About 25 Years Too Late, But Still Good

Well, I read Red Storm Rising (here) about 25 years after it came out and was a best seller, but it still had a lot going for it after all these years. One of the things I really liked about this book is that he wrote it without a primary main character. Sure this is Toland and Sergetov (two major characters) but unlike Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games et al, all the action in this book happens without the presence of Jack Ryan. I liked that. I found it refreshing. It makes me think that Tom Clancy hadn't yet been harangued by his editor/agent that he had to have a central character for readers to glom onto and relate with.

This feature of the book reminds me of the first time I saw Die Hard. I thought, what a great premise for a series of movies in which the main character in each story refuses to give up. I didn't think it should feature Bruce Willis in each movie. I mean how unrealistic that one guy would be put into all those different situations. This is why I dig Dick Francis novels. I think he made two novels with repeat main characters and yet he continued to be a prolific and popular author.

Nevertheless, I really liked Red Storm Rising and it has re-inspired me to go back and read some of the other Tom Clancy's I've missed. In terms of the "techno-thriller" he is unmatched. Some may find it too detailed or boring but I love reading about how the loader works in a battleships guns, or how a submarine uses passive "pinging" verses active sonar and why.

I enjoyed several of his passages. I love this one below that related several of the Russian generals to lions.



Alekseyev leaned forward and swatted himself with his bundle of branches. The action was strangely like a lion’s swishing its tail. At fifty, he was the second-youngest officer there, a respected intellectual soldier and a fit, handsome man with the shoulders of a lumberjack. His intense, dark eyes squinted down through the rising cloud of steam. “Mid-June?”

At one point he writes from a Naval Captain's point of view about the merchant marine fleet that is being used for convoy duty. As much as I liked the analogy above I thought this one was especially cringe inducing.



Of those, a mere 103 were routinely engaged in overseas trade. The supplemental National Defense Reserve Fleet consisted of only 172 cargo ships. To call the situation a disgrace was to describe gang rape as a mild social deviation. They couldn’t allow even one to be lost. Morris wandered over to the bridge radarscope

Then this one caught my eye. In context its not too heavy-handed but it provides a nice glimpse both into the general condition of the battle in Europe but also the weariness of the commander.


A field hospital was in the trees five hundred meters away, and the wind carried the shrieks of the wounded to the command post. Not like that in the movies he’d watched as a child— and still watched. The wounded were supposed to suffer in quiet, determined dignity, puffing on cigarettes proffered by the kindly, hardworking medics, waiting their turn for the courageous, hardworking surgeons and the pretty, dedicated nurses. A fucking lie, all of it a monstrous fucking lie, he told himself. The profession for which he had prepared his life was organized murder. He sent boys with pimples on their faces into a landscape rained on with steel and watered with blood. The burns were the worst. The tank crews who escaped from their brewed-up vehicles with their clothes alight— they never stopped screaming. Those killed by shock or the pistol of a merciful officer were only replaced by more. The lucky ones who reached the casualty-clearing stations found medics too busy to offer cigarettes, and doctors who were dropping from fatigue. 


Finally, this next one grabbed me for its particularly startling last line. I took a second look and thought you should too.


Alekseyev waved for Major Sergetov to follow him. Only he felt the cold lead weight in his belly. Only he knew how weak his knees were as they trod down the marble steps. Alekseyev didn’t believe in God, but he knew that he had just seen the door to hell cracked open. “Major,” he said casually

All in all, a great and terrific book and I can't wait to get a few smaller novels under my belt so I can go back and read another Clancy.

Wow, . . . Who Knew?

I was pleasantly reading along in my most recent book, Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy when BOOM! out of nowhere came this word.


It would have been fairly easy except for their heavy packs. Each man carried a fifty-pound load. The added weight and their fatigue affected their balance, with the result that someone watching from a distance might have taken the Marines for old women crossing an icy street. It was a fifty-degree slope down, in some places almost vertical, with some paths worn into the slopes, perhaps by the wild deer that throve here. For the first time fatigue worked in their favor. Fresher, they might have tried to move more quickly; as it was, each man was near the end of his string, and feared his own weakness more than the rocks. It took over an hour, but they made it down with nothing worse than cuts on their hands and bruises somewhere else.

Clancy, Tom - Red Storm Rising


Did you see it? Throve. Seriously? I felt sure it was a type. I actually took a second to look it up, and "Yep" there is it. Who knew that was the past of thrive (here). I bet if I polled a hundred people no one would know that.

First Line Right Now

That title is a bit misleading. I'm actually trying valiantly to get to that next first line. I'm racing through Red Storm Rising in an effort to get to this next book, both because I am looking forward to reading it, but also because Red Storm Rising is intense and engaging enough that reading it fast is fun.

