whatever. If you’ve got guns and hunting in your story, a plethora of blogs, ezines and conventional magazines can bring you up to speed. You might end up subscribing to Guns and Gardens. (They pay for articles.) I subscribe to three horses magazines and follow a couple of forums and several seriously informative blogs around the world.

Third, do field research. Go where the action is. I volunteered as a jump judge and dressage scribe at competitions, met experts, made friends. I regularly visited big competition barns and soaked up competitions, the heartbreak and breakdowns, the victory and defeat. I stood around at horse trials in March when it was 40 degrees tops all day. Then a cold rain started, I’d not packed my slicker, and the best horse-and-rider teams I’d come to observe were yet to run the course. In June, I’ve stuck it out in 104 degrees with no shade on the arenas. Or in April, I raced home with tornadoes touching down and torrents of rain slowing me to 15 mph, no other idiot in the road. All true!

Nearer home, my new best friend is my wonderful county sheriff. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask local experts what you need to know. You may well be the first novelist they’ve met, and wow, do they love to answer your questions and tell their stories.

Fourth, let the action come to you. Honestly, I can't recommend this. I didn't need for my horse to throw me midway the novel’s third draft for me to better polish a scene where face meets dirt! Despite my state-of-the-art safety helmet, I was knocked out cold. Didn't need the doctor to diagnose a concussion. The 4-day headache told me all.

I didn't need to pulverize my left ankle to learn firsthand how many days it would take for purple bruises to climb my calf almost to my knee and seep down to my toes. (About a week, if you're serious about verisimilitude.) Then the green and yellow transmutations--about a month in all.

Nor can I recommend the intruder episode just after Christmas, when I went for night check at the barn to find a stranger frozen in a fetal position under my mare’s feed trough. Dead, I thought, and ran to the house--pulse racing, check, mouth dry, check, knees watery, hands shaking too hard to dial nine-one-one—check, and check. Can use all that in the book. Right. It was only a short wait. A deputy sheriff's cruiser drove up our long driveway, and then the EMTs.

They were incredibly solicitous as they took notes and milled around me, not questioning my story. "You sure you're alright?" "Yes,” I said, “but I ran." "You did the right thing." I was, after all, the good guy, the rational citizen, who’d been startled in the night.

The deputy was fearless too when he took out his gun and canvassed the barn, feed room, tack room, the loft, then called into the darkness, "This is Chatham County Sheriff's Department. Come out of the woods." It almost didn't matter that the “dead” dude was long gone.

And then there was that giant box of an emergency vehicle, sitting in my driveway, engine purring, waiting to rescue me, or my intruder, twice as big and white as any I ever passed on the road. But it's all in my book, the vehicle's size, the EMTs support and courtesy, the relief, when you're the one who’s done no wrong guy, that they're there for you, larger than life, but regular people too.

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Judith Stanton

Horse Woman, Author, Editor, and Lecturer

Coming Summer 2012–“A Stallion to Die For: an equestrian suspense"

—Qualifying for the Olympics can be deadly for woman and horse.

Guest Blog: The Writing Partner Tango

My name is Francene Stanley, and these are my experiences with a writing partner.

Four years ago, I first 'met' Edith Parzefall on The Internet Writing Workshop. She gave wonderful critiques for three novels I posted, one chapter a week. And I did the same for her--probably not so well at the start due to lack of skill. The experience forged our friendship.

My original novels featured a gentle woman wearing an inherited moonstone ring which whisked her away into visions. Just recently, I missed Liliha and wanted to reconnect. It just so happened I had skimmed over six months of her life. I decided to use this time to good advantage. Lonely, Liliha needed a purpose to hold her life together. Unable to stop a perpetrator in her vision, she decided to search for him in real life. Only natural--that's what I'd do. And so Liliha became a detective of sorts in trying to track him down and rectify the offence she'd seen in her vision.

I couldn't say I'm clever like Rick and his protagonist. My main character is a quiet woman who sees everything with understanding eyes--suspecting nobody of any evil. Rather like me. Funny that.

During our critique sessions, Edith influenced my writing, not so much my style, but by demonstrating how to create a unique voice for different characters. She pointed out that the charming rogue in Still Rock Water sounded too sophisticated for a man with his background and rewrote a few paragraphs to establish a different voice for Harry. This first exercise in collaboration encouraged me to experiment and planted the seed for a series set in the future.

When I contacted her with the idea of writing a post-apocalyptic fantasy series based on my theme of a moonstone ring, she agreed to join me as co-author. She went along with the way I'd begun the story and wrote scenes for several characters, made them her own and eventually changed them as they took over in the imagery of writing. Double Dragon Publishing released the first book, Wind Over Troubled Waters in April.

