Time Critical: Get your questions asked.

Dr. Lyle is the award-winning author of many books. He serves as a consultant for television and film writers, and he’s a practicing cardiologist in the L.A area. He will be answering questions on Monday on Lee Lofland's interesting crime and mystery-related blog on Monday. Lots of good stuff there for you mystery writers.

Eclipse of the Mind

What happened to Saturday? I don't know. After four hours of chopping up a fallen poplar, I kind of fell asleep, helped make six pizzas, and watched "Gattica". The dog ate my homework, and there's a total lunar eclipse beginning 10:51 PST on February 20th (that is, 1:51 a.m. EST). I suspect vampires and werewolves will be out in full that night, so wear your silver and spray garlic in the air. It also repels horny deer and voracious rabbits. Okay, the dog didn't eat my homework, but Sydney, my pet cockateil, did take a bite out of it. Oh, I guess Saturday was still there after all. I rewrote the query for "One Promise Too Many" and alerted the post office to expect another couple hundred mailings for Monday. Agents...you are on alert!

Yea, I hear them shaking in their boots also.

P.S. Is it just me or is everyone's blogger spellcheck on the blink?

Steal this idea - "Love Hang-up"

This news article about the storage of text messages is rife with ideas for stories, especially about the two policemen unceremouniously fired over their investigation into the mayors hanki-panki only now it appears they were right.

Harold Jones thought he'd met the perfect love in Cheryl Sanford. The only thing standing in his way was her husband, Bert, the President of the United States.

The Best Writing Workshop for You

It's simple: the best workshop for the best value to improve your writing is the Writers Retreat Workshop, May 23 t0 June 1, in Erlanger, Kentucky. If you're serious about your craft, GO. I have it on good authority that there are only five slots left for writers who want to succeed. These are some of the successes from past participants in the last three weeks.

* Jack Getze, author of "Big Numbers," was guest editor this month for the "Spinetingle" ezine. His follow-up novel in the Austin Carr series, "Big Money," arrives in March.
* Gene Sittenfield garnered his first publication "Last Man Standing".
* Dennis Lahane announced Lorin Oberweger as winner of the Best Of Award in her literary grouping during the Writers In Paradise conference in St Pete, FLA.
* Janice Croom's "Death of an Island Tart" is a semi-finalist in the Amazon/Penguin Breakthrough Novel Award
* Kimberly Frost's first novel "Would-be Witch" is scheduled for release in February, 2009.
* Susan Goodwill has received the final edited copy of "Little Shop of Murders" her follow-up to her stellar first novel, "Briga-DOOM," in the Kate London mystery series.

Check it out. Rick (WRW05 and 06)

Bookcrossing - Where freed books roam.

Do you know where to set books free? Try bookcrossing.

What's black and white and read all over? A book. rimshot! I'm losing it.

"In the Bleak Midwinter" by Julia Spencer-Fleming

The 2003 Agatha Best First Novel winner pulled me in from the beginning to the end. Using the stark northeastern New York winter as a backdrop, the story follows newly ordained Episcopal Priest Clare Fergusson and Police Chief Russ Van Alystyne as they try to identify the parents of a newborn left at the church. The investigation intensifies when a young woman is murdered. Ultimately, the story intensifies putting the investigator's lives in danger. Coupled because of their mutual interest in ensuring the baby's welfare and the mutual "the buck stops here" attitudes toward their jobs, a romantic undertone permeates but doesn't get in the way of the story. While a few scenes seem somewhat contrived to enhance the plot and tension, numerous twists and turns keep the reader guessing as to the outcome. For mystery lovers, this is a five.

MMWUC for February 4, 2008

EXERCISE: A giant stood in front of the writers. "Close your eyes, take a deep breath and let it out nice and slow. For the next ten minutes, write from the protagonists POV, "He saw his dream taking shape...'." The giant smiled and left for a party.

MUSING: I mused yesterday. Today I have to chop wood or look for work or do some writing or read another book or work on my bills or clean up around the house or ... how come my fictional characters never do that stuff?

A Day in the Woods

Spent Saturday helping with the 8-20-40 mile Uwharrie Mountain Run by manning the 8/32 mile checkpoint. 500-600 runners depleted the atmosphere of oxygen and increased the carbon dioxide levels by pounding the rocks, mud, roots, and branches of a rugged trail into submission while running, jogging, walking, gimping, and crawling through the forest scaring the bejeebers out of coyotes, bear, deer, opossums, raccoons, and partridge in a nearby Bradford Pear tree. Nearly every runner fell once during the race. A 78-year-old participant refused to quit at the 32 mile checkpoint despite the setting sun at his back and a nasty looking cut on his forearm from a counter attack from an oak tree root. We had 80 gallons of water, gatorade, Coke, and Mountain Dew at our aid station, and those greedy, sweaty, smelly runners drank every last drop of it. One runner commented that he gently subcumbed to gravity at some point and lay on his back watching the bare tree limbs extend skyward as part of some runner's hallucinagenic trance after nine hours of massauging his knees with earth-shattering jolts. He smiled gleefully as he told his story. I kept backing up. But the course was fast, the day sunny, the weather perfect for the volunteers if just a tad warm for the runners (30 at the seven a.m. start; mid-50s at four p.m.).

I picked up a gleam of a story last year from this race which is now captured in ten pages of notes that I might get to someday. Not so much this year, except the rehash of memories when I used to pound mile after mile in long distance races. If not for the day in the woods, all those memories would probably wither and die. I have the stinky, funny, happy, disappointed, ecstatic, elated, weary, frustrated, disconsolent, excited, and courageous runners of this race to thanks for keeping those memories alive as potential book fodder in the future.

I played (over and over) the "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" piece from Orff by Carmina Burana for the 40-milers when they came through our aid station. Okay, obscurely titled, but you do know it. It's that piece with the lush, medeival-sounding orchestra, with heavy drums, and a chorus of hundreds that commercials and sports pieces love to tap into to show the agony and ecstasy of an athlete in action. It garnered more than a few grins, some requests to switch to Carolina Beach music, but there was one couple who came through who actually knew the piece by name. The husband breathlessly said, "That's Orff. That's her favorite piece for inspiration." She turned and gave us a thousand watt smile.

I cranked that sucker up to full volume as the climatic drum pounding ending and choral crescendo echoed in the air while they headed up the path into the woods to do battle against the limits of human endurance.

Eight more miles of the runner's high for them. One more memory for me to cherish in the twilight years.

Starting from nothing

It was a gray and stormy morning. A fine spray filled in where the thunderstorms had rumbled through. A lone figure fed the birds and then stoked the fire.

Do you ever just start a story just to see where it would go? What happened?

The toenail was never right: too long, too short, too raggedy. It caught on the bedsheets; it scratched his lover. It ached whether it was too long or short; it never let up. It dominated his thoughts and once had him lose it at an interview in a Tourette's Syndrome-like outburst at his toenail after the interviewer had asked him if had any special job requirements. It's not that the toenail didn't have its place in his life. It did protect the toe from hard objects dropped--the owner of the toe being a klutz, but it had gone too far this time. This time, it had overreached its importance.

I don't know. Things just spill out from my fingers.

"Tied to the whipping post." - A. B.

My face-to-face critique group meets tonight at my house for one last thrashing of "One Promise Too Many" before it goes out to agents one last time. If no takers this time, this WIP goes into the dark closet of doom. I'll have two dishes to serve them. They better critique wisely.

How many books do you have in the dark closet of doom waiting for resurrection when your novels are selling like hotcakes at a Catholic breakfast and Spielberg has you on speed dial for movie rights to your next novel?

I've been nominated for a Nobel!

Well, not really. But now that I have your attention, you ARE my guest blogger today. Don't just pass through, leave a comment about a writing concern you have. Maybe together or with the other people passing through, we can shine some light on a dark area of writing and get you one step closer to a Nobel, okay, maybe a National Book Award. No, a Pulitzer. Oh, I see. Just being published would be fine.

Modeling

When I write, I use a breakdown of "The Fugitive" (yeah, I know it's a movie) as a model for my ups and downs in my story, when my right angle turns occur, when my character learns what he/she needs to know to fight back, and when my character learns the antagonist's Achilles Heel that helps the protagonist fight back during his black moment in front of the climax.