The first line for this next novel is:

No way around it, there was going to be a body count.
What Goes Around - Cheryl Rogers

You can't tell me that doesn't make you want to read on. I actually started a novel a few years ago called Body Count. It didn't start with that compelling a line, so I'm looking forward to the rest of the book.

This Post is About This Book is About Travel

My indispensable brother sent me a terrific link about a fellow writer who has also recently self-published his book on travelling, Andrew Hyde is the author, his book is This Book is About Travel and the post is on his blog (here).

Yesterday I said I would get around to writing a post or two about the foibles, challenges (expected and unexpected) and difficulties that went with self-publishing. I still do intend to do that, mostly as an AAR (Military speak for After Action Review) to help me avoid the same problems next time.

One thing that my AAR will not address is the centerpiece for Mr. Hyde's post, the amount of royalties he received from each delivery method; Kindle, iBook, Nook, PDF. He provides a terrific primer on what to expect and what he found after he published and started to gain sales.


The most stunning piece of information that I found in the post was the change in the customer's buying habits prior to his having written his post and after (here).

This is required reading for anyone thinking of self-publishing and wants to know what to expect in terms of royalties.

I'll Take a Thumb's Up

The reason that I published my novel Toe the Line is so that I could find out what challenges and hurdles I should expect later down the road. I have another novel that I'm far more excited about just around the corner, and I want all my ducks in place for that one. I'll have a post on all the things I did wrong and all that I did right in the near future, but one thing I've found I underestimated was the work it takes to get reviews.

I assumed that reviews just came with purchasers. Not so. I was confused by this for about two seconds, right up till I thought about all the reviews I've written on Amazon for books that I've read . . . none. So the challenge is to find bloggers to read and review the work then post it to their blogs and to Amazon. I found a terrific site called Book Blogs (here) which is chock full of folks willing to do reviews. In some cases it's a review for a review which is how I ended up review Scrapbook last month (here).

Well, now a review has come in for Toe the Line and it's a thumbs up review. Mom's Thumb Review is a blog that review everything that could possibly intersect with a mom's life; hair products, cleaning products, fiction, non-fiction. Sort of an Angie's List without the focus on contractors. The site has around 20,000 views a month from 160+ countries and just yesterday had 1500 views. Miss Carr has read and reviewed my book and she liked it (see here).

I understand that it reads like a first timer's novel (it is), but at the very least, since it's on sale now for only $0.99 every review should at least say it was worth the price.

If Challenges Make the Character More Interesting . . . Why Do People Say I'm So Boring?

One of my favorite movies with Will Ferrel is Stranger than Fiction. At least that's one of my favorite movies of his where he is trying to be serious. My favorite part of that movie is when Will Ferrell's character, Harold Crick, finally discovers who the author talking to him in his thoughts is, he confronts her, gets a copy of the novel she is writing about him (and he is subsequently living out) and he gives it to Dustin Hoffman, a literature professor to read. Dustin Hoffman reads it and says something along the lines of "I'm sorry, you have to die. The book won't be any good if you don't die." (see here)

I was thinking about this movie on my drive in today. Today I feel like Harold. When I first started editing and rewriting my novel, my editor kept saying you have to add more conflict, more challenges. If the protagonist isn't having to overcome obstacles the reader will get bored. Now, when I read I see all the challenges that the author lays out in their own works  . . . boom . . . boom . . . boom. Now that I know what to look for I see it. In the book I'm reading, Red Storm Rising, I see World War III, five different characters stuck in their own little battles within the war, submarines stalking boats, ships stalking subs, firefights, an attempted rape, even Toland the intelligence officer trying to figure out how to gain the initiative, and even in the midst of all that he's dealing with troubles with his wife back at home. Tons of external and internal challenges.

My life is like that protagonist right now. The company I work for just recently laid off a large group of folks. I have had to take on a lot of new duties as well as continue my own. I have this to do, that to do, I have to fly to California, there is impending doom on the horizon when we look at our Fall workload. . . . boom . . . boom . . . boom. I feel like an author is throwing challenges at me to see how many more I can take. Interestingly, I find it difficult to believe that a reader would still be reading my novel. Who cares about the upcoming workload for an industrial cleaning company. Makes me think I need to find my own life's author and tell them to get more creative. 

The Good and Bad of Book Promotion

I read an article today in the WSJ by Nell Alk entitled, Author Runs the City (here). I thought for a moment, "What a great idea for research into a novel, getting to run a city for a day." I wondered if the character he was researching was a big city mayor. I was wrong. Actually it was an article about Scott Jurek, author of "Eat & Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness".