Together we've written three more books:

*  Knights in Dark Leather (coming out soon)

*  Golden Submarine (ready)

*  Long Doom Calling (ready)

...all with the warped name of a song as the title. And each critiqued by the wonderful people at the Internet Writing Workshop.

Guest Blog: Dangling Modifiers, Gangling Grammer

Sometimes, I'll come across laughable images which materialize from sentences that mean one thing but are understood as something else altogether. No, I am not talking about irony (simulated ignorance, contrariness in wit) or rhetoric (an impressive lack of sincerity); those are literary and verbal techniques intended to put a spin on language and circumstance. The culprit, of course, is the dangling participle or misplaced modifier (aka dangling modifiers), those humorous errors in sentence structure that leave our words hanging. I know I have done this subconsciously in my own writing, and perhaps you have, too.

Let's look at it another way. You wouldn't make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from ham and cheese, would you? Nor would you call a BLT combo a Fluffernutter sandwich. Each meal is distinct and implies nothing else (I don't know why I'm thinking about food right now!). Likewise, you wouldn't want to place confusion in your writing? Here are examples where language has gone wrong structurally, leaving us with a few good laughs along the way:

Biking in the rain, the cluttered storefront provided his family the closest shelter.—or—
Jogging along the path, the grazing deer suddenly raised their heads then bolted from view.
—and this—
The young girl spotted an ice cream truck near the corner dusting off her messy clothes.—or even this—
Rusted beyond repair, I took the old lawnmower to the alley and got rid of it.


Who, I ask, is biking in the rain (the cluttered storefront?) or jogging along the path (the grazing deer? That would be a sight for St. Nicklaus!). Is the ice cream truck doing the dusting off then? And who is rusted beyond repair? (I feel that way sometimes, yes, but not today! So it must be the old lawnmower that's rusted then.) These are dangling participles or misplaced modifiers, or as I like to call it—gangling grammar. And any sentence structured like the ones I mention above will prick and tickle an editor pouring over your labor of love, your submitted work.

To help sort out the confusion, let me begin by stating that a verb (a doing word) must always point to its noun (the subject). We know this, yes? But we also have variations in verbs, and a participle is one variation formed from a verb; as well, it can show the characteristics of both verbs and adjectives (in some languages, as adverbs, too). For example, jog is a verb, and jogging is a present participle of jog. Bear with me here if all this is mindless drivel to your practiced ears. So I could say jogging along the path, which becomes a participial phrase, because it contains the present participle and because it isn't a full sentence by itself. If I were to draw out a complete sentence I would say, I went jogging along the path. Here, went jogging points correctly to the subject I.

We wind up with a dangling participle when the phrase jogging along the path cannot correctly point to its subject (noun) in a sentence, whether complete, compound, or complex; and the dangling often takes place when the participial phrase is placed at the front of the sentence. So to use the example from above with the grazing deer:

Jogging along the path, the grazing deer suddenly raised their heads then bolted from view.

We know fully well that you, or I, or someone other than the grazing deer went jogging along the path. (And if deer can jog along a path then I am good for grazing, going cold before headlights, and taking flight at the slightest disturbance.) All the same, we need to place the correct subject in its rightful place in a sentence that might be written like this:

1. As I went jogging along the path, the grazing deer suddenly raised their heads then bolted from view.
—or this—
2. Jogging along the path, I startled the grazing deer who suddenly raised their heads then bolted from view.

Misplaced modifiers work the same way, and #2 is an example of one. Notice how my "jogging" phrase in front now points correctly to the subject I. Modifiers are usually adjectives (for e.g., large) and nouns (for e.g., sun) that are used as attributes to qualify or modify a greater noun (large sun room). A misplaced modifier should point to the correct noun, as shown in my example #2 above. Grammar pundits, including Fowler, Kenneth Wilson, Patricia O'Conner and others insist that misplaced modifiers create no ambiguity in the reader, although the reader is bound to hesitate or become rattled by the writer's blunder. Here's another misplaced example (note the passive voice, another contributor to the problem):

Having read the book, my critique was read to the entire class.


In fact, I read the book, not my critique, but a reader would understand what is meant in the sentence, however wrong it may be by its odd structure. In A Writer's Reference, Sixth Edition online, Diana Hacker says, "Though it may be a good thing to amuse readers now and again, most of us would prefer to do so intentionally. When we write a dangling modifier, the joke is at our expense."

So to grammatically correct the misplaced modifier, I should write:  Having read the book, I read my critique to the entire class.