I'd love to use "Casablanca" (my favorite movie), but "C" does something unique as pointed out by Robert McKee in his book "Story". "C" starts off setting up the subplots before the inciting incident of the main plot line occurs. It is brilliant and tough to match up against.

What book/movie do you hold up as a model for guiding you through the pacing of your novel.

MMWUC for January 28, 2008

EXERCISE: His crumpled dead body occupied the center aisle when the first student stumbled into the class room. Yellow police tape surrounded him like a forgotten May pole game. One student screamed; one nearly passed out; two giggled until they detected the faint coppery smell of blood emanating from a small pool of it. Shortly, a tall thin man entered the room his detective badge displayed over his coat pocket. "Sit, relax, close eyes. Take a deep breath." A few students coughed as the decaying process moved forward. "For the next ten minutes, write 'I wanted it not to be true, but...'."

MUSING: I think I need to go work in the morgue with Lindsey Lohan for a couple of days. The grist of reality might help my (or anyone's) writing. Or maybe I'll just learn some new drinking games from "Lindy".

Books that make you dumb.

Fascinating little survey about your readership of your novels at the college level mapped against multiple colleges and universities. I don't even want to tell you where my college ended up, but I think I need to repeat some English classes at Duke up the street.

Flash Fiction

Need to get those six sentence stories off your chest? Try the 6S site.

Don't have enough for six sentences? Try 55 words.

Got another site for flash fiction?

Marketing: Getting your book out there

Need to get your book in front of more people? Try looking at this site for a list of sites to freely list you novel.

When you write your novel, do you purposely create tie-ins for marketing or do those things evolve after-the-fact when you think, "Holy cow, I've got to sell this thing?"

Inspiration Initiator

If Monday Morning Wake-Up Calls (MMWUC) are not enough for you, spark your imagination from this site. The site is now listed as Writing Prompts under Writing Help should you need it later.

The Birth of Your Character

Guest blogger, Ron Voigts, wrote the "Penelope" YA mystery series that his agent is shopping around. We met at the Triangle Writers Circle in Cary, NC in 2001, and he has been a member of my face-to-face Movable Critique Group since 2003.
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I’m always curious how the character in the story developed, or perhaps a better word was born. Did Harry Potter start out with blonde hair and blue eye, but then J.K. Rowling realized dark hair, spectacles and a lightning bolt scar worked better? Was Monk a manic-depressive, but then the show’s writers found phobias and OCD had better viewer appeal? Was Harry Holmes a flop until Sir Arthur Conan Doyle changed his name to Sherlock?

In my YA series, I originally had a college aged woman returning home for the Christmas holidays; the problem was her antics were too immature. So I scaled back her age to sixteen, but that brought along baggage that I didn’t want and the character still seemed to be younger. Finally I made her thirteen years old, wearing bib overalls. She was short for her age and had terribly curly hair that she hid under a stocking cap. Suddenly she came alive, disagreeing with adults and taking on the supernatural to solve a murder. Penelope was born.

How were your characters born?

"Better Off Wed" by Laura Durham

The 2005 Agatha Best First Novel winner is a well-written cozy that is a breeze to read with some off-beat but believable characters, including Annabelle Archer, the troubled wedding planner protagonist who has to suffer with the much hated mother of the bride before she's murdered at the wedding reception by the end of Chapter One. I vow that there is no bloody gore, but the reveal at the end is a bit too pat even though it is pulled off with a classic bit of panache. Good humor rings throughout, and her assistant, Kate, mangles enough phrases to keep the best punsters in snitches. An excellent first wedding of humor and mystery, but it was a bit light and somewhat predictable for my taste. I give it a four; however, cozy lovers will decorate it with fives.

My MMWUC Exercise. Share if you dare

The wind had died during the night, and the quiet cold settled in the usual places, around the deck, the open front lawn, and my knees as I walked around filling the various bird feeders and casting seed on the frozen ground that crunches underfoot like shredded wheat in my cereal bowl. The bird baths are frozen, so I take the little one inside and thaw it next to the wood stove that warms the inside of the house. It's cold, not bitter inside at sixty-four degrees, but the master bedroom is usually five to ten degrees cooler. The sun has inched over the horizon miles in the distance, and its light casts bony shadows in the yard. The early morning feeders, cardinals and titmouse, peck away earnestly at the seeds. The sparrows, various finches, chickadees, and other visitors will wait until the brightness of the morning signals them. A raccoon and cat have left their tracks on my deck in yesterday's fresh snow. I will have to set the re-education trap for them. I fill the bird bath with warm water that will freeze in forty minutes, and as I place it on the deck, a slight southwesterly breeze pushes the cold aside for a moment, and the birds chirp loudly in celebration.

MMWUC for January 21, 2008

Writers are on strike. They left this message for me. "Close your eyes, take a deep break, and relax. In the next ten minutes write one good paragraph about a cold frozen morning."

Musing: The muse dances within my head, strokes my brain with tantalizing ideas, and then splits with George Clooney, leaving me to struggle on my own. Oh, we writers do most things on our own.

Do Nothing. Avoid criticism.

That is a Dilbert philosophy as he sleeps leaning back on an uncomfortable office chair in a cartoon. It is not the credo of any author I know.

Get it. Got it. Write it. There is only one rule!

But for today, I think I'll find a comfy chair and stare at the rare southern snowfall, a disappointing two inches, and temperatures not rising above freezing while rooting on my favorite teams in the AFC/NFC Championship games.

"In Stereo Where Available" by Becky Anderson

Phoebe Kassner, a 29-year-old virgin, inches her way into a romantic situation that could be the real deal. When it does turn serious, it surprises her obsessive, list-checking roommate, Phoebe's not-so-identical twin Madison (a Yankee in the "Belle of Georgia" television show seeking her own perfect mate), and the rest of her family. Some of the light-hearted chick-lit aspects of the story take a backseat as contemporary adult relationship issues are dealt with heartfelt honestly. Chick-lit novels are not my forte, but some of the not-so-right dates Phoebe endured had me reminiscing about some of mine and made me smile. The humorous antics of Madison on the reality show nearly steals the novel away from Phoebe. An excellent first novel from an author who shows lots of promise, I gave it a four on the five star scale.

How to write about a disaster! Create one!!

Morning? No coffee; no diet coke; no chocolate; no sun. Shelves in pantry fell down. Must fix. You don't understand the size of my pantry! 17x6!! Note to self. Never store the Kitchen Aid on the upper shelf. Is that molasses on the floor or dragon blood? Amazingly, no glass broke, but there's this eerie looking pattern on the back wall that I think leads to the fourth dimension. A trail of socks leads to it, and I'm sure that something passed through it to knock down the shelves. This is how adventures begin. Who knows where it will lead.

The Kashmir Kid

Okay, I have this little map of the world at the bottom of my blog that indicates where people are when they access my blog. I find it mighty interesting, but then again, I'm into maps. The scale is rather small, but who is accessing me from Kashmir? Is that you, Osama?

The Garret

2:43 yesterday afternoon. I had tired of chopping wood and had been filling out job applications ever since Judge Judy made a deadbeat pay the maximum of $5,000 to an ex-girlfriend for bills he ran up. "I didn't think she'd mind" was his defense. I couldn't get warm. I was waiting for today's snow, which never came. I looked around my office and the junk piling up. "I look like a poor starving writer living in a garret," I said to Sydney, my cockateil. He bit me sensing another pity party afternoon.

Lightning struck inside my brain. The muse landed with a thud, and the basis of a story hit with a beginning, middle, and ending!

Yeah, yeah! I know. I'm struck with inspiration twenty times a day, but this...well, it was different. It had the smell of novel in the afterglow. I wrote down what I could, and this morning I looked at my notes. IT WAS STILL THERE. Mark this day. Six months from now, you'll hear more about "The Garret" (tentative title).

Kicking the Query Letter up a Notch

Today we have a guest blogger: Ron Voigts. I met Ron at the Triangle Writers Circle in Cary, NC in 2001. He has been a member of my face-to-face Movable Critique Group since 2003. His agent is pounding on Publisher's doors with his series of YA books. So Ron, what saith you?

The careful shopper compares products and asks why should I buy this brand? Most literary agents are careful shoppers. They read your query letter and ask why should I buy it? Or why would the publisher? Or the book shopper?