When I first started reading Diane Mott Davidson I thought she had a good idea in including her recipes at the end of her mysteries. I still think the recipes are a good idea, I just don't read her books anymore. I got to a point where I didn't find her characters engaging.

I thought a good way to expand on this idea of hers would be to include some of the runs, bike rides, and swims that take place in my novel in the back of my new novel. I decided against it. Don't get me wrong, I think that My Jurek has a great promotional idea for his new book. He's got a famous name, he's got a following, he even gets it in the WSJ. Davidson's idea is a bit more passive. Not much promotion. Fun, but no promotional aspect.

Then I realized that they weren't even useful. I never made one of those recipes. I liked reading about them originally, but that wore off. I even asked my wife, who turned me on to Davidson, if she had even used one of the recipes. She might have admitted to making one. It was all gimmick. That's the way the run, bike and swim routes would have come off. Gimmicky. No thanks. So, when you buy my new novel, you'll not see any mapped out race routes. However, you might see a bookmark for my novel in your race packet for your next race. Not gimmickry, that would be all promotion.

RV Novel

A few years ago I had an idea to write a story about a group of friends who travel around the US competing in triathlons, half marathons and other adventure races. The idea was to have a murder or two to occur on the way and for one of the RV riders to be the killer. As they raced more and more, and traveled on and on, the tension would ramp up both because the racers would get tired, but also because of the natural cabin fever that the RV trip would create.

It always seemed like a good idea, I just never got around to developing it further. One problem was that I remember the times I traveled with my lacrosse team in college. We would usually play lacrosse, sleep, eat, and drink. That's about it. Lots and lots of sleeping. Not much tension in that.

I've decided that if I really want to ramp up the tension and frustration one of the racers needs to bring along his wife, his two year old and his four year old. This would rapidly develop some frustration and aggravation. I have first-hand knowledge of just how much tension and aggravation it creates. This is our third day in the motor-coach and the two children alone have produced so much anxiety I'm about to yank my eyeballs out. The wife's complaints are just icing on the cake.

I think its time to pull that ole idea out of the cupboard and revisit the RV story.

Write Drunk . . .

There is a fun article and even more fun comments regarding the article in Fuel Your Writing by Eric Kuentz entitled What Happens When You Try and Drink Like Hemingway (here). It's short and a worthwhile read and it has inspired me to try the same experiment to see what happens. Basically, the author took a bottle of wine and another aperitif and tried to write for the evening drunk. His results?



One thing I learned, besides being out of practice drinking (no worries, not a habit I’m looking to pick up), alcohol definitely lowered my inhibitions. While this can be a dangerous occurrence at the bar, facing the blank page wasn’t nearly as scary as usual. While the ideas didn’t flow as smoothly as I may have liked, and clearly I lose the ability to punctuate and spell, there was definitely a stream-of-consciousness kind of feeling as I was writing. As things popped into my head, as characters spoke out of the fog of intoxication, it all spewed out onto the page.


Going back and looking what I have written in my intoxicated state, I think this may have been what Hemingway meant by “write drunk; edit sober.” My first draft is fluid and uninhibited. It’s haggard and sloppy, but it’s free. I had no fears and no restraints. Nothing was held back, and I wasn’t able to second-guess myself.

Again, it might be interesting to try. the question is . . . would it be worth the hangover?

Mission Success

If the mission of a first line was to establish a sense of foreboding and intrigue then I'd have to say that Tom Clancy achieved that mission with his first line way back in 1986.


They moved swiftly, silently, with purpose, under a crystalline, star-filled night in western Siberia. 

The passage only continue to up the tension as it continues.

They moved swiftly, silently, with purpose, under a crystalline, star-filled night in western Siberia. They were Muslims, though one could scarcely have known it from their speech, which was Russian, though inflected with the singsong Azerbaijani accent that wrongly struck the senior members of the engineering staff as entertaining. The three of them had just completed a complex task in the truck and train yards, the opening of hundreds of loading valves. Ibrahim Tolkaze was their leader, though he was not in front. Rasul was in front, the massive former sergeant in the MVD who had already killed six men this cold night— three with a pistol hidden under his coat and three with his hands alone. No one had heard them. An oil refinery is a noisy place. The bodies were left in shadows, and the three men entered Tolkaze’s car for the next part of their task.

Clancy, Tom - Red Storm Rising

Pretty good stuff if you ask me. I've been looking forward to reading this for some time. Now, after trying a couple of first time novelist's fare (a mixed bag) I would have to say it's nice to come back to some familiar territory.