While working with an author recently, a few dangling modifiers showed up in the finished draft, and I spared no time marking up the guilty sentences. Now, wait a minute! That's not what I meant to say, although that sentence might sound right and make it seem as if there isn't any confusion. I, not the few dangling modifiers, had been working with an author recently. So let me recast the sentence: While working with an author recently, I ran across a few dangling modifiers that showed up in the finished draft, and I spared no time marking up the guilty sentences and sending them to the cleaners.

Ignatius Valntine Aloysius is a member of the American Copy Editors Society. He lives in Evanston, Illinois, and occupies a small farmhouse there that once used to be a barn. When he isn't teaching or working in his design studio, he writes fiction and poetry to keep his mind warm and fuzzy.

Guest Blog: She's MIA. You'll have to do with me.

This is a test of the emergency guest blog system. This is only a test. Should this have been an actual emergency, you would have had better things to be doing than reading this. This is only a test.
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Yesterday, on the Internet Writing Workshop, someone sent me, and other great thinkers and writers, a link (no longer working) to an article titled:  Is Writing an Art or a Craft?  After Googling the topic to do research, I received 200,000,000 hits (seriously). On the IWW, I decided to answer thusly.
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(Y'all need to read this with a southern accent in your head even though I'm originally from New Jersey.)

You can't spell craft without "a"..."r"..."t".

We're splitting definitional hairs, and I'm too busy crafting my next novel into a work of art so future generations can shell out big bucks for a first edition of my literary masterpiece.



Art is in the eye of the beholder. Some paintings, pictures, and books are pieces of dog do-do that don't resonate with anyone but the plumber, unplugging the toilet after those items are flushed. Some paintings, pictures, and books can take a person's breath away or change their lives. You want to call me a craftsman or artist or writer or novelist or author, go ahead...it's all good. It's even better if you call me one of those fancy names while leaving me a 5-star review on Amazon, paying $13.99 for the paperback of One Promise Too Many because that's my biggest profit margin, and posting on Facebook (after you change your password) that Rick Bylina is a genius and his writings changed my life. But don't call me a bum. Only my mother-in-law can do that with impunity.

Notice, you can't spell masterpiece without "a"..."r"..."t" either.

The beaver family down the creek from me built a dam where the farmer and his contractor failed to do so twice over the past 20 years. The beaver's damn dam is masterpiece of engineering that withstood the illegal attempt by the farmer to dynamite it. Farmer's dead now. Explosives accident, I hear tell. But he has the watering hole he wanted all along thanks to the beaver's craft and resultant work of art. Of the farmer, well, as Leslie Winkle would say, "Dumb ass."

I am that I am: a scribbler of words. Had I been an actual writing genius, I would have probably written something prophetic by now. No, I'm just a Joe who enjoys words, tells some good stories, understands the craft but can't always execute it without a cheat sheet. A Joe, who has problems with the details, spelling, and micro-hairsplitting grammar concepts. Nevertheless, I keep working at it. Genius is state to strive for. Keep trying and maybe no one will notice that you didn't make it to that state, but your art did.

Notice agin (sic), you can't spell author without "a"..."r"..."t" either. Webster works in mysterious ways.

P.S. God spelled backwards is dog. Mind-blowing.

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This has been a test of the emergency guest blog system. Should this have been an actual emergency, we'd all be looking for someone with whom we could spending eternity blogging. This was only a test.

Guest Blog: Cooking English Novels With Exotic Seasoning by Edith Parzefall

Sometimes I wish I'd become a cameraman, uhm woman. See, that's where the trouble starts already.  Words can be such a nuisance. While German is my mother tongue (hm, my father tongue as well), I've wanted to write in English ever since attending the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA.

Writers are taught to pay close attention to how people speak, act, behave... Well, there is no better motivation than being thrown into a foreign culture. Of course, in school I'd been taught British English as the more sophisticated, original flavor, sorry flavour. Well, ask Shakespeare how modern British English sounds to him.

In the US, I quickly adapted. Gotta fit in if you don't want to hear the question, "Oh, where are you from?" every time you open your mouth. Very important survival strategy since your answer might prompt a lengthy explanation of a complete stranger's family history. After a few weeks, I'd mastered a perfectly pronounced "Hi" that didn't raise questions.

Around that time I started thinking and dreaming in English. Years later, when I seriously attempted writing fiction, I started in German, but English phrases kept popping up in my head, particularly for dialogue. Naturally, I'd never listened to Germans so carefully, assuming they all talked like I do, which of course they don't.