Good query letters should have a catchy opening (the hook), summary of book (title, word count, characters and plot idea) and closing (asking them to buy). But most often omitted is a pitch why your book is better than the rest, why the readers are waiting for this book and what benefits the reader receives.

When searching for an agent for my first book, a murder mystery with a thirteen year old detective, I added the following line to my query:

“With today's young readers moving up grade levels for adventure and excitement, the story line presents them with the classic murder mystery, while minimizing the violence.”

In 25 queries, I had three agents request the book and landed agent number three.

Remember: it’s not enough to write a good book, unless that shopper (or agent) has reason to buy it.

Twisting Your Plot

Plot twists are great. Here is a list of what the Premier website thinks are the 20 best of all time. My favorite was the ending to "The Sixth Sense." Totally didn't see it coming. What's your favorite?

MMWUC for January 14, 2008

EXERCISE: I awoke late and exercised by sprinting to class where I found all the writers gone, save for one who had backed himself into a corner with a thermos of coffee, squeezed into minefield of tables and chairs, hidden behind a stack of papers as though he was in a writer's bunker. "Where are they?" I asked. "Writing," he said, not raising his head or missing a stroke of his quill pen. "Oh," I responded brilliantly despondent that no one would hear my brilliant and inspirational words. The writer heard my sorrowful one-word response. "They're writing," he said. The scratching of his pen halted. "That's all that matters."

MUSINGS: Got the point. Let's get to it. The lack of a muse can't stop you from laying words on a page. Sometimes you have to purge yourself of the meaningless words before the muse will return. The muse doesn't like to work in a trashy environment.

Banishing Overused Words

Lake Superior State University has come out with its 2008 list of words (or phrases) that need to be banished. (Thanks for the reminder CJ.) It made me think of four things when writing.

1. Don't overuse unusual words in your stories, for example, purloined. (Unless, of course, your name is Edgar Allan Poe.)

2. Don't overuse common words. (How many times are you going to use "up" in that scene?)

3. Rein in the jargon and popular cliches least you end up dating your material before it is even published. (Unless, ya know, that you're like, ya know, doing a period piece, hehehe, about some silly female pop singer who screws up her life, like ya know, I'm a pop princess and I can do, oh is that another dog I can get while I go into a strip club with my kids in a car?)

4. Use the correct word. Always look up the definition of those words of which you only THINK you know the definition. (You can't whine like in Mrs. Brown's seventh grade class, "Well, you know what I meant.")

Have a great Sunday...reflect...eat well...cheer your favorite team...write...write...write.

Steal this idea - "Mom Kills Car"

Good for the mom who sold her son's car after finding booze under the front seat. Good for Judge Judy when the kid sues the mom for the cost of the car claiming he paid for it. I don't have a fully formed story idea because I'm suffering from chocolate cake withdrawal, but this seems like the kind of thing that should inspire someone even if just for a scene in a novel.

Two guys try to cash a dead man's check in a for real "Weekend at Bernies". I'd make a separate posting for it, but the idea has been done already. Can you improve on it?

Because we get into ruts

Don't forget to feed the world one grain of rice at a time and learn some new vocabulary words.

Check the list of contests. There's plenty to be entered for those who enjoy that.

And don't forget the label DA GUIDELINEZ as you revise your stories.

Psst. The alien food eating French Poodle (see yesterday's post) was standing outside my deer fence last night. It's eyes glowed at me when I arose at 3 a.m. and looked outside. It bayed at the moon (even though it was cloudy). It's getting weird out there. Soon, she'll be shooting crepe flambeau from her mouth and making little children do her bidding.

Ya'll have a nice day.

Aliens have Landed

Well, at least I thought that the pod people had arrived in my backyard. And man, you can't imagine the hundreds of stories that ripped through my head as I examined the alien pod I found after raking away some leaves. It was the size of an enormous white chicken egg or a turkey egg. In fact, I thought it was an egg. I picked it up and the tissue thin white outer layer started to peel away. At that point, I was glad I had gloves on, but the memories of the blob racing up that old man's pointy stick made me put the object down. I pulled back part of the white tissue and noticed that the inside was a greenish gelatinous mess, and underneath the mess was what looked like dozens of small eyes. For a fleeting moment, I thought about an old monster movie where a monster evolves quickly from a small egg, Gorgon, I think, from Venus. However, the thought vanished the moment I remembered that there was a root to this thing: a dozen or so angel hair pasta extensions, the longest being about eight inches long. I didn't dare put my face closer. I'm no fool. That's exactly what it wants so it can grasp onto my face and suck my brains out. (Boy, would it be disappointed.) The eyes, however, looked lifeless, and as I looked at them more intently, I was wondering if it was making me do it or if I was doing it on my own. I decided, not eyes, but almost a small pockmarked pit with dark centers in each of the indentations.

I called a master gardener friend, figuring this was organic. She told me to leave it be. Then her cell phone cut out. Could it be that the pod people had gotten to her already?

I checked the Internet, and though I can't be certain, I think what I found was the egg stage of the Stinkhorn mushroom (Phallales Stinkhorn Gleba) which grows to be a penis shaped fungus about eight inches high and stinks like rotten meat or bad smelling feet to attract flies to suck of the gelatinous mess and spread its seeds. And in France, they eat the pit. EUUWWW. YUCK! Give me McDonalds.

I just checked outside to verify the dimensions. It's gone. Some paw-shaped footprints go off into the woods. All my lights are now on. My doors are locked. And I'm on the lookout for my neighbors French Poodle. Spooky.

Steal this idea - "The Chicken Bones"

Bones is a popular word in many book titles recently: "The Lovely Bones", "The Bone Collector", "The Bone Garden", and many more. How about "The Chicken Bones". Stay with me here. Some schmo burglarized an apartment, ate some chicken, and eventually got caught because of his DNA on the chicken bones. That's kind of funny in of itself, but what if that is only the tip of the iceberg to the story. What if one of the guns he stole out of that apartment led to a famous historical murder and the cops have a new clue, but some powerful people don't want the murder to be "resolved." Could be dicey.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Murder and mayhem and psychos and villains;
Killers and victims and coppers and hit men;
Assassins who kill the queens and the kings;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Chases and shoot-outs with fiery crashes;
Hoods in dark places with knife blades that slashes;
PIs with tight lips stare jailbirds to singing;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Men in deep trouble and women in peril;
Heroes with dark pasts who always are sterile;
Moments so dark that my readers are tingling;
These are a few of my favorite things.

When the dog bites,
When the bee stings,
When I'm feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.

MMWUC for January 7, 2008

EXERCISE: Eager writers fill the classroom seats. Most are writing; some adjust their caffeine drips; one dozes with a thin silvery stream of drool no wider than floss angling across the table. Emily Dickinson floats up the aisle without meeting the students' stares then stands before the students. She has been dead, after all, for almost two hundred years, her shyness intact. Her pale blue eyes focus on a matchbook size piece of paper. She clears her throat. "Tighten, tighten, tighten," she roars louder than a foghorn, clears her throat again, and in a voice slightly more than whisper, "Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax. For the next ten minutes, write from the protagonists POV, 'I never saw...'." A puff punctuates her sentence, and she is gone.

MUSING: I'm revising for the last time one of my novels. It either sinks into the abyss after this or swims like swan fully emerged from an ugly duckling. I've given it a fair chance to find its way. My efforts have proven futile nearly one hundred times. I love the intricate story, but some characters lay like toy soldiers on the floor in the recreation room of my childhood rising to action only to the tune of my imagination and no one else's. We will see what the last revisions can do, and then it's on to the next story beating on the lid of the toy box to be let out.

Steal this idea - "The Dead Candidates"

John Wilkes Struthers is fed up with the political system, and his unlikely friend, next door neighbor, Xi Chang, agrees that something must be done to stop the flood of illegal immigrants, high taxes, and America's involvement in foreign lands. Xi even agrees that English should be the official language. "I work very hard to speak my adopted country's language. All these other wahoos can do it too."

John, an ex-demolition expert in the army, sets out to level the playing field with financial support from Xi. "If I blow up all those yakking politicians at the next debate, maybe someone with commonsense will run for president." While John and Xi start to figure out how to get rid of the politicians in Capital City's big debate in three weeks, Xi, a Chinese mole, has his small organization plow the field to make sure John can execute his plan. With the current set of candidates out of the way, the pro-Chinese candidate will surely rise to the top.

Who will stop him or can this plan just work to our advantage.

Saturday in the Park

You'd not confuse today with the fourth of July, as the song lyrics would suggest. It's winter. Normal winter again, not that bitter cold stuff sent from my writing friends in Maine, but an average winter day in central North Carolina. I'm finishing the clean-up from my NYD party, catching up on emails, and looking for work. (The horror;the horror.)

I've written a few email responses on the craft of writing this morning, and I must confess. I now have to again, go back to some of the basics about the craft and ensure I'm not delusional in what I'm writing, that I need to put some writer Visene in my eyes and make sure I'm following all the good advice I've picked up over the years that I parrot out to others.

Is there tension on every page? Is there tension on every page of what you write? Even if it isn't a thriller, I need to make my reader squirm in his/her seat about the potential of my protag not reaching their stated goal. I want the reader to be afraid to move forward in the story because they've invested so much in the protag, that they don't want him to fail, but must read on just as I have to go down in my crawlspace, cold, dark, dank, probably bug infested, with maybe some mice or a rabid opossum, and find out what that noise is that I hear and hope that it's not Lestat. Pray for my character; pray for me.

Workshops to Catch

Okay! Everyone is back at work and sneaking a peek at their favorite blogs. Here's hoping mine is one of them. Several writers have asked me about workshops lately. Here's my favorite...

Writers Retreat Workshop in Marydale, Kentucky in late May/early June is ten days of great instruction by wonderful people in a learning environment on YOUR material at a great price.

Here's an on-line workshop that I think will be tops for mystery/action/adventure writers...

RWA's Mystery/Suspense Chapter's COFFIN College of Felony and Intrigue MURDER ONE online Workshop for the month of FEBRUARY 2008 taught by Bob Mayer.

Looking for witticism's this morning? Go away. It's hard to be witty when your sweetie rushes into the bedroom and yells, "The car won't start," and you have to stumble out of a dream starring Jane Seymour from the bond movie into a 21 degree morning (hey, that's cold for central Carolina) and figure out why. Could it be connected to the glove box that was reinstalled on New Year's Day? Stay tuned for updates or just check out the workshops mentioned above.

Oy!

I think I have a hangover from eating too many fried wantons at yesterday's New Year's Day party at my house to ring in the new year.

The second lead story on the noon news today was about the minuscule line of snow flurries sneaking through the Raleigh area. It snowed for four minutes and twelve seconds at my house. That was just long enough for me to check and see if we have enough milk and bread, find my snow shovel (I'm the only one on the street with one), and my big boots. Yes, that was sarcasm.

Reminds me of the time I drove to Wilmington, North Carolina in November out of boredom. I had little money, no work, and time. A snow squall spawned from a cold front followed me down I-40 for the three hour drive while every radio station broadcast its progress. Hunger overcame me when I arrived so I stopped at small hamburger joint and ordered a late lunch. Two burgers, a large fry, and a soft drink arrived at the counter a few minutes later. As I pulled out my wallet, a strong gust of wind that hit the building like God doing a high-five and a horizontal burst of snow quickly obscured the buildings across the street. The middle-aged women behind the counter screamed as though Godzilla had asked for four thousand fish sandwiches and she only had six prepared. Quicker than Marion Jones, she dashed to the door shouting, "My kids. I've got to get my kids home from school."

A thin layer of white covered the ground five minutes later. Ten minutes after that, the wind had blown the snow to the edges of the parking lot into mountainous drifts four to six inches high. I walked out into the sun-dried parking lot to my car and assumed the woman had saved her kids. Thanks be to God for southern snowstorms and free lunches for a poor man.

My Doppelganger Wrote This

I can't believe no one wanted to steal my idea from 12/30/07. Oh well.

For you sci-fi writers, check out this article about the REAL possibility of parallel words. Can you imagine the credibility in your story by quoting a CERN scientist that someone like me is writing the exact same words at this moment! Maybe I should rent the doppelganger movie that was out in the 1970s. Start off the new year blowing my mind with possibilities.

MMWUC for December 31, 2007

Writers, take the day off. Take tomorrow off, too. But like Scrooge said to Bob Crachett, "Be here all the early the next day," the first day of your future writing career starts with a cold, hard stare in the mirror. What do you really have to do to be the best writer you want to be? I have to make my opening forty pages sizzle more.

The joy of writing and the struggle to get published begins anew.

By the way, I'm having oysters on crackers at midnight. How do you ring in the new year?

Steal this idea - "Fifty Places"

When I first read the article that made a snide remark to this mythical book, I thought it was a real book already. The writer did call it a best-seller, and with the proper treatment, I think this could be a best-selling idea either fiction (with some story attached) or non-fiction.

"Fifty Places Not Worth Seeing Before You Die"

What are the fifty places you don't think anyone needs to visit?

The inspiration for this idea suggested Shreveport, Louisiana and gave a convincing argument for me not to visit this town. I thought of Camden, New Jersey as another possibility. Perhaps in your non-fiction story, your protagonist finds this lists and decides to visit all fifty places. Perhaps the news wires pick up on his story after a while. Tourism picks up in these towns pick up. The towns get an influx of money and start to flourish. The protag gets hailed for his work. A noble peace prize is in the offering. Of course, our protag is a near idiot and...you figure out the rest. Think "Forrest Gump" meets Bill Bryson.

Banned But Not Forgotten

On January 2nd, the world changes. No more smoking at cafes in France. This is hard to imagine, and I wonder how many ex-pat American writers, who lived and wrote in Paris, are rolling over in their papers at the moment?

I don't smoke, but I always have liquids nearby, sipping, sipping, sipping when I write. I can't imagine if diet coke (which actually is bad for us) were to be banned. How would I cope? Coffee! How many writers can't live without it? What do you have/do that you can't live without if the Lords of Laws banned it? Fuzzy dice? Pencils in mouth/behind ear/betwixt fingers? Cigarettes in YOUR house?

Fired for Writing and Dumb Crooks

Okay, it's a teaser. The woman in this article was fired for writing on the job. She only wrote during the slow times. Slow times! What's that?

Why can't I write a criminal as dumb as these? Oh yeah, a novel must make some sense and these people make no sense.

Hope the holidays were wonderful for all. Time to get ready for our New Year's Day bash...Asian food for all, and then down to some serious writing about some non-serious stuff.

I thought I saw Austin Carr while I was visiting home in New Jersey, but a thug blocked my view and a redhead had him covered up.

Merry Christmas

Stealing a few minutes at my sisters. Happy holidays to all and hope Santa brought each of you an acceptance.

On the Road

I've put the cat out, shut off the gas, and blown out the candles. Christmas beckons nine hours up the road in New Jersey. I've spent weeks decorating the house with the spouse so that I can leave. I cleaned the fish tank completely. Eighty-seven confused guppies eye me with distrust. To get revenge, every female gave birth yesterday and twenty-five new ones float near the surface looking things over. The lighting auto-timer is set; the next door neighbor is armed with food for the outside birds. The clean car awaits my form in the well-worn cushions, as the wife shoves one more present into the back buckling the roof and obstructing any view of the road behind me. I've got a diet coke to make it to the daylight hours and five days of computer withdrawal.

Everything is set as the computer is turned down and the only weighty thought on my mind is that we don't own a cat, so where did that one come from? Must be a Festivus Miracle.

Of course, now that I'm ready to post this, I find the water heater leaking from the only pipe that does not hang over our enlarged pan under the dual system. Every time we go on vacation, something happens to the heater or the water system. That dang cat must have chewed on it.

Early happy birthday, Skippy, if you're reading this.

Makes Squirrely Sense to Me

"Squirrels are just rats with good PR," saith the Michael J Fox character on "Spin City". But I'm finding them smarter than I realized because they use shed rattlesnake skin to mask their scent from predators. Why didn't I rub up against Richard Gere when he sat behind me in a restaurant. I could have used some positive scent while hunting females. What's the point? The importance of scent as one of the five senses should never be lost on writers. Without it, our stories could be struck dead by a predator.

By the way, happy solstice.