Nudged and encouraged by American friends, I switched to writing in English. To add a little language challenge, I set my thriller Strays of Rio in Brazil, sprinkling in Portuguese, and my psychological suspense Crumple Zone in Chile, spiced with some Spanish. Fairly easy in comparison to what lay ahead.

A few years ago, Francene Stanley invited me to co-write a post-apocalyptic fantasy with her. Born in Australia, she has been living in the UK for decades. Since Wind Over Troubled Waters is set in Cornwall, I had to revert to British English--while I was still editing Strays written in American English. Fortunately, Francene never complained when she had to fix any of my slips into American spelling. In return, I weeded out her Australian instances of 'no-body'.

Since a US or UK publisher would have been far too boring language-wise, our Australian-German-British novel ended up with Canadian Double Dragon Publishing. I half-expected a South African editor for further coverage of English language flavors. Maybe for the next book in the series.
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Edith Parzefall can be contacted via her blog or website.

Guest Blog: "Laughing Out Loud" by Pauline F. Micciche

Does your writing make people laugh? Mine doesn’t.  It tends to be gloomy. I’d been trying to write with a lighter tone to see how it works for me.  Only I didn’t know how. So when I saw a five line squib in the local newspaper about the 2012 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop I thought I might be able to learn a more light-hearted approach from the humor experts there.  I registered.

I wasn’t disappointed. Two of the sessions I attended were especially helpful, How I Converted 7,000 Hours of Work Into $10 Hard Cash and Then Turned a Single Stupid Idea into $37,000! by Tim Bete and The Six Million Dollar Column: How to Write Bigger, Funnier and Faster by Tracy Beckerman.

Tim believes that almost all humor comes from two ideas that don’t go together.  Tracy breaks humor down into its components. According to her, humor comes from the reader’s ability to relate to the setup, unexpected elements, and the humorous use of language. She sees three theories or approaches to humor. They include a situation in which one person takes advantage of another, incongruity between parts of a sentence or paragraph, and building up the story to some sort of relief.  She also shared twenty-two tools for creating humorous language, some of which are related.

When I got home I started writing what I hoped would be a funny report on my experience at the workshop.  But how to tell if I’d succeeded? I asked my husband to read it. He smiled at the end. Not what I’d hoped for. Then Tim’s presentation came to my rescue. He suggested submitting your writing to the local newspaper.  I researched the newspapers in my area. Not wanting to have the topic go stale or cool my own enthusiasm, I concentrated on newspapers who accepted contact via e-mail or Facebook. So I contacted the Springfield News Sun, the Fairborn Daily Herald, the Dayton City Paper, and the Dayton Daily News.  My post made it onto the Fairborn Daily Herald. No-one has liked it or commented on it – yet.
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Pauline Micciche writes fiction as P. F. Palm in the rare moments she isn't snuggling with her husband (Richard Palm) in Fairborn, Ohio.
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Photo: Mountain Man Rick ratcheting up the humor or his beard.

Guest Blog: "First Novel Journey: OUTLAWS" by Bill Weldy

Years ago while traveling west, I stopped along the edge of the highway in the early morning hours and gazed down on a beautiful valley nestled in the Idaho Mountains. An Emerald green lake surrounded by tall pine trees and dense forest contrasted the golden meadow leading to the lake. I envisioned a log cabin and small barn, with horses grazing. I fell in love with that spot and it imprinted itself forever in my memory.

Flash forward: During that time I was working swing shifts for the Dayton Police Department and often had difficulty falling to sleep. I developed the habit of envisioning that unforgettable setting In Idaho and thought of the process of building a log cabin – one log at a time. I veered off my thoughts to consider every aspect of what it would take to survive in total wilderness alone. Long story short, I drifted off to sleep. Over many years, I managed to get the cabin build in my mind but continued to visit the scene anytime I wanted to fall sleep. I still do.

I have tried to write stories all my life – stacks of finished and unfinished manuscripts crowd my files and desktop. But undying praise from friends and loved ones does not lead to a published novel. With the mantra of ‘write what you know’ firmly embedded, most of my novel attempts were crime/fight crime/mystery stories, with hundreds of rejections from publishers to accompany them. 

One night lying in bed thinking of my secret valley and the small farm I’d built in my head, I had difficulty thinking of something new to build or some new aspect of survival. Sleep wouldn’t come. “Write what you know”, flashed through my mind. I decided I needed to write a story about my secret place.

With only the setting as a starting point, I developed a protagonist totally different from me, but who possessed all my knowledge of having built this place over many years. I then set about (in my mind only) putting the character in life threatening situations and involving other characters to come up with a story. I quickly found that I could not get to sleep with these thoughts.