"The Monkey's Raincoat" by Robert Crais

Okay, I'm a bit late coming to this book published in 1987, but Jack Getze said Crais be one good writer, so I cracked it open. Besides, the cover's red tag read, "Named one of the century's 100 favorite mysteries by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association." That fancy tag and Getze were right, this was a great read. Elvis Cole, a literate, wisecracking Vietnam war vet is an L.A. detective who must find the wayward husband of a mousy wife and pushy female friend. The case mushrooms into something bigger, and Elvis brings in his deadly and mostly silent partner, Joe Pike, as the body count climbs. The story gathers momentum with its tight prose and well-drawn characters until the conclusion when people must decide what they are willing to fight for and die for. Hands down five stars.

Resolutions for 2008

Everyone I know is making resolutions, so I've made mine.

1. Eat better in order to think better so I can write better.
2. Work out five days a week to build stamina so I can write better and write every day.
3. Practice meditation for inner strength to find value in rejections and joy in acceptances.
4. Sleep more regularly and build a schedule that supports continuous submissions.
5. Listen more and talk less when others evaluate my work.

And finally, kill no more than two squirrels per week while imagining they are agents who've rejected me.

Will Strike for Strong Verbs

Strike, strike, strike...Why is writing not considered hard work by the masses?

If you're tired of holding a picket sign, you can always write about a new species of giant rat! Maybe the striking writers mind-meld with the rats and have them attack the evil enemy. Oh, wait! "Ben the two of us..." It's been done before.

Steal These Ideas - "I'll Raise You Two Novellas"

In this story, a postcard arrives at its destination 93 years late. No joke. I'm thinking that there has to be a story buried in there somewhere, perhaps even an inventive murder mystery. Where was it all these years? Why did it get returned now? Could the news on the postcard hold clues to a murder from nearly 100 years ago that caused the rise of one family by the ruination of another, and that this is someway to get the investigation restared. Murder cases are never closed. Hmmmmmmm.

In this story, here's a new twist on an old story that usually stars a man. This woman has ten husbands! It's an immigration scam, but I bet it would make for a great TV movie of the week. Okay TV movies of the week usually aren't great, but someone needs to snap this up before it is a bad episode on CSI: Miami (a really awful show) or Law and Order: Flint, Michigan.

MMWUC for December 17, 2007

EXERCISE: "Final exams for students," Mr. Chips said. "Sometimes life is simple, and you just need to focus on the important things at hand. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax. For the next ten minutes, write from the protagonist's POV, 'All I want for Christmas is...'."

MUSINGS: I'll be on the road, weather permitting, next Monday. And I'm not taking my laptop or accessing my computer or worrying about what wonderfully witty things everyone is saying that I'm missing. Sometimes you just have to put the computer aside, but it is somewhat like withdrawal, especially if some of the things you want for Christmas relate to the computer and what it brings to you: the hope and possibility of publication in my case via email submissions. But more so, there is the pause that refreshes when you set it aside for several days. Like any lifestyle choice that becomes habit after a while, you learn what you can do without, that in the past has just been filler in your life. For me, I think I need to shut off the Internet for a few hours a day to concentrate on writing and not react like a Pavlovian dog each time the new mail dinger chimes. It would also cut down on my laundry. The number of drool bibs is getting a bit excessive.

Steal this idea - "The Next Sound You Hear"

From the Live Science web site, something you should definitely mark as a favorite if you write science fiction, this item caught my attention.

Speedier Satellites -- A primary cause of a warmer planet, carbon dioxide emissions, is having effects that reach into space with a bizarre twist. Air in the atmosphere's outermost layer is very thin, but air molecules still create drag that slows down satellites, requiring engineers to periodically boost them back into their proper orbits. But the amount of carbon dioxide up there is increasing. And while carbon dioxide molecules in the lower atmosphere release energy as heat when they collide, thereby warming the air, the sparser molecules in the upper atmosphere collide less frequently and tend to radiate their energy away, cooling the air around them. With more carbon dioxide up there, more cooling occurs, causing the air to settle. So the atmosphere is less dense and creates less drag.

What if...The Atmosphere Stabilizing Satellite (ASS) crosses over a suddenly less dense hole in the upper atmosphere and disappears into space because the signals can't find the satellite. On Earth, the ASS no longer covers the planet with its cloud seeding and storm disruption rays. Storms overcome some areas and apocalyptic events occur until...

Lexophile Humor

Humor for Lexophiles (lovers of words):

1. I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

2. Police were called to a day care where a three-year old was resisting a rest.

3. Did you hear about the guy whose left side was cut off? He's all right now.

4. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.

5. The butcher backed up into the meat grinder, and got a little behind in his work.

6. To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

7. The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

8. A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.

9. A thief fell and broke his leg in wet cement. He became a hardened criminal.

10. Thieves who steal corn from a garden could be charged with stalking.

To see the rest, go to this site. (thx to DB...who really needs to update his blog.)

Steal this idea - "Meccamania"

This article about the pilgrimage to Mecca got me thinking. What if...

A para-military group made up of a group of people bent on personal revenge and financial banking acquires a nuclear weapon and targets the time of pilgrimage to deliver "their final solution." Someone in the group balks at the thought of this horrendous act, but before she can get the attention of help, she is liquidated. Her death, though, captures the interest of a former Muslim friend, and minor police official, and he starts to investigate. Soon, he realizes the exact nature of the threat, but is rebuffed by his superiors who consider him lower class. He reluctantly turns to MI7 for help and is reeled into the world of secrets, agents, connections to the Massad (sp) and the CIA that can be used for good and for evil in a desperate attempt to stop the para-military group. And he only has a week to gain this trust and stop the slaughter of millions.

Ebaying your book

Bid on book, tab, and curious rejections of fellow novelists book, "In Stereo Where Available" by internet friend, Becky Anderson. I'll have to remember this additional marketing approach. I wonder what I can get for an autographed version of my college thesis, a short story entitled, "Apologies to William Faulkner"? It's brilliant! Brilliant!

Faking it!

Trying to get my "average joe" some false identification. How would you do it?

What's inspiring you this morning, afternoon, or evening?

My brain moving too slowly is morning this. Inspiration. Marques De Paiva Gourmet organic arabica coffee--medium roast. Help maybe, but takes twenty minutes. Meanwhile.

Meteor shower could inspire. The feathery trails of the meteorites lingered. I knew they were remains of ancient ice, the stuff of life. Could they be bringing new life to this dead planet?

Ice storm could inspire. Ice continued to rain over me. Damn volcano blowing up in what was Indonesia. The whole world's gone mad. It's April. We haven't seen the sun in months, and it hasn't been over thirty-two degrees in six months. To hell with global warming. Mother Nature is laughing somewhere.

Coffee. What if it was laced with small trace amounts of cocaine? What if the addictive factor in coffee is not caffeine, but cocaine? What if Juan Valdez was really the mastermind behind my paranoid dreams that made me wage a one-man war against the coffee industry?

Whew! Enough coffee for me. I think I'll go paint the front porch.

MMWUC for December 10, 2007

Writers are still on strike. Write your own wake-up call and post it here in comments.

Dialogue

After a day of falling trees, choping wood, and stacking a 1/2 cord of wood, we did some Christmas decorating at my SIL's house. I got home. "Casablanca" was on. I watched. Dialogue so sharp, I've got paper cuts on my ears. How'd they do that? How can I do it?

The Auctioning of Manly Men

Okay, I combined two links into one. Check out the December 5th blog on PUB RANTS about the auction process the agent went through. Hey, I thought it was interesting. Who are the ten most manly men of the writing world? Check it out. Hemingway, London, and Twain top my list. Of course, there is this viking I know and his main character, Austin.

The Editing Muse

Yesterday was a brilliant day of editing. I didn't know there was an editing muse to guide my hand so skillfully. What other muses are out there that I'm not taping into?


(The 16 oz. Hershey bar probably didn't hurt the process either.)

Steal this idea - "The Cannabus Conspiracy"

Robert Jones is a medical beat reporter for the Tacoma Times. Fresh from the wires, he reports on medical breakthrough from an independent research organization indicating that marijuana cures several kinds of cancer. Through his column, he champions the government to move quickly to get the active ingredients in marijuana available to the hundreds who die daily. Hours after the news breaks, Xanfield, Inc., a large multi-national corporation headquartered in Washington, files a patent to produce a product based on this research. A coalition of senators and representatives fast-tracks FDA approval and six months later "Marijuana Matrix" is available for only selected test candidates prior to being made available to the general public.

Xanfield's stock has gone through the roof. Everyone is happy. Jones has cancer. When he approaches Xanfield to be a test candidate adding that he has the benefit of national exposure through his column on the drug's positive results, he is not taken as a candidate. He is shocked that he's been denied despite being a perfect candidate. His prognoses is not good, and he decides to spend what time he has left doing things he loves. Then the note arrives, and he's pulled into an investigation of Xanfield executives who've done well financially, the senators and representatives who've done well financially, and the key persons at the "independent" research lab who've done well financially. Test results with the note lead to clues indicating the results were faked, and all the candidates hand selected to make the results look good.

Can Jones live long enough to expose a massive fraud? Can he find the evidence? And what femme fatal (you knew there had to be a love interest) left him the information and falls for a dying man over his current love, who may or may not have set him up?

Steal this idea. I'd love to read it in two years or so.

New Resources

A few new resources I've added:

* Publications Coach, under the Writing Help lavel, which provides writing tips.

* Reading Recommendations at Stop Your Killing Me, under the Mystery and Crime Stuff label, which provides lists upon lists of recommendations for reading

* Murder She Writes, under Mystery and Crime Stuff label, which provides writing related help from a quintuplet of writers.

"The Concrete Maze" by Steven Torres

Jasmine Ramos is 13 years old and missing. That is the cold, hard fact. Her father, Luis Ramos, will stop at nothing to find her and then provide the justice that the reluctant NYPD detectives can't seem to meter out. Told through the eyes of Luis' nephew, Marc, the pair dive into a world of drugs, prostitution, and corruption driven by selfish people with too much money and too little humanity. The maze Luis must traverse includes slices of New York City that most don't see and many who have wish they hadn't. A smooth read, it is heart-wrenching at several points with twists that keep you guessing at the ultimate outcome. It is an urban noir thriller engrossing enough for a straight-through read. There is a depth and maturity in the writing that I'm sure will grow and pull this reader back for more. Any minor nit-picking is just that and doesn't diminish this from being a 5 star read.

MMWUC for December 3, 2007

EXERCISE: "Tis our season," Dickens shouts, prodding Scrooge in the butt with the Grinch's pointy shoes. An army of elves march up the aisle, singing songs of grandmothers run over by reindeer and dragging a tied-up Macaulay Caulkin behind them as a sacrificial offering. Bill Murray shares a beer with the Grime Reaper and Jack Skellington on a sticky floor. Frosty the snowman slides in on an electric razor head running over Rudolph while John Boy Walton heads for bed at nine in the morning calling to his siblings. Dickens turns. "Close your eyes students, take a deep breath, and relax. For the next ten minutes, write from the protagonist's POV, 'While he slept, the events of the day streamed through his mind...'."

MUSINGS: Do you capture your dreams? If you don't, why not? They are a rich fertile ground of disassociated thoughts that sometimes lead to magical journals and perhaps novels. It isn't easy at first, but I find, if I talk about them immediately upon waking up or write them down, bits and pieces, fragments, leap out and stay with me longer. A few dreams, or really fragments of dreams, have made it into stories. Make your dreams work for you. After all, you rent them room in your brain for free.

Author Interviews on Court TV

Court TV has a show with author interviews on each Monday at 10:00 p.m. Check it out.

Critiquing

An Internet writing acquaintance alerted me to another site that has potential for those of us who need those other eyes when refining our stories. She has recommended Deadly Prose. If your chapter-by-chapter critiques need a boost with a full novel review, you might won't to check out this site that includes published and unpublished authors and a screening process.

NANOWRIMO's Next Novel Nudge

2008 NANOWRIMO is over. I failed to achieve the NANO goal. Congratulations to all who did whether they poked along at 1,667 words per day or wrote like a possessed demon whose muse wouldn't let go of them, shaking their fingers furiously until the last strong verb beat the crap out of a useless "was." Sammi slammed over 10,000 words in a day; some writers unknown to me did even more.

I covered just under 11,000 words in my attempt to Nanoize my next novel and did some editing of existing novels. While missing the NANO goal is disappointing, the whole point to NANO is to put the butt in the seat, get something done, shake off the brain dust, sharpen the thoughts, and focus on the thing that writers profess is their passion.

Writers write. It IS the only rule. And if it takes some oddball contest to wake some writers' up to that truth, I'm all for it.

Write on! Write on!! Brothers and sisters in writing. Amen. Write on!!!

MWA's Publishing List

You be the judge. Is Mystery Writers of America (MWA) establishing a level of criteria or becoming elitist with regard to who can be on their panel discussions? Is that level of criteria too high or really just right to create a measure of quality control? In part, MWA has decided to "...develop quality control, criteria to determine who is a legitimate author and who is not..." based on the book's publisher to ensure that vanity and self-published authors don't end up on panels.

Seems to me, after all the discussions over the years about being a writer/author, that published or unpublished, if that's what you do, you're a writer. Seems to me, if you can publish your book (vanity and self-publishing have been around for a long time), you're an author. Seems to me, there are many coaches/managers/teachers who have a lot to say on how things should be done, although they may not have had the skill sets to perform well on the playing field, and I've seen some good writers who had absolutely nothing worth saying. Seems to me, MWA may be punishing their own lifeblood (authors) by using a yardstick to measure the performance of the publishing industry, not the viability of what the author has to say on an instructional level.

I don't know how they come up with panel members or whether it's a long and arduous chore or if they evaluate the panel members' performance after the fact, which would seem to be the best way to decide if a panel member is worth re-inviting. I'm not an MWA member for no other reason than because I've just not bothered to join. But it is their organization, and they can do with it as they please. But to me, discounting a great many AUTHORS (possibly as high as 50-70%) because of their PUBLISHERS seems backwards and counter-productive.

Mohammad and Me

Some British woman is going to be given 40 lashes because her class named a Teddy Bear, Mohammad. I have a character named Mohammad, who's not a particularly nice guy, in one of my novels. I hope I don't get any lashes. That would make me mad.

Are there any other names that get such negative reactions that they probably shouldn't be used?

Steal this idea - "The Bush Whack"

Conspiracy theorists and action authors, this is your day. What if Bush and the boys were right for all the wrong reasons? Huh! What if a routine army patrol finds yet another secret Iraqi installation, and it did contain elements of a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD). However, the actual weapon triggering devices were ported out of the country only days before the patrol finds the installation. After a brief firefight with the well-paid remaining Iraqi troops, the only clues point to a toy set to hit the Christmas market in two days that will kill thousands of kids world-wide instantly and render the families sick and dying over days. Can your agent overcome the maze of business denials, bureaucratic red-tape, and tight timeframe to stop the sale of this toy while uncovering the shocking truth that...

...the Icelandic President is backing the toys and sleazy manufacturer for years

...that the nebulus Council for Human Population Control supplied the money for the toy

(or some other nonsense)

Gee...almost sounds like a job for James Bond or Clive Cussler.

MMWUC for November 26, 2007

EXERCISE: Students waddle into the classroom and plop into their seats like so many egg dumplings in grandma's turkey leftover surprise soup. Paul Simon, still dressed in his SNL turkey costume, stands on the dais. The faint humming of "Still Crazy After All These Years" settles over the room. He gobbles, "I am a musician. I am a lyricist. I am not a novel writer; however, choosing the right word, Mrs. Robinson instead of Mrs. Roosevelt as in "The Graduate" can mean the difference between a chuckle amongst friends and a lasting image in popular culture." He spreads his wings wide. Students teeter between falling out of their seats laughing, barfing leftovers, or applauding. "Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Today, you will write with new vigor from the antagonist's POV, 'Dozens of herring lay on the counter-top...'."

MUSINGS: ...and a dead body rested on the bar stool like a walrus after a heart-chocking feast. I only wished I could have been there when it happened. Fat Tony, who'd need to beef up to match the bulbous proportions of the dead man, said he actually heard the guy's head crack when it hit the bar. Blood mixed with the juice from the pickled egg jar that fell when the dead man hit the bar. Vodka collins, rum and cokes, beer, and a old-fashioned completed the smells and added to the sticky film on the floor. One of the last smoker's bar, it tasted like a pack of Camels when I breathed through my mouth to avoid smelling the foul air. It smelled as bad as Joe Camel after a week on a Saharan trek. I made a wide swing past the body while heading for the back office. My hand slid along the wall in need of a paint job, flecks pealed like Fat Tony's dandruff. When I passed the door to the woman's room, it opened. Sam Spade came out in drag; I rubbed my hand across his startled cheek. "You need a shave, sweetheart." "I was tailing the dead man's moll, but she gave me the slip," he replied. "Sure," I said. Then a punch out of left field knocked me down. The last thing I remembered was that Sam had a great set of legs.