So I started to write the story. Coming up with a believable antagonist was the most difficult part. Thinking back on my police career and the criminals I’d dealt with didn’t help much (for a story in this isolated setting).  Not much activity there for organized crime mobs, no national security issues to involve terrorists, not many serial killers roaming the woods of southern Idaho. Then the Outlaws motorcycle gang popped into my head. Having had some dealings with them in my police career I knew they were mobile, nationwide in scope, vicious, lawless, and colorful. Perfect bad guys.

But why would they bother with a hermit farmer? Well, he periodically had to get supplies from someplace. Why not have the gang murder the general store owner and the hero could then become involved. Unlike previous novel attempts, the story flowed with no outline (other than in my mind).  I wrote the entire first draft in a few short weeks (and sleepless nights).  Along the way, I threw in the murder victim’s daughter for a romance angle, and a couple of inept bikers for comic relief. In my experience with the local chapter of Outlaws, I knew, although they are vicious and lawless, they are not necessarily CEO material. I needed the ineptness to keep our hero and damsel in distress from being killed in the first chapter.

As with my other novels I instinctively knew it was not worthy of publication despite the praise from my family. I tweaked and rewrote it a little at a time. Then I joined a writers’ group and started subbing chapters for review. The Internet Writers Workshop provided unbiased criticism of my writing and succinct suggestions of how to make it better. Slap myself in the forehead. Why hadn’t I seen those flaws before? The manuscript slowly changed into a publishable novel. I learned how to write an acceptable query letter and started submitting the manuscript to publishers. Even though I knew OUTLAWS was a vast improvement over all my previous novels, I had little confidence is getting it published (thanks to all my previous rejections).

When I was asked to submit the entire manuscript to an eBook publishing house (Musa Publishing), I was thrilled beyond compare, and shocked with disbelief, when two weeks later, they offered me a contract to publish the book. It will be released on Amazon and Musa Publishing on May 18, 2012.

Dreams can become reality. If you count sheep to get to sleep -- write a story about sheep.

Guest Blog: "Comma Wars" by Wayne Scheer

It's a problem every writer faces each day. No, not how am I going to express my thoughts elegantly and concisely or even how am I going to earn enough money to make it through next month?

Rather, where should I place the damned comma?

There are rules, of course.  But in order to understand the rules, you must have a command of such phrases as, "coordinate adjectives," "restrictive elements," "parenthetical expressions," as well as the ever-popular, "independent and dependent clauses."  Trying to understand the logic behind comma rules is like trying to balance Jello on the tip of a banana. Even if you succeed, you still ask yourself: "Why did I bother?"

 

So we can all appreciate the kommakrigen, comma war, taking place in Denmark. That's right. The Cold War may be dead, but the dreaded commas continue to creep and crawl over the writings of Danes, great and otherwise, dancing doggedly from phrase to phrase.

You see, up until the Second World War, Danish was dependent on rules of German punctuation. That meant commas were used aggressively in rigid, lockstep formation. The problem is after the war, everything German became so uncool that Danish schools stopped teaching the rules, and most folk, if they once accepted the German punctuation mentality, soon denied any knowledge of it.

 

But the comma remained, and few knew when to use it.

 

However, the present-day Conservatives want to bring back the old German way of punctuating by stressing the basics of grammar in the Danish school system while the left-wing Social Democrats, under the authority of the 1996 Language Committee of the Ministry of Culture, are rallying behind the "New Comma," with its de-emphasis on rules. Instead, it argues that the comma should be used primarily to denote natural pauses of breath in Danish speech.

Sound familiar?

The problem, of course, is few Danes understand the old German rules well enough to use the comma with any kind of consistency and just as few Danes speak in regular breath patterns, especially when dealing with matters of punctuation and politics. The left-wing accuses the Conservatives of fostering an elitism based on a foreign ideology and the right-wing accuses the Social Democrats of a kind of dummying down to appease the masses. For the grammarians, nothing less than the future of Danish civilization is at stake.

Is there a lesson in this for us?  Perhaps. But for me I'd rather let the Danes fight it out while I try to determine if I need a comma or if I can get away without using one even if this final sentence leaves me breathless.
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Wayne Scheer has locked himself in a room with his computer and turtle since his retirement. (Wayne's, not the turtle's.) To keep from going back to work, he's published hundreds of short stories, essays and poems, including Revealing Moments, a collection of flash stories. He's been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net. Wayne lives in Atlanta with his wife and can be contacted at wvscheer@aol.com.

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The book Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss has nothing to do with Wayne's guest blog. I just thought it was a nice addition for those comma-challenged people as a resource.