My Thanksgiving

This was my thanksgiving. How was yours?

My Thanksgiving
-----------------
Kids scream, adults talk
bloated belly sings enough!
Warm fire, victimstalk
Grandkid/grandpa, toot same snore.
Friday we mall walk
Dash to movie popcorn stuffed
Nights of sleepless talk
lifting stories -- realm of lore.

All turn homeward bound
Vacuum litter, mop the floors.
Strip bed without sound
Find pets who beg, "Please, no more."

Who are you?

I have this little world map at the bottom of the blog. It shows the places from where people have visited my blog on an updated basis. Sometimes there's as many as 64 visitors in a day; sometimes as little as six, but usually it's in the mid-teens. I actually can figure out who a few might be. I can reasonably speculate a few others. But sometimes, I'll get one from some far flung site, and it sets my already over-developed sense of imagination into hyper drive. (It ain't pretty being in my head at that point.) Someday I'll put down on paper the amazing stories surrounding those unusual visitors from northern Chile, a dot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, southern India (Is that you Anita?), or Tehran (where a little girl meets the Ayatollah and melts his heart, so he decides to marry her and is stoned to death as an unholy man, not because he married her, but didn't get approval of the father first). Stories are everywhere. Kick over a stone and unleash a good wizard trapped in a salamander's body until a kindness is bestowed upon him, and he brings back unicorns whose horns are the only weapon that can stop the aliens who have been secretly taking over the Earth. I CAN'T STOP!

Six Word Stories

Can you write a story in six words? William Shatner did. Margaret Atwater did. See what they wrote.
---
Ate turkey, burped, expired in pie.

Gobble down your next writing assignment

In honor of turkey day, don't forget to get your turkeys into the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest by April 15th (or so).
---
It was a dark and stormy night.
---
Bowlegged frogs littered the roadside mimicking the drunken old men under the railroad bridge who released methane thick as swamp gas into the sultry night choking the frogs in mid-croak in an endless cycle of what passed for life, death, and Al Gore's worst nightmare.

Prior to Black Internet Monday...I have this to offer.

Mother and Daughter clothes. Amber also writes horror which her kids don't get to read...thank goodness.

Who is your scariest character?

Abebooks asked visitors to name the scariest characters in books. The results:

1. Big Brother from 1984 by George Orwell
2. Hannibal Lecter from the novels by Thomas Harris
3. Pennywise the clown from It by Stephen King
4. Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
5. Count Dracula from Bram Stoker's novel
6. Annie Wilkes from Misery by Stephen King
7. The demon from The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
8. Patrick Bateman from American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
9. Bill Sykes from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
10. Voldemort from the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling

Got another favorite?

I lifted this list from Southern Review of Books from Anvil Publications. Though promotional in nature, there were some interesting marketing tips in this review.

MMWUC for November 19, 2007

Exercise. Yes, for real, do this exercise before you break into your story. "Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Release and relax. Write for ten minutes, 'I held open the door and in walked...'."

Musings. Do I do my own exercises? Yes. Faithfully? Well, no, but I do find warming up with something I'm not committed to gets the juices flowing so that when I start on my WIP (work in progress), the brain is engaged. And sometimes I keep what I write in the exercise, because it feels like it might lead to something. (What I really should do is put them all in a journal.) Also, I'll try to apply the exercise to my current WIP even if the opening words in the exercise doesn't apply to anything that I'm aware of yet. And it's kind of important to have the brain engaged when you're writing. Finally, I do open my eyes before I start writing. It's dangerous being a writer with pens and pencils sticking up at odd angles, paperclips looking to be launched when least expected, tape ready to hold you hostage, electrical shocks from computers, batteries catching fire on laptops, and radiation leaking from IPods, cell phones, and the X-ray machine in the other room. I'm sure some can write with their eyes closed, but I'm a visualist and need to see the showering sparks from my overhead lamp from the 100 watt bulb in a socket for a 60 watt bulb. Write on!

Steal this idea - "Dust Mite Poop"

I was vaguely aware that NPR was on the radio, and frankly, I don't remember anything about the allergy suffering session except these words, "...dust mite poop." Jack Klugman and Tony Randall invaded my thoughts--television's version of the odd couple. (Stay with me.) Now, the idea of suffering with allergies is not a funny thing...the old rolling pin and hair net gets allergy shots, but I couldn't get over the idea of dust mite poop. What if...

Barry Grubber makes Felix Unger look slothful. But when Barry finds out about dust mite poops, the cleaning gloves get thicker as he starts a one man campaign to wipe out dust mites. After ridding his house of them with a toxic solution he has become immune to, they return. Pushed to the edge, he wages his secret one-man campaign against his perceived enemies, first his neighbor, then the block, and then the town. What starts as a one-person eccentricity becomes a national emergency. Comedy, dramedy, sf gone mad. It's my idea, but you can steal it and make what you can of it.

"Blue Screen" by Robert Parker

I guessed the murderer about six lines after it happened in Robert Parker's "Blue Screen". I even had a handle on the motive. Guessing the murderer and motive early in a story isn't a bad thing, because it's the journey sometimes that makes the story as pleasurable as the surprise of "who dun it." But I must confess that any gossip mag or TV show would have had Erin and Misty's past figured out LONG before the investigators made whoopee. Parker sacrificed a thin plot to create some interesting secondary characters, but the female (Sunny Randall) and male (Jesse Stone) leads packed the emotional punch of the boys on "Dragnet," especially with their staccato dialogue. Parker must have had someplace better to be and phoned in a weak ending. Still, it was a quick read suitable for a long drive with an undesirable in-law. Rosie gets bonus doggie treats from me. I'm sure those who've read the series from the beginning see character development that I don't, but that may be part of the problem for later books in a series -- they still have to stand on their own merit. This one does, but is tipsy earning a 3.

Fighting World Hunger Through Vocabularly Lessons

Here's the link to the story. Here's the link to the site where if you get the correct definition to a word, you help fight world hunger.

Inspirational Inclemency

What type of weather inspires you to write? Me! Give me a cold, raw rainy day when the lumpy, mash-potatoed cloud bottoms are occasionally ripped by winds creating wispy feathers of moisture-laden clouds streaking Earth bound to touch and inspire me. Allow the wood stove's fire to warm me while I watch the cloud dance, and a rush of words will spill onto the page.

The Write, er, White Stuff

Whoa! Where did Wednesday go? Oh yeah, that's right. I was working in another medium - painting. NANO has been sacrificed to the God of Time. Time is a harsh God, but a steady one, beating out the seconds of the day evenly, giving all of us the same amount of Time, allowing each of us to meter out the use of the gift of Time. My Time didn't go to writing, getting a job, studying for a test, watching TV (although I did get to see the "list" episode of "South Park" in half a stupor with my honey. Maybe today the God of Time will afford me the necessary attention to writing.

As for my painting, I can't pain anymore. I can't do it when it is cold and raw, like it is today, a huge change from the sunny 70s of yesterday. I think Andy Warhol would have appreciated my efforts. The ghostly after images of wood showing through the snowy white of the primer coat on my front porch. My neighbors cheer, the mossy green growth has been vanquished.

Poison People Perfectly

Looking to poison your next victim in your mystery? Check out this blog from Poe's Deadly Daughters about untraceable poisons. Also useful if you have someone who drives over you bed of begonias every Friday night.

MMWUC for November 12, 2007

EXERCISE: Wake me up! My pencil is rubbing me out; my computer is deleting me; my pen is scribbling me into a unrecognizable mass of blue spaghetti. What happens to you when your muse takes off with your electrons to Aruba and you're stuck in Inuvik without a dog sled or toilet paper? I scream into the oblivion of an arctic winter's night, where even the snow white of forever is coal black: "Vampires can't handle the cold."

The flight attendant coos over the intercom: "Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Fasten your seat belts and relax. For the next three minutes and twenty seconds write, 'I heard the wind rush by and...'."

MUSINGS: It's Monday.

Veteran's Day

Yeah, I'm a Vietnam-era veteran. Thanks to all the other veterans who put themselves in harms way for our country and our way of life. Write about a better day when none of us have to make the decision to do so again.

I've been tagged

Ooh, we're about to get personal over here!The rules of the game are:

A). Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog...

B). Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself...

C). Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs...

D). Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I got tagged by Rae, and my seven random facts are:

1. I once wrestled an alligator...okay, he was only 14 inches long, but I was only ten at the time. (Yeah, Aunt Joannie)

2. I've never been to Mexico (but I've been to Mexico, NY -- Carol M.) or south of Orlando, Florida (Carol M. again).

3. I inhaled, but then again I'll never run for the Presidency.

4. I ran 36 miles once, but I don't even run to the bathroom anymore, and I have to do that more than once a night.

5. I designed, engineered, created the blueprints, and was the general contractor for my 3,500 sq ft home, but have never worked in the trades or taken a class in architecture. The county engineer approved the plans on the first try.

6. As I age, OCD is becoming part of my life. I don't know how many times I've gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to make sure I've turned off the hose or the oven or an outside light.

7. There is intelligent life in the universe. The odds are too stacked in favor of it, but I find it hard to believe we've been visited without a shred of "verifiable" evidence left behind.

I'm not entirely sure what this has to do with writing, but it did give me an idea or two for a story.

On Memoirs These Days

There was an old man who wrote a book
And an old lady who took a look.
She got a surprise
And widened her eyes.
The story was her life that he took.

On another group site I frequent (IWW), the discussion recently wove around memoirs as first "novels" as suggested by an (editor or agent, I forget) at an event with Haven Kimmel, author of the creative nonfiction memoir (my tongue snaps off with that classification) "A Girl Named Zippy". Is it easier to get a memoir published and then move on to novels? Are all our lives worth laying down on pages for publication? Have we lost our moral compass when it comes between the desire to be published and the willingness to blur the lines between the truth and fiction? Inquiring minds may not want to know, but I do.

The Smell of Danger

It officially went below 32 degrees, but my gardenias are still in their second blooming -- the fall blush. It got me thinking about Joel Cairo from "The Maltese Falcon". It was his scent in the movie, although in the book it was something else less recognizable. It was very effeminate. What smell would your hunk detective or P.I. have about him? Cigars, cigarettes, Tiparellos?

Segueing my way through the writing world.

Steal this idea - "The Murder of Moo"

I've GOT to include this somehow in my next novel. I can see it clearly. The bad guy getting away when something VERY unexpected prevents him from doing so. Maybe he gets amnesia and falls in love with the female sheriff or something who's investigating his crime(s) and he unwittingly keeps bringing her closer to the truth.

Muse Search

Where do you go to find your muse?

Turkey City Lexicon

I've added the Turkey City Lexicon under "Writing Help". If you're a SF writer, you should memorize. If you write, you should be aware.

MMWUC for November 5, 2007

EXERCISE: Writers pound their keyboards as John Kennedy Toole lumbers up the aisle. He smiles broadly at such an industrious lot, as he positions himself behind the lectern. The clock up ticks to nine a.m. A Yorkie charges in from the side door and bites him. His mother glides into the room through the skylight, somersaults out of the parachute and throws ninja stars at the Yorkie who deflects them with his studded collar. John lies bleeding on the podium. His mother rushes to her son, but a gaggle of men in dark navy blue suits charge out from behind the stage and carry her away, hoisting her high and shouting "Pull at her" or something like that. The Yorkie clears his throat and barks into the microphone, "Close your eyes students, take a deep breath, and relax. For the next ten minutes, write from the OMNI POV, 'Reginald couldn't wait...'."

The writers don't look up. And with his dying gasp, John asks, "Why?"

The blond haired girl in pig-tails in the front row mutters, "NANO. Must get words done."

MUSINGS: Is 2,000 words a day a reasonable goal for a writer? S. King says it is, and some writers are more productive than him, so they must have no problem with it. But I struggled to 2,001 words on Friday and decided, it's not the words that are the problem, it's the words without a plot that's the problem. Without direction, the words come hard and frankly, somewhat less than stimulating. With direction on Saturday after spending some time to plot a bit of the NANO story, the words flowed better. Were the words better? I don't know, but I'm sure there's a host of critiquers who'd love to decided whether or not I'm a dunce.

Steal this idea - "Chewbacca Found"

A friend, with a bad habit of smoking weird cigarettes, was really worried that Star Wards had actually happened because the dead body of a Chewbacca had been found in Texas. This was months ago, and I paid little attention to her ranting. She couldn't remember what she was listening to, but insisted she was right.

Well she was...sort of.

Somehow, I think this could be an excellent story. Something like a Coen movie where a misheard word starts a massive search for the missing Chewbacca and how everyone reacts to the search, and even once solved, the conspiracy theorists start things back up again.

"Visions in Death" by J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts)

It took me three tries before I could finish Chapter 1. The gruesomeness of the crime wasn't nearly as off-putting as the character of Lieutenant Eve Dallas. Perhaps I'm just not ready for the mid-21st century's version of the inverted thin man series. It's not that she's the cop and that her husband's so fabulously wealthy and a man of infinite abilities, but that he gets to play tag-along detective with his wife despite her otherwise prickly attitude about procedure. I found her as emotionally welcoming as snuggling with an Arctic Grayling. The police procedural parts of the story are top notch, but I stumbled over some surprising awkward writing. Any number of times, I was confused as to who was speaking, and some of the secondary characters were poorly drawn. I was ready for a twist at the end, even though I couldn't fathom its form. I had a hard time rating this story and settled for a strong 3 though I suspect her legion of fans will envision me dead.

Post-Halloween Thoughts

I'm sad. The only two goblins I expected to see at my door in the middle of the woods never showed. And I had two 14 inch long okras for each boy figuring that kids these days eat too much candy and this would be better for them.
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I like Halloween; my wife loves Halloween. I dressed in appropriate orange all day to scare the birds, forest animals, and goldfish. The goldfish, however, had this funny loving look in their eyes. I'll never wear all orange around them again.
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Can we cease with the blood and gore Halloween movies? I wanted to relax with an Italian sausage on bun for an hour or two last night, and all I found on my 902 channels were gory "Halloween" movies. Vampires sucking, werewolves woofing, the dead rising, bees stinging, jellyfish jiggling, and sharks snapping. And just what do sharks have to do with Halloween? I mean, I like Jack Nicholson. "Here's Johnny." But the last time I checked, no one except some poor Eskimo on an ice flow gets that much snow at Halloween. My wife pulled out Bambi and slipped into the VHS. We breathed a sigh of relief until we realized 39 seconds later that it was my copy of "Bambi vs. Godzilla". End of story.
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NANO day one went well. Have a log of each day near the bottom on the right-hand side.
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Must go write; must think; must get rid of those okra, they're starting to stink.

NANO Nuttiness Begins

I thought about staying up all night, yanking those first 1,667 words out of my brain, dropping them on paper like gifts from my muse, slamming down cups of coffee to keep me awake, but I'm getting old. I need my two hours of sleep (then pee), then two more (then pee), then maybe three more and awake refreshed in the morning, bed hair directionless, and waddle into the bathroom to pee. (You just knew it was coming.) The words can wait until I get a plot. I did open a file for the story and a few supporting files where I put character lists, names list, timeline, and other assorted tools. I even wrote the title and the opening paragraph. I woke my wife up and read it to her. "It sucks." She rolled over and went back to sleep. I'm not sure if she was dreaming about our vacuum cleaner or commenting on my opening paragraph.
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"Secrets My Grandmother Never Told Me"

Two years ago, my 78-year-old grandmother stole a scooter from an elderly gentleman, roared through the terminal to our gate, and barely made the flight out of Istanbul. It took the authorities hours to figure out what had happened. By then, we were halfway across the Atlantic and the plane didn't have the fuel to turn back. For my grandmother, it was just another bizarre episode in a long series of weird adventures that began long before I was born. But now I wonder if her luck has run out. Being wanted by the Turkish government for theft is one thing. Being taken away by Homeland Security after a flight for murder is another.
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"Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are." - Jimmy